http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jan-06-Fri-2006/news/5235487.html
Jan. 06, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
HIGH-PROFILE MURDER CASE: Extradition compliance expected
Bodybuilder's lawyer calls client 'focused'
By FRANK CURRERI
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A lawyer for bodybuilder Craig Titus said Thursday that his client, who has been in a Boston jail for nearly two weeks, intends to agree to extradition and could be back in Clark County within two weeks to face the murder charge against him.
"It would be fruitless to try and fight extradition," Steven Boozang said from Massachusetts, adding that Titus never really intended to fight extradition in the first place. "We just wanted to hold it (a flight back to Nevada) up a little bit to let the dust settle. The case has been so sensationalized."
Boozang said Titus is gearing up for a courtroom battle, however. Titus will continue to fight the charge that he killed 28-year-old Melissa James, Boozang said. James, a former dance instructor, lived with Titus and his wife, bodybuilder Kelly Ryan, at the couple's 3,034-square-foot Spring Valley home and was their personal assistant.
Titus, a 40-year-old former competitor in Mr. Olympia and other national bodybuilding contests, has started lifting weights in jail to relieve stress and because he knows "he's in for the fight of his life," Boozang said.
"After the dust settled, he has gotten very focused," Boozang said. "He's eating well and in better spirits. He's working out and trying to clear his mind a little bit."
Titus' wife of five years is herself a Ms. Olympia runner-up and fitness magazine cover girl. Ryan is charged with being an accessory to murder and with third-degree arson in connection with James' slaying.
James' body was discovered about 6:30 a.m. Dec. 14 in the trunk of Ryan's 2003 Jaguar, which had been ablaze on Sandy Valley Road just off state Route 160.
Las Vegas police have twice questioned Titus and Ryan about the killing and have theorized that Titus strangled James and then had Ryan and 23-year-old Anthony Gross help him dispose of the body. Ryan and Titus each has denied having anything to do with James' death, and neither has implicated the other, police have said.
Boozang said he suspects Gross will become an ally to prosecutors and testify against Titus. But the attorney does not sense any growing division between Titus and his wife and does not expect that Ryan eventually will testify against her husband.
"They're 100 percent supportive of one another, from what I understand," Boozang said.
Ryan's attorney, John Gibbons of Massachusetts, had no comment Thursday other than to say that "Craig, he loves his wife and he supports her, and my sense is that she does as well."
Attorney Robert George of Boston no longer represents Titus, Boozang said. But Boozang stood by George's earlier contention that Titus and Ryan were on a cross-country vacation at the time of their capture and were unaware that they were wanted for the Las Vegas slaying. The couple learned of the arrest warrants only a few hours before a SWAT team surrounded them Dec. 23 at a Boston-area shopping center, where Ryan had stopped for a pedicure, Boozang said.
"They had just gotten the oil changed" in Titus' truck, Boozang said, asserting that his client did not act like someone on the run from authorities. "Craig had just gotten a lint brush, forgot to pay for it and drove back to pay for it. The woman (at the store) said she'd never seen that before. I have never seen a case where someone is a fugitive from justice and they stop to get their nails done."
Police have not revealed the suspected motive for the killing or the events that precipitated it.
The affidavit police filed to obtain the arrest warrant notes that Gross told police of Titus calling him early on Dec. 14 and asking for help. Gross said he drove to a remote desert area and handed Titus a can full of gas as Titus stood next to the Jaguar. Gross told police he didn't ask Titus any questions on the ride together back to town. An hour or so after that trip to the desert, police say a trucker on Route 160 noticed the burning car and called the fire department.
Police also wrote that a friend of Ryan said Ryan told her of discovering James dead in her room from a drug overdose and that Craig was supposed to get someone to get rid of the body. Ryan told a friend that she was only following instructions from Titus, who told her, "No body, no crime," according to police.
Titus and Ryan told police that they had evicted James for embezzling money from them and that they believed she had taken the Jaguar the night before her body was found, but they had not filed police complaints regarding either of those allegations.
Titus also told police he was having a secret affair with James, according to the police documentation, but Boozang said any report of an affair was not true.
"She was treated more like a sister than anything by both Kelly and Craig," he said.
Boozang said that Gross, who is charged with being an accessory to murder and with third-degree arson but was freed after posting $13,000 bail, lacks credibility and might say anything to spare himself jail time.
Titus repeatedly has extolled the benefits of steroids and was sentenced to prison in the late 1990s after testing positive for steroids, in violation of his probation, but Boozang said prosecutors would be overreaching if they allege that aggression fueled by steroids, commonly called " 'roid rage," led Titus to hurt anyone.
Clark County prosecutors have not said whether they will pursue the death penalty against Titus or Ryan.
Titus and Ryan are scheduled to appear in a Massachusetts courtroom on Thursday for their next hearing.
Boozang said he and Boston attorney Anthony Cardinale will team with Las Vegas counsel to mount an aggressive defense for Titus.