Sin City Murders is investigating the murder of Bruce Weinstein, a Las Vegas bookie who was shot dead by his live-in girlfriend Amy DeChant and then dumped in the Mojave Desert by her employee Robert Jones.
Weinstein and DeChant began dating in the fall of 1995, and she moved in with him only a few days later. The pair had reportedly bonded over a love of Texas Hold’em poker and seemed very happy together.
However, members of Weinstein’s family, including his mother, Sylvia White, were always suspicious of DeChant, fearing she was only interested in his money. Unfortunately, they were right.
On July 5, 1996, Weinstein disappeared. His mother, White, went round to his house and found DeChant scrubbing the carpets. She said her boyfriend had popped out, but White wondered why her son would leave without his cell phone or other belongings.
When her son failed to turn up, White hired a private detective who found a bullet hole and blood on a mattress.
Forensic investigators used chemicals that highlight blood stains on carpets to conclude that someone had dragged a bloody corpse through the house and into a car in the garage.
Amy DeChant fled the law after Bruce Weinstein murder
DeChant then claimed that mobsters from New York had kidnapped her boyfriend and threatened her to stay quiet. In the meantime, she had found Weinstein’s money safe and emptied it of $100,000. She then fled to Baltimore, MD.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelA lucky traffic stop by a Maryland cop saw her sent back to Nevada, where, incredibly, she posted bail and fled the state again. She had not been officially charged with murder at that stage, so her bail was set very low.
DeChant evaded capture for a year, but after an appeal was made on America’s Most Wanted, she was discovered hiding out at a nudist camp in Florida.
Weinstein’s remains were found in a remote area outside the city in August 1996. The 46-year-old had been shot with a .38 caliber gun.
The gun was traced to a friend of Robert Jones’s son. Jones was a former employee of DeChant’s cleaning business, and the cops concluded he had helped her dispose of Weinstein’s body.
In October 1998, DeChant was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole. However, in 2000, the Nevada Supreme Court threw out the conviction, ruling that a comment made by the prosecution during the trial may have unfairly influenced the verdict.
Amy DeChant finally pleaded guilty to killing Bruce Weinstein
The prosecution offered DeChant a deal. She agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a second-degree murder conviction and a sentence of ten to 25 years. According to Nevada Department of Corrections records, she has since been released.
Robert Jones also received a custodial sentence for his role in the crime but has since been released.
Sin City Murders airs Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.