The show “Deadly Women: Cling ‘Til Death” on Investigation Discovery tells the story of Vegas Bray, a former Navy mechanic from California who became obsessed with her ex-boyfriend, Victor Saucedo.
When he broke up with her, Vegas started following him and damaging his property until he started to fear for his life. When Vegas killed him in October 2012, his fears came true.
The episode shows how the police found her through their investigation. If you want to learn more about this case, we’ve got you covered. Who is this Vegas Bray, anyway? Let’s find out.
What does Vegas Bray do?
Vegas Batallya Bray was born in 1988 in San Diego, California, where she also grew up. She was a pretty, smart girl who was known for how well she treated people. Even though she came from a broken home and didn’t have a father, she never let those problems show in her grades. In high school, she got straight A’s. After she graduated from high school, the Army hired her as a mechanic for the Navy. There, she met Victor C. Saucedo, a fellow Navy sailor who worked on a Destroyer ship in Southern California. The two fell in love quickly, and the relationship moved at a fast pace.
By March 2011, they were dating. They liked each other because they both had a dark sense of humor. But their relationship had problems because Vegas was jealous and didn’t like it when Victor talked to his ex-girlfriend, who was also the mother of his child. By 2012, they had both left the Navy. Victor went to a local college to make money for his son, and Vegas got a job as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. By that time, Victor had stopped being friends with Vegas on Facebook, blocked her calls, and stopped seeing her.
Even after they broke up, they still saw each other every once in a while for the next 10 months or so. The government and witnesses say that this is where Vegas lost it. She started following Victor around and doing things like cutting the tires on his car, throwing bottles through the window, smearing peanut butter on his front door, and other acts of vandalism. Even though Victor told the police about them more than once, no one was ever charged or arrested.
A week before the murder, Vegas said that Victor was trying to get back together with her and had even agreed to let her rent an apartment in his California complex. Later, the police also found disturbing notes and a bucket list on her devices. On the list, she wrote that she wanted to buy guns, kill Victor, and abuse him over and over again. On October 15, 2012, Vegas went to his place and they had drinks together. Vegas wanted breakfast in the morning after they had sex. Victor turned her down, and that was the last straw.
She was said to have felt ashamed, so she and her brother, Santiago, spent the morning at the DMV. On October 16, 2012, around 3 p.m., Victor’s neighbors say they saw her walk to Victor’s apartment and then heard a bunch of gunshots. She shot Victor nine times with hollow-point bullets from a gun, killing him, before she herself called 911.
Where is Vegas Bray at the moment?
Vegas was taken in for questioning, but she said she had blacked out and didn’t know what had happened. A psychiatrist told her that she was depressed and had PTSD because she had been sexually abused for a long time. On April 24, 2013, she was charged with killing Victor and stood in front of a judge. But after someone lost their mind in court, the judge ordered a psych evaluation. After almost 3 years of treatment, the court decided that she was ready to stand trial.
Her trial started on October 15, 2015. In her defense, she said that on that terrible day in October 2012, she had “posttraumatic stress disorder and other mental disorders.” But she was found guilty of first-degree murder and given a 50-year prison sentence on January 8, 2016. In April 2017, she filed an appeal against the decision, but it was turned down. Official court records say that Vegas, who is 33 years old, is currently locked up at the Central California Women’s Facility. According to her prison records, Vegas will be able to get out of jail in October 2036.
Vegas Bray was born in 1988, but she never knew her father. She grew up in San Diego. Even though things were hard at home, she did well in high school. Vegas was beautiful, got good grades, had a lot of friends, and was known as a “good girl” who never used bad words. So, none of Vegas’s classmates would have thought that she would one day follow an ex-boyfriend and shoot him a day after they hooked up and had sex.
Vegas joined the military after she graduated from high school. She worked in a Navy machine shop, where she met Victor Saucedo, who was working on a Destroyer ship. “He was a damage control man,” Victor’s friend told “Snapped.” “That means that if something broke, there was a fire, or a ship got hit by a missile, or anything like that, he was the first person on board the ship to help,” the friend said.
He also lived with some Navy friends in a bachelor pad and was always with different women. A friend said, “Victor dated a lot of people. It’s hard to keep his attention for too long.”
Victor left the Navy in 2012, in part to spend more time with his 4-year-old son, whom he had with a former girlfriend. Victor wanted to be in the life of his son, even though his son’s mother found out she was pregnant soon after they broke up. So he could better take care of his son, he even started taking classes at a local college.
Vegas had also grown tired of the Navy life, so he asked for and got an early discharge and left the service. But she hadn’t done much work outside of the military, so she didn’t have many professional skills.
She got a job as a cocktail waitress in a strip club because she was beautiful and had a lot of curves.
Vegas and Victor knew each other from the base. They started spending more time together and were dating by March 2011. Their friends were happy for them.
“Victor had a kind of sarcastic humor, and she had the same kind,” said Victor’s friend.
A friend of Vegas said, “They were always together, so I thought, ‘Okay, this guy could be the one for her.'”
But on October 16, 2012, Vegas found Victor dead in the hallway outside his bathroom. On the floor of his apartment’s hallway, he was covered in blood. Vegas called 911 and told the operator that he had been shot. He said, “Miss, I don’t know. “I don’t know what happened.” She told the police that there was a gun next to him on the ground.
“Snapped” was told by a police officer that Vegas said “he shot himself, that it was a suicide.”
But when the police and EMTs came, they saw something strange.
Victor was shot more than once, and his body was full of holes. He had actually been shot in the head, chest, and hand. The DA said that the wound on the hand was “consistent with him holding up his hand to protect himself from being shot.”
Five or six shots were fired quickly, then there was a pause, and then four more shots were fired. Since the revolver could only hold six shots, someone probably reloaded it. There was a box of ammunition left there, and it was very dangerous. The DA said, “They used hollow-point ammunition, which hurts people more than regular ammunition.”
Vegas was the only person at the scene, so she was taken to the station to tell what happened. At first, the questioning was simple. Vegas told the police that she met Victor in the Navy and that they had been friends for years. She said that they finally got together and that things were going well until Victor broke up with her out of the blue.
During the interrogation, Vegas said, “He deleted me as a friend, like, he unfriended me on Facebook, and he didn’t even, none of this was in person or anything, he just stopped.” “Yeah, we talked on the phone and then on Facebook, and then I drove over to see him because I was like, ‘What the hell? ’”
Even though Vegas was upset about the breakup, they still hung out every now and then for the next 10 months. Victor finally told Vegas that he didn’t want a relationship, even though Vegas had hoped for more. Vegas felt used.
In March 2012, one year after Victor and Vegas were officially a couple, Vegas went to his house, threw eggs at his car, and cut the tires. “I popped some of his tires. I popped two of them, and then, I think in March, I popped one, then another, and then two more,” she told the police.
Victor tried to calm things down and make things better between them. Vegas said that Victor had offered to co-sign a lease for a new apartment a week before he was shot. Vegas came over to talk about his offer, and when he did, they started drinking together… and kept drinking. That night, they slept together.