48 Hours - 48 Hours "Vengeance in Vegas" Detectives Interview

Episode Date: October 16, 2015

CBS News correspondent Peter Van Sant talks to two Las Vegas homicide detectives that investigated the murder of Shauna Tiaffay.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. I'm Peter Van Sant for the CBS News broadcast 48 Hours. In this podcast, we will look into the night a beautiful cocktail waitress, Shawna Tiafe, was murdered. It was the early morning hours of September 29, 2012, that Shawna Tiafe got off of work and made her way home. It was in her home that someone

snuck up behind her and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer. This twisted crime would take investigators from the streets of Las Vegas to the Nevada desert looking for clues in the bizarre and horrific murder. In this week's podcast, we interview two homicide detectives, Dan Long and Terry Miller, who investigated this brutal murder. I received a call on September 29th of 2012 from Sergeant Annette Mullen, who requested, because we were the homicide team that was up for rotation, to respond to a homicide that had occurred at the Willow Creek apartment complex on 215 and Town Center. What did you know going in? I had very little information going in, just that a female had been found by her husband and her child, deceased in her home, and homicide had been requested to respond.

When you arrive at the scene, what do you do? When I arrived at the scene, it was quite hectic because not only were there patrol officers there, we had several other detectives as well as lots of fire department personnel were on scene, which was uncommon, as well as some of our upper administration. Right. Typically, we don't have that when we respond out on a scene. So you had a whole crowd of people there.

There were. Why were there firemen there? The person that had called 9-1-1 was a Las Vegas Fire Department employee. He was a firefighter for them. He had responded over to his wife's residence with his daughter on a personal matter and had located her deceased within the home. So you arrived. Did you go into the residence? Did you see her? Eventually, but upon arrival, we had a briefing, and it was one of the biggest briefings we've ever had. And we were given details of the call. We always do that.

That's the protocol for a homicide response is that we get a briefing from everyone that had been involved prior to our arrival. And during that briefing we had information that the firefighter was identified as George Tiafe and his eight-year-old daughter, Madison, was on scene also. And they had discovered Shauna Tiafe, his wife. That's right. And upon discovering her body within her residence, he had contacted 911 and requested police respond. So take me to the next step. What do you do? You get your briefing. What is your task? What do you do? When our team responds, we have a variety of different assignments. My partner, Dan, was assigned to the crime scene, and I was responsible for all the outside interviews, the canvas of the area, anything that was going on outside the crime scene.

Tell me about that. What do you decide to do? Well, naturally our first person that we want to interview is the person that called 911. That was the person that was on scene that obviously found Shawna deceased and we wanted to talk to him to find out exactly what he did, why he was there, and what he found when he entered her residence. That's George Tiafé. Yeah, and naturally, George is going to be our number one suspect. A woman that he's going through a divorce with and separated from, he finds dead inside of an apartment.

So he's our number one suspect right away. So that interview is very, very important. And Detective Terry and Cliff Mogg started the interview with him to see where that was going to take him. They learned right away that he was at work at the fire station and was not the man that killed Shauna. We did some verification, but we knew right away that he's not our killer. Whoever had done this horrific act, this terrible beating, it wasn't George TFA. Correct. So tell me about that first interview with George TFA

and what struck you as an investigator with what you heard. What struck you as an investigator with what you heard? Well, naturally, one of my first questions was, where were you in the hours prior to her death? And he had an alibi. He had worked a 24-hour shift at the fire station. And when we checked that out, he absolutely was from 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. He was at the fire station, he responded on all calls, and he had a partner when he responded on those calls. And what did that tell you?

He's not our killer. During the course of the investigation, initially I had the impression that although he was not distraught, he cried appropriately. He answered our questions. He initially appeared to be somewhat honest when he was telling us that he was going through a divorce. However, he told Detective Cliff Maugh and I that they had been going to counseling, that the divorce had been called off, that things were going well with them. They were able to overcome the problems that they had in their marriage, and things were back on track.

And he had no idea whatsoever who would have done this. None? None. Did you ask him that question? Would anyone want to harm your wife? We asked him a variety of different questions. Did he have a large life insurance policy on her? Was there anything suspicious that had happened recently with her?

Was there anyone from the Palms that she'd been having problems with? And he did mention that there had been a burglary prior to, a couple of weeks prior to her death, which of course caused us to ask additional questions in regards to what was taken, why, you know, if it had been reported to police, things on that order. But initially, he, this was a voluntary interview that he conducted with us, and he had a justification for everything that we asked. Those questions when you asked him about, was there anyone at the Palms who had a gripe against Shauna or some issue with her?

Did he know anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? How did he answer those questions? He said absolutely not. As far as he knew, everything was fine at work, that she got along well with all her employees that she worked with. The only thing that had happened in the prior weeks to her death was the burglary. Is that a red flag for you? Yeah, it was. Absolutely. There was a break-in at the house. We found no forced entry into the house that day. Of course, there was no forced entry on the prior occasion either. So that threw up a lot of red flags for us. The things that were taken in the prior

burglary was panties, lotion. They drank some of the chocolate vodka and left a pair of small-sized boxer shorts, which she found very, very creepy. And she didn't know what to do at that point. So she consulted with several people and then about a week later decided to call the police, who sent out a cadet who took a report. But the evidence, the boxers, were never collected. We later found those in, well, they found, the family found them in the garage. A pair of boxers was left behind by this intruder. Correct. And that's the size small. They immediately started thinking that it's an adolescent, somebody from the neighborhood, maybe. And they started to opine on who this person could be that actually came into the house. Well, you have to be wondering, could this have been the person that was there two weeks earlier? Yes, very much so.

But everybody in the family had all talked and theorized that the person that did this was going to be a juvenile from that apartment complex. Of course we're going to go talk to them we did it was not them those small size boxer shorts in my opinion belong to noel stevens who we later discover give me um before we jump ahead to that give me in these initial hours what's going through your mind as to who potentially could have done this to Shauna I would say initially we thought that it was a stranger we had information from our briefing that a phone call had come in from Shauna's family and they were very concerned and wanted us to take a look at George TFA, that there were problems in the marriage and there was a lot of questions

that were asked to him about the state of their marriage. However, he responded appropriately at that time, stating that they had went to counseling, that they had just recently decided to stop the divorce proceedings, that they had went to counseling, that they had just recently decided to stop the divorce proceedings, that they had had problems since December of the prior year, and they had been working on their relationship throughout that time period. And although he had filed for divorce twice, I believe, that they had decided that they needed to be parents and take care of their daughter, Madison. that they had decided that they needed to be parents and take care of their daughter Madison.

Is it true that George and Shauna had decided to try to reconcile? A couple of different times they did. Records later indicated to us through attorneys that the divorce was filed by, proceedings was filed by George TFA in December. He called it off in March, I think. And then she moved out into her apartment in April. In May, he filed again for divorce. Then it was back off in June. July, almost.

June or July, the end of June. A real roller coaster then is what we're talking about. Absolutely. They couldn't make up their minds? Right. And the last reconciliation that George is talking about, that they were going to get back together, is false. That was completely false.

If you go through those text messages between the two, there was no reconciliation. Her last comments were, we are moved into separate places. We are never going to get back together again. So in your interview with George, does he say anything in a disparaging way about his now dead wife? And he tried to indicate that Shauna had some drug problems for prescription drugs. But then he would turn around and say, but Shauna was one of the hardest working people that he ever knew. He wasn't all that flattering towards her in the interview. Did he talk about money?

Yes, he did. There were some financial problems. George and Shauna were on two different pages financially. George was kind of an earthy person who didn't need a lot of materialistic things. Shauna, especially in the position that she worked at the Palms as a cocktail waitress, and based on, unfortunately, the way she looks, also comes into her income for tips as a cocktail waitress. Shawna always looked very, very nice.

She's a beautiful woman. And she always looked fantastic when she went to work. Any of the photos that we've seen of her, she was just beautiful. She also liked beautiful things and she was, in my opinion, sort of materialistic. She liked nice things, which there's nothing wrong with that. But George didn't see eye to eye with her on that and constantly complained because she wanted those materialistic things. Dan, when you read through or listened to this interview with George TFA, Anything in that that you picked up on that seemed unusual? Yes. Her parenting styles with her daughter was a huge deal to him. In my opinion, he's a very manipulative person,

and he was manipulating Shauna using their daughter. And it was really obvious with Detective Miller's questions and bringing it out that that's what he was doing. The only problem was when you read through it, he's not our suspect. There was some real animosity between the two of them that was not solved. He still held that animosity. He was still using things to control Shauna, items to control Shauna, money to control Shauna, and the daughter to control Shauna.

And that control is a huge red flag for us. The problem is he's not our suspect. So you're reading it and you're like, there's something seriously wrong here. But he's not the man that killed Shauna. So let's keep moving until we find the person that killed Shauna. So it was the glamour girl. In some ways, she was very glamorous, right? She was like a star. Absolutely. Beautiful versus kind of Earth boy. Earth boy and extremely intelligent Earth boy.

Very accomplished. Valedictorian, valedictorian. He went into West Point. He got an engineering degree. He came out of there and was building schools for habitat, for humanity. He went to work as an engineer for a large corporation, but it didn't give him that limelight. And so he wanted to be a fireman. He wanted to be a hero. Firemen are heroes. So he joined the firemen. And then he becomes honor guard for the firemen.

Every one of the firemen we talked to looked up to George Tiafé. He was the epitome of firemen. And they are the heroes. Because George and Shauna were working on their relationship, wanting it to succeed, some people wonder if Shauna's exposure as a cocktail waitress could have something to do with her murder. Could someone have been obsessed with her? Maybe stalking her? Tune in this week at 10 p.m. Eastern time for 48 hours on CBS to find out what exactly happened to Shauna Tiafé. by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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