LAS VEGAS (AP) - The specter of witchcraft emerged in a murder case stemming from the discovery of a Las Vegas woman's remains in a sealed barrel.
An investigator said the "Satanic Bible" and "The Geography of Witchcraft" were found with the trash barrel in a storage shed.
The revelation prompted Brookey Lee West's lawyer to deny that West is a witch, a Satanist or a killer - or that the literature had anything to do with the death of West's 68-year-old mother, Christine M. Smith.
"We had witch hunts in Salem several hundred years ago," Clark County Deputy Public Defender Scott Coffee said after a Monday hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court. "This shouldn't turn into one."
Justice of the Peace William Jansen will decide if there is enough evidence to bind West over for trial on a murder charge. The preliminary hearing, which began Monday, is scheduled to resume Thursday.
The body was discovered Feb. 5, when customers noticed a foul smell at a storage unit rented by West, 47.
William Unruh, storage business manager, tried unsuccessfully to contact West before cutting the lock and rolling back the door.
"That's when the smell hit us," Unruh testified. "I said, 'This one's not for us. This one's for the police."'
Police officers found a 56-gallon trash can, boxes and other items inside the unit. West's fingerprint was found on tape sealing the barrel.
Joseph Matvay, a Las Vegas police crime scene analyst, said Smith's bones and putrefied remains were found inside. Smith had last been seen at her nearby apartment in February 1998.
Clark County Medical Examiner Gary Telgenhoff testified that a plastic bag was tied around the skeleton's face and nose, but there wasn't enough tissue intact to say how Smith died.
Telgenhoff couldn't say whether Smith was dead before she was placed in the barrel.
Under questioning from Coffee, Matvay acknowledged that a traditional Bible and a book called "Jews For Jesus" also were found at the scene.
In another twist, it was revealed that Smith isn't the first family member of West's to die suspiciously.
One of her ex-husbands, Howard Simon St. John, was found shot to death in Tulare County, Calif., on June 6, 1994.
No one has ever been charged in the slaying.