The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) has identified the suspect in the murder of Melonie White.
On Aug. 27, 1994, two hikers found a female body near Gypsum Wash in the Lake Mead Recreation Area and called 911. The next day the Clark County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as Melonie White. The cause of death was determined to be a homicide due to evidence of strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head. The LVMPD Homicide section took over the investigation.
At the time, all investigative efforts were exhausted in the attempt to identify the suspect responsible for White’s murder. The case remained unsolved and was assigned to the LVMPD Homicide Cold Case Section.
In May 2010, during a review of White’s murder, LVMPD Homicide Cold Case detectives requested additional forensic testing of the evidence left at the scene. A DNA profile was located and loaded into CODIS, but there was no match.
In 2021, cold case detectives, with the assistance of the Vegas Justice League, sent the unknown suspect profile to Othram to identify the suspect.
On Aug. 26, 2024—almost 30 years to the day of recovering White’s body—detectives were notified by Orthram that forensic genetic genealogy identified Arthur Joseph Lavery as the suspect in this case.
Lavery was living in Las Vegas at the time of the murder and moved to California in the mid 2000’s. He died on Feb. 20, 2021, from heart disease and complications from COVID.