Her name is Sherrice Iverson, and she was 7 when she was lured from an arcade into a Primm casino restroom 20 years ago, forced into the largest stall, sexually assaulted and slowly strangled before her killer snapped her neck.
A copy of that portrait, her smile wide and earnest, now sits in a cardboard box marked as “evidence” at the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas. The man convicted of her murder, Jeremy Strohmeyer, sits at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs.
The shocking case started a national conversation on casino security and whether gaming properties should be required to provide child care. Its fallout also led to a new good Samaritan law aimed at protecting child victims of crime.
Jeremy Strohmeyer is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. At the time of the murder, he was a high school senior, adopted at birth by a well-off Long Beach, California family. He pleaded guilty to his charges in 1998, and in exchange, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
In 2000, Strohmeyer appealed, arguing that his lawyers pressured him to make the deal. In 2006, a federal judge upheld the conviction.
Sherrice’s body was found about 5 a.m., after her father desperately searched for her, screaming her name. To this day, the hotel staff retains a collective sense of guilt.
“They felt bad about forcing her off the casino floor, because then she became vulnerable,” former Primm Valley Resort medic Bart Stinson said. Nevada law prohibits children from lingering in casinos.
Stinson had just commuted from Las Vegas the morning of May 25, 1997. To clock in about 6:30 a.m., he had to pass the downstairs arcade, where he noticed bright yellow crime scene tape blocking the nearby women’s restroom. An officer was standing guard.
“I thought it was a crazy girlfriend or boyfriend,” Stinson said. It wasn’t until he walked upstairs into the EMT briefing room, exactly one floor above where Sherrice was killed, that he learned of the horror that had happened just a few hours prior.
Though Stinson didn’t respond to the scene, he said his co-worker, a young man, did.
“He was a chain smoker. Tough kid. But it screwed him up,” Stinson said. “He was in therapy for the rest of the time I knew him.”
Stinson said the housekeeper who found Sherrice, and then guided Sherrice’s father into the restroom stall to see her, was deeply affected, too.
“She would have panic attacks. The rest of the time I worked there, I would get calls for her,” he said. They would happen randomly, as she was cleaning a room, or walking the casino floor. “She was in real bad shape.”
The murder happened shortly after 3:48 a.m., when Sherrice was last seen on surveillance footage, walking into the restroom. Her 14-year-old brother was somewhere else in the casino, and her father, Leroy Iverson, was upstairs playing slot machines.
Iverson didn’t have money for a room. The plan was to stay and gamble for several hours while his kids played in the arcade. He told police he had done it several times in the past.
“She was like any 7-year-old, running around, screeching. And they’re not supposed to be on the casino floor,” Stinson said. So more than once that fateful night, casino employees reunited a wandering Sherrice with her father, and told him he needed to attend to her.
More than once, she ended up back in the arcade, where Strohmeyer found Sherrice while perusing the property with his friend, David Cash Jr. Cash watched as Strohmeyer forced Sherrice into that stall. He even leaned over the stall and tapped on Strohmeyer’s head, but he never intervened, never reported the crime and never faced criminal charges.
She was a smart Los Angeles second-grader who loved learning and had dreams of becoming either a nurse, police officer or dancer, her mother, Yolanda Manuel, told Strohmeyer in court the day of his 1998 sentencing.
“Are you a demon? Are you a devil?” she asked Strohmeyer, raising her voice before apologizing to the judge for her demeanor. “You are so evil if I had a wish here I would put you to death the same way you put my child to death. If it was my prison, I would blindfold you and shoot you in your feet and send you back to your cell.”
On a scratchy cassette tape of Strohmeyer’s confession, recorded four days after the killing, the honor-roll student can be heard matter-of-factly describing the act.
Detective Ramos can be heard on the tape, too, asking Strohmeyer if Sherrice’s eyes were open or closed before he left the stall. The detective was searching for some glimmer of remorse.
“I don’t, I don’t think I really looked at her eyes,” Strohmeyer said. “I don’t recall really looking at her face at all.”
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