LAS VEGAS (AP) – A New Hampshire ex-convict told a police dispatcher the slaying of his girlfriend in a Las Vegas Strip hotel was an accident, and that he was intent on killing himself.

Lawrence Joyce, 34, of Laconia, N.H., did not say why he killed 27-year-old Rebecca Roux, of Sanford, Maine. But he apologized and calmly told the 911 dispatcher that police could find her body in a Treasure Island hotel room, according to a recording of the call released Thursday.

“There is a body on the floor there,” Joyce said. “Please take care of her. OK? Please get her back to her family. OK? And like I said, I’m sorry. It was a (expletive) accident, and it just spiraled out of control.”

About four hours after the 12:15 a.m. Tuesday call to police, Joyce ignored police attempts to stop him from jumping from the dam about 30 miles east of Las Vegas. Police shot Joyce with a Taser stun gun before he plunged more than 700 feet to his death.

Joyce left a note that also did not explain the murder-suicide, police said.

For three minutes and 45 seconds, Joyce urged the dispatcher to send officers to the room. He said he began hallucinating after four drinks in a hotel bar late Monday, and described his own criminal past.

Joyce served just under two years on a 1990 conviction for aggravated felonious sexual assault and criminal mischief, according to the New Hampshire Department of Corrections.

Laconia police said that since 1989 Joyce had been arrested for sexual assault, kidnapping and failure to register as a sex offender.

Joyce had called a co-worker of Roux on Monday afternoon to say that the two had broken up and that she was returning home to Sanford.

Police found Roux’s body in a room on the 29th floor of Treasure Island.

Investigators said she was bludgeoned with the leg of a chair, stabbed with a knife and strangled.

The Clark County coroner’s office determined the cause of death was blunt trauma to the head.

AP-ES-10-01-04 1245EDT