In the late summer of 1979, a young woman named Sheila Gay Griffith, a 22-year-old White/Caucasian female, had recently embarked on a new chapter in her life, moving from Oklahoma to North Las Vegas, Nevada. She was staying with her sister and had found work as a cocktail waitress at the renowned Caesar's Palace. On the evening of September 23, 1979, Sheila and her sister decided to have a few drinks at the Silver Nugget Casino. It was there that Sheila was last seen leaving with a man.
Her disappearance marked the beginning of a grim mystery.
Days turned into weeks with no sign of Sheila. A significant clue in her disappearance surfaced on September 30, 1979, when her 1972 Plymouth Satellite was discovered abandoned and burned behind a hotel in Eloy, Arizona. Investigators noted that a toolbox had been taken from the vehicle, suggesting the perpetrator was unfamiliar with the desolate desert areas typically used to dispose of evidence. The search for Sheila came to a tragic end on November 27, 1979. A hunter in a ravine near Whiskey Pete's Casino, close to the Nevada-California state line, stumbled upon a sleeping bag containing a nude female body. Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to Sheila Griffith. The cause of her death was determined to be strangulation.
The investigation into Sheila's murder took a significant turn in early 1980 with the arrest of 32-year-old Edward Allen See in Robeson County, North Carolina, for a restaurant robbery. Facing consecutive life sentences due to prior convictions for kidnapping and rape, See began to confess to a series of violent crimes. He admitted to five murders, including two in the Las Vegas area. See recounted to FBI agents how he had persuaded Sheila to leave the Silver Nugget with him. When she rejected his sexual advances, he became enraged, sexually assaulted her, and then strangled her to death, leaving her body in the desert. His confession brought a resolution to the murder of Sheila Griffith, closing a chapter of a violent spree that had left a trail of victims.
