The family of a man who was found dead inside his room from a fentanyl overdose after a robbery by a sex worker at a Strip resort in 2023 has sued the owners of the hotel.
According to documents filed in District Court late last month, Jennifer Jacoby, the widow of Jeffrey Jacoby, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Venetian Casino Resort LLC, which owns the Venetian and Palazzo.
Court documents state that Jeffrey Jacoby, a 55-year-old Colorado resident, was in Las Vegas in March 2023 for a work conference. While staying at the Palazzo, Jacoby met a woman named Cheylee Kessee at a hotel bar just after 1 a.m. on March 1, according to the lawsuit.
Prosecutors later said in court that Kessee was operating as a sex worker that night.
The complaint, which asks for a jury trial, alleges that Kessee, while working in tandem with a man named Kashon Glass, “walked around” the resort’s casino floor with Jacoby for “40 minutes” before accompanying him to a cashier’s cage area, where Jacoby withdrew $1,000.
Kessee then went with Jacoby to his hotel room at about 2:30 a.m. and left the room about eight minutes later. All along, the lawsuit alleges, Kessee was in contact with Glass via text. It states Glass was acting as her “pimp.”
Later, Jennifer Jacoby called the hotel to request a welfare check on her husband because he hadn’t texted her in several hours.
A worker who made the welfare check found Jacoby “unresponsive, slumped on the bathroom floor,” the complaint said.
Guilty pleas, prison sentences
Glass and Kessee were later charged with multiple crimes, including murder charges, after being accused of giving Jacoby a lethal dose of fentanyl.
They eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, robbery with use of a deadly weapon and burglary in relation to the case, according to District Court records.
The pair, according to the records, agreed to the guilty pleas in exchange for other cases being dismissed.
According to Nevada Department of Corrections records, Glass is serving a 50-year sentence at High Desert State Prison, just northwest of Las Vegas. Glass will be eligible for parole after 20 years.
Kessee, according to department records, is serving time at Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Las Vegas. She’s serving a 20-year sentence, though she’ll be eligible for parole after eight years.
Among other claims, the lawsuit alleges that Palazzo security guards should have alerted Jacoby that he was being followed by Glass. It also alleges the casino operators would have been able to identify Glass and Kessee because they had a history of “targeting hotel guests to rob and victimize them.”
‘You have to try to prevent known dangers’
Ben Edwards, a professor at the UNLV Boyd School of Law, said it will be interesting to see how the case plays out.
“Anytime you invite somebody onto your property, you have an obligation to make sure the place is safe,” Edwards said. “The kinds of dangers you have to protect against are really dangers you know about. You have to try to prevent known dangers. The question the court will figure out is whether it was unreasonable for the casino to not monitor, or not communicate, for this sort of thing.”
Along with Jennifer Jacoby, the lawsuit lists Jeffrey Jacoby’s three daughters as plaintiffs.
Listed as defendants in the wrongful death lawsuit are the Venetian Casino Resort, Venetian Las Vegas Gaming, and Pioneer OpCo, a subsidiary of Apollo Global Management.
Attempts by the Review-Journal to reach Apollo for comment were unsuccessful.
Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.
