30 year mark since casino mogul, Steve Wynn's daughter was kidnapped
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LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — July marks 30 years since a high profile kidnapping case that rocked southern Nevada.
The kidnapping of casino mogul, Steve Wynn's daughter. It was a crime that captured international attention.
July 26, 1993, the daughter of one of the most powerful gaming executives on the Las Vegas Strip. Steve Wynn's daughter Kevyn Wynn was abducted at gunpoint from her home in Spanish Trail, a premier golf course community.
Steve paid two masked men $1.45 million in cash he got from the Mirage casino cage. Wynn did not report the kidnapping until after paying the ransom.
It's an abduction case that was chronicled by The Mob Museum two years ago.
The high profile case was led by federal prosecutor Tom O'Connell who has court testimony from Steve Wynn remembering that chilling call from his daughter.
There were instructions for Steve, "he said, 'we got your daughter, go to the hotel, go to the casino cage.'"
After following instructions and bringing the money to the parking lot of a bar on Spring Mountain near The Mirage, Steve was given instructions on how to find his daughter who was tied up, but unharmed in the back seat of her car in a parking lot at the McCarran airport, now Harry Reid International Airport.
Ray Cuddy and an accomplice, Jacob Sherwood were both arrested and convicted of kidnapping, extortion and money laundering by a federal jury.
Cuddy tried to buy a Ferrari in Newport Beach with a large sum of cash, leading to his arrest. He spent 20 years in prison and was released in 2015.
A third accomplice, Anthony Watkins cooperated with authorities and was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in 1994.
While the case shook the Wynn family, the family continued to develop more hotels on the Strip despite the unsettling crime.
