BOULDER CITY (KTNV) — A family fighting for justice in a homicide. Police closed the case, claiming self-defense. But that didn't stop the questions about what happened.
From accusations of a potential cover-up to possible corruption, negligence and incompetence, one small police department finds itself at the center of a big controversy.
In a 13 Investigates exclusive, I sit down with the family of the man who was killed as they explain their relentless demand for accountability.
Their allegations against the Boulder City Police Department include officers contaminating evidence, failing to document key crime scene information, and withholding details of a homicide investigation.
To investigate those allegations, I've spent nearly a year poring over hours of body camera footage and dozens of documents, delving into the shocking details behind a twisted narrative that may hide the truth of a murder.
On May 31, 2021, Ashley Dingman lost her husband, Scott. Her 8-year-old son lost his father. Josh Dingman lost his only brother.
And in the months that followed, the Dingman family also lost its faith in law enforcement.
Now, four years later, Josh Dingman maintains “the Boulder City Police failed to do their job."
On the night of May 31, 2021, Scott was visiting his long-time friend, John Powell "JP" Morgan III.
Morgan admitted to police that he shot Scott in the street outside his home, but claimed it was self-defense.
“In dealing with the police department, I was just trying to get answers,” said Ashley, “and nothing made sense.”
In trying to sort out what Boulder City police did in her husband's death investigation, Ashley turned for help to long-time friend Wade Seekatz.
“That level of investigative work is absolutely unacceptable on any crime,” said Seekatz, a retired Henderson police captain who helped her through public records requests to get all the body camera footage and police reports from Boulder City's investigation.
They shared it all with 13 Investigates.
“I would argue no investigation ever took place,” said Seekatz. “I would argue that very early on, a theory was born, and everything that occurred after that was to work towards proving that theory.”
The theory — that the shooting was self-defense — came from JP Morgan, who repeatedly reminds all officers he encounters that he has friends in the Boulder City Police Department. In particular, Officer Scott Pastore, who admits his familiarity with the suspect.
“Everybody knows me,” Morgan says on police body camera footage.
"He's dropping my name in the car right now like crazy to the detectives,” Pastore says in another clip. He goes on to say, “I know everybody in this house. And I'm saying it on camera, so everybody knows. I got his girlfriend calling me; the dog knows me.”
Morgan's claim of self-defense conflicts with reports from a neighbor who called 911 after witnessing the shooting.
911 DISPATCH: 911, the address of the emergency?
WITNESS MIKE HENN: It's, um, near Pueblo.
DISPATCH: Where on Pueblo?
HENN: Somebody just got shot.
DISPATCH: Did you see who did it?
HENN: I did. I saw everything.
DISPATCH: Where did the person who did the shooting...where did he go?
HENN: He went into the house. I’m afraid, ma'am. He still has his gun.
The police report states the witness saw "the victim walking away from the shooter...And that once the shooter closed the distance on the victim, he saw several muzzle flashes."
He told police, "he witnessed what he believed was a murder."
But investigators ultimately believed Morgan's story that he shot Scott Dingman in self-defense. Morgan was never charged, and the case was closed — something Dingman's brother Josh, who serves in the U.S. Navy, can't understand.
“I serve my country to protect the citizens of the United States, and I took an oath — just like these police officers took an oath to protect the citizens of Boulder City — and they just did not do their job," Josh Dingman said. "I don't understand how there's so much clear evidence of what really happened, and they're just ignoring it.”
Let's walk through the evidence, starting with the moment police officers first encounter the suspect.
In Officer Armando Salazar's body camera footage, you can see Morgan with his phone to his ear, standing in the street far away from Scott's body. But later that night, Salazar told Det. Brett Wibrew “When I arrived, it looked like he was checking on him.”
Again, that's not what Salazar's body camera video shows.
OFFICER SALAZAR: Where is the person?!
JP MORGAN: He's up there! He's up there! His name is Scott Dingman!
SALAZAR: [TALKING INTO HIS MIC] I've got one down with what appears to be some type of a gunshot wound in the middle of the street. [TO MORGAN] Did you do the shooting?! Who did the shooting?!
MORGAN: I did! I did! I did!
SALAZAR: Get on the ground! Get on the ground right now! [INTO MIC] I got the suspect, as well. [TO MORGAN] Where's the gun?! Where's the gun?!
MORGAN: It's in the house!
Officer Kenny Calzada appears next and starts searching Morgan as he lies on the ground.
CALZADA: Turn on your side.
MORGAN: I got nothing.
What happens next is key, says Jamie Borden, a retired Henderson police sergeant who founded the company Critical Incident Review — where he now serves as an investigator and instructor, often testifying in court cases across the country as an expert witness.
“Hindsight review and analysis of cases. That's what I do as an expert,” Borden said.
Ashley Dingman hired Borden to review Scott's case.
“The first thing I do is look at video,” said Borden, who, among other factors, zeroed in on Officer Calzada’s body camera footage.
While searching Morgan's pockets, Calzada pulls out a metal wallet. The police report claims the wallet was found in the road, about 10 feet from Scott's body. But the body camera video shows that the wallet is in the road because Calzada tossed it there after taking it out of Morgan's pocket.
“That was Scott Dingman's wallet that was just removed from the suspect's left rear pocket,” Seekatz noted while watching the video.
The evidence log shows the wallet on the scene belonged to Scott. But, says Borden, “it was never documented as coming from the suspect's pocket.”
Why Morgan had Scott's wallet was never explored or followed up on in any of the police records.
Jamie, Wade and Ashley believe that's important because Ashley told police Scott had withdrawn $1,000 from one of their accounts on the day he was killed and that she was concerned "robbery could have been a motive for his death."
“They dismissed me, and they ignored me,” Ashley said.
In fact, when Ashley brought it up again to BCPD Deputy Chief Aaron Johnson in 2023, he sent her an email referring to "Morgan being in possession of Dingman's wallet" as a "new development," which it clearly was not. Even so, Johnson wrote that it had no impact on the case, which would remain closed "pending further information."
“The deeper I got into this case, the more mistakes I saw,” Borden said.
Body camera footage in July 2021 — nearly two months after the shooting — shows Det. Wibrew did question Morgan about the wallet.
DET. WIBREW: Ashley, she's concerned. Apparently, he pulled out $1,000 that day, and that money's unaccounted for. I'm not saying you stole it, but the thing was — do you know where he might have spent that? Or did he have any money?
MORGAN: All I know is he had coc[aine] with him when he got here.
WIBREW: OK. Was it a bunch, or was it a little bit, or...?
MORGAN: He had two gram bags on him.
WIBREW: OK. Did he burn through both of those that night, or...?
MORGAN: Yeah.
Morgan claims he saw Scott snorting the cocaine.
"What was he doing it off of?" Wibrew asks.
"My counter in my bathroom," Morgan says.
Although the toxicology report shows Scott Dingman had more than three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system, the same report shows there was no cocaine in his system.
“The reason that's important is because nobody followed up on it,” said Seekatz. “As an investigator, you would want to go back and say, 'Why did you lie to me?'"
The family's concern only deepened when they saw what Officer Calzada did after throwing Scott's wallet into the crime scene. Body camera footage shows Calzada also removes a 9 mm bullet from one of Morgan's pockets, which the officer also places on the ground in the crime scene.
“The suspect is lying on his right side, and he places that just in front of his belly,” said Seekatz. “He just rolled him over the top of it."
Wibrew asks about the bullet on body camera footage.
WIBREW: And the 9 [mm] round was stuck to his stomach?
CALZADA: Around that area, because when I rolled him to the left side, it rolled off.
WIBREW: On the ground, right near his body, which tells you what? [He makes a motion of pulling the gun slide.] That supports self-defense. So, if somebody pulls out a gun and they rack a round, you shoot 'em, man. You're good.
“There is nothing in any of the evidence that substantiates that statement!” Borden exclaimed.
To add to the confusion, the police report explains that earlier that night, Scott was showing his gun to Morgan in the kitchen and that "Dingman ejected a live round of 9 mm ammunition from his gun, which Morgan later placed in his [own] pocket."
The bullet from his pocket was the bullet underneath him "in the roadway." It was there because body camera footage shows Calzada putting it there — not because of a misfire in the street from Scott's gun, which fed the self-defense theory.
And although the police report says the bullet was from Morgan's pocket, Borden says it's a big deal that Det. Wibrew didn't know that. He believes Wibrew reached conclusions without fully considering all the evidence.
“The fact that this round was the point of contention in a path forward on a homicide investigation rather than a self-defense investigation was a massive flag for me," Borden said.
Another flag for Borden and Seekatz? What Morgan told the police.
On Officer Calzada’s body camera footage, Morgan says, “He [Scott] started shooting at me.”
Borden's review found that forensics tests confirmed Scott's 9 mm gun was never fired.
All the shell casings from rounds fired at the scene were from Morgan's 40-caliber weapon.
“But nobody ever follows up and says, 'Why did you initially tell officers that he was shooting at you?'" Seekatz said.
And there's more. Going back to that July 2021 video from two months after the shooting, here's what Morgan tells Det. Wibrew, when asked to recount what happened:
MORGAN: I fell backwards down onto the ground. He went for his [gun] out of his lap.
WIBREW: So, you were on the ground when he pulled his?
MORGAN: Yeah. I was. Because then I...My gun fell. It was, like, right beside me or right behind me from where it was in my belt. And then I walked up [demonstrating how he shot multiple times upward]. I do remember this: I walked him. That's why it was groin to chest. It was because I was coming up with the gun, firing.
“Both of the fatal wounds to Scott Dingman — the trajectory does not match,” said Seekatz, noting that Scott's autopsy shows the trajectory on both wounds was "front-to-back, slightly right-to-left, and downward."
“Evidence shows that it completely contradicts every explanation offered by the suspect. Boulder City police make no mention of that in their report,” Seekatz said.
“I have never seen flaws to this level that have gone unchecked,” added Borden, who says another unchecked flaw is where police found Scott's gun.
The police report narrative states Officer Calzada removed Scott's handgun from under his torso and right hand area, but Calzada's body camera footage shows him take the gun from Scott's left hand. That is significant, the family says, because Scott was right-handed and had an injury to his left hand that prevented him from shooting a gun with it.
They have their own theory of how the gun got into Scott's left hand. Morgan told police he ran inside and put his gun on a shelf after the shooting. Seekatz says, “It is plausible that he retrieved Scott Dingman's gun from inside of his home, came back out, and put it in his hand.”
A police detective raised the same theory the night of the shooting. You might be shocked to learn that Morgan's home was wired with security cameras he had installed inside and out. Officers on the scene watched some of that video from inside the house the night of the shooting.
MALE OFFICER: So, whose gun was outside?
DET. MARK DUBOIS: There's another mag[azine] in here, and there's a holster.
FEMALE OFFICER: So, did he [Scott] or did he not have a holster right here?
MALE OFFICER: He did. Yeah, he did. I saw it. He had a holster in his waistband.
DUBOIS: So, I wonder in that video if we can see him running out with another gun. Because did he shoot him out there and then run in here and grab his gun and go put it in his hand?
MALE OFFICER: Yeah, you see him [Morgan] walk out with a gun.
DUBOIS: Yeah, the suspect has a gun in his hand. Can you see if the victim?
MALE OFFICER: The suspect has a gun in his hand. The victim, you can't tell. And then all you see is the suspect come back in, then place his weapon here, drop his magazine, come in here, grab his phone, and run outside — grab something and run outside.
Police photos inside Morgan's house show Scott's holster on the kitchen floor, blood above it on the counter, and blood on the shelf where Morgan put his own gun after the shooting.
“I want explanations as to why there's blood in the house near a holster that belonged to the decedent,” Borden said.
Records have no mention of any testing to determine whose blood it was or any further exploration of Det. Dubois' theory.
“There are video cameras in every room of this house and on the front of this house. In a homicide! And that video evidence was never collected. These are mistakes!” Borden exclaimed. “It's a red flag, and there's no culpability.”
Borden’s review of police records concluded Morgan changed his story seven times — contradicting himself, the video surveillance detailed by Det. Dubois, the toxicology report, and the autopsy report.
Borden and Seekatz say those discrepancies likely could have been resolved if police had seized the video from Morgan's many cameras, but they never did.
They kept asking for it, Morgan never gave it up, and forensics teams from other police departments were unable to retrieve it from Morgan's phone.
In Det. Wibrew's body camera footage from that visit with Morgan, nearly two months after the shooting, Wibrew says, “If you can get it and just email it to me, great. If you can't, like, here's the deal, I figured at this time — with the amount of time it took for us...”
“We don't ask people if it's OK to collect evidence,” Borden said. “As police officers, we get the evidence. That's part of a crime.”
Ultimately, based on the case presented by Boulder City police, District Attorney Steve Wolfson did not charge Morgan with any crime. Wolfson told me he also met twice with the Dingman family and Seekatz and found insufficient evidence to move forward with a criminal case. But, he said, as with any case, his office will take another look if it comes to him again through Boulder City police.
Despite the years gone by, Ashley Dingman says she hasn’t let this go, “and I won't until justice is served.”
They've continued pushing Boulder City police to reopen the case, even providing new information from two other sources.
In 2022, nearly a year after Scott Dingman was killed, a Boulder City woman sought a protection order against Morgan after a dispute between the two at the Horsemen's Association. In her temporary protective order hearing, she told the judge that Morgan "brags about getting away with what he'd done to some gentleman," saying he "shot him and he knows how to cover it up."
"He talks about it freely around the Association. So, everybody is afraid," she said.
Also, last November, Morgan's ex-girlfriend — who moved out of state — filed a police report with her local department saying she wanted to get on record that Morgan "killed someone in Boulder City and the killing was ruled self-defense" but that "she saw evidence that [he] intended to kill the other [man] and believes it was a murder, and she is afraid that she will be targeted because she is aware of this."
Boulder City police have declined to comment on the case, but Seekatz recorded a meeting he had with Deputy Chief Aaron Johnson when the two met in October 2022 to discuss it.
On the recording, Johnson says, “What you have here is compelling information to make you cock your head a little bit and say, ‘Yeah, we missed this; this was missed. How did we miss this?' I think there should be a second set of eyes on this. I think there always has been a need for a second set of eyes. But I'm not quite sure that the second set of eyes should necessarily be internal."
“We're very hopeful that someday this will be picked up, and there will be a thorough investigation done, and Steve Wolfson and his team will get an opportunity to look at real details of what happened and hopefully do something for Scott and his family,” Seekatz told 13 Investigates.
A few months ago, after Boulder City police learned we were investigating, they reopened the homicide case — which is why they say they can't comment for this story.
Through his attorney, Morgan also declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Records confirm police served a search warrant at Morgan's home on April 15 of this year, and during the search, police found cocaine "in plain view on a countertop in a bedroom" as well as a digital scale and numerous small baggies. Officers seized about 30 grams of cocaine and arrested Morgan for multiple felonies, including possession with intent to sell. He quickly bailed out of jail, and those charges are pending.
Police also found multiple weapons in Morgan's home and are working to determine if any of them are illegal.
“There's a saying that 'justice delayed is justice denied.' Does that apply here?” I asked Jamie Borden.
“It very well could,” he responded.
The Dingman family feels that justice won't be served until there's accountability for all.
“I will never stop fighting for my brother,” said Josh Dingman. “I want the person who committed this crime to be held accountable. I want the law enforcement officers who were aware of all this, or who were negligent — whatever you want to call it, they need to be held accountable as well.”
Since Boulder City police reopened the investigation, they learned of a new allegation that in the months after the shooting, a member of the department was leaking information to Morgan.
Based on that and everything we've exposed, the Dingman family is hoping the FBI will step in. The FBI told me they can neither confirm nor deny any action they may be taking.
Ashley Dingman sued Morgan for the wrongful death of her husband and entered into a settlement agreement.