Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - The Murder of Daniel Mendoza - Part 7

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

You might think that 30 years after the murder of Daniel Mendoza, this case would finally fade from the news, with Ron Mortensen serving a life sentence, but you'd be wrong. Continual appeals and getting in front of the right judge got us to a shocking place 30 years later.https://sinspod.co/136https://sinspod.co/129sourceshttps://sinspod.co/136transcripthttps://sinspod.co/136blogBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.Domestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms

To listen ad-free, visit sinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. For nearly 30 years, Ron Mortensen said the jury never heard the full story. He said Christopher Brady was protected, that the evidence had been mishandled, and that the state asked jurors to trust a man who had every reason to save himself. In some ways, he was right. But a trial can have real flaws without making a convicted man innocent, and a guilty man can use the truth about someone else's misconduct to turn himself into the victim. For Daniel's murder, the legal questions are complicated, but the moral questions remain painfully clear. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on missing persons, unsolved cases, and the number one cause of homicide in the Las Vegas area, domestic violence.

I'm your host Sean and I'm your co-host John welcome to part seven of our series on the murder of Daniel Mendoza if you have not listened to parts one through six yet we strongly recommend going back and starting there this is a case where the details build on each other and at this point in the story we are deep in the legal aftermath we recommend you start at sinspod.co slash 129 last week we talked about what happened after Ron Mortensen's conviction Ramone's civil lawsuit the fight for civilian police oversight, Christopher Brady's attempt to return to law enforcement, and Ramon's devastating statement that years later, police were still harassing his youngest son. Part six was about whether Las Vegas really changed after Daniel's murder. This week, we turned back to Ron Mortensen.

While the city debated reform, while Christopher Brady faced a federal civil rights case, while Daniels family fought for accountability in a civil suit, Mortensen kept insisting that he was not the man who fired the shots. In the years that followed, some of the points he made in his appeals raised real questions. Before we go any further, we want to be clear about where we are coming from. Based on the eyewitness testimony, the physical evidence, the position of the men in the truck, and the fact that the murder weapon was Mortensen's gun, we believe the jury did not make a mistake in convicting Ron Mortensen for Daniel Mendoza's murder. However, we also believe that Christopher Brady should have been prosecuted for his role in what happened.

that night. Brady's misconduct doesn't make Mortensen innocent, but the decision not to charge Brady left a space in this case for doubt to seep in. All the unanswered questions about Brady, and the flaws in the investigation, became part of Mortensen's argument, and another reason to say the jury had not heard the full story. Mortensen's appeals painted him as a victim of Metro. From the beginning, his defense was built on one claim. Christopher Brady was. the shooter and Metro protected Brady because he was connected. That argument kept coming back year after year, motion after motion, hearing after hearing. Just a quick recap, we believe that the state's case against Mortensen was not weak. At trial, prosecutors had eyewitnesses who described

the shooter as being the passenger in the truck, a larger white man wearing glasses. Mortensen was admittedly sitting in the passenger seat, and he was larger than Brady and wore glasses. The The gun that fired the fatal shots was Mortensen Sig Sauer. According to the state's firearm expert, the physical evidence supported the theory that the gun had been fired from outside of the passenger side of the truck and that it was likely the truck was moving when the shots were fired. Mortensen never accepted the jury's verdict. At sentencing, he apologized to Daniel's family, but he still maintained that Brady was the

shooter. He stated in court that he was a scapegoat for years of misconduct inside Metro, the rookie officer chosen to take the fall for the department's larger problems. That word, scapegoat, became central to the way Mortensen presented himself for the next 30 years. In August of 1998, more than a year after Mortensen's conviction, Frank Kremlin was preparing the first major appeal, and the argument was essentially the same one he had made at trial. The jury, he said, had not heard the full story about Christopher Brady and about the evidence that might have made the state's key witness look very different.

One of the clearest examples was Brady's truck. As we have already discussed, the truck was a critical piece of evidence for both sides, because the case turned on what was physically possible for Brady to do or to not do while inside the cab. But also, since Brady had control of his truck, he had made modifications to it before the trial started. While it was eventually restored to the way it looked

the night of the murder, as we discussed, that just led to more unanswered questions and cast more suspicion on Brady. On appeal, Kremlin argued that the changes to the truck mattered because they made it harder to test visibility, movement, and whether Brady could have reached across the cab in a way that Mortensen described. He later summed up the defense's frustration by saying that, after a lot of effort, the truck was finally delivered to him,

but it was delivered late and changed, with the tint removed, the clothing laundered, and the seat already taken out. Then he asked the question that became, the theme of the appeal, who was telling the truth. The courts did not agree that the changes to the truck were enough to overturn the verdict. The jury had seen the truck with a custom seat reinstalled, jurors were allowed to sit inside it, and the defense was able to argue that Brady could have reached across the cab if the seat was positioned in a certain way. Later courts concluded that Mortensen had not shown enough prejudice that the changes to the truck justified a new trial.

But even though the legal argument failed, the objects were still terrible. Even though the messy investigation does not erase the eyewitnesses and other evidence, they created an opening, and because Brady was never prosecuted, every flaw around Brady became something Mortensen could point to and say, this is why you should have believed me instead. That same argument applied to the evidence the jury did not hear, or heard only partially, about Brady himself. Since Brady was the witness the state chose to build their case around, his credibility became one of the most important issues in Mortensen's appeals. As we discussed in Part 5, excluded or limited evidence admitted about Brady involved internal affairs complaints and allegations about Brady's conduct as an

officer, including claims that he had pulled a gun on people or roughed people up. Some of those allegations were unproven, and the trial judge limited them because the court did not find them reliable enough or relevant enough to put in front of the jury. There was also Carrie Morris. Morris had accused Brady of sexual misconduct during a traffic stop, an allegation that was never charged and the prosecutors viewed with credibility concerns. But after Mortensen's conviction, it became clear that Morris had described Brady using language that sounded strikingly similar to something Mortensen claimed Brady said after Daniel's shooting. Mortensen testified that Brady told him, I told you I was an evil man, I am evil. Morris said that Brady had used similar language with

her. For the defense, that mattered because it was such an unusual phrase, and if Mortensen had made up the evil man line, Morris's separate account could look like corroboration of at least that part of his story. It is another element to show that the jury had not heard everything that might have changed how they understood Christopher Brady. However, the courts were not persuaded. finding that Morris's statement did not have a close enough connection to Daniel's murder and probably would not have produced a different result at a new trial. But for Mortensen's supporters, it became one more piece of the same larger claim that the state had asked the jury to trust Brady without letting the jury see the full picture

of who Brady might have been. The prosecution had a similar issue with Mark Barry. During Mortensen's trial in 1997, Frank Kremlin said he received an anonymous call about Christopher Brady. The caller claimed that Brady had once told fellow officer Mark Barry that he wanted to do a drive-by shooting. At the time, prosecutors said, an investigator had spoken with Barry, and Barry had called the allegation nonsense, so the jury never heard it. In July of 1998, though, after Mortensen had been convicted, Mark Barry testified before a federal grand jury investigating possible civil rights violations in Daniel's death. As you might recall,

from our earlier episode, Barry testified to that grand jury that Brady had mentioned doing a drive-by more than once, but he didn't take Brady seriously. Essentially what he said was that once this thing Brady had joked about actually happened, he'd put two and two together. That testimony became a major appellate issue because it went directly to Brady's credibility and possibly to his motive. In August of 1998, the issue was serious enough that District Judge Joseph Papalikowski, ordered an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Mortensen deserved a new trial. Legal experts quoted at the time said that if Barry's testimony was credible, it could be important. It could raise serious questions about Brady, not just as a bad witness, but as a person

who may have talked about doing the very type of crime that later happened. The ACLU of Nevada also weighed in. Gary Peck said he didn't want to prejudge the case, but if the accounts of the federal grand jury testimony were accurate, Mortensen should have an opportunity for the evidence to come out. In October of 1998, the hearing on Mortensen's request for a new trial was held in front of District Judge Joseph Pavokowski. Frank Kremlin leaned into the testimony from Officer Mark Barry. Barry did not say Brady had ever laid out a specific plan, and he described the comments as the kind of thing said while drinking, joking, blowing off steam, and talking about work. However,

Barry was not the only officer whose testimony raised questions about the culture in Metro. Another officer testified that Brady and other officers sometimes talked about certain neighborhoods, including the area near McKellar Circle, as if they were filled with worthless or bad people. A former officer, William Butler, said some of those conversations were jokes or venting after stressful shifts, but he also described talk about certain areas needing to be napalmed and jokes about contract hits to wipe about certain people in certain neighborhoods. For Kremlin, this all suggested that Daniel's neighborhood was not just a random place Brady and Mortensen ended up in that night, but a place some officers had already talked about

with contempt. We're going to pause here for a quick break, but we'll be right back to discuss an issue with the physical evidence that we haven't yet talked about during this series. Torrey Johnson, the police firearms expert, had been one of the major witnesses at Mortensen's trial. Johnson had written notes during the trial that were apparently not turned over to the defense until later, through attorneys involved in the Mendoza family's civil lawsuit that we discussed last week. Johnson's notes involved the fatal bullet. Because the bullet that killed Daniel passed through his body and was never recovered, Johnson had written notes speculating about

whether the bullet might have come from a gun more powerful than Mortensen's 380 sig sour. To Cremond, that opened the door to another question, whether the jury had heard everything it should have heard about the ballistics evidence. Johnson testified that he had been concerned about the issue during the trial, but he also denied that he meant that the 380 could not have fired the fatal shot. He explained that the caliber of the bullet cannot necessarily be determined from the size of a wound, and prosecutors argued that the new ballistics questions did not amount to a new theory of the murder. Deputy District Attorney Gary Geiman argued that none of the new material justified a new trial. He said the state's case had been supported by five eyewitnesses and was not built solely on Brady's credibility. It was not enough to undo the jury's verdict. At the end of the hearing, Judge Pavikowski took the matter under advisement.

As Mortensen was led out of the courtroom in chains, he silently made his own argument for the press and the cameras in the courtroom. According to the review journal, he flashed a sign with the way. words, Metro Political Prisoner. That image captured the appeal in one strange, uncomfortable moment, legitimate questions being raised inside the courtroom while Mortensen tried to cast himself as the victim of a police department conspiracy. Later that month, Judge Pavilkowski denied Mortensen's request for a new trial, but the Barry issue did not go away. Mortensen took the argument to the Nevada Supreme Court, where the justices later agreed that Barry's testimony had not been discoverable with reasonable diligence before trial, but still concluded that

it was not likely to produce a different result. So the door stayed closed, at least for then. But the argument had been preserved, and the same question would keep following the case for decades. If Brady was the state's key witness, how much did the jury have the right to know about what he allegedly said and done before deciding whether to believe him? In 1999, Mortensen brought forth a challenge based on one of the witnesses against him, Ruben Ramirez. During the trial in 1997, Ramirez was one of the eyewitnesses who identified Mortensen as the shooter. He had not identified Mortensen in the first photo lineup, but after seeing Mortensen's photo, he identified him in a physical lineup the next day and then again at trial.

His testimony was important because he said the passenger signaled for people to come closer and then fired from the window. He also said he couldn't see the driver clearly because the passenger blocked his view. As a part of his pursuit of a new trial, Mortensen's legal team argued that the state had failed to disclose Ramirez's criminal history. The allegedly undisclosed information included several incidents, including a 1996 misdemeanor for firearm driving case, a 1997 domestic violence complaint, an April 1997 conspiracy to commit burglary attempted robbery case, and an April 1997 citation for possession of a bludgeoning device.

However, a March 1997 alleged incident where Ramirez had sold drugs to an undercover agent was key to the defense's argument. The incident had led to federal charges against Ramirez. The buy happened before the trial, but did not result in Ramirez's arrest until after the trial. The defense argument was that Ramirez was an important eyewitness, and the jury should have known more about his potential crimes because it could have affected his credibility. Ramirez had testified that on the night Daniel was killed, he had gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and had not been drinking or using drugs, and neither he nor his associates had a gun. The defense theory was basically, if Ramirez was involved in a meth sale before trial, the jury should have known that when weighing his credibility. The arrest also suggested that he had reasons to testify and cooperate with the state. The Nevada Supreme Court rejected that argument.

The court said that Ramirez's criminal history didn't matter because the jury already knew Ramirez was an 18th Street gang member and knew the gang was involved in drug-related activity. All of his criminal history was available before trial, except for the undercover drug buy that resulted in arrest after the trial. Additional information about Ramirez's criminal history would not likely have changed the verdict given the evidence. against him. In summary, Mortensen's appeals often focused on each individual flaw, Brady, Barry, Morris, the truck, the clothes, Ramirez, and on and on. And the argument that if the jury had known, they would have found him not guilty. But the state's response always amounted to the fact that no single flaw in the case changed the overall picture. No single witness or missing detail could overcome the eyewitness descriptions, the physical evidence, and the use of Mortensen's very own

weapon. For a long time, the courts agreed with the state. The conviction remained in place and Bartinson stayed in prison as appeal after appeal failed. In November of 1998, the RJ interviewed Mortensen from prison. At the time, he was in an Ohio maximum security facility, far from Las Vegas, living in what he called his living hell. Mortensen said he woke up in a small cell, put on a light blue prison uniform, and went to work caring for flowers. and plants. He said the flowers were his only mental salvation from an otherwise monotonous prison life. He also said being a former police officer made prison dangerous. He said the other prisoners around him, men convicted of murder, rape, drug offenses, gang crimes, do not know that he had

been a cop and that he had to keep it a secret for his own safety. During that interview, he continued to claim innocence. Mortensen said he was not a killer. He said he did not go to Daniel's neighborhood to harass anyone. He said he had no choice but to go along that night because of Brady, and that Brady was the person who fired the shots. In this case, the question of innocence is complicated and layered. There is the idea of legal innocence, did Mortensen fire the shots, and did the state prove first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt? But there's also the question of moral responsibility. What responsibility does a police officer carry when he participates in a night of harassment that ends with an innocent young man dead?

In late 1998, Mortensen responded to the interview with a letter to the review journal, where he accused the newspaper of leaving out much of what he had said. He accused Metro Homicide detectives of protecting Brady and using smoke and mirrors, and he said he was set up as a symbolic sacrifice to protect Brady. He wrote that he blamed Christopher Brady for destroying his life and ending Daniel Mendoza's. Years passed, claims were raised and rejected, more appeals were filed than denied, Brady's federal case came and went. The review board was created.

The public moved on to other scandals, other headlines, other fights with Metro. But Mortensen wouldn't stop. By the mid-2000s, his long campaign to prove his innocence went off the rails in a bizarre turn. We're going to pause here for our second break, but we'll be back to discuss the desperate acts Mortensen allegedly took to get out of prison, which involved scamming his own grandmother. In March of 2005, Mortensen had been brought back to Las Vegas from the Ohio prison where he was serving his life sentence, so he could await another appeal proceeding. This was another stage in the legal fight he had been waging for years. Another attempt to convince a court that the jury had not

heard the full story about Christopher Brady, the evidence and the allegations that surfaced after the trial. According to the reporting summarized in our case materials, this may have been his final serious bid for a new trial, and he needed money, allegedly, to influence the judge presiding over his hearing. Mortensen had decided the easiest way to access some money would be through his elderly grandmother, Doris Kosovo. Doris was in her late 80s by then. She was in a Las Vegas nursing home, and she owned, through a trust, a piece of California beachfront property in Morro Bay. Mortensen's mother had been helping care for Doris, and according to recorded conversations, She didn't want the family's resources drained into Ron's case.

Mortensen did not take this very well. On one recording, Mortensen referred to his mother as his stupid mother, because in his view, she was standing in the way of the property being used for him. His mother, from what we can tell, was saying that the family needed to care for Doris, not spend the estate's biggest asset on Ron's legal fight. Mortensen saw the Moro Bay House as a financial lifeline to possibly buy influence around the appeal he believed could set him free. So Mortensen wrote to his grandmother, Doris, and asked her to sign the house over to him. He asked one of his supporters, former prosecutor Kenneth Long, to physically bring that letter to her nursing home. Long's alleged and documented role in this whole detour feels almost unreal. He was familiar with the Mortensen case. He believed he was innocent, and he had become connected to his cause. He had recently run unsuccessfully for a Henderson judgeship. He had

had reportedly written the first hundred pages or so about a book about Mortensen's murder case, and he had visited Mortensen in jail at least 15 times. The review journal described Long as the kind of person who seemed, at least on paper, above reproach, a former prosecutor, a Boy Scout leader, and someone who had worked for the FBI in Idaho in the late 1990s. Long later wrote in an affidavit that Doris was alert and aware of her surroundings when he visited her, and that she'd close clearly stated several times that she wanted Ronald to have the California House and wanted to help him. The house was held in trust, but she signed the house over to him and a jail guard notarized it. However, Mortensen was in prison and had no job, which made it difficult for him to get a loan against the property.

Eddie Gould, another inmate, agreed to buy the Morrow Bay property for $1.3 million, with no money down and two years to pay. Gould's plan, according to reporting, was to flip the house and make even more money. According to reporting in Los Angeles Times, he said that for a deal like that, he would parade down Fremont Street in a speedo with nipple pasties. However, Eddie Gould was not only another inmate, he was also a former FBI informant, and he told authorities what Mortensen was trying to do. According to Gould, some of the money from the sale of the property was intended to bribe the judge connected to Mortensen's appeal, Nancy Sayida. At the time, Judge Saida's husband, Joe Saida,

was a retired chief of the U.S. Secret Service office in Las Vegas and an acquaintance of Kenneth Long. Long wrote an email to Mortensen's wife, Zoe, saying that he kept in contact with Saida's husband and had told him his feelings about Ron's case, including his very blunt view that Mortensen's conviction was garbage. The FBI was reportedly interested in looking at Saida because, a According to the reporting, there had already been concerns about her taking campaign contributions from attorneys with cases in front of her. The FBI asked Gould to wear a wire. According to our research, Mortensen told Gould that he thought he would win on appeal because of all the errors in the case. He said he had not murdered anyone and he expected that if his murder conviction was overturned, he could

plead to something much less. Then Gould suggested that another $100,000 would put the judge even more in his favor. Mortensen's response was not exactly comforting. He said, yeah, then a hundred grand really gets her predilections going, and he added that he hoped they could get it all together. He called the whole thing good politics. In one of the most revealing moments, Mortensen said, it's only illegal if we tell on ourselves, or if we get ourselves caught. Gould, who had a history of racketeering, allegedly lied on the loan documents by claiming Mortensen was his stepfather, and he was able to secure a loan connected to the property. Days after the loan cleared, Gould's own criminal situation improved dramatically, and his 11 felony charges were resolved through dismissals,

suspended sentences, and probation, and Gould was released. Then Gould met with Kenneth Long at Boulder Station Casino with a bag of cash. With the help of the FBI, hidden cameras were in place, and Gould was wearing a wire. During the meeting, Long said he met with Joe Saida and raised the question of what kind of influence Joe had over Nancy. Gould brought a letter from Mortensen addressed to Ken, Kenneth Long, saying that only $40,000 was available right then, but that Long should make the $30,000 payments as discussed and keep $10,000 for himself. Wong said he didn't want the money, and he would put it in a money market in account.

He also said something that sounded, at a minimum, like he understood the danger of what was being discussed. He said that, personally, he thought giving the money to Saida would backfire, and that if Mortensen wanted to contribute to her campaign, Long would tell him that he should not, or if he did, he should do it anonymously. Gould told Long to take it up with Mortensen and then left. When Mortensen didn't hear back from Gould, he became frustrated and contacted his mother. In that communication, Mortensen complained that he had not been able to go into every detail with Long about what to do with the money, which we all know is for Nancy. and he said he was not the one messing up Nancy's piece.

Then the next day, Mortensen scolded Gould in a letter. He said, you decided not to pay Joe and Nancy, not me. Mortensen wrote a second letter to his mother, saying that a corrections officer had told Kenneth Long that Gould was a police informant and that Gould was wearing a wire. A Clark County corrections officer named Brian Hurich later resigned amid allegations that he had blown Gould's cover. Hurridge said he did not intentionally tip off Mortensen, but said he jokingly speculated to Mortensen that Gould might have been wearing a wire. We find this whole story almost impossible to believe. A convicted former police officer housed in the Clark County Detention Center

while fighting a murder conviction allegedly tried to route money through an elderly grandmother's property, possibly to bribe a judge, while a former cellmate informant wears a wire, a former prosecutor gets drawn into a cash meeting at Boulder Station Casino and a corrections officer allegedly tips off Mortensen that the informant is wearing a wire. When Kenneth Long was questioned by police, he denied knowing about any plan to bribe a judge, and he agreed to wear a wire himself and confront Mortensen. When Long spoke to Mortensen, he said, you can't contribute to a judge who's going to hear your case and told Mortensen that he needed to hear him say he was not bribing a judge. Mortensen said he was embarrassed and denied it. Long pushed again, asking whether he could say, as a friend and as a fellow Mormon, that he was not bribing a judge. Mortensen said, I'm not bribing a judge, and added that he had no interest in bribing Judge Saida. Judge Saida and her husband

also denied knowing about any plot. Mortensen and Long were charged with elder abuse connected to the attempt to obtain Doris' property. Long pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor was fined $2,000 and lost his law license. Mortensen later entered an Alfred plea to conspiracy to commit a crime. Both Gould and Mortensen ultimately lost their claims to Doris's house, and the property reverted back to the trust. Las Vegas prosecutors also charged Gould with fraud related to the falsified loan documents, and Gould insisted that he had done what he did at the direction of authorities.

He sued police officers in federal court for civil rights violations, and through that lawsuit, discovery brought more of the alleged bribery and elder review scheme into public view. These documents also revealed that the investigation itself may have been compromised by the jailhouse leak, and that one of the lead detectives in the probe had once testified that he was a friend of Mortensen. After seven postponements, Mortensen's long appeal finally went forward after more than two years after he had been brought back to Las Vegas, and Judge Douglas Herndon denied it. The review journal later summed up the whole thing like this.

The judge won election to the Nevada Supreme Court. The convicted cop lost the appeal he had allegedly hoped to influence. The corrections officer resigned under fire. The grandmother got her house back, and the prosecutor got a small fine for his part in cheating a senior citizen. It is also the kind of thing that made Morton's in a very difficult person to turn into a clean, innocent-looking figure. Mortensen remained in prison.

He continued to pursue state and federal relief. The courts continued to review, reject, narrow, or preserve pieces of his claims. One other issue that we mentioned briefly, but never dived into fully, was the issue of the jury instructions during the trial. At the time of the trial in 1997, Nevada courts were using what became known as the Casillan instruction, which blurred the difference between premeditation and deliberation in first-degree murder cases. A few years later, in a case called Biford, the Nevada Supreme Court said juries needed clearer explanation of those terms. To simplify the issue, it was not enough for jurors to decide that a killing was intentional. For first-degree murder, they also had to be properly instructed on the separate requirement of deliberation.

Deliberation requires the act to be more than impulsive or rash. intent would be, I meant to do it. Pre-meditation would be, I had formed the idea to do it before I did it. Deliberation means I actually thought about doing it even briefly rather than acting on pure impulse. The jury in Mortensen's trial needed to be instructed about the difference. Based on that issue, nearly 28 years after the jury convicted Ron Mortensen of first degree murder on March 31st, 2025, U.S. District Judge Ken Dawson overturned his conviction and ruled that Mortensen was entitled to a new trial. The jury had been asked to decide whether Mortensen committed first-degree murder, but the instruction did not adequately explain deliberation. The jury could have found the shooting was intentional, but not necessarily deliberate in the specific legal sense required for first-degree murder. Judge Dawson also looked again at the Mark Barry issue, although years earlier the Nevada Supreme Court had rejected the argument that Barry's text.

testimony would have mattered enough to change the result, Judge Dawson disagreed. He concluded that Barry's testimony could have changed the case by undermining Brady's credibility and exposing that Brady might have had a motive for the shooting that Mortensen did not. And with that, nearly 30 years after Daniel Mendoza was killed, Ron Mortensen, was granted a new trial, reopening the case that people thought had been long settled. The ruling stunned both of us and motivated us to bring you this series. Next week, in our final final final, we'll be able to bring you this series. next week in our final part we'll look at what happened after that ruling. Now that the conviction had been overturned nearly 30 years later,

the state had a lot to consider when it decided what to do next. Did they retry a case from 1997? Can they even find witnesses they need to testify? Does the Mendoza family have to live through this whole thing again? If they don't retry Mortensen, what happens if he just walks free? Vegas is not the same city was in 1997, but nearly 30 years later, this case is.

is reopening in a city still wrestling with the same question Daniel's murder forced into the open. What happens when the people sworn to protect a community become the danger? Until next week, we remind you what happens here, happens everywhere. Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.com slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad-free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at sins and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at Questions at Sins and Survivors.com. If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support,

please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, Sins and Survivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is researched written and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sins and survivors.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal

professionals for guidance.