The murder of Loretta Jones
Price, Carbon County, Utah · 1970
Overview
Loretta Jones, a 23-year-old mother, was stabbed to death in her home in Price, Utah, in July 1970, and her body was found the next morning by her 4-year-old daughter, Heidi. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed seventeen times. Police quickly focused on Thomas Edward Egley, a man Loretta had briefly dated, but a judge dismissed the murder charge in November 1970 for lack of evidence, and Egley moved to Colorado. The case sat cold for nearly four decades, and much of the original physical evidence, including a swab that might have yielded usable DNA, was lost over the years. The case was not reopened until 2009, when the victim's grown daughter asked a high-school acquaintance who had become a Carbon County sheriff's sergeant, David Brewer, to look again. Brewer rebuilt the case without DNA: he re-examined the single surviving crime-scene photograph and made out the letters T and O that Loretta had written in her own blood, he tracked old witnesses across the country, and he finally obtained a recorded confession from Egley with the help of one of Egley's own neighbors. Egley pleaded guilty to murder in 2016 and was sentenced to ten years to life.
How it was solved
The 1970 investigation moved fast but collapsed in court. Acting on an anonymous tip, Price police questioned Thomas Egley, a man Loretta Jones had dated for roughly two months, within days of the killing; Egley admitted being in town that night but denied going to her home. He was charged with murder, but at a preliminary hearing on November 5, 1970, the judge ruled the evidence insufficient to send the case to trial and dismissed it. Egley relocated to Colorado, and the case went cold. In the decades that followed, the file deteriorated and key physical evidence disappeared from storage, including, according to investigators, a vaginal swab with a semen sample that modern DNA testing could have used. That loss is central to why this case was ultimately solved without DNA. The decisive re-investigation began in 2009, when Loretta's daughter, Heidi Jones-Asay, who was four when she found her mother's body, ran into a former high-school classmate, Carbon County Sheriff's Sergeant David Brewer, at a community event and asked him to reopen the case. Brewer spent years rebuilding it from what remained. The breakthrough evidence was not biological. He re-examined the sole surviving crime-scene photograph and was able to make out the letters T and O, written in blood, which the family and investigators believe Loretta wrote as she was dying to name her attacker. He located and re-interviewed witnesses scattered across the country, including a former girlfriend who recalled that Egley came home very late the night of the murder and bathed while still wearing his clothes, then turned up at a laundromat the next day missing several items of clothing. The final piece was a confession: a neighbor of Egley's, Lisa Carter, agreed to wear a recording device and, after the publicized 2016 exhumation of Loretta's body, drew Egley into admitting that he had killed her. The exhumation itself produced nothing usable. Egley was arrested in Rocky Ford, Colorado, on August 18, 2016, charged with murder and rape, and in October 2016 he pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for the rape charge being dropped. On November 22, 2016, he was sentenced to ten years to life in the Utah State Prison.
Sources
- Man sent to prison in emotional sentencing 46 years after murder
“Loretta Jones, 23, was stabbed multiple times and her throat was slit in her Price, Utah home on July 30, 1970; her 4-year-old daughter, Heidi Jones-Asay, found her body the next morning. The case was reopened in 2009 by Sgt. David Brewer of the Carbon County Sheriff's Office, and Thomas Edward Egley pleaded guilty to murder in October 2016 and was sentenced to 10 years to life.”
- Man arrested and charged 46 years later in rape and murder of Carbon County woman
“Loretta Jones, 23, was stabbed 14 times in the back, twice in the chest and once in the throat at her home at 468 E. 400 South in Price on July 30, 1970; Egley was questioned two days later on an anonymous tip and charged, but the case was dismissed after a Nov. 5, 1970 preliminary hearing for insufficient evidence. He was arrested Aug. 18, 2016, in Rocky Ford, Colorado, on a one-million-dollar warrant for criminal homicide and rape.”
- Man sent to prison in emotional sentencing 46 years after murder
“On Nov. 22, 2016, Thomas Edward Egley was sentenced to 10 years to life for the murder of Loretta Jones; he had pleaded guilty to murder in October 2016 and the rape charge was dropped. Heidi Jones-Asay told the court, I was in shock, terrified and all alone. That day my life changed forever.”
- Loretta Jones' Murder Cold Case Solved After Exhumation
“Semen was found in 1970 but DNA testing was inadequate then; the same day as the murder a man tried to abduct a young neighborhood girl who later identified Egley in a lineup. Authorities identified Tom Egley from Jones's diaries. After the 2016 exhumation produced nothing usable because of water damage, neighbor Lisa Carter wore a wire and obtained a confession in which Egley admitted stabbing Jones. DNA was not recovered or used as evidence.”
- How a Daughter Helped Convict Her Mother's Killer
“Loretta Jones wrote the letters T and O in her own blood during the attack; her daughter recounted, my mom was there, bleeding to death, gasping for her last breath, writing with her own finger, in her own blood. Sgt. David Brewer reopened the case in 2009, tracked Egley to Colorado, and obtained a confession with help from Egley's neighbor Lisa Carter. The case was not solved by DNA; the 2016 exhumation yielded no usable evidence.”
- Despite long odds, lost evidence, Utah detective hopes to solve 45-year-old homicide
“Critical evidence disappeared over the years, including almost every scrap of physical evidence, even Jones' clothing, and a vaginal swab from Jones with a semen sample. Brewer said: Today, that swab would be a chunk of gold. Detective Sgt. David Brewer reopened the case after reconnecting with Heidi Asay at a community festival and tracked down witnesses nationwide.”
- How a Utah Detective Solved a 46-year-old Murder Case
“Sgt. David Brewer of the Carbon County Sheriff's Office reopened the 1970 murder of Loretta Jones in 2009 at the request of her daughter, Heidi Jones-Asay, who was four years old when she found her mother's body, and pursued the case for years until Thomas Edward Egley was arrested in 2016.”
- Arrest made in 46-year-old Utah rape and murder cold case
“Thomas Edward Egley was arrested Aug. 18, 2016, in connection with the July 30, 1970 stabbing death of 23-year-old Loretta Jones in Price; the original 1970 case was dismissed at a Nov. 5, 1970 preliminary hearing for insufficient evidence, and Sgt. David Brewer reopened the case in 2009 at the family's request, ultimately obtaining a confession during the reopened investigation.”