Agent Brian Davis, of the State Bureau of Investigation shows photos of the victim and the location the was found and a few detail images of rope knots as he talks with media at a press conference in West Valley City on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2018. Agents are asking for the publicÕs help identifying a murder victim in a cold case homicide from April 1998. The body of the unidentified female was found by a passerby on the side of SR-276 milepost 8, approximately 38 miles north of Lake Powell, Utah. (Scott G Winterton, Deseret News)
TAYLORSVILLE, Utah — The Department of Public Safety is asking the public for help in identifying the victim from a 20-year-old cold homicide case.
The woman’s body was found approximately 40 miles north of Lake Powell on the side of SR-276. Investigators put countless hours into solving the case, but it ended up going cold two years later.
“When she was located, there was an autopsy performed,” says Utah State Bureau of Investigations Agent Brian Davis. “She was five feet, zero inches tall; 112 pounds; brown eyes, brown hair; has a mole on the top of her right ear; she had what appeared to be tattooed eyebrows; she had good dental work.”
A later DNA test revealed she may have been of Native-American and/or Hispanic descent.
Despite a lack of victim I.D., investigators already have a person of interest in the case. He happens to be serving a 70-year sentence in Colorado after pleading guilty to four murders.
“There are a lot of similarities between this victim and his other victims,” Davis says. “In the cause of death, the matter in which things occurred to their body after death.”
Kimball has been interviewed but denies any involvement in this case.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Utah Department of Public Safety at 801-887-3800.