Dancing on Her Grave (6 page)

In court papers, Jamile’s attorney, Scott Holper, called the allegations frivolous and offered to settle for a dollar. But Debora continued her suit, and court records show that she ultimately won a $250,000 civil judgment. Damages were awarded to her because the scars cost her modeling jobs, leaving her with a lesser income of $40,000
per year from dancing part-time in a local show, according to court documents. Despite losing the lawsuit, Jamile McGee was never prosecuted by law enforcement; however, he had nevertheless left Las Vegas more than a year before Debbie’s disappearance.

At the moment, investigators were not pursuing that angle, but I prompted Celeste for any more details about Debbie and Jamile’s relationship.

Celeste did say that she knew Debbie had been in a relationship with Jamile for two years, until they broke up in 2009.

“Your sister never confided in you that there was violence in that relationship?”

“No, she never told me of any violence. But she would get very sad while she was with him. She would call me sometimes, crying. I was there to listen, like a sister.”

I had to come right out with it. “Did Jamile hit Debbie?” I asked Celeste, but she didn’t know anything more than what I did, which was that after Debbie had ended that relationship, she took him to court and was awarded a quarter of a million dollars for the physical damages he’d inflicted on her during one of their last fights.

Celeste interjected that her sister never did collect the money she’d won in that lawsuit; that it had been just a moral victory for her. But then she added something else:

“What I do know is that, four days before [Debbie] disappeared, she changed her mind, called her attorney,
and told him she wanted to collect it. She called her attorney on December 8. She went missing on Sunday, December 12, 2010, and I found out about her disappearance the following Wednesday.”

Matthew Guerrero (no relation to Mia) was another friend of Debbie’s, and he recalled meeting the dancer shortly after she and Jamile broke up. “I met Debbie on a bad note,” he said.

It was at Jamile’s birthday party. Matthew, a dancer from San Francisco who had only recently moved to Vegas, was invited. Despite just starting out as a performer in a new city, Matthew’s dancing skills were considerable, and he had quickly become friends with Jamile. At the party, in a reserved VIP area of the Drai’s After Hours nightclub, Matthew saw a beautiful girl wearing a hat and camouflage pants come running toward their table all of a sudden looking very upset. She was obviously jealous and feisty, screaming because Jamile was there with his new girlfriend.

“Who is this girl?” asked Matthew, but he didn’t get an answer. “Hey man, what the hell? I don’t want to get into this, but what’s going on, why is she so upset?” he remembers asking Jamile, who told him that the woman was his ex-girlfriend, Debora. Jamile went on to claim that she was stalking him, and now she was making a scene. After a long argument with Jamile, Debbie left, and the party continued.

A couple of days later, Debbie messaged Matthew through Facebook.

“She told me she wanted to come to my class, and I said, ‘Yeah, sure, come to one of our rehearsals.’” Matthew taught a class at the Rock Center for Dance, a place very well known within the dancing community.

Debbie showed up to his class, and despite Matthew’s less-than-stellar first impression of her, this time they hit it off while comparing their dancing skills. They even made plans to shoot a dance video together, which Debbie eventually choreographed. After talking to her for a little bit, Matthew said he turned around his opinion of her and instead thought, “What a nice and down-to-earth girl!”

They were both hungry after practice, so he invited Debbie to come along to his favorite pizza place in town, a small restaurant located in front of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was impressed that Debbie, a girl who’d seemed to be so high maintenance, had no complaints and enjoyed her five-dollar pizza.

“I saw Debbie had two different sides,” Matthew said. Everyone always seemed to notice the different sides to Debbie.

She spoke all night about her passion for dance and how she had moved to Vegas pursuing a dream, risking her career in Baltimore as a financial analyst by leaving it on hold. As Matthew later said, “Dancers, just like
cheerleaders, are usually underpaid, [yet] they over-deliver because one of the needs they have is to be seen and recognized when they show their talents. It’s their way of sharing their talent and connecting with others, which is a very primal need in human beings.” As a fellow dancer, he understood that need and respected Debbie for it. “I enjoyed listening to her story. She worked very hard, and even though we had started on a bad note, she seemed very cool.”

Matthew remembers Debbie as a good friend, a woman with a very big heart, and someone who would never take no for an answer. On their way out of the pizza place that very night, Matthew recalled a homeless man asking them for money. Instead, Debbie went running back inside, bought the guy a pizza, and gave it to him.

She helped Matthew with little things, too, like often letting him stay in her apartment when he was tired or had had a few drinks and didn’t want to drive all the way home.

Although Matthew and Debbie became very close friends, the last time they’d seen each other was a little over a month before she disappeared, at a
FANTASY
show Halloween party. Matthew said that at the party Debbie had looked happy, she was glowing, and she was already excited about becoming the main star of her show.

“I was never friends with Blu,” Matthew added, referring to Jason Griffith, Debbie’s latest boyfriend. Even
though the two men both worked on the same Beatles
LOVE
show at the Mirage Hotel and Casino, they’d hung out with different groups of people. Debbie’s boyfriend’s group had more seniority within the show. He was also the backup lead dancer for Sugar Plum Fairy, a part of the
LOVE
review, and did solos when the main performer was unavailable. Cirque du Soleil’s
LOVE
is an interpretation of the Beatles’ music (the title is taken from their song “All You Need is Love”) combined with circus-based artistic and athletic performances onstage. Jason would often perform as the charming character Sugar Plum Fairy, who is completely in love with music and likes to dance. His fun character is a link between old-world blues and new wave pop.

But like so many people, it would turn out that Matthew didn’t know all the different sides to Jason Griffith or Debora Flores-Narvaez, or even Jamile McGee, through whom he first met Debbie.

Jamile McGee certainly viewed her as someone with a difficult personality, and indicated that his attorney, Scott Holper, would be able to shed more light on this very gray area. When contacted, Holper did.

The Vegas attorney who had represented Jamile McGee against allegations of abuse at trial against Debora (who was in turn represented by attorney Luke Ciciliano) admitted that the lawsuit had been decided in her favor. “But I wouldn’t say she won anything. She did not collect
one penny from my client. My client did not have the financial resources to mount a vigorous defense.” Holper added: “I do admit that her attorney G. Luke Ciciliano is a very formidable opponent. I think I would hire him if my wife went crazy.”

Holper, in a roundabout way, seemed to be corroborating Jamile’s statements in regards to Debora’s mental instability. But then, he stated in a later verbal interview, “Debora was a beautiful woman who did not deserve what happened to her. I do feel that in some way her stalking behavior led to her demise. In some weird way, I think she would make up the abusive behavior in an effort to draw her mate closer to her, but this obviously did not work when her boyfriend was charged with domestic violence. To this day, I feel bad for grilling Debora on the stand, but her version of events did not make sense and I knew Mr. McGee was innocent.”

It’s true that Jamile McGee did not seem to fit the profile of an abuser. The biography on his website states that he started dancing at the age of four but was then diagnosed with systemic rheumatoid arthritis and told he would be in a wheelchair and not be able to walk ever again. Yet he presumably managed to beat the disease, and was not only able to walk again, but to dance on the world stage, giving his first professional performance at the age of fourteen.

Jamile and Debbie apparently knew each other from
high school, but he’d gone on to become a dance major at Wright State University in Ohio, excelling in ballet, modern dance, lyrical dance, and jazz, and performed at colleges and universities and special events throughout the country.

This all paints McGee as a dedicated, hardworking professional who had overcome the odds—not a violent man.

But things do happen behind closed doors. Still, I asked Celeste, why had her sister not told anybody in her family about her claims of domestic violence?

“Well, if someone beats you, you don’t want to tell your parents; you think it’s your fault. You feel ashamed, and you don’t want to tell your family. So we didn’t know anything about that. I don’t know anyone who would want to tell her parents about something like that,” Celeste said, though she added, “I never thought that would happen to Debora. She was a very strong person, very confident in herself, very independent. I never thought that would ever happen to my sister.”

“I guess she was embarrassed to tell me,” Celeste said. “She knew me. I would have gone there to take care of business.” One wonders if she might have attempted to drag Debbie back home, although it seemed unlikely she’d have succeeded with her fiery and willful younger sister. Jamile McGee’s guilt, however, was never established through the criminal system.

While attorney Scott Holper seemed to detect a logical progression, spiraling down from Jamile McGee’s trial proceedings, Luke Ciciliano, the Vegas attorney who’d represented Debbie in her civil suit against Jamile, disagreed. Aside from being his client, Ciciliano, a man with a light complexion, curly, light brown hair, and blue eyes, said that the dancer “was like a little sister to me.” He attested to Jamile’s violent behavior toward his client.

“We presented evidence and photographs of her injuries. Violence against Debbie was very well documented. There were not only photographs, but home videos Debbie took with her iPhone. After we got a protective order against Mr. McGee, he violated it a couple of times. One time [he] even came to Debbie’s and left her a card,” Ciciliano said, noting that Jamile not only signed the card, “he dated it.”

Ciciliano dismissed the allegations from Scott Holper that Debbie had been stalking his client.

“McGee was harassing Debbie, and as part of his harassment he filed for a P.O. [protective order] against her, which was thrown out in court, and at the hearing where Debbie was awarded her protective order, Scott tried to make the same kinds of arguments, that Debbie was stalking him. It didn’t get him anywhere.”

It was enough, however, to get the media talking.

Debbie’s presumed stalking behavior was brought up and discussed on the program
Issues with Jane
Velez-Mitchell
aired on December 22, 2010, on CNN’s HLN Network. Although Velez-Mitchell opened the discussion by stating she in no way wished to “cast any aspersions on the missing woman,” noting that “she is the victim here,” the host nonetheless mentioned that they’d gotten hold of court documents that indicated Debbie had previously been arrested for “disorderly conduct and accused of harassment. They report four people—
four people
[all of them ex-boyfriends]—sought protective orders against Debbie and three of them obtained those protective orders.”

Velez-Mitchell then asked former sex crimes prosecutor Robin Sax about said protective orders, and Sax responded that while “disorderly conduct” was too vague to tell them much, protective orders do give a clue about someone’s past history and motives, and that a restraining order against Debbie might have been evidence that she did have a “proclivity towards violence.”

However, Sax added, it could also have shown who felt they had motive to “retaliate against her” on account of Debbie’s prior behavior toward them. In short, Sax concluded, she might even be a victim. The protective orders, said the expert, provide “valuable clues to the investigation.”

Ciciliano, however, was of the opinion that a lot of bogus protective orders come through the system. “So we might never know whether some of the allegations are
valid.” But, the attorney added, “The one thing I will say, knowing Debbie and representing her, is she kept her cool always. It took a lot to get her worked up. She was very levelheaded. She wouldn’t have fed into it, is the point I am trying to make.”

Jamile McGee’s attorney also seemed to be concerned about Debora’s well-being. “I wanted so bad to reach out to [Celeste] when she was in town looking for Debora,” Scott Holper said. “Then, as soon as the news broke that Debora was missing, I told my wife, Margaret, ‘She is not missing; she is
dead.’”

The Music and the Mirror and a Chance to Dance . . .

Debora Flores-Narvaez seemed so full of life, as evidenced by her photos and videos the media aired and kept almost obsessively reviewing.

On Google, the name Debbie Flores-Narvaez now brings up a ton of videos of news coverage of her disappearance, her murder, and the trial. But even before any of that started, Debbie was all over the Internet for her sexy, revealing modeling pictures. Her demo reel is still online under the name “Debbie’s XO Modeling Reel.” It shows professional pictures of Debora in a bathing suit, in lingerie, and in a beautiful red dress as well as some shots of her at the beach, all to the accompaniment of Fergie’s pop hit “Glamorous.”

And that was Debbie’s life in Sin City—glamorous.
She was, after all, trying to make a living at her craft and move up in her career. It seemed immaterial, and par for the course, almost, that she also casually shed her top during some of the shows, revealing her shapely breasts. In that sense she was reminiscent of Bettie Page, the 1950s pinup girl notorious for her brazen disrobing in photographs and videos.

“The Strip’s most seductive variety show,” the billboard read for the spectacle at the Luxor Hotel that Debbie was meant to star in. “Women dancing around in close to nothing,” noted in About.com teaser. And on the VegasLiveShow.tv website: “We actually had a woman take her top off in the audience!” gushed one of two dancers being interviewed. A former
Playboy
centerfold and
Baywatch
star, Angelica Bridges, performed in the ten-year anniversary of
FANTASY
, singing “Glory Box” and then singing and performing “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Starring in
FANTASY
was Debora’s ultimate goal, at least in Vegas.

Debbie was certainly ambitious, but she was also, like her friends described her, a down-to-earth, good-hearted woman. On her MySpace page she described herself as “well-cultured, quick witted, intelligent, considerate and humorous.” But despite Debora Flores-Narvaez’s advanced degrees, her accomplishments, her cheerleading feats, her dance training, and her spot as the lead dancer
in a Vegas revue, there were certainly those who wondered if her “sexy” lifestyle contributed to what had happened to her. But that is like saying that she “asked for it,” a cliché that makes victims’ advocates see red. No one deserves to be abused, let alone murdered and discarded like so much trash. Debora was not “trash,” nor is any victim, no matter what lifestyle choices or companions he or she keeps.

Of course, there are different types of dances and dancers. One cannot compare what happens in Vegas to the ballet, or to modern dance. There is an art to it, yes, but it is not the same. These dancers create characters, but in order to live out these fantasies with their bodies and to allow the audiences to fantasize about those male and female forms they see gyrating and contorting suggestively on the stage. And there is nothing wrong with the human form, when utilized consensually for artistic purposes. But surely there is a degree of exhibitionism involved in certain types of dances.

Debbie had been rehearsing for weeks with R & B star Sisqó, for a new number entirely conceived by her for the two of them to perform together as part of the
FANTASY
show.

Sisqó, whose real name is Mark Althavean Andrews, also hails from Baltimore, where the two had been friends. They had danced together in performances in Baltimore, and Debbie invited the singer to come and see
FANTASY
.
They planned to do a two-week run of Sisqó’s hit “Thong Song,” and it was Debbie’s big chance to do a solo on the
FANTASY
stage. Granted, it was a solo with her friend Sisqó, but an opportunity to show off her skills on the stage without the rest of the dance corps.

“Thong Song” is indeed about that skimpy women’s underwear garment, and knowing Debbie’s style of dancing and the pervasive style of
FANTASY
, it was probably a highly suggestive dance. In the video of one of their rehearsals, she is showing Sisqó the moves, urging him playfully to slap his derriere. “Yeah, slap it!” she insists, smiling.

Kevin Peck, Sisqó’s manager, who had the last footage of Debbie alive, gave the rehearsal tape to her sister, Celeste, as a memento. Kevin, who stated that he, too, had been a good friend of Debbie’s, remembers the entire incident as “one of the darkest moments of our lives,” referring to himself and Sisqó, who was not available for an interview. “He doesn’t want to remember this at all,” the manager explained.

But if
FANTASY
was the sexy Vegas show Debbie was meant to star in, there is also the one that can be found on YouTube, a video called “Sex Games,” starring her and Jason Griffith.

“
Sex games . . . sex sex sex games . . .
” Griffith whispers on the video to rap music in a deep, throaty, and sensual
voice. “
Will you play my, will you play my . . . will you play my sex games
,” and the rap beat turns insistent.

The “Sex Games” video might provide a piece of the puzzle as to the kind of relationship Debora had with Jason Griffith, and the way he viewed her. It is easy to stereotype, yes, but falling into the stereotype might have become all too easy for Debora when it came to men, and to the dance; almost like a parody of the brainy girl who described herself as having “a great sense of humor” on Debbie’s MySpace page.

Black Latina writer Sofia Quintero offered her take, during another interview about the genre, on the sexism of hip-hop and rap:

Who holds it down at home for these men while they do their thing? Their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, home girls, girlfriends and wives, that’s who. Who raises their children while they’re in the studio or on tour? It’s not their boys, that’s for sure. But for all that unconditional love and support, a woman has no place in a rap song or video unless she’s a mindless sex object or a ruthless femme fatale.

Was Debora a “mindless sex object,” which in turn caused her to act like a “ruthless femme fatale”? The “Sex Games” video with Jason Griffith certainly paints her that
way: “
Will you be my
slave . . .
” he asks, as she licks his chest, hungrily, and then bends down to bring her face up close to his crotch. Or is that too simplistic an explanation for a pattern of behavior that was growing increasingly more complex by the minute?

In spite of the steamy sexuality of the video, both participants seem very conscious of being onstage. There is no intimacy in the video; it’s a game, a sex game. Debbie looks, sporadically, straight at the camera, suggestively and seductively. Griffith appears to be toying with his own reflection.

Dance studios are flanked by mirrors all around. Dancers are, by definition, body obsessed. “
All I ever needed was the music, and the mirror, and the chance to dance for you
,” sings one of the dancers from the meta Broadway show about Broadway dancers,
A Chorus Line
. Which of these reflections was the real Debbie? Which one did she want people, and especially men, to see? Which reflection of herself did she see when she danced before the mirror, to the music? What on earth caused her to leave Baltimore, after obtaining three university degrees, managing financial portfolios, and earning a good salary, to enact these fantasies?

Once the dance in the “Sex Games” video is over, Debbie and Jason Griffith are seen playing a video game, taking turns at the joystick. That, too, seems like a reflection of the “
sex game, sex game, sex game.
” Griffith is
excited and self-absorbed about the game, like a child. She wins, but he minimizes the importance of the win. And then they play again.

“I got you, I got you!” Debbie yells triumphantly, and then, while romping on the bed, she defies her partner, playfully and invitingly, “There is nothing you could possibly do right now. . . .” He interrupts her, jumping on top of her. She says something unintelligible about her neck. Then, his back to the audience, Griffith points to his rump, wearing briefs with the logo “Black Panther,” slaps his behind, and boasts, “Yo, muddafuckahs . . . Black Panther’s in da house.”

Also on YouTube was Debbie’s demo reel, where at one point she dances to the song “Down the Drain” by James Cappra Jr. Debbie recorded a music video for this song with her friend and fellow dancer Matthew Guerrero.

From the song:

I can hear the drip, drip, drip, drip, drop

is going down the drain, is going down the drain.

During the video choreographed and uploaded by Debbie, she dances to the lyrics, she and Matthew push each other, fight, cry, and then, just as in her real-life turbulent relationship with Jason Griffith, she goes back to him. She hugs him from behind, like begging him for love, for a second chance. More than a choreography, it
seems like an act, like one of those dramatic Spanish soap operas. It ends with a close-up of their faces, Debbie looking down at Matthew. And apparently, “down the drain” is where Debora thought her relationship was going with Jason Griffith.

It is chilling to hear the song and the lyrics, and to see Debbie, so passionate about dancing, a woman with an amazing silhouette, so full of life on the screen. The video now, as of this writing, has over 31,000 views on YouTube.

I remembered what Debbie’s friend Mia had told me about Debbie talking so incessantly about her boyfriend. “She always said, ‘I was with my boyfriend,’ or talking about them being always together.” She always talked about how much she loved him, and my boyfriend this, and my boyfriend that.”

The ABC affiliate in Las Vegas, KTNV, had published a statement online by Merriliz Monzon, another friend of Debbie’s, on December 21, 2010. Merriliz said that she’d overheard Debbie on the phone with Jason Griffith on December 12, crying and pleading: “Just wait for me, wait for me, respect me, respect me, don’t leave, don’t leave!”

Merriliz explained, “It was obvious that it was her ex. It was obvious he wanted to resolve something via phone.”

Merriliz, who had been expecting Debbie over at her house for Christmas that year, described her friend as “inspiring” and “powerful” but also told the station that
she had witnessed “an emotional pull” that Debbie’s ex-boyfriend had had over her.

“She’s a strong woman and so dynamic and so lively. I felt like this was something she needed to vent from because she was keeping a lot in.”

What was the fine line between reality and fantasy for Debbie? Did her exhibitionism border on obsession?

I was still curious to know what sort of relationship Debbie and Jason Griffith had really had. The
LOVE
dancer was known to date many women at the same time. Some of his friends called him a “womanizer,” or a “player,” a label that many guys do not mind. Griffith seemed to enjoy the attention, especially from the ladies.

One of those women was Agnes Roux, who was also involved in the assault incidents in October, when Jason Griffith had taken Debbie Flores-Narvaez’s cell phone and then had allegedly assaulted Debbie.

Agnes Roux is a beautiful dancer for
Zumanity
, a resident cabaret show at the New York–New York Hotel. According to Wikipedia and the show’s official website, it is the first “adult-themed” Cirque du Soleil show, billed as “the sensual side of Cirque du Soleil” or “another side of Cirque du Soleil.” It is a show that explores human sexuality and describes itself as “a seductive twist on reality, making the provocative playful and the forbidden electrifying.” The performers are truly risqué; some of the acts seem as explicit as the act of sex itself. The
costumes are also in keeping with the show’s sexuality. Most of them are minimal, colorful, and feature an extreme use of fur, feathers, lace, fishnet stockings, and cone bras to create a provocative appeal.

Jason Griffith was believed to have been carrying on sexual relationships with both Debora Flores-Narvaez and Agnes Roux at the same time, which is presumably why Debbie followed him to Agnes’s home in October.

Both women had amazing figures, but they were very different in looks. Agnes has red hair and a very delicate face. She has a French background. Her name is pronounced with the “gn” the same way as “cognac,” and the emphasis is on the “e” in Agnes, so that it sounds like Ahn-nyess. As a dancer, she has an amazing talent. Her demo reel is on YouTube, and one can only admire her moves as she delights her audience with her body. She has many different dance styles on the video, and her body is flexible and supple. She shakes her head, whipping around her long mane of hair.

Agnes was always competition for Debbie, who knew that Griffith had deep feelings for the
Zumanity
dancer. Agnes was also a highly trained dancer, while Debbie, who had no formal training and was basically self-taught except for classes she took here and there, must have had more than ample reason to be jealous of her.

But the redhead was not even Debbie’s sole competition for Griffith’s affection. Eventually, I sought out and
met four of his other ex-partners. Most were fellow dancers, and maybe that made them attractive to him. Maybe he thought they were also on the same page about having an open relationship.