Guilty verdicts in double-homicide on Nevada tribal lands

RENO, Nev. — A 43-year-old northern Nevada man was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder Tuesday in the 2018 shotgun slayings of two women at a house on a tribal reservation along the Nevada-Oregon line.

Stoney Prior of McDermitt and his two victims in the double murder were members of the Fort McDermitt Shoshone Paiute Tribe, U.S. prosecutors said.

At least one victim lived on the reservation at the home about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Winnemucca.

A six-day trial ended in U.S. District Court in Reno on Tuesday after the federal jury returned guilty verdicts on two counts of second-degree murder within Indian Country. Judge Larry Hicks scheduled Prior’s sentencing for Nov. 16.

Prior was taken into custody on unrelated tribal charges later the same day of the killings Jan. 31, 2018.

The federal murder charges were added the following week after the Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Allen said investigators for his office, the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs developed probable cause that Prior shot the women, ages 40 and 31.