Thomas Wayne Crump was sentenced to death in Las Vegas in 1984 for the murder and robbery of Jodie Jameson, a 26-year-old woman found dead in the city on October 4, 1980. By the time Nevada tried him, he was already serving life sentences in New Mexico for killings in Albuquerque, among them the shooting of his wife. In a videotaped statement played to his Nevada jury, he described seven murders and seven attempted murders in all, along with robberies, assaults and kidnappings too many to count.
He was never executed. Stays and post-conviction appeals kept his case in the courts for more than three decades, and in June 2018 he died in a prison medical unit in Carson City at the age of 78. The Las Vegas Review-Journal counted the time from his death sentence to his death as 34 years, one month and 13 days.
Crump grew up in Muncie, Indiana. The Review-Journal, drawing on its own earlier reporting, wrote in 2018 that he blamed his cold-blooded ways on having been locked up at an early age. Little else is known about his childhood or family. His exact date of birth has not been reported; the Las Vegas Sun gave his age as 76 in 2016, and the Nevada Department of Corrections, as quoted by Las Vegas television stations, gave it as 78 when he died in 2018.
Jodie Jameson was 26 years old, according to the Review-Journal. She was found dead in Las Vegas on October 4, 1980. An autopsy found that she had died of ligature strangulation, the Nevada Supreme Court later recorded. Little else is known about her life, and her relatives have not been publicly named.
Crump's own explanation, recorded years later, was that he believed she had robbed him. In his videotaped confession, the Review-Journal reported, he said that someone had come in and taken his money, and that he suspected she had arranged it. The Nevada Supreme Court found that he killed and robbed her because he believed she had robbed him. On the tape he said he had "snapped." He also said, in words the court quoted in full: "I could have obtained my money without killing her. I just wanted to kill her." And: "I premeditated. I knew I was going to kill her and I did."
A Las Vegas homicide detective testified that after the killing Crump fled to Albuquerque, the Review-Journal reported. The crimes that followed in New Mexico are known mainly through two kinds of record: the Nevada Supreme Court's summary of the convictions presented at his Nevada penalty hearing, and later news reports.
The Review-Journal reported that Crump was serving two life sentences in New Mexico for fatally shooting his wife, Rhonda, in Albuquerque. The paper also reported that he was convicted of the robbery and fatal shooting of a Minnesota man who was driving through Albuquerque in 1980, and of the robbery and fatal shooting of an Albuquerque cab driver in 1982. The Minnesota man and the cab driver have not been publicly named.
The Nevada Supreme Court's 1986 opinion lists the convictions obtained for crimes Crump committed after the Jameson killing: two first-degree murders with a firearm, one attempted murder with a firearm, three armed robberies and one kidnapping. The opinion does not say in which court each conviction was entered, and it does not name the victims.
It has never been explained how Crump came to be free in Albuquerque in 1982, after the New Mexico killings of 1980. In his second videotaped statement, the Nevada Supreme Court noted, he said he had escaped from a New Mexico jail, without further detail in the court's summary. He also said he had taken part in a prison uprising in which a guard was taken hostage and killed. The court recorded both statements as part of what he told investigators; neither was the subject of a charge in the Nevada case.
Crump was in New Mexico State Prison, serving his life sentences, when a homicide detective from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department arrested him there in 1983, the Review-Journal reported. On October 5, 1983, he gave a videotaped confession to the Jameson killing.
There were two recorded statements. The first, about Jodie Jameson, was played to the jury at the guilt phase of his Nevada trial. The second was played at the penalty phase. In it, according to the Nevada Supreme Court, he described a long criminal history: seven murders and seven attempted murders, along with innumerable robberies, assaults and kidnappings. He said that if he had the chance he would escape, that time in prison had no effect on him, and that he wanted the death penalty because he deserved it. The court later cited his statement that he would kill again as one reason the death sentence was not excessive.
Not all of the killings he described led to convictions; the rest remained admissions. The Las Vegas Sun, reporting on his last state appeal in 2016, described him as having admitted to seven other murders when arrested; the Nevada Supreme Court's opinions put the total he described at seven murders.
Crump was tried in the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County. The Nevada Supreme Court's 1986 opinion lists Public Defender Morgan D. Harris and Deputy Public Defender Robert L. Miller as his lawyers on appeal, and District Attorney Robert J. Miller with deputies James N. Tufteland and Daniel Seaton for the state.
A jury of seven women and five men deliberated for less than an hour, the Review-Journal reported, before finding him guilty of first-degree murder. Video of his confession was shown in court. The formal verdict was first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon and robbery with use of a deadly weapon. The Nevada Supreme Court, in a 1998 opinion, dated the verdict April 25, 1984; the Review-Journal's account gives April 26.
At the penalty phase the state presented the second videotape and evidence of his other crimes. It called a witness who testified that he had seen Crump kill the witness's roommate, Ernie Ritchie. Crump had not been convicted of that killing. The state also presented his convictions for the murders and violent felonies committed after the Jameson killing.
The jury found three aggravating circumstances: that Crump had previously been convicted of another murder or a felony involving violence; that the murder was committed during a robbery or flight after one; and that the murder involved depravity of mind. It found no mitigating circumstances and returned a sentence of death.
The Review-Journal reported that the sentencing hearing was moved to another courtroom after Crump threatened to kill someone. The court imposed the death sentence for the murder and two consecutive 15-year terms for the robbery. The Nevada Supreme Court's 1997 opinion dates the sentencing to May 8, 1984; the Review-Journal gave May 2, 1984. Clark County committed him to the custody of the Nevada Department of Corrections on May 22, 1984, according to the department's statement reported by KTNV.
In May 1984 Crump gave a jailhouse interview to the Review-Journal's Kent Lauer. The paper recalled in 2018 that he had said he felt no remorse. "I don't feel compassion for the victims or anything that I've ever done," he told the paper. He said he would have finished the job on the people he attacked had he known they had survived, and he said he had hoped that a lethal injection would put an end to his rage.
On appeal Crump argued that the penalty jury should not have heard evidence of a killing for which he had never been convicted, and that it should not have heard about crimes committed after the Jameson killing. He also challenged the evidence for the aggravating circumstances and the proportionality of the death sentence.
The Nevada Supreme Court rejected every claim in a unanimous unsigned opinion on April 9, 1986, reported as Crump v. State, 102 Nev. 158, 716 P.2d 1387. Relying on its earlier decision in Gallego v. State, the court held that evidence of an uncharged killing may be heard at a penalty hearing as relevant to the sentence, though not to prove an aggravating circumstance, and that the testimony about Ernie Ritchie's death was neither dubious nor tenuous. Convictions for crimes committed after the murder on trial, the court held, may be introduced at the penalty phase and may serve as the aggravating circumstance of a prior conviction.
The court found that the evidence supported all three aggravating circumstances and that nothing showed the sentence had been imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any arbitrary factor. Given the nature of the killing, Crump's criminal history and his statement that he would kill again, it found the death sentence neither excessive nor disproportionate. The opinion noted that the Nevada Legislature had abolished mandatory proportionality review effective June 6, 1985, but applied the review because the crime predated the change.
The Review-Journal reported in 2018 that Justice Charles Springer had remarked, while the court considered the case, "If you want a death penalty candidate, this guy is a 10."
The court's decision became final with the issue of its remittitur on May 7, 1986. Crump asked the United States Supreme Court to review the case on June 6, 1986, and the Court declined on October 6, 1986.
On October 16, 1986, a warrant was issued for his execution on November 14, 1986. On October 28, 1986, Crump filed his own petition for post-conviction relief in the Clark County district court. A lawyer, Barbara Schubel, was appointed to represent him on November 4, 1986, and the district court refused to stay the execution.
On November 8, 1986, Crump asked the Nevada Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus and filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal court. The federal court granted a stay, and the state court dismissed the mandamus petition as moot. The federal petition was dismissed without prejudice on February 6, 1987, so that he could first exhaust his state remedies.
After an evidentiary hearing, the district court dismissed the first state petition on April 14, 1987. His appeal from that ruling was dismissed on August 31, 1988. A second federal petition, filed on October 26, 1988, was voluntarily dismissed in August 1989.
On August 31, 1989, Crump filed a second state petition in the First Judicial District Court in Carson City, claiming that Schubel had represented him ineffectively. The State Public Defender was appointed for him the next day. A supplement filed in March 1990 listed seventeen grounds, and another claim was added that May. About a month after the petition was filed, he was moved to Ely State Prison.
The petition sat for years. In July 1994 Crump added five more claims, more than four years after the deadline for supplements. The state moved to dismiss, and on November 7, 1995, the district court dismissed the petition as procedurally barred.
The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. In Crump v. Warden, 113 Nev. 293, 934 P.2d 247, decided February 26, 1997, it held that a prisoner whose post-conviction lawyer was appointed under a statute requiring the appointment is entitled to effective help from that lawyer, and that ineffective help can supply the "cause" needed to overcome a procedural default. Ordinary ignorance or carelessness by counsel, it said, is not enough. The record did not show whether Schubel's omissions met that standard, so the court sent the case back for an evidentiary hearing. Justice A. William Maupin did not take part.
A dispute over where that hearing should take place followed. Crump asked to move the case to the district court in Las Vegas, and the request was denied in February 1998. In a per curiam decision of May 19, 1998, the Nevada Supreme Court held that a district court that has properly taken up a prisoner's petition keeps jurisdiction over it even after the prisoner is transferred to a prison in another district, and it left the case in Carson City.
Crump's legal challenges continued into his seventies. In December 2015, the Nevada Supreme Court heard argument en banc in Las Vegas on his appeal in a post-conviction case, docket number 63346, with Michael Pescetta arguing for Crump and Jonathan VanBoskerck for the state.
In 2016 the court rejected what the Las Vegas Sun described as his fourth petition. The Sun reported that the court turned down three claims: that his former lawyer had been ineffective, that he had not premeditated the killing of Jodie Jameson, and that he had brain damage when he confessed. He was 76.
Crump spent the rest of his life in custody under sentence of death. On June 15, 2018, KTNV in Las Vegas reported, citing the Nevada Department of Corrections, that Thomas W. Crump, 78, had died at about 5:15 a.m. on Friday at the Regional Medical Facility inside the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City. KSNV reported that the Carson City Sheriff's Office coroner had responded, that an autopsy would be scheduled and that his next of kin had been notified. No cause of death was made public.
The department's statement, as the stations reported it, described him as sentenced to death twice for first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon and for robbery. The court records describe a single death sentence, for the murder, with prison terms for the robbery.
The number of killings. Crump described seven murders on videotape. Courts convicted him of the murder of Jodie Jameson in Nevada and, by the court and news records, of other killings in New Mexico. The remaining killings he described were never tried, and those victims have not been publicly identified. The Las Vegas Sun's phrase "seven other murders" would make the total eight; the Nevada Supreme Court's opinions say seven in all.
The New Mexico record. The Nevada Supreme Court lists two first-degree murder convictions with a firearm for crimes after the Jameson killing, while the Review-Journal reports a conviction for the killing of his wife and convictions for two robbery killings, of the Minnesota man in 1980 and the cab driver in 1982. The dates of the New Mexico trials and of his wife's death have not been reported.
The escape. Crump told investigators he had escaped from a New Mexico jail. When he escaped and how he was recaptured have not been reported.
Ernie Ritchie. A witness testified at the penalty hearing that he saw Crump kill Ritchie. Crump was not convicted of that killing, and the testimony was admitted only as evidence bearing on the sentence.
Dates. The court records date the Nevada verdict to April 25, 1984, and the sentence to May 8, 1984; the Review-Journal gives April 26 and May 2.
1980, October 4: Jodie Jameson, 26, found dead in Las Vegas.
1980: A Minnesota man driving through Albuquerque is robbed and shot dead; Crump was later convicted (Review-Journal).
1982: An Albuquerque cab driver is robbed and shot dead; Crump was later convicted (Review-Journal).
1983: A Las Vegas homicide detective arrests Crump at New Mexico State Prison, where he is serving two life sentences.
1983, October 5: Videotaped confession to the Jameson killing.
1984, April 25: Clark County jury convicts him of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon and robbery with use of a deadly weapon (court date; the Review-Journal gives April 26).
1984, May 8: Sentenced to death for the murder and to two consecutive 15-year terms for the robbery (court date; the Review-Journal gives May 2).
1984, May 22: Committed to the Nevada Department of Corrections.
1986, April 9: Nevada Supreme Court affirms the conviction and death sentence.
1986, October 6: United States Supreme Court denies review.
1986, November 14: Execution date set; stayed by a federal court.
1987, April 14: First state post-conviction petition dismissed after a hearing.
1989, August 31: Second state petition filed in Carson City; about a month later he is moved to Ely State Prison.
1995, November 7: Second petition dismissed as procedurally barred.
1997, February 26: Nevada Supreme Court orders a hearing on whether his first post-conviction lawyer was ineffective.
1998, May 19: Nevada Supreme Court keeps the case in the Carson City court.
2015, December 7: Argument before the Nevada Supreme Court in his post-conviction appeal.
2016: Nevada Supreme Court rejects his fourth petition.
2018: Dies at the Regional Medical Facility inside the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, Carson City, aged 78 (reported June 15, 2018).