Dancing on Her Grave (7 page)

But one young woman, Marci Gee, was different. When she and Jason Griffith met through a dating site, Marci was working as a cashier at a cable company. She was a family girl, a very young woman from Guatemala—a
Chapina
, the term used for women born in that country. She was twenty-three years old, but she was naïve and trusting; at least, she was before she met Jason Griffith.

Marci has long, thick black hair. She wears almost no makeup, and her skin is flawless. She is a curvy, voluptuous woman. Her beauty is more innocent than most of the other women Jason Griffith dated. She wasn’t a typical Las Vegas party girl.

Marci Gee was having problems with her then-boyfriend, so she decided to open a MocoSpace account (similar to MySpace, but more of a dating site). She was looking for a real relationship and not an affair. She did start chatting with other men, one of whom was Jason Griffith. He started the conversation, and she replied right away. His profile picture was very appealing to her, especially the six-pack abs revealed through his open shirt. As they continued to talk online, Marci told him about her problems with her current boyfriend, that she was having jealousy issues with him, which was why she decided to
take a break. Then Marci changed her mind, decided to give her boyfriend another chance, closed her MocoSpace account, and did not hear from Jason Griffith for a while.

A year went by, and Marci’s relationship with her boyfriend ended for good. The young woman was single again. She reactivated her account and was browsing for new friends, and there was Jason Griffith. Again. They chatted, but this time he wanted to meet in person. They arranged a meeting at the IHOP (a favorite location frequented by dancers after work, due to their late hours). The two talked for hours. He told her about his life, and she told him about hers.

The date ended at Griffith’s house. He told her he wanted to show her the room where he recorded his music videos. It also happened to be his bedroom.

(At the time, Jason Griffith was living in a converted garage at his friend Louis Colombo’s home. By the end of 2010, Griffith and Louis had moved out of that residence but were still roommates.)

Marci was impressed with Griffith’s setup. The garage-room was very organized; it really looked like a recording studio. He had three Mac computers where he worked on music and videos. He told her he was on the verge of wrapping up a deal with Sony Music. That night, they had sex, and they continued to see each other for almost a year.

Marci said Griffith was always polite and a gentleman
and never seemed to lose his temper. He did not appear to be a jealous man at all. However, he did get rather upset one time, when Marci posted a status on her MocoSpace account that read, “I think I am allergic to condoms.” He surprised her then by phoning her, very irate, asking her if she had had sex with another man. Nevertheless, after that incident, they continued to see each other, and as the relationship progressed, he opened up more about his life.

He told Marci that he had attended Juilliard, the very prestigious performing arts school in New York for dance, drama, and music, and that he had been able to fund his tuition with scholarships. (This was later corroborated during an interview with Gerald Gordon, his former acting coach in Las Vegas, who stated that Griffith had indeed graduated from Juilliard with a full scholarship.) Griffith then went on to perform as one of the backup dancers for the rapper Jay-Z, the music mogul also famous for being married to superstar Beyoncé Knowles.

Among the stories Griffith told Marci was one about his mother. While his mother was pregnant with his sister, he told her, the driver of a public transportation bus had accidentally closed the door on her belly. His mother sued the city and received a substantial sum of money. His parents were divorced, he said. His father was a professional photographer in New York City. He had apparently had an uneventful and even happy childhood and came from a middle-class family.

Jason Griffith himself had also been previously married, and he had two boys from that marriage. His dream was to become a famous performer. He and his wife and sons had moved from New York City to Reno when he got a job offer as a dancer in one of the casinos in northern Nevada. As he met the dance community there, friends advised him that he would have a better shot at breaking into the music industry in Vegas. He moved by himself and got a job as a backup dancer with singer Toni Braxton. Once he was established, he wanted to bring his family to Las Vegas. But, he told Marci, then he believed that his wife had been cheating on him. He said he felt betrayed. (This particular account was never corroborated. If his wife was unfaithful and had left the marriage, why, then, had he not gotten custody of the children? He did not clear up that matter, and Marci did not ask.)

He and his wife separated, and he stayed in Las Vegas alone while his wife moved with their children to California.

“He had tears in his eyes when he talked about his boys,” Marci recalled, adding that Griffith told her his ex-wife would not allow him to see his children often.

As Marci continued to get to know Griffith, she met his roommate, Louis Colombo, and his friends, but she felt uncomfortable with the familiar way he treated his female friends. She objected to the way he behaved toward women in her presence, feeling that he was way too
affectionate with them. They argued about it. She even told him, “I’m not a skinny woman and I cannot compete with your beautiful friends.” He insisted that she was different, that he really liked her, and that the other women were just his friends.

It’s not unusual for “civilians,” as show-people and actors and other performers refer to regular folks with regular jobs, to have trouble understanding that it is perfectly normal for people “in the business” to regard one another as the closest members of their immediate family. It happens during Broadway shows, during television series and film shoots, and surely it happens with dancers. (It even happens among us newspeople, although we are never quite that chummy.)

But Marci was unconvinced. “He and his dancer friends were very close, almost unnaturally close,” she observed. “I mean, they talked about each other’s private parts, it was like they had all seen each other naked. I started to think I was the weird one!”

It got to a point when she could not take it anymore. She was having the same jealously issues she had with her previous boyfriend, so Marci decided to stop seeing Griffith. After they broke up, he would constantly call her and text her, asking her to at least be “friends with benefits,” but she refused.

It was a few weeks after they’d stopped seeing each other that Marci ran a Google search on Jason Griffith’s
name and found the YouTube video “Sex Games,” the one with Debbie kissing him all over his body. Marci phoned him and said, “Your new girlfriend is very pretty.” Griffith replied that Debbie was just a friend, that he had “nothing to do with her.”

But even though Marci considered Griffith “a player,” she never thought he was a bad person, though he certainly had a few morally gray areas. He once told her, “I haven’t been able to keep track of how many women I’ve slept with since I turned twenty.” She also found out that he’d lied to her about his age. At the time they began dating, she was twenty-two and he told her he was twenty-six. “He listed different ages in his online accounts. Eventually I found out he was thirty-two.” After learning about Debbie’s disappearance and murder, Marci deleted photographs of Jason Griffith, and considers herself very fortunate.

Considering what happened to Debbie, she tells me, “I’m very thankful I ended my relationship with Jason. It could have been me.”

It is painstaking, in more ways than one, to put together the pieces of this puzzle; not only of the disappearance and murder of Debbie Flores-Narvaez, but what, exactly, was her relationship with Jason Griffith? Between Marci’s take on the man, and the stalking allegations about Debbie, her obsessive nature, and her own violent behavior, where was the truth?

Now that she’s gone, her friends have made videos with her pictures, her own choreography. There is one post on YouTube that still reads “RIP Debbie. Beautiful Inside and Out.” People knew her, she had friends, she had a family, and she mattered to many people.

Her name was Debora. She was a showgirl, she was a dancer, she was a person—but now came the news that she was also gone
forever.

Death of a Showgirl

Yes, Debbie was dead. And Jason Griffith, who had only been considered as a person of interest by investigators, had now been arrested and indicted on charges of homicide for the murder of his beautiful ex-lover.

Acting on a tip, investigators had found Debora Flores-Narvaez’s remains on Friday, January 7, 2011, hidden inside the closet of an empty house in the center of the city of Las Vegas.

On Saturday, January 8, 2011, media outlets were going crazy. The big national story was the shooting that morning of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by a mentally ill gunman, who also shot nineteen other people, six of them fatally. But locally, all of the Las Vegas outlets were trying to find out what had happened to the
beautiful burlesque dancer. A press release announcing a last-minute conference call went out on Saturday, titled “Metro Arrests Suspect In Missing Woman, Debora Flores-Narvaez Case.” The press release read: “A suspect has been arrested in the case of the local missing woman, Debora Flores-Narvaez. Metro Officers will meet with the media this afternoon to discuss this arrest and other developments in the case.”

Lieutenant Lew Roberts, Las Vegas Metro Police Department Homicide Section, was in charge of the conference. He is a very serious yet polite officer who was often willing to talk to the Spanish media whenever a Spanish public information officer was not available for comment on the scene of a homicide.

Most weekend crews showed up to hear what had happened. If you are a reporter and you are covering a crime, a last-minute press conference, one that cannot wait until Monday, is most likely delivering pretty bad news.

The lieutenant said, “Our victim was reported missing on Tuesday, December 14. From that point on, missing people began to conduct an investigation as a missing person’s case. There came a point shortly thereafter that Missing Persons and the Homicide detail came together, began to look at the case, and conducted our investigation based on something we had found and tips that came in.”

He went on to confirm the exact date that the victim had been reported missing and the fact that the police had
already recovered her abandoned vehicle. He mentioned a tip that came in early the previous day, which led them to “a location in the downtown area where we were able to discover some human remains.” He added, “As a result of that pretty reliable tip and the discovery, we were able to have enough probable cause to make an arrest on a Jason Omar Griffith, who was the ex-boyfriend of our victim. He is currently housed in the Clark County Detention Center, and our investigation is ongoing.”

Griffith had been arrested early Saturday morning, January 8, 2011, as he left his job at the Mirage Hotel and Casino (where he was a performer; ironically, in the show
LOVE
), and he was due in court on Wednesday, January 11, 2011, exactly one month after Debora’s disappearance.

The tragic end of dancer Debora Flores-Narvaez shook the city of Las Vegas with seismic proportions as an autopsy revealed her cause of death: she had been strangled and then dismembered.

The headlines now said it all, and everyone had the story, the complete story, about what happened to Debbie Flores, except this story did not end with her death, not by far.

People
magazine featured, on the cover,
“Coroner: Missing Las Vegas Showgirl Strangled.”

From the
New York Daily News
: “Dismembered Body of Missing Las Vegas Showgirl, Debbie Flores.”

Our own ABC affiliate, KTNV, announced: “Remains of Missing Dancer Found, Ex-boyfriend Arrested.”

From CNN, viewers learned
:
“Dancer’s Dismembered Body Found; Boyfriend Charged With Murder.”

There were many others, including the obligatory segments on
Nancy Grace
and on
Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell
, also on CNN.

But the succinct headline from TruTV rang truest in its finality: “Debora Flores-Narvaez: Death of a Showgirl.”

Our story’s TV headline read:
“Bailarina boricua fue encontrada en pedazos: Su novio la estranguló y luego la mutiló para esconder su cuerpo”
(“Puerto Rican dancer was found in pieces: Her boyfriend strangled her and then mutilated her to hide her body”).

Although Jason Griffith’s roommate, Louis Colombo, eventually made a deal with the police in exchange for a confession about what had happened, the first real break in the case had come from a witness who had a friend of a friend in the police department.

The police report states that on January 5, 2011, Detective Robert Garris received a phone call from Detective L. Cho, a female detective, reporting that a friend of hers had relayed some information from a witness named Kalae Casorso. Kalae, an attractive woman in her thirties, said that about a month earlier, her ex-boyfriend, Jason Griffith, had called her to ask if she would store something for him and his roommate in her apartment.

Griffith had met Kalae online, just like he met his ex-girlfriend Marci Gee. Kalae and Griffith met on a “hookup website.” According to Griffith’s defense attorney Abel Yáñez, the relationship was merely based on sex, but Kalae wanted something more serious than that. She was aware that he was dating Debbie, and would even offer him advice, although it got to the point where she thought Griffith was finally committed to her, but once again: he was two-timing her. They eventually stopped seeing each other when she found out Griffith continued to see Debbie even though they were trying to “make it work” as a couple.

On January 7, 2011, Detectives Daryl Raetz and Dean O’Kelley at the LVMPD Homicide Section obtained a recorded statement from Kalae Casorso during which she admitted that on December 14, 2010, Jason Griffith asked her if he could store some items at her apartment until he was ready to move. Kalae said she informed Griffith she didn’t have much space, but that he could come over to see if the item would fit in a closet, or, if he didn’t mind it being exposed to the weather, he could leave it out on her patio.

Later, she stated, Griffith arrived at her apartment and she showed him the space she had available either in the closet or on the patio. Kalae said she didn’t realize that he’d actually brought the item with him, but he left the apartment to go get what he described as a plastic tub.

Some time went by, then Kalae said she heard cracking sounds outside her apartment, so she looked out the window to see a U-Haul truck parked outside with the back door open. She said she went outside, and as she was walking up to the truck, she heard a creaking sound from the back end of the truck, swaying from side to side. Kalae said she walked to the back of the truck where she saw Griffith and his roommate, Louis Colombo, standing on either side of a large, light blue plastic tub that appeared to be full of dark, charcoal-colored concrete that looked rocky on the surface. She described the sides of the tub as bulging out. She did not see a lid for the tub. The only other item Kalae said she saw in the truck was an orange dolly.

Kalae said she asked Griffith what was going on and what was in the tub. She described Griffith as hesitating, but then asking her if she really wanted him to tell her. Kalae said she told Griffith he’d better tell her if he intended to store whatever it was at her apartment. She described Griffith as hesitating again, then telling her, “Debbie is in there.”

Kalae said that then she freaked out and told Griffith and Louis to leave and to get the tub and “the truck out of here!” The two men then left with the tub, Louis driving the U-Haul truck, and Griffith driving his black Chevrolet Cobalt.

Kalae said she hadn’t called the police right away
because, at first, she didn’t want to believe it was true, and later, because she claimed she was afraid of Louis, a big man who worked as a bouncer at a club. However, she said she later decided to confide in a friend who knew someone at the police department so she could get help in figuring out what to do and how to handle the situation.

On January 5, 2011, detectives obtained surveillance footage and rental agreements indicating that Jason Griffith and Louis Colombo had indeed rented a truck and two utility dollies on December 14, 2010, from a U-Haul business located on W. Craig Road. When the truck was returned two days later, two males matching their descriptions were also seen dropping the keys in the drop box and leaving in what looked to be Griffith’s black Chevrolet Cobalt.

On the evening of January 7, 2011, Detective Dean O’Kelley called Louis Colombo and solicited his cooperation in going to the Homicide office to answer additional questions related to the investigation into the disappearance of Debora Flores-Narvaez. Louis was still on the phone with Detective O’Kelley when he arrived at his residence, where Detective Dan Long was already waiting to offer Louis a ride to the police station.

Louis Colombo “agreed to tell detectives what happened if he would not be arrested or prosecuted on the condition he did not have anything to do with the murder,” the report stated.

The roommates lived in a fairly new, two-story home in residential North Las Vegas, about fifteen miles away from the area where all the modern hotels and casinos are located. It was an unusual location for two relatively young, single men (Louis was separated from his wife) working in the entertainment industry to live—one would have expected them to either live near the Strip like Debora or in a swanky condo that said, “Hey, I’m cool and single.” In Las Vegas, a twenty-five-minute drive to work is a lot, especially because everything is so close.

Louis worked as a bouncer (also known as a “V.I.P. host”) at the club Revolution at the Mirage Hotel and Casino. Jason Griffith had gotten Louis the gig—the club was located in the same hotel as the Beatles
LOVE
show from Cirque du Soleil and decorated with a contemporary interpretation of the Beatles’ era. Many of the performers are known to hang around at the lounge after the show.

According to the police report, Debora Flores-Narvaez had gone to Jason Griffith’s house on the night she disappeared, December 12, 2010, supposedly to watch the show
Dexter
. She was last seen by her roomate, carrying a gym bag with her rehearsal clothes, since she was expected back at the Luxor Hotel that evening for practice of the
FANTASY
show.

It was Griffith’s birthday weekend, and he had presumably asked Debbie to come over, but once she was there, inside Griffith’s place, the two got into a fight.

The fight, as usual, escalated. Louis, his new girlfriend Maya Hines, and Louis’s own children were present in the house during the argument and all heard the fighting, which at one point became so loud and heated that Louis had had to intervene, and even pulled Griffith off of Debbie because he was choking her with his hands around her neck. The roommate alleged that he told Griffith to stop, or he would end up harming Debora.

At that point, Louis said, he, his girlfriend, and his children all left the house, but he said that “when I came back, Debbie’s [nearly] naked body was on the floor. He had killed her.”

More than a month later, an autopsy would reveal that the cause of death had indeed been strangulation. And then the odyssey of concealing and disposing of Debora’s body began.

We might never know if he premeditated Debbie’s murder, but we do know he put a lot of thought into finding a way to hide her body. Griffith went to great lengths, and visited several locations, trying to erase all forensic evidence of the crime.

Griffith first took the dancer’s car, after removing the vehicle’s license plate, and abandoned it behind some houses approximately sixteen miles from where he lived. Griffith went to great lengths to conceal his beautiful ex-lover’s corpse.

Louis went on to describe how Griffith purchased bags
of concrete at a nearby Home Depot, how the two of them mixed the concrete in their garage on Russian Olive Street, and how they filled a plastic tub with concrete to completely cover Debora’s naked body. Louis said Griffith had cut her clothes off and taped her legs together in order to make her fit in the tub, face up with her knees to her chest. Louis said they left the tub in the garage to harden overnight until the next day, when they rented the U-Haul truck.

Louis said that they used the dolly to get the tub up the ramp and into the truck. After unsuccessfully trying to store the tub in an apartment in Henderson, at a friend’s house, Louis drove the truck with Griffith following in his black Chevrolet Cobalt to the Flying J Truck Stop, where they parked the U-Haul overnight. (Louis would not identify the other friend of Griffith’s in whose apartment they attempted to store the plastic tub.)

Then, Louis said, Griffith was able to get keys to a house that belonged to some friends of his who were out of the country for an extended period of time so they could store the tub there.

It later turned out that Agnes Roux, one of Jason Griffith’s other lovers, was the one who’d been taking care of an abandoned home located in North Las Vegas. The house belonged to a couple, two performers, who had been deported back to Germany. Since the house was
in foreclosure, she would go by once in a while to pick up the mail for her friends.