I was told a frightening story about a woman’s violent experience with Anthony “Nino” D’Anna. D’Anna was charged (filed May 2017 as State of Nevada v. Anthony Francis Danna, Jr.; Case No. 17F08833X) with “Domestic Battery by Strangulation” and “Domestic Battery.” According to the woman who accused D’Anna, she was beaten, strangled, taken into the desert outside of Las Vegas, dumped, and left for dead.

The case took two years to wind its way through the court system. Ultimately, the late Judge Melanie Tobiasson, who died by a gunshot wound in January 2023, which the Clark County Coroner ruled as a suicide, dismissed the case against D’Anna with the notation on July 6, 2017: “State Not Proceeding (Nolle Prosequi).”

I find this interesting, because I know Tony D’Anna had an intimate personal relationship with Judge Tobiasson for a time, although both publicly denied it. However D’Anna had volunteered information to me that he had sex with the judge in the front seat of a Corvette parked at a very popular Las Vegas restaurant, Peiro’s Italian Cuisine, where they were having dinner that evening.

Even though the two denied having an intimate relationship, media reports (such as a story published online by Las Vegas’s News Channel 8, headlined, “I-TEAM: Las Vegas judge formally accused of abusing her power, improper conduct“, which we are quoting from) documented that, “According to the [Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department], police learned [Judge Tobiasson] had more than 1,000 communications over five months with organized crime figure, Anthony Danna, who she had previously dismissed charges against in her courtroom. Police say she also later communicated with him while he was a fugitive.”

In a separate story published by the Toronto Sun (see image below), longtime journalist Dana Gentry, who writes for the Nevada Current, raised an interesting note about her conversations with Judge Melanie Tobiasson over time while Tobiasson was fighting allegations of ethical impropriety. According to the Toronto Sun story, Gentry was skeptical that Tobiasson committed suicide. Gentry was quoted in the story as saying, “I can’t tell you how many times Melanie told me, ‘If I wind up dead, remember I wasn’t suicidal,’ Dana Gentry told the New York Post. She was being followed, all sorts of things. She was unusual in the sense that she was willing to stand up for the truth even though she knew it might ruin her career.”

That statement by Gentry must also be measured against and considered in addition to the death of another mother who committed suicide within five months of Tobiasson’s death, a woman named Sydney Land, the two, “both spent years fighting the Las Vegas Metro Police Department over what they alleged was a cover-up of a still-unsolved double homicide tied to underage sex trafficking,” The NY Post reported.

“Judge Melanie Andress-Tobiasson, 55, who stepped down from the bench a year ago to avoid an ethics probe, killed herself Jan. 20 at her $2 million Vegas mansion. The Clark County coroner’s office said she died from a gunshot wound.

“Andress-Tobiasson’s one-time friend Connie Land, 53, shot herself to death Aug. 10, 2022, at her Las Vegas home after crusading for six years for justice for her daughter.

“Land’s daughter Sydney Land, 21, was murdered along with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Nehemiah “Neo” Kauffman, a reported pimp, in October 2016. The homicides remain unsolved.” (NY Post; Inside the mysterious suicides of two Las Vegas moms who accused cops of cover-up; By Dana Kennedy; Published Feb. 16, 2023)

How does Sigal Chattah tie into this? Chattah was friends with Tobiasson, also had dinner at Piero’s (shown above) on the evening of the Corvette-Tobiasson-D’Anna “connection.” Chattah knows D’Anna, knows about his criminal background, is friends with him, and represented both Nino and his mother, Erlava D’Anna, in several court cases — one of which resulted in a significant settlement for Nino. Chattah and Tobiasson were connected through the Nevada courts and legal system, and interestingly enough, Tobiasson dismissed the battery case against Nino D’Anna detailed above. What you can’t read between the lines in the cold, antiseptic legal jargon has to come from the victim to fill in the blanks — that she was beaten and strangled by D’Anna, driven into the desert and dumped for dead.

The tentacles of Chattah’s connections should not be underestimated — they run from the highest levels of Nevada state government — and even beyond, to the national level — to the lowest of the low convicted felons, such as Nino D’Anna himself. And Chattah does not shy away from throwing her considerable political weight around; just ask anyone in the hierarchy of the Nevada Republican Party (particularly the Clark County GOP) who would be willing to speak about her honestly on the record.