Man competent to stand trial in Fernley, Mustang deaths

FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) — A judge ruled that a Northern Nevada man is competent to stand trial on charges that he killed five people in Fernley and Mustang over the Mother’s Day weekend.

District Judge Leon Aberasturi cleared the way for Jeremiah Diaz Bean’s case to move forward, according to a Monday announcement from the Lyon County District Attorney’s Office.

Bean is charged with killing two couples in two homes in the rural town of Fernley and a newspaper deliveryman off an Interstate 80 exit in May.

He faces 19 charges, including five counts of first-degree murder, in the May 10 slayings of 84-year-olds Robert Pape and Dorothy Pape in one Fernley home, and the killings of Angie Duff, 67, and Lester Leiber, 69, at a house around the corner.

He also is accused of fatally shooting Eliazar Graham, 52, of Sparks.

Bean, who had been staying two houses away from the Duff-Leiber home, faces an arson charge for allegedly burning the Pape house.

His attorney, Paul Yohey, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

A criminal complaint alleges Bean, who was 25 at the time of the crimes, killed the Papes and stole their pickup truck 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, then setting fire to the Papes’ house and killing Duff and Leiber at their home about a block away.

Washoe County sheriff’s deputies arrested Bean 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Bean was convicted of burglary in January 2011 in Lyon County and granted probation, which records show was revoked in July 2011.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 forabout one year and was released last September. His parole expired in December.