John Ernest Welsh, a 58-year-old White male, lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a home with his girlfriend, Kimberly Warth, and her biological daughter. In an unusual family arrangement, Welsh had adopted Warth’s two children years after she lost custody, and the couple had begun living together with the daughter in December 2021.
On the night of August 17, 2022, Warth, then 41, called 911 around 9:30 p.m. to report that she had shot her boyfriend.
When officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department arrived at the residence in a gated community on Whitelion Walk Street, they found Welsh deceased. He had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head, and a butcher knife was lying near his body.
Warth told investigators that she had acted in self-defense. She claimed that Welsh had a drinking problem and that on the night of the shooting, he had threatened to kill her while holding a knife. According to her initial account, Welsh charged at her with the knife raised, and she fired her gun twice to protect herself. Police noted that a teenage girl, believed to be the couple's daughter, was in the house at the time. The case was initially investigated as a possible act of self-defense.
The investigation shifted dramatically after detectives seized and reviewed footage from two video cameras attached to Welsh's workstation inside the house. The video and audio recordings directly conflicted with Warth’s self-defense story. On October 4, 2022, investigators interviewed Warth again. After she repeated her original version of events, they confronted her with the evidence from the cameras.
Faced with the contradictory footage, Warth recanted her statement. She admitted that Welsh was not holding a knife and had not threatened her when she shot him. She confessed to staging the crime scene by throwing the knife near his body after the shooting. Warth gave a new reason for her actions, stating that while she was not afraid for herself and that Welsh had never been physical with her or the daughter, she was afraid he "would do something" to the girl.
Following her confession, Kimberly Warth was arrested and charged with open murder. She was booked into the Clark County Detention Center. Warth later pleaded guilty to killing John Ernest Welsh.
