Erik Menendez could be headed to Las Vegas.
Menendez and his brother, Lyle, are serving sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. But renewed interest in the case, thanks in part to the Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” led outgoing Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón to recommend they be resentenced. District Attorney-elect Nathan Hochman has said he’ll review the case after he takes office Dec. 3.
Should he be released, Menendez has said he plans to move to Las Vegas to be with his wife, Tammi, whom he wed in 1999. If that were to happen, Menendez would join the improbable cavalcade of characters who dominated gossip columns and tabloids during the 1990s and later moved to Las Vegas.
They’re like the National Enquirer’s version of The Avengers.
Honestly, the city is Tonya Harding and Joey Buttafuoco away from the ultimate Jay Leno joke.
Here’s a look at six of the biggest tabloid names of the ’90s who’ve called Southern Nevada home:
Gennifer Flowers
Weeks before the Iowa caucus kicked off the presidential nominating process in 1992, Arkansas state government employee Gennifer Flowers told the Star tabloid she’d had an affair with an up-and-coming candidate named Bill Clinton. The allegation and media fury that followed nearly derailed his campaign.
Five years later, Flowers moved to Las Vegas where, periodically over the next decade, she lived and worked as a lounge/cabaret singer.
Heidi Fleiss
“Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss, who ran a high-priced prostitution ring that catered to the rich and famous, was convicted on three counts of pandering on Dec. 2, 1994.
In 2005, she moved to Pahrump to open the Stud Farm, a brothel for women, but the project fell through. Two years later, Fleiss launched the Dirty Laundry laundromat in Pahrump. She also started two pet grooming businesses.
Fleiss inherited parrots from a Nye County neighbor, another former madam, and became devoted to caring for them and other exotic birds, many of whom had been abused. Her Instagram profile describes her as “Retired Hollywood Madam turned Macaw Messiah.”
John Wayne Bobbitt
On June 23, 1993, John Wayne Bobbitt woke up without a penis. His wife, Lorena Bobbitt, had cut it off with a kitchen knife while he slept in their home in Manassas, Virginia, following what she said were years of physical and sexual abuse. Then she drove away and tossed it in a field.
Bobbitt visited Las Vegas on Feb. 11, 1994, during his “Severed Parts” tour and sold T-shirts for $25 and photos with him for $10 to help pay the bills for the groundbreaking surgery that made him whole again.
During a stop at the Olympic Garden strip club, he met dancer Kristina Elliott. Bobbitt moved to Las Vegas the next month to be with her and was arrested for domestic battery against her that May and July. He was convicted in both cases.
In 1999, Bobbitt pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in connection with the theft of $150,000 worth of clothing from a store in Fallon.
Brothel owner Dennis Hof said he fired Bobbitt as a bartender-chauffeur at his Moonlite Bunny Ranch in April 1998 for messing around with the working girls, but by that November, Bobbitt was tending bar at the Hof-owned Kitty’s Guest Ranch.
Over the years, the Review-Journal also reported that he worked as a tow-truck driver, wedding chapel minister, professional mover and porn star.
Mike Tyson
The ’90s weren’t kind to the man known as “the Baddest Man on the Planet.” Mike Tyson spent three years in prison for rape beginning in 1992 and 108 days in jail for assault in 1999. In between, he bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear.
The longtime Henderson resident has mellowed over the years, as seen during his return to the ring against Jake Paul. He’s reinvented himself through his celebrated cameo in “The Hangover,” the one-man show that played everywhere from the MGM Grand to Broadway and the animated “Mike Tyson Mysteries” in which he helped strangers with the assistance of his (fictional) Korean daughter, the ghost of the Marquess of Queensberry and a foul-mouthed pigeon voiced by Norm Macdonald.
O.J. Simpson
He may have been the most famous murder defendant of all time. After June 17, 1994, when he fled from police in a white Ford Bronco, America simply couldn’t get enough of O.J. Simpson.
On Oct. 3, 1995, the actor and former football star was acquitted of all criminal charges in the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Exactly 13 years later, Simpson was found guilty of the kidnapping and armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers at Palace Station.
He settled in Las Vegas after his Oct. 1, 2017, release from Lovelock Correctional Center and was often seen around Summerlin and on valley golf courses. Simpson died April 10 in Las Vegas after a battle with cancer.
Michael Jackson
Few people were stalked by the tabloids quite like Michael Jackson. Things took an especially ugly turn, though, in August 1993 when Los Angeles police began investigating molestation claims against him.
As a friend of Steve Wynn, the singer spent long stretches during the ’90s as a guest at The Mirage, and he became a regular visitor to Las Vegas in 2002. On Nov. 20, 2003, he flew from North Las Vegas to Santa Barbara, California, to be booked on separate molestation charges. Hours later, Jackson returned to the valley and embarked on a winding, nearly three-hour rolling street party that was televised live on CNN before he eventually settled at Green Valley Ranch Resort.
Following his acquittal and more than a year spent overseas, Jackson returned to Las Vegas on Dec. 24, 2006. He became a fixture around town over the next two years while living at the Palms, in Summerlin, in Spanish Trail and, finally, in a 1.7-acre compound on Palomino Lane that has become known as the Thriller Villa.
In a grim twist, Las Vegas cardiologist Dr. Conrad Murray also became tabloid fodder after Jackson died June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles. Murray served half of a four-year prison sentence after a jury found his negligence led to Jackson’s death.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
