A woman convicted of murder has vanished from Nevada's parole supervision system, and state police say she was last seen in the Las Vegas area. Stacey Denby, described as 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds, is now the subject of a statewide fugitive alert after being flagged for a parole violation, with authorities cautioning the public not to approach her directly.
The bulletin, issued Friday by Nevada State Police as part of the agency's recurring #FugitiveFriday campaign, lists Denby's underlying conviction simply as murder and notes that information in the alert is current as of Friday. The Nevada State Police routinely use the social media push to solicit public assistance in locating absconders wanted for probation or parole violations across the state, a strategy that has included prior alerts in both Reno and Las Vegas, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage.
Because Denby's conviction is for murder, her case would have fallen under some of Nevada's strictest sentencing statutes before she was ever eligible for release. Under Nevada Revised Statute 200.030, someone convicted of second-degree murder faces life imprisonment or 50 years with parole eligibility only after serving a minimum of 10 or 20 years, while a first-degree murder conviction carries a life sentence with parole eligibility starting at 20 years. The dossier does not specify which degree of murder Denby was convicted of, when she was originally paroled, or whether her current violation stems from a technical rule breach or a new alleged offense.
Why Las Vegas Is the Epicenter of the Search
Denby's last known whereabouts near Las Vegas fit a broader pattern in how Nevada manages people leaving its prison system. According to a 2016 report on Nevada prisoner reentry from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, roughly two-thirds of all incarcerated individuals released from Nevada state prisons return home to Clark County, making the Las Vegas metro area the state's primary destination for parole supervision. That concentration helps explain why so many of the state's fugitive alerts, including a January case involving Reno fugitive Faleniko Pulalasi that Hoodline covered, point back to the same corner of the state.
Supervision of felony parolees like Denby is handled centrally rather than by county agencies. Felony probation and parole supervision in Nevada is administered at the state level by the Department of Public Safety, while misdemeanor and juvenile cases are handled independently by individual counties, per the National Association of Counties. To keep tabs on the roughly ten offices statewide, the Division of Parole and Probation partnered with VIP and cFive Solutions in March 2023 to roll out a modernized digital case-management system for tracking probationers and parolees.
How the State Hunts Down Absconders
When someone like Denby disappears from supervision, the case does not stay solely with local officers. The Nevada Division of Parole and Probation operates a specialized Warrants and Extraditions Unit that works alongside the U.S. Marshals Service Nevada Violent Offender Fugitive Task Force to locate and apprehend high-risk parole absconders statewide, according to a Facebook post from the agency. That same central unit, based in Carson City, processes public tips by phone at 775-684-2644 or by email at [email protected].
Investigators also lean on decades-old paperwork to chase down people who vanish from supervision. Under Nevada Revised Statutes 176.135 through 176.156, parole and probation staff generate detailed Presentence Investigation Reports for violent offenders, and those archived records are later used by officers trying to track fugitives who abscond, a process that would apply to a case involving a murder conviction like Denby's.
What Happens if Denby Is Found
If Denby is located and taken back into custody, she would not face a new criminal trial simply for the parole violation itself. Under Nevada Revised Statute 213.1519, someone suspected of violating parole conditions faces summary arrest and a formal revocation proceeding before the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners, which can revoke her parole status and order her back to prison to serve out the remainder of her term.
That process operates under a lower bar of proof than a criminal courtroom. Parole revocation hearings in Nevada use a substantial evidence standard rather than the beyond a reasonable doubt standard required in criminal trials, according to the Las Vegas Defense Group, meaning the parole board can revoke her release without the same evidentiary threshold prosecutors would need to secure a conviction.
Nevada State Police have stressed that anyone with information should contact authorities rather than confront Denby themselves, and that tips will remain confidential, with tipster identities not revealed. The alert comes just two days after Hoodline reported on a separate case involving an ex-convict accused of threatening a Vegas-area prison guard with a screwdriver, underscoring the steady flow of supervision and custody incidents authorities in the region are contending with.
