CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Investigators may have gotten the break they were looking for in their four-year search for a suspect in a series of threats against a Carson City judge.
Deputies received a tip earlier this week that a Washoe County jail inmate - 74-year-old John Aston of Sparks - may have been involved with the threats made against Judge John Tatro in 2012, Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said.
Deputies took him to the sheriff’s office, where they questioned him, and subsequently served a search warrant on a storage locker in Sparks where they found a Mercedes Benz similar to one they had been seeking in connection with the case based on surveillance footage near the judge’s home, he said.
Aston was being held Friday in the Carson City jail on $5,000 bail on a warrant in connection with a 2011 contempt of court charge.
Furlong said no arrests have been made, but that the new lead “appears promising.”
Investigators hope to collect DNA samples to see if they match any to DNA evidence collected earlier during the investigation at the judge’ s home in Carson City, he said in a statement Thursday. The evidence will be processed next week at the Washoe County crime lab, he said.
State, local and federal law officers have spent “thousands of investigative man-hours” on the case since someone fired two gunshots through the front door of Tatro’s home in December 2012, Furlong said.
A year later, the judge received death threats in a Christmas card mailed to his home. In May 2015, deputies responded to a failed attempt to fire-bomb the judge’s residence, he said.
Aston first appeared in Tatro’s courtroom on a traffic citation in 2005, court records show.
Furlong said he also went before the judge in 2011 after he was arrested on a charge of possession a concealed weapon - a sawed-off shotgun. He previously was being held in the Washoe County jail on the contempt of court warrant stemming from that case.
Last summer, Carson City District Attorney Jason Woodbury issued a DNA warrant for a “John Doe” in connection with the case. One of the DNA samples they are seeking to match came from the stamp affixed to the threatening Christmas card that was mailed to the judge’s home, Furlong said.
That warrant was used in Wednesday’s search that recovered the vehicle in the storage unit.
Furlong said whoever matches the DNA likely committed the crimes. “It’s a first in that we are so close because we know who he is, we just don’t have a name,” the sheriff told the Nevada Appeal.
Furlong told KRNV-TV he spoke this week with Tatro, who is continuing to cooperate in the case. “Certainly he is pleased that the activity is taking place and it appears promising,” he said.
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This story corrects the misspelling of the inmate’s last name in a previous version.
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