eRJ from the Las Vegas Review-Journal
Thursday, February 23, 2006
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Las Vegas police announced tonight that they now know the identity of the
young girl who was found beaten to death in a trash bin at The Fountains at
Villa Cordova apartments, 2800 S. Eastern Ave., on Jan. 12. They also said
the people allegedly responsible for her death have been arrested.
Last night, Las Vegas police got a tip out of Tulare County Sheriff's
Department in California that cracked the case.
Earlier in the day, a woman in Tulare County had called authorities there
and said that her granddaughter was missing, and that the last place she
knew she had been was Las Vegas. A sheriff's department detective in Tulare
did some research and found information about the Jane "Cordova" Doe case
on the Internet and matched the portrait of the child to the photograph that he had been given by the grandmother. The detective contacted Las Vegas police who sent two detectives to Tulare County to interview the missing girl's mother, 24-year-old Gladys Perez, Las Vegas police Lt. Lew Roberts said.
Perez was arrested a little more than an hour ago in Tulare County on a
arrest warrant out of Clark County, and the charge in the warrant is
murder, Roberts said.
Perez's boyfriend, 28-year-old Mark Anthony Colon, was tracked down in St.
Paul, Minn., and was arrested for violating his parole out of California.,
Roberts said. Roberts said Las Vegas police had yet to interview him. They
are calling him a "person of interest" at this point. Roberts said police
expect to charge Colon with murder in the case.
Police did not release the dead girl's name, saying that had to be
confirmed by the Clark County Coroner's office.
Police said the couple had been in Las Vegas around the time that the
girl's body was found. The couple had been considering moving to Las Vegas
at that time, police said.