Brad Mehn (Nye County Sheriff’s Office)
A 39-year-old Nevada man will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars for kidnapping, torturing, and killing a 27-year-old man in a horrific fashion. A Nye County jury on Tuesday found Brad Mehn guilty on one count each of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and kidnapping with a deadly weapon in the 2021 slaying of Roy Jaggers, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
Mehn was one of three people charged in connection with Jagger’s death. Heather Pate, who was Mehn’s ex-girlfriend and neighbors with Jaggers, pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree kidnapping. Kevin Dent, Pate’s current boyfriend, pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder.
According to a report from Las Vegas ABC affiliate KTNV, Pate and Dent both reached deals with the Nye County District Attorney’s Office prior to pleading guilty to Jagger’s murder last month. Under the reported terms of the deals, Pate will become eligible for parole in 15 years while Dent could be released in as few as 10 years.
Heather Pate and Kevin Dent (Nye County Sheriff’s Office)
Following closing arguments, the jury deliberated for less than two hours before convicting Mehn on both counts, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“We have now obtained murder convictions for the three individuals involved in this heinous crime, who are all facing lengthy prison terms,” Nye County District Attorney Brian Kunzi wrote in an emailed statement to the newspaper.
Jaggers’ mother, Kassy Robinson, previously told the Review-Journal that her son was friendly with Pate and would often babysit her children and watch her dogs.
Authorities said that Pate and Dent lured Jaggers to Pate’s home where they beat and handcuffed him because they believed that he had molested Pate’s young son — an accusation police said was entirely unsubstantiated. Pate then called Mehn, who instructed her to bring Jaggers to Nye County. Pate and Dent wrapped Jaggers in a tarp, threw him in the back of a car, and drove him out to a remote area in the desert where they met up with Mehn.
The trio then tortured him “over multiple hours utilizing numerous different weapons” Mehn brought for that reason, authorities said.
“A blowtorch, knives, baton, axe, and a shotgun,” Nye County Judge Kim Wanker said as she recounted just some of the weapons used on Jaggers during Tuesday’s proceedings.
Authorities said that when they finished torturing Jaggers, they allegedly drove him approximately 25 miles to Cathedral Canyon where they forced him to strip naked and walk off of a cliff. After he landed in a gorge, Mehn shot him multiple times, ultimately killing him.
Jaggers’ body was discovered by an unidentified man in the early morning hours of Aug. 1, 2021, who then called 911. He was later identified by his fingerprints. Pate, Dent, and Mehn were all arrested within 36 hours of the victim being discovered.
Witness testimony for the sentencing phase of Mehn’s trial is currently scheduled to commence on Thursday.
Jaggers’ father, Jerry Jaggers, has already expressed outrage at the district attorney’s office for allowing Pate and Dent to take plea deals for his son’s murder, noting that he and his wife were not even notified about the agreements.
“Two of them, to me, on the plea deals… just doesn’t make any sense for what he went through,” an emotional Jerry Jaggers said in an interview with KTNV.
Kunzi, in an email to KTNV, reportedly said that his office did not consult with Jaggers’ parents before entering into the plea agreements because that is “not a right granted by our constitution.”
Kunzi did not immediately respond to an email from Law&Crime.
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