Las Vegas Review-Journal Review-Journal Tuesday, August 26, 1997 Man boasted about bodies, ex-worker says A suspect in the death of a singer paid for secret photographs of women, a former employee says. By Joe Schoenmann Review-Journal Craig Jacobsen, held in the death of Las Vegas singer Ginger Rios, bragged of using the desert as a graveyard and had an employee take secret photos of unsuspecting women in Las Vegas casinos. That employee also told police he remembers finding three women's wedding bands in the glove compartment of Jacobsen's truck in 1996. Jacobsen, 26, is suspected in the death of Rios and another unidentified woman, found near each other in the Arizona desert. A police source said Las Vegas police traveled to the Los Angeles County Jail Monday to question Jacobsen, who was arrested in Los Angeles after U.S. Customs agents searched his Phoenix Spycraft store looking for illegal surveillance equipment. Though Las Vegas police focused only on Rios in Monday's meeting, they are also interested to know if Jacobsen has any information about the bodies of five other women found in the desert in the last two years. Since August 1994, the remains of five women have been found within a four-mile radius in the far eastern portion of the Las Vegas Valley, including the Lake Mead National Recreational Area. Florida police, meanwhile, said they were checking their files of unsolved slayings. "I know we don't have any unsolved homicides that would fit this particular style," said Police Chief John Kintz of Longboat Key, Fla., near Tampa. "But I'm going to contact surrounding agencies to see if they have anything similar." That Jacobsen is being considered a suspect in any slaying is a surprise to Kintz, who got to know Jacobsen professionally during Jacobsen's adolescence. "I was always convinced he was a con man and a thief and a very convincing one," Kintz said. "But I never had seen any pattern in his past to indicate that he was a potential serial killer." Jacobsen, also known as John Flowers, owned at least three Spycraft stores in the Southwest when he was arrested Aug. 16. His Las Vegas store on Maryland Parkway is where police believe Rios was killed on April 4. Jacobsen, according to affidavits and police records, liked to pass himself off as a government employee with ties to the FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration. That's just what Bernard McLoughlin thought he was when he met Jacobsen in the spring of 1996 at a coffee shop in downtown Las Vegas. That brief meeting was the start of a four-month relationship in which McLoughlin was employed by Jacobsen to do one thing -- secretly photograph dark-haired women, many of whom worked in casinos and hotels. [Image] "I never took a picture of a blonde, to tell you the truth," said McLoughlin. Rios was an attractive 20-year-old with long black hair who sang and danced with the local band Salsa Machine. Las Vegas police also interviewed McLoughlin on Saturday. Sgt. Kevin Manning, commenting on McLoughlin's story, said, "There are some incredible implications when you think about it." McLoughlin, 62, is a roamer with no permanent address who says he takes odd jobs to get by. In the short time that he knew Jacobsen, he said, he earned $900 to $1,000 for taking the pictures and recording the voices. Jacobsen always paid him with crisp new $20- and $50-dollar bills. Though he traveled from Phoenix to Lake Havasu and Gila Bend, Ariz., it was in Las Vegas, McLoughlin said, where he took many of the pictures. Armed with a tiny fish-eye camera lens pinned to his shirt lapel, which led to a button-controller in his hand, McLoughlin would prowl the Plaza, among other casinos, candidly photographing women. He also used a palm-sized, hand-held camera. "He'd say, 'Take pictures, I want to see what they look like,' " McLoughlin said. "And he wanted faces, not backsides, not buttocks or legs. Faces. And no one trashy or trampish." The scheme evolved to the point where McLoughlin would carry a microcassette recorder to tape the voices of some of the women who served as waitresses. "You know, I'm looking at it now and thinking I should have dropped the dime on him back then," he said. "But I had no idea." McLoughlin said Jacobsen boasted to him about leaving bodies in the desert. They were in Lake Havasu at the time. "He said, "You know, from here to Provo, Utah, we use the desert as a government graveyard,' " McLoughlin said. Jacobsen liked to glorify himself, saying he was a government employee working at different times for the CIA, FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration, McLoughlin said. In reality, Jacobsen actually did some work for the FBI, according to Kintz. It was after Jacobsen was arrested in 1991 in Longboat as he drove around with a fake driver's license wearing a Rolex watch. Kintz arrested him and found evidence of a California computer heist in his Cadillac. The paperwork led later to the burglary of $250,000 in computer equipment from a California company called Grid Systems. Jacobsen was also tied to several local computer burglaries totaling roughly $60,000, said Kintz. During a routine criminal background check, Kintz found evidence that Jacobsen was wanted in New Hampshire. The Rockingham County Sheriff's Department issued a warrant for his arrest in October 1991 for forced-entry burglary of a non-residential property. While in the Manatee County Detention Center in 1994, Jacobsen penned some poorly worded and spelled requests to jailers. In one "contact form" dated Aug. 24, 1994, he wrote in a childlike scrawl, "I know they are put poison in my food -- I'm getting worse for little by think is that OK -- You know I'm OK and my voices told me to drop the suits so I can be OK in time for heaven." Jacobsen had actually filed a lawsuit against Kintz and the Manatee County sheriff. Kintz said Jacobsen claimed his credit history and reputation were ruined by Kintz's investigation. "The funny thing is, by the time his court date came, he was already a fugitive," Kintz said. Jacobsen became a fugitive in 1995 after pleading no contest to four counts of burglary, four counts of grand theft and single counts of resisting arrest and impersonating an officer. It was between court hearings, Kintz said, that Jacobsen disappeared. ------------------------------------------- Give us your FEEDBACK on this or any story. ------------------------------------------- Fill out our Online Readers' Poll [Image] [News] [Sports] [Business] [Lifestyles] [Neon] [Opinion] [in-depth] [Columnists] [Help/About] [Archive] [Community Link] [Current Edition] [Classifieds] [Real Estate] [TV] [Weather] [EMAIL] [SEARCH] [HOME] [INDEX] Brought to you by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Nevada's largest daily newspaper.
