A lawsuit was filed in Federal Court in Las Vegas naming Morgans Hotel Group, owners of the Hard Rock Hotel and casino, former Morgans Hotel Group COO Ed Scheetz, Scheetz's ex-girlfriend Annie Darrohn, and others are named as defendants in the $645 million wrongful death lawsuit following the death of 23-year-old Michelle Lynn Hatchel on August 29, 2007 in Las Vegas.

Reading like a script from a TV show, this story has everything - a major corporation condoning while underwriting a hedonistic sexually permissive and promiscuous lifestyle, a super-executive with a taste for finer things in life, love and drugs, an on-again off-again divorce featuring a jilted wife and children, jealous ex-girlfriend(s), creative pornography, private jets, $8 million homes, $10 million condos, illegal drugs in lethal quanities, and sex...lots and lots of sex.

Set this story against the glamourous neon flash of Las Vegas in a multi-million dollar penthouse suite high atop the Turnberry Towers overlooking the famous Vegas strip. Throw into the mix the untimely death of a twenty-something young lady found in the bed of the forty-something CEO and you have all the makings of a made-for-TV mystery movie. Did I fail to mention the maybe-we-did and maybe-we-didn't file a report of the "incident" coming from Metro Police, actually, a mote point because the report, whether filed or not, has apparently been misplaced.

Need more for the story line? The deceased was a student at Colombine High School in Littleton, Colorado for a couple of years, moving to Texas two weeks before the tragic events that shocked the nation. And finally, a cell phone with text messages and graphic photos.

So much for the myth, "what happens here stays here," because it didn't. So what happened? A druggie paying the ultimate price for a high or was it something else? Did a crime occur? Was it the doings of a jealous lover from the past? Could it be murder?

Read the full story here and the complete text of the lawsuit.

photo by flipchip • lasvegasvegas.com