The saying goes that the wheels of justice turn slowly. And this could not be more true than an investigation that was nearly 50 years in the making. Were it not for the relentless efforts of two individuals, the murder of Loretta Jones may have never been solved.
In the summer of 1970, in Price, Utah, Loretta Jones as a 23-year-old single mother. This was a very judgemental, and very conservative community who looked down on and condescended to Loretta every chance they got. But she was not letting that stop her. She was taking accounting classes at night, while working a full-time day job, in order to secure a stable future for herself, and her 4-year-old daughter, Heidi.
Loretta and Heidi had an incredibly close bond. Heidi would follow her mother around the house. She would help with the chores, and keep up a steady stream of chatter, laughter, and dancing as they listened to music together. Loretta loved her daughter more than anything else in the entire world, and that love definitely went both ways.
July 31st, 1970, was a hot summer day like any other. But that morning sparked nearly a lifetime of questions for Heidi.
She awoke, and peeked out of the keyhole of her bedroom door to find other mother on the floor of the living room. She was laying in a pool of blood. Even at such a young, tender, age, Heidi knew that this was wrong. Heidi ran out of the house, knowing she needed to find help, but not knowing what to do.
Outside, she ran into a little boy whom she knew. He was a neighbour, and he and Heidi often played together. On that summer morning, he was hunting for bugs and critters to use as bait to go fishing later that day. As this little boy was someone she knew, Heidi ran to him and told him that she thought her mommy was dead.
Curious, the little boy went to the house and saw the sight for himself. He then ran to his parents, who ushered both children into their home and called the police themselves.
When police arrived, the scene looked brutal. There was blood all over the living floor and walls. However, they noticed that there weren’t any signs of forced entry. This indicated to them that Loretta likely knew her attacker. They also noticed that she had been sexually assaulted, and semen was found on her body. The autopsy would later show that she had suffered at least 17 stab wounds. The autopsy further confirmed that Loretta had been murdered with a small, narrow knife.
Everyone was at a loss. Though they looked down on her, the community couldn’t fathom anyone harming such a vibrant young mother.
But police didn’t have to look too far for a lead.
The same day that Loretta had been murdered, police were called to the scene of an attempted abduction.
Lori Kulow Fennel was playing outside with her brother and his friend when they noticed a man wearing a strange, yellow hat watching them. When the two boys went inside, the man tried to grab Lori from behind while covering her mouth. She managed to wriggle herself free, and screamed for help.
As soon as Lori screamed, the man dropped her. Her brother and his friend ran outside to see what was wrong. Lori pointed in the direction the man was running and told them that he tried to take her. The two boys tried to run after him, but the man managed to get away.
At the time, it seemed incredibly strange that two such horrific incidents would take place on the same night. While they couldn’t confirm it at the time, law enforcement highly suspected that the two incidents were connected.
As the investigation continued, Heidi had been placed in the custody of her grandparents. Her grandmother grew increasingly concerned at the things Heidi was saying in relation to her mother, and her mother’s murder. Unsure of what else to do, she took Heidi to the police where she told them, without a shadow of a doubt, that “Tom did it”.
This gave investigators some insight into Loretta and Heidi’s home life. They had access to Loretta’s diaries and were able to determine that at one time, Loretta had very briefly dated a man by the name of Thomas Edward Egley. This was very likely the Tom that Heidi was referring to.
They managed to track Egley down, and questioned him about his relationship with Loretta. He admitted to dating her, but denied having any involvement in her murder. He stated that he had an alibi. He told investigators that he had been in town having drinks, window shopping, and eating a hamburger at the time of Loretta’s murder.
In trying to verify his alibi, a bar owner did confirm seeing Egley later the night of the murder. But they also noticed that Egley had red spots all over his shirt.
And while this corroboration was tenuous at best, investigators never forgot one very important thing – before Loretta had been murdered, a man had tried to abduct a little girl.
They brought Lori Kulow Fennel, her brother, and her brother’s friend in to view a lineup. In turn, they all identified Tom Egley as the man who tried to abduct Lori. Lori’s brother even remembered that while all three of them were playing, he’d seen Egley watch them while standing under a streetlight. But what unsettled Lori’s brother most was that the man was eating a hamburger.
On August 31st, 1970, a month after Loretta Jones was murder, Tom Egley was arrested for the murder.
Investigators had one hell of a circumstantial case. In their minds, and in the minds of most who knew Loretta, Egley fit the bill. But there was no forensic evidence, however limited it was at the time. There was no way to determine whether or not the semen that had been found on Loretta’s body belonged to Egley.
On October 8th, 1970, the preliminary hearing for the case was set. The prosecutor asked the judge if the proceedings could be postponed. They had just managed to track down ideal witnesses in Kansas and wanted time to interview them properly. The chief of police would also be unable to testify, as he was in New York taking classes. Further delaying the prosecution’s readiness was the fact that the reports they’d requested from the FBI, which they felt would be crucial to the case, had yet to be completed.
The defence scoffed. They argued that delaying the hearing would be a direct violation of Egley’s civil rights to a speedy trial. The defence argued that the prosecution had plenty of time to make their case and get their ducks in a row. If they hadn’t gotten their rears in gear, that was on them, and not on Egley.
In the end, the judge saw the benefit of having the chief of police and FBI reports readily available at trial. The preliminary hearing was rescheduled for November 5th, 1970, giving the prosecution a month to get their act together.
When the preliminary hearing finally took place, the prosecution completely dropped the ball. They were unable to successfully make their case that Tom Egley, beyond a reasonable doubt, was responsible for the murder of Loretta Jones. The judge concluded that not enough evidence had been provided to go through with the murder charge. He then ordered for the release of Tom Egley from jail.
In the end, Tom Egley ultimately served only 90 days in prison for the attempted abduction of Lori Kulow Fennel, while the charges against him for the murder of Loretta Jones were dropped.
The case went ice cold.
But there was one person who never let the case go – Loretta’s daughter, Heidi. Through her whole life, she was determined to solve her mother’s case. She just didn’t have the resources. Not until 2009.
In 2009, Heidi reconnected with a high school friend of hers, David Brewer. David was a Sergeant with the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office, and had the tools and resources that Heidi didn’t.
Heidi told him her story. In her own words, she spilled her guts. And David was empathetic. He wanted to help her in any way that he could. He knew reopening the case for investigation wouldn’t be an easy feat, but he was determined to try.
Detective Sergeant Brewer dug into the case, asked for information in the newspaper, and tried to track down witnesses from the original investigation. Over time, this led him to a woman who was dating Tom Egley at the time of Loretta’s murder.
This woman confided in Brewer that Egley acted very strangely the night of the murder. She stated that he had come home very late, and then proceeded to take a bath. But he was still wearing all of his clothes. The following day, he went to the laundromat, but when he returned, he was missing some items of clothing. Following up, Brewer interviewed another witness who had seen Egley burning clothes outside of the laundromat in a burn barrel.
Detective Sergeant Brewer then tracked down Egley himself in Colorado.
Tom Egley claimed that he had a lot of old girlfriends from around the time of Loretta’s murder, and that he couldn’t remember the names of them all. He said that he’d heard one of them had been killed, but that he’d had nothing to do with it. Though he claimed he couldn’t remember Loretta’s name, he did say that he remembered exactly what he’d done that night – he went to the bar to have some drinks and then ate a hamburger.
Brewer knew that Loretta’s murderer was lying straight to his face. But, like the investigators before him, he ran into a brick wall. There was a distinct lack of physical evidence, and the case was going to go cold again. But he was determined to continue the investigation.
The murder of Loretta Jones was always at the forefront of his mind. Detective Sergeant Brewer presented her case at a cold case seminar. He asked his colleagues for advice, and what they would consider the next best steps in the case. They suggested that they exhume Loretta’s body, conceding that this was a last resort tactic, and that it may be highly emotional for the family. And they were right.
When Heidi and her grandmother were presented with the option, Heidi’s grandmother was vehemently against an exhumation. Her wishes were respected.
When she passed in 2015, Brewer approached the topic with Heidi again, being mindful of the emotional upheaval an exhumation could be. Heidi agreed this was the next best step in solving her mother’s murder. She even told Brewer she’d help him dig the hole herself if it meant finding more answers.
Loretta’s body was exhumed in July of 2016 – 46 years after her murder. However, there was too much damage to her body, and her coffin, for investigators to gather enough substantial evidence. But Brewer was hopeful that the news of the exhumation would rattle other witnesses, or Egley himself, into coming forward with more information.
And it worked.
Brewer heard from a woman named Linda who had lived with Loretta’s parents when she was in college. She claimed that Loretta had started to writer her killer’s name in her own blood on the floor. And there was a photo to prove it.
Heidi had a photo that she gave Brewer. It had been taken after the crime scene had been released by investigators. In the photos, 4-year-old Heidi was standing in the doorway of the living room, in front of a large pool of blood. In that blood pool, the letters T and O could be made out.
It did, indeed, look like Loretta had been trying to name her killer.
The final piece of the puzzle came to Brewer in the form of another witness.
Lisa Carter had been Tom Egley’s neighbour for a number of years. The two were friendly, but he had been acting strangely. When news of movement in Loretta’s murder hit the media, Lisa put two and two together.
Egley had come over to ask Lisa to take care of his dog, and his home, if the police were to ever come looking for him. At the time, Lisa thought this very strange, but looking back, she realized what he wasn’t saying.
Lisa called detectives, and offered to record her conversations with Egley in the hopes that she could help with the investigation. And it worked. The more Lisa and Egley talked, the more paranoid he became. And then, he confessed.
Tom Egley confessed to Lisa that he had stabbed Loretta in a fit of rage because she refused to have sex with him. He said that they fought about it, she eventually agreed to have consensual sex (unlikely), the fought again, and he snapped.
After the confession, Lisa convinced Egley to turn himself in to the authorities. Which he did.
Despite his confessions, when Tom Egley was arrested and charged, he pleaded not guilty to the murder of Loretta Jones. In the end, he took a plea deal. He agreed to plead guilty to the murder if the charge of rape was dropped.
In October of 2016, Tom Egley was found guilty of the criminal homicide of Loretta Jones. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which was the maximum sentence in 1970, when the murder occurred. Prosecutors are convinced that Tom Egley will die in prison.
46 years after her mother’s murder, Heidi was able to put the man responsible for a lifetime of trauma and heartache behind bars. She is very thankful for David Brewer’s efforts, stating: “Some heroes wear capes. Mine wears kevlar.”
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Sources:
How a Daughter Helped Convict Her Mother’s Killer—46 Years After She Identified Him – Elena Ferrarin – A&E True Crime Blog
Woman Wrote Killer’s Name In Blood Before Dying In Disturbing Crime Scene Photo, Police Say – Becca van Sambeck – Oxygen True Crime
Man arrested and charged 46 years later in rape and murder of Carbon County woman – Ben Lockhart – Deseret News
Morbid podcast – Episode 335: Solving the Decades Old Murder of Loretta Jones
On the Case with Paula Zahn – Season 16, Episode 14: A Lifetime of Questions – Discovery+