On Feb. 24, 2000, the RN&R‘s cover story focused on a then-recently overturned murder conviction.
“A new life on death row” was the headline on the piece, a compelling read by D. Brian Burghart. It examined the December 1978 murder of Richard Minor Jr., and the trial of his accused killer, John Francis Mazzan, who was convicted and sent to death row. The state Supreme Court had overturned the case, “determining that Washoe County prosecutors withheld evidence that they had investigated two drug dealers who may have had reason to kill Minor,” as Burghart wrote.
At the time of the story, the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office was pondering whether to re-try Mazzan, who had always claimed he was innocent.
In the 26 years since, the RN&R never followed up on the story. After re-reading the piece, I was curious about what happened—so I decided to follow up myself.
Here are two excerpts from the piece. (If you’d like to read the whole story, which was published before our online archives began, you can do so, sort of, via the photos below of the newspaper in our bound volume. Apologies for the photo quality; it’s hard to clearly photograph the parts closest to the binding.)
Richard Minor Jr. had been stabbed 15 times when his father, Reno Justice of the Peace Richard C. Minor, found him dead.
That much is certain.
What isn’t certain is that the man who was convicted for the murder, John Francis Mazzan-who has spent 20 years behind bars awaiting his own execution—actually wielded the knife.
On Jan. 27, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously reversed Mazzan’s 1979 first-degree murder conviction, determining that Washoe County prosecutors withheld evidence that they had investigated two drug dealers who may have had reason to kill Minor. The disclosure of the investigation, which is required by law, may have cast doubt on their murder case against Mazzan.
The Supreme Court left open the possibility to retry Mazzan, and as he sits in the Ely State Prison, the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office is considering a new trial for the 20-plus-year-old crime. The district attorney’s office could also decide not to retry the case.
If the office does decide to retry the case, Mazzan’s attorneys say they will argue that it would be impossible for Mazzan to get a fair trial, since some of the witnesses are dead, and the evidence and memories of the surviving witnesses are too old to be reliable.
If the district attorney’s office chooses not to retry Mazzan, he will be set free. That decision could be made in a matter of days-ending the 21-year-long saga for Mazzan.
“We’re in the process of reviewing everything,” said Tom Barb, the chief deputy district attorney who will prosecute Mazzan should the case go back to trial. “We can’t make a knowledgeable decision without knowing what we have still available. All of the evidence has been through two trials. Some of the witnesses have been through two trials. Some of the witnesses are still around here; some of them are in other parts of the country. Two or three have died. We just have to put it all back together again to see if we have enough to go forward.”
Many of the players from the original trial are still around. Cal Dunlap, the former district attorney, has a successful private practice in town. The chief deputy district attorney, Mills Lane, went on to become district attorney and a district court judge. He’s now the presiding referee on the television court show, Judge Mills Lane.
Lane disputes whether any information about other suspects was withheld, and, while he said he has not read the Nevada Supreme Court decision which overturned Mazzan’s conviction, he still maintains that Mazzan was guilty.
“The defense had everything that I knew of,” he said. “Let me tell you something else. I was in that apartment. There is no way that a murder occurred—it was only about 5 feet by 8 feet—that he didn’t have something to do with. The Supreme Court did what they did (reversed the conviction), the Monday-morning quarterback deal.”
The former Washoe County District Attorney Cal Dunlap said he would prefer not to comment on the new developments in the case, since it’s technically an open murder investigation. However, he too questions whether any information was withheld. He also points out that, in 1997, a district court judge saw the evidence that Mazzan’s attorneys said was exculpatory, and the judge ruled it did not meet the legal disclosure standards, and that prosecutors had orally informed Mazzan’s defense about the investigation into other suspects. …
Mazzan moved to Reno in April 1978, according to Nevada Supreme Court documents. He was … a hairdresser, small-time pot smoker and cocaine user. He bought his cocaine from April Barber, a Mustang Ranch prostitute. He got his pot from Barber’s boyfriend, Richard Minor, say court records.
On the evening of Dec. 20, 1978, he and Minor were taping albums, snorting coke and smoking pot in Minor’s converted-garage home at 906 1/2 Holcomb Ave. Several people saw him at the apartment, including a man, John Sullivan, who bought a quarter-ounce of Hawaiian sensimilla marijuana, “Maui Wowee,” for $65 from Minor. In the hours after midnight, Mazzan tried to leave, but his car wouldn’t start, according to court testimony.
Minor let him crash behind the couch in the tiny living room.
Sometime during the night, Mazzan said, he heard a fight going on in the kitchen. He said he saw his friend covered with blood and fighting with someone.
He said he heard two people run from the house and a car drive away. Mazzan said he stepped outside but didn’t see anyone. He returned in time to watch Minor collapse and die. Minor was 26.
He fled the scene without notifying police of the murder. When he arrived home, he cleaned up.
Minor’s father, a justice of the peace who eventually became a district court judge, found his son’s body the next day.
Two days later, Mazzan flew to Las Vegas to see his wife, who was employed as a dancer. Las Vegas police contacted him there and told him he was a suspect. He returned to Reno on Dec. 26 and went to the Reno police station the following morning. He was questioned for about 12 hours before he was arrested for the murder.
At first he lied, according to court records, saying he hadn’t seen anything—until he was told the police had found blood in his car. He then admitted that he’d been present, but he made other statements that police later proved to be lies. At that time, police also strip-searched him, looking for bruises, since Minor was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed around 215 pounds, and the pattern of blood in the house suggested a struggle. No bruises were found on the 6-feet-1-inch Mazzan.
It was barely a week later, while Mazzan was in jail, that a garbage worker found a bloody coat belonging to Mazzan and a purse and bloody clothes that belonged to April Barber in a trash can near Mazzan’s home. According to eyewitnesses at the trial, the items were placed in the trash can after Mazzan was jailed. Barber had been missing for around a month, and speculation arose that she’d been killed in connection with Minor’s murder. Her murder was never solved.
A series of newspaper stories document what would happen regarding Mazzan’s case over the next five years.
In April 2000, Judge Peter Breen gave Mazzan a chance to leave prison by setting a bail amount of $100,000, according to an Associated Press story. A May 18, 2000, AP piece, published in the Las Vegas Sun, tells us Mazzan was indeed set free—but that the DA’s office had decided to retry Mazzan:
Jack Mazzan has been taking long walks, contacting family and old friends. He tries out cell phones, CDs and the Internet—all firsts after 20 years on Nevada’s death row.
Since the January reversal of Mazzan’s murder conviction and his May 6 release, he’s taking tentative steps in a world he had seen only on a printed page or on a prison television set.
Mazzan could go back to prison if he loses at a retrial scheduled for July. But if he is cleared, he’ll walk away after having spent more time at death’s door than anyone in this country to successfully appeal a capital murder conviction since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
However, Mazzan’s freedom would not last. A wire-service piece in the Los Angeles Times dated Sept. 28, 2001, explained that after several delays, Mazzan was going to be retried for Minor’s murder—and was now being charged for the murder of April Barber. One reason: “New tests on a pair of shoes found at Mazzan’s home disclosed traces of Barber’s DNA.”
That new DNA evidence was vital. Mazzan’s trial was delayed several more times, but in 2002, after claiming he was innocent for decades, Mazzan admitted he had murdered both Minor and Barber. On May 24, 2002, the Nevada Appeal reported:
In a plea deal made Feb. 15, Mazzan surprised everyone by agreeing to admit he killed Minor if (Washoe County District Attorney Richard) Gammick agreed not to prosecute him in the death of Barber. He was resentenced to life with possible parole three months ago and, since he has already served more than 21 years, was scheduled for his first parole hearing almost immediately.
Mazzan, who spent 20 years on Nevada’s death row, was arrested Sept. 10, 2001, for the second murder. Minor had never admitted killing Barber until his Thursday hearing before the Parole Board.
Speaking to the board, Mazzan first repeated his admission that he stabbed Minor to death in the victim’s apartment after the two argued over the profits from a drug deal.
“We got very high and we entered a major argument over the proceeds,” he told Parole Board members Thomas Goodson, John Morrow and Dorla Salling.
“The argument just got out of control and I killed him.”
Then Salling asked about Barber. Mazzan replied that the girl was dead “because I killed her.”
“She was just part of the whole situation,” he said, adding that the girl introduced him to Minor.
The Parole Board denied Mazzan’s request. In January 2005, Mazzan again requested parole, and was again denied, according to the Las Vegas Sun, which reported: “David Smith, a spokesman for the board, said the vote was unanimous. He said the board’s denial was based on the nature and severity of the crime and ‘the need to protect the public from further criminal activity.’ Mazzan will not be able to apply against until May of 2008.”
This is the last news story regarding Mazzan that I can find online.
According to the online Nevada Department of Corrections database, Mazzan went before the parole board again every three years, in March 2011, March 2014, and March 2017—and was apparently denied each time.
But on April 15, 2019, Mazzan again went in front of the Parole Board, for the sixth time—and this time, his request was granted. The database includes a small, grainy picture of Mazzan, holding a piece of paper that includes his name, his offender ID and the words, “Parole 6/19/2019.”
Mazzan is 79 today. Online records indicate he likely resides somewhere in Nevada, but his exact whereabouts are unclear.
—Jimmy Boegle
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