On September 10, 2001, the world was on the brink of a tragedy that would change history forever. But in a hotel room in Los Angeles, a smaller, more intimate horror was unfolding. Larry McNabney, a flamboyant personal injury attorney known for his cowboy boots and television ads featuring him on horseback, was being pushed in a wheelchair. He looked sick. Out of it.
His fifth wife, Elisa, was the one behind the chair.
People at the horse show didn’t think much of it at first. Larry liked his drink, and he’d struggled with sobriety before. They figured he was just having another "episode." Nobody knew that Larry had been injected with enough horse tranquilizer to stop a beast ten times his size.
The murder of Larry McNabney wasn't just a simple case of a wife wanting out. It was a calculated, cold-blooded execution involving a woman with nearly 40 different identities and a 21-year-old art student who got way too close to the flame.
Who Was the Woman Larry Married?
Larry thought he’d found the one. Elisa was smart, capable, and shared his love for quarter horses. She ran his law office with an iron fist and, for a while, it seemed like Larry’s chaotic life was finally settling down.
But Elisa McNabney didn't exist.
The woman Larry called his wife was actually Laren Renee Sims. She was a high school dropout from Florida with a rap sheet longer than most of Larry's legal briefs. We're talking 113 pages of criminal history. Fraud, identity theft, grand larceny—Sims was a professional ghost. She had used 38 different aliases over the years, often stealing the identities of women she met in jail or at work.
When she met Larry in 1995, she was using the name Elisa Barasch, a name she'd lifted from a former cellmate.
By the time they moved their practice from Nevada to Sacramento, the Nevada State Bar had already caught wind of her. She’d allegedly embezzled $140,000 from Larry’s clients. Instead of turning her in, Larry married her. He was a brilliant lawyer, but he was a sucker for Laren. That mistake eventually cost him his life.
The Poisoning and the "Weekend at Bernie's" Nightmare
The actual murder of Larry McNabney started at that Los Angeles horse show. Sims and her secretary, Sarah Dutra, injected Larry with xylazine—a powerful horse tranquilizer.
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What followed was a macabre road trip.
Sims and Dutra bundled an unconscious, dying Larry into his $110,000 horse trailer and started driving. They headed toward Yosemite National Park, originally intending to bury him there. Sarah even started digging a hole. But the ground was too rocky, too hard.
And Larry? He wasn't dead yet.
According to Sims' later confession, Larry was still breathing in the backseat as they drove back to their home in Woodbridge. He was "droopy." He just wanted to sleep. On September 11, 2001—the same day the Twin Towers fell—Larry McNabney finally took his last breath.
While the rest of the country was glued to the news in shock, Sims and Dutra were busy. They wrapped Larry’s body in plastic and duct tape. Then, they shoved him into a refrigerator in the garage.
He stayed there for months.
Living a Lie on Larry’s Dime
You'd think after killing your husband, you'd lay low. Not Laren Sims.
She and Sarah Dutra went on a spending spree. They bought a red Jaguar and a red BMW. They kept the law firm running, telling clients that Larry was in rehab, or in Costa Rica, or had joined a cult. Sims was a master of the "runaround." She even hired a new employee to help manage the workload, which turned out to be her undoing.
Ginger Miller, the new hire, started noticing things didn't add up. She never met her boss. The stories about Larry’s whereabouts kept changing. Eventually, she called the cops.
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In the meantime, the two women finally moved the body. They took Larry out of the fridge and buried him in a shallow grave in a San Joaquin County vineyard.
They thought they were home free.
The Vultures and the Manhunt
In February 2002, a vineyard worker saw something sticking out of the dirt near Linden, California. It was Larry. Or what was left of him.
The discovery of the body turned the investigation into a full-blown manhunt. Sims realized the jig was up. She liquidated about $500,000 of Larry’s assets and vanished. She took her daughter, Haylei Jordan, and headed back to Florida, changing her hair and her name yet again. This time she was "Shane Ivaroni."
The FBI caught up with her in Destin, Florida. She was arrested while lounging by a pool.
When the police finally cornered her, she didn't fight. "I'm the one you're looking for," she reportedly said. She was tired of running. But she wasn't done with the drama.
The Final Twist in the Jail Cell
While awaiting extradition to California, Sims wrote a three-page confession. She laid it all out—the tranquilizer, the drive to Yosemite, the refrigerator. But she didn't take all the blame. She pointed the finger squarely at Sarah Dutra, claiming the 21-year-old was a willing participant who helped her every step of the way.
Then, on Easter Sunday 2002, Laren Sims hanged herself in her jail cell using a bedsheet.
She left behind a suicide note that was pure narcissism. She asked her lawyer to sue the jail for not preventing her suicide so her children could have the money. She died as she lived: trying to find a way to work the system.
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What Happened to Sarah Dutra?
With Sims dead, the state of California went after Sarah Dutra with everything they had.
The trial was a media circus. Dutra’s defense portrayed her as a "baby," an innocent art student who had fallen under the hypnotic spell of a "black widow." They argued she was terrified of Sims and only helped because she felt she had no choice.
The prosecution saw it differently. They showed photos of Dutra smiling and enjoying the high life after the murder. They talked about the BMW. They talked about the shopping trips.
Ultimately, the jury didn't buy the "first-degree murder" charge. In 2003, Dutra was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and being an accessory to murder. She got the maximum sentence: 11 years and 8 months.
She served 85% of that time and was released from the Central California Women's Facility in August 2011. Since then, she has largely disappeared from the public eye.
Lessons from the Case
The murder of Larry McNabney is a dark reminder of how easily a "successful" life can be dismantled by a professional predator. Larry wasn't perfect—his struggles with alcohol and his penchant for quick marriages made him vulnerable.
If you are looking for takeaways from this bizarre saga, consider these points:
- Check the Background: In a professional setting, especially law or finance, verify identities. Sims used 38 aliases because people rarely looked past the surface.
- Trust the Red Flags: Employees like Ginger Miller are often the first to notice when something is wrong. If a story doesn't make sense, it's usually because it isn't true.
- The "High Life" Fallacy: Sudden displays of wealth (like new luxury cars) immediately following a disappearance are almost always a smoking gun in forensic investigations.
Today, Larry's story lives on in true crime documentaries and TV movies like Lies My Mother Told Me. It remains one of the most twisted examples of domestic homicide in California history, a tale of horses, law, and a woman who could never stop being someone else.
To stay informed on similar historical cases, you can research the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department archives or look into the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) records regarding the release of Sarah Dutra. Many true crime enthusiasts also recommend reading "Marked for Death" by Brian J. Karem for a deeper dive into the courtroom drama.