Less than three weeks before she was slain by her neighbor, Mildred Olivo hosted a birthday pool party for her great-grandson.
She reveled in putting smiles on the children, so she bought a variety of snacks, as well as floaties and goggles with a snorkel for the boy’s younger sister. The family jovially splashed in the water.
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At the home Olivo rented for the occasion, she cooked their father — her grandson Jose Roman, 34 — his favorite dish: Puerto Rican piñon, a Caribbean lasagna of sorts, over white rice, topped with a fried egg.
Roman, of Tucson, Ariz., truly believes that Olivo, 71, was “the best grandma in the world.”
They last spoke on June 21 when she told Roman how proud she was of the man he had become. Later, he sent a text message to remind her how much she meant to him.
Andrew Cote
“Unfortunately, I never got a text back,” Roman said. “And we know why.”
A violent, abrupt end
Olivo and her partner, Timothy Darnell Hanson, 54, were allegedly shot and killed on June 25 by Andrew Cote, the woman’s next-door neighbor who she had been feuding with for more than a decade.
“I feel like I was robbed,” said Roman about the tragic way his grandmother was killed, not by an illness nor through natural causes. “It’s not a death that you were able to warm up to, and count the days and appreciate the last ones.”
Metro Police responded to three distinctive shotgun blasts at 4413 Mossy Rock Court in central Las Vegas to find a gruesome scene in Olivo’s backyard. Police said Cote shot Hanson and Olivo from across a wall separating the properties. And when Cote saw a wounded Hanson still moving, police say he fired another round.
The victims weren’t armed and Cote told homicide detective he couldn’t see the victims’ hands. Cote had grabbed his shotgun because he said Hanson was yelling at him over the wall.
Police did not find any other weapons at the scene. The slayings were caught on video.
Cote is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of murder, without the possibility of bail.
It wasn’t clear what set off the yearslong neighborhood dispute, or when. But Olivo told many friends about the man next door who would torment her, Roman said.
The feud led to numerous calls to Metro from both parties. This year alone, police dispatch logs show seven reports originating from Olivo’s address. The last call was the afternoon of the killings, when Cote complained that Olivo had sprayed him and one of his children with a garden hose, police said.
A pair of neighbors told the Sun about a tiff regarding Olivo’s sun-bathing habits in which Cote would yell at the woman to put on clothes, while Olivo shouted back about her right to privacy on her own property. But while the wall between the houses didn't provide much separation, someone in Cote's yard would have to "tiptoe" to glance into Olivo's backyard, Roman said.
Olivo also enjoyed music and having friends over, festivities in which she loved to dance, Roman said. But those get-togethers prompted Cote to call in several noise complaints to police, which Roman said she was never cited for. “You’re free to do whatever it is that you want in your own privacy,” he said.
At some point, Cote filed a restraining order against Olivo, which was served in April, police said. Her grandson said her motion to do the same had been denied, leaving him perplexed about how a man half Olivo’s age would fear her.
“What was this guy thinking?” Roman said. “For him to have this issue with such an old woman. She’s a little old lady,” adding, “I was raised to have respect: You respect your elders and you help the elderly, and you’re kind to the elderly. You don’t do something like this.”
A record of the restraining order wasn’t immediately visible through searches of court logs.
In recent months, Olivo had grown scared when Cote allegedly started recording her on her property, Roman said. And recently, she started to invite people to her house more often — not to party, but to protect her, Roman said.
"Mama Millie"
Looking for a different life than what she had in Monticello, N.Y., Olivo made Las Vegas her home more than 25 years ago.
She found a job and a place to live. And soon, her daughter and her young grandson, Roman, moved here.
Roman fondly remembers his grandmother helping raise him. She would clothe and feed him, drop him off at school and pick him up while his mother worked. Olivo was a hotel housekeeper before she retired.
She moved to the property on Mossy Rock Court and took over a house that “looked like trash” more than 12 years ago. Olivo easily made friends such as Hanson, who she befriended before dating on and off for years. She was close to a homeless man in the neighborhood whom she helped feed and clothe.
“She made an impact through kindness,” Roman said. They called her “Mama Millie,” "G’ma Millie,” or “Momma Dukes.”
In the months leading to her death, as if she sensed the end was near, she began to rekindle lost relationships, such as with Roman’s mom or a friend whom she’d owed money to. “I have that money. It will help,” she told that friend.
“She was just so happy and she wanted to do so much better and do more,” Roman said.
Roman would like to ask Cote: “Why? Why? What did she do or what happened so bad that you had to go and do what you did. Why?”
Cote didn’t provide much of a reason in his arrest report. He said Hanson had just arrived at Olivo’s house and that he was scared when the man yelled at him. So, he grabbed a shotgun and pulled the trigger.
A plate of food Olivo had fixed Hanson was waiting for him in the microwave. It was still there when detectives searched the house.
“She was in love with him,” Roman said, “And it’s sad to say, (but) at least she didn’t die alone.”