Chilling new body cam footage shows the shocking moment Las Vegas cops found a woman’s body in a locked freezer after she was allegedly murdered by a transgender house guest she was trying to kick out.
The footage shows officers making a wellness check in November looking for Monique Gilbertson, 68, with nobody answering the door.
But when they get a locksmith to help them gain access, the door is opened by Daniel Roush, a transgender woman who identifies as Jazzlynn Roush who told them she was housesitting for Gilbertson.
“She’s not here right now,” Roush repeatedly tells the officers, claiming to have “rights” to the property.
Roush and Roush’s wife, Gina Lopez, eventually let in the officers, who find a locked freezer covered in clothing in a utility room.
After getting the locksmith back to open the freezer, one of the officers tentatively opens it while noting “there’s something in there.”
“Yeah, there’s a person in here,” one of the cops says.
“Go get him in handcuffs,” the officer added of Roush, who cops and prosecutors still identified as a man.
Gilbertson was “folded up” in the freezer and appeared to have been “frozen for some time,” Clark County District Attorney James Puccinelli said.
Roush was identified by cops and prosecutors as a man, despite legally changing her name to Jazzlynn in Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District in 2022, according to Law and Crime.
Gilbertson had invited Roush, who was homeless, to move in with her temporarily, according to court documents.
But she became “upset about how filthy” Roush was, kicking out her short-stay roommate and changing the locks, the docs said.
Messages show Gilbertson had gently tried to get Roush to leave.
“Good luck to you. I just can’t live with anybody, I’m so sorry,” one said, according to grand jury transcripts. “I helped you for way longer than I thought I would so just think of it as a gift. So, you have to find another person.”
Roush claimed to have found Gilbertson slumped over in a dining room chair and decided to “put her in the icebox” in confusion over what to do.
The suspect reckoned she overdosed on fentanyl or cocaine, even though friends never knew her to drink or use drugs.
Prosecutors allege Roush “force-fed” Gilbertson at least 400 nanograms of fentanyl “willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, and with malice” causing her death, according to court documents, Law and Crime reported.
Four hundred nanograms of fentanyl is about 200 times the amount that could kill a person, Puccinelli said. She is believed to have died around Oct. 22 — the day she evicted her guest.
Roush is charged with second-degree murder. Roush’s wife, Lopez, is facing drug charges related to the incident but is not charged with murder.
