FERNLEY (AP) — A judge on Tuesday ordered a psychiatric evaluation for a 25-year-old Northern Nevada man accused of killing two couples in two homes in the rural town of Fernley and a newspaper deliveryman off an Interstate 80 exit in Sparks during the Mother’s Day weekend.
Jeremiah Bean appeared calm during a short hearing at which Fernley Justice of the Peace Robert J. Bennett granted a request by Bean’s public defender to send him to the Lake’s Crossing state psychiatric center in Sparks.
Defense lawyer Paul Yohey said it could take doctors several months to evaluate whether Bean is fit to stand trial.
Bean faces 19 charges, including five counts of first-degree murder, in the May 10 slayings of 84-year-old Robert Pape and Dorothy Pape in one Fernley home and Angie Duff, 67, and Lester Leiber, 69, at a house around the corner.
He is also accused of shooting Eliazar Graham, 52, of Sparks, to death in a ditch near an I-80 exit in Sparks.
Lyon County prosecutor Jeremy Reichenberg said a decision has not been made on whether to seek the death penalty.
Bean, who been staying two houses away from the Duff-Leiber home, faces an arson charge for allegedly burning the Pape house.
A criminal complaint alleges that Bean killed the Papes and stole their pickup before abandoning it off an exit near the Mustang Ranch brothel in Sparks.
He is accused of killing Graham, stealing his truck and returning to Fernley, where he allegedly set fire to the Papes’ house and killed Duff and Leiber at their home about a block away.
Bean was arrested by Washoe County sheriff’s deputies when he returned May 13 to the Duff-Leiber home.
Bean was convicted of burglary in January 2011 in Lyon County and granted probation, which records show was revoked in July 2011. He was jailed for about one year and was released last September. His parole expired in December, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.