Former Las Vegas Judge who demanded an investigation into an alleged sex trafficking ring has been found dead.
In 2021, Judge Melanie Andress-Tobiasson resigned from her elected position after she was being faced with an ethics investigation after she tried rescuing her daughter from being sex trafficked.
Check out what the New York Post reported:
Melanie Andress-Tobiasson, 53, who stepped down as a Justice of the Peace before a hearing regarding her ethics investigation, was reportedly found dead by suicide Friday, 8NewsNow reported. The outlet did not provide details about how she died.
The judge charged that pimps were “targeting the daughters of judges and law enforcement” to recruit them into prostitution.
Andress-Tobiasson was being investigated by Nevada’s Judicial Discipline Commission for almost two years before she agreed to resign in 2021.
Her problems began when her daughter Sarah, then 16, started working at a clothing store that Andress-Tobiasson claimed was a front for criminal activities and tried to stop it, first by reporting the issue to the police, the Daily Mail reported. She said the store, Top Knotch, was involved with prostitution and trying to recruit her daughter.
Tobiasson accused the Las Vegas police of disregarding information regarding alleged sexual trafficking at a store. She said that the establishment was operating as an unlicensed and underage nightclub, and expressed fear towards Shane Valentine, who was the manager of the store during that period.
Instead of helping her rescue her daughter, the state Commission on Judicial Discipline decided to go after her, claiming that she allowed her family’s interests to influence her conduct.
In 2015, Tobiasson called on Las Vegas vice detectives to investigate Shane Valentine for luring her teenage daughter into prostitution.
Fox News reports:
The following year, Valentine, a felon, was named a person of interest in an October 2016 shooting in Las Vegas that left Sydney Land, 21, and Nehemiah Kauffman, 20, dead.
The commission said Tobiasson “personally investigated” the case — and while doing so reached out to Land’s mother — “because she believed Valentine had committed the murders,” according to the Review-Journal.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department investigated Tobiasson’s actions, the Review-Journal reported, but detectives found that she had not committed any crimes.
On Friday, Tobiasson was found dead from a gunshot wound.
“The Clark County coroner’s office confirmed Saturday that Melanie Andress Tobiasson, 55, died Friday from a gunshot wound,” Fox News reported. “The coroner ruled the death a suicide, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.”
