Killing at Vegas party: 2-time GOP House candidate was dressed as Ken when he allegedly hit victim
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former congressional candidate surrendered to police Wednesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest in the death of a man who suffered a head injury in a suite at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.
Daniel Rodimer, 45, was reportedly dressed as Ken from the “Barbie” movie when he got in an altercation with Christopher Tapp, 47, during a Halloween party last year at Resorts World.
The hotel’s security guards were called to the suite around 1:50 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2023, and were told that Tapp had accidentally fallen and hit his head. He died a week later in the hospital.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said detectives opened a suspicious-death investigation after they received information Nov. 22 that Tapp’s injury was “a result of a purposed accident.”
The Clark County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide as a result of blunt-force trauma to the head.
A warrant was issued Wednesday for Rodimer’s arrest on a charge of open murder. In Nevada, that designation allows a judge or jury to decide whether an offense was first-degree or second-degree murder or voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.
Rodimer’s Las Vegas lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said in a statement emailed to the Associated Press that Rodimer was “voluntarily surrendering to authorities and will post a court-ordered bail.” They added that he “intends on vigorously contesting the allegations.”
According to court documents cited by Las Vegas TV station KVVU, Rodimer believed that his stepdaughter had been given cocaine by Tapp.
A party guest described seeing “angry Ken” pull off the fur coat that was part of his costume and charge toward a bathroom where lines of cocaine had been laid out. Others said Rodimer pushed Tapp to the floor and punched him.
The documents also included a text message reportedly sent to Rodimer by his wife hours after the incident:
“I had to take your … hands off his neck as he laid there and you ran away. And I spent the next two hours trying to take care of him. Nobody should have to watch their husband murder somebody.”
Rodimer, a former professional wrestler, twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Republican.
In 2020, he challenged Democratic Rep. Susie Lee for her seat in Nevada’s District 3. The following year, when he was living in Texas, he was among 23 candidates in a special election to fill the seat of Ron Wright, who was the first member of Congress to die after contracting COVID-19. Rodimer finished in the middle of the pack, getting less than 3% of the vote.
Tapp served 20 years in prison because of a wrongful conviction in the 1996 rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman in Idaho. He was released in 2017 and exonerated in 2019. Another man has since pleaded guilty to the crime.