Couple shot, killed by fellow YouTuber while livestreaming, police say
Las Vegas police say the shooting happened outside the Bellagio, and it’s believed the suspect and victims had a feud with each other. (Source: KPHO)
By Justine Verastigue, Alexis Dominguez and Amanda Alvarado
LAS VEGAS (KPHO/KVVU/Gray News) – A couple was shot and killed by a fellow YouTuber while livestreaming on the Las Vegas Strip, according to police.
Rodney Finley, 44, went by “Finny Da Legend” and had over 6,000 subscribers. His wife was often in his videos with him.
“He just started the page and it just blew up. He had no idea it was going to blow up like that,” Finley’s mother said.
According to his mother, Finley had been arguing with 41-year-old Manuel Ruiz, another YouTuber known as “Sin City MannyWise.”
“It was just back and forth, back and forth. He said he talked about the whole family. He said, ‘I hope your mom has a black dress, because I’m going to kill you’,” Finley’s mother said.
The online feud took a deadly turn on Sunday.
Finley’s mother said she was watching his livestream. She called him and he said he could not talk because he was livestreaming.
“Then I heard the shots and then heard some more shots and the phone dropped,” she said.
Ruiz turned himself in to police the next day and told police that he shot Finley and his wife in self-defense.
According to the arrest report, social media contradicts Ruiz’s self-defense claims.
Viewers watching both Ruiz and Finley’s livestreams on Sunday said that Ruiz was looking for Finley across the street at the Paris Hotel and Casino.
Finley’s mother said the feud should have stopped long before it became deadly.
“I told my son. I said, ‘Come on. This is getting too far. Calm it down,’” she said.
Finley and his wife died on the scene.
Ruiz is being held without bail.
Copyright 2025 KVVU, KPHO via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
An Idaho woman is found dead in her bathtub. Did her husband use his law enforcement skills to stage the scene?
By Peter Van Sant,
Chuck Stevenson, Lauren Clark
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Deputy Miranda Thomas will never forget coming face to face with a distraught Dan Howard, a former state trooper, at his home in Northern Idaho on a cold winter’s morning in February 2021.
Deputy Miranda Thomas: He would scream and yell, but there were no tears in his eyes. At any point he would, um, act like he was gagging … But nothing would ever actually happen.
Thomas was one of the first responders to Dan Howard’s home, a place he shared with Kendy, his wife of 26 years.
DEPUTY (bodycam): Dan, I know this is hard but, when — when is the last time that you saw your wife alive?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): (crying, unintelligible)
DEPUTY THOMAS (bodycam): Dan, do you want medical to look at you at all?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): No.
DEPUTY THOMAS (bodycam): OK.
Dan Howard told police he discovered his wife in the bathtub. He said she had shot herself in the head. Kendy’s own pistol was at the bottom of the tub in murky water.
Kootenai County Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Northrup arrived before midnight.
Peter Van Sant: Were you dispatched … to a possible suicide?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Yes sir. … It was identified as a suicide.
EVIDENCE NOT ADDING UP FOR INVESTIGATORS
Northrup immediately began analyzing what was before him.
Det. Jerry Northrup: For a woman to shoot herself in the tub, nude, is unusual. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen It just means that it’s unusual.
Northrup, a crime scene expert, says something was missing from this death scene — especially considering Kendy had suffered a head wound.
Det. Jerry Northrup: There would be a lot more blood that was produced. And I just didn’t see that on her face, on her body or in the tub.
Thomas also saw some curious things.
Deputy Miranda Thomas: I went into the house and found a packed duffle bag. … Was someone planning on leaving the house?
In the laundry room, the dryer was running. It was full of clean bath towels and mats.
Deputy Miranda Thomas: Having a … dryer running at midnight, very odd, because I don’t do laundry at midnight. Sure, you could but …
And despite the shock of finding his wife dead, Dan Howard appeared to have recently showered, changed his clothes, and applied fresh deodorant.
Deputy Miranda Thomas: You can tell that he’s got deodorant lines on his T-shirt.
Peter Van Sant: Did something seem un-suicide-like to you?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Certainly. … There was no, other signs of like a suicide note.
It’s often standard procedure to check people at a shooting scene for GSR, gunshot residue. And as a former state trooper, Dan Howard would know that. Yet Northrup says Dan was uneasy about being tested.
Det. Jerry Northrup: Mr. Howard stuck his hands into his coat pockets, and then he began twisting them to and fro, back and forth repeatedly, until we told him to stop and remove his hands.
Peter Van Sant: Back and forth as if he’s trying to wipe something off?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Yes. That was the impression that we were getting …
Peter Van Sant: What was the result?
Det. Jerry Northrup: It was negative.
Peter Van Sant: It was negative.
Even though detectives were suspicious of all those little pieces of evidence that didn’t seem to add up, they could not rule out the possibility that Kendy Howard could have taken her own life.
Kendy’s sudden passing stunned those who loved her.
Michelle Lampert: She loved life … I have never had so much fun with somebody … no care in the world.
Michelle Lampert was one of Kendy’s best friends.
Michelle Lampert: She always laughed. … my favorite is spin class … and then to the brewery … nothing like spin class and brewery, but she felt like that was OK.
Brooke Wilkins: She was a great mom.
Brooke Wilkins is Kendy’s daughter from an earlier relationship.
Peter Van Sant: Tell me about your mom. She just seems really special.
Brooke Wilkins: She was. She had a big personality. … She was happy to talk to anyone and make a friend and joke around.
Kendy was a small town girl from northern Idaho — sporty and outdoorsy, says her brother Brian Wilkins.
Brian Wilkins: She … rode her horse a lot, had sheep for 4H and … and, well, she had a goat, too, at the same time.
Kendy was just 22 when she married former Marine-turned-Idaho state trooper Dan Howard. He was six years older.
Peter Van Sant: Did she talk about the attraction?
Brooke Wilkins: She did think he was very handsome. And I think the sense of security is a topic that was brought up quite a bit.
The couple settled on 10 acres in the town of Athol, just a speck on the map, located 21 miles north of Coeur D’Alene. They had a son together, Wyatt. Like his dad, Wyatt became a Marine. A neighbor, Cari Maitland, says Dan and Kendy’s marriage seemed strong.
Cari Maitland: They were affectionate towards each other and … they were generally respectful to each other.
Kendy worked at a local medical center. During 26 years of marriage, they made good money in real estate in this fast-growing state. By the time of Kendy’s death, the couple had more than $2 million in assets. And yet, money created friction between them.
Michelle Lampert: Her money was his money and his money was his money. … He never wanted to spend money.
And there was more friction in the marriage, according to friends, after Dan Howard — working as a trooper for the Idaho State Police — shot and killed a woman during a traffic stop. Dan was cleared of all wrongdoing, but the incident took its toll on Kendy.
Cari Maitland: I do believe … she did become depressed.
Years later, Dan Howard would leave the Idaho State Police.
Cari Maitland: And things kind of changed between them.
Kendy’s brother Brian Wilkins helped Dan find work on the North Slope — the oil fields of Alaska. He’d work three weeks straight and then come home for three weeks.
Michelle Lampert: She was free for three weeks is when she really decided to experience life.
Brian Wilkins says the couple grew apart.
Brian Wilkins: There was arguing, bickering pretty much the whole time I’d be up there around him. But I didn’t think it was anything.
But Brooke Wilkins says it was the beginning of the end of their relationship. Kendy was frustrated and lonely.
Brooke Wilkins: She’s very vocal that she does not love him; that there’s no love in this marriage.
Lampert says Kendy had an affair, and even planned plastic surgery.
Michelle Lampert: She was just super excited.
And that’s when Kendy told Dan she was moving out and wanted a divorce. And she had started the process of buying a new house.
Michelle Lampert: And I think she really felt that it would be OK.
By the end of January 2021, just days before her death, Kendy met with a divorce lawyer. When Dan came home from work —
Michelle Lampert: She just told him … I mean, she just told him everything. And I think [at] that point I did get scared. … She said he was fine. He wasn’t fine.
QUESTIONING DAN HOWARD’S VERSION OF THE EVENTS
Michelle Lampert: It never made sense to me. It never made sense.
When first responders examined Kendy Howard’s body in her bathtub, she had a gunshot wound to the back of her mouth and her pistol was in the water. Dan Howard told everyone that Kendy had taken her own life.
Peter Van Sant: Were you buying that?
Brian Wilkins: No. … I couldn’t see her leaving her kids and granddaughter.
When he learned his sister was dead, Brian Wilkins rushed over to her house. He walked right up to Dan Howard.
Brian Wilkins: There was no emotion. He wasn’t crying. … I asked him if he’d ever hurt my sister. … he wouldn’t look at me in the eye and he said, “no.”
Kendy’s friend, Michelle Lampert, was also certain Kendy had not taken her own life.
Michelle Lampert: Kendy was not depressed. … You don’t think about doing plastic surgery. You don’t go work out. You don’t go to spin class.
But Cari Maitland, Kendy’s neighbor, says Kendy had been deeply unhappy. Months earlier she says Kendy told her about problems in her marriage.
Cari Maitland: She’s just crying and crying and crying. … And — and she’s like, “I don’t even deserve to be here.”
Maitland doesn’t think there’s any mystery about what happened in that bathroom.
Cari Maitland: I do believe that Kendy committed suicide.
In the hours following Kendy’s death, Northrup said he had questions about Dan Howard’s version of events.
Det. Jerry Northrup: There’s a — an order to things and a logical order … it did not make sense.
One thing that didn’t make sense that night was the clothes dryer running when first responders entered the house. There were still six minutes showing on the display. So Northrup did some digging.
Det. Jerry Northrup: I went to the manufacturer’s site, pulled up the specifics about the times for cycles … And then took that information and compared that against the time at which the 911 call was placed.
Peter Van Sant: And what do you learn?
Det. Jerry Northrup: That it was started within a minute of the 911 call.
Det. Jerry Northrup: It suggested that he was doing actions like starting laundry … rather than his claim that he was checking on Kendy Howard and — and that he was inconsolable and upset … it just — it didn’t add up.
And there were other red flags for Northrup.
Peter Van Sant: Did you find any signs of a struggle, that there’d been some sort of a physical confrontation between these two?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Yes, we did. Up in the master bedroom, we noted on the floor that there were pieces of broken glass.
And there was that question of the amount of blood in the bathtub.
Peter Van Sant: With a wound to the head, that water will be much darker red-colored, right? From the blood?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Yes, sir. Based on my experience, that would be consistent. That the — the fact that there wasn’t — was inconsistent.
Peter Van Sant: Inconsistent, suggesting it might not be a suicide?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Correct. … Everything started directing us to the path that this was a staged crime scene.
Detective Sergeant Ken Lallatin, now retired, was the lead investigator.
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Nothing about this case felt right from the beginning.
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): Hi Dan … So what happened tonight?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): Marital problems … she wants a divorce one day … she doesn’t the next … So she brought home divorce papers, just preliminary ones.
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): We just grew apart, I guess.
Lallatin says he quickly became convinced Dan Howard was playing them.
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: I had the sense that Dan had a story that he had planned to share with us that evening … it felt very contrived.
Peter Van Sant: Almost scripted in a way?
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely scripted.
One example, Lallatin says, was Dan Howard telling him that Kendy had once put a gun to her head.
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): She put the gun to her f****** head … it freaked me the f*** out… and um I thought for sure… ‘here we go’ and she dropped the gun and f****** shot through the floor.
DETECTIVE (bodycam): Same gun?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): Same gun.
Lallatin says Dan Howard told him, that after a heated argument that night over splitting their finances, Kendy went upstairs to take a bath. A short time later Dan heard what he described as a “thud.”
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): It sounded like something hit the floor or something. I don’t know.
But he didn’t investigate for more than an hour. That’s when Dan Howard says he found her: dead in the tub.
Peter Van Sant: How many times have you ever described a gunshot as a thud?
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: I don’t think I’ve ever described a gunshot as a thud. … I certainly would not expect someone who served in the Marine Corps, served … approximately 20 years in law enforcement, someone who was a firearms instructor, someone who had been on their SWAT team. I think if anybody’s going to know what the sound of a gunshot is from inside a residence, it’s going to be Dan Howard.
As the morning came, Dan Howard called his stepdaughter Brooke Wilkins, and told her the news … it didn’t go well. Lallatin says he could hear Brooke shouting at Dan through the phone.
DAN HOWARD (bodycam, shouting back at his phone): What? What are you talking about? …
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): Who was that Dan? …
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): It was my daughter, Brooke …
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): Did she just accuse you of this?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): No.
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): That’s what it sounded like. … Why would she do that Dan? Why would she think you did this? … I haven’t heard someone that angry in a long time … I’ll be honest with you. I was not expecting anything like that … I was across the room and I could hear her. She’s angry …
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): Kids don’t want to believe their moms would do that.
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Not one time have I ever been to a suicide or even heard of one where one of the family members … call and accuse her stepdad of murdering her mom. … it was a very powerful moment. … and I literally was able to see Dan Howard almost physically shrink down.
Peter Van Sant: Like the walls are closing in?
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Oh, a hundred percent.
WAS THE DEATH SCENE STAGED?
In the early morning of Feb. 3, 2021, Dan Howard’s behavior continued raising the suspicions of Kootenai County detectives. They had just overheard that phone call from his stepdaughter, Brooke Wilkins, accusing him of killing her mother.
Brooke Wilkins: I’m hysterical. I’m crying pretty hard.
Peter Van Sant: And you’re believing that no way she shot herself.
Brooke Wilkins: Right. … I tell him that … I don’t know what happened, but … “I know you did this.”
Detective Sgt. Ken Lallatin confronted Dan about Brooke’s accusation:
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): I gotta tell you, that phone call put chills down my spine. …
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): You did it, didn’t you Dan?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): No, I didn’t.
DET. SGT. KEN LALLATIN (bodycam): I didn’t think so, but now, after listening to that, I think you did, didn’t you?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam): How the hell, how the hell — she doesn’t know. She wasn’t here.
Within minutes, Dan Howard stopped responding to questions. Detectives were now very suspicious, because, as an ex-cop, he had special skills.
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Dan knows things that most normal people, ordinary people don’t know.
Peter Van Sant: Things like what?
Det. Sgt. Ken Lallatin: Things like killing someone and staging it to look like a suicide.
But there wasn’t enough physical evidence at the scene to arrest him. What’s more, later that day, an autopsy was done. The medical examiner concluded Kendy died from that gunshot. Brooke Wilkins was perplexed. She says her mother never took her gun out of the safe.
Brooke Wilkins: Mom never touched a gun. She wouldn’t have used a gun. … there’s something not making sense here. And … I’m so lost and confused because … you know, Dan’s not arrested.
What Brooke Wilkins didn’t know was that the investigation was zeroing in on Dan Howard. Just hours after Kendy’s death, Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Stan Mortensen was called in to consult with detectives. They pieced together a detailed timeline of the couple’s relationship.
Peter Van Sant: What did you learn about Dan Howard?
Stan Mortensen: So we learned … that Dan Howard was not the person that we thought he was … at home and behind and closed doors, he was a different person.
Investigators focused in on an alarming incident Dan Howard was involved in from 2013, when he was still a state trooper. Dan had found out Kendy was having an affair with a neighbor — who also happened to be Dan’s good friend. Enraged, Dan confronted him at his office.
Det. Jerry Northrup: He … threatened to — I believe his words were — splatter his brains all over the walls.
Peter Van Sant: Threatened to kill him?
Det. Jerry Northrup: Threatened to kill him.
Dan Howard was accused of repeatedly harassing the neighbor, and eventually pleaded guilty to two felonies and served almost four months in jail in connection with that incident. He was allowed to resign from the Idaho State Police. After that, Kendy’s friend Michelle Lampert says the couple’s relationship seemed to change.
Michelle Lampert: She was stuck to him like glue, just like glue, like hanging all over him. And she was never that way before. .. I think back, going, was she scared?
In the years that followed, Lampert says Dan was controlling and quick to anger — especially when it came to Kendy’s spending.
Michelle Lampert: Dan never wanted to go do anything cause that would spend money. … I just don’t think she was her full personality when he was around.
But when Dan was about to head back to Alaska for work —
Michelle Lampert: She was a totally different person … I think she realized the more she was free, the more she loved life. And she didn’t have to be under his thumb.
They continued to grow apart. Then Kendy told Lampert about an explosive argument, just seven months before her death.
Michelle Lampert: She had hidden credit cards and he found the bills and that started that argument … He … grabbed her and held her and there was bruises on her neck and her … She sent me pictures … You could see ’em. Clear as day in the pictures. … She just told me not to tell anybody.
Kendy never reported any kind of abuse from Dan Howard to authorities.
Peter Van Sant: How long had this physical abuse been going on? Do you have a sense?
Stan Mortensen: We — we really don’t know. It had been going on at least … six months before she died.
Then, just four nights before Kendy Howard’s death, deputies were called to the Howard home. Kendy’s mother had asked for a welfare check, after hearing a panicked Kendy on the phone. A visibly nervous Kendy answered the door.
DEPUTY (bodycam): You mind if we talk to you guys really quick?
DAN HOWARD (bodycam, sitting on couch): Sounds fine to me.
Hours earlier, Kendy had picked Dan up at the airport, coming home from the oil fields of Alaska. And apparently upset him by saying she wanted a divorce. Kendy tells a deputy she needs to get something from the bedroom.
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam, stuttering): And — so, I can go?
DEPUTY (bodycam): Yeah, do you mind if I follow you?
That let the deputy speak with Kendy away from Dan Howard.
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam) I asked for a divorce and he just got home. He’s not taking it good.
DEPUTY (bodycam): OK.
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam) I can’t say what he was going to do …
DEPUTY (bodycam): Did it ever become physical?
KENDY HOWARD: I think I had woke up in time so it wouldn’t.
DEPUTY (bodycam): OK. When you woke up, where was he?
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam): Standing over me …
DEPUTY (bodycam): Was he yelling? Was the argument like a —
KENDY HOWARD: No, that’s the thing —
DEPUTY (bodycam): So he’s always kind of just that calm?
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam): (unintel) It’s weird.
DEPUTY (bodycam): OK. Alright.
KENDY HOWARD (bodycam): I know what I seen. I know what he was going to do …
The deputy helped Kendy leave the house. But investigators would later say they couldn’t arrest Dan Howard because Kendy never told deputies Dan had physically harmed her. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Julia Schoffstall later learned that Kendy had told friends what had happened.
Julia Schoffstall: She wakes up in early morning hours to Dan standing over her … wearing dark clothes … black latex gloves … a pillow in his hand … the look in his eyes … it was a look that she had never seen before and that she wholeheartedly believed in that moment that he was going to kill her.
But later that day, Kendy, returned home.
Julia Schoffstall: She told friends and family that … he wasn’t stupid enough to try something again, that she felt like she had some level of safety …
Peter Van Sant: What’s the tragedy in this case to you? The biggest tragedy of all?
Julia Schoffstall: That she was so close to getting out.
In the text messages to Kendy, Dan Howard said it was all a misunderstanding and he was willing to work things out. But there were other signs he wasn’t OK. The day before Kendy’s death, her brother Brian Wilkins took a long road trip with Dan.
Brian Wilkins: He started asking me about who Kendy was having an affair with.
Brian Wilkins says Dan Howard figured out Kendy was seeing the real estate agent who was helping her buy that new house near her hometown.
Brian Wilkins: You could tell, he was mad.
The next day, Kendy Howard was dead. To prosecutors, the circumstantial evidence against Dan Howard was adding up. After reviewing Kendy’s autopsy and photos taken of Kendy’s body, investigators discovered that, in fact, Kendy had multiple bruises all over her body.
Stan Mortensen: Her body was riddled from head to toe with bruises and some lacerations.
And her jaw had been broken.
Stan Mortensen: I believe that Kendy was beat severely by Dan.
So what really happened that night? The theory that Kendy’s death scene could have been staged began to take on a new light.
Stan Mortensen: Kendy did not die from a gunshot wound …
Peter Van Sant: Wait, wait. Stop. She was shot, I understand, in the mouth … the bullet lodged in her vertebrae. And it didn’t kill her?
Stan Mortensen: Exactly. We believe that Kendy was already dead when she was shot.
