George Bone (LVMPD) and the home where he allegedly killed and lived with Beverly Ma (KLAS screenshot)
A 31-year-old man in Nevada who allegedly killed his female roommate and spent months living with her body stuffed in a closet — which he barricaded shut out of fear she would rise from the makeshift grave — has been ruled mentally fit to stand trial. Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Christy Craig on Wednesday found that George Anthony Bone was competent to be tried for one count of open murder in the slaying of Beverly Ma earlier this year, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to the online court docket, since his arrest in July of this year, Bone was evaluated by two doctors, both of whom indicated to the court that he was competent for criminal procedures pursuant to the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dusky v. United States. In that case, the justices determined that the defendant must have a rational and factual understanding of the trial proceedings and be able to consult with their lawyer and aid in their own defense in order to stand trial.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, officers with the LVMPD at about 2:27 p.m. on July 26 responded to a 911 call about a deceased adult female at a residence located in the 5300 block of Railroad River Avenue. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders located the victim, saying that she appeared to have been “deceased for an extended period of time.”
Due to what investigators referred to as “the suspicious nature of the death,” the department’s Homicide Section was dispatched to the scene.
“Through the course of the investigation detectives determined this was a homicide and identified the suspect as the victim’s roommate, 31-year-old George Anthony Bone,” the release states. “He was arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center for open murder.”
The victim was later identified as Ma by the Clark County Coroner’s Office.
According to a probable cause affidavit, one of Ma’s family members placed the original call to 911 and told the emergency dispatcher that when they went to the home shared by Bone and Ma looking for Ma, Bone told them she was “in the closet and had been there for two months.” The family members were prompted to go to the home after not speaking to Ma for several weeks and receiving an unusually large air conditioning bill that her family was on the hook to cover.
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A female family member told investigators that Bone told them Ma was “dead and gone,” and then led them upstairs to the closet where Ma’s body was being kept when she saw something odd that caught her attention.
“She noticed a cooler against the bedroom closet door and the bottom of the door had a towel, which covered the gap,” the affidavit states. “George told her that she can open it and see.”
That’s when they found Ma’s decomposing body.
Bone told police that Ma had killed herself in early May, saying he opened the closet and found her with some kind of belt wrapped around her neck. However, Bone’s story of how he found Ma as well as the evidence at the scene undercut his claim.
“Bone went about living at the house with Beverly deceased in the upstairs closet for the next two months and began ordering several items on Beverly’s Amazon account using her funds for his own gain,” the affidavit states. “When asked why he didn’t call for help, Bone’s response was ‘I was afraid of going back to jail for being found with a dead body.’ Bone admitted that his behavior since the death of Beverly Ma was ‘not normal.’ When asked why he placed a cooler in the master bedroom near the closest, Bone stated that he put it there so that he would be alerted if Beverly rose from the dead like the movie ‘The Grudge.””
Police said Bone admitted to ordering nearly 200 items from Amazon on Ma’s account and also pretending to be her and sending her family members text messages from Ma’s phone. He also allegedly told police that he kept the air conditioner on its lowest setting following her death because he believed it was the best way to slow the decomposing process and limit the number of flies in the home.
Bone is scheduled to appear in court again on Monday.
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