Family wants answers in man's stabbing death at Nevada prison | Local Nevada

The last time Gracie Hernandez spoke to her fiancé, he told her he was getting in line to take a shower. The man she was planning to marry, Antonio Talavera, was incarcerated at Ely State Prison.

“He told me he loved me,” Hernandez remembers the phone call. “It was a beautiful moment.”

Hernandez would never hear her fiancé's voice again. Later that day, Talavera was stabbed to death in prison.

Since April, Hernandez said, she has been trying to get answers about what happened to him or how it could have happened. Similar efforts by Talavera's ex-wife and daughter have also been unsuccessful.

Months later, Antonio Talavera's family still does not have a death certificate. Despite their best efforts, his relatives have not been able to get a clear picture of what happened at Ely State Prison, the Nevada Department of Corrections, the White Pine County Sheriff's Office or the Clark County Coroner's Office, they say.

“I can’t finish yet,” said Hernandez, who, like Talavera, lives in Reno.

Several officials said that because the investigation into Talavera's death is still ongoing, no information can be released at this time.

The death prompted relatives to question the safety of Ely State Prison, but William “Bill” Quenga, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Corrections, said it is not always possible to control violence within prison walls.

“The prison is not a student dormitory,” Quenga said.

According to spokeswoman Teri Vance, violence at Ely State Prison is on the Nevada Department of Corrections' radar. “We are working to curb the violence,” she said, adding that she was not yet ready to discuss the plans and procedures that would be put in place to do so.

Over the past two years, the department has issued press releases about the deaths of seven people in the prison, three of whom were killed in a brawl there on July 30.

The department refused to release public records such as incident reports, investigative reports and surveillance footage of the incident, arguing that releasing those records “would undermine the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial.”

Talavera was scheduled to be released on parole in July 2025. He was 38.

“A changed man”

Hernandez recalled a conversation with Talavera on April 16, the day of his death, around 1:30 p.m.

According to a Clark County coroner's inquest report provided to the Review-Journal by the White Pine County Sheriff's Office, Talavera was “attacked” at 2:13 p.m. He died from multiple stab wounds and the death was determined to be a homicide.

According to records, the date of the investigation was April 17. The next day, April 18, the agency issued its press release about Talavera's death.

It simply said he was “pronounced dead.” It did not say Talavera was stabbed or that the death was being investigated as a homicide.

Quenga said his office never discloses the circumstances of death in press releases because the determination is made by the medical examiner, not the agency.

“I don't talk to the coroner,” Quenga said, explaining that sometimes he is not even aware of a decision made by the coroner's office.

While the department's policy has previously been to announce only that a death has occurred, Vance said that in the future “we may consider” including in a press release that a death occurred under suspicious circumstances.

“It feels crazy”

Talavera was serving a sentence for burglary with a firearm and possession of a weapon by a prohibited person or former felon, records show. Hernandez said he was charged with a felony in California.

A criminal complaint filed by Hernandez revealed that Talavera had been convicted of grand theft in California.

“According to the prosecution, he should not have been in a place where murderers roamed,” Hernandez said.

Ely State Prison, which according to its website is “the maximum security prison in the state of Nevada,” also houses death row for the state’s male inmates.

Hernandez said she received a letter from Talavera, which she only read after his death, in which he expressed concern for his safety.

“If anything happens to me in there, blame it on the homeboys because it feels crazy and sometimes they go crazy,” the letter said. Hernandez said she understood “homeboys” to be a reference to the prison gang Talavera was associated with.

She remembered Talavera telling her that his gang affiliation was the reason he was being held in Ely State Prison.

“We try to spread our population,” Quenga said, explaining that the more gang members come together, the more active a gang becomes.

However, the department also takes care not to house members of rival gangs in the same facility, Vance explained. This means that some members of the same gang are then housed together by default.

“We're seeing a slight increase in gang activity,” Quenga said. While the department tries to gather intelligence by intercepting calls and interviewing inmates, he said, “sometimes it's just not controllable.”

“My children were born into the gang life,” said Kristen Lovato, Talavera's ex-wife and mother of his five children. She said that was one of the reasons she and her ex-husband went their separate ways. Talavera turned away from that life, she said, but “a little too late.”

“Today with Gracie he was a different person,” Lovato said. “And I loved it.”

Looking for answers

“My daughter had a hard time telling me,” Lovato said, adding that she was one of Talavera's last relatives to learn of his death.

Lovato received a call from Talavera's daughter, Serina Talavera, 19, who took responsibility as her father's next of kin.

At first, Lovato said, her daughter just asked what a family should do when someone dies. When Lovato asked her why she was asking, Serina Talavera said she got a call from Ely State Prison and was told her father had died.

Hernandez, Lovato and Serina Talavera were all put in touch with a White Pine County Sheriff's Office detective who was assigned to the case.

When Lovato said she first called Detective Paul Bath, she was informed that her ex-husband's death had been reported as a homicide and that two other people were involved in the case.

Since then, the detective has not provided any further information, the family said.

“I know the details are hard to accept, but I think we need them to move forward,” Hernandez said. “And that's being denied to us.”

“I can't say much without getting myself in trouble,” Bath told the Review-Journal. The White Pine County Sheriff's Office's investigation into Talavera's death is ongoing.

Before charges can be brought against those involved, Bath said, the investigation must be completed and forwarded to the Office of the Inspector General, which is responsible for conducting criminal investigations into prisons and inmates.

Bath said he has fielded five or six calls from Talavera's relatives and has always returned them within a week or so. “I know that's probably not good enough for a grieving family,” Bath said. “You want answers right away.”

While the Clark County Coroner's Office and the White Pine County Sheriff's Office confirmed Talavera's cause of death, Captain Todd Fincher of the Sheriff's Office stated that no further information would be released “as this is an ongoing homicide investigation.”

Information from inside

In an attempt to call the prison for answers, Lovato managed to reach a nurse who worked at Ely. Although she did not want to give away any information, the nurse told Lovato that if she wanted answers, she should check the Prison Writers website.

Prison Writers is a nonprofit organization with a mission to give incarcerated people a voice on the issues that affect them.

“I founded Prison Writers almost ten years ago for the very specific reason of giving prisoners a voice, because they literally had none,” says Loen Kelley, the organization’s founder.

On July 20, an Ely State Prison inmate named Gilbert Paliotta wrote in a letter to Kelley obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had “witnessed another murder” while in prison in April.

“I have been a hostage in the ESP for thirty (30) years and have never experienced so much violence,” Paliotta wrote.

Paliotta also wrote an article for Prison Writers titled “Inmates are dying at Ely State Prison in Nevada.”

When Lovato visited the site and read Paliotta's story, she believed he was writing about her ex-husband's death because Paliotta referenced a death in April.

“It is known that people die here,” wrote Paliotta.

Vance said the department would need to review the specific allegations in Paliotta's writings before responding.

Bring Talavera home

Serina Talavera embarked on the difficult journey to bring her father home.

“They just started talking to me about cremation,” Serina Talavera said of the initial discussions with the prison. She and her mother, both of whom live in Arkansas, drove to the Giddens Memorial Chapel in Las Vegas to try to work things out.

On April 26, the state granted permission for cremation, according to an email from the chapel. That permission was the first time anyone knew when Antonio Talavera had died, Hernandez said.

Attempts to obtain any records from the medical examiner in person were unsuccessful, his family said. On August 19, a redacted copy of Talavera's autopsy was provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by the Clark County Medical Examiner.

“To this day, we don't have the death certificate or anything else,” said Serina Talavera. “But we have the ashes.”

Serina Talavera, Lovato and Hernandez continue to search for answers inside and outside of prison.

“It's hard for me to sleep at night knowing he's never coming home,” Hernandez said. “The system has failed him in so many ways.”

Contact Estelle Atkinson at [email protected]. Follow @estellelilym on X and @estelleatkinsonreports on Instagram.