Las Vegas landlady strangled, renter charged with murder

LAS VEGAS – A man has been charged for allegedly fatally beating and strangling his landlady, reports CBS Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Metro police booked Edward Kopp, 52, into Clark County Detention Center on Feb. 18 on a charge of open murder. Authorities said that Kopp confessed to killing 53-year-old Sheila Linke, who was in the process of evicting him and his girlfriend from the space they rented in her Las Vegas home.

Linke had been classified as a missing person since Jan. 26, according to CBS affiliate KPHO. Her body was found buried in the desert in Mohave County, Ariz.

When friends and co-workers reported Linke missing, police interviewed her roommates, Kathy Atteberry and her boyfriend Kopp, who both denied any involvement in the disappearance. KPHO reports that investigators spotted blood on Kopp’s truck bed which later turned out to be human.

After authorities figured out that the blood was human, Kopp – with an attorney present – told detectives that he got into a confrontation with Linke on Jan. 26, KPHO reports.

In the arrest report, Kopp claimed Linke yelled at him to leave and was holding a knife. Kopp stated that he kicked the victim in the chest when she had the knife over her head, which resulted in him holding her down on the floor. He told police that he suffocated Linke with his hands and then a nylon cord, then placed a plastic trash bag over her head because “he did not want Linke to get up again,” the arrest report states.

The report said Kopp and Atteberry loaded Linke’s body and camping gear into his pickup, got drinks at a nearby bar and then drove out to a desert area near White Hills, Ariz., to bury her.

“To have something like that happen close by, it’s frightening,” said neighbor Sandra Palmer. “It’s just a sad thing that somebody so good had to die this way.”

Another neighbor, Deborah Anderson, said she was close to Linke and revealed that she had previously battled stomach cancer and was recently divorced. She was only renting out part of her home because of financial difficulties, according to Anderson.

“She had some devastating things happen in the last year,” Anderson said.

Police said that Atteberry has not been charged in connection with the case.