UPDATE: Following the latest twist in a case which has had many, sentencing for Roger Hillygus and Stewart Handte is now expected on March 28th in a local court.
The two men entered plea deals this week averting an anonymous trial which was due to begin January 22nd on charges related to the alleged kidnapping of Roger’s mother Susan Hillygus from a Reno care facility in 2019 amid a family guardianship dispute.
They were facing up to 10 years in prison but media reports indicate the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office is now agreeing to recommend probation instead.
Handte is a former state trooper, Mineral County Sheriff and Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Police Chief who was present when Hillygus took his mom away from the care facility. Hillygus was arrested in California after he was found there with his mom, who died two months later. Both men were angry at Hillygus relatives for allegedly trying to make money off of the elder Hillygus.
They have also both complained of detention conditions at the Washoe County jail on Parr Blvd.
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“I’m worried,” says Stewart Handte, who had a long career in law enforcement, as a state trooper, sheriff and most recently as police chief of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony until 2019, at which point the Wooster High and UNR grad started to work in lower paying jobs in construction and as an Amazon driver.
Handte currently faces felony charges along with his friend Roger Hillygus after Hillygus removed his mother from a Reno care facility in 2019.
“Defendant Handte had tried to use his influence as a former law enforcement officer to convince [RPD] command staff to make the nursing home release Mrs. Hillygus,” Washoe County Deputy District Attorney Amos Stege wrote in a recent court filing.
Handte said he was simply there to observe when Hillygus took his mom from the Alzheimer’s care facility. Several days later, Handte was arrested locally on suspicion of “playing a principal role” in her removal which authorities deemed a kidnapping. Hillygus was then located in Bellflower, California, and arrested after a standoff. His mother died two months later.
Following many complex twists and turns, an anonymous trial is now set to begin in Reno’s Second Judicial District Court on January 22nd.
This means those in the courtroom will not be able to identify jurors. Washoe County District Court Judge Barry Breslow says the defendants and their supporters, some of them in guardianship reform circles who have been extremely vocal about the case and sending emails to local officials, have the potential “to harm jurors.”
There have also been concerns expressed by county officials and in court over Handte visiting the FBI’s office in this matter, allegedly intimidating investigators, making statements in a gun store about the case, and alleging conspiracies on his own social media and in repeated interviews. During a court hearing last year, Stege argued that Handte should have a mental health evaluation.
"You just testified on direct examination that your social media posts had many insinuations related to threats, isn't that true?" Stege at one point asked Handte in court.
“Stop the corruption in Reno, Nevada!” Handte wrote as part of a caption on his own TikTok channel where he’s walking around explaining his views.
“I’m sure it’s because they don't want the truth to get out,” he said of the pushback he’s receiving. “I won't stop speaking about the truth until the public knows exactly what goes on, at least in this county,” he promised.
“I think it's a setup,” Handte said of the decision to have an anonymous trial instead of a normal one.
“Anonymous juries are only used in organized crime trials to keep the identity of the jurors secretive, because as we all know, organized crime tends to take care of people that go against them. Case in point was the shootout at the Nugget a few years ago, between the Hell's Angels and the Vagos. That trial was an anonymous jury. And sometimes they put a partition up so the jurors can hear what's taking place, but nobody can see each other because they're afraid that organized crime will come knock the door at three o'clock in the morning and take care of the jurors or the witnesses. It’s unheard of for a case like this,” he said based on his own experiences.
Handte says he has already been in jail for over 90 days including a week in Elko and over 80 days at Parr Blvd and winces at the possibility of prison.
“I was treated like garbage,” he claims, while alleging others weren’t receiving proper medical attention for different health issues at the Washoe County jail.
He took a quick break from his current job as a packer at a warehouse in south Reno to speak with Our Town Reno.
“I can talk about things, but I can't talk about the merits because this judge is waiting for me to slip up in any way, shape or form so he can put me back in jail,” he said. “And having been a cop for 30 years, jail and cops do not mix,” he explained.
He alleges guns were pointed at him when he was first arrested, which Our Town Reno couldn’t independently verify, and that he believes if he was open carrying that day he would have been shot.
After his initial detention, Handte was sent back behind bars for speaking publicly about the case and for going outside Washoe County without getting permission, he says to get cheaper gas and to help a friend who was suicidal.
“This has been an ongoing nightmare,” he told Our Town Reno. He’s been wearing a GPS tracking monitor since April 2022 and he isn’t allowed to go anywhere that’s “not of necessity,” he says, outside of church, getting groceries, gas and going to work.
Handte says his arrest and detentions caused him to lose another job he had previously and to lose his marriage, his house, personal property, pets as well as relationships with other family members and former friends.
After having several other attorneys, he is now being represented by Ian Silverberg out of the Public Defender’s Office. He repeated several times he’s extremely worried about the upcoming trial.
At the center of this particular case is a guardianship dispute, with Handte and Hillygus saying they were trying to save the elder Hillygus from other family members.
“This is all about money,” Handte says. “This is all about taking away people's assets and property. This is all about putting people in assisted care facilities, which my mother was in one for a brief time before she died. So I can speak from experience. They are disgusting. They treat patients and residents in there like a second day newspaper.”
Handte says he also has older history confronting local authorities, dating back to 2001 when he was already an 18-year veteran trooper based in Reno and president of the Nevada Highway Patrol Association.
A Nevada Appeal article from the time indicated he was placed under investigation and “on administrative leave in a move association officials described as a vendetta.”
The article indicated Handte “was told the Public Safety Department headed by Dick Kirkland was beginning an internal affairs investigation into his conduct. His badge, gun and patrol car were taken from him on Christmas Eve.”
The matter allegedly related to disclosing information about other troopers being looked into and other matters.
The animosity between Handte and Kirkland dated further back to when according to the Nevada Appeal “the association complained to the attorney general and governor about the director's abrasive management style.”
Kirkland, previously the Reno PD chief of police, retired from the Public Safety director job in 2003, which the Appeal called a “criticism-filled assignment” in its headline.
In 2003, the Appeal also reported on Handte and three former Nevada Highway Patrol troopers filing “a federal court suit charging the highway patrol, governor's office and former Public Safety Director Dick Kirkland harassed them and violated their civil rights.”
The action alleged Kirkland had a "hit list" including Handte he wanted to force out of the highway patrol.
According to the Washoe County website, Michelle Bays “began her service as Chief of the Investigations Division and Victim Services in January, 2019. She began her 25 year law enforcement career in 1994 when she attended the High Sierra Regional Law Enforcement Academy, graduating second in her class before moving on to the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office. In 2008, she transferred to an investigator position at the Washoe County District Attorney’s Office (WCDA) and was promoted to supervisor in 2010. In addition, in 2015 she was selected by District Attorney Hicks to act as the office’s Public Information Officer.”
Officials in the Washoe County District Attorney’s office have denied there is any retaliation going on in the current case.
“It’s a very broad allegation and I can only speak for my office and, frankly, that's ridiculous,” Chief Investigator Michelle Bays is quoted as saying in a detailed 2022 Union Square Times website article by Juliette Fairley, who has looked into this story several times.
“Our prosecutor was concerned about the tone of those postings and identifying certain people, claiming there was a big conspiracy, that this case and these charges were rooted in just very outlandish claims of either persecution or conspiracy and the times that we're in, unfortunately, there are people out there that have agendas or make threats against either public officials or government. We need to deal with that sometimes in our profession and that was a concern for us. So, our prosecutor made an argument related to that,” Bays is quoted as saying in the q and a portion of that article.