In the early hours of January 4, Las Vegas police found the body of Daniel Aldape, a 46-year-old homeless man, laying in an empty lot at an intersection near the city's downtown, dead of head trauma. They suspected he had been killed in his sleep, bludgeoned over the head with a hammer as he lay wrapped in blankets.
One month later, another homeless man, 60-year-old David Dunn, turned up dead at the same intersection. He, too, was likely sleeping when someone struck him repeatedly in the head with a hammer, police said.
Detectives worried that both men were victims of "thrill kills," random slayings carried out solely for the rush of taking another person's life, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
With no leads on a suspect, police decided they'd try to bait the killer. Just a few feet from where Aldape's body was discovered, they set up a decoy, a mannequin draped in blankets and positioned to look like a person sleeping on the sidewalk.
Within hours, someone approached. After surveying the scene, the suspect pulled up his hooded sweatshirt, took out a hammer and bashed the mannequin "several times" on the head, according to police. The incident was captured on surveillance video.