Las Vegas Police Chief Luther Horner Kills Self
On December 11, 1949, at approximately 9 AM, Las Vegas Police Chief Luther Horner shot himself in the head with a Colt .22 target pistol at his home on 601 South Nineth Street. Approximately 30 minutes earlier, City Manager J. M. Murphy had telephoned the Chief's home and advised that he had scheduled a conference for later that day to discuss problems with the police department.
This information and that presented here is taken from the December 11, 12 & 14, 1949, issues of the Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal newspaper. Information about the subsequent Coroner's Inquest is taken for the December 14 issue of the same paper.
Physicians who attended him during the evening before and those close to him said that Horner had become "mentally unbalanced" by a series of events which had taken place during the six days of his tenure as Police Chief. The article does not list an author but states that Horner "had been suffering under the delusion that men within the police department were conspiring to discredit him...."
The newspaper articles talked about three situations that were severely troubling Chief Horner.
1. The City Manager said that the chief took his job very seriously and was very concerned about "the gangsters and hoodlooms who had been flocking into this area following the California clean-up drive."
2. On December 8th, there was a hit-and-run traffic accident in which Mrs. Lona Monti, mother of two, had been critically injured. John J. Baldwin, 34, had been arrested for the crime. The articles do not identify any relationship between Mrs. Monti and Chief Horner.
3. A man named R. R. Reynolds, 50, had "tried to throw himself in front of a car in North Las Vegas last Thursday. He had been drinking and was placed in the county jail to sober up. He appeared normal Friday, but later was discovered beatting his head against the concrete walls of his cell." Reynolds was transferred to a "padded cell in the city jail" and scheduled for a "sanity hearing." When he "quieted down" on December 10th, he was returned to an "ordinary cell" where he was able to loosen a chain from his bed and used it to strangle himself.
Following the death of Reynolds, "Horner appearned to be in a daze, as he walked around the police station and continued to mutter: 'too much pressure--too much pressure.'"
He was taken home by his friend, Lisle Bordwell, who stated that he was taking personal responsibility for the incidents. About midnight, Mrs. Esther Horner became so disturbed over his condition that she called their family doctor. He gave the chief sedatives and said that he was "normal and rational" when the doctor left.
It was about 8:30 the next morning when City Manager Murphy telephoned the Horner residence and spoke to Mrs. Horner. She told him that her husband seemed to be "in good spirits," and Murphy informed her of the conference to discuss problems with the police department. Shortly after 9:00 AM, Mrs. Horner left to go to the store to purchase some ice cream. When she returned shortly there after, she found the doors to her residence locked. She became concerned and pryed open one of the doors with a shovel and found her husband lying in the living room with a bullet wound to the head.
He was rushed to the Clark County General Hospital where Dr. Jack Cherry stated that he had been dead for approximately 20 minutes.
Close acquaintances of Horner at the police department, said that he had threatened suicide at least three previous times "in moods of dispondency."
On Saturday, December 13th, a coroner's inquest was conducted by Deputy Coroner Ted Cupit at Bunker Brothers' Mortuary. The jury ruled "probable suicide." The first witness called Al Kahre, a car distributor and long-time friend of Horner, who had been called Mrs. Horner Wednesday evening when her husband was so distraught. Kahre said Horner told him "in an incoherent conversation of his fears that he had been framed and was to be sent to prison." He said Horner "insisted he had been drugged." Kahre said he and Mrs. Horner called a doctor who "found no evidence of narcotics."
The second witness was Police Officer Annabelle Plunkett who was with Mrs. Horner when the later broke into her home to find her husband had shot himself. Plunkett told of finding the body on the living room floor and of summoning an ambulance.
Police Officer Floyd Switzer identified photos of the body taken in the Horner residence. Detective Sergeant B. J. Handlon, who investigated the death, testified that he had worked "exhaustively" since Horner's death to trace rumors of foul play, but nothing had been discovered to indicate anything but suicide.
Funeral services were held at the Methodist Church on Monday, December 15th, and Horner was buried at the Woodlawn Cemetary. Pallbearers were Captain Sam Irick, Captain George Thompson, Sergeant Archie Wells, Sergeant Eddie Davis, Sergeant Robert Cooper and Sergeant Colby Peterson.
Horner had been named acting chief on December 5th, succeeding George Thompson. He was survived by his wife and a daughter, Lynn, a student at Las Vegas High School; his mother, Mrs. Carolyn Horner of Fairfax, Oklahoma; three bothers, Melvin and Floyd of Fairfax, and Ernest of Compton, California; and a sister, Mrs. Florence Wentworth of Pratt, Kansas.
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