It was 1980 and Mary Catherine Monahan was 14 when she, her father and her father’s wife met a man at Caesars Palace who was interested in buying a van her dad was selling.

The man claimed to work in security and displayed a badge, she said. He arranged to meet again with her father, a Las Vegas dentist named George Monahan, the next morning.

The day after the meeting at the casino, Samuel Howard, the prospective van buyer, fatally shot George Monahan.

Howard was sentenced to death in 1983, but the Nevada Supreme Court deemed him ineligible for capital punishment in 2021 after he spent decades on death row. So at 60, Monahan’s daughter appeared in court Tuesday to speak about her father and push for Howard, who is now 77, to spend the rest of his days behind bars.

At the end of the hou

See Full Page