Trial Opens in Kidnaping of Boy Later Found Dead

A data processor from San Diego killed a 7-year-old Mountain View, Calif., boy at a Stateline gambling resort 14 months ago, a district court jury was told Friday.

Mel Harmon, Clark County chief deputy district attorney, said during opening statements in the murder trial of Howard Lee Haupt that he will call witnesses who will identify the defendant as the man last seen with the victim.

Haupt, 38, a computer processing analyst, is accused of first-degree murder and first-degree kidnaping in the 1987 slaying of Alexander Harris.

The boy vanished during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend from the video arcade at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in Stateline, 43 miles southwest of Las Vegas near the California state line.

Body Found

His body was found a month later under a trailer in the resort’s employee housing area.

Haupt has pleaded innocent.

“The defense case will prove that this man had nothing whatsoever to do with the kidnaping and murder,” defense attorney Steve Stein said during his opening remarks.

Stein described Haupt as a stable, quiet, college graduate, who had never been arrested or investigated by law enforcement agencies.

Harmon was expected to argue that a combination of circumstantial, direct and medical evidence, coupled with logic, should tell jurors that the person who abducted Harris and the person who killed the boy are one and the same. Harmon said a casino security department videotape would show the boy leaving the arcade with a man who looks like Haupt.

Will Attack Reliability

Stein said he will concentrate a major portion of the defense on attacking the reliability of the state’s eyewitness identifications. He said the defense intends to call at least one identification expert to refute their testimony.

He said he will also call as many as four alibi witnesses who will testify that Haupt, a member of San Diego’s Western Land Yacht Club, was preparing his boat for a land sailing competition in the desert outside Stateline about the same time Harris vanished from the game room.