LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Prosecutors Tuesday urged a Clark County jury to find a man guilty of a revenge killing for murdering and cutting up and setting on fire the remains of the person they say slept with his and impregnated his wife, then forcing her to have an abortion.
In closing arguments of a death penalty murder trial, prosecutors said Anthony Newton robbed, kidnapped and murdered Cesar Molina on Christmas 2016 in East Las Vegas. Newton is charged with six felonies, including open murder, kidnapping and robbery – all with a deadly weapon.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Clark County District Court Judge Jacqueline Bluth will preside over a separate, additional phase of the trial to determine Newton’s sentence. The jury would, in that case, have the authority to send Newton to death row.
“Your job is quite straightforward,” William Flinn, a chief deputy district attorney, in his closing argument to the jury said. “Take the overwhelming evidence, apply the law and return a conclusion. And that conclusion should be to hold Anthony Newton accountable and find him guilty.”
Newton’s attorney, on the other hand, argued that the state did not meet its burden of proof that Newton is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He said inconsistent witness testimony and contradictory forensic evidence should tilt the verdict in Newton’s favor.
“There is not evidence that my client committed this crime,” Josh Tomsheck, a highly-regarded defense attorney said. “He wasn’t there.”
One item of evidence, Tomsheck points to in that theory of the case is that a homeowner in Henderson found what police ultimately identified as Molina’s hand in 2018, some two years after the murder while Newton was in Clark County Detention Center awaiting trial.
Tomsheck argued, and prosecutors could not refute that Newton could not have placed Molina’s severed, decaying hand into that mailbox.
Newton went on trial late in 2024 for the same charges, but Bluth declared a mistrial because that jury heard testimony about Newton’s prison time, which Newton’s attorneys argued would make it impossible for a jury to render a fair verdict.
That witness, Kelsea Glass, is expected to plead guilty for her role in luring Molina to the apartment where prosecutors say he was killed, public records show. Another witness, George Malaperdas, is also expected to plead guilty in February for helping remove Molina’s body parts after his death.
