LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Prosecutors say a man on trial for murder – with the help of his brother-in-law- –tied up his 33-year-old victim, killed him, rolled his body in a blanket, put his body in a garbage can, hacked up his remains, put them in a suitcase, drove them to a vacant lot in the northeast valley, poured an accelerant and lit a match.

In opening statements of Anthony Newton’s death-penalty murder case Thursday, prosecutors said DNA evidence ties Newton to the murder of Ulysis ‘Cesar’ Molina, whose sister testified that her brother went missing on Christmas 2016.

“I talked to my brother for, it was right before Christmas, it was like Christmas Eve it probably was,” Maria Molina, the victim’s sister, said in court Tuesday. She says the two lived together until a few days before Christmas. 

Molina’s family did not report him missing until several days later because Molina was “living a pretty hard life at the time,” prosecutors said, and it was not uncommon for him to several days without talking with them.

“He was using drugs, had issues with drugs, had a lot of financial and housing instability and he was in and out of trouble a certain amount of time as well,” Pam Weckerly, a chief deputy district attorney in Clark County, said in her opening statement to the jury.

Weckerly said Molina’s “phone records indicate he was alive on, at least part of the day, on December 25, that Christmas. But after that, something changed.”

“What changed was he was murdered,” she said. And he was murdered by the defendant, Anthony Newton, and other individuals.”

Indeed, Newton’s brother-in-law, George Malaperdas, awaits sentencing on charges for murder, robbery, and kidnapping. Court records indicate a sentencing date of January 14, 2025.

Weckerly said Newton and Malaperdas acted in concert in both the murder and the gruesome aftermath. Another witness in the case, Kelsea Glass, also awaits sentencing on the same day for her role in the murder. Prosecutors say Glass lured Molina to her apartment, where Newton and Malaperdas were waiting for them.

Glass, testifying as a cooperating state’s witness after pleading guilty to – among other things – accessory to murder, said Newton was angry with Molina because Molina had an affair with Newton’s wife, Jami, while Newton was serving a prison sentence.

“You will hear about the process that Cesar Molina went through once he was murdered,” Weckerly said.

But Josh Tomsheck, Newton’s attorney, argued that state’s witnesses have reason to lie to police, who are working on a faulty theory of what happened to Molina, and by whom.

“Things in this case are not as they seem,” Tomsheck said in his opening statement.

He implored the jury to pay close attention to the evidence, which he said will not be sufficient to convict Newton, 45, who is currently being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center.

“When we wait til all the evidence comes in, you will know that law enforcement is wrong in their investigation,” Tomsheck said. “You will know that the state is wrong in those charges.”

Both Weckerly and Tomsheck agreed on one item of interest in this case. In April 2018, while Newton was incarcerated awaiting trial, a woman in Henderson reported finding a decomposing human hand in her mailbox. Police could not connect that woman to Molina or Newton, Weckerly said. But the Clark County coroner was able to confirm the hand belonged to Molina.

“At the end of this trial, that will be a question that we don’t answer for you,” Weckerly said toward the end of her opening statement.

“Anthony Newton, who the state says is responsible for this homicide, couldn’t have possibly done anything with that hand,” Tomsheck said in response.  “That evidence … is a part of the story that the state does have to answer because it doesn’t fit their theory.”

Weckerly said police never located Molina’s other hand or his head.

The jury, if it finds Newton guilty, will then hear testimony in a separate hearing to decide whether to send Newton to death row. 



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