NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (KLAS) — Video obtained by NewsNation affiliate KLAS appears to show a woman dumping a body on the side of the road before allegedly killing her second victim.
Rosemary Meza, 37, faces two murder charges for the Sept. 18 deaths of her girlfriend, Alyssa Valdovinos, 26; and her girlfriend’s mother, 58-year-old Norma Rios-Valdovinos, police said.
As part of their investigation, North Las Vegas police received video of Meza allegedly pulling Rios-Valdovinos out of a car and leaving her body on the side of Cartier Avenue, which is about a block from Las Vegas Boulevard.
Just after 6 p.m. the day of the murders, officers responded to a report of a woman’s body lying in the road near Magnet Street, police said. Paramedics took the woman, later identified as Rios-Valdovinos, to the hospital where a doctor pronounced her deceased.
Detectives noticed Rios-Valdovinos had “deep ligature marks on her neck,” police said, and it “appeared that she had been attacked and defended herself.”
Several hours later, North Las Vegas police responded to a crash at the intersection of Alexander Road and North 5th Street. Meza had driven her car into construction equipment, police said. While speaking with Meza, they learned she was a person of interest in the earlier homicide as she matched the clothing of the person in the surveillance video.
While in custody, Meza told a North Las Vegas police officer she had killed her girlfriend, according to grand jury transcripts.
“She told me that she was a bad person and that I should just kill her now,” the officer told the grand jury about his conversation with Meza. “And I replied that, no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that to somebody. And then she said that she had hurt her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s mother.”
Officers also noticed smeared blood on the middle console armrest of Meza’s car and shoelaces. Prosecutors suspect Meza used the shoelaces to kill the two women.
As part of their investigation, police performed a welfare check at Valdovinos’ home about a block away from where officers said they found her mother’s body, documents said. Police said they found Valdovinos on the floor deceased from a suspected strangulation, they said.
Police suspect Meza drove to Rios-Valdovinos’ workplace earlier in the day, strangled Rios-Valdovinos in the car and then drove to Valdovinos’ home, detectives said. She told police she did not remember if she dumped Rios-Valdovinos’ body before or after strangling Valdovinos.
Prosecutors wrote in documents filed last week that they intend to seek the death penalty against Meza should a jury convict her on the two murder charges. In addition to the two murder charges, Meza faced a third charge of burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon.
While the death penalty is legal in Nevada, the state has not put a convicted murderer to death since 2006.
Meza declined an interview request. She was due to return to court Jan. 4.
To contact investigative reporter David Charns, email dcharns@8newsnow.com.