The Brilliant Lawyer Collapsed at a Horse Event—His Wife and Secretary Had Been Poisoning Him
Las Vegas, Nevada. 1995.
The city of sin glittered under the desert sun, drawing 40 million tourists a year to its casinos, shows, and unapologetic excess. It was a place where fortunes were made and lost in a single night—where the line between ambition and obsession blurred into something dangerous.
Larry McNabney understood that line better than most.
Born December 19, 1948, in Reno, Nevada, Larry had been exceptional from the start. Brilliant in school. Charismatic with women. A natural leader who commanded every room he entered.
After graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno, he earned his law degree from McGeorge School of Law, Pacific University—graduating at the top of his class. In 1974, he was licensed to practice in both California and Nevada.
His career took off immediately.
He defended high-profile criminal cases. One federal case became the longest-running trial for violating export administration regulations in US history—16 months in court. His opposing counsel privately admitted they were in awe of his courtroom presence.
Standing 6 feet tall and weighing 190 pounds, Larry cut an impressive figure. He wore custom suits. He favored a cowboy hat that became his signature. Friends called him charismatic, generous, funny—a “man’s man” with a Western swagger.
But behind the polished exterior, Larry had a weakness.
Alcohol.
His addiction had destroyed multiple marriages. He would disappear for weeks, then reappear just as dramatically. After the 16-month trial ended, he stepped away from law for nearly three years to focus on rehabilitation and mental health treatment.
During that time, he met and married his fourth wife.
By the mid-1990s, Larry was back—clean, focused, and more successful than ever. He meditated every morning. He poured his energy into building a solo practice.
Then he did something unprecedented for a lawyer at the time: he advertised on television.
The image of the cowboy attorney burned into the public consciousness. His phone rang constantly. He was earning over 300,000amonth—equivalenttomorethan700 billion Vietnamese dong today.
A local Nevada judge once called Larry “a genius lawyer, a born leader” who had “pulled himself up from the gutter of alcohol multiple times, each time stronger than before.”
Everything was finally going right.
Then Elizabeth walked through his door.
ACT 2 — THE WOMAN WITH 38 NAMES
The help-wanted ad ran in the local newspaper. Larry needed a secretary for his Las Vegas law practice.
Elizabeth arrived for the interview wearing a perfectly tailored outfit. Her blonde hair caught the light. Her blue eyes sparkled with practiced warmth.
Larry was mesmerized.
He barely asked her any questions. When she explained she was divorced and starting over, with a daughter and horses to support, he simply nodded. The interview was over in minutes.
Larry’s friends would later say he had never hired anyone so quickly. The man who was famously detail-oriented in court had thrown all caution aside.
Elizabeth was 28 years old—18 years younger than Larry.
What Larry didn’t know was that Elizabeth didn’t exist.
Her real name was Lauren Simonds. She was born on May 5, 1967, into a wealthy Florida family, the second of four children. As a teenager, she was a cheerleader, a model, an honor student with an IQ of 140. The girl everyone loved.
At 18, she became pregnant by her boyfriend. She dropped out of school, married hastily, and gave birth to a daughter.
The marriage didn’t last.
Something changed in Lauren after that. The honor student became a petty thief. At 25, she was arrested and sent to prison.
From behind bars, she wrote a letter full of remorse: “Anyone who has been to prison and still hasn’t learned their lesson deserves to go back. This is my first time in prison, and I pray it’s my last. I have learned my lesson.”
The words meant nothing.
After her release, she violated her probation. She was caught again for credit card fraud. When authorities fitted her with an electronic monitoring device, she cut it off and fled across state lines with her young daughter.
That was the beginning of her professional criminal career.
Over the next several years, Lauren would use 38 different fake identities. She was a master of the “honey trap”—using her beauty to seduce wealthy men into giving her money. She wrote bad checks. She committed wire fraud. Her criminal record eventually stretched to 113 pages.
Each time she was caught, she escaped.
Until she met Larry McNabney—a wealthy attorney who could fund all her desires. Cars. Houses. A private plane. Horses.
Everything she wanted, Larry could provide.
ACT 3 — THE MARRIAGE AND THE UNRAVELING
Elizabeth started working at Larry’s law firm in 1995. Within one week, they were having dinner together. Within two months, Larry had divorced his wife to be with her.
Four months after that, they were married.
It was a whirlwind that left Larry’s friends and family dizzy with concern. But Larry was blind to any warning signs.
After the wedding, Elizabeth began showing her true colors.
She cut off Larry’s communication with the outside world. She limited his phone calls with his own daughter. She isolated him from everyone who might warn him about her.
Then came the financial disaster.
A routine audit of Larry’s law practice revealed that $70,000 had vanished from a client’s trust account. The evidence pointed directly at Elizabeth.
Larry knew the truth. But he was too in love—or too ashamed—to expose her. Instead of reporting the theft, he took the blame himself.
The Nevada State Bar publicly censured Larry for poor financial management. They suspended his license to practice law in Nevada.
A man who had built his entire identity on his legal career was now barred from working in his home state.
They closed the Las Vegas office and moved to Sacramento, California. Larry used his personal savings to repay the stolen money. They bought a luxurious mansion. A private plane. A collection of quarter horses—American horses famous for sprinting short distances.
Elizabeth had suggested the horses as a way to “improve their relationship.”
Larry, who once dismissed horse shows as “just a gathering of horses,” dove in completely. He spent millions building a ranch and buying top-tier quarter horses. The couple began winning awards at competitions across California.
But as Larry poured more time into the horses, Elizabeth poured more distance between them.
She hired a young assistant named Sarah Dutra—a 21-year-old art student at California State University, Sacramento. Sarah was young, beautiful, and energetic. Elizabeth paid her an unusually high salary of $3,000 a month.
Within weeks, Elizabeth and Sarah were inseparable. They wore each other’s clothes. Shared makeup. Slept in the same bed.
Larry became a ghost in his own home.
He asked Elizabeth to spend more time with him. She refused. He begged. She laughed. Arguments escalated into violence—Larry’s drinking problem returned with a vengeance.
Elizabeth later claimed Larry was physically abusive toward her and her daughter. Whether that was true or another of her calculated lies remains unclear.
What is clear is that Elizabeth needed someone else. And Sarah was more than willing to fill that role.
Soon, they hired a second secretary: Jennifer, 25 years old. Unlike Sarah, Jennifer kept her distance. She showed up on time, did her work, and went home. She didn’t insert herself into Elizabeth and Sarah’s private world.
But even Jennifer noticed something was wrong.
Larry was rarely at the office anymore. Elizabeth and Sarah controlled everything—including the money. And the money was flowing out faster than it ever had before.
ACT 4 — THE POISONING
September 2001.
Larry and Elizabeth traveled to Los Angeles for a major quarter horse competition. The atmosphere was celebratory. They joked in the car. They had a nice dinner.
Then Sarah arrived.
Larry’s face fell when he saw her. He had expected a romantic evening alone with his wife. Instead, Elizabeth had invited her best friend.
The three of them argued at the restaurant table. No one enjoyed the meal. Larry returned to the hotel room, drank several glasses of whiskey alone, and fell asleep.
He had no idea what the two women were planning in the parking lot.
“We went down to my trailer’s truck and I got the medicine bag out. I got the tranquilizer out of it.”
The recording would later be played in court. The tranquilizer was xylazine—a powerful sedative used to calm horses. It was never meant for human consumption.
Xylazine causes extreme drowsiness, blurred vision, and loss of motor control. Because human tolerance to the drug varies wildly, even a small dose can kill. As of 2014, there was still no known antidote.
The next morning, Larry was already unwell. But he insisted on participating in the competition.
On the track, in front of hundreds of spectators, Larry collapsed.
His legs gave out beneath him. He staggered. His eyes rolled back. Elizabeth and Sarah rushed from the stands with a wheelchair.
“Medical emergency,” Elizabeth announced. “He needs rest and treatment.”
No one questioned her.
Back at the hotel room, Larry was disoriented but alive. Any normal person would have called an ambulance.
Elizabeth and Sarah did not.
Instead, they gave him more xylazine.
The next day—September 11, 2001—terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. America’s attention shifted entirely. In the chaos of that historic morning, Elizabeth and Sarah loaded Larry’s weakened body into a car.
He woke up during the drive.
With the last of his strength, Larry lunged from the back seat, wrapping his hands around Elizabeth’s throat. He tried to jump from the moving vehicle.
But he was already dying.
Sarah helped Elizabeth restrain him. They forced more tranquilizer down his throat. Larry stopped fighting.
They drove to Joshua Tree National Park. Elizabeth later admitted she had planned to bury Larry there—or perhaps leave his body in the desert. But at the last moment, something made her change her mind.
They turned around and drove back to Sacramento.
Larry McNabney was dead by the time they arrived home.
Elizabeth and Sarah placed his body in a storage container. Then they put the container in a commercial freezer.
For three months, Larry’s body remained frozen while his wife and her best friend continued living their lives.
ACT 5 — THE COVER-UP AND THE CONFESSION
After Larry’s death, Elizabeth didn’t grieve.
She went shopping. She attended horse shows. She cashed Larry’s disability checks. She sold his assets—forging his signature on documents each time.
Whenever anyone asked about Larry, she invented a different story. He was in rehab. He was traveling. He was sick. He was resting.
Sarah played along. The two women grew even closer. They dyed their hair the same color. They dressed alike. People began mistaking them for sisters.
It was part of Elizabeth’s plan—if things went wrong, she could disappear and leave Sarah to take the blame.
But things started going wrong when Larry’s California law license came up for renewal.
Without an active license, the law firm couldn’t operate. Without Larry, there was no license. Elizabeth panicked.
“You don’t understand,” she screamed in the office, shredding documents. “No Larry, no license, no money. We’re finished!”
Jennifer, the second secretary, watched in horror. She had known something was wrong for months. But this was the first time she realized how deep the nightmare went.
Three months had passed since anyone had seen Larry alive.
Jennifer went to the police.
The police believed her, but they had no evidence. They worried that confronting Elizabeth too soon would scare her into destroying evidence. They asked Jennifer to keep working at the firm and wait.
In early 2002, Elizabeth decided to move Larry’s body.
She loaded the frozen remains into the red Jaguar—the same car Larry had bought her as a gift. She drove to a vineyard near Lodi, California. She dug a shallow grave and buried him there.
Later, she would claim she chose that location because Larry “loved wine.”
On February 11, 2002, Elizabeth suddenly called Jennifer and told her to come to the office early—they were fleeing to Arizona.
Jennifer realized Elizabeth was about to escape. She secretly contacted police.
But Elizabeth was too smart. She sensed the trap and sped away before officers could arrest her.
She drove to Florida, where she and her daughter hid for months. But the story was everywhere by then—on television, in newspapers, across the internet. Lauren’s face was plastered across the country.
Her daughter had had enough.
“I’m tired of running,” the girl told her mother. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
Those words—”I’m tired of running”—hit Lauren like a physical blow.
She confessed everything to her daughter. Then she got in her car and drove alone to a beach.
Her daughter, terrified her mother would harm herself, called police.
Officers found Lauren on that beach. She confessed on the spot to murdering Larry McNabney.
ACT 6 — THE FINAL ACT
Lauren was arrested and held at the Hernando County Jail awaiting trial.
From her cell, she wrote letters—to her daughter, to her family, to her lawyer. In them, she blamed Larry for his own death. She claimed he was abusive. She claimed she had been trapped.
She claimed she couldn’t go to the police because she was a wanted fugitive.
She claimed she had no choice.
Then, on Easter morning 2002—April 31, 2002—36-year-old Lauren Simonds carried out her final con.
She tore her pillowcase into strips. She braided the strips into a rope. She threaded the rope through a metal grate in the ceiling, tied it around her neck, and jumped.
Her body was discovered the next morning.
Beside her was a suicide note—pages long, detailed, and dripping with manipulation until the very end.
In the note, she confessed to the murder in clinical detail. Then she explained why she had killed herself:
“What I’m doing now will lift the burden from them. They won’t have to watch me on trial on television. I tried to free myself, but it was useless. Inside, I’m empty now. For so many years, I pretended to be strong. But now there’s nothing left but an empty shell.”
Even in death, Lauren couldn’t stop performing. She couldn’t stop controlling the narrative.
Her final request? That her lawyer sue the jail for negligence—because their carelessness had allowed her to kill herself. She said the lawsuit would be her “last gift” to her daughter.
She used her death as one final scam.
ACT 7 — THE AFTERMATH
Sarah Dutra, Elizabeth’s 21-year-old best friend and accomplice, was arrested separately.
For months, she insisted she was also a victim—that Elizabeth had forced her to participate, that she had no choice. She claimed she was terrified of Elizabeth.
But the evidence told a different story.
Jennifer testified that Sarah had been an enthusiastic participant from the beginning. Phone records showed Sarah had researched horse tranquilizers before the murder. And Lauren’s suicide note explicitly stated that Sarah had volunteered—that she had never been coerced.
The jury didn’t believe Sarah’s version of events.
She was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison.
On May 26, 2011, Sarah Dutra was released on parole. She walked out of prison and back into a world that would never forget her role in one of California’s most disturbing murders.
Larry’s body was finally recovered from the vineyard. He was laid to rest—three months after he died, six months after he disappeared.
The lawyer who had pulled himself up from rock bottom multiple times had finally met an enemy he couldn’t defeat. Not alcohol. Not addiction.
Trust.
He had trusted the wrong woman. And that trust had cost him everything.
ACT 8 — REFLECTION
Lauren Simonds was brilliant. Beautiful. Charming.
She had every advantage life could offer—wealth, intelligence, looks, a loving family. She could have done anything. Been anyone.
Instead, she became a predator.
One mistake—pregnant at 18—sent her down a path she never tried to leave. She blamed everyone else for her choices. She manipulated everyone who loved her. And in the end, she destroyed not only Larry McNabney but also herself and her own daughter, who had to grow up knowing her mother was a murderer.
Sarah Dutra was 21 when she met Elizabeth. Young. Impressionable. Perhaps lonely. She was seduced by the promise of luxury, by the thrill of being included in Elizabeth’s glamorous world.
By the time she realized how deep she had fallen, it was too late.
Jennifer, the second secretary, was the only one who walked away with her integrity intact. She saw something wrong. She spoke up. She waited for the police. She helped bring murderers to justice.
The case of Larry McNabney, Lauren Simonds, and Sarah Dutra is a warning about the destructive power of greed, deception, and betrayal. A brilliant legal career destroyed by temptation and bad choices. A beautiful, intelligent woman who buried her own future with her own hands. A young girl swept into a vortex of evil, forced to pay for her mistakes with years of her youth.
It also raises uncomfortable questions about the justice system. Should the jail have prevented Lauren’s suicide? Was her death truly inevitable, or did institutional failures contribute?
And perhaps most hauntingly: If someone with a 140 IQ and a face like an angel knocks on your door, how can you possibly know what’s hiding behind her smile?