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Poor communication between federal and state prison officials led to the release of convicted murderer Jeremy Kelly in Nevada, reports say. (Nevada Department of Corrections)
A convicted murderer who was supposed to be in prison roamed the streets for over a year because of bad communication between federal and state authorities, according to reports.
It took until Jeremy Brian Kelly’s parole hearing scheduled for Jan. 30 for officials with the Nevada Department of Corrections to realize he was not in custody, court records obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal said.
Kelly was just 15 years old when he murdered a 47-year-old man in Las Vegas in 1996. Local CBS affiliate KLAS posted a copy of the original arrest affidavit that said the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department received a call around 12:30 a.m. June 2, 1996, about gunshots at an apartment. They responded to find Terry Dixon dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
Witnesses told cops Dixon’s son Sean Dixon had been saying he was going to kill his father and had a gun, the affidavit said. Witnesses said three people running from the apartment after the shooting. A security guard said he saw a Ford truck leaving the complex with two juveniles later identified as Sean Dixon and Kelly inside. Cops later spotted the vehicle and the driver fled, leading them on a high-speed chase, the affidavit said.
The truck crashed and Dixon and Kelly were taken into custody.
A jury convicted Sean Dixon and Kelly of first-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy to commit murder, and a judge later sentenced them to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Prison officials granted Kelly’s parole in April 2016 but he landed in trouble less than two years later when he was allegedly caught with a gun and trafficking drugs in December 2017. Federal officials charged him with felon in possession of ammunition and a firearm, possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, according to court records.
Kelly pleaded guilty in June 2019 to felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute heroin. Court records say a judge sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.
He served his federal sentence and the Federal Bureau of Prisons released Kelly from its custody in June 2022 — and this is when things got messed up. The BOP should have returned Kelly to the Nevada Department of Corrections at that point because he violated his probation with the gun and drug charges.
Citing court documents, KLAS reported the BOP never checked with Nevada officials to see if there was a hold on Kelly, so the BOP released him to the streets.
“The Nevada Department of Corrections was looking for the defendant’s location for his parole hearing it was at that [time] they realized the defendant was not returned to their custody,” court minutes from the hearing said.
NDOC officials didn’t realize Kelly was gone until December when they were preparing him for his parole hearing, KLAS reported. A judge issued an arrest warrant for Kelly on Jan. 25.
According to KLAS, cops were called after a license plate reader identified a suspicious vehicle in northwest Las Vegas around 5 p.m. on Feb. 16. Officers conducted a traffic stop and took Kelly into custody. He remains at the Clark County Jail. A parole board will determine Kelly’s fate in April, KLAS reported.
A spokesperson declined to comment to Law&Crime on the incident other than to give the date they released Kelly from their custody and general information on how prisoners’ projected release dates are calculated. NDOC did not return a comment.
