Teen Implicated Self in Girl’s Slaying, Police Say

Jeremy Joseph Strohmeyer, a once-promising 18-year-old high school senior from Long Beach, was behind bars Thursday as the suspected killer of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, who was raped and slain this week at a Nevada state-line casino.

Authorities said Strohmeyer attracted their attention by talking of his actions to two female classmates, whose parents reported the conversations to police. After his arrest he spoke at length with homicide investigators from the Las Vegas and Long Beach police departments and made highly incriminating statements, officials said.

“He has implicated himself in each and every step” of the crime, said Las Vegas Police Sgt. Bill Keeton.

The girl’s father, LeRoy Iverson, appeared briefly outside his South-Central Los Angeles home Thursday but refused to speak with reporters.

Strohmeyer is expected to be arraigned today in Long Beach before being extradited to Nevada, probably early next week, where he could face the death penalty on charges of murder, kidnapping and four counts of rape.

“The indication we’re getting is that he will not fight extradition. If he doesn’t, we should get him back here fairly quickly, maybe within a few days,” said Las Vegas Metro Police Homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen.

Strohmeyer, a Woodrow Wilson High School senior, had planned to attend the school prom tonight. Instead, he was taken into custody at his family’s home at 7:25 p.m. Wednesday.

Police said that as detectives approached the house, Strohmeyer swallowed a handful of pills in what they described as a “half-hearted” suicide attempt. He was taken to Long Beach Community Medical Center to have his stomach pumped before being transported to the city jail.

Strohmeyer’s companion at the casino was identified as David Cash, 18, a Wilson High senior and one of the suspect’s closest friends. Cash, whose family lives in La Palma, turned himself in to police there Wednesday after his parents recognized his face on a TV broadcast of surveillance tapes from the casino and confronted him, police said. He was interviewed as a witness but not charged with any crime.

At the Iverson home Thursday a steady stream of reporters and television crews gathered from early in the morning, seeking reaction from the girl’s father.

LeRoy Iverson has been widely criticized on talk radio and elsewhere since Las Vegas officials said he allowed his daughter to wander unattended through the casino arcade. Accusing some television reporters of trespassing on his property Thursday, he summoned police, who stationed themselves on the sidewalk.

“They won’t leave me alone!” Iverson shouted. “They won’t let me make arrangements to bury my daughter.”

Not long after the police arrived, Iverson got into his van and left.

Miles to the south, at Strohmeyer’s home in a Long Beach subdivision, a man drove up early in the morning and hurried inside, telling a reporter, “I’m sorry.”

At his school and elsewhere in the neighborhood, a picture of Strohmeyer emerged from interviews with classmates and others who know him: a smart but troubled teenager who, until recently, seemed on the right track.

“He seemed like a guy who was poised to go on,” said one classmate, Scott Burroughs, 18.

Strohmeyer attended elementary school at Grace Brethren Christian School in Cypress, where the principal described him as a very intelligent, relatively well-behaved boy who also played in Little League.

“Jeremy most certainly knows right from wrong, but like all of us, he has his choices to make,” said the principal, Frank Coburn.

Strohmeyer later attended Los Alamitos High School, where he “was making A’s and Bs in honors classes” during ninth and part of 10th grade, said Assistant Principal Kelly Godfrey. In 1995, the family lived in Singapore, where it had moved because of a job held by the suspect’s mother, Winifred, according to neighbors. A sister, who is a student at Cal State Long Beach, remained behind.

The family returned early in 1996 to Long Beach, where Strohmeyer enrolled at Wilson midway through his junior year.

Wilson Principal Al Taylor said Strohmeyer maintained less than a 3.0 grade-point average. He was to graduate June 12.

But in recent months, students at the school said, Strohmeyer had taken a downward turn.

One acquaintance recalled seeing him try to drink a whole bottle of tequila, then scuffle with another student at a recent party. Others said he quit the volleyball team a few weeks ago, two-thirds of the way through the season.

Friends said that his parents had kicked him out of the house earlier this spring and that he had been living on his own for two or three months, although police located him at the family home when he was arrested.

While some described Strohmeyer as a joker and a sharp wit, a few acquaintances said he had begun to show a darker, violent side.

“He was pretty nice until he didn’t get his way. He’d get violent. He hit me hard,” a former girlfriend, Jennifer Ainley, 17, told reporters outside the school as news spread of his arrest.

Long Beach police said they had received several leads pointing toward Strohmeyer from people who had recognized him on the surveillance videotapes. But the suspect himself provided the key break in the case by talking about his involvement, they said.

“Thank goodness for stupid criminals. They talk. They gotta tell somebody,” said Petersen, adding that Strohmeyer’s attitude “was more boastful than it was remorseful.”

The two girls he told informed their parents, who reported the news to the Long Beach police.

Authorities said Strohmeyer and Cash were apparently headed to Las Vegas when they decided to stop at the Primadonna casino at the state line early Sunday. Strohmeyer apparently used a fake identification card to get drinks there, Las Vegas police said.

In the wee hours of the morning, authorities said, he encountered Sherrice as she played in the video arcade. Police said the girl’s father had allowed her and a 14-year-old brother to play there without adult supervision while he gambled elsewhere in the complex.

According to police, the videotapes indicate that Strohmeyer engaged in a game of hide-and-seek with the girl in the arcade. In the surveillance tape, she is seen darting behind a video game machine as he appears at the other side of the room.

“He was gaining the confidence of this young lady,” Keeton said.

When the child bolts for the women’s restroom, police say, the suspect follows her inside. Another man--investigators say it was Cash--appears to mill about outside, disappears off-camera, then reappears and heads for the exit.

Keeton said Cash told police during his interrogation that he had looked inside the restroom, seen Strohmeyer struggling with the girl, and then left the room.

“He couldn’t get his friend to leave her alone,” Keeton said.

Twenty-five minutes after the suspect entered the bathroom, he walked out. Another 45 minutes passed before the girl was reported missing. A casino employee found her slumped on a toilet in one of the stalls.

Strohmeyer and Cash apparently proceeded to Las Vegas, where they spent the night before returning home.

For the Iverson family, Sherrice’s killing was the latest in a series of tragedies.

In 1988, another Iverson daughter died after being born three months prematurely, said an official in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. The death was linked to the girl’s early birth, said the official, who asked not to be named.

In July 1992, the mother of another of LeRoy Iverson’s children died during childbirth, said the same official, who did not know the cause of the woman’s death.

The boy whom the woman bore died 17 months later. His death was investigated by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department. The boy suffered an inflammation of the head of unknown origin, but there was no finding of wrongdoing in the death, and no charges were filed, the official said.

County child welfare officials also investigated the Iverson home after the boy’s death. They found that LeRoy Iverson’s 10-year-old son--the same youth who would later visit the Nevada casino with his father and sister--was having “behavioral problems,” the official said.

After its investigation, the children’s services department chose to leave the boy and Sherrice with their father. But they instigated a series of services--including in-home counseling, parenting instruction and therapy--to help the family cope with problems.

This January the family again was investigated by the child welfare agency. By that time the son had turned 14 and was having serious conflicts with his father, which led the elder Iverson to attempt to remove the teenager from the home, the county official said.

As the teenager tried to push his way back inside the house, he sustained a bump on the head from a screen door, the source said.

A social worker investigated the case and found a report of abuse “unsubstantiated,” also interviewing Sherrice and determining that she was not in danger, the official said.

The child welfare department again decided that the family was worth preserving and--as it does in thousands of cases--left the children at home and ordered the father and son to attend counseling.

“We felt this is a way that we could maintain the children in the home in a safe way,” said the official.

Later Thursday more than a dozen members of local groups advocating nonviolence assembled at a press conference outside First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

“If the casinos want our money, then they have to be responsible for responsibility of providing safety,” said the Rev. Leonard Jackson, a minister at the church.

Times staff writers John Mitchell, Douglas Shuit, Tom Gorman and Thao Hua and correspondent John Cox in Long Beach contributed to this story.