Brandon Tenorio received 20 years to life after admitting first-degree murder in the 2023 death of Kourtney Glover.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — A first-degree murder plea has resolved the central prosecution against Brandon Tenorio, who received 20 years to life in prison for killing his girlfriend, Kourtney Glover, after entering an agreement with prosecutors nearly three years after her death.
Chief District Judge Tierra Jones imposed the sentence Sept. 10 after prosecutors and Tenorio agreed to recommend that punishment in exchange for his guilty plea. The agreement is the clearest point from which to understand the current legal status of the case: allegations filed immediately after Glover’s death in December 2023 were replaced by Tenorio’s formal admission to first-degree murder. Earlier records had listed open murder and other charges connected with events inside the northwest Las Vegas home. By sentencing, however, there was no unresolved question in the criminal case about whether Tenorio was legally responsible for Glover’s murder. He had admitted the offense to which he was sentenced.
The progression matters because the public record developed in stages. Tenorio was 39 when Las Vegas police arrested him on Dec. 20, 2023. Justice Court records the next day listed open murder, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon on an older person. Later police-report coverage described kidnapping allegations associated with his grandmother’s attempt to flee the residence. Those initial charges represented accusations, not findings of guilt. Tenorio was ordered held without bail while the case proceeded. By the time of his 2026 sentencing, he was 42 and had chosen to plead guilty to first-degree murder under the agreement described in court coverage.
Glover’s identity and the basic circumstances of her death were established publicly soon after the arrest. The Clark County coroner’s office identified her as a 36-year-old Las Vegas resident on Dec. 22, 2023. Police said officers had found her dead inside a home in the 3500 block of Mountain Valley Drive, near Fort Apache Road and Gowan Road. Authorities described blunt-force injuries and stab wounds. The early public statements did not contain the detailed narrative that later emerged from an arrest report, but they established the location, the relationship between Tenorio and Glover, and the fact that officers had arrested him after responding to the residence.
The arrest report added an eyewitness account from Tenorio’s grandmother. She told investigators she was upstairs when she heard a loud thud and went to see what had happened. According to the report, she encountered Tenorio standing over Glover while Glover was on the floor and saw him striking her with a hammer. The grandmother tried to intervene, police said, but Tenorio pushed her aside. Her statement became one of the principal accounts of what happened before officers reached the scene. Because the description came through a police report, it was initially an attributed witness account rather than a judicial finding.
Police said the grandmother then attempted to leave through the garage. Tenorio followed her and pulled her back inside, according to the arrest report, while telling her he would not kill her. She later escaped again and went to a neighbor’s home, where she called 911. Officers arrived shortly afterward. The grandmother’s account helped explain why the earliest court records extended beyond the homicide allegation to include kidnapping and an assault charge involving an older person. The later guilty plea reported in the sentencing coverage was specifically to first-degree murder, and the available sentencing report does not describe separate convictions on those early companion allegations.
Tenorio’s encounter with arriving officers supplied another part of the prosecution record. Police said he walked from the residence with his hands raised and blood on his hands and arms. The arrest report quoted him as saying, “I did it. I killed her.” Officers found Glover at the base of the stairs near the kitchen and pronounced her dead. Investigators reported recovering a bloody hammer from a downstairs bathroom and three bloody kitchen knives from the kitchen. Those observations and recovered items were documented separately from Tenorio’s later interview, giving investigators several categories of information to work with after his arrest.
During that interview, Tenorio made claims about what he had been experiencing before the killing. Police said he reported hearing voices and believing that other people wanted to kill him. He described one voice telling him that it was time to kill or be killed. He also claimed that a message on the Signal app told him to kill his grandmother, and he described a gas truck outside the residence as part of what he believed was a threat. Tenorio said he interpreted Glover’s use of a light as signaling to someone outside. Police recorded those statements as Tenorio’s account. The reporting reviewed for this article does not establish that the perceived plot or threat existed independently of his claims.
Tenorio also described using a hammer and knife against Glover, police said. The arrest report contained disturbing details about the sequence, but the later guilty plea is more legally significant than the original interview for determining his status today. In 2023, investigators were collecting statements and evidence against a suspect. In 2026, Tenorio personally admitted first-degree murder in court. That distinction also affects how the case should be described: early reports properly referred to alleged conduct and pending charges, while the completed plea allows the killing itself to be attributed to Tenorio as an admitted and convicted offense.
The sentencing hearing then moved away from the investigative details and toward punishment and impact. Glover’s father, William Davis, expressed anger and told the judge he wanted Tenorio to serve his time. Glover’s sister, Ashley Davis, said the defendant had taken a decision over life and death that was not his to make. She told the court, “There is no sentence long enough to restore what he took.” Their remarks emphasized that the negotiated sentence settled the criminal punishment but could not provide the kind of restoration the family said was impossible after Glover’s death.
Tenorio’s defense presented a different part of the sentencing record without challenging his responsibility. Tenorio apologized and said he accepted full responsibility. Special Public Defender Caitlyn McAmis told Jones that significant substance abuse and mental health problems had gone untreated at the time of the killing. She called what happened to Glover a tragedy. The comments echoed elements of Tenorio’s 2023 police interview, in which he reported voices and perceived threats, but the defense statement was made in the context of sentencing mitigation. The sources reviewed do not show the judge making an independent medical finding about Tenorio’s condition when the crime occurred.
Jones ultimately imposed the sentence contemplated by the plea agreement: 20 years to life. The outcome gave the prosecution a first-degree murder conviction and fixed Tenorio’s minimum prison term, while avoiding any need to rely on the unresolved status of the original open-murder allegation when describing the case today. The sentencing also provided Glover’s relatives a public opportunity to address the court. Their statements, Tenorio’s apology and the defense’s mitigation came after the most consequential legal decision had already been made by the defendant himself — his guilty plea.
Tenorio remains under the life sentence imposed for Glover’s murder. No subsequent ruling changing that sentence was identified in the material reviewed for this report. The case that began with multiple allegations in December 2023 therefore stands, as of Oct. 21, 2026, as a first-degree murder conviction resolved by plea and punished with a minimum 20-year prison term.
Author note: Last updated October 21, 2026.