30 years after a Las Vegas mom was found dead by hikers, police identify her alleged killer

Thirty years after Las Vegas mom Melonie White was found dead by hikers, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said DNA testing has helped identify her alleged killer. 

Two men were hiking in August 1994 on Lake Mead Boulevard near the entrance to the Lake Mead Recreation Area when they found the remains of the 27-year-old woman near the bottom of a wash, police said at a news conference on Monday. 

“It was obvious she had been dragged there,” police said. The Clark County Coroner identified the woman as Melonie White and determined she had been the victim of a homicide.

She had been strangled, police said, and also died from blunt force trauma.

White had moved to Las Vegas with her boyfriend in the Spring of 1994, police said. When her family couldn’t get a hold of her, they reported White missing. Her two brothers, Walter and Jason, who spoke at the news conference said their sister had a son, who is now 33 years old. They said at the time of her death White was “at a crossroads” and was struggling with jobs and to find her place in the world. She was traveling back and forth between Phoenix and Las Vegas and loved fashion, Walter said.

Police were unable to identify a suspect at the time and the case eventually went cold. The case was reopened in 2010, when a DNA profile was entered into CODIS, a national DNA database that allows law enforcement agencies to compare DNA profiles to identify suspects, link crimes and find missing persons. Still, police said investigators weren’t able to find a match.

Eleven years later, in 2021, cold case detectives with the assistance of the Vegas Justice League, sent the DNA profile to Othram Labs to help identify the suspect. On August 26, 2024, the lab notified police they identified the alleged suspect as Arthur Lavery, who grew up in the Las Vegas area and would have been 38 years old at the time of White’s murder. Lavery died from COVID-19 complications in 2021. His only criminal history was a battery charge, said police.

Many of White’s friends had seen her the night before her murder in an area of Las Vegas near where Lavery lived, police said, but they have not been able to establish a direct link between the two. 

Jason White, Melonie’s younger brother, thanked the police department and the Vegas Justice League for helping bring the case to a close.

“It was a short conversation that closed the book on 30 years of not knowing what happened,” he said of the call from police that let him know his sister’s alleged had been identified.

“We will always miss Melonie and believe the solving of her murder will help bring a measure of peace to her and all of us,” he said.