by Steven | Aug 3, 2015 | Blog Post
By Steven Barket Las Vegas, Nevada Roxanne Harris is the mother of Alexander Harris (left), whose 7-year-old body was found under a trailer on the grounds of Whiskey Pete’s casino in Stateline, Nevada after he had been abducted and murdered on Thanksgiving weekend in 1987. Alexander went missing from a video arcade at Whiskey Pete’s and was never found until a month later, when his body was discovered under a temporary housing trailer on the grounds of the casino. He was wearing the same clothes he had on the day he disappeared. The autopsy report on Alexander postulated that he was asphyxiated at about the same time he was abducted and that his body had been under the trailer ever since then. Why is Roxanne a victim of Tom Dillard’s? Very simply: justice denied. Dillard wasted so much time, energy and resources in trying to pin the crime on Howard Lee Haupt that he disregarded other possible suspects. Roxanne is a victim, because through Dillard, she has been denied even the smallest glimmer of satisfaction of knowing that her son’s killer has been found, tried, sentenced and is paying for his crime. This still is an unsolved murder case. And the mother of an innocent boy whose life was taken is still awaiting a resolution. Right now it’s a cold case. And apparently in the eyes of Metro PD it’s a frozen case. Nothing is happening on it. It’s not even listed as one of the cold-case unsolved murders from the 1980s on Metro’s website. (You can see that here: 1980-89 Unsolved Murders.) It’s a sad thing to think about....
by Steven | Aug 3, 2015 | Blog Post, Howard Haupt
By Steven Barket Las Vegas, Nevada Court documents are very one-sided. There’s no two ways to look at something when it comes to the finality of a court’s decision. Sometimes the legalese gets in the way, but there can be no mistake about rulings or verdicts. And that is the case in the jury’s findings in the U.S. District Court case (Nevada) between Howard L. Haupt (the plaintiff) and former Metro detective and defendant Thomas D. Dillard (Case No. CV-S-90-121-PMP(RJJ). You can see above a few of the highlighted statements. Dillard (left) should know better, but apparently he believes he’s above the law. We’re speculating here, drawing inferences from his actions, but how else do you explain his violation of one of the basic tenants of law? Dillard had the stones to call Judge Stephen L. Huffaker, the sitting judge presiding over this case of life and death, and try to influence his instructions to the jury as the jury was about to begin their deliberations after hearing all the testimony and seeing all the evidence in this highly publicized murder case involving a 7-year-old boy. And that’s what this current case of Haupt v. Dillard stemmed from. It’s a case brought by Haupt against Dillard, which germinated from a previous case in which Haupt had been arrested and charged with the abduction and murder of 7-year-old Alexander Harris at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in Stateline, Nevada. Dillard was one of the Metro homicide detectives assigned to investigate the case. Haupt ultimately was acquitted, but not before Dillard tried to pile up as much circumstantial and fabricated evidence as he could and dump it all over Haupt, who was...
by Steven | Aug 3, 2015 | Blog Post
The Beginning of Haupt’s Criminal and Legal Ordeal On this website we will chronicle the impact that Tom Dillard has made on the lives of those he’s come into contact with through various criminal investigations, either as a sanctioned and sworn-in law enforcement officer in his capacity as a homicide detective with the Las Vegas Metro PD, or on his own as a licensed private investigator. Let’s start with the life of Howard L. Haupt, and how he unfortunately was targeted by Tom Dillard, who at the time was a Metro homicide detective. Howard Haupt was a quiet man living a quiet life in the San Diego area before he suddenly found himself accused of kidnapping and killing a 7-year-old boy. Imagine how dramatically that would affect your life — having to fight those charges. Tom Dillard was at the center of it all. He and his partner, detective Robert Leonard, also with Las Vegas Metro PD, spent weeks looking for the evidence that would pin the murder of the boy on Haupt. Haupt was registered as a guest at the resort hotel during the time that Alexander Harris, 7, was there. Check. He loosely fit the often changing description of a man witnesses saw with Alexander at about the time the abduction would have taken place. Check. He owned a tan jacket, also fitting a description given by some witnesses who said they saw a man in a tan jacket leaving with a boy. Check. He had a somewhat stoic, unemotional reaction when confronted as being suspected of committing the crime. Hmmm. Check. Yet after all the testimony was collected by people who thought...
