BOULDER CITY (KTNV) — Scott Dingman was shot and killed in the street on May 31, 2021, by a man he called a friend. Now, nearly five years later, the man who admitted to pulling the trigger is under a felony drug indictment — and under investigation for murder — in the wake of a 13 Investigates special report.
Darcy Spears shares the latest developments in her ongoing investigation:
John Powell Morgan III, also known as JP Morgan, was indicted in February on charges of possession of cocaine with intent to sell and maintaining an illegal dwelling, accused of using his Boulder City home to sell drugs. He is currently out of jail on $19,000 bail.
Morgan pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in March before Clark County District Court Judge Tina Talim.
The original investigation
Every Memorial Day weekend, friends and family ride motorcycles to mark Dingman's loss and preserve his memory. Morgan claimed he shot Dingman in self-defense. Boulder City police closed the case without filing charges.
"In dealing with the police department, I was just trying to get answers, and nothing made sense," said Dingman's widow, Ashley Dingman.
After she reached out to 13 Investigates, I embarked on a year-long investigation, reviewing hours of body camera footage, dozens of documents, and interviewing law enforcement experts including Wade Seekatz and Jamie Borden. Ashley hired Borden to review the case.
"That level of investigative work is absolutely unacceptable on any crime," Seekatz said.
"The deeper I got into this case, the more mistakes I saw," Borden said.
After I began investigating in 2025, Boulder City police reopened the case. Following that development, three people involved in the initial case retired: Det. Mark Dubois — who previously introduced a theory other than self-defense, Officer Scott Pastore — who the family has accused of conflict of interest, and Ruby Perkins, the records department manager suspected of leaking information about the investigation to the Morgan family.
On Sept. 23, Perkins received a notice from Boulder City Police Chief Tim Shea placing her on paid administrative leave "effective immediately and until further notice." The department confirmed she retired in February after being on leave for five months.
I reached Dubois, Pastore and Perkins by phone. None agreed to go on camera. All maintain they did nothing wrong.
Drug evidence and search warrant
Police evidence photos show what investigators determined to be more than 25 grams of cocaine, along with a spoon, a glass mortar and pestle, a digital scale and multiple plastic baggies.
In grand jury testimony, police also noted that on the desk with the drugs, investigators found "an appointment slip for a passport," multiple passport photos, Morgan's car registration and his birth certificate.
According to court records, police also seized 40 guns from Morgan's home, including 21 handguns and 19 rifles. Morgan is fighting in court to get them back.
The informant and the murder investigation
Boulder City Police Sgt. Chris Slack sought the search warrant in connection with Dingman's death after hearing from an informant — Morgan's ex-girlfriend, Cheralee Seekatz, who goes by Christy. Christy is the ex-wife of Wade Seekatz, a consultant on the case who is in a relationship and living with Ashley Dingman.
After Christy moved out of state, she filed a police report in Texas in 2024 saying she saw evidence that Morgan intended to kill Dingman and "believes it was a murder and she is afraid that she will be targeted because she is aware of this." She later told Boulder City police that Morgan had shown her "several videos from the night of the shooting, captured from...security cameras throughout (his) residence."
The search warrant application states, "Christy also recalled (that) while looking at some of the videos, JP laughed while insulting the Police Department investigators for not reviewing and/or collecting the videos as evidence at the time of the investigation."
In the search warrant affidavit, Sgt. Slack cites "probable cause that evidence of a murder allegedly committed on May 31, 2021 would be found."
Failures in the initial investigation
Court records show that "Sgt. Slack developed serious concerns that important investigative steps were overlooked/missed throughout the (prior) investigation," which may have led "to a false conclusion."
Slack's search warrant application points to many of the same issues that experts identified in my earlier reports.
Prosecutor Chase Christensen, citing my reporting in court records from the drug case, noted that officers "found Mr. Dingman's money clip and a 9-millimeter bullet in Defendant's pants pockets. For unknown reasons, investigating Detectives failed to note that those items were found in Defendant's pockets and instead noted them being found in the street nearby, where the first arriving officer had tossed them after a search-incident-to-arrest."
"That was Scott Dingman's wallet that was just removed from the suspect's left rear pocket," Seekatz pointed out in body camera footage he reviewed with me.
Slack also wrote in the search warrant application that "JP provided several different statements/accounts of what transpired during the incident which resulted in the shooting," and that none of those inconsistencies and different stories "appeared to be followed up on and/or questioned."
Slack further noted that police failed to question Mike Henn, the eyewitness who called 911 the night of the shooting. Henn died in late 2025 after an apparent medical episode. In his 911 call, Henn told dispatchers, "Somebody just got shot."
When asked if he saw who did it, Henn said, "I did. I saw everything." Henn told police "he witnessed what he believed was a murder."
"I'm afraid ma'am. He still has his gun," Henn said in the 911 call.
Slack also noted in the search warrant application that body camera footage shows only one gun at the scene — Dingman's gun — with Morgan's later found inside the house. A detective during the initial investigation "scrubbed through a video" seeing only a portion "that showed JP enter the home and with his back to the camera manipulate 'something and then grab something off the counter.' There was no mention the video was recovered and booked into evidence."
"All of this evidence was left on the table," Borden said. "This is a homicide where a man has lost his life. It deserves a full and complete investigation."
What's next?
In the renewed investigation, while serving the search warrant, Boulder City police seized four laptops, two external hard drives, multiple flash drives and memory cards.
Morgan has alleged that the search warrant is defective. An evidentiary hearing on that is scheduled for the end of May. Morgan's attorney, Louis Schneider, is seeking to have the judge in the drug case invalidate the search warrant and all evidence police obtained in Morgan's home.
Schneider did not respond to a request for comment for this story but has previously declined to comment due to the open criminal investigation. The judge's decision at the upcoming hearing on the search warrant in the drug case could also impact the ongoing murder investigation.
