William Derr, of Pahrump, was bound over to Fifth District Court Tuesday for a number of charges including sexual assault and kidnapping.

A request by his defense attorney prior to the ruling to reduce his bail from $100,000 actually resulted in its increase to $250,000.

Derr was arrested last March after becoming a suspect in three separate incidents that occurred throughout the valley, including two sexual assaults and one attempted sexual assault.

He was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of battery and sentenced to five months in jail for the latter incident, which occurred April 1 at Valley Bar.

His arrest was the result of an investigation that led not only to him but also to a dark hatchback vehicle parked outside his house.

Tuesday Derr stood in court for his preliminary hearing to face charges for the two sexual assaults.

Whether by face or by voice, Derr stood accused by both victims in court.

The first crime took place March 7, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10054.

The bartender who worked that night was sexually assaulted after closing up the building.

Her hands and ankles were bound with zip ties and she was left lying in back of the building until discovered the following morning by Tom Vick, the VFW commander.

For his alleged involvement in that crime, Derr is facing one charge of sexual assault and one charge of first-degree kidnapping.

The second incident occurred three days later at a private residence when the victim had a knife held to her throat and was assaulted in her bedroom.

Derr faces a charge of sexual assault, first-degree kidnapping, battery with intent to commit a crime, assault with a deadly weapon, and three counts of unlawful use of a controlled substance.

The events that occurred at the VFW unfolded through the testimony of numerous witnesses.

Pauline Haynes, the usual bartender on Wednesday nights, (the victim of the assault was subbing her shift) testified that during the course of several weeks prior to the assault on the victim a man had come into the VFW bar around closing time.

The first time, Haynes said, the man came in and used the bathroom for an unusually long time. Another man went in and told the latecomer he had to leave.

Haynes further testified that a similar incident occurred with the same man on a following Wednesday night, also around 8 p.m.

She said this time the man came in during a meeting and once again said he was having car trouble and asked to use the phone to call for a ride.

Pauline later identified Derr in a photo line up.

The victim testified next, telling the court a chilling account of her experience.

She said she was closing the bar on Wednesday night when a man came from around the corner, carrying a pipe and wearing what she described as thick gloves.

According to the victim, the man demanded that she re-open the bar and when she refused, they got into a shouting match.

At that point, the assailant forced her to the back of the building and beat her a number of times on the back of her head and neck prior to sexually assaulting her.

After the assault, she said she heard him take her car and drive it to the back of the building, then drive a different vehicle away.

Later, she said she saw a dark hatchback car pull up at the street, stop for about 10 minutes and drive away.

Although the victim testified she did not see his face because he was wearing a hood, she said he spoke to her in a gravelly voice throughout the assault, telling her if she was in California she'd be dead.

His voice, the victim said, was how she came to identify Derr.

On April 1, the day of the incident for which Derr was recently convicted, the victim said she stopped by Valley Bar to drop off a couple of packs of cigarettes for a friend that worked there.

She was about to go home when her friend asked her not to leave because there was a dark hatchback in the parking lot.

The friend later identified a dark hatchback that was parked outside Derr's house as the car she had seen.

At that point, several men came into the bar and ordered some drinks, at which point the victim said she recognized the voice of her assailant.

"I started shaking as soon as I heard that voice," she testified.

Bob Glennan, Derr's defense attorney, asked Derr at that point to say the phrase about California aloud.

After his client did this, the victim said she could not be sure. However, she added that the tone Derr used in court was not the same as the one used at the time.

When Glennan questioned her as to why she did not pick out Derr's voice from a vocal line-up (she actually picked out someone else's voice), she said that voices always sound different to her after being recorded.

The victim of the second assault, according to Dep. Moore, identified Derr by name even before being shown a photo line-up because she knew him at the time of the assault.

She testified that Derr had dated her former roommate and had come over and begun chatting with her.

It was at this time she found out that Derr's children lived near her, and she informed him that there had been some problems with them.

He offered to give her a phone number to call if the kids were a problem again and followed her into the house.

After writing his number down on a sheet of paper, using a known alias of his, the victim alleged Derr held one of her kitchen knives to her throat and forced her into the bedroom where he assaulted her.

Before leaving, she said the perpetrator told her if she told anyone about the incident, he would kill her. She later identified Derr in photo line-up and said he had a red mark on his chest.

Glennan questioned the victim as to why she washed the knife allegedly used by Derr, the clothes she wore during the assault, and why she did not go into Las Vegas to be examined for rape.

She testified that she was in fear for her life and the police did not ask for the clothes she had been wearing, which she was forced to remove herself.

Later testimony by former sheriff's Det. Mike McGrath revealed that Derr had told him that the victim had been rejected romantically by Derr, but that he admitted to speaking to the neighbor and living next door to her.

Glennan argued that the inconsistencies in the attacks were enough to clear his client.

"One (attack) we have hidden face, professional job, one we have right in front of somebody he knows and no effort to hide who he is," Glennan pointed out. "Then we've got he beats the woman repeatedly, in the other one he holds a knife and there's no hitting at all. One case he's wearing gloves, in the other he's bare-handed. In one incident he's got a gravelly voice, in another it's a normal voice. The similarities are impossible to put to the same person."

In regard to the VFW assault, Glennan stressed that the victim could not pick Derr out of a photo line-up and picked out the wrong voice from the vocal line-up, in spite of claiming to recognize his voice later at Valley Bar and having looked at him then.

The hatchback, according to the defense attorney, was also a mistaken link.

"We've had no evidence that Mr. Derr had any access to such a vehicle," Glennan added.

"Every single piece of evidence that could show that something happened is not collected," Glennan pointed out. "It's almost like the evidence was being destroyed on purpose. Why would she do that? Maybe it's because he wouldn't be with her, so she had to say it was a rape."

Prosecutor Kirk Vitto, however, pointed out Derr could very well have had a scratch on him from the VFW attack that had healed.

Furthermore, Vitto pointed out that Derr admitted to having been at the second victim's residence at the time of the attack and having a conversation with her, thus placing himself at the scene of the crime.

The prosecutor also emphasized Derr's recent conviction for the Valley Bar attack, which he indicated gave credence to the first victim's testimony about hearing his voice there that day.

Ultimately, Justice of the Peace Tina Brisebill ruled that Derr should be bound over to the District level, further stating that the evidence convinced her the bail should be increased, not reduced.