The King & The Queen - The Unsolved Murders of Dana McKay and Mary Huffman

Transcript

Episode 21

Is there anything more Las Vegas than an Elvis impersonator? I don’t think so. You see them everywhere…on the strip, in at least 4 separate shows we’re aware of, and you can even be married by Elvis in pretty much any wedding chapel inside or outside the city limits.

It was more than 40 years ago that the King died in August of 1977

OR DID HE

Well, sadly he did. Shortly after his death, Dana MacKay took up the mantle and became arguably the best-known Elvis Impersonator ever, and from what we’ve read, he was also the very first.

While we lost the real Elvis to a drug overdose, we lost Dana in a way that is much more of a mystery, and much more violent.

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[Shaun]

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence. I’m your host, Shaun, and with me as always, is the one and only John.

[John]

I am the only John in the room.

[Shaun]

One of our listeners commented to us recently that our episode about dancer and choreographer Debbie Flores Narvaez was the most “Vegas” of the episodes we had done so far. But the cold case we have planned for this week I think might be the most Vegas – with not only the professions of the victims in this case, but the other notable Vegas personalities that are involved and a few key details of how Las Vegas grew and changed over the decades.

Typically, our listeners know that we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, but we both agreed that unsolved cases from Vegas are critical to talk about and get more eyes and ears and attention on to try and get some new leads.

[John]

Absolutely. This is a case of a double homicide which, 30 years later, remains unsolved, so we want to do what we can to support the families who are left behind by this tragedy and help them get justice.

Dana MacKay and his girlfriend, Mary Huffman were murdered in their Las Vegas home in 1993.

Dana was born In Los Angeles on February 12, 1956, to parents Joyce Mackay and Sharon “Mac” MacKay. He had two brothers, Steve and Bryan, and they relocated to Las Vegas in the 70s. Dana was known for having a huge heart and a great sense of humor.

Dana had an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley. We’ll post some photos and you can see that for yourself. Around the time that Elvis died, in August of 1977 and according to the Associated Press, Dana began putting that lookalike face to work in Las Vegas as an Elvis impersonator. In fact, according to one of Dana’s friends, Dana was THE first Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas.

He said that Dana “was an immediate hit and spawned scores of imitators”.

[Shaun]

Although Elvis died in 1977, his spirit is alive and well in Vegas.

Elvis has always been synonymous with Las Vegas.

One of his most famous movies Viva Las Vegas was filmed at the Flamingo Hotel in the early 60s, and that song is played at every UNLV game. He performed regularly at the Las Vegas Hilton in the early 70s & married Priscilla in Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel, which of course is long gone. The LV Hilton is still there, but it’s no longer the Hilton, it’s the Westgate Las Vegas.

According to a local entertainment guide, right now in Las Vegas, there are at least 4 Elvis tribute shows happening around town. We also have the Graceland Wedding Chapel, the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel where you can get married by Elvis. You can run into Elvis at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign or down on Fremont Street and get your photo taken with him.

His name and likeness are found all over at souvenir shops & one of the vintage signs downtown on display courtesy of the Neon Museum is from the Normandie Hotel and the marquis reads, “Elvis slept here”.

[John]

One of my favorite Elvis-themed shows was Million Dollar Quartet which was at Harrah’s for many years. It’s a musical based on a true story and an actual recording that happened in December of 1956, where Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis were all together at Sun Records Recording studio in Memphis.

The show still travels around and it's well worth seeing how it might have been for those four to interact and play together. In 1956 Elvis was HUGE, and Jerry Lee was just starting out, and the show does an amazing job of capturing Jerry Lee’s crazy young energy.

[Shaun]

That show was great, and I definitely miss it. For me this kind of highlights how timeless Elvis is, because that recording happened in 1956 – Elvis was 21, but Dana Mackay, he wasn’t even a year old yet. Even so, Elvis made an impression on Dana during his life, and he emulated the King for decades, and 50 years later, people are still impersonating him. In 2022, we got another Elvis biopic titled just “Elvis” staring Tom Hanks and Austin Butler, which made nearly $290million at the box office and was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Austin Butler. It’s clear that looking like Elvis can be great for your career.

Dana auditioned for, but missed out on the role of Elvis in the 1979 Movie “Elvis” – the part went to Kurt Russell. (Directed by John Carpenter - I’ve never seen it.) Dana did play Elvis in 1980 television movie “This is Elvis”. According to reporting in the Review-Journal, while MacKay was filming, the Presley family noted how well he resembled and emulated Elvis in his appearance and mannerisms.

In 1992 Dana worked on the Hard Copy documentary, called I, Elvis. The project was mainly documentary footage from Elvis’s performances through the years, but actors portrayed Elvis at different times of his life, and Dana played him at age 35.

One of the things that made Dana so popular as an Elvis impersonator was that he didn’t lip-sync. He sang like Elvis and performed with a live band. When the Legends In Concert show opened at the Imperial Palace in 1983, Dana was Elvis.

Legends in Concert show was the longest-running show in Vegas history, running for 40 years, moving from the Imperial Palace to Harrah’s to the Flamingo, and then finally to the Tropicana in 2018. It ran there for 4 years; then it closed.

It had a 40th-anniversary show at The Orleans in 2023 as its final performance. It’s not currently running on the strip, but affiliate shows are running on cruise ships, in Branson, in Myrtle Beach. It may be returning to Vegas in the future.

[John]

Dana married a woman named Alphonsa in 1980 and they had a daughter together named Misty. The marriage didn't last very long though.

In 1984 he married a woman named Linda, but the two divorced in 1986. One article in the RJ stated that Dana also had a son who lived in Henderson. We were able to find some records from the Las Vegas family court from August 1993 where Dana was determined to be the father of a 9-year-old boy via a paternity test

According to reports, Misty didn’t spend a lot of time with her dad, with Dana only seeing Misty during summers. She said the last time she saw him was at a family funeral where he brought a Marilyn Monroe impersonator as a date.

And, I think that’s a good segway to talk about the other victim in this case, Mary Huffman. Mary’s birthname was Mary Scott. She was born in Oklahoma City in 1944. She graduated from Capital Hill High School in Oklahoma City.

Mary earned degrees from colleges in Missouri and Texas for fashion, modeling, and business management. She moved to Las Vegas around 1980.

We don’t have records about when she married Harold Huffman and changed her name, But, in 1989, at the age of 45, Mary competed in the Mrs. Nevada beauty pageant and won Mrs. Congeniality and also was crowned Mrs. Nevada.

We also found some divorce records from 1992 of Mary Huffman divorcing Harold Huffman.

She had one daughter, named Michelle, and she opened her own upscale clothing store called Encore Fashions, which was located on Spring Mountain Road in the central part of town. The business was a successful venture for her and over the years she moved and expanded the store several times.

We have no way of knowing for sure if the woman that Misty saw her father with at the funeral many years ago was Mary, but looking at photos of her, even though there’s no record that she ever appeared as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, her elegance and her style give her that “blonde bombshell” aura.

But as we always stress – people are never only one thing, and that was true for both Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley as well as Dana and Mary.

And even though both of the victims in this case were known for their roles as an entertainer and a beauty queen – the two of them were much more than that.

Our reporting will only ever capture a sliver of who they were and what they meant to their friends, families, and loved ones.

[Shaun]

Dana and Mary lived together in a very cool home that they nicknamed “mini graceland” which is a really appropriate name. The home is still there, although the area has been built up quite a bit in the past 20 years. At the time it was on the edge of town, but now I’d say it's more in the center of Las Vegas. Mary moved in and became part owner.

It’s just south of Spring Mountain which is the Chinatown area where there are some great sushi go-round places we visit a lot

You can find the property on Zillow, and we’ll be sure to share that link along with some photos of the house. It’s been maintained really well. It’s at 3624 Edmond St. It’s 3900 square feet, has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, a really nice pool, and over an acre of land which is absolutely enormous for Las Vegas, especially in that area. It’s listed just over 2 million dollars, but at the time in 1993 it was referred to as “their $450,000 home” which seems adorable now given what has happened with home prices.

Even adjusting for inflation, the home has doubled in value since 1993

It was described as a fixer-upper, but Dana was good at remodeling, and looking through the photos on Zillow you can tell it has been updated much more recently.

It also has a great view of the Las Vegas Strip from the top floor, which has a recording studio and picture windows.

While it’s true they lived together, strangely Mary often claimed to be Dana’s wife, but he definitely had girlfriends, and it's unclear if Mary was aware of that.

[John]

As it often happens, markets tend to get saturated, and by the early 1990s Las Vegas was awash in Elvis impersonators, so even though Dana was the original, he started finding it harder and harder to find work.

Because of that, he decided to pursue another passion of his… money. Actually, it was landscaping, but in the early 1990s, there was a lot of money to be made in landscaping, specifically palm trees.

There’s some debate as to the origins of how palm trees came to be in Las Vegas. We learned that members of Nevada’s Moapa Paiute Native American Tribe will claim that palm trees have existed in and around the warm springs in the Moapa Valley about 60 miles north of Las Vegas for 1000 years, while the more commonly held belief is that Mormon settlers brought them to Nevada from Arizona closer to 125 years ago. Generally, though they are not native to this area.

Regardless though, they weren't prevalent in the city of Las Vegas, which you can see if you look at photos from the 80s and earlier.

[Shaun]

When the Mirage resort hotel and casino opened in November of 1989, Steve Wynn spared no expense and surrounded the massive volcano on their property with Palm Trees, and this seems to be when they started becoming popular.

Dana knew about this trend and he also “had a guy”. He was friends with a palm tree grower in California who could supply him with palm trees at a discounted price, and he planned to move the trees here, and then sell them to high-end homeowners and hotels for a big profit.

There was a plan by Clark County officials at that same time to plant a large number of palm trees right in the middle of Las Vegas Blvd (the Strip)

Dana really wanted that contract with Clark County, and although he had the trees (which was immediately obvious if you were to have looked at his home back then.. They were everywhere), he didn't have the equipment and financing to get the job done

[John]

Luckily, he knew a guy. His friend Tim Stonestreet who used to run a car dealership called “Stonestreet Motorcars” would join him in the palm tree business. The two of them formed “Paradise Plants” in December of 1992, and Stonestreet spent upwards of $100,000 in 2024 dollars for landscaping equipment like a backhoe, a 40-foot storage trailer, and crane equipment.

Armed with the trees and all of this equipment they were confident they’d get the contract with Clark County.

Things didn't work out though. Within 5 months the company and their (business and personal) relationships were dissolved, and they were bitterly working it out the old-fashioned way, in court.

Dana, who represented himself at one point told the court “In retrospect, it appeared that all Tim was trying to do was obtain my contacts for trees, learn my expertise, and establish his own palm tree company.”

Tim was represented by the law firm of Goodman and Chesnff. For people who live in Las Vegas, the name Goodman is probably familiar. That’s Oscar Goodman, who went on to be the mayor of Las Vegas from 1999 through 2011.

He was succeeded by his wife Carolyn Goodman as mayor (note she’s STILL the mayor), and currently serves as the “first gentleman of Las Vegas”

[Shaun]

The Goodmans probably warrant a podcast episode or maybe a whole season because of their interesting history. Oscar Goodman was a defense attorney known for defending some of the most notorious figures in organized crime in Las Vegas history.

One of his notorious clients was Chicago mobster Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, who was known to have a short and violent temper. In the 1995 movie Casino, the character of Nicky Santoro was based on Spilotro and was played by Joe Pesci. (do I amuse you?!)

Oscar appears in the movie Casino as Ace Rothstein’s attorney (Robert DeNiro), who was based on Lefty Rosenthal, whom Goodman defended in real life!

You can't make this stuff up.

You can see why he needs his own podcast.

Around the same time, Dana went into business with another friend of his named Danny Koker.

At one point Las Vegas Metro arrived at Dana’s house to repossess all of the equipment Tim had bought (it was being stored there), but Dana refused to let them take it.

[John]

Apparently, Dana had some information on Tim he thought would help him win the case, and he told Koker about it. Unfortunately, that evidence would never be revealed, because Dana was murdered before he could reveal it.

On October 2, 1993, a neighbor of Dana and Mary’s realized they hadn’t seen the couple for a few days, so they went over to the home. They noticed the door was open, and they went inside.

In the front entryway, they discovered that 37-year-old Dana and 49-year-old Mary were dead on the floor.

It appeared they had just returned from grocery shopping. Several items such as laundry detergent, steaks, bananas, and a box of Junior Mints were lying on the floor near them. The steaks had gone bad, and the couple had been dead for at least a day.

In an article in the Toronto Sun written in 2020, Dana’s daughter Misty shared that she clearly remembers hearing her grandmother crying when they received the news that Dana had been killed.

Misty said, “It was this cry that I can’t even explain to you. It was so terrible. Anybody who has ever heard a mother mourn for her child knows what I am talking about.”

[Shaun]

Las Vegas Metro police began investigating their murders. Mary had been shot once, but Dana had been shot seven times. Their house had been broken into through a back door, and one of the rooms in the house had been ransacked.

The police believed that they had been killed sometime between September 30 and October 2.

Normally on our podcast, we don’t want to talk about rumors or speculation, but when we are talking about a cold case and where there might be folks out there with information, we want to make sure we cover everything.

Dana’s friend and business partner Danny Koker said one of the first theories the Police had was that maybe Dana was killed in a drug deal that went wrong. The Las Vegas Sun reported that it was said that perhaps Dana was involved with drug trafficking and that he had been associating with dangerous individuals involved in the drug trade.

However, Dana was not known to use drugs at all and he wasn’t even much of a drinker. When police searched the house, no drugs were found and there were no drugs in Dana’s system.

Police theorized that perhaps Dana and Mary had come home from grocery shopping and interrupted the burglary in progress. Although the house had been broken into, it was not clear that anything was stolen.

Jewelry and cash were lying around the house in plain sight, none of it was missing.

The only thing that anyone noticed was missing was a single manilla folder.

[John]

Friends recalled that Dana always kept this manilla file folder with him. Inside he kept his financial records and notes about his landscaping business, as well as information relating to the house, his music career, and other personal information.

One detective told the Toronto Star, “that was the only notable thing that was missing. Somebody wanted that folder, and somebody wanted Dana.”

Since that was the only item missing and the two had been shot at close range, an alternate theory emerged that this was possibly a hired hit.

Danny Koker told Channel 8 news Las Vegas that Dana had received death threats before the murder.

Shortly after the murders were discovered, the owner of a home security company told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had spoken to Dana several times about putting in an alarm system.

He had tried 3 times to set up an install appointment but Dana never gave his final ok – but he did recommend the alarm company to several friends who did buy security systems.

Another interesting piece of information that came out after the murders came from a woman who said she was a girlfriend of Dana’s.

She told the television show “Hard Copy” that on what she believes was the day Dana was killed, she was driving and someone in a car next to hers pointed a gun at her. She said she ducked down and sped away.

[Shaun]

Around two weeks after Dana and Mary’s murder, Tim Stonestreet was awarded the assets of the dissolved company. I know for our listeners that’s going to raise some red flags and eyebrows. It definitely did for people close to the couple. It’s important to note that Tim had a pretty tight alibi -- he was in Aruba during the murders. He was cleared by the police.

Danny Koker believed quite strongly that Tim was responsible for the murders and has been very vocal about that. He contacted America's Most Wanted and had a camera crew go to Tim Stonestreet’s house and attempted to get him to talk. He had no comment.

Tim Stonestreet is still living in the Las Vegas area and he owns a construction company that builds custom homes, many in the Summerlin area.

The aftermath of Mary and Dana’s murder left their parents distraught and struggling with their grief. Dana’s family and Mary’s family argued over their children’s estates, with the Mackays claiming that the Huffmans had taken many of Dana’s things, including a black jumpsuit once owned by Elvis that had been given to him by the Presley estate. The case ultimately had to go to the courts to decide what would be done with the couple’s property.

We don’t have the details as to how it was all resolved, but I can tell you that it took more than 3 years of litigation before their estates were settled.

Incidentally, the Huffmans were represented by Bruce Woodbury during the dispute. One of the main highways in Clark County, the I-215 is named for Bruce Woodbury. He is a prominent attorney and a former Clark County Commissioner.

[John]

We told you there was a lot of Vegas being crammed into the episode this week.

Mack, Dana’s father, also stated that he felt that his son’s spirit was haunting the house after their two violent deaths. He stated he wasn’t sure if Mary was also haunting the house, but he was certain Dana was.

Mack gave a statement to the Review Journal a year after the murders, saying he had been disgusted by the corruption of the attorneys in Las Vegas and that most of the police “are utterly worthless”

As Shaun mentioned at the beginning of the episode, this is currently a cold case. This should come as no surprise when you learn how woefully understaffed Las Vegas Metro was in the early 90s

At the time, the population of the Las Vegas metro area was 779,000 (it’s 2.9 million in 2024) with over 27 million tourists visiting yearly, while there were only 1300 officers in all of Las Vegas Metro.

There were 9421 violent crimes reported in 1993, and only 20.7 percent of those resulted in arrest and prosecution. That was the lowest clearance rate in the country at the time for any city over 250,000 residents

Experts said that crime in Las Vegas was particularly hard to control because Las Vegas was (and is, really) an extremely rapidly growing place where millions of tourists drink, gamble, and spend money 24/7/365.

[Shaun]

Initially, a $25,000 reward was offered and the Police received tips from all over the country, some of them from self-described “psychics”. At the time, officers noted the facts of the case were sure to spawn wild conspiracy theories like

The existence of a serial killer targeting Elvis impersonators (we’re unclear on that one because there was no rash of Elvis impersonator killings)
Another asserted theory that Elvis himself committed the crime. Presumably from beyond the grave.

Two years after the murders, in 1995, the reward was increased to $100,000 and a billboard was put up on Sahara and Maryland. Of course, the billboard had a picture of Dana on it, who was the spitting image of Elvis, so you can probably guess what happened.

People started calling in sightings of other Elvis impersonators all over town trying to get the reward money. Not helpful.

In 1994, a Las Vegas Metro detective told the Review-Journal that due to MacKay’s business dealings “half of the valley is a suspect”

[John]

As you might expect, Dana’s daughter Misty had a hard time coming to terms with her father’s murder. She was only a teenager at the time, and she told the San Bernadino Sun that it only made it more difficult that tabloids were so focused on the sensational aspects of the case, between the “gangland-style execution” and the fact that Dana was the first Elvis Impersonator

She and her father hadn't been close since her parents split up but she still felt the loss. She said, “It really hurt because I didn’t get a chance to get close to him.”

The media attention was a lot to deal with. Misty’s mother said, “Many nights, I heard her cry herself to sleep”. Misty would deal with her pain by listening to her dad’s old Elvis records.

Misty looked up her father’s name in 2008, and found an article saying that he was killed in a robbery gone wrong. She called the police because she knew that wasn't what happened, and the case was re-opened.

Detective George Sherwood shared with The Las Vegas Sun his comprehensive investigation efforts, including conducting numerous interviews, making multiple trips out of state, and visiting various prisons to talk to key suspects—one of whom is incarcerated for life due to involvement in a contract killing. He mentioned his plans to submit evidence for genetic analysis and disclosed that he is pursuing three distinct leads.

[Shaun]

Although he had been cleared of suspicion because he was out of state at the time, Tim Stonestreet, who had a lot to gain when Dana was killed, refused to speak to investigators. Instead, his lawyer told police they should focus on “Dana’s drug connections”

Sherwood told I-8 news that there were “strong indications this was a murder-for-hire plot” because someone was “lying in wait” for them.

Misty has said “I know exactly who did it, and I know the cops know exactly who did it, but he’s allowed to get away with it because of his connections.” and.. My dad was telling people before he died, “if something happens to me, this is the person responsible.”.

Dana’s friend Danny Koker was quoted as saying “I have no doubt in my mind, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I am positive who had this done.”

The case remains unsolved to this day, but investigators believe that with more input from the public, the case can be solved. Anyone with information is urged to call Metro’s homicide division at 702-828-3521

[John]

We want to take a moment to thank Haley Gray for her research on this story. She can be reached through her website at haleygrayresearch.com.

We’ll be back next week with another episode and focusing back on the important topic of Domestic Violence.

Until then we’ll remind you that what happens here happens everywhere

[SWING SHIFT TOPICS]

This one could only happen here.

Why we covered this case (Paige and Natalie at Murder Diaries)

Cold cases, may or may not have a DV component; we don’t know until we know for sure

Kevyn Wynn Kidnapping case

How we did the research

The Goodmans
The palm trees
Look at the court records about Dana and Mary:
1. 2 months before Dana was murdered he was found to have been the father of that 9yo officially
2. Mary got divorced from Harold in 1992
Looked into what Tim Stonestreet is up to
Looked at the house
1. I also found a 50s party house where Elvis, Sinatra, Monroe is said to have stayed
Vegas growth; 80% of Nevada is federal land