Transcript of The After Show: Death of a Showgirl New

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Hi there, everybody. So happy you're with us today. I'm Deborah Roberts, and welcome to 20/20: The After Show. You may have heard the expression— I mean, who hasn't— what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Well, our most recent 20/20 story actually did happen in Vegas, but certainly the awful details did not stay there. The episode that aired on Friday is called Death of a Showgirl, and today we're gonna explore some fresh details around this heartbreaking story of a talented beautiful young woman named Debbie Flores Narvaez. She was only 31 years old when she died, and it's really a very heartbreaking story. She was a bright woman. She had taken law classes after graduating from college. She was also a former NFL cheerleader ambassador, and she desperately wanted to be a professional dancer. She wanted to fulfill her dreams of becoming a star, maybe even see her name in lights one day on the Vegas Strip. On January 8th, 2011, police found what is really so hard to even talk about— her dismembered in cement-filled bins stashed away in a closet of a vacant home just a few miles across town. And the big question, of course, was who could be capable of such an unspeakable crime?

Was it some crazed stalker or maybe an obsessed fan? Police were looking at all of those ideas, and it took just about a month before they would zero in on her killer. And it turned out to be somebody she knew and loved. Well, today we're going to take you inside the reporting of this story. If you had a chance to see it on 20/20, you know some of the details. If you didn't, you will hear even more today from our investigation, even an exclusive prison interview with Debbie's killer.

Debbie Flores is dead and she did not deserve to die. I'm not trying to get out of responsibility. I'm not trying to diminish what this situation is by any means.

This was actually the first time that this man has ever spoken out publicly, and our chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin worked on this story, and he is actually here to bring us some exclusive details on on the investigation, the prosecution of it all. Josh, welcome.

Hi, Deb.

Let's start off talking about this woman, a woman of Puerto Rican descent from the East Coast who had moved out very intentionally to Las Vegas trying to make her name as a dancer.

Yeah, we're talking about somebody who was intelligent, who had a lot going for a lot of energy. Her dream was to be not only a professional dancer and, like you said, see her, her name in lights, but she wanted to be known for her choreography. She was thinking about down the road maybe going into the business side.

Mm-hmm.

Of professional dance. And I don't know if that in her mind meant running a company or running a series of companies or running a theater, but she saw this idea of moving from the East Coast where she was from, Baltimore area.

Mm-hmm.

To moving out to Vegas as an opportunity for the stardom and the celebrity So she had already achieved some status as a dancer.

She was good.

She was good. She was very, very talented. And so she goes out there and her goal was to hit the Strip and to be a professional showgirl. She winds up, you know, as a featured dancer in one of the longest running, most popular, high-end shows on the Las Vegas Strip. This is not an easy needle to thread.

Yeah, well, help us understand that because she did get her dream job working at the fantasy burlesque show at the Luxor Hotel and Casino. Many people know that.

The Luxor is one of the big fancy hotels that are very, very famous.

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that world. I've been to Vegas once or twice on shoots. I mean, I never really have taken to going out there with friends as many people do. Talk a little bit about that world and what that is like when people come out there with aspirations.

First of all, it is a very demanding job. Being a professional dancer at a high-end show, and we are talking on the Strip, we are talking high-end. This is not low rent. This is not some sort of a, you know, second or third-rate kind of a thing. There are women from all over who compete for these positions, and they are prized positions, and they hang on to them for dear life because people are paying big bucks to come to these shows. And, and in their heyday, you know, let's step back even further, that the Las Vegas showgirl is an icon on the Strip. 30 years ago, Luxor, which at that time was one of the new age hotels, it was— it's built like the Egyptian pyramid.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, so it's, it's down at the part of the Strip where you have New York, New York, and some of these other other, you know, theme hotels. And so it got a lot of attention when it first opened up. And it has this burlesque show that's very high-end, and it has a small company of dancers. It runs— they, they advertise 7 days a week, 365 days a year, every single day. So she becomes—

the dancers, that's demanding, too.

Very demanding. And in fact, the dancers work 5, 6, you know, days a week. And, you know, the show, the curtain is 10:30 at night. So that takes a toll. Also, you know, the Vegas lifestyle, it's a city that lives at night. And so you have that. So, so Debbie gets on first, she's a replacement dancer, a fill-in dancer in this small company at Fantasy. So Fantasy is this show at the Luxor. So she ends up becoming a fill-in dancer, then she becomes a regular dancer. And on the way to, you know, her terrible end, she winds up hitting it big. She's going to be a featured dancer, a soloist, and she's going to get to perform with a guy who was a well-known, you know, music star at the time, Sisqó.

Yeah, so she is basically on the eve of rehearsals for, for this great moment. It's December 13th, and she doesn't show up for rehearsals.

The last rehearsal.

The last rehearsal. This is back in 2010, and everybody knows that she's very dedicated. She sees this as her big moment. And her roommate reports her missing. So you mentioned you had a very, very good description of Vegas and what it's all about. And I remember being there covering Siegfried and Roy back in the day. And, you know, there is like this allure to Vegas. But when you think about it, Sin City, that's almost a character in our story in 2022. When you think about Vegas, how much did that complicate this investigation? Because they are looking for someone in a town where, as you said, maybe somebody just wanted to disappear.

That's exactly it. And also remember, It's a town of transients, not in a negative way, but there's almost nobody that's from Vegas. You have a population of people that are coming for work. A lot of that work is in the hospitality and entertainment business. Those are both businesses that attract people from all over who come in alone, unattached. So you don't, you're not necessarily finding people that are coming in with full families of 4 or 5, but you have a single woman who gets in a car in Baltimore, drives cross-country to follow her dream. Who does that woman know? So she winds up having a roommate. That roommate could well be the only other person in the world that knew who she was, what she was doing, what she was about. Yeah, because otherwise her family was back home.

And when she was last seen— well, you mentioned her car. She drives that car across the country. So as police start to look, eventually they find her car, a maroon Geo Prizm. License plates are gone. And her boots are in the car, the boots that I guess that she had last been seen in, but nothing else. So it's kind of a break, or is it a break?

It's a major break because what this does is it confirms the hunches that the detectives had. The detectives behind the scenes at the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, they were working a missing persons case, but they had a spiny sense that they were working a murder case.

Mm.

They just couldn't put their finger on it. They didn't have a crime scene, they didn't have a crime victim, they didn't have any, But they, they felt, if for nothing else, the fact that she was about to be a star.

Yeah.

At this show, fulfilling her life's dream. They felt that that was the reason why she obviously had, had something had happened to her. Maybe she hadn't been killed. They, they were worried about it.

They were worried.

So the finding the car with no plates, that's immediately suspicious because anybody that's driving their own car is not gonna take off their own plates.

Right.

That's, that's the sign of somebody trying to hide something.

Mm-hmm. And why are they gonna leave their shoes?

Why would they leave their shoes? Running, right? And if she disappeared because she wanted to, let's just exercise a for a second. She had enough of Vegas. She was angry at this. She didn't like living there. She was gonna run off and she's gonna go to LA. She's not gonna leave her car. She's not gonna leave her shoes.

That—

it's illogical.

Yeah. Yeah.

They knew, they knew from that moment that something was up.

Something was up. So they start questioning, uh, the folks in her orbit, including her ex-boyfriend. So I wanna talk more about him, Jason Blue Griffith, her ex-boyfriend, who is a person that they wanted to talk to. So when we come back, we're gonna talk about the details of that relationship and a shocking twist and turn in this case where police begin and to look in the direction that would take them to the killer. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to 20/20: The After Show. I am sitting here with our ABC chief investigative reporter, Josh Margolin, who really helped bring the story to life here on 20/20, and it was called The Death of a Showgirl. It's the unbelievable story of 31-year-old Vegas dancer Debbie Flores Narvaez, who failed to show up for a critical rehearsal in a big event at the Luxor Hotel and Casino. This was a missing persons investigation, but as you said, the police were starting to think this is maybe a homicide or something bad has happened here. Give us a sense of their early thoughts. You mentioned that they are looking at her inner circle. There's that boyfriend or ex-boyfriend of hers, Jason Blue Griffith. He was also a dancer. He had been a notable dancer with what Cirque du Soleil and everything. What are they making of him when they first start to look into him?

They don't have any reason to doubt his genuineness, his story, what he's telling them. They don't look at him as a suspect.

And he's telling them what?

He's just telling them, you know, he's answering their questions. I last saw her here, and what was your relationship about? Now, they had some trouble.

A tumultuous relationship.

In the history of their relationship. But he was being honest enough. Nothing set off alarm bells. They have this missing woman. She's a beautiful woman who dances in a sexy show. So what if you're a cop? What are you immediately going to think? Uh, some man, a fan, a stalker, somebody who maybe became obsessed in some way. Exactly. What ends up happening in the story is nothing like what detectives originally thought they were going to expect to have.

Yeah, exactly. Because one, the plot thickens once they start asking more questions. And so they, they, um, wind up talking to, um, another woman, and this woman had an interesting story that actually changed everything in their minds.

Calle Casorzo. Tells a story to investigators that Jason wanted to store something in her place, and she wanted to know what it was before she said okay. And he said, "You don't want to know what it is." Mm-hmm.

And she wanted nothing to do with that.

She wanted nothing to do with that.

Yeah. So when she tells that to police, that kind of changes everything. Then there's another chilling conversation they have with Jason's roommate. Louis Colombo. And it, I mean, it's a chilling interview in a way where he essentially tells police everything. Let's just take a listen.

I can guarantee this: you tell us what happened and you're not getting arrested. That's my guarantee to you. We know you wish you could rewind it, but you can't. Now you got to go forward. You need to tell us what happened from the beginning all the way to the end. Louis, did you kill Debbie?

No.

Then talk to him.

You need to tell us what happened.

I saw him choke her.

During the argument?

During the argument, and I pulled him off her. That's why I got her some water, and I asked them if they were going to be all right. I tried to tell her, look, no more arguing, no more fighting.

Clovis says he leaves the house for about 2 hours.

When he came home, he saw Debbie laying on the floor with a plastic bag over her head. And she was not moving and did not appear to be breathing.

You helped put her in the bin?

Yeah.

Was she cold?

Was she— Yeah, she was. His idea was to put her in the concrete. So, you know, tells me to start mixing the concrete. I started mixing the concrete.

Louis tells us that he can take us to where the body is.

So it's like an abandoned house.

Now the big question is, where's the house?

On Benazir.

Take us to it. You don't have to go in, but can you take us to the house? We gotta go. We've gotta get it.

This was a major turning point in the case. Once they start talking to Colombo, it's like now they know, right? How much stock do they put in his comments?

They put tremendous stock in Louis's comments. The— it's entirely possible that the case would not have been cracked but for Louis's cooperation in this case. And Louie's cooperation was, uh, controversial because the police— the police knew that the relationship between Jason and Louie had gone back to childhood. So they get the sense that Louie knows a lot. And Louie, at this point in the story, was already showing signs of somebody who was under extreme emotional stress. So they, they then realize he knows way more, and they then make the critical decision to offer him a deal.

Immunity.

Immunity from prosecution entirely. But the deal was very, very precise. We will not arrest you, we will not charge you, you can go your merry way if you had nothing to do with the murder.

Mm-hmm.

And by this point, they know that a murder has happened.

They, they believe a murder has happened. They believe that Jason, the, the former boyfriend, had talked to Kolei They believe that, that Jason had killed Debbie and was looking for a place to store Debbie's body.

Mm.

And that Columbo was a part of that too.

They believe that Columbo was a part of it and would know about it. And they had a sense that Columbo had not done the killing, but he would have been involved in the hiding, in trying to help, uh, hide her remains.

And so the grisly details do come out. About this, and we want to talk about that later. But you say he was paying the price, essentially, for what he knew and dealing with the trauma of all of this. Well, we want to talk about the details of what happened. Jason Griffith is eventually arrested on January 8th, 2011. He faced charges of first-degree murder. And I want to talk about what exactly police learned happened and also the courtroom. Once he made it into a courtroom, we're going to talk about what happened there. And he did something nobody saw coming. He took the stand. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back.

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Hi there, welcome back to 20/20: The After Show. Josh Margolin, our ABC chief investigative reporter, was here with us with more details than we could get into in our recent episode of 20/20. Called Death of a Showgirl. Josh, you've seen plenty. You know, you've covered a lot of these stories. You've spoken with cops a lot about things that have happened. As we've been talking, this is the story of a young dancer who was gruesomely murdered by, it turns out, her ex-boyfriend, Jason Blue Griffith. Ultimately, these two had a disagreement. And what do police determine happened? I mean, it's just so hard to wrap your mind around that this is a guy who she loved, even though they were not on great terms, but that she could be dismembered and her body could just be treated this way. How do police begin to sort of unravel all of this?

Police get to the point— first of all, they— it's a little bit in reverse. They find out from Louis, who had cut a deal, what had happened. And they know that Jason and Debbie, the night that Debbie they believe ultimately is killed, that she had gone to Jason's home and that they were going to, to watch Dexter on television.

But that Dexter—

Dexter, ironically, right, right, right.

The show about a serial killer who dismembers people, right?

And then— but they believe that, that they have an argument. Now, this is an argument in, in the sea of arguments in this relationship. Very volatile relationship. You know, she had vandalized his car. They had called 911. The police knew there was no evidence of any physical violence, but there was evidence of volatility in the relationship. And it does seem that, that Debbie was very emotional and she could become very angry at Jason. And Jason, he was open about the fact that he was a, a ladies' man. He was playing the field, and he was very, very clear with police that he was playing the field. And it seems that throughout the, the course of their relationship The issue that really, uh, you know, was, was the overwhelming source of, of a problem between the two of them was the fact that she wanted a relationship, an exclusive relationship. She wanted to be together with Jason, and Jason wanted a lot of women. And when he was asked in a, a really telling moment in our reporting, when we talked to one of the homicide detectives on the case and asked Jason about about, you know, why so many women, what's up with that, you know, tell us about it.

And he said, it's Vegas, baby. You know, Jason had also come to Vegas to be a professional dancer. He was an accomplished dancer. He was a good-looking guy, good-looking guy. And he was well known, you know, among that set of people, the professional performers on the Strip, which is a really, it's kind of a rarefied space in that entertainment business. These are people who worked hard to get to where they were. They're in excellent physical condition, very athletic dance maneuvers. So he definitely was an accomplished guy, but he, he wanted the Sin City of Vegas. He wanted a different woman every night. He was telling the police that if he had a date and the date canceled, he'd call somebody else. He didn't want to be alone any night. He was a man who, who, who, who had this list of women in his life, and he was proud of it. And Debbie wouldn't have it.

And so police are, are left with trying to figure out a motive. So they figure out that they must have had some big explosive argument. She gets killed, uh, he, he kills her, and then he wants to get rid of the body, right? And he freaks out.

And that's where Louis comes in. And, and Louis tells the police the story. You know, Louis had committed to them that he would take their deal at the no prosecution, no arrest deal. And the, the deal was that he did not have any part in the murder, but he would give them all of the information about what happened and But Louis did come back and see her on the floor.

He did witness her lying on the floor after, after the fact.

After the fact. The point was the cops drew a line of distinction. They know in this case they are not going to be able to make a case for murder unless they have a witness explaining. Remember, they don't know where the body is, so they have to quickly make a calculation. Would we rather let a guy off a guy who helped, you know, clean up the scene, get rid of the body in order to get the killer? Or do we want to risk everyone going free? And that is a fairly typical quandary that law enforcement finds themselves in.

And some people weren't crazy about the idea that Louis would get immunity.

In their minds, there's a greater good here. The killer is going to face the music.

And police determine he killed her. How?

He strangled her.

He strangled her. He strangled her and then had to get rid of the body.

And remember, this is a very personal crime. It's the kind of thing that you, you know, strangling is an up-close kind of a thing.

Yeah, something very personal. So police make their case. Griffith goes to trial. He actually chooses to testify. And of course, he disavows doing any harm to Debbie and says basically she sort of attacked him. It was self-defense.

Right.

And the big question was, how is this playing with the jury? Because this is a guy who comes in, as you said, a good-looking guy who seems to be sharp and so forth, but the jury doesn't buy it.

No, and it's a tough case to make. First of all, he had to testify because his defense is self-defense.

Mm-hmm.

So, I felt that my life was in jeopardy. I did not plan to kill her, did not want to kill her, but she was going to harm me, therefore I had to defend myself. Now that's really— when you have only two people in the house, yeah, you— in order to make that defense work, you're gonna have to testify on your own behalf so the jury can hear your state of mind. And prosecutors and, and cops figured that Jason, being a good-looking, charming, charismatic guy who had a remarkable way of making people like him, and he thought that would work in a court of law, but —It didn't.

Well, the jury doesn't buy it. And on May 22nd, 2014, after 14 hours of deliberation, they actually find Griffith guilty of second-degree murder. And while prosecutors, you know, had considered first-degree murder, the jury went for a lesser charge. And that was a little surprising to some people. —It was.

I think the jury took some of what they learned in the courtroom, but possibly from what Jason said. Second-degree murder is a— it's not premeditated, right? So he's trying to say that this is something that was not planned. And it seems that the jury went along with the notion that it was not planned. Now, there's a lot of other questions, right? He didn't call the police and say, "Oh my God, I just did a terrible thing, and, you know, help me out of it." He tried to hide it, and then he acted with really heinous conduct toward the body of the woman at one point, he cared for. So obviously the jury was not letting them— but they were swayed by the notion that this was not a premeditated murder.

Yeah, which, which was the best he could hope for in that case. Well, you know, we heard from him in court, but for the first time he actually spoke out to our team from behind bars. And viewers would have heard some of that conversation on Friday, Friday's episode. What do you think about him and the way he came across? Do you feel that he took responsibility? What's your thinking about Griffith?

No, it does not seem that he's taken any more responsibility than he was willing to take in the courtroom. In his mind, it's, it's more violent than any of the police information we got. The police characterized it as more of a harassment that Debbie had, had brought to the relationship when she was angry. Jason acts like it's— it was more violent toward him, that he was the victim of, of Debbie.

Yeah, he painted himself as a victim.

Does he take responsibility for having killed her? Sure, he's done that, but he has an explanation, and he has— he doesn't get why people are not accepting his explanation. Is there a chance that he could—

I mean, he got second-degree murder.

He could go free the next time he comes up for parole. This is, you know, very possible.

Yeah, yeah, that's what happens when you don't get the first-degree murder charge. Well, let's talk about Debbie and her family, because this was clearly a heartbreaking tragic story anyway, but just even so much more horrific for her family. Her sister Celeste is in our story. And she's still processing, trying to come to terms with the loss of her sister, which is so painful for her, of course. But she's also too determined. She wants folks to see her face. She wants there to be the face of the victim in her family. And she wants to make sure that Griffith does not actually walk out of jail.

And she wants to keep Debbie's memory alive. And she wants Look, the parole board is not obligated to give him parole. So in her mind, the way to basically effectuate the sentence that she wants to see him have, that she wants to see him stay locked up indefinitely, she's doing everything she possibly can, Celeste, to see that come to fruition.

Yeah, she really kind of broke our hearts in that story. How is she processing, do you think? I mean, obviously her life will never be the same. Yeah.

She, she's eager to tell the story. She wants people to know what happened. She wants Debbie to not be forgotten. And she certainly isn't forgotten.

What a story, Josh. Great having you here. Thanks, Deb. And good seeing you. Uh, Josh is always welcome back here anytime. And by the way, I'll probably see you again because there are lots of other stories for us to talk about. So don't go too far because I think I'm going to want to talk to you soon about another one. Um, you can watch our latest 20/20 episodes on Friday nights on ABC. And of course you can stream episodes like this one anytime on Disney+ and Hulu. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody. Have a good day. I have great news!

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