The Kidnapping of Kevyn Wynn: When a Casino Mogul's Daughter Was Taken

During the early 1990s, there was no bigger name in Las Vegas than Steve Wynn. The Forbes list-topping executive had launched some of Sin City’s most iconic and most successful casinos, including the now-shuttered volcano-themed Mirage Hotel and Casino, which debuted in 1989, and the swashbuckling Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, which opened its doors to great fanfare on October 26, 1993.

Three months earlier, though, on July 26, 1993, one of Wynn’s two daughters was kidnapped at gunpoint by a pair of masked men who hid outside her home for hours, waiting for her to return from work. The kidnappers then phoned the casino mogul demanding $2.5 million in ransom cash for the 26-year-old’s safe return.

The unsettling abduction of Kevyn Wynn ended up dominating newspaper headlines for weeks after she was found on July 27, 1993, unharmed but restrained inside her own car, which the criminals left parked at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport.

Within hours of receiving Kevyn’s captors’ demands, Steve, 51 at the time, managed to negotiate his daughter’s release. He took $1.45 million in $100 bills from the vault inside the cage at the Mirage and had his chauffeur deliver the money to the two kidnappers in the parking lot of Sonny’s Saloon, a bar where the kidnappers planned their caper.

Steve, who got his start in gaming in Atlantic City, N.J., did all of this without ever involving the local authorities.

“We do not have a big history of kidnappings and disappearances, despite the mob history, so this was big news,” Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Wynn often was treated very carefully in the local media, because he was a big name with big money and he did not object to throwing his own weight around. Kevyn was not harmed physically, but mentally, I am sure it was a horrific experience—and it was, of course, very difficult for her sister [Gillian] and her parents.”

The two suspects threatened to release photographs of Kevyn that were taken after she was forced to strip down to her underwear. The men also taped her eyes shut.

Beyond rough sketches of the two suspects, the police had almost no evidence to work with. But detectives wouldn’t have to wait long before there was a break in the investigation.

“This was not a pair of geniuses, to say the least,” Green says of the kidnappers. “We are not talking about criminal masterminds here.”

Within days of the frightening home abduction, one of Kevyn’s captors—a former blackjack dealer and health club manager named Ray Marion Cuddy—waltzed into a Southern California Ferrari dealership carrying $70,000 in cash, hoping to drive away with a white 1992 Ferrari 512TR. The bills from the Mirage vault were “easily traceable,” Green says, so when Cuddy, 47, tried spending them on a luxury sports car, it triggered an alert to federal authorities.

“On the one hand, it took some form of weird courage to do all of this,” Green says. “On the other hand, it also took a great deal of stupidity.”

During his interrogation by FBI agents, Cuddy eventually gave up the name of his accomplice, 23-year-old Jacob Harold Sherwood. Both men were federally indicted on conspiracy, extortion, interference with interstate commerce by threats or violence and using a firearm in a crime of violence charges and two counts of siding and abetting. Cuddy was also charged with money laundering ,and Sherwood was charged with conspiracy to launder monetary instruments; Anthony Watkins, 20, who served as the lookout for the kidnapping, spoke to investigators, and received six and a half years in prison for his cooperation. The FBI recovered around $900,000 of the ransom money.

Calvin Chrustie, an international security expert with three decades of experience in kidnapping negotiations, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that kidnappings for ransom are more prevalent than we even know, noting most are never reported to police.

“Criminal-on-criminal kidnapping is probably the most common, with criminals targeting so-called ‘innocent victims’ less common,” Chrustie says. “Kidnappings, historically around the world, have been a fairly common conflict resolution technique, used by tribal groups and drug dealers in Columbia to collect debts. It isn’t as mainstream in the U.S. and Canada.”

After rejecting plea deals, Cuddy and Sherwood were tried and convicted in 1994, with Cuddy sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison; he was released in 2015. Sherwood received a 19-year sentence, and was freed from prison in 2010. Neither Cuddy nor Sherwood responded to A&E + Investigation’s request for comment.

“This case is a reminder that even multimillionaires can be human beings,” Green suggests. When John L. Smith published a biography of Wynn in 1995, titled Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn, the casino mogul sued Smith and the publisher because of the book

Wynn “put the publisher out of business,” according to Green, “and he bankrupted Smith, who was very careful and quoting specific documents from New Jersey, where Wynn had gotten licensed.” In 2001, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the $3.1 million jury verdict against the book publisher.

Wynn was eventually compelled to sell his stake in Wynn Resorts International in 2018 as part of a deal valued at $2.1 billion, after the Wall Street Journal reported on multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, coercion and assault that were made against Wynn by subordinate employees—including a manicurist he paid a $7.5 million settlement to after she accused him of raping her in 2005.

Despite denying the sexual harassment allegations, the fallout from the news reports resulted in multimillion-dollar fines against Wynn, and his exit from the gaming industry. Wynn is now a prominent Republican donor who Forbes estimates is worth $3.9 billion.

Kevyn now lives in Los Angeles where she works in fashion as a designer.