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•IOIS joins Kindervision in Protecting Children and Training Police, March 2004
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•The Face of King Tut, CBS News October 2002
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•Unlocking the Past The King Tut Investigation
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•Deserving Another Chance? August 12, 2001 - Salt Lake Tribune
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•UTAP Addition Faked Her Own Death May 1, 2001 - Standard Examiner, Ogden, Utah
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•Layton Murder Added to Website March 9, 2001 - Standard Examiner, Ogden, Utah
Crime Team Nabs Its First Killer
The Salt Lake Tribune Types: Utah Published: 12/23/1998
Byline: BY GREG BURTON THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Little Ian Wing 7 weeks old fell asleep for good on Feb. 23, 1996. Wrapped tightly in a blanket and finally unable to scream, the Clearfield infant died of suffocation, the Utah Medical Examiner would eventually rule, although the exact cause of death would be in doubt for a year. More curious, and unexplained for nearly three years, were the 29 rib fractures, the two broken legs and the cracked left arm. "It was a short, bleak life," says Lt. Mike King, an investigator for the Utah Attorney General who picked up the stalled, 2-year-old death investigation in March. The case eventually was added to the docket of the fledgling Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP), a crime-fighting team modeled on the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP). Ian's father would eventually tell King that the child's screaming was a bother and he would squeeze the boy until he was silent. In seven weeks, he squeezed Ian to silence five times.
On Tuesday, Mark Wing, 34, pleaded guilty to second-degree felony manslaughter in the death of his infant son, ending a criminal mystery that had tripped over the father's persistent denials of any wrongdoing and his ex-wife's defense of her son's father. Wing, who faces up to 15 years in prison, will be sentenced on Feb. 2 in 2nd District Court. "Some may consider this a victory for the state, but I've been pretty sick all day," says King. "I keep reflecting that in a couple weeks this baby would be celebrating his third birthday. Instead, he's [in] a graveyard. I don't think there were any winners in this."
Wing's conviction is the first for UTAP and comes about a year after King and Provo Police Chief Greg Cooper, an ex-FBI profiler who worked at VICAP, organized the project. A clearinghouse rather than a task force, UTAP gathers experts in forensic medicine, psychiatry and crime-scene analysis to screen unsolved cases for local law enforcement. UTAP has no budget and will only go where invited. Two years after Ian's death, detectives in Clearfield appealed to the AG's child-abuse unit for assistance. When King joined the investigation, he enlisted UTAP. "It's really just a resource for local jurisdictions," says Cooper, who along with King, the Utah Medical Examiner's Office and other UTAP experts, is assisting several rural Utah sheriffs with their unsolved homicides. "In a way, we're just there to brainstorm solutions."
The first thing King completed for Clearfield was a profile of Mark Wing. The mental analysis was bizarre and enlightening. What King allegedly discovered was a history of drugs and animal cruelty, he says, and a pattern of violence to his former wives. "But the thing that really pushed me over the edge and targeted him as a suspect was he had a fixation on two children being the perfect size of a family," King says. "It is something he often talked about." Ian's mother, Cara Wing, already had two children when she married Mark. Several months after they got married, she became pregnant, but Mark Wing forced her to have an abortion, investigators allege, and he got a vasectomy. It was too late Cara was pregnant again, this time with Ian. Other factors may have led to Ian's death. His mother was working two jobs to support the five-member family. Mark Wing was unemployed and spent his days caring for Ian and his two siblings.
On the night Ian died, Mark Wing squeezed his baby, placed it in its crib, and then fell asleep. He discovered the dead infant at 8:30 a.m. the next morning. At 10 a.m., he called police. "Our investigators worked very hard," says Clearfield Police Chief Morton Sparks. "When they see a child that's thought to be abused, and possibly killed from the abuse, they fret over it. Anytime you have something like this, people are left wondering grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. At least now they can start the healing process."
© Copyright 1990-2000, The Salt Lake Tribune
Should Women Fight Off Rapists?
New Information May Help Victims Defeat Sexual Assailants
Oct. 27, 1999
By Ruth Papazian
NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- Cold statistics underscore the stark reality that haunts all women in America: Rape is a common event here. In fact, somewhere in the country, a woman is raped every six minutes.
A 1992 study by the National Center for Victims of Crime found that one in eight females has been the victim of forcible rape or attempted rape sometime during her lifetime. Last year, the Department of Justice recalculated the odds of such sexual assaults as one in five.
That means that one in five women will eventually be faced with making a decision about how to respond when suddenly confronted by a rapist.
If you are that target female, what should you do? Fight like a tiger? Meekly submit? Try to talk the assailant out of it? Those questions and the issues they raise have long been the subject of contentious debate and contradictory advice.
Resist or submit
Women's self-defense experts say that if you find yourself in a situation where your only choices are to resist or to submit, you should weigh your chances of escaping, attracting help or incapacitating the assailant. "Some rapists might hurt you more, or kill you, if you fight back," said Christine Fowley, MSW, manager of the rape crisis program at Saint Vincent's Hospital in New York City. "On the other hand, some rapists might back off if you fight. You have to use your best judgment, given the situation."
"The most recent research [on] victim responses [shows that] in certain circumstances and with certain personalities of rapists, there is at least a possibility of avoiding the humiliating experience of being raped," said Cora Mosely, a professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas (Arlington).
In fact, using methods not unlike those employed by FBI profilers to predict the behavior of serial killers, police and forensic psychologists have identified four profiles of rapists defined by motive, style of attack and psychosexual characteristics. They are:
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•The power-assertive rapist
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•The anger-retaliation rapist
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•The power-reassurance rapist
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•The anger-excitation rapist
More importantly, such rapist behaviour profiles provide information that may be helpful in determining how best to respond to a specific kind of attacker.
"If you're given a chance to think, you should consider these characteristics," in the split-second you have to assess your chances of survival if you struggle or succumb, said forensic psychologist Robert Geffner, Ph.D, founder and president of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute of San Diego, Calif.
These are the characteristics of each of the four rapist profiles:
Power-assertive rapist: Athletic, he has a "macho" image of himself. More often than not, this is the type who commits date rapes. He typically meets his victim in a bar or nightclub. Instead of targeting a specific victim, he looks for an opportunity to get a woman alone with him -- perhaps with an offer of a ride home or an invitation back to his place. Alternatively, he may con his victim into trusting him or letting him into her home, perhaps by posing as a policeman or repairman. Approximately 44 percent of rapes are committed by power-assertive rapists.
Anger-retaliatory rapist: He feels animosity towards women and wants to punish and degrade them. Often, he is a substance abuser. He is impulsive, and has an explosive temper. He looks for an opportunity to commit the rape, rather than for a specific victim. He attacks spontaneously and brutalizes the woman into submission. Thirty percent of rapists fall into the anger-retaliation category.
Power-reassurance rapist: He lacks the self-confidence and interpersonal skills to develop relationships with women. He is passive and nonathletic. He lives or works near his victim, and "preselects" her by peeping or stalking. He typically breaks into her home (often entering through an open window or unlocked door) in the wee hours of the morning and awakens her. He uses minimal force, and will threaten her with a weapon -- but usually does not have one. He fantasizes that he is his victim's lover, so he may ask her to disrobe or to wear a negligee and he will kiss her and engage in foreplay. The power-reassurance type accounts for 21 percent of rapists.
Anger-excitation rapist: A sadist, he derives sexual gratification from inflicting pain. He is typically charming and intelligent. The crime is premeditated and rehearsed methodically in his mind before it is attempted. His victims may or may not be strangers. He will tie, gag and blindfold them and torture them over a period of days, even recording his crimes in a diary, taking photographs or videotaping them. Just five percent of rapists fit this description.
While authorities generally agree that rapist profiles are useful in planning defense responses, they don't completely agree on what those responses should be. Here's what some say about the four profiles.
Power-assertive rapist
"He is physically aggressive, and will use the amount of force needed to control you -- degrading or obscene language, [brandishing] a weapon, slapping or punching -- but he does not intend to kill you," said Greg Cooper, Chief of Police, Provo, Utah. He has interrogated a large number of rapists over the past 10 years.
"Generally, begging and crying doesn't work with this guy," said Cooper. "If you're going to resist, you've got to be serious. You've got to scream and fight him as hard as you can to get away."
Women's self-defense instructor Kevin Brady agreed, but does not believe that the presence of a weapon should necessarily be the deciding factor in whether you should resist or fight. "If you react in an unexpected way you could survive. You can outwit someone with a knife." Geffner cited a case in which a woman "acted crazy" and so unnerved her would-be rapist that he fled.
Fowley conceded the point, but added that a woman may be too paralyzed by fear to do anything to resist, and shouldn't second-guess her decision. "If no weapon is involved, a woman may feel guilty for not fighting back. Even if she tried to resist, she may blame herself for not fighting hard enough."
Anger-retaliatory rapist
"He will grab you from behind and drag you into the bushes. He will often beat you to near-unconsciousness before committing the rape," said Cooper. "Any level of resistance may well enrage him and cause him to beat the hell out of you until he gets what he wants. He's not looking to kill you, but the beating could be fatal."
"You do not want to challenge or enrage this type of rapist," said Geffner. "You could try to escape. If you cannot get away or incapacitate the assailant, it's best to submit and try to limit the level of violence of the assault to the extent that you can."
"I absolutely agree with that advice," said Mosley. "Your goal is to come out alive, so if your instinct tells you that fighting is not the thing to do, you just have to cut your losses."
Power-reassurance rapist
"He is the least violent type of rapist, and does not intend to hurt or kill you," said Cooper. "Among the different types of rapists, he is most likely to be dissuaded if you scream, cry, plead or fight."
"In general, it is more probable that you can discourage a rapist who uses this [power reassurance] approach. But you could instead be dealing with a power assertive rapist who is starting off with a softer approach," warns Geffner.
He recommends trying nonviolent tactics -- crying, pleading, praying aloud -- while you're sizing up the assailant. "If it works, you may be able to escape the situation. But if he responds by becoming verbally abusive or degrading, [he is] likely a power assertive rapist and you will have to evaluate whether you are capable of fighting him off."
"Women need to rely on their instincts. When confronted with a rapist they will try various techniques. In this situation, take full advantage of your instincts in trying to figure out which type of rapist you are dealing with," said Mosley.
Anger-excitation rapist
"He is evil incarnate. Of the four types, he is the most criminally sophisticated and it's difficult to catch him," said Cooper. "He's got absolute control over you so there's no question of any type of resistance or of escaping. Oftentimes he kills his victims, either to get rid of a witness or to gratify a psychosexual need."
"This is probably the most dangerous situation a woman can be in. If you're tied up, you're going to have to match wits with this guy and trick him or talk him into untying you so you have at least some chance of escape," said Geffner.
"Just pray you never cross paths with this guy," said Mosley. But she's doubtful about a victim's ability to escape. "If you consider how frightened the victim is when she is being tortured and humiliated, I don't know if she will be rational enough under that kind of pressure to trick this rapist. He's probably had a lot of practice in carrying out his mayhem."
'Most rapists are not murderers'
It is less likely that a woman - even one who has taken a women's self-defense course -- can overcome the intensity of the violence that an anger rapist will inflict, said Geffner. But power rapists commit nearly two-thirds of all rapes, and Fowler believes you have a fighting chance to fend them off. "If you assess the situation and feel confident of your ability to fight or talk your way out of [being raped], go ahead and do it," said Fowley. "Most rapists are not murderers."
"There are women who have yelled or fought back, whether they've taken self-defense classes or not, and have not gotten raped," said Brady. "To tell a woman 'don't do anything, be the passive female' is absolute (nonsense)."
While cautioning that "every case is different and there are always exceptions," Cooper added, "If there's even a [slight] chance of getting away or living the rest of your life as a rape victim, is it worth it [to resist]? It's a question every woman has to answer for herself. It's as foolish to discourage resistance as it is to prescribe the same course of action for all women."
"Given that the goal of all women who are in imminent danger of being raped is to avoid it, they should rely on their instincts rather than assume that they have to submit. There are several other courses of action you may be able to take," said Mosely.
But whatever her instincts tell her to do, "If a woman survives, she made the right choice," as Fowley put it.
A DESOLATE DUMPING GROUND FOR KILLERS
Unknown Victims, Unsolved Murders Plague Great Basin
Sept. 7, 1999
NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- The Great Basin, a vast, arid bowl sprawling between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, gets its name from an odd geographical trait: Its few rivers find no outlet to the sea. Instead, they dribble into the basin's low spots and evaporate.
Water isn't the only thing that collects in the empty expanses of the Great Basin. Since 1983, killers have found the region's lonely highway interchanges the perfect dumping grounds for corpses.
In the Great Basin states of Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and Idaho, authorities are investigating the deaths of nine women whose bodies turned up near highways that cross the empty scrub land.
Vestiges of deadly violence
The women were strangled, shot, stabbed. Many were stripped nude, aggressively sexually abused and assaulted beyond what would be necessary to kill them.
Their bodies were found on hilltops, in snowbanks, rivers or desolate expanses of desert. Some were purposefully posed on their backs, arms spread in the shape of a cross, decomposing faces scanning the sky for weeks or months until found by a deer hunter or trucker.
Years after the crimes, identities of three of the slain women are still unknown.
Intrepid killers, some with experience
And the perpetrators? In all but one of the cases, the killer or killers disappeared, leaving few clues -- at times only a tire track or bullet casing. Police reports tell of sophisticated criminals who killed by inserting an ice pick into a nostril or knew enough to make a victim's car and possessions completely disappear.
In the minds of investigators, these killings are not typical homicides. Authorities believe these are serial crimes: Some are linked to other Basin slayings, some linked to killings elsewhere. In effect, investigators say, the Great Basin may serve as a convenient disposal site for serial killers.
A cross-jurisdictional resource
Because of the special problems these type of cases present, area law enforcers developed the Utah Criminal Tracking Analysis Project (UTAP), a regional version of the FBI's violent crimes and serial homicide profiling unit. UTAP's function is to pool the efforts of detectives, medical examiners, forensic psychologists, prosecuting attorneys and other experts.
APBnews.com is taking UTAP's work one step further: going to the public with the clues and data in hopes that a case might be solved. We've pieced together elements of each slaying: photos and maps of body dumpsites, ballistics reports, interviews with investigators, dental charts, offense reports and autopsy reports.
APBnews.com's "Unsolved" offers online tools to study the evidence in these cases. It also provides a way for users -- among the public and police -- to unveil hidden patterns and clues that may be present in the data, develop theories and discuss the killings.
Brainstorming Cops Unite to Solve Old Crimes
Salt Lake Tribune Types: Utah Published: 06/22/1998
Byline: BY MIKE CARTER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two weeks ago at a Woods Cross motel, a group of mostly rural investigators from Utah and three neighboring states sat down to talk about old murders. Each of the 20 or so law officers sifted through the grisly circumstances of the unsolved slayings, 13 in all, involving the dumped bodies of women. The grim litany covering cases in Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and Idaho went on for nearly two days as a group of Utah experts listened intently. The details of each case were added to a butcher-paper chart on the wall. In the end, the cluttered chart was 20 feet long and contained two revelations. The first was confirmation of a long-held suspicion that at least one serial killer -- and more likely two -- had murdered most of the women. At least one suspect was identified. The second, less sensational but to the participants perhaps as significant, was the surprising efficacy of the fledgling Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, which hosted the meeting. ``I came out of that meeting feeling upbeat about this case for the first time in eight years,'' said Millard County Sheriff's Sgt. John Kimball. Kimball has been haunted by the discovery in March 1990 of the decomposed nude body of a woman found along a desolate stretch of Interstate 15. The woman, who has never been identified, had been shot and her body seemingly posed in a sexually suggestive manner.
The UTAP conference not only reinforced a long-held belief the crime was the work of a serial killer, but underscored the likelihood that the same killer dumped and posed the bodies of women found along Interstate 70 in neighboring Juab County in March 1991 and along a rural road outside St. George a month later. Moreover, the conference gave Kimball something he hadn't had before: a good suspect. ``I can't say enough about this concept,'' Kimball said. UTAP, brainchild of Provo Police Chief Greg Cooper and Utah attorney general's investigator Mike King, is rapidly being acknowledged as a unique tool in law enforcement circles both in and out of Utah. It is also something of a curiosity, a hybrid. In the turf-conscious world of law enforcement, task forces elicit groans from any detective who has had to navigate those ego-charged and bureaucratic waters. But UTAP isn't just a task force. It is a smorgasbord of expertise unavailable in any one place outside of the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va.
Indeed, the project is closely modeled after the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP, where Cooper worked for five years and where he supervised its famed Investigative Support Unit. The unit's criminal profilers have been celebrated in the movie ``Silence of the Lambs'' and a variety of television and movie knockoffs since. Launched just seven months ago with the blessing of virtually every law enforcement agency in the state, UTAP has brought together a committee of diverse talents -- from forensic psychiatrists to death-scene investigators -- to help with those cases that keep detectives awake at night. ``The idea was to make this available to anybody who wanted the help,'' said Cooper. ``The idea was to solve crimes, not take credit for solving crimes.'' And that, perhaps more than anything else, is what makes the project unique. While it has structure, it has no agenda and no budget.
While Cooper and King coordinate its board of experts and meetings, they have no legal jurisdiction. UTAP can only go where it's invited. ``We have leaders, but no authority,'' said King. ``The whole idea here is to facilitate cooperation and communication between agencies. Rather than fostering reliance on outside agencies, we think [UTAP] gives us a little independence.'' ``This is a pretty laid-back operation,'' added Rudi Riet, a UTAP expert and chief investigator for the Utah Medical Examiner's Office. ``Nobody should be intimidated.'' By contrast, most task forces have a lead agency and all of the accompanying egos, politics and petty jurisdictional squabbles. ``That's what I like about this concept, it's that the jurisdictional lines aren't there,'' said Millard County's Kimball. ``A lot of time there's friction between the rural county agencies and the Wasatch Front. That's missing here.'' Cooper and King say that, while UTAP emulates VICAP, it was intentionally set up to avoid the FBI's notorious here-we-are-to-save-the-day reputation among other agencies. It has trained 40 law officers from throughout the state to act as liaisons between local police agencies and the project. They are usually the first contact for a detective and help screen cases and guide investigators through the process.
Like VICAP, a case detective must fill out a detailed questionnaire about the case, which is then sent along to King and Cooper. If it's accepted -- so far none have been rejected -- a committee of experts will be chosen and each given a copy of the entire case file. ``We'll go over it for a couple of weeks before we meet with the detective,'' Cooper said. Those meetings are fairly formal -- the investigator presents his case to the panel in a meeting that often lasts four hours or more. ``The officers don't always think they've had a great afternoon,'' Cooper said. ``It's pretty comprehensive.'' The crime scene is analyzed, evidence is examined and the case is profiled by Cooper, who is trained to discern an offender's personality traits and motivations from a crime scene. "Sometimes it's simply telling them they're doing all they can,'' said Riet. ``Sometimes we'll see something they haven't done. Sometimes, in some of these old cases, there's new technology that might be of use.''
King said no detective has ever walked out of the meetings without some new avenue of inquiry, evidence or a tack for interviewing a suspect who hasn't cracked. The project has reviewed some 20 cases in the past seven months, including the 13 regional murders. Cooper said they are almost all ``old and cold'' murders or what he calls ``equivocal deaths'' -- when the manner of passing is questionable. None of the cases has been solved -- yet. Cooper and King said there are at least two unsolved rural Utah homicides where arrests are imminent as a direct result of new leads and evidence plumbed by UTAP. Kimball, who had been a virtual one-man task force traveling the West trying to catch his serial killer, is optimistic for the first time in nearly a decade. ``I couldn't do any more myself,'' he said. ``I'd looked at all the crime-scene photos I could stand. I wasn't above asking for help, and I got it.''
© Copyright 1990-2000, The Salt Lake Tribune
Predator/Serial Rapist Training Recap
April 15, 1999
by Patti Donohoo
Criminal Justice Student
Weber State University, Ogden, Utah
On April 15, 1999 the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP) presented a seminar on Predator/Serial Rapist Training at the Fred House Academy in Draper, Utah. The training was attended by more than 150 law enforcement officers and personnel from throughout Utah.
UTAP was formed by the Strategic Planning Committee for Utah Law Enforcement a year and a half ago to assist law enforcement agencies in solving cases. The goal of the Predator/Serial Rapist Training was to attempt to understand why rape occurs, discuss prevention strategies, and learn how a victim and perpetrator think and feel about the crime. The training focused on the April 10, 1997 rape of a real estate broker in Riverton, Utah. The perpetrator had been released one month earlier from the Utah State Prison after serving time for burglary
The training covered profiling and victimology, criminal history of the perpetrator, case review by the detective, prosecutor and defense attorney and interviews with the victim and perpetrator.
Chief of Staff, Mike King of the Attorney General’s Office, began the seminar by outlining the basic ideas and tools necessary for criminal profiling. The first step in solving a crime is understanding who the victim is and why they are a victim; victimology is the key to crime analysis.
Chief King discussed the correlations between the perpetrator and statistical facts that criminal profiling provides. The complete background and criminal history of the perpetrator were reviewed to help establish a basic understanding of this rapist and his motives which led to the sexual assault of at least 5 women. Four of his five victims were real estate brokers and one was an automobile salesperson. He preselected three victims by looking through real estate magazines with glamour photographs and the other two women were victims of opportunity
The perpetrator profiled his victims based upon photographs, attitudes, and flirtatiousness. He said he "liked women on the wild side" and felt his victims fit this description. He later denied this and said that his victims had to be women and vulnerable (someone he could handle). He believed he had not threatened or forced his victims and that four out of the five women enjoyed having sex with him. These insights established a good foundation for the following presentations and reemphasized the importance of criminal profiling and victimology.
Detective Cory Snodgrass of the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, the lead investigator, led the next segment of the training. He provided a detailed description of the
perpetrator's actions during his one month release from prison. The events that precipitated the rape clearly evidenced his intent to commit this crime. Detective Snodgrass discussed the victim's description of the rape which set the stage for the prosecutor and defense attorney.
Marsha Atkin from the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office and Robert Steele of the Salt Lake Public Defenders Association discussed the perpetrator and victim. The passion, dedication, and genuine care exhibited by Ms. Atkin for the victim was exceptional. Many of her decisions throughout the trial were influenced by her desire to protect the victim. Mr. Steele provided excellent representation for the perpetrator, but was restricted in discussing many details of the case due to attorney/client privilege. He focused his presentation on the fundamental duties of a defense attorney and the delicate steps involved in providing the best defense. Both attorneys exhibited a loyalty and belief in their clients that promulgated the feeling that justice had been served in the adjudication of this matter.
On April 10, 1997, the victim's life was changed forever by the brutal act of a stranger. Putting aside her own fear and pain, the victim put forth a valiant effort to help educate law enforcement by telling her side of the story and allowing us to question her. It has been almost two years since her rape and the trauma of this violent act was painfully obvious. The fear, anger, hate and grief she has conquered is inconceivable, but her determination to move on and see the perpetrator convicted was truly admirable. When discussing the trial, the one criticism the victim had was directed at the criminal justice system. She felt the system had victimized her over and over again due to the length of time it took to conclude this case. At the conclusion of her interview, the victim took the opportunity to publicly acknowledge her deep appreciation and respect to everyone who had helped her throughout this difficult time.
On December 11, 1998, the perpetrator was convicted of aggravated rape and recommitted to the Utah State Prison. He consented to an interview and was brought over from the prison. Throughout the presentation the perpetrator appeared to enjoy the attention he was receiving from the audience and kept control of the situation by manipulating the questioning. He repeatedly expressed his contempt and hatred for everyone, especially law enforcement and implied he would have tried to kill one of them if he had not been locked up. The perpetrator demonstrated a complete lack of remorse or sense of wrongdoing towards the victim. He stated that what hurt him the worst is what he did to his parents, not what he did to his victims. Up until six months ago, the perpetrator believed he was not a rapist. Today he admits to being a rapist and credits Chief King and the UTAP program with helping him to change his perception of this crime.
A critique was held at the conclusion of the training to evaluate the information gained. Several officers in the audience were friends of the perpetrator throughout his life and none of them felt he had changed. In the last twenty-eight years of his life, the perpetrator spent over twenty-five years in prison. The rippling effect caused by his life of crime and hatred will have detrimental effects on many people for the rest of their lives.
The Predator/Serial Rapist Training provided a well-rounded and thorough approach to examining a rape case. It afforded everyone the opportunity to gain valuable insight and information for future use.
On a personal note, I am a criminal justice major at Weber State University and was the only person not directly involved in law enforcement allowed to attend this training. The knowledge I have gained on how our criminal justice system works and the role each person plays in resolving the crime of rape was fascinating and extensive. UTAP's efforts to educate law enforcement about serial rapists, profiling and victimology was impressive. My sincere thanks to Chief’s Mike King and Greg Cooper for supporting me in the furtherance of my education in the criminal justice system.
Clearfield Man Gets 1 to 15 Years for Son's Death
The Salt Lake Tribune Section: Utah Published:02/03/1999
Byline: BY GREG BURTON THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
FARMINGTON -- A Clearfield man was sentenced to 1 to 15 years in prison for manslaughter Tuesday, putting to rest a horrific child-abuse homicide that for three years had confounded investigators, prosecutors and family members. Later blaming frustrations at home and work, Mark Wing squeezed his crying infant into silence at least five times over Ian Wing's seven-week life, prosecutors said. Ian Wing eventually died in his crib on Feb. 23, 1996. An autopsy showed the infant had suffocated, a condition likely brought on by 29 rib fractures. Ian also suffered two broken legs and a cracked left arm. "This helpless child never had a chance," said Assistant Atty. Gen. Robert Parrish. "There's absolutely nothing a 7-week-old child can do to provoke [this kind of a] violent attack." Wing stood silent as 2nd District Judge Jon M. Memmott issued a quick, unemotional decision inside the Farmington courtroom. "I can't read this as a single incident where somebody lost control," the judge said. While not denying Wing's complicity in the death, defense attorney Troy Rawlings attempted to mitigate the punishment by outlining Wing's behavior since the crime. Wing has a steady job, is enrolled in college, has remarried -- for the fourth time -- and is supervising two stepchildren with no apparent ill effect. "He snapped, he exploded," Rawlings conceded. "[But] this is an aberration. Something Mr. Wing did that will probably not happen again. [And] he has immense inner guilt, turmoil . . . of the consequences of losing his son." Rawlings asked for a short jail sentence and work release. Instead, Memmott applied the maximum penalty. Wing's fourth wife, who is not Ian's mother, also appealed for a reduced sentence. "He's never raised a hand to me or my children," she told the judge through sobs. "He is a good father. I've never seen him act in a violent manner." For more than two years, the 34-year-old denied playing a hand in Ian's death. The case was stalled when Clearfield investigators appealed to state child-abuse experts. That appeal eventually landed with Lt. Mike King, an investigator at the Attorney General's Office, who brought together experts from the fledgling Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project UTAP) to assist. Modeled on the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, UTAP is assisting local investigators on nearly 20 cases, providing expertise in medicine, crime-scene analysis and forensic psychology. Wing's conviction is UTAP's first courtroom success. King praised Clearfield Police Chief Morton Sparks for not only requesting assistance from UTAP, but also for freeing his investigators to answer questions. When King began reviewing the evidence, he drafted a disturbing profile of Wing and a history that allegedly included drugs, spousal abuse and animal cruelty as well as a fixation on the perfect family size. That profile was later used to elicit Wing's confession and the subsequent plea bargain that resulted in Wing's guilty plea last December to the charge of manslaughter. "Nobody can say what it's like to lie in a crib . . . waiting for someone to hold you, swaddle you . . . and then have your caretaker squeeze your chest as hard as he could," Parrish said. "For whatever reason, he didn't want this baby."
© Copyright 1990-2000, The Salt Lake Tribune.
Clearfield man: I killed my son
Wednesday, December 23, 1998
Prosecutors: Pressures of college and raising kids drove him to act
By GEOFFREY FATTAH Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
FARMINGTON -- The pressure of raising his children and going to college while his wife held down several jobs was what drove a 34-year-old Clearfield man to kill his infant son two years ago, prosecutors say. Mark Wing plead guilty Tuesday in 2nd District Court to one count of manslaughter, a second-degree felony for the 1996 death of the 8-month-old boy. Prosecutors claimed Wing repeatedly squeezed the infant over a five-week period to stop him from crying, breaking the baby's bones.
Wing confessed to police that on Feb. 23 of 1996, he squeezed the infant and placed the baby in its crib. It wasn't until the next morning that Wing noticed the baby had died An autopsy revealed that Ian Wing's ribs were broken in 29 different places, along with fractures in his wrist and both legs from forceful turning. Deputy Attorney General Rob Parrish, who is part of a special task force on prosecuting child abuse cases, said because a baby's bones are mostly cartilage at that age and very flexible, Wing had to exert a lot of force to cause the fractures. "Mark Wing knew very well what he was doing," Parrish said. In what has been called one of the most difficult child abuse cases to prove, prosecutors said initially the state medical examiner's office and Clearfield Po lice could not gather enough evidence to charge Wing.
Parrish said Wing and his wife continually denied any wrong-doing. The autopsy revealed that some of the baby's bones had begun to heal but no direct link could be made that the injuries were the cause of the baby's death.. With no medical evidence and no witnesses to testify, Clearfield detectives were at a loss. But a team the team of investigators from the Attorney Genera's Office built a case which lead to Wing's confession. "Time has opened up some things for us," said investigator Mike King. Initially prosecutors were seeking a murder charge, but in an agreement Wing plead guilty to manslaughter.
Parrish said the circumstances surrounding the case show that Wing was feeling stress from all aspects of his life. "He was under a lot of pressure," Parrish said.
Wing allegedly told authorities that he had asked his wife to get an abortion because he did not know if they could handle another child, Parrish said, but Wing has maintained that once the child was born he came to accept the baby. Parrish said the couple was investigated by the Division of Child and Family Services for allegedly mistreating two other children before the baby's death. Wing is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 2. He faces a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
Great Basin Murders
apbnews.com Staff
At least nine dead. Last body found: Aug. 15, 1997
THE HOMICIDES
Authorities in Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho are investigating the deaths of at least nine women as serial crimes, according to Lt. Mike King of the Utah attorney general's office. King and Provo Police Department Chief Greg Cooper, a former FBI profiling expert, are co-coordinators of Utah Criminal Tracking Analysis Project (UTAP), a project that brings together separate agencies investigating these cases.
The majority of the women were killed within the last 10 years, however one case dates to 1983. Investigators believe there are at least two killers responsible.
Some investigators involved believed that the same person was responsible for killing three of the victims between 1990 and 1993. These slayings occurred in Millard and Juab counties in Utah, and in Elko, Nev. There was also a killing in St. George, Utah, in 1991 that was thought to also be linked to this sub-cluster. However, in March 1999 police arrested the husband of the Juab County victim and charged him with her murder. It's unknown how this links to the other cases, according to authorities.
VICTIMS At least four of the victims have still not been identified. All of the victims were women. Some were hitchhikers, prostitutes or women who frequented truck stops. However, at least one victim was described by police as "an all-American girl."
SUSPECTS(S)/PERSON(S) OF INTEREST According to information from a report released by UTAP, there is the suspicion that one offender may be familiar with the Casper, Wyo., area, where one of the bodies was found. This victim was thought to have been held for eight days before being slain, police said.
In February 1999 the Florida Department of Law Enforcement contacted the Juab County Sheriff's Office in response to a 1991 Jane Doe that Juab County had entered into the National Crime Information Commission computer network. Florida authorities had a missing person they thought might be a match. After some investigation the woman was identified as Barbara Kaye Williams. On March 3, authorities subsequently traveled to Florida and charged her husband, Howell Williams, with her murder.
M.O. A number of the victims were found nude. At least eight of the women were found off highways or interstates.
Some of the bodies appeared to be posed or displayed by the killer(s). Several were sexually abused and killed by multiple gunshots from a small-caliber weapon.
One victim, found off Interstate 15 in 1990 in Millard County, Utah, was found naked, posed on her back, arms out to her side (palms turned upward) in the shape of a cross. Her legs were spread slightly apart and her hair, a French braid, carefully laid out to the side, an investigator said.
According to Millard County Sgt. John Kimball, Williams' body, found in neighboring Juab County off I-15 in 1991, and a body found in Elko, Nev., in 1993 near an offramp on Interstate 80 were posed in an almost identical manner. A woman found slain in St. George, Utah, in 1991 may also be related to these three cases. That victim was found partially undressed, east of I-15. Kimball said it appeared as if the killer was interrupted.
The Millard County victim was shot four times in the head and one time in the neck. The victim in Juab County was shot eight times in the head. The victim in St. George was shot six times in the head.
The body of one of the victims showed signs of "extreme sexual activity." She was found in a river in Casper, Wyo., with six deep stab wounds to her chest. None of the stab wounds hit her ribs, which, according to the case review press release, "possibly indicated the suspect had medical training." Five of the wounds were patterned in the shape of fingers on a hand.
EVIDENCE Casings or bullets were found at three sites where bodies were discovered.
STATUS OF CASE Under the auspices of UTAP, personnel from local law enforcement agencies as well as personnel from the state hospital, the medical examiner's office and the state attorney general's office meet on a regular basis to review the cases, develop leads and exchange information.
Former Ogden officer named to FBI panel
A South Ogden man has been appointed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to serve on one of its national advisory boards.
Mike King, a former police officer now chief of staff at the Utah Attorney General's Office, will sit on the National Advisory Board of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP.
The nine-member panel establishes procedures and protocols for information-sharing between local law enforcement agencies and the federal government in the investigation of violent and serial crimes, according to a press release from Attorney General Jan Graham announcing King's appointment.
King, a 20-year police veteran, currently oversees one of Graham's two investigations units and specifically focuses on crime prevention initiatives, victims' services, special investigations, and law enforcement projects.
King is a former police officer with several Weber County police forces, and was chief investigator with the Weber County Attorney's Office at the time of his hiring by the attorney general's office five years ago.
The ViCAP appointment was largely due to King's involvement as the Statewide Coordinator of the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, an organization which provides a diverse committee of experts to assist local police statewide in analyzing and profiling difficult cases.
ViCAP is a nationwide data information center designed to collect and analyze information on crimes of violence.
Utah Panel is patterned after FBI Program... Task Force Yields new clues in Old Murders
Deseret News Archives,, Monday, June 22, 1998
By Mike Carter, Associated Press writer
Two weeks ago at a Woods Cross motel, a group of mostly rural investigators from Utah and three neighboring states sat down to talk about old murders.
Each of the 20 or so lawmen sifted through the grisly circumstances of the unsolved slayings, 13 in all, involving the dumped bodies of women. The grim litany covering cases in Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and Idaho went on for nearly two days as a group of Utah experts listened intently.
The details of each case were added to a butcher-paper chart on the wall. In the end, the cluttered chart was 20 feet long and contained two revelations.
The first was confirmation of a long-held suspicion that at least one serial killer - and more likely two - had murdered most of the women. At least one suspect was identified.
The second, less sensational but to the participants perhaps as significant, was the surprising efficacy of the fledgling Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, which hosted the meeting. "I came out of that meeting feeling upbeat about this case for the first time in eight years," said Millard County Sheriff's Sgt. John Kimball. Kimball has been haunted by the discovery in March 1990 of the decomposed and nude body of a woman found along a desolate stretch of Interstate 15. The woman, who has never been identified, had been shot and her body seemingly posed in a sexually suggestive manner.
The UTAP conference not only reinforced a long-held belief the crime was the work of a serial killer but underscored the likelihood that the same killer dumped and posed the bodies of women found along Interstate 70 in neighboring Juab County in March 1991 and along a rural road outside St. George a month later. Moreover, the conference gave Kimball something he hadn't had before: a good suspect. "I can't say enough about this concept," Kimball said.
UTAP, brainchild of Provo Police Chief Greg Cooper and Utah attorney general's investigator Mike King, is rapidly being acknowledged as a unique tool in law enforcement circles both in and out of Utah. It is also something of a curiosity, a hybrid. In the turf-conscious world of law enforcement, task forces elicit groans from any detective who has had to navigate those ego-charged and bureaucratic waters. But UTAP isn't just a task force. It is a smorgasbord of expertise unavailable in any one place outside of the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va.
Indeed, the project is closely modeled after the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP, where Cooper worked for five years and where he supervised its famed Investigative Support Unit. The unit's criminal profilers have been celebrated in the movie "Silence of the Lambs" and a variety of television and movie knockoffs since.
Launched just seven months ago with the blessing of virtually every law enforcement agency in the state, UTAP has brought together a committee of diverse talents - from forensic psychiatrists to death-scene investigators - to help with those cases that keep detectives awake at night.
"The idea was to make this available to anybody who wanted the help," said Cooper. "The idea was to solve crimes, not take credit for solving crimes."
And that, perhaps more than anything else, is what makes the project unique. While it has structure, it has no agenda and no budget. While Cooper and King coordinate its board of experts and meetings, they have no legal jurisdiction. UTAP can only go where it's invited.
"We have leaders but no authority," said King. "The whole idea here is to facilitate cooperation and communication between agencies. Rather than fostering reliance on outside agencies, we think (UTAP) gives us a little independence."
"This is a pretty laid-back operation," added Rudi Riet, a UTAP expert and chief investigator for the Utah Medical Examiner's Office. "Nobody should be intimidated."
By contrast, most task forces have a lead agency and all of the accompanying egos, politics and petty jurisdictional squabbles.
"That's what I like about this concept, it's that the jurisdictional lines aren't there," said Millard County's Kimball. "A lot of time there's friction between the rural county agencies and the Wasatch Front. That's missing here."
Cooper and King say that, while UTAP emulates VICAP, it was intentionally set up to avoid the FBI's notorious here-we-are-to-save-the-day reputation among other agencies.
It has trained 40 lawmen from throughout the state to act as liaisons between local police agencies and the project. They are usually the first contact for a detective and help screen cases and guide investigators through the process. Like VICAP, a case detective must fill out a detailed questionnaire about the case, which is then sent to King and Cooper. If it's accepted - so far none has been rejected - a committee of experts will be chosen and each given a copy of the entire case file. "We'll go over it for a couple of weeks before we meet with the detective," Cooper said. Those meetings are fairly formal - the investigator presents his case to the panel in a meeting that often lasts four hours or more. "The officers don't always think they've had a great afternoon," Cooper said. "It's pretty comprehensive." The crime scene is analyzed, evidence is examined and the case is profiled by Cooper, who is trained to discern an offender's personality traits and motivations from a crime scene. "Sometimes it's simply telling them they're doing all they can," said Riet. "Sometimes we'll see something they haven't done. Sometimes, in some of these old cases, there's new technology that might be of use."
King said no detective has ever walked out of the meetings without some new avenue of inquiry, evidence or a tack for interviewing a suspect who hasn't cracked. The project has reviewed some 20 cases in the past seven months, including the 13 regional murders. Cooper said they are almost all "old and cold" murders or what he calls "equivocal deaths" - when the manner of passing is questionable.
None of the cases has been solved - yet. Cooper and King said there are at least two unsolved rural Utah homicides where arrests are imminent as a direct result of new leads and evidence plumbed by UTAP. Kimball, who had been a virtual one-man task force traveling the West trying to catch his serial killer, is optimistic for the first time in nearly a decade. "I couldn't do any more myself," he said. "I'd looked at all the crime-scene photos I could stand. I wasn't above asking for help, and I got it."
© 1999 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Law Agencies Pool Their Efforts
Deseret News Archives, Sunday, November 30, 1997
By Jennifer Dobner, Staff Writer
Utah's law-enforcement agencies are formalizing an old standard of police procedure - that of helping each other solve crimes. Officials from the Utah Attorney General's Office recently announced the creation of UTAP, the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project. (Agencies are not capitalizing "criminal" as part of the UTAP name because of their low regard for criminals.)
The project is designed to pool resources and expertise from across the state to assist local sheriff or police departments. Members of the UTAP team will provide coordinated case assessment, criminal behavioral analysis and criminal profiling. And it will help develop strategies for case investigations and prosecution, project chairman and Provo Police Chief Gregory Cooper said. And whether the crime is a string of burglaries or a homicide, having those resources just a phone call away could be a big help to someone like Wayne County Sheriff Don Torgerson.
Torgerson's small department of four deputies covers a 2,500-square-mile patch of southern Utah where the population varies between 2,300 and 7,000 people depending upon the season.
"We don't have the manpower or the budget to take on major crimes," said Torgerson. "But with UTAP we will get some help. I think this will be a great benefit to departments in rural communities." Torgerson's already got a case in mind for the UTAP team. A suspicious drowning last summer has left officers pondering circumstantial evidence for months. No arrests have been made.
With UTAP's help, Torgerson said he hopes his staff will come up with new leads or at least a new way of looking at the evidence.
"I think in some cases (UTAP's help) will make the difference between solving and not solving a crime," he said. UTAP is patterned loosely after an FBI-run crime and behavioral science unit in Quantico, Va., said Lt. Mike King of the Utah Attorney General's Office. There the best of the best - from detectives to medical experts and attorneys - come together to review every aspect of case in order to get it solved and successfully prosecuted.
The FBI does offer that help to local law-enforcement agencies across the country, King said. But the FBI is selective about the cases it reviews and even then, getting help can take a long time. "We figured that locally, we should be able to put together the same resources here in Utah, so why weren't we doing it?" said King, adding that he believes the UTAP program to be the first of its kind in the nation.
To get the program in place, some 40 law-enforcement officers from across the state began a three-day training session at the Police Officer Standards and Training facility Monday. Every region of Utah is participating in the program, King said. Both the Salt Lake City Police Department and the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office will participate in the program. Each of the 40 officers will serve as a contact person for his region of the state, King said. Cooper, who is a former FBI agent, is leading the training.
Most of the cost of UTAP will be borne by federal grant money. The rest will be donated time from officers with some costs reimbursed by the agency requesting assistance, King said.
© 1999 Deseret News Publishing Co
Officers Given Insight into Criminal Minds
METRO & NEW MEXICO
Rapist offers Hints on Fighting Crime
Jeff Jones Journal Staff Writer
12/11/1999, Albuquerque Journal - (Copyright 1999)
How can a woman stay safe from a serial rapist?
Having a dog can help. So can living in a well-lighted area and leaving clues outside a home that show a man lives there, such as a muddy pair of boots.
How can police catch a serial rapist?
Set up a bigger perimeter during searches, and question everyone coming in or out of the area. Release enough details about the crimes so people who may know the rapist will realize it.
These are a few of the tips an expert on serial rapes told dozens of law officers who gathered Friday morning at an Albuquerque hotel.
This guest speaker came to the New Mexico Law Enforcement Conference under heavy guard and wearing white Utah prison pants, a white prison shirt and shackles around his legs and arms. He’s an expert because he is a convicted rapist one who’s preyed on more than 80 victims in 11 western states. He’ll be spending the next several decades, and quite possibly the rest of his life, in prison.
The rapist is part of a unique Utah law enforcement training program that allows police to get ideas on crime fighting from the criminals themselves.
His name isn’t being used at the request of a program organizer, who said his life could be in danger if other prisoners identify him. He told the large crowd at the Albuquerque Marriott that he’s now talking about his crimes to prevent other rapes.
"I know about crime. I know about rape," he said. "I hope this makes a difference."
Some of the things the rapist said were "repugnant," said Bernalillo County Sheriff Joe Bowdich. But he said he and other law officers agreed it was "something we can learn from."
"There is a point where you might want to jump up and choke him," Bowdich said, "but we can’t do that."
The rapist, who worked as a trucker, said he became hooked on drugs and started doing burglaries to support his habit. He later began raping women in the homes he broke into. He went to apartment complexes where he thought single women might live, and he said the cars parked outside homes told him if a potential victim lived there.
They usually drive "a smaller," he said. And "they always had cute little things hanging from the mirror."
He said he told his victims he was a police officer or firefighter to throw investigators off his trail. He raped on victim, allowed her to call police and raped another victim nearby while police were investigating the first crime.
"It got to be more of a game," he said. "And I was more thrilled with the game than the crime."
The rapist said he was a voyeur - someone who gets sexual gratification from seeing sex acts - before he became a rapist, and other rapists begin the same way.
He also said the best rehabilitation he’s ever had came when one of his victims described the crime at a parole hearing, and he tried to hold back tears as he spoke about it.
"It’s difficult for me to look back upon who I was and how many people I hurt," he said. "I can’t fix rape. I can’t go back and take it away. This is not easy to do. This is embarrassing, humiliating. But who’s gonna do it? To better educate you people (and) society that’s why I do this."
Web Site for Tipsters Has Police Hoping Killers Will Get Caught in the Net
Tuesday, July 18, 2000
BY MICHAEL VIGH
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Last summer, an aspiring actress about to graduate from the University of Utah was murdered in her apartment during a home-invasion robbery. Two years ago, a gap-toothed 10-year-old Salt Lake City girl was stabbed to death in broad daylight on her front porch.
And on a winter night in 1996, a Pizza Hut delivery driver was found dead on a West Valley City roadside, apparently run over by her own pickup.
In the years following the slayings of Amy Quinton, Anna Palmer and Lisa Redmond, investigators have mined every detail of the murders but have been unable to catch the killers. Now, police have new hope -- courtesy of the information superhighway -- that these cases might someday be solved.
A new Web site will allow tipsters who have information on these unsolved killings -- and the dozens of others statewide -- to send e-mail to lead investigators. Police hope the information will generate new leads and help them catch murderers. Tipsters can remain anonymous.
The site is www.UTAP.org and is maintained by the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project. Formed in 1997, the mission of UTAP is to facilitate cooperation between law enforcement agencies in major criminal cases, including unsolved homicides, missing persons and unidentified bodies. "There really hasn't been one single source for law enforcement agencies to get information on unidentified bodies and unsolved homicides," said Mike King of the Utah Attorney General's Office. "With the Internet, we can also use the public more and gather information that way."
UTAP also provides investigators with expertise in medicine, crime-scene analysis and forensic psychology by including experts as members. The group -- made up of police and such experts in crime-solving -- also interviews the other "experts," prisoners who have been convicted of unusual or heinous crimes, such as serial killers. "If you want to solve the crimes, you need to look to the expert -- the individual who committed similar crimes," said Provo Police Chief Greg Cooper and UTAP state chairman. "This has opened up a tremendous wealth of knowledge."
Investigators use the information as a resource to help solve cases and provide seminars. Police forces from at least eight other states -- including Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico -- have asked to join the program. "UTAP has formalized, in a nonthreatening way, the process of information sharing among law enforcement agencies statewide," said Chief Deputy Attorney General Reed Richards. "As vital information is shared, crimes are solved.
Got a crime tip for police? E-mail it in New Web site links the public with investigators
By Diane Urbani
Deseret News staff writer
Utahns can now harness e-mail to find criminals. On Monday the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP) unveiled a Web site that links the public with crime investigators around the state. So anyone with an Internet connection can send a tip regarding a missing-person case, an unsolved violent crime or an unidentified body.
"We're hoping the public will go on the site and start mousing around," said Mike King, UTAP's coordinator. At www.UTAP.org, visitors will find pictures of missing persons and crime victims, information about each case and tip submission forms. "Just click on the e-mail link," King said, and you can send your message directly to UTAP. "We think that will help us in areas where people are reluctant to come forward with information." Would-be tippers may feel safer using e-mail, he said. "Leads grow cold," King added, but a fresh lead from a citizen can reopen and help solve even an old case. "You can send in tips, information, even theories" about unsolved crimes, he said. "We think this can speed up the investigative process."
The site, the first of its kind, is the brainchild of Greg Cooper, who spent 10 years as an FBI profiler before becoming Provo's police chief. Through sharing knowledge among the public and Utah's 400 law enforcement agencies, the site "will enhance the resolution rate for these unsolved crimes," Cooper said.
Eight other states including Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico have recently called UTAP, requesting advice on how to build their own crime-analysis sites. The next step, Cooper said, is to consolidate Mountain West states into a single site, accessible to the public and police agencies around the region.
In the past six weeks, while initial construction of the Web site was going on, it received 2,860 visits and UTAP analyzed 60 cases, according to King. "We had a case in Clearfield, a 3-year-old murder case involving a child, that was solved with the help of UTAP forensic experts. The analysis eventually led to a confession and a conviction."
UTAP's site is designed to help police officers around Utah exchange knowledge in the same way that the Internet was originally developed to help university researchers put their heads together. Detectives, psychologists, medical examiners, profilers and the public can contribute to the site, thus arming police with information about past crimes similar to the ones that remain unsolved. Investigators can take advantage of these resources free of charge, King said. "We're hoping we see a deluge of information coming in." UTAP will use its new Web site to promote police training seminars that delve into the criminal psyche. The classes often include interviews with convicted offenders, who talk about the events and thoughts that led up to their crimes.
"We have an aggressive training schedule through December," said King, listing seminars such as "The Making of a Serial Killer," to be held Oct. 11 in Draper, and a Dec. 7 session on "Pyramid Schemes and Financial Fraud," also in Draper.
Utah's Cybercops
Saturday, July 22, 2000, Salt Lake Tribune
Utah law enforcement officials should be congratulated for taking the benefits of cyberspace a step further by setting up a new Web site that citizens can access to provide tips and information about unsolved killings and other serious crimes.
The new site, www.UTAP.org, is maintained by the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project. UTAP's job is to facilitate cooperation between law enforcement agencies in major criminal cases, including unsolved homicides, missing persons and unidentified bodies. Aside from its use as a resource for law enforcement agencies investigating these and other cases, it just makes good sense that the site also be able to process e-mail from private citizens about unsolved crimes and even to be able to offer tipsters anonymity.
While most homicide cases, for example, are solved fairly easily, there are some that simply have stumped authorities. These include the murder of a University of Utah student last year in a home invasion robbery, the brutal stabbing of a 10-year-old Salt Lake City girl on her front porch two years ago, and the 1996 slaying of a pizza delivery driver who apparently was run over by her own pickup.
These cases remain open, but mostly are dormant. All the available evidence has been checked and rechecked; every lead has been zealously tracked down, yet authorities have been unable to catch the killers. The new Web site is no guarantee that this will change the status of any of these or other cases, but any provision that encourages the receipt of public information, especially if it is easy and convenient to do so with a minimum of effort, cannot hurt.
Even in routine cases, authorities are dependent upon the good will and cooperation of the public. This is even more so in those difficult cases where leads are few, evidence is scanty and witnesses are reluctant to talk, assuming any can be found at all.
The new Web site represents another important tool that authorities can use to aid them in their job of investigating criminal cases and in identifying and locating suspects. This is the case whether a law enforcement agency is simply tapping counterparts for information about a particular case or is hoping for an e-mail tip that points them in a promising direction on a previously stalemated investigation.
New Web site aims to catch Utah killers
State detectives hope to gather anonymous tips on unsolved crimes
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
By JOEY HAWS
Standard-Examiner staff
Detectives from around the state are hoping to hear three simple words when they arrive for work each morning: "You've got mail."
With the help of the information superhighway, police anticipate a newly launched Web site, www.UTAP.org, will snare killers via the Internet and e-mail sent by anonymous tipsters.
"I think it's going to be a huge benefit to both investigators and the public," said Mike King of the Utah Attorney General's Office.
The site, managed by the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, is designed to help tipsters contact law enforcement agencies with information they may have regarding an unsolved homicide, missing person or unidentified body.
With a few clicks of the mouse, site visitors can see pictures of the victims, get a detailed description of the victim and the case's progress and get contact information for the investigating officer. Police hope the Web site will help catch murderers, while ensuring tipsters can remain anonymous.
The secrecy of making the tips is what provides a break in many cases that police have working on for months and even years, said Roy Police Lt. Greg Whinham.
"Historically, anonymous tips do come in on major cases," Whinham said. "(Tipsters will) either call in to dispatch, write a letter to police or find a way to pass along the information they have."
Formed in 1997, UTAP's mission is to provide a way for law enforcement agencies in major crimes, including unsolved murders, unidentified bodies and missing persons to share information.
"That's one of the purposes of that whole process is so that we talk together," Whinham said. "The computer puts us together and helps us put gather vital information on cases."
King said that many local cases are in the process of being put on the pages, and that the entire site will be constantly evolving and updated.
Though UTAP will not accept additions from the general public, King said they will add a case if an investigator wants to place the case online. "Eventually we'd like to get all of the cases in the state on the Web site," he said.
Currently, the only local case listed on UTAP's database is a missing person report dating back 15 years when then 25-year-old Sheree Warren was reported missing.
Warren was last seen about 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 2, 1985, as she was leaving work at the Utah State Employees' Credit Union in Salt Lake City. On Nov. 11, 1985, Warren's vehicle was recovered at the Aladdin Hotel parking lot in Las Vegas, NV. The vehicle appeared to have been parked for some time.
And though it has been a long time since Warren was last seen, Whinham said there is still hope that someone, somewhere may have a morsel of information on the case.
"We're convinced there are still people out there who are willing to help us with this case," Whinham said. "It could easily be activated with any new leads or new information."
Eight other missing person reports are active on the Web site ranging from November 1998 to July 1984. No cases are listed yet for unidentified bodies, though all three pages are "under construction."
The unsolved murders page lists 22 active cases dating back to March 1976. The most recent unsolved murder involved 22-year-old Amy Quinton, a University of Utah student who was stabbed to death by a man who broke into her Salt Lake apartment.
King said that the potential success of the UTAP Web site has enlisted inquiries from at least eight surrounding states which have asked to have a link put into the page that will connect the user to their unsolved cases.
"We know of no other agency in the country that is doing a site similar to this," King said. In the past six weeks, while initial construction of the Web site was going on, it received nearly 3,000 visits and UTAP analyzed 60 cases, King said.
You can reach reporter Joey Haws at 625-4231 or by e-mail at jhaws@standard.net
Delving into the Dark Side
Sunday, August 20, 2000
BY GREG BURTON
(c) 2000, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Convicted killer Dan Lafferty, 52, talked to Tribune reporters about his crimes. A Utah program has criminals talk to police about their acts, providing clues to catch future perpetrators. (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Sitting with legs crossed at the front of a hotel conference room, John talks of the summer of 1988 with its open windows and lacy drapery, cool night walks through tree lined neighborhoods and women who sleep in the nude.
John is calm and occasionally cheeky with his audience. But he is precise with details: A small pocket knife, plastic toys in a yard and the tears of some 85 women in 11 states who John __ not his real name __ stalked and raped.
"He's the expert," says Utah Attorney General investigator Mike King, while a videotape of John's presentation plays in his Salt Lake City office. "You get the sense that talking about it is cathartic for him."
Three months ago, 400 New Mexico police officers gathered in an Albuquerque conference room to hear John recount his crimes. For the officers, it was a rare opportunity to be tutored by an expert in the methodology of serial rape.
John is part of a program designed to help law officers learn firsthand what makes a criminal tick. Devised in Utah by
King, Utah Chief Deputy Attorney General Reed Richards and Provo Police Chief Gregory Cooper, the program went national earlier this year at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Since then, King and Cooper have shared their interview methods and profiling models of selected inmates with police agencies in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Arizona, Massachusetts, Texas, Wyoming and Montana.
"What the inmate does is provide a great example of a certain profile, whether that be cockiness or self_consciousness," says Jeff Pierce, deputy director of the Rocky Mountain Information Network, an agency that collects criminal intelligence for eight Western states under a grant from the Justice Department.
"The law enforcement professionals who are involved in this never forget," says Pierce, who encouraged federal support for Utah's efforts. "It is a sobering, eye_opening event, a real_life validation of the principles that are being taught. After listening to these guys, the officers chasing leads in the field are just a little more wise, a little more attuned to what's going on in the criminal mind."
John is one of six Utah inmates __ each a prototypical offender __ who have agreed to participate. They are promised nothing but the chance to air their dark ruminations before an audience.
King's stock of inmates includes a hermaphrodite who molested some 500 boys and girls over 35 years, a religious cult leader/child abuser, a rapist who targeted professional women, a flimflam artist who took millions through pyramid schemes and murderous polygamist Dan Lafferty __ the only inmate who agreed to the use of his name for this story.
"In most cases we found the inmates were not only willing but eager," says King. "For some of them, it's the first opportunity to be really honest about what they've done."
Next month, John, now serving up to life in prison at Utah State Prison, will speak at a seminar on serial rapists in Duchesne County. In October, King, Cooper and Richards will present a conference on "The Making of a Serial Killer" to officers at the Utah prison.
The October session is based on interviews with a 21_year_old transient whose ritualistic slaying of a 9_year_old California boy shocked even hardened investigators. The confessed killer, now awaiting execution in California's San Quentin Prison, was caught before he could kill again. But King says he had all the makings of a mass murderer.
"This was his first killing and he found it to be more thrilling than anything he had ever done," King says. "He was a boy with incredible confidence problems, but no prior record that we could find. And suddenly he kills one person and the next day nearly kills another. It was about having total dominion and control."
King recently interviewed California mass murderer Richard Ramirez, the so_called Night Stalker. He hopes to include the Ramirez profile in the training that is part of the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP). The program, which sponsors the inmate interviews, also acts as Utah's clearinghouse for unsolved homicides, missing persons and unidentified bodies and is teamed with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
Much of UTAP's mission centers on forming agency partnerships and providing training for local law enforcement. King, a former Weber County investigator, directs the programming based on working relationships with convicted criminals.
"This is about understanding why they do it. That doesn't mean you have to like it, or them. But there is a very meaningful exchange here, empathy if you will," he says. "When the officers start realizing it's not a hunk of meat out there __ that there's fear and disgust and anger and all these other emotions __ that turns them."
While UTAP's program is the first of its kind in the nation, the idea of teaching detectives to become amateur psychologists is not new. Long the grist of pulp fiction, criminal psychology became the focus of an elite team of FBI detectives in the 1980s.
These "profilers," or forensic psychologists, conducted in_depth interviews with prototypical child murderers, serial killers and rapists.
From those interviews, the FBI developed a "profiling" database and went on to crack numerous unsolved crimes by matching characteristics of a crime with the profiled traits of the criminal, such as age, race, profession and marital status.
Profiling is by no means an exact science, but as a teaching model the skills are invaluable, says Provo's Cooper, who studied under the most famous profiler of all, John Douglas.
Douglas, who retired from the FBI five years ago, found certain killing fetishes tended to reveal personality traits. Details of his interviews with Ed Gein, a mass murderer who liked to preserve the skin of his victims and look at himself in feathered masks made from their faces, were popularized in the book and movie "Silence of the Lambs."
Douglas amassed a gruesome list of prison interviews with Gein, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz and Richard Speck.
Five years before Douglas retired, Cooper joined the FBI's profiling unit. The two became friends and, later, partners in a police consulting firm. Now Cooper is extending the legacy of Douglas' program by casting workaday cops in the role of forensic profiler.
"Instead of trying to theorize about what these criminals are thinking, it's going right to the source," says Cooper. "You can see the lightbulbs go off in the heads of the audience."
In the New Mexico presentation, the serial rapist spends two hours detailing his transformation from long_haul truck driver and part_time burglar with a cocaine addiction into a voyeur fixated on women who sleep in the nude.
John tells how he profiled his victims, targeting single women with children living in poorly kept homes. He recounts how he watched nearby as officers arrived to investigate his rapes.
"He was never violent with any of his victims, but he used the threat [to the children] to get his way. Only one victim ever resisted," King says. "He would look for the type of vehicle, children's toys. He looked at mail to see if it was just delivered to a female's name. He was a voyeur who became an opportunist who would rape."
The ultimate goal of UTAP's program is to teach officers how to catch perpetrators like John. When John leaves the stage, King and Cooper return to guide the officers through the thicket of lies or half_truths he has planted.
King tells the audience that John demanded oral sex from his victims. When rebuffed, he would commit a second rape within two hours. Knowing this, Weber County detectives put hundreds of officers on alert to look for a rape victim who refused oral sex. When that victim suddenly came forward, detectives were ready and John was arrested not far from the crime scene.
"It's the kind of detail you can teach detectives to look for," King says. "Cops know how to investigate. Looking at behavior is the new twist."
© Copyright 2000, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on Utah OnLine is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.
Lafferty to Sheriff's Deputy: 'If God Asked Me to, I'd Kill You Right Now'
Sunday, August 20, 2000
BY BRANDON GRIGGS
(c) 2000, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
UTAH STATE PRISON __ Sixteen years after he slit the throats of his sister_in_law and her daughter in their American Fork home, Dan Lafferty remains tormented by his past.
Not by the murders, but an unpaid debt.
As a young man, Lafferty backed his vehicle into another car owned by a friend. The collision damaged her fender.
"I never fixed her car for her, and that torments me. Things like that," the Utah State Prison inmate told The Salt Lake Tribune. As for the killings, Lafferty remains convinced he was following God's instructions and feels no remorse.
"I'm not going to offend God by saying something inappropriate like, 'I wish I'd never done it.' I'll never say that. If you're a child of God, it'll make sense to you someday. I'll never say I'm sorry I did it."
Lafferty's cold_blooded candor and use of religious beliefs to justify his crimes make him a compelling subject for homicide investigators seeking insight into the criminal mind. During the past year, Lafferty has told his story several times to groups of law enforcement officers as part of the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP), a new program that assists agencies in investigating ritualistic violent crimes. (See story on Page A_1.)
"We looked at Lafferty and thought, 'Here's a guy we can really learn from,' " said state UTAP coordinator Mike King, a criminal investigator with the Utah Attorney General's Office. "My job is to find the truth. And the only real expert [on ritual crime] is the person who's done it."
Lafferty needs little prompting to spin his tale of biblical prophecy and bloodshed. He is soft_spoken, thoughtful and polite, all while revealing chilling glimpses of his skewed morality.
In April, King brought Lafferty before a class on religious_based homicides at a law enforcement conference in Phoenix. When one angry sheriff's deputy confronted the convicted murderer about his lack of remorse, Lafferty calmly replied, "With all due respect, if God asked me to, I'd kill you right now."
"That kind of mindset frightens me," said King, who has established an unusual friendship with the longtime inmate. "I have many things I like about Dan Lafferty, but I don't ever want to see him on the street."
That won't happen soon __ if ever. Lafferty, who narrowly avoided being sentenced to death, is serving two consecutive life terms for his role in the July 24, 1984, slayings. He has little chance of parole. His older brother, Ron Lafferty, is on death row for the same crimes. Speaking with unnerving matter_of_factness, the younger Lafferty appears remarkably untroubled by having taken the lives of a young woman and her child.
"Just recently I had a [new inmate] come to my [cell] door and call me a baby killer. It was sort of humorous. I'm not sure how else to respond to these kinds of things. I find myself smiling in their face," Lafferty said. "He came up and pushed this other guy away from my door and said, 'Do you realize this guy killed a baby? He cut her throat so deep her head nearly fell off!' And I said, 'So what's your point?' Don't call anybody a fool for what they feel led to do."
The grisly facts are undisputed: On Pioneer Day afternoon, Dan and Ron Lafferty pushed their way into the home of 24_year_old Brenda Wright Lafferty while her husband, Allen Lafferty, was away. As she pleaded for her daughter's life, the two men beat her and throttled her with a vacuum cord. Dan then stepped into the bedroom and, as the girl cried out for her mother, slashed the throat of Brenda's 15_month_old daughter, Erica. That done, he used the same knife to finish off Brenda.
'School of Prophets': By the time of the murders, Ron and Dan Lafferty had been excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter_day Saints for their radical views. Both had joined a renegade polygamist cult called "School of Prophets," whose members sought to receive and share revelations from God.
In March 1984, Ron claimed to have received a revelation ordering the killings of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter because the woman stood in the way of the cult's work.
"It was a cold_blooded murder for sure," Dan Lafferty told The Tribune last week. "I wasn't anxious, I wasn't vengeful, I wasn't hateful. It was just business, that's all. I had a calm peacefulness when I did it. I was being led by the Spirit."
Dan was convicted of the murders in January 1985 but spared the death penalty by a lone holdout juror. Ron was convicted in a separate trial later that year, but the verdict was overturned in 1991 by a federal appeals court on the grounds that attorneys never established whether he was mentally fit to stand trial. Ron was sentenced to death after a retrial in 1996.
Allen Lafferty now is remarried and living in California. He and Dan have not spoken since the trials in 1985, and Dan Lafferty's letters to his brother have gone unanswered. "I've told him, I don't expect you to understand this completely, but I don't feel like I've done wrong and one day it'll all make sense," Dan Lafferty said. "I tell him it'll have a happy ending."
This "happy ending" relates to the evolution of Dan Lafferty's religious views during the 16 years he has been incarcerated. About four years ago, Lafferty says, he began receiving revelations casting him as a modern_day Elijah, a prophet whose role is to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Christ. Lafferty believes the events of his life, including the murders, are part of a divine plan that will somehow spring him from prison upon Jesus' return.
"I believe there's an unseen hand, guiding everything that takes place. It all just feels right. To prepare the way for Christ __ yes, I believe that's what I was born into the world to do."
'Comforting Delusion': "That's a very comforting delusion," said David Tomb, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah Medical School. Criminals cling to delusions to explain their actions, he said. "They're often using delusions to combat a sense of inferiority. Their life has gone down the tubes. It's the only way they can live with themselves."
Despite his loyalty to God, Lafferty no longer believes in organized religion. He has nothing but contempt for the Mormon religion in which he was raised, and, after committing much of it to memory, he tore up his Bible eight years ago. In Lafferty's mind, everyone is either a child of God or a child of the devil. Brenda and Erica Lafferty were children of the devil, so they needed to be killed. At the Second Coming of Christ, Lafferty believes, all the devil's children will be wiped from the earth.
"He's a religious nut," said investigator King. "This is a guy who knew what society's standards were. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he'd rather offend society than offend God."
Lafferty now believes his brother Ron is a child of the devil. He also claims Ron tried repeatedly to kill him in 1984 while the pair were being held at the Utah County Jail.
"He was being told by voices to take my life," said Lafferty, who claims Ron tried to stab him with a sharpened pencil and later choked him with a towel. Lafferty said he surrendered willingly to the choking, passed out and awoke some time later on the floor. "I was not afraid to die. If I'm willing to take life, I guess I should also be willing to give my life."
Ron Lafferty, 58, declined to comment for this story.
At 52, Dan Lafferty is a graying, prison_savvy version of the twinkle_eyed defendant who repelled and riveted Utahns during court appearances more than 15 years ago. He hasn't shaved his beard since the day he was sentenced in January 1985; it now hangs, rope_like and bound by rubber bands, to his waist. On his left elbow is a spider_web tattoo commemorating his first 10 years in prison.
Lafferty's cellmate in the prison's maximum security wing is Mark Hofmann, who killed two Salt Lake City residents in much_publicized 1985 pipe bombings Hofmann hoped would divert attention from a forgery scheme he was attempting to perpetuate on the LDS Church.
"We are the archtypical opposites," Lafferty said of his notorious cellmate, with whom he has become friends. "I'm a religious fanatic. You might call him an atheist. But we are brothers, which has been so valuable to me."
In turn, King believes Lafferty is valuable to the UTAP program. Lafferty lends his services to UTAP in part because he likes King, who treats him with respect. "I consider Mike King a friend. I call him my manager, setting up gigs."
Lafferty also believes his UTAP appearances give him a platform for spreading his religious views.
"They always have me run through the gory details, and that's fine. They seem to think [I can help]. I doubt it. The truth is, I feel like I'm using them."
Brenda Lafferty's father agrees. Jim Wright sees Lafferty as a manipulator whose rationale for committing the murders is bogus. By inviting Lafferty to speak in public, authorities are playing into his hand, he said.
"He thrives on telling his story," Wright said by phone from his Idaho home. "He's supposed to be in there to be punished for what he did. It's probably rewarding him more than it's helping them."
Wright has long since stopped hoping for an apology from Lafferty for the loss of his daughter and grandchild. And Lafferty is not inclined to offer one since he believes God has assured him he did nothing wrong.
Wright's response is "absolutely understandable," said King. "The secret here is that in order to understand the mind of these people you've got to give officers the opportunity to talk to them."
Lafferty denies his religious views are an elaborate justification for languishing behind bars as a scorned child_killer. But he concedes the convoluted path he claims to be following on behalf of God __ to kill two people, go to prison, become a prophet and pave the way for Jesus' return __ sounds far_fetched.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, no, to be honest. Sometimes I think to myself, 'Am I crazy?' And I might be. And if I am, that's OK, too. It's all just survival. Do whatever it is that enables you to survive the best you can. If you feel the need to play the game of religion, play it.
"If I had known when I first came that I was going to be here 16 years, I don't think I could have handled it. I've always believed I've only got a few more weeks to go. I still hope. It's like a carrot sitting in front of me. That's the way I do time. I don't think my mind could comprehend the thought of never getting out."
© Copyright 2000, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on Utah OnLine is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.
Utah Puts Crime Mysteries Online
The New York Times
By MINDY SINK
October 26, 2000
THE police in Utah have a new tool for solving cases of murder, missing persons and unidentified bodies: a Web site that provides statewide crime information for investigators and the public.
"It's like crime-stoppers in cyberspace," said Mike King, chief of the criminal support unit of the Utah Attorney General's Office and the coordinator for the Web site of the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, a group of crime experts.
The site (www.utap.org) has a twofold purpose. Anyone with information about a crime can send it anonymously via e-mail, and investigators statewide can share data about similar crimes or people who are missing by posting reports about what has occurred in their areas.
"An investigator in the southern part of our state, which is much more rural, might come across an unidentified body," Mr. King said, "and he can go immediately to the Web site and hopefully see all of the missing people from the state. Or they might see a similarity between two cases, maybe a serial homicide."
Mr. King pointed out that he had noticed eerie similarities in the cases of two women who disappeared on the same date, but four years apart, in different parts of the state. "See how they look alike, and notice those dates?" he said.
One woman, Peggy Sue Case, vanished from Spanish Forks on July 9, 1988, and the other, Debra Lee Frost of Salt Lake City, was last seen on July 9, 1984. "There may not be any connection," Mr. King said, "but maybe no one noticed those similarities before their photos were there on the site, side by side almost."
Although Mr. King refused to divulge details of any open cases, he said that one 12-year-old homicide was on the verge of being solved as a result of e-mail received at the site. "The officer got an e-mail saying, `I am the girlfriend of the person who committed this murder,' and they have since spoken," he said.
Mr. King acknowledged that e- mail was not entirely anonymous, but he said that the police did not intend to track down e-mail tipsters. "There is the possibility they could be tracked down," he said, "but officers have not gone out of their way to find out who that person sending the e-mail is."
And investigators are counting on the comfortable feeling of anonymity people get with e-mail. "People can develop relationships and get married after meeting online," Mr. King said, "so they must feel comfortable for some reason."
The Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project was formed in 1997 to encourage cooperation among various law enforcement agencies. Mr. King said investigators in the state hoped to combine their resources and expertise for some cases to increase the odds of solving them.
Members of the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project also meet with convicted criminals to learn more about how they select victims and commit crimes, and the group provides training seminars for police officers and investigators. The group is not involved in solving the cases posted on the Web, but instead serves as an intermediary for sharing information.
Mr. King, who is paid by the Attorney General's Office to maintain the site, created the site by himself in one long weekend. "After about six months of trying to get Webmasters," he said with a laugh, "I gave up and bought a `Web Design for Dummies' book, went home one weekend and learned how to do it. It seems to be working O.K."
So far the site has color pictures and statistical information for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the state's missing-person and unsolved homicide cases. Individual police departments must supply the site with crime data from their areas by filling out submission forms they can obtain on the site. The site has been up for about three months and has had more than 17,000 visitors.
"It's hard to tell how successful it is," Mr. King said. "One of the core missions is to provide this service without becoming involved in the investigations. The e-mails go directly to the investigators."
Mr. King said that he did not know of any other state or police agencies with similar sites and that he would like to see a multistate task force working together online.
While the e-mail tips are welcomed, Mr. King said, old-fashioned police work is still the key to solving crimes. "I think the benefit goes a lot further than a hopeful e-mail of remembering a guy in a blue Chevy," he said. "Hopefully this will help them triage the case and get lucky and solve the crime a little sooner."
Enemy of time fades in unsolved crimes
Tuesday, October 31, 2000
By L. ANNE NEWELL
The Associated Press
ROY -- Sometimes when the phone rings unexpectedly or the doorbell chimes at an odd hour, Mary Sorensen thinks it might bring the an answer to the question she has been asking herself for 15 years: Why did her daughter disappear on Oct. 2, 1985? "I think you always wish for that," the Roy woman says three weeks after the anniversary of Sheree Warren's disappearance. "You know, when you're not expecting the doorbell to ring." Warren, 25, walked out of the Utah State Employees' Credit Union, where she was in management training, about 6:30 p.m. She was wearing black heels and a red and white striped blouse with a gold necklace. She had dark brown hair and hazel eyes, a chipped tooth and a subtle smile.
Authorities found her car a month later at a Las Vegas hotel. "You feel about the same now as you did then," Mary Sorensen says. "Your feelings don't change a lot. It's still remorse and wistful that things could be different." Sorensen and her husband, Edwin, aren't alone.
There's a long list of Utah families waiting for explanations about where their loved ones are; men, women and children who have been gone for decades while police stare at their photos, sending them out every so often hoping for that one tip that will break open the case.
Their names and faces fill the online version of the three-year-old Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, a crime-fighting team modeled on the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Names such as Johanna Leatherbury, 18, who was reported missing on Aug. 21, 1971. Her nude body was found the next day near the Great Salt Lake. She'd been shot and sexually assaulted. Or Valaine Briggs, 19, who was walking from home to the LDS Business College when she disappeared on May 5, 1977. Her nude body was found two days later in Lamb's Canyon. And Bertha Hughes, 81, who was found dead in her Salt Lake County home by family members March 17, 1982. She had been sexually assaulted. Their smiling faces stare out from the UTAP Web site, clothes and haircuts now far out of date. Two decades can do a lot to discourage families, cities, even the officers assigned to deliver justice and explanations. And it would be discouraging, says Mike King, an investigator for the Utah Attorney General's Office, if cases just like these weren't being solved nearly every day.
King points to cases such as that of Barbara Kaye Williams, whose nude body was found in Juab County on March 22, 1991. Last year, Williams' mother, who lives in Florida, contacted authorities because she was grew suspicious after not hearing from her daughter. Williams' husband confessed to the killing after being questioned. Then there's 7-week-old Ian Wing, whose 1996 death was the first case solved by UTAP. In 1998, Ian's father admitted to King he'd squeezed the child to death to keep him quiet. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"Time is usually an enemy in law enforcement, but sometimes it works to our advantage," King says.
He says advances in forensic technology during the past decade have made more evidence available in old crimes. For example, if physical evidence has been retained, it can be put through DNA testing now. "I think the advances forensically that have occurred in the last 10, 15 years alone ensure that if police departments are in a position where they can take old physical evidence and run it through the forensics office, they would score a victory every now and then just based on that," King says. Weber County Attorney's Office Investigator Shane Minor, the latest person to work on the Sheree Warren case, agrees. "I think the technology does it," he says. But it's not always the technology that gets confessions, King says. Sometimes it's a case of "telltale heart syndrome," when a person feels so guilty for committing murder that confession or madness becomes necessary. "You see all kinds of problems," King says. "A person who was pretty much a normal person starts having to run from all the terror of the incident and starts committing other crimes."
Other Utah investigators have similar tales. Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Jerry Townsend, who heads the Leatherbury, Briggs and Hughes investigations, says one case his agency solved happened because the murderer kept bragging about the woman he killed. Bonnie Sievers Ryan, who was six months pregnant, was shot in the head as she got into her car. Eventually, one of Michael Robert Jones' ex-wives told police of the crime. Nationally, the story is much the same. New York City's cold case squad cleared 280 cases in its first three years. The Washington, D.C., cold-case squad closed 157 old homicides and several high-profile attempted-murder cases in its first five years. In Prince George's County, Md., police recently solved the 45-year-old murder of two teen-age girls.
All of which means that one day when the phone rings, it might be the call Mary Sorensen has waited for as she watched her daughter's son grow up, as she and her husband had their girl legally declared dead and held a memorial service, as she watched every news report on every body found in Utah for 15 years and wondered if it could be her daughter. "There are those times that are bad," she says. "It being this many years, it's still hard ... but the right person might hear something someday."
Using the Net to Net Criminals
Police in Utah are learning to use the Internet to solve what were once unsolvable crimes.
By Jack Karp
November 20, 2000
Law enforcement officers in Utah are taking advantage of the Internet's widespread popularity to help them solve crimes.
The Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP) recently unveiled a public website designed to help Utah police gather and share clues about their cases. The website, which is the first of its kind in the country, allows users throughout the world to view photographs of victims, read case files, get progress reports, and contact investigating officers directly concerning unsolved crimes. The hope is that when a visitor to the site comes across a case he or she knows something about, that person will email or call the investigating officer with a lead or tip.
"The problem with tipster lines is that a call goes to a central location where one person must deal with all the cases," site administrator Mike King told CyberCrime in a recent interview. "We've tried to bypass that and allow a tipster to go straight to the investigating officer."
King also hopes that the anonymity of email and the Web will aid the system. "We think that will help us in areas where people are reluctant to come forward with information," King says.
In addition to allowing the public to submit clues about cases, the UTAP site allows police officers and law-enforcement agents to share those clues. Not only can police departments get information about unsolved cases on the site, but they can also add to that information and post their own cases. Detectives, psychologists, criminal profilers, and medical examiners from all over Utah submit cases to UTAP, both electronically and on paper. King manages to get most new cases posted to the UTAP site within 24 hours.
"It's like crime-stoppers in cyberspace," King says. The site, which was first hatched by Provo police chief and former FBI profiler Greg Cooper, currently posts case files belonging to 26 unsolved murders, 11 missing persons, and one unidentified body. Listed victims include Anna Palmer, who was 10 years old when she was murdered, and Theresa R. Greaves, who hasn't been seen since October 5, 1983. The site, which has been online since the summer of 2000, has received 20,952 visitors so far. At its peak, it gets 2,000 hits per day, according to King.
"There really hasn't been one single source for law enforcement agencies to get information on unidentified bodies and unsolved homicides," King says. "With the Internet, we can also use the public more and gather information that way."
So far, the public is responding to UTAP's efforts.
"I received a letter within the past week which I am currently following up on and [that] may be very helpful," Detective Cameron M. Noel of the Beaver County Sheriff's Office told CyberCrime about the case he has posted on the UTAP site. Detective Noel is currently investigating the mysterious death of Karen Lee Jarvis, whose body was found naked and decomposed in her Beaver City apartment in 1998.
"I have also had many people in my small community contact me about the case," he says. "I have found the UTAP [site] very helpful, with not only my case, but have heard from other investigators that it is a great tool."
Detective Scott Cosgrove of the Box Elder County police department and Sergeant Jerry Townsend of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Homicide Unit also tell CyberCrime that they have received several tips about their cases via the UTAP site.
King and the other officers involved in UTAP hope that tips such as these, which come from the public via the Internet, will someday help put to rest many of Utah's unsolved cases. "I think it's going to be a huge benefit to both investigators and the public," he says. "It's a way to speed up the investigations and bring closure to families.
Peering Into the Minds of Killers and Rapists
Utah Program Lets Police Question Inmates' Motives and Methods
Dec. 1, 2000
By Robert Anthony Phillips (Click here to read the actual article)
SALT LAKE CITY (APBnews.com) -- The experts include a deranged killer who said he slit a baby's throat because God ordered him to and a pedophile who revealed the subtle tricks he used to sexually abuse more than 500 children over 35 years. And the people they are telling this to are police. The religious killer and pedophile are part of a stable of inmates, most serving life terms, being used in a program here to help law enforcement authorities crawl inside the minds of some of the country's most notorious criminals and find out the motivations that led them to commit the crimes.
Unique project
Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project The Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, a 3-year-old program, is the only one of its kind operated by any state. The program profiles certain types of criminals and helps bring together police agencies throughout the state to investigate unsolved cases and share information.
As an offshoot of the project, imprisoned criminals are brought to police conferences to talk about their bizarre crimes. The hope is that by hearing firsthand how and why these men committed their crimes, police will gain insights that will help them nab others committing similar acts and learn what interviewing techniques work best on them, the project's founders say.
"We can read all the books we want, talk to all the people who have talked to serial murders or serial rapists, but we need to go to the experts to find out what their motivations are," said the program's co-founder, Chief Mike King.
Brutal child-killing
Those "experts" include Dan Lafferty, who is serving a double life term for participating with his brother, Ron, in the murders of their sister-in-law and her 15-month-old child in 1984.
King said Ron Lafferty had told his brother that he received a revelation to kill Brenda Wright Lafferty -- their brother's wife -- and her daughter, Erica. King said Dan Lafferty believed his brother. The men had been excommunicated from the Mormon Church and had joined the School of Prophets, a radical cult whose members received revelations from God.
The brothers went into Brenda Wright Lafferty's home while her husband was away and beat her. Dan Lafferty went into the bedroom, where the 15-month-old child was screaming, and slashed the child's throat with a knife. Dan Lafferty then went back and slashed the mother's throat.
Ron Lafferty received a death sentence for the murders, and Dan Lafferty a double life term in prison. King said that the real reason Ron Lafferty wanted the woman killed was that he believed she had helped break up his marriage.
Greg Cooper Under the program, the facts of the Lafferty case are presented to the conference, and, in the grand finale, Dan Lafferty is brought out to talk about the crime and answer questions. Last summer, Lafferty was brought before a conference of homicide investigators in Phoenix.
"It's an opportunity to go full circle," said Provo Police Chief Greg Cooper, who with King and the state's attorney general's office was a co-founder of the program. Cooper was a former FBI agent, instructor and member of the bureau's Behavioral Sciences Unit.
"We present the cases through the eyes of the victim [when possible], the investigator, the prosecutor and the criminal," he said. "Most police officers don't have the opportunity to talk to these type of offenders. ... In the event it does happen, they will have had some exposure and training."
Lafferty, King said, showed no emotion when he told the officers how he killed and why. He believes he is the biblical prophet Elijah, King said.
"The police are amazed that the guy shows zero emotion when he talks about the murders. To them it is very disturbing. His choice was not to offend God. He says killing them was no big deal."
Ego boost for criminals?
But not everyone is enamored with criminals like Lafferty being brought out to talk about their crimes. The father of Brenda Wright Lafferty has publicly criticized the state for allowing the religious killer to be brought to police conferences, charging that he is manipulating police and receives an ego boost from talking about the murders.
Despite the criticism, King said he had no doubt about the merits of allowing Lafferty to talk.
"I fully understand the father and will not argue his point other than to say that we are in a peculiar position wherein we can either continue to ignore the criminal and keep the 'us vs. them' philosophy or recognize that they truly are the experts and learn from them," King said.
Another supporter of the program is Jeff Pierce, the deputy director of the Rocky Mountain Information Network, which provides criminal intelligence services to law enforcement authorities in the Rocky Mountain states. Pierces attended the conference in Phoenix where Lafferty talked about the murders. "It really sobers the audience," Pierce said. "It's the most realistic training I ever had. It helps you to know your enemies and to know what he is thinking."
Clues to serial child molester
Lafferty is the only one of the imprisoned criminals being used by program who has been publicly identified. The names of the others are unknown.
Police say they have also gained insight on how a man who sexually abused 527 children over 35 years picked his victims.
"He talked of tactics he used to make the children comfortable and to make the parents comfortable," King said. "He did everything. He volunteered to be a camp counselor so he could do physical exams on children. One of his favorites was to hang out at the deeper end of the local pool. Children would scoot around the edge of the pool and he would help them."
Tracking their prey
A serial rapist serving a life sentence told police that he specialized in attacking real estate agents by making appointments to view homes they were trying to sell. King said that he would review photos of the agents in the newspapers, looking for specific hair color and style and use the home visits to get the person alone.
And still another serial rapist, a truck driver who assaulted 85 women in 11 states, told lawmen how he targeted his victims.
He prowled poor neighborhoods looking for single women. He told police how he looked at mail, watched for small cars with cute ornaments dangling from the rearview mirror and toys in the yard.
By Robert Anthony Phillips is an APBnews.com senior writer
Web Watch: Amateur sleuths, get cracking!
By Amanda Druckman, Court TV
Get the article at: http://courttv.com/onair/shows/pros_and_cons/webwatch-120600.html
Have you ever thought you had the makings of a detective? At www.utap.org, wannabe crime solvers have a shot at figuring out some of Utah's unsolved crimes.
Visitors to this site can peruse information on missing persons, unsolved homicides and unidentified bodies, and notify the proper authorities if they have any leads on these pending cases.
The brainchild of Utah's Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project (UTAP) State Coordinator Mike King, the site aims "to facilitate cooperation, communication and coordination between law enforcement agencies and to provide support in their efforts to investigate, identify, track, apprehend and prosecute violent offenders and assist in successfully resolving any major case."
King, who thought up the concept for the site, saw a unique opportunity to combine the growing popularity of the Internet with efforts of law enforcement. The former police officer also believes that ordinary citizens are uncomfortable calling crime hotlines such as CrimeStoppers, but might be more willing to work with law enforcement through the Internet.
In addition to open cases, the site includes articles chronicling instances of UTAP's success in solving crimes, links to dozens of Utah police departments, and schedules for police training classes. Utah is currently the only state that operates this type of site.
The site first launched in July and, according to King, has enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response from both law enforcement and the public. King updates the site on a weekly basis and tries to have new submissions online within 48 hours of receiving them from law enforcement.
To protect the integrity of the site, King only accepts submissions from law enforcement agencies. However, he admits that without the willingness of the public to participate and provide information, a site like this cannot succeed.
Although the site is not a complete listing of every unsolved murder, missing person, or unidentified body in Utah, King hopes one day to have every pending case online.
UTAP was founded in 1997 to increase cooperation between various law enforcement agencies and is sponsored by such corporate heavyweights at America Online and Xerox.
©2000 Courtroom Television Network LLC. All Rights Reserved.
New technology may help solve 31-year-old slaying
No arrests were ever made in the Roosevelt killing
Author: By Lezlee E. Whiting, Deseret News correspondent, December 09, 2000
ROOSEVELT -- More than 31 years have passed since a 14-year-old Roosevelt boy glanced through the window of the home where he was mowing a lawn and saw what appeared to be a dead body slumped on a bed.
Lynn Casto ran to the next-door neighbor's home with the alarming news. After Roosevelt police were called, his discovery was confirmed. Fontella Galloway, a 65-year-old former schoolteacher who lived alone, had been tortured, sexually assaulted and bound with ropes. She died of suffocation from the weight of her own body.
Galloway was found on June 19, 1969, the same day that a crime conference was being held in Roosevelt Junior High.
The conference was being attended by city, county and state law-enforcement agents, who were summoned to the murder scene. From that point, Roosevelt Police Chief Dave Roberts essentially turned the investigation and evidence over to the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office, which relied heavily on help from the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department, which in turn coordinated with city and county law-enforcement agencies.
Although there were several suspects, no arrests were ever made. It was recently discovered that over the years, critical evidence, such as clothing, fingernail scrapings and documentation, had been lost as they were sent off to other law-enforcement agencies and to crime laboratories for testing. Roosevelt Police Chief Cecil Gurr has tracked down what is left of the evidence, some of which was located by Duchesne County sheriff's detective Sgt. Wally Hendricks. They are working with a new state agency to re-examine the unsolved murder.
"You always open a case like this, hopefully to solve it. We had hoped to track down some of the evidence that had been misplaced over the years and use the advancements in DNA technology so we would have something to rule some people out," Gurr said.
Even with the depleted evidence, there are still photographs, reports and other information that will aid in the reopened investigation. Assisting are experts with the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project. UTAP serves as a statewide coordinator and central clearinghouse for all Utah cases involving unsolved homicides, missing persons and unidentified bodies. Under the agreement, police agencies from across the state upload their cases to the attorney general's case analysts, who will compare them with similar cases. If similarities are
discovered, the attorney general's office will notify the agencies involved and encourage their cooperation.
The attorney general's office forwards all Utah-based cases to the national database house at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va. Once there, the Utah cases are compared with cases from around the nation and world.
The vicious nature of the Galloway murder shook the community. Ruby Allred, a neighbor who had known Galloway for 20 years, described her as "very quiet and independent and did not neighbor very much."
Allred said she hadn't noticed any lights on at the Galloway house since about 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 15. She told investigators that she tried to phone the victim on June 17 at 10 a.m. The phone rang only once, she said. She recalled that "it sounded as though someone picked it up and then hung it up." On June 18, Allred told police she was on her way to town around 11 a.m. and noticed a gray cat sitting in the window of the Galloway house. She noticed that the screen was off and the window was open.
Galloway's partially clothed body was found the next day. Investigators believed the murderer entered the home by using a nearby shovel to pry open a rear window so he could climb in and surprise the victim. They say evidence shows that Galloway fought hard to ward off her attacker, sustaining bruises and a broken fingernail in the process. At some point Galloway was rendered unconscious, her hands were bound behind her at her waist and tied to the headboard of her bed, causing her upper body to slouch forward, which cut off the circulation to her lungs.
Police estimate that Galloway's death went unnoticed for a few days, probably because the 5-foot, 120-pound woman was "a loner who stayed by herself."
The fact that a woman had been brutalized in her own home by an unknown assailant who was still at large must have generated a huge amount of discussion in the community, but it resulted in just two short news stories in what was then the Roosevelt Standard.
The crime also resulted in two editorials, one of which implored citizens to end rumor and speculation about the murder and quit spreading gossip, stating that when there was something factual to be reported it would be released by police.
According to remaining police records, the primary suspect in the case was a 58-year-old man who lived near the Galloway house. The man, who was from Cedar City, was working in town at Jack Rasmussen's landscaping business.
On June 16, 1969, he unexpectedly called his boss at 7 a.m. and asked for a week of vacation time. He left and never returned.
Former Duchesne County Sheriff George Marret recalls trying to interview the man in St. George, but was thwarted by the man's daughter, who was furious with police for contacting her father regarding the murder.
There apparently were no other attempts to interview the man. The man would be 89 years old today, if he is still alive.
The Galloway murder case was profiled in 1980 by police consultants who said that the execution of the crime pointed to someone who was possibly just starting a killing spree.
They said this was the killer's first attempt and that he probably lived nearby, said Gurr, noting that the case was reviewed just as profiling was in its infancy as a law enforcement tool.
The profile suggested the killer may have been in his 40s and called him an "unorganized killer" because of the way evidence was haphazardly left at the scene.
Copyright 2000, Deseret News Publishing Co
Layton Murder added to Website
Friday, March 09, 2001
By KARI LYNN HARLAND
Standard-Examiner staff
LAYTON -- Police are still searching for the person who killed a woman 15 years ago. Now, to help find the killer, Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project is adding the case to its Web site.
Carla Maxwell was shot April 25, 1986, just a few days short of her 21st birthday. At the time of the shooting, she was working alone at the 7-Eleven store at the intersection of Fort Lane and South Main in Layton.
Police believe an unknown person or persons entered the store and shot her five times in the face, head, neck and abdomen. There are no known witnesses or motive to the murder and the killer left very little evidence at the scene, police report.
Maxwell's death, however, has been linked to two similar homicides in Salt Lake City. Tina Gallegos was killed near Dirk's Field 11 months before Maxwell's death, Layton Detective Sgt. John Lybbert said.
Then, one month after the Layton shooting, Lisa Strong was killed in the Sugar House area while she was walking home. Lybbert said all three women were shot for no apparent reason.
Nothing was taken from the 7-Eleven store at the time of Maxwell's death that would indicate robbery was a motive, police report. Lybbert said he is hoping the UTAP Web site will help clear up the Maxwell case. "We're hoping that something will come up from this. We haven't had any new leads since 1986," he said.
A picture of Maxwell and basic information about the case is available at UTAP.org/Maxwell.htm. Other unsolved cases are available at UTAP.org/unsolved.htm. Anyone with information is strongly urged to contact Lybbert at 497-8403 or by e-mail at jlybbert@laytoncity.org.
Sheri Lynn Stark allegedly faked her own death in 2000
Wednesday, May 02, 2001
By JOEY HAWS, Standard-Examiner staff
OGDEN -- A Roy woman who allegedly staged her own drowning death then disappeared has been added to the missing persons section of the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project Web site.
On a frigid, snowy day in January of last year, Sheri Lynn Stark, 35, made a 911call saying that someone jumped into an ice hole at Pineview Reservoir. Stark originally identified herself to dispatchers as Linda Strong, then hung up. Investigators later found Stark's vehicle at the reservoir along with a suicide note and all her personal belongings.
The 911 call came from a nearby restaurant, where many employees identified Stark as the caller. A cab later picked her up there and dropped her off at the Ogden City Mall. Stark has not been seen since.
"She's done a pretty good job at vanishing," said Weber County Sheriff's Detective Colten Johansen. "I've been in contact with relatives all over in different states, and they say they haven't heard a word from her. She has just disappeared."
Johansen said he thinks he's been able to determine a motive as to why the woman would stage her own death. Written in the suicide note, Stark directed her husband, David, to use the money he would receive from her life insurance policy to pay off all of the debts she had racked up -- some $50,000 in credit card expenses and other liabilities.
Johansen said Stark was heavily addicted to drugs and had cleaned out her joint account she had with her husband, when she decided to come up with the ploy to disappear, leaving behind two children.
Nearly one year after Stark disappeared, her 11- year-old son Jonathan was killed Jan. 20 while crossing the road in front of his house in Roy. Stark did not attend the funeral and investigators believe she probably has no idea her son was killed.
David Stark declined comment to the media. "He said he has moved on in his life, and he has filed for divorce," Johansen said. He said the only reason David Stark wants to track her down is to let her know her son died.
Deserving Another Chance?
Sunday, August 12, 2001
BY STEPHEN HUNT
(c) 2001, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
There are tears and appropriate expressions of remorse when Bob Lee Boog Jr. talks about the women he stalked and raped at knifepoint. But are the emotion and contrition genuine?
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole believes they are, and that Boog, the notoriously cunning Capitol Hill rapist of the mid-1980s, has earned a chance at redemption outside the prison walls that have held him since 1987. "What I did was hideous," Boog said at his parole hearing in May. But he insisted he no longer is the serial rapist who terrorized Salt Lake City, painstakingly stalking -- often for weeks or months -- and then attacking a dozen women in their homes.
"There's a point in a man's life when he starts to think about his legacy. And I don't want to leave as my legacy, 'He's a rapist and a bad person,' " Boog told parole board member Keith Hamilton. "I want to change that."
With the Nov. 18, 2003, parole date recently awarded him by the board, Boog, now 46, will get to pursue what he says are his goals: getting a job, returning to the religion of his youth and marrying his girlfriend in an LDS temple. The parole board's conclusion that Boog has truly abandoned a lifetime of deviancy ran counter to an evaluation this spring by an independent psychologist, Ted A. Harris, who maintained Boog has "conned his way" through prison treatment programs and remains a "high risk to repeat sexual violence." Third District Judge Leslie Lewis, who, as a deputy county attorney, prosecuted Boog, is likewise skeptical. She calls him "a very dangerous man, and not a man amenable to treatment."
Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Don Bell is wary as well. "It's a crap shoot, at best," said the supervisor of the department's sex-crime unit. "Part of me says [16 years in prison] is not enough."
Sex offenders often are more intelligent and from a higher social and educational background than other criminals -- and many never accept that they are indeed criminals, Bell said. "I'm not sure you can change their thinking. I've got sex offenders who are in their 70s and 80s."
A 1997 U.S. Justice Department study found that rapists and other sex offenders are the criminals most likely to commit the same crime again. Until he was caught, Boog was such a repeat offender.
Hamilton, the parole board member whose recommendation was adopted by the full five-member panel, said in an interview that Boog seems remorseful, has completed sex-offender therapy and has been a trouble-free inmate.
"I wish I could predict that we will never have a problem from Mr. Boog," Hamilton said. "You balance risk with length of incarceration and the nature of his crimes. Then you try and make the best decision you can humanly make."
The board set the 2003 date to release Boog to a halfway house, followed by intensively supervised parole, which includes electronic monitoring.
"Halfway houses are really good at letting us know when these guys are even thinking dangerously," Hamilton said. "If he has been playing games with us . . . we'll get him back here."
Detailing Double Life: During a two-hour interview at the prison, Boog wept often -- especially when speaking of the harm he inflicted on his victims -- and seemed pained at the memory of his deeds.
But despite Boog's apparent remorse, it also was clear he desperately wants to be free. He constantly was selling the notion he is a changed man and no longer a threat.
Boog also talked in detail about the double life he led before his capture in 1987. Court documents, parole hearings and news articles from the mid-80s provide other details.
By day, Boog appeared a typical member of his North Salt Lake community. He had attended Bountiful High School before enlisting in the U.S. Navy at age 17. Returning to Utah two years later, he had married, fathered two children and worked as a computer programmer and electrical technician.
But at night, Boog crept around peeping at women through windows, an obsession that escalated to sneaking into their homes to fondle their belongings. He committed his first rape in 1983. Then, beginning in 1985, he attacked 11 more women during a two-year spree.
To escape detection, he posed as a jogger. He ran for miles while casing homes and spying on potential victims to learn who had roommates and dogs, which doors and windows were left unlocked.
He preferred Capitol Hill for its alleyways and many single-level homes without blinds or frosted windows. He often entered a victim's home beforehand to explore, to scout escape routes and go through the woman's mail to learn her name.
Then -- high on cocaine and wearing a mask, yellow latex gloves and crotchless pants concealed under running shorts -- Boog would cut the phone lines and slip inside.
Boog would immediately gain the upper hand. "I've got a knife and I'm calling them by name," he said. "There's enough shock and fear to control the situation."
Afterward, he sometimes apologized. But he also boasted to one victim that police would "never" catch him.
In 1986, he was convicted of a federal cocaine charge. Returning to the streets drug-free, he attacked three more women. But without drugs he was unable to complete the rapes. "I was no longer 10 feet tall and bulletproof," he said.
The night of his last attempt, in October 1987, Boog was hiding in a woman's bathroom when she arrived home. He chased her and knocked her down, according to police reports. But after a struggle, Boog fled, saying: "God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
In the end, the ultra-cautious criminal was caught almost by accident.
As he drove from the neighborhood in the early morning hours, a patrol officer stopped him, made a routine note of his name and address and let him go. But detectives, who had been given Boog's name by a tipster, now tracked him to his North Salt Lake trailer home.
They quickly debunked Boog's alibi and he confessed.
In a plea deal, Boog pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree felony aggravated sexual assault, punishable by up to life in prison. In March 1988, a judge sentenced Boog to a minimum of 10 years in prison.
Moving On: One of Boog's victims told The Salt Lake Tribune she had trouble sleeping for about a year after he attacked her but has moved on with her life. She now owns a dog and a gun and practices regularly with the weapon.
She agrees Boog "needs a chance. But I don't want his chance anywhere near my house or where I live. I would be afraid and concerned, especially for people in close proximity to that halfway house."
Hamilton said only one victim had written recently to the parole board and she opposed a release date. During his hearing, Boog read Hamilton an older letter from another victim who said she had forgiven him.
"This does not mean I am excusing, rationalizing or condoning his behavior in any way," the woman wrote. "But I have chosen to let go of my painful negative feelings. I believe people can turn their lives around."
Boog said the woman's letter -- and prison visits by rape victims in unrelated cases -- helped him develop a conscience, to empathize with his victims and begin to see women as people, not just sexual objects.
Boog's avowed transformation has included helping police understand the mind of a serial rapist.
Utah attorney general investigator Mike King, coordinator of the Utah criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, said Boog has spoken candidly about his exploits.
He called Boog a "power assertive" rapist, one who acts with great confidence, seeks to "prove his virility as a macho man" and feels deserving of beautiful women.
King said Boog is worth studying for tips on catching rapists because he spent so much time planning and anticipating his crimes. He likened Boog to a big-game hunter.
"Weeks before the hunt they lay out their clothing, get the right ammo and make sure their gun is on target," King said. "Then they fantasize about the big, huge buck they're going to get."
Clues in the Past? Boog believes his past provides clues to his criminality.
Born in Salt Lake City, he was 5 years old when his father's government career took the family to Japan for three years. Boog says he was taken to bathhouses used by both sexes. "I was at a young and impressionable age," he told the parole board in 1989.
Boog said he was allowed to sleep with his sister -- who was six years older -- until she reached puberty, and felt torn apart when he was finally forced to sleep alone.
As a teen, he began looking at pornography. "I still have imprints of pictures I looked at when I was 13," he said. "How do you purge that stuff?"
But Boog's mother disputes many of her son's recollections.
"I don't think a lot of the things in his childhood happened like that," she said in an interview. "He had to blame something, rather than taking the blame himself."
She recalls Bob Jr. was different from her four other children: "From the time he was born, he had a mind of his own. He would do what he wanted, regardless. He was kind of a hard one to handle."
She says her son slept in a crib in the same room with his older sister, but insists never in her bed.
Yet, Boog's sister appears to have played a major role in shaping his life. Like her, all of Boog's victims were blue-eyed blondes. She was, he says now, "part of the dynamic. . . . All I wanted was her love and acceptance, and I didn't get a lot of that."
During Boog's off-and-on marriage (he married and divorced the same woman twice), the couple had sex four or five times a day, he said. Then, while his wife and two children slept, he would sneak out to peep in windows.
Boog claims his first rape in 1983 was an act of revenge, triggered by a sexual assault inflicted on him by three women who held him at gunpoint after catching him peeping. But in 1985, he raped again and kept raping. Boog now calls it a response to stress: An older brother died of cancer, his wife divorced him for good, he had back surgery and started using drugs.
"I believed the world owed me, and I was bitter," Boog said.
Today, though, Boog says he is a different man, one able to have a normal, healthy relationship with a woman. And he has a girlfriend.
His plan upon release from prison?
"My dream, my goal," he said, "is simply to find a job, get baptized again and get married in the temple."
UNLOCKING THE PAST WITH A FORENSIC KEY
BY: MARIA ESPOSITO Senior Citizen Magazine
Most of us grew up idolizing comic book heroes like Superman and Batman who fought crime with their arsenal of super powers. It was thrilling to watch as they made “good” triumph over “evil” every time. There was only one thing that would have made the experience perfect, if Superman and Batman had been real.
Modern day investigators may not be superheroes and they may not have x-ray vision or the ability to fly, but they do have a pretty powerful weapon in their bag of crime fighting tricks. Forensics has proved to be one of the most useful tools a criminologist has. It has not only helped bring the guilty to justice; it has also released the innocent from suffering the punishment of a crime they didn’t commit. And now, it has become the means by which a question that has mystified historians for years has finally been answered.
The ancient Egyptians never documented Tutankhamen’s cause of death. This was clearly a strange omission about the man that had been their king. From the time his tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, scientists and historians have gotten together to try and piece together who or what killed King Tut. Despite their combined efforts, the answer remained a mystery – until now.
Two of America’s top criminologists, Greg Cooper, Police Chief of Provo, Utah and Mike King of the Utah Attorney General’s Office, spent two years unraveling the mystery of how this nineteen-year-old monarch met his demise. Their search and the conclusion it led them to, were the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary that originally aired on October 6th.
Oddly enough, the methodology they used was as interesting as the solution. They had very little circumstantial evidence given the fact that the body was 30 centuries old and had been altered in the mummification process. They did have the tomb; but the secrets it held needed unlocking.
To get the ball rolling, they began their investigation with the assumption that Tut’s death was a homicide. This was an obvious starting point because of the victim’s youth. However, the real meat of the investigation resulted from two important criminal investigation techniques.
Cooper and King enlisted the aid of Dr. Todd Grey, Salt Lake City’s Medical Examiner. Using x-rays of Tut’s body made at Howard Carter’s request, Grey discovered that Tut suffered from Klippel-Feil Syndrome, a rare disease of the spinal cord in which the vertebrae of the neck are fused together. This makes movement difficult and painful. He also uncovered the fact that Tut suffered from scoliosis, another spinal cord abnormality. These pieces of the king’s medical history would figure later on in the investigation.
The second technique that Cooper and King used to unravel the mystery was actually developed by the FBI. Behavioral analysis is a methodology criminologists use to develop a profile of the environment in which the victim lived. This piecing together of events before, during and after the victim’s life provided the investigators with leads in their search for the killer.
Cooper and King began by examining the world Tut was born into. His father, Akhenaton, was a religious heretic who replaced the people’s pantheistic religion with a new monotheistic one. However, Akhenaton’s religious fervor had more to do with politics than religion. During the time of the old way of worshiping, a group of priests dedicated to the god Aman acquired a great deal of political power. Eventually, they became as powerful as the pharaoh himself. Akhenaton decided to break the priests’ power and the best way to do that was to eliminate them. And so a brand new religion dedicated to the god Aton was born. It was no coincidence that the mediator between the god and the Egyptian people was Akhenaton. The priests retaliated by trying to poison him. It was into this world of political upheaval that Tut was born.
When Tut became king, he followed the counsel of his advisors and restored the old ways. And in doing so, he became a powerful champion among the Egyptians. Were those older and more established advisors supportive of the young king’s new found power? Cooper and King initially believed the answer to that question was “no”.
That supposition led them to an examination of four major players in this drama that could potentially have the means, motive and opportunity to kill the king. His wife, Ankhesenamun might have wanted to claim the throne for herself, which could certainly be a driving force to murder. But the duo eliminated her based on historical data that as Tut’s half-sister, she had loved and cared for him all of his life.
That led Cooper and King to examine members of the royal court. Maya, Tut’s Treasurer, had grown wealthy as a result of his duties. History also exonerated him because it documented his loyalty to Tut both during and after his life. The next suspect was Horemheb, the Commander of the Army. He would have a lot to gain by the king’s death because he could make himself pharaoh. As a rough and ready army man, he would undoubtedly have had a great disdain for the infirm monarch. Cooper and King used the discoveries made by Dr. Grey as a motive for murder. However, once again history stepped in to exonerate the accused. Horemheb’s continued efforts to defend the government and maintain the political status quo were well documented.
This left one final suspect. Ay, Tut’s Prime Minister had once been a part of the priesthood dedicated to Aman. However, he had faithfully served as Prime Minister to Akhenaton. On the surface, his loyalty seemed undeniable. But as Cooper and King began to dig further, they discovered that was not the case.
The “smoking gun” was found in Tut’s tomb. There on the wall was a pictorial representation of the “Open Mouth “ ceremony. This was a ritual performed on a dead monarch to allow his senses to be enlivened for the afterlife. It could only be performed by the dead king’s successor.
Tut’s rite was performed by none other than Ay himself. What Cooper and King deduced was that the 60 year-old Ay decided he deserved to be the man in charge. And as we all know, the need for power has always been an overwhelming motivation to kill. The final damning piece of evidence was found in a tomb Ay had built for himself but later abandoned. On the wall the Prime Minister had made a confession to the gods about his role as Tut’s murderer.
Searches on the internet with "Mike King" "Greg Cooper" "King Tut" will reveal articles worldwide that featured this show. Readers can also visit www.Discovery.com and search "King Tut" to get answers regarding show times etc.
The Face Of King Tut
LONDON, Oct. 2, 2002
King Tut's solid gold face mask and a fiberglass model of the young king, based on computer models and X-rays of his mummified corpse. (Channel 5) (AP / CBS)
The king took the throne at the age of nine after the death of his father Akhenaten at age 18. The cause of Tut's death has long been debated, with theories ranging from hunting accident to murder.
(AP) A fiberglass bust that purportedly shows the true face of ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun went on display Monday at London's Science Museum.
The likeness was crafted as part of an investigation into how the teenage pharaoh died more than 3,000 years ago. The fiberglass cast of Tut's head, based on computer models generated from 1969 X-rays of his mummified corpse, shows an attractive round-headed youth with full lips. But it bears little resemblance to the golden funeral mask found in the pharaoh's tomb.
The opulent tomb of Tut, who died around 1350 B.C., was found almost intact by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. His glittering death mask and golden coffin are among the most famous Egyptian artifacts in the world. For a documentary to be broadcast in October, investigators led by Provo, Utah, police chief Greg Cooper and Mike King of the Utah Attorney General's office traveled to Egypt and examined Tutankhamun's tomb, as well as the 1969 X-rays.
They say the disheveled state of the artifacts in the tomb suggested Tutankhamun's burial was done hurriedly and haphazardly, while the X-rays revealed evidence of a blow to the back of the head.
They examined the cases against four suspects in the king's death - Ay; his wife and half sister, Ankhesenamun; his treasurer, Maya; and his army commander Horemheb.
Their verdict will be revealed in a documentary about the investigation, to be broadcast on British television on Oct. 9. An article published in the Sunday Times said the team points the finger at Ay, who married Tutankhamun's widow and succeeded him as pharaoh.
Forensic scientists led by Salt Lake City chief medical examiner Todd Grey say the X-rays show that Tutankhamun probably suffered from a spinal disorder that fused together vertebrae in his neck and would have made him dependent on a cane to walk. More than 100 walking sticks were discovered in his tomb.
The king took the throne at the age of nine after the death of his father Akhenaten at age 18. The cause of Tut's death has long been debated, with theories ranging from hunting accident to murder.
Law enforcers learn new modes
By A. Dionne Waugh / Lynchburg News and Advance
September 18, 2003
Brandon Wilson received the death penalty for brutally slitting the throat of a 9-year-old boy in California. During his interrogation, he gleefully re-enacted the killing for police, even demonstrating how he held the boy when he stabbed him. The irony is that Wilson’s antics in that interrogation room might save a life one day.
Special Agent Steve Oliver of the Virginia State Police watched the interrogation on video Tuesday and he learned something new. Oliver hadn’t thought about having a suspect actually demonstrate in detail what his specific actions were, like Wilson showing exactly how he held the victim. “That’s just another example, but the demonstration is something new. I do a lot of interviewing and you’re always looking for a another tool you can use,” said Oliver, who’s been with state police for 11 years.
That knowledge is exactly why the Bedford County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office sponsored the Death Scene Analysis and Cold Case Investigation seminar at Liberty University this week. The three-day workshop brought in three nationally-recognized crime analysts to teach local law enforcement and others new investigative techniques as well as how to work across jurisdictional boundaries to solve cases.
Mike King, intelligence supervisor for the Utah Department of Public Safety, said the hardest part about teaching the new methods is changing the long held, traditional way of thinking. “We’re taking the evidence off the shelf and looking at it in a new way. We’re taking them out of the element they’re comfortable in. It’s like they’re putting on new glasses,” King said.
Greg Cooper, deputy director for the Federal Homeland Security-Transportation Safety Administration, said investigators sometimes have trouble putting aside their own experiences based on prior cases. “They need to gather all the facts and always be willing to change your theory. A lot of things are overlooked and you need to break your facts against that theory,” Cooper said.
Cooper and King have written books on criminal investigations and consulted on thousands of investigations across the country. They also spent two months in 2001 investigating the death of King Tut in Egypt and their resulting documentary, “The Assassination of King Tut,” was one of the top 10 most watched programs on the Discovery Channel. Bedford County Commonwealth’s Attorney Randy Krantz said that in addition to the new techniques, it is important that the different agencies know each other so they can work together more easily when the need arises. “When we get these people training together the crimes are not going to stop at county lines,” he said. “You get a much better look at the truth (when you use) the systematic system. It’s good police work. The only difference is you see it (the case) through the eyes of the police officers, the correctional officers, the forensic nurses. “You get a team looking at the evidence so you don’t get tunnel vision. You build in the devil’s advocate.”
More than 20 people attended the seminar, including forensic nurses, correctional and probation officers, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and state police. Law enforcement investigators from Bedford County, Bedford city, Lynchburg, Campbell County and Roanoke city also attended. “If you have a crime in this county and a similar crime in another county, and you’re talking and sharing information, we’ll realize that we have the same person. The sharing of information can only help,” said Investigator Eddie Harmony of the Bedford City Police Department. “It’s numbers against numbers. It’s an ideal situation when you can get multiple jurisdictions working together because you put the bad guys at an extreme disadvantage,” he said. Campbell County Investigator L.T. Guthrie agreed, saying that officers don’t always communicate as often as they should and that the seminar shows them how to go outside of their agency. The seminar also took the lessons beyond the typical police personnel.
Caroline Butt and Theresa Kern, forensic nurses at Bedford Memorial Hospital, said the course has helped them know what questions to ask both the victim and the assailant.
“Knowing (the officers) builds more of a trust, a relationship. They’re comfortable with our evidence collection and on the same lines as (far as) interviewing the victims and suspects,” Kern said. Harmony said that what he learned at the seminar will change the way he approaches his investigations. “I’ll be more systematic,” he said. “Often I’ll get back to work and be typing away and then (realize) that I forgot to ask what the date of birth was, or another question. I’ll get more consistent with how I do my investigations.”
IOIS joins Kindervision in Protecting Children and Training Police
March 11, 2004
Kindervision President Doug Sebastian appeared on Good Morning America today to announce the newest tool in protecting children, the Kindervision Law Enforcement Training component. Together, Kindervision and IOIS have developed new and innovative approaches to the initial response to, and investigation of child abduction and homicide cases. (From Kindervision's website:) "Since its inception, KinderVision has had a close partnership with and deep appreciation for law enforcement. Recently, two things have been brought to our attention by our law enforcement partners. First, a comprehensive training in the area of child abduction and child homicide case investigations was needed. Due to the unique and infrequent nature of this crime, and the fact that of the 17,000 agencies nationwide, most are very small, departments have little collective expertise in this area. At our request, the Institute of Investigative Sciences has developed a training program to assist law enforcement with this issue so that law enforcement can assure families that everything that can possibly be done to find a missing child and the perpetrator happens in the most expedient and comprehensive manner possible. This training will be delivered through the KinderVision Foundation via its longstanding relationship with law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The KinderVision Law Enforcement Training is a three day multi-agency law enforcement training whose goal is to prepare the Investigator and Investigative Supervisor to conduct and manage a Major Crime Investigation from initial response through needed follow up. The course is intended for various experienced investigators, evidence technicians, supervisors, and prosecution attorneys. The training will be taught by several well known experts from the Institute of Investigative Sciences."
2 Utah law enforcers unravel ancient mystery
By Pat Reavy, Deseret Morning News
July 26, 2004
There are "cold cases" and then there are really cold cases. In 2001, Utah law enforcers Mike King and Greg Cooper traveled to Egypt in an attempt to unravel the mystery behind the death 3,300 years ago of one of the most famous leaders of all time — "King Tut," the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen.
The duo's investigation, which they described as "Sherlock Holmes meets Indiana Jones," was documented for a special on the Discovery Channel, "The Assassination of King Tut," which first aired in 2002. The video has since become one of the channel's top sellers and has now been distributed in 144 countries in 33 languages, King said. Now, King and Cooper are ready to release a book, "Who Killed King Tut?" which goes into much more detail about both their trip and their findings. "The movie gives a snapshot," King said. "The book gives the reader an understanding of how we developed our theories."
King currently works for the Utah Department of Public Safety in the Criminal Intelligence Center. Cooper, who used to be the chief of the Provo Police Department, recently moved back to Utah to work at a private company that produces law enforcement software. King and Cooper were hand-selected from a small list of investigators worldwide to examine the Tut mystery. What they brought to the table was the ability to incorporate all investigative sciences including forensics and and the psychology of criminal behavior in their search for answers, Cooper said.
In addition, the two had historians and Egyptologists available to answer all their questions. "We had the world's greatest minds at our fingertips," King said. "They gave us everything we asked for." They entered the project without any preconceived notions of what caused Tut's death. "We conducted a death investigation, not a homicide investigation," King said.
By the time they were finished, the duo concluded Tut's death was the result of "political assassination," Cooper said. The chief suspect was the boy king's prime minister, Ay. "This is a theory based on the most current evidence," King said. Ay was the "perfect chameleon," according to King. He was a non-royal who wanted power, had reasons for wanting revenge and tried to play both sides between the royal family and the Amun priests who were stripped of their power by Tut's father. "Ay lived for power, dominion, and control. He was no different than any other murderous psychopath who roams the streets today," King and Cooper wrote in their book.
Both men admit much of the case against Ay is circumstantial. Two of the biggest keys to the case centered around Tut's tomb. One clue came from what was, and was not, found inside. The other was the rushed manner in which Tut was entombed. "This is the most important event in a Pharaoh's life," said King of Tut's burial. But Tut's entombment was rushed and performed without much ado. If this were a case being looked at today, King and Cooper are confident they'd be able to get a federal grand jury indictment against Ay. In fact, they even made up a pretend indictment in their book imitating what that real one might look like. The indictment charges Ay with criminal homicide. As to exactly what killed Tut, King and Cooper said they still don't know. The two aren't sure their book will really change any views of what happened to Tut. Some Egyptologists have disputed and criticized their findings. But Cooper said critics are already preconditioned by their own conclusions.
Utahns Mike King and Gary Cooper have investigated the death of ancient Egypt's King Tutankhamen.
Ryan Long, Deseret Morning News
And if new technology allows someone else to go to Tut's tomb in the future and come up with new evidence and a different conclusion, Cooper and King said they'd welcome the findings. In addition to going into depth on their findings, the book also gives more into detail about the duo's travels and the surrounding environment. Cooper and King arrived in Egypt right after the attack on the World Trade Center. The two had to travel with a military escort to many areas as Jihad members were training just over the hills from them.
As for the future, unraveling history's mysteries is expected to keep the two Utah sleuths busy for awhile. Both have worked on projects for the History Channel and A&E since their Tut adventure. King and Cooper are considering several options for their next big project together. One option is to examine the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis to coincide with the bicentennial of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Lewis died a violent death in 1809. President Thomas Jefferson called it a suicide, but Lewis' family claimed it was murder. Another potential project is the death of Matthew Hopkins, the Witch-Finder General of England in the mid-1600s. Hopkins was believed to be responsible for the executions of more than 200 "witches." His cruel methods were eventually challenged, however, and Hopkins died mysteriously. Some believe he was tried as a witch himself and drowned while others believe he died of an illness.
-------------------- Sun, July 11, 2004
Veteran law officers tell who killed King Tut
By TIM GURRISTER, Standard-Examiner staff
OGDEN -- Trial of the century? In the hereafter? That's the suggestion in the book, released last month, "Who Killed King Tut?," co-written by local criminal justice entrepreneur Mike King, a private profiling specialist who has held numerous police posts in his 25-year career stretching between Ogden and Salt Lake City. King and his profiling partner, Greg Cooper, former Provo police chief, were hired two years ago by cable-TV's Discovery Channel to apply their forensic expertise to the death of the Egyptian boy King Tutankhamun 3,300 years ago. The well-received special aired with the pair getting the forensic goods on Ay, Tut's manipulative "vizier," or prime minister.
The book goes a step further than merely accusing the wily Ay of Tut's regicide (the killing of a monarch). The same evidence also implicates Ay in the mysterious deaths and disappearances of many close to Tut, including his father, his step-mother, the famous Nefertiti, and his sister-bride. The latter Ay married after Tut's death, before she too disappeared from the historical record. The book concludes with the copy of the indictment King and Cooper would like to serve on Ay in the next life. The devout Mormons' beliefs allow them to look forward to a final confrontation with Ay, leading to the book's concluding passage: "In the final summation, if our analysis is correct, Ay will receive the justice he deserves (in the next life). Our greatest hope is that we have the opportunity to present our evidence and testify in that eternal and final court that we are convinced exists."
Tut-nut King appears on another Tut documentary today on The History Channel's "Investigating History" series at 5 p.m., titled "The Curse of King Tut," featuring an epidemiologist looking at Tut's death. King calls Ay "a monster. He was playing both sides from the middle, the perfect chameleon." Tut was the last of the bloodline that dominated Egypt's 18th dynasty, ending about 1300 B.C. So a major piece of forensic -- circumstantial/deductive -- evidence is the fact that Tut, a 12th-generation Pharaoh, god to his people, ends up tossed hurriedly into a tomb built for a non-Pharaoh, King said. Ay put Tut in his tomb and claimed Tut's tomb for himself. "It's amazing," King said, noting Ay also had himself named Pharaoh to succeed Tut. The timing was also suspicious in that events occurred when likely the only man in Egypt who could have stood up to Ay was out of town.
Tut's reign had only one warring phase, near the time of his death at age 18 or 20, a campaign in Turkey against the Hittites, the book explains. General Horemheb, commander of the Egyptian army, was conducting the war when Tut died. Horemheb had guarded, probably trained and worshipped Tut throughout the young king's life, according to history. Ay had Tut quickly buried before Horemheb's return, cutting the normal 70-day mummification process to a 40-day job. "Ay only lived a few years as Pharaoh," King said. "And Horemheb succeeds him and has all the eyes, noses and ears removed from Ay's statues, which, according to Egyptian belief, ends his influence in the afterlife. "It's a sort of romantic spin I like to take. I like to think Horemheb got a deathbed confession from Ay."
No murder weapon is identified, or a cause of death agreed upon, according to the book, which instead concentrates on the "biopsychosocial" evidence. That includes the power the 50-year-old Ay wielded over Tut when he first ascended to the throne at age 9, shortly after his father's death. Ay was also prime minister to Tut's father, Akhenaten. He also headed the Egyptian priesthood at the same time. Tut's father's demise was brought about, the book theorizes, because he was moving the country from Egypt's multi-god faith -- requiring many priests -- to a single-god form of worship, leaving priests jobless. Ay convinced the young Tut to denounce his late father's religion and return the country to its historic polytheism. This kept Ay in power and required a major building boom of new temples and statuary.
Movie buffs might recall some of the names from 1954's "The Egyptian," which centers on the religious conflict, but portrays Horemheb as Akhenaten's assassin. Tut only makes a cameo. King theorizes that as Tut grew older, he turned away from Ay's guidance and likely began to wonder about the explanations he was given as a boy for the demise of so many around him. Tut also began to regret turning his back on his father's legacy, he said. King is currently a crime analyst with the Ogden Police Department, a position contracted with the state Department of Public Safety, where he is an intelligence supervisor. Before that, he retired from the Utah Attorney General's Office as chief of staff and a lieutenant over investigations.
In the mid-1990s he served as chief investigator with the Weber County Attorney's Office, where he led the investigation that sent northern Ogden polygamist Arvin Shreeve to prison for 20 years to life on child molestation charges. Eleven female members of the clan, many Shreeve's wives, also went to jail on similar charges after the nearly three-year investigation.
Copyright ©2004, Ogden Publishing Corporation
