Nightmare In Nevada: The Traumatic Tale of Kirstin Lobato
In August 2002, teenager Kirstin Lobato was convicted of first-degree murder for the brutal killing of a man she had never met. After spending over 16 years in prison, she was finally exonerated
*Warning: This Article Contains Sensitive Subject Matter*
Background
In 2001, 18-year-old Kirstin Blaise Lobato lived with her parents in Panaca, Nevada. An admitted drug user at the time, she often went out in search of methamphetamine to satisfy her habit.
In May of that year, she returned from one such trip with a story she shared with at least nine friends. According to Kirstin, she had parked her car in a motel parking lot near the Budget Suites Hotel on Boulder Highway in Las Vegas and was exiting her vehicle when a man approached her.
The man grabbed her, and as she struggled to get away, he slapped her across the face and told her, “Shut up, bitch!” According to Kirstin, the man was attempting to rape her when she pulled out the butterfly knife she carried for self-protection and slashed his groin leaving the man writhing in pain. She then fled the area.
Murder of Duran Bailey
On the night of July 8, 2001, around 10 p.m., the battered and mutilated corpse of a man was discovered near a dumpster in the parking lot of a bank on West Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. It was a gruesome scene.
The man’s pants had been pulled down, and his penis had been severed. His skull had been fractured, and several teeth had been knocked out. His face was beaten so badly that both eyes were swollen shut.
Nearly 200 stab wounds, most of them superficial, covered his head, face, neck, chest, upper abdomen, and testicles. A handful of white paper towels has been wadded up and pushed into the bloody, gaping hole in the man’s scrotum.
The killer had also stuck a knife into the man’s rectum and sliced apart the tissues. Investigators later found a waxy substance as well as bits of silver paper inside his rectum.
This murder was a prime example of overkill. Whoever killed the man acted out of severe rage.
The victim was identified as 44-year-old Duran Bailey, a homeless individual who resided in the dumpster enclosure where his body was found. Duran was a known crack addict who often traded drugs to women in exchange for sex. It was also no secret that he had a penchant for committing sexual assault.
Just a week before the murder, Bailey had raped a woman in the apartment building next to the parking lot where his body was found. Despite Bailey threatening to kill her if she told anyone, the victim reported the assault to both the police and some of her male neighbors, who were incensed about the attack.
Investigation
After learning about Bailey’s murder, an acquaintance of one of Kirstin Lobato’s friends remembered hearing about a girl who had stabbed a man in the groin in Las Vegas after he attempted to rape her. The individual reported this information to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department.
When detectives visited the home of Kirstin’s parents in Panaca, they asked her if she had stabbed a man in the groin. She admitted that she had. However, it was evident that the timeline did not fit, as Kirstin clearly stated it happened more than a month ago, and Bailey’s murder had occurred less than two weeks before.
When police informed her that the man - Bailey - had died, she expressed regret, believing that they were speaking about the man who had attacked her in May. The police took her statements as a confession of her guilt in Bailey’s murder.
The teenager was handcuffed and arrested, taken to the police station, and charged with first-degree murder.
Kirstin attempted to explain that there had to be two different situations in question, as she had stabbed a man back in May. Duran’s murder had occurred in early July, and she swore that she had recently been nowhere near Las Vegas – about 160 miles from her home – and had never met a man named Duran Bailey.
The police never considered the male neighbors, who lived next to Bailey and may have had a motive to kill him; instead, all focus was on convicting Lobato.
Kirstin refused a plea deal in which she would be sentenced to serve only three years in prison if she pled guilty to manslaughter. Her defense team prepared their case, although Judge Valorie Vega would prevent them from presenting their evidence in its entirety.
Trial and Conviction
During her trial, Kirstin denied she had any part in the death of Duran Bailey, who she maintained she had never met. Many of the expert witnesses the defense wished to present were not allowed to testify.
Since there was absolutely no physical evidence tying Kirstin to the scene of the murder, her attorneys had planned to support that by providing proof that she could not have been at the crime scene. They intended to prove that Duran’s murder had occurred very shortly before he was discovered, when Kirstin was inarguably home in Panaca.
When Bailey’s body was discovered, there was a noticeable absence of blowfly eggs or molestation by rodents or bugs. Blowfly eggs appear on corpses very soon after death, and since they had not yet swarmed the body despite numerous open and gaping wounds, it was apparent that Bailey had likely died only hours before being found.
The medical examiner had determined that Duran’s death had been caused by blunt trauma and that the mutilation had occurred post-mortem. The fact that two weapons had been used and that numerous types of injuries had been inflicted upon him suggested the presence of more than one attacker. However, all efforts appeared directed at convicting the teenage girl in custody.
Judge Valorie Vega suppressed much of the defense’s testimony while the jury was allowed to hear testimony from the prosecution concerning Kirstin’s history of drug abuse and sexual victimization.
It was suggested that Kirstin acted out against Duran due to repressed anger brought on by past sexual abuse. She was asked if she had ever been sexually victimized. Kirstin told the jury that she had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of an ex-boyfriend, a boyfriend of her mother’s and the father of a friend.
The jury heard the prosecution’s theory that Kirstin must have gone to Duran to trade sex for drugs and then killed him when he didn’t honor his part in the bargain. They were not privy to expert opinions concerning the likelihood of two attackers due to the evidence of two weapons being used.
During the sixth day of the trial, Kirstin took the stand in her own defense and admitted that she was addicted to methamphetamine. She acknowledged that she had been at the end of a three-day drug binge when she stabbed a man in the groin in May and was unable to recall much about it. But she denied having anything to do with the July 2001 murder of Duran Bailey.
She was asked whether she carried a blunt object in her car and admitted that she kept an aluminum baseball bat in her backseat for self-protection. For three hours, she answered the questions posed to her, telling the jury, “I’m a sensitive person. The thought of killing someone really bothers me.”
The jury deliberated overnight and returned at 3:00 a.m. with their verdict. They had found Kirstin Lobato guilty of first-degree murder. On August 27, 2002, she was sentenced to serve from 40 to 100 years in prison. The sentence included 15 years for the charge of sexual penetration of a dead body. After standing for her sentencing, Lobato sat down at the defense table and cried.
Retrial and Appeals
Kirstin Lobato was granted a retrial in 2006. At its completion, she was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve 13 to 45 years in prison. The Nevada Supreme Court denied her appeal of the conviction.
In May of 2010, Lobato filed a writ of habeas corpus petition which listed 79 points considered grounds for a new trial, including new evidence which had come to light since her incarceration. Judge Vega denied the petition.
Kirstin filed a post-conviction petition in February of 2011, asking that items taken from the crime scene be tested for DNA presence. The Innocence Project – a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongly convicted individuals through DNA – agreed to pay for the testing.
The petition was opposed by the Clark County District Attorney’s Office and denied by Judge Vega. Kirstin appealed the decision to the Nevada Supreme Court, which dismissed it in January 2012.
In 2013, Judge Valorie Vega stepped down from her position after the Nevada Commissioner on Judicial Discipline publicly reprimanded her for her conduct in another case. In December 2017, Judge Stefany Miley granted Kirstin a new trial.
The fact of the matter was that no evidence ever linked Kirstin to the scene of Duran Bailey’s murder. A bloody footprint found next to the body was almost three sizes bigger than the shoes Kirstin wore.
No trace evidence of blood was found on her baseball bat or her vehicle. And the tire tracks found at the scene did not match the tread on her car’s tires. Her conviction was a result of her admission that she had stabbed a man in the groin in May 2001, which had been twisted into a confession of murdering Duran Bailey, despite glaring evidence to the contrary.
Exoneration and Release
On December 29, 2017, Chief Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ordered Kirstin’s immediate release from the Nevada Department of Corrections. Fifteen days later, Kirstin reclaimed her freedom after spending more than 16 years behind bars.
On December 12, 2024, a jury found that Nevada detectives and police officers who had been involved in the investigation of Kirstin’s case back in 2001 had fabricated evidence and sought to inflict emotional distress on her.
Kirstin Lobato was also awarded $34 million in damages from the police department itself and $10,000 in damages from two of the department’s detectives.
Kirstin Blaise Lobato was the 13th person to be released from a Nevada penal facility for wrongful conviction. She also became the 200th person to be exonerated with the assistance of The Innocence Project.
Sources:
Jury in Las Vegas Awards Woman $34 Million for Wrongful Conviction - The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/us/kirstin-lobato-jury-award.html. Accessed 16 May 2025.
Smith, Kim. “Lobato Receives 100 Years in Mutilation Slaying of Man.” Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Sun, 28 Aug. 2002, lasvegassun.com/news/2002/aug/28/lobato-receives-100-years-in-mutilation-slaying-of/.
Lobato Becomes the 200th Person to Win Exoneration ..., www.8newsnow.com/news/lobato-becomes-the-200th-person-to-win-exoneration-through-the-innocence-project/. Accessed 16 May 2025.
Ferrara, David. “Judge Tosses Case against Kirstin Lobato, Orders Her Freed.” Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 30 Dec. 2017, www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/judge-tosses-case-against-kirstin-lobato-orders-her-freed/.
Sherrer, Hans. “Kirstin Lobato Released!!” Justice Denied, Justice Denied, 3 Jan. 2018, justicedenied.org/wordpress/archives/4135.
Mccabe, Francis. “Judge Vega Won’t Seek Re-Election.” Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 24 Feb. 2017, www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/judge-vega-wont-seek-re-election/.
“US Jury Finds Vegas Police Fabricated Evidence in 2001 Killing, Awards $34m to Exonerated Woman.” CNN, Cable News Network, 14 Dec. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/us/kirstin-lobato-las-vegas-verdict/index.html.
“Kirstin Blaise Lobato.” Innocence Project, 18 May 2023, innocenceproject.org/cases/kirstin-blaise-lobato/.
GlennPuit, May 29, et al. “Kirstin Lobato Trial.” Kirstin Lobato Trial: Found Guilty of Murder, injusticebusters.org/index.htm/Lobato/Kirstin_Lobato_trial.htm#anchor2686696. Accessed 16 May 2025.