In the spring of 2005, a terrifying sequence of events unfolded at a Las Vegas apartment complex, leaving two women dead and a community in fear. The second of these victims was Rena Gonzalez, a 24-year-old woman whose life was cut short on May 4, 2005. Her death was part of a brutal spree by a serial killer who preyed on women in their own homes, a place where they should have been safest.
The day of Rena’s death began with a grim discovery at the Silver Pines apartment complex on
East Russell Road. The body of 45-year-old Marilee Coote was found in her apartment; she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Just eight hours later, concern for another resident led to a second, equally horrific finding in the same complex. Police discovered Rena Gonzalez in her apartment. She, too, had been murdered, strangled with a telephone cord. The proximity and timing of the killings immediately suggested they were the work of one person, sending a wave of panic through the neighborhood.
The investigation quickly focused on Norman Keith Flowers, a man with a significant criminal history who had been released from prison only weeks before the murders began. He was known to residents in the apartment complex, and his behavior on the day of the murders was suspicious. One neighbor, Juanita Curry, testified that Flowers knocked on her door five separate times that morning, acting nervously as police were on the scene investigating Coote's death. He told her the police activity made him anxious because he was on parole.
While Flowers’ DNA was found at the scene of Marilee Coote’s murder, investigators initially struggled to forensically link him to Rena’s death. During a preliminary hearing, a criminalist testified that while a mixture of DNA was found on the telephone cord used to strangle Rena, none of it belonged to Flowers. This led a judge to initially dismiss the murder charge against him in Rena's case, even as the case for Coote's murder moved forward. Prosecutors, however, remained convinced of his guilt, arguing that the similarities between the two crimes, committed hours apart in the same location, were too striking to be a coincidence.
Flowers was a serial predator. Before killing Coote and Gonzalez, he had murdered 18-year-old Sheila Quarles, the daughter of his ex-girlfriend, on March 24, 2005. He was first tried and convicted for the murder of Quarles in October 2008. During that trial's sentencing phase, testimony about his abusive childhood, which included physical and sexual abuse, persuaded the jury to sentence him to life without parole instead of death. Years later, in 2023, DNA evidence would also link Flowers to the October 2004 murder of 28-year-old Keysha Brown, who was raped, beaten, stabbed, and strangled in her apartment.
Faced with an upcoming trial for the murders of both Coote and Gonzalez, and the looming possibility of a death sentence, Norman Flowers chose to avoid another verdict from a jury. In June 2011, he entered an Alford plea for the first-degree murders of Rena Gonzalez and Marilee Coote. This type of plea allowed him to maintain his innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to likely secure a conviction. In exchange, he was sentenced to two more consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.
Norman Keith Flowers is currently serving three consecutive life sentences at High Desert State Prison in Nevada for the murders of Sheila Quarles, Marilee Coote, and Rena Gonzalez. His campaign of terror, which involved strangulation, beatings, and sexual assault, ended the lives of at least four women. While the initial investigation into Rena Gonzalez's murder presented challenges, the persistent efforts of law enforcement ensured that her killer would be held accountable, bringing a measure of justice to the families shattered by his violent crimes.
