Family of ’97 slaying victim seeking peace
With an arrest, Coker said, maybe her family can finally find the peace they’ve sought for nearly 21 years. But processing the whirlwind of emotions has proved challenging.
Coker has barely slept since the arrest. Her parents are a mess, and her brother is beside himself. They didn’t know she had been raped.
“After 20 years, everything is right back where it’s in your face,” Coker said. threaten women for sexual favors — on charges of murder After waiting more than two and sexual assault in decades for an arrest in her older Nadia Iverson’s cold sister’s killing, Marie Ann Iverson case killing. Coker’s first instinct was to look Police learned up the suspect’s social media accounts. in early 2017 that Sewall’s DNA was
“I have waited almost 21 years. I found in Iverson’s needed to see the last person she rape kit. On May 8, 1997, four days saw,” Coker said. “I needed to.” after Iverson’s 20th birthday, Metro
Last week, Las Vegas detectives found Iverson’s body with a gunshot arrested Arthur Lee Sewall Jr., 51 wound to her head inside a — a former Metropolitan Police duplex under construction north of Department officer previously downtown Las Vegas. She had been convicted of using his badge to in Las Vegas only a few months.
According to court papers, former Metro officer Arthur Sewall says he shot Iverson during sexual encounter ▶ Page 4B
‘She was just gone’
Iverson’s family still doesn’t IVERSON
know why she left their hometown of Pittsfield, Pennsylvania, in late January or early February 1997.
“There was no goodbye,” Coker said. “There was no nothing. She was just gone.”
Iverson grew up wanting to be a hairdresser. She had spent her childhood practicing on Coker, leading to some “heinous” school pictures. She could have been an artist, too, her sister said.
Most of all, perhaps, Iverson wanted to find love and start a family, Coker said. As a preteen, Iverson would write down the names of her future children.
She was engaged for some time before the couple split up, Coker said. In a small town, it was hard to avoid seeing her ex’s face.
Maybe the loneliness got to be too much to bear, Coker said.
Iverson met a new guy, and a few weeks later, the only things she left in her room were her jeans and her favorite leather jacket.
An arrest warrant for Sewall indicates Iverson and her boyfriend drove to Las Vegas together and began using drugs. Her boyfriend soon served time behind bars, and Iverson turned to sex work for drugs, the warrant said.
“That was extremely hard to process, and in some ways (I) have to accept (it),” Coker said.
Nadia and Marie
There was a post office and stop light in Pittsfield, but no grocery store.
Coker called it an “if you blink, you’ll miss it kinda town.”
Iverson was smart, Coker said, but didn’t care much for school and marched to the beat of her own drum.
Coker said her sister was a product of the time — big hair and hair metal. The pair would drive down the back roads of their little town, belting Paula Abdul, Poison and Guns N’ Roses.
Coker swears her sister used an entire bottle of hairspray each time she did her hair.
“You could touch it and hear it
crinkle.”
As a child, Coker would try on Iverson’s clothes, much to her older sister’s chagrin.
“I looked up to her,” Iverson said. Their parents tried hard to dress them alike — down to their swimsuits — before Iverson starting wearing black and rock band T-shirts.
She exuded confidence and leaned into her feminine chic, but, “Hell or high water, you were not gonna find her in a dress,” Coker said.
On a rare occasion she was seen wearing one, a school dance, it was a “goth” dress.
“It was so funny,” Coker said.
“She just rode with it and made it look as best as she could.”
Sometimes Iverson would turn to Coker and ask to take a late-night walk along state Route 27. It beats sitting around, Iverson would say.
“It was an adventure, and I’m glad I had it with her,” Coker said.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.