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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A woman arrested in Louisiana told Las Vegas police she and her boyfriend duct-taped and suffocated a 71-year-old Las Vegas neighbor with a plastic bag before stuffing her corpse in a duffel bag to hide it in an underground utility vault, according to court documents.
Veronica Johnvae Houck, 23, told homicide detectives that as she and Jamar Kenty Webb, 33, were trying to move Young Suk Sanchez's body, Webb said that if he went to prison, she would too, according to an arrest report obtained Friday.
Houck told police that she didn't know where Webb hid the corpse.
Houck and Webb were arrested Oct. 7 in Minden, Louisiana, and were being held at the Webster Parish Jail pending their transfer in custody to Nevada. Houck faces murder, robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy charges. Webb faces burglary, conspiracy, and possession and fraudulent use of a credit card charges.
Police said robbery was the apparent motive for the slaying, and investigators traced the couple's Greyhound bus trip halfway across the country with charges to Sanchez's credit card.
The couple was captured on security video when one attempted purchase was declined at a gas station in Van Horn, Texas, according to the police report. The first purchase, at a Las Vegas convenience store on Aug. 20, totaled $8.47 for two beers and a $5 cash return.
Houck told detectives that she and Webb lived at the same extended-stay apartment complex southeast of downtown Las Vegas where Houck said they killed Sanchez during an argument about money on Aug. 18.
Sanchez's decomposed body was found more than a month later, on Sept. 22, by a utility worker checking a broken lock on the cover of a water district valve locker off Nellis Boulevard between Twain Avenue and Flamingo Road.
Houck told police that Sanchez died after she and Webb duct-taped the elderly woman's feet, hands and mouth and put a trash bag over her head, set a cellphone timer and returned about 30 minutes later.
Houck admitted to police she told apartment managers that day that Sanchez had moved to Arizona. A maintenance worker told police that among Sanchez's possessions, he found her eyeglasses on the carpet of the apartment.
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