The murder of Carol Bishop
Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada · 1991
Overview
Carol Bishop, a 50-year-old convenience-store worker who lived alone in Las Vegas, Nevada, was found beaten and stabbed to death in her home at 980 Westminster Avenue on November 15, 1991, after she failed to show up for work. Investigators lifted fingerprints from a bottle of peppermint schnapps and a shot glass left in her kitchen, but in 1991 the prints matched no one, and the case went cold for more than two decades. In 2012, as part of a grant-funded cold-case initiative, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police detectives re-submitted the old latent prints to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). The database returned a name that had never come up in the original investigation: Dale Bryant, who by then was already serving a life sentence in Arkansas for stabbing another woman to death in 1992. It was the fingerprint hit, not DNA, that named the killer. Bryant later admitted to the killing, pleaded guilty, and in August 2017, 26 years after the crime, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
How it was solved
The 1991 investigation produced solid physical evidence but no suspect. Carol Bishop was found dead in her home at 980 Westminster Avenue, near Maryland Parkway, after her employer went to check on her when she did not arrive for her shift; the coroner attributed her death to a stab wound to the chest and massive blunt-force trauma to the face. A pizza delivery man told police he had seen Bishop at home with a male guest before the killing. Crime-scene technicians recovered latent fingerprints from a bottle of peppermint schnapps and a shot glass in the kitchen. But fingerprint matching in 1991 depended largely on having a named suspect to compare against, and the prints of an unknown person led nowhere. The case stalled and stayed cold for more than twenty years. The decisive step came in 2012, when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reopened the file as part of a grant-funded initiative to review unsolved cold cases. Detectives re-submitted the decades-old latent prints from the schnapps bottle and shot glass to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a searchable database that had matured enormously since 1991. This time the system returned a candidate, and examiners confirmed a match: Dale Bryant. Bryant had never been a suspect in 1991 and had no publicly known connection to Bishop. The reason his prints were now in the system was that his later life had put them there. In 1992, only months after Bishop was killed, Bryant stabbed 40-year-old Margaret Cooper to death in Harrison, Arkansas; he pleaded guilty to capital murder that August and was sentenced to life in prison without parole, where he had been ever since. It was the re-examined fingerprint evidence, run against a database that had finally caught up to it, that surfaced his name. Las Vegas cold-case detectives traveled to interview him, and Bryant admitted that he was responsible for Bishop's death. He was booked on a murder charge in February 2017, returned to Nevada, pleaded guilty in April 2017, and on August 2, 2017, was sentenced to a second term of life without the possibility of parole.
Sources
- Man gets life in prison for 1991 killing of Las Vegas woman
“Carol Bishop, 50, was found dead on her bedroom floor at 980 Westminster Ave. with a knife protruding from her back; Dale Bryant pleaded guilty in April to the murder after cold-case detectives matched his fingerprints to prints collected off a shot glass and bottle of peppermint schnapps found at the scene more than 25 years ago, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”
- Las Vegas police book suspect in woman's 1991 killing
“Dale Bryant, 63, was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon; in 2012 the case was reviewed as part of a grant-funded initiative to solve cold cases, and fingerprints from a bottle of peppermint schnapps and a shot glass in the kitchen of Bishop's home were run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System and matched to Bryant, who has been serving a life sentence in Arkansas for fatally stabbing another woman in February 1992.”
- Preliminary hearing set for suspect in Las Vegas woman's 1991 death
“Carol Bishop, 50, was found dead in her home on Nov. 15, 1991, after she failed to report to work; the coroner determined she died from a stab wound to the chest and massive blunt trauma to the face; in 2012 a cold-case review found that Bryant's fingerprints matched prints on a shot glass and bottle of peppermint schnapps in the residence, and Bryant, 63, appeared in court in a wheelchair as a preliminary hearing was set.”
- Police report: Convicted killer in Arkansas admits to 1991 Las Vegas murder
“Carol Bishop, 50, was stabbed to death in November 1991 at her home near Hacienda and Maryland Parkway; her body was discovered Nov. 15 after she failed to show up for work; Bryant's prints were matched to a peppermint schnapps bottle and a shot glass found in the kitchen after the case was reopened in 2012 and the prints submitted to AFIS, and Bryant admitted to LVMPD officers in May that he killed Bishop while already serving life without parole in Arkansas for a woman killed three months after Bishop's death.”
- Cold Case Closed: Man sentenced to life in prison 26 years after murder
“Dale Bryant was sentenced on August 2, 2017, to life in prison without parole for stabbing 50-year-old Carol Bishop to death in November 1991, 26 years after the murder; Bryant's fingerprints matched a peppermint schnapps bottle and shot glass at the scene after the case was reopened in 2012, and he spoke in court to offer an apology to the family, while Bishop's children thanked the grant and the detectives who worked the case.”
- I-Team: Police solve 1991 cold case murder
“Fingerprints found at the scene of Carol Bishop's 1991 killing were run through an updated database after the case was reviewed in 2012 as part of a grant-funded cold-case initiative, and Dale Bryant's fingerprints came up as a match; Bryant had served time in Idaho for rape and burglary and was already serving a life sentence in Arkansas for the 1992 stabbing death of another woman.”
- Man found in Arkansas prison facing Las Vegas murder charge
“Dale Bryant, 63, serving time in an Arkansas prison for a woman's stabbing death in 1992, is accused of killing 50-year-old Carol Bishop in November 1991; fingerprints on a bottle of peppermint schnapps led cold-case detectives to Bryant after the prints were identified in 2012 in the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a pizza delivery person saw a man at Bishop's house the night she died, and Bryant admitted last May that he was responsible for her death.”
- Boone County murder convict accused in Las Vegas cold case
“Dale Bryant pleaded guilty in August 1992 to capital murder in the stabbing death of 40-year-old Margaret Cooper of Harrison, Arkansas, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole; he is now accused in the 1991 cold-case killing of Carol Bishop in Las Vegas after fingerprints from that scene were matched to him.”
- Police solve 1991 cold case murder
“Dale Bryant pleaded guilty to the murder of Carol Bishop after cold-case detectives matched his fingerprints to prints collected off a shot glass and bottle of peppermint schnapps found at the scene more than 25 years earlier, when the fingerprints were run through an updated database during a 2012 grant-funded cold-case review.”