Timeline of events
■ Nov. 27, 1987: Alexander Harris is seen alive for the last time in a Whiskey Pete’s arcade.
■ Dec. 30, 1987: Alexander’s body is found by a maintenance worker under a trailer near the hotel-casino.
■ Feb. 19, 1988: Howard Lee Haupt is arrested in San Diego.
■ Feb. 25, 1988: Haupt is flown to Las Vegas.
■ March 4, 1988: Haupt is released from jail on bail.
■ Jan. 11, 1989: Jury selection begins in Haupt’s murder trial.
■ Feb. 15, 1989: Haupt is acquitted.
■ Feb. 15, 1990: Haupt files $4 million lawsuit in federal court, alleging the police department and two homicide detectives conspired to violate his civil rights. or innocence, but I felt that the judge made himself the 13th member of the jury,” Harmon said.
Huffaker could not be reached for this story.
Metro’s part-time cold case detectives declined to be interviewed. A department spokesman said police have no new information and are not pursuing any leads.
The lawsuit
About a year after his acquittal, Haupt filed a $4 million lawsuit against Metro, Tom Dillard and another detective, Robert Leonard, alleging the detectives and the department conspired to violate his civil rights. The city of Las Vegas and Clark County also were listed as defendants.
Haupt claimed detectives misused photos taken from the Whiskey Pete’s arcade and that police filed false and misleading affidavits to secure a search warrant. He also claimed police tried to coerce a confession, according to news reports. He cited Dillard’s phone call to the judge as an example of being denied a fair trial.
J. Pat Horton, an Oregon-based attorney who litigated the case, said Dillard and Leonard picked Haupt as a suspect first, then tried to stack evidence against him.
“They did everything they could in terms of twisting evidence, ignoring evidence, misrepresenting evidence,” Horton said recently. “They were bound and determined to convict him.”
Horton said police essentially ignored a latent fingerprint on Alexander’s glasses.
“They should have done something with that fingerprint,” he said, adding it did not belong to Haupt.
News stories said the print shared some similarities with Haupt’s fingerprint, but they also had differences, so no substantial connection could be made.
Neither Dillard nor Leonard could be reached for this story.
After litigation, Haupt was awarded a single dollar in general damages and $1 million in punitive damages, Horton said. Court records show the case was fought for more than seven years.
A federal judge ruled the award excessive and threw out the punitive damages. Haupt later agreed not to pursue a judgment and to have attorneys fees reimbursed.
Haupt said if he had known how much trouble the lawsuit would be, he probably would not have filed it. He said he still believes in the justice system, but he thinks its flaws are in some of the people who run it.
Aftermath
The years after his acquittal brought trauma and turmoil for Haupt. The mere sight of a police car sent him into a tailspin.
“It was borderline panic attack,” he said.
The emotional trauma Haupt said he experienced still bubbles up occasionally.
“There’s emotional scarring from that process that’s only one or two levels below that of conscious memory,”hesaid.
Haupt said he has never spoken to the boy’s mother, Roxanne Harris, because he never had a reason to.
“It’s tragic what happened to their family, but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Roxanne Harris could not be reached for comment.
“I’m still in the same house that the FBI went through from top to bottom looking for all that dastardly evidence they were sure they were going to find,” Haupt said. “But they didn’t, because there wasn’t any.”
Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.