Author: Dave Cawley

Dave Cawley: The penalty phase of Doug Lovell’s trial for the murder of Joyce Yost began on March 20, 2015.

Mike Anderson (from March ??, 2015 KSL TV archive): Prosecutors described in detail Douglas Lovell’s rape and murder of Joyce Yost back in 1985 and a long criminal history that started in his teen years.

Dave Cawley: Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts had each testified already, during the trial’s guilt phase. But they took the stand again in the penalty phase and were able to tell a broader story.

Greg Roberts: It was great to look at the jury and just tell our side and I mean I think it had an impact.

Dave Cawley: This was an opportunity Kim and Greg had not had during Doug’s original sentencing in ’93. They were able to tell the jurors who their mother was…

Greg Roberts: She was a great, great, great, mother. She was just a wonderful grandmother. She was so happy.

Kim Salazar: Everybody will say the same thing. ‘Oh, she was so beautiful. Oh, she was so sweet. She was the kindest woman, she,’ and she was. She was genuine.

Dave Cawley: …and they described the far-reaching — and ongoing — impacts of what Doug had done to her.

Kim Salazar: I don’t know, he’s a horrible person and he’s done horrible things. And he’s, as far as I’m concerned he’s continued to do horrible things to our family for all these years.

Dave Cawley: Kim’s children, who were by then adults, sat in the gallery as she testified. Their dad, Kim’s ex-husband Randy, was right beside them.

Randy Salazar: When Kim testified this last time … she said she wanted to apologize to her ex-husband for not being the wife she could have been and she also apologized to her kids for not being 100-percent focused on them when she should have. But you know, I mean, there was no. She, she did nothing wrong.

Greg Roberts: Yeah I think Kim’s oldest Melisa and, y’know, Melisa and Melanie, her children have a lot of resentment on what this has done to their mom’s whole life. Of where it’s become the main focus of your life.

Dave Cawley: Kim and Randy’s daughters even took the stand themselves, to describe how their young lives had changed when their grandma Joyce had disappeared.

Randy Salazar: And now my kids are older. Now they have to listen to this. And Kim and Greg, we got to go through this whole trial again. (Pause) Not fair. Not fair.

Dave Cawley: Greg’s children had not even been born at the time of Joyce’s murder.

Greg Roberts: I miss terribly that my kids couldn’t know her and get a bigger piece of her, uh, growing up. A bigger influence from her growing up.

Kim Salazar: He took all that from us.

Greg Roberts: That’s part of my biggest regrets.

Dave Cawley: This is Cold: season 2, episode 12: Dancing with the Devil. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. We’ll be right back.

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Dave Cawley: The Weber County Attorney’s Office pushed for a sentence of death against Doug Lovell during the penalty phase of his 2015 capital murder trial. They had a proxy once again read a transcript of Doug’s own words from the earlier ’93 sentencing hearing. They played portions of the two wire recordings with Doug and Rhonda inside the Utah State Prison, focusing on portions like this one, where he’d talked about the anonymous caller who’d reported finding a body near Causey Reservoir.

Doug Lovell (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): The only thing I’m nervous about is that one time that caller called in. I remember, ah, seeing it on TV.

Dave Cawley: And they put an investigator on the stand to tell the jury how those remains had never been located or recovered. Then, it was Doug’s turn. His defense team — lawyers Michael Bouwhuis and Sean Young — made their case for a sentence of life with the possibility of parole.

The first three defense witnesses were John Newton, Gary Webster and Chuck Thompson. All three men had at various times served as bishops for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Utah State Prison. All had ministered to Doug.

Defense attorney Sean Young led the questioning of the bishops and the results were, I’ll just say, stilted. Apologies in advance for the poor quality of this audio, it’s unfortunately the best available for this piece of testimony.

Sean Young (from March 23, 2015 court recording): And are you aware of Mr. Lovell’s current status with the Latter-day Saint church?

Chuck Thompson (from March 23, 2015 court recording): Yes I am.

Sean Young (from March 23, 2015 court recording): And what is that?

Chuck Thompson (from March 23, 2015 court recording): He’s excommunicated.

Dave Cawley: If you couldn’t make that out, Chuck Thompson acknowledged that Doug had been excommunicated from The Church.

Chuck’s testimony wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for Doug, but that wasn’t because Chuck held reservations about Doug’s character. To the contrary. He very much believed Doug was a reformed man. So why didn’t he emphatically express that belief?

There’s a back story to these bishops that requires some explanation. Doug had identified four bishops, as well as the person above them in the church’s hierarchy — called a stake president — on his witness list.

Prior to the trial, attorneys from the law firm Kirton McConkie — acting as outside counsel to The Church — had connected with these five men to offer them legal representation if they wanted it. The church’s attorneys had advised the bishops they were not permitted to speak on behalf of the church, or about matters of doctrine or policy. But John Newton, Brent Scharman, Gary Webster and Chuck Thompson had all wanted to speak for Doug. They all believed him worthy of a chance for parole.

The Church of Jesus Christ, unlike many other Christian faiths, does not take a public position on the issue of capital punishment. The church’s lawyers communicated to Doug’s defense team that, in their view, putting all the bishops and their stake president on the stand on Doug’s behalf might lead some people to assume — incorrectly — that The Church was taking an official position on his specific case. The church’s lawyers advised Doug’s defense if they wanted to question the bishops, they would have to compel that testimony by subpoena.

Defense attorneys Michael Bouwhuis and Sean Young reached a compromise. They would subpoena just three of the bishops and in exchange the church’s lawyers agreed not to fight those subpoenas.

Sean Young (from March 23, 2015 court recording): And just for the record, you’re here under order of subpoena today. Is that correct?

Chuck Thompson (from March 23, 2015 court recording): It is. I’m under order of subpoena.

Sean Young (from March 23, 2015 court recording): Ok, no further questions at this time, your honor.

Dave Cawley: When these three bishops testified at the trial, they each made mention of Doug’s charitable giving to Rising Star Outreach. Becky Douglas, the head of that non-profit, arrived at the Weber County Courthouse the following morning. She’d traveled all the way from the Dominican Republic, where her husband was at that time serving as a mission president for The Church. Becky, in her role as “companion” to the mission president, had needed Church permission to leave that post, even temporarily. That permission had been slow in coming, and Becky had at one point told a supervisor they were welcome to excommunicate her, but she would testify on Doug’s behalf no matter what.

In a later court hearing, Becky would describe encountering a church lawyer at the courthouse on the day she’d arrived to testify.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): A man approached me and said ‘Are you Becky Douglas?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said ‘Could I have a word with you?’

Dave Cawley: Becky said she’d told the man she intended to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which he agreed she should do. They’d both then entered the courtroom and sat in the gallery.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): When I was called to testify I got up. He stood up so I could get out and he put his hand on my arm and he said, gave me a pat and he said ‘I’m sure you’ll do just fine.’ That actually felt a little intimidating to me.

Dave Cawley: I wanted to ask Becky about this, but she didn’t respond to an interview request for this podcast. But consider, it’s not surprising or even unexpected a lawyer for an organization that’s being discussed in court might want to be present to hear that testimony firsthand. I’ll go into more detail about whether or not this amounted to intimidation or interference in the next episode.

In Becky’s testimony, she voiced the most emphatic support for Doug of all his character witnesses, portraying him as a giving, caring man who in spite of past failures had endeavored to become a better person.

The next day, she received an email from one of Doug’s bishops, Chuck Thompson. Here’s what it read:

Scott Mitchell (as Chuck Thompson): Hello Becky, nice job on the testimony. You hit the nail on the head. I was careful to say too much with my church position. In fact, I was instructed to say as little opinion as I could and followed counsel.

Dave Cawley: Becky replied to this email, describing her own discomfort over the presence of the church’s lawyers at the trial.

Amy Donaldson (as Becky Douglas): But I felt very blessed. I had prayed for the spirit and as I took the stand I felt a calm peace settle over me. It seemed that whenever the prosecuting attorney closed some doors they were later opened by the Lord in unexpected manners and I was able to share the things I had come to share.

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Dave Cawley: Becky Douglas and Doug’s bishops constituted just a fraction of the people on the defense’s witness list. But many of the others didn’t show up to testify. Defense attorney Sean Young told Judge Michael DiReda their mitigation specialist had struggled to locate some of these people.

I want to look at one of those in particular. His name was Brian Peterson. Brian had worked as a prison guard at SSD. During Doug’s first sentencing for the murder in ’93, Brian had told the story of the time Doug had washed the eyes of another guard who’d been accidentally been sprayed with insecticide.

Sean told Judge DiReda no one could find Brian. The defense had mailed a subpoena to what they believed was his address, but he hadn’t showed up as ordered. Sean asked the judge to declare Brian unavailable, which would allow the defense to simply present his testimony from transcript. Judge DiReda said this troubled him.

Michael DiReda (from March ??, 2015 court recording): I guess I’m troubled by the fact that no one has physically gone to the address to confirm that this person in fact is there or not there.

Dave Cawley: In the absence of these other character witnesses, the defense turned to its experts. They brought forward not one but two Ph.D-level forensic psychologists.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 KSL TV archive): Somewhere between the age of six and eight, one of his brothers hit him in the head with a rock.

Mike Anderson (from March 31, 2015 KSL TV archive): Lovell’s attorneys described how he had a long history of head trauma, including a major construction accident as an adult.

Dave Cawley: One of the psychologists, Mark Cunningham, spent hours on the stand talking about Doug’s youth and the environment in which he’d been raised.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 KSL TV archive): After the divorce came everything else, all these crimes that you’ve heard about.

Mike Anderson (from March 31, 2015 KSL TV archive): Then there was the troubled childhood. His mom’s struggle with depression.

Dave Cawley: Cunningham placed blame on Doug’s parents, saying his mother Shirley had been distant and detached. She’d been so medicated, he said, that she hadn’t nurtured her youngest son. Cunningham said Doug’s father Monan had been absent or worse, outright abusive to Doug’s mother Shirley. As a result, he said, Doug had modeled that behavior as he’d grown into a man.

There may’ve been some truth in one or both of these claims. The problem was, there weren’t any other defense witnesses with first-hand knowledge of Doug’s childhood who backed up what Cunningham said. Doug himself had, in many of his letters, described having a wonderful childhood with loving parents.

There’s one other expert witness Doug’s defense called to testify. His name was David Stoner.

David was a wildlife biologist and Ph.D-level ecologist at Utah State University. He was an expert on the topic of mountain lions. The purpose of his testimony was to provide an explanation for why Joyce’s body hadn’t been at the spot along the Old Snowbasin Road where police had searched in ’93.

David Stoner (from March 30, 2015 court recording): It’s been acknowledged by a number of authorities that animals tampering with human bodies really confounds these investigations.

Dave Cawley: The defense used this to suggest Doug had acted in good faith, that he’d made an honest attempt to lead the searchers to Joyce’s body. Prosecutor Gary Heward attacked this idea on cross-examination. Even if animals had scattered the remains, Gary asked where were Joyce’s clothes? Her necklace? Her purse?

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): It’s also true, isn’t it Dr. Stoner, that animals are not going to have any interest in a woman’s purse?

David Stoner (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I wouldn’t think so.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): The jewelry she’s wearing, the contents of her purse?

Dave Cawley: And though it didn’t come up in court, I’ll suggest you to consider what had happened to Theresa Greaves. When police had located her remains on that hillside just a month before this trial, they’d also found animals bones and droppings in the area. Yet, in more than 30 years, scavengers had not dug up Theresa’s remains.

Defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis next put Rhonda back on the stand. Michael showed old family pictures of Doug, Rhonda and her daughter Alisha together on camping trips. He talked about how Doug had wanted to adopt Alisha. Then, he had Rhonda read portions of the loving letters she’d written to her husband after he went to prison for raping Joyce.

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): It’s just not the same with you not with us. Doug, I love you with all my heart and soul and I never want us to be apart from each other. I would die without you, Doug. Us and the kids are one and we can never break that.

Dave Cawley: Michael’s questioning of Rhonda painted them as a happy family, with Doug a dedicated father. On cross, prosecutor Gary Heward drew a different picture of Rhonda…

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Are you afraid of Doug Lovell?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes I am.

Dave Cawley: …as a woman long plagued by conscience…

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Rhonda, how did it make you feel when you, in 1991, told Terry Carpenter what’d happened to Joyce? How did it make you feel?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I was very relieved.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did defendant Douglass Lovell ever show you or take you to where he had dumped the body of Joyce Yost?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did he ever tell you where he had dumped the body of Joyce Yost?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Just up by Causey.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Is that the only thing he ever told you? Up by Causey?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): He never told you on Snowbasin Road?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Never used those words?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Not to me.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda dropped something of a bombshell toward the end of her time on the stand, regarding one time when she’d visited Doug at the prison in the late ‘80s.

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes, on one visit, umm, he said if he had to do a really long time in there, that he would plan an escape.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Those were his words?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And I said — yes — I said ‘where would you go?’ And he said ‘up in the mountains.’

Dave Cawley: Rhonda had never said anything about this until a couple of weeks prior, when she’d revealed it to the prosecution.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And so, the times that you’ve testified previously in this case under oath, you did not, in fact, mention anything about an escape plan, did you?

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Nope.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did not. Until today.

Rhonda Buttars (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yep.

Dave Cawley: Which led defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis to wonder, what else had Rhonda never disclosed?

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Well I’m going to ask you now, is there anything else that needs to come forward in this case that you haven’t said yet?

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Judge, I’ll object to the form of the question. ‘Anything else?’

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Mr. Bouwhuis, you can rephrase.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I’m going to withdraw the question.

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Thank you.

Dave Cawley: A man named Kent Tucker followed Rhonda on the stand. The junior member of Doug’s defense team — attorney Sean Young — led the questioning.

Sean Young (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And what’s your current occupation?

Kent Tucker (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I’m a bus driver for Weber County School District.

Dave Cawley: Sean asked Kent how he knew Doug.

Kent Tucker (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Doug’s mother and my mother-in-law are sisters.

Dave Cawley: Kent had watched Doug grow up, from a distance.

Kent Tucker (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Doug always wanted he, he was just really hungry for somebody to pay a little attention to him and always want to know if I’d take him hunting or fishing. That’s always been one of his passions.

Dave Cawley: They’d briefly lost touch after Doug first went to prison for the rape of Joyce Yost. They’d reconnected a few years later and Kent had been paying Doug regular visits ever since. They’d grown very close and Kent said he would take Doug in, if Doug someday managed to secure his freedom.

Kent Tucker (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And I figure I could be, y’know, maybe build him up a little bit. I’ve, I, we’ve been engaged in a lot of humor down there.

Dave Cawley: That was about it. Sean’s examination of Kent and cross lasted all of 10 minutes. The defense then asked for an early lunch, so they could try and contact other witnesses who had not shown up yet. But there were no more witnesses coming. So, after lunch, Judge DiReda raised the question of whether Doug intended to testify. Sean Young had urged Doug to take the stand.

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Have you had a chance to, to discuss that right with your attorneys and have you made a decision about what you want to do with respect to that right?

Doug Lovell (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes sir. I have talked with both of my attorneys and I’m choosing not to testify.

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Okay.

Dave Cawley: With that…

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Mr. Bouwhuis, you may proceed.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Thank you your honor. The defense rests.

Michael DiReda (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Alright, thank you.

Dave Cawley: The state then had an opportunity to call rebuttal witnesses. The first was Jared Briggs. Doug’s defense team had fought against this, arguing the state had added Jared to its witness list too late in the process and without proper warning, but Judge DiReda decided to allow it. Jared, you might recall, had been incarcerated at the Utah State prison years earlier and had briefly bunked in the death row cell block.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Do you recall specifically where you were housed?

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Uinta One, block one, cell 104.

Dave Cawley: Jared shared the same story you heard in episode 10: how he’d met and befriended Doug, how they’d talked about hunting and fishing and eventually, how Doug had opened up and told him about the murder.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): When he was describing those events in detail, and he did describe them in great detail, is that right?

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did he show any remorse?

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No.

Dave Cawley: On cross, defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis peppered Jared with questions designed to show his knowledge of the case was flawed, embellished and included outdated details — pieces Jared could’ve only known from having read old transcripts.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): You’re aware that Doug Lovell had a lot of his legal paperwork with him in prison.

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Everybody does.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Including Doug?

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Don’t know, never was in his cell.

Dave Cawley: This was a trap and the defense closed it by calling a man named Ralph Menzies to the stand.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Are you an inmate at the Utah State Prison?

Ralph Menzies (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes sir.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): What are you serving time there for?

Ralph Menzies (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Capital homicide.

Dave Cawley: Ralph’s criminal history stretched back nearly as far as Doug’s. Just weeks after Doug had arrived at the prison in ’86, Ralph had kidnapped a woman named Maurine Hunsaker from a convenience store. He’d robbed her, tied her to a tree in a canyon east of Salt Lake City and slit her throat. A judge had sentenced Ralph to die by firing squad in ’88. Doug and Ralph had lived next to one another for more than two decades. Which meant Ralph was also acquainted with Jared Briggs.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Was there a period of time when, in that same section, there was a Jared Briggs housed?

Ralph Menzies (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes sir.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Do you remember him?

Ralph Menzies (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes sir.

Dave Cawley: Ralph said all the death row inmates kept their case papers in their cells. But it was tough to do any meaningful work using the tiny tables inside each 14-by-7-foot cell. So, Ralph said, they would often take their papers out on the tier, the common area. One time, Ralph said, they’d been ordered into lockdown while Doug’d had his papers out on that table. Doug had left them there. The lockdown had stretched on for hours and, after a time, the guards allowed Jared Briggs out of his cell to do some work.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Do you know whether or not Jared Briggs had contact with his papers?

Ralph Menzies (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Uh yeah, Doug asked him when he come in if he would pick everything up and take it to his cell and he’d get it in the morning.

Dave Cawley: Ralph said Jared had kept Doug’s legal papers — transcripts, motions, court decisions and the like — in his own cell that night. This suggested that everything Jared knew about Doug’s case had come not from Doug himself, but instead from Doug’s files.

The state called Carl Jacobson as its final rebuttal witness. Carl had left his job at the prison at the end of 2005, concluding a 22-year career with the Utah Department of Corrections.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): In the time period you were there at the Utah State Prison, did you become acquainted with the defendant here in court, Douglas Lovell?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes, I did.

Dave Cawley: I’ve mentioned Carl several times before. He’d first met Doug while working in SSD in ’87.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did you develop a rapport with him?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes I did.

Dave Cawley: That rapport, Carl said, had benefited them both. It’d evolved into a relationship of quid pro quo.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Quid pro quo meaning what?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Something for something.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Okay.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): He gave me something, I gave him something, within reason and within the authority of my position.

Dave Cawley: Carl said Doug had not been a difficult inmate. He didn’t brawl, he didn’t break rules. He didn’t cause problems. But he sometimes fed Carl information about others who did. Inmates often ratted one another out to the guards like this, either to keep from having the whole group punished for a single person’s misdeeds or to covertly take out the competition and move up in rank.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): So there’s a motive behind that and you’ve got to weigh that balance out. And, and often times it’s dangerous and it’s difficult but it’s part of the equation. It’s part of management of a correctional facility.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s good behavior had also on occasion resulted in his receiving what are known as positive “chronological notes” or c-notes in his jacket — a sort of permanent record.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): If it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen. An inmate jacket is from the beginning to the end of their incarceration and possibly more.

Dave Cawley: Inmates coveted positive c-notes. They were the currency with which a prisoner could prove good behavior when standing before the parole board pleading for their freedom. Doug’s jacket was replete with positive marks for actions he’d taken at Carl’s request. He had, for instance, repeatedly talked with groups of high schoolers as they took tours of the prison arranged by Carl.

Prosecutor Gary Heward asked Carl about the time in December of ’98 when he’d pulled Doug into a conference room for a one-on-one talk about Joyce’s murder. It had come following the death of Carl’s father.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I said ‘Joyce deserves what my father has. And you need to stop this nonsense and you need to come clean with me, and you need, I deserve the why and the what. I want to know what you did. And why you did it.’ And he proceeded to tell me.

Dave Cawley: I described this encounter once already, so I won’t spend too much time rehashing it here. But Carl did say from the stand Doug had blamed the detectives for their inability to find the body during the searches along the Snowbasin Road.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I responded that it was [expletive]—”

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And how did he respond to that?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): —that he’s a mountain man, he knows the outdoors. He’d went there, he’d returned and shrub oak grows this much in nine years. He knows where it’s at. He knows where that body is and why won’t he give this body up?

Dave Cawley: Carl said he believed there were three possible reasons why Doug had not — and still would not — admit to the actual location of Joyce’s remains. First, if he’d mutilated them. Second, if there were more than one body at the site. And third, a combination of reasons one and two.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): How would you describe for this jury this defendant?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): On the positive, he’s charming, cooperative, manageable, articulate, very smart. On the negative, he’s cold, calculating and controlling.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Is he a manipulator?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): How would you rank him as far as being cunning and smart in the people you’ve dealt with?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Top of the list.

Dave Cawley: Then, Gary arrived at the most important question.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Do you believe if he were paroled that he would be dangerous in the future?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: Defense attorney Sean Young countered this on cross, highlighting Doug’s clean behavioral record.

Sean Young (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No assaults?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): None.

Sean Young (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No escape plans, that you’re aware of?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): None, none that I know of.

Sean Young (from March 30, 2015 court recording): No attempted escapes?

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): None that I know of.

Dave Cawley: Sean brought up those student panels, where Doug had talked to high schoolers about life in prison. Carl said Doug’s participation had probably not been motivated by altruism.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Because there was something in it for him.

Dave Cawley: Those panels, Carl said, had allowed Doug an opportunity to leave maximum security, if only for an hour. He’d been able to walk between the prison buildings, feeling the green grass between his toes. A tiny, but significant, taste of freedom for someone who otherwise lived in a world of steel and concrete.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): And so it broke his routine up, and he got to walk through the yard. He got a cigarette and he also received a positive C-note from me.

Dave Cawley: At one point, Sean suggested Carl had even treated Doug as a “friend.”

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I wasn’t his friend.

Sean Young (from March 30, 2015 court recording): You treated him like a friend that day.

Carl Jacobson (from March 30, 2015 court recording): I was friendly all the time. I was not his friend. I knew who I was dancing with. And when you dance with the devil, you know who you’re dancing with.

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Dave Cawley: Doug Lovell was either an angel or a devil, depending on who you asked.

Scott Mitchell (as Chuck Thompson): Doug is a man who has repented and deserves a chance to get into society before he dies.

Dave Cawley: His bishop, Chuck Thompson, sent this email to the head of the charity Rising Star Outreach, Becky Douglas, on the final day of witness testimony.

Scott Mitchell (as Chuck Thompson): Saw Doug yesterday. He glowed. You are his angel and might be the one who saves his life.

Dave Cawley: Both Chuck and Becky had testified on Doug’s behalf. Both had seen Joyce Yost’s children Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts sitting in the courtroom.

Scott Michell (as Chuck Thompson): I still don’t understand what part of the atonement Joyce’s kids don’t understand. After 30 bitter years, it is more than time to let go and forgive Doug, a changed man.

Dave Cawley: Closing arguments began the following morning. Prosecutor Chris Shaw went first. He told the jury over the 30 years since Doug had killed Joyce, the focus had become “all screwed up.”

Chris Shaw (from March 31, 2015 court recording): It gets perversely directed back at him. When the focus should not be on him, it should be on Joyce Yost.

Dave Cawley: There can be no closure, he said, when your loved one is taken from you forever.

Chris Shaw (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Consider that weight … the weight of the human destruction … that this defendant’s conduct has had on that family. And on Joyce Yost, most importantly. Life ended at 39 years.

Dave Cawley: He asked the jurors to consider whether Doug had showed Joyce human dignity when she’d pleaded for her life. And he challenged the idea Doug’s efforts to lead investigators to Joyce’s remains had been authentic.

Chris Shaw (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Remember his manipulative, controlling and cunning nature. We have to stop and get a beer before we can take law enforcement to the place? Are you kidding me? We have to stop and get a beer. This is the same person that raped her, that kidnapped her, that kidnapped her again and murdered her and he’s squeamish about taking police to the right spot? Please.

Dave Cawley: Chris asked the jury to make its decision based on the entire constellation of Doug’s criminal behavior.

Chris Shaw (from March 31, 2015 court recording): He’s committed all of the aggravating felonies the state of Utah has to offer.

Dave Cawley: This, Chris said, justified a sentence of death. Defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis then stood and reminded the jury Doug did not contest the facts of the crimes he’d committed 30 years earlier.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): The state’s right. It was a horrendous crime. Uh, there’s no excuse for it, there’s no defense for it. Which is exactly why, during the trial phase, we didn’t present a defense.

Dave Cawley: But, Michael said, there were other factors to consider: Doug’s family life, his parents’ divorce, a history of head trauma and substance abuse. And what about Rhonda? Michael called her a co-conspirator who’d needed immunity because of the active role she’d played in plotting Joyce’s death.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): And of course, where we’re going with this is not that we ought to somehow bring Rhonda in and charge her. But the question is whether it’s appropriate — and that’s a decision you’re gonna have to reach at the end of this case — whether it’s appropriate and just in this case to impose the death penalty on Doug when Rhonda didn’t face any charges at all.

Dave Cawley: Michael said Doug had been earnest in his efforts to take Terry Carpenter to Joyce’s body.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Doug Lovell has the greatest incentive of anybody to lead them to the right place. If he leads them to the right place, death is off the table and he lives.

Dave Cawley: And all of the hand-wringing over that anonymous call in ’87 about human remains near Causey Reservoir? Michael said that call probably wasn’t even about Joyce. He said the person who’d called probably just wanted to goad police into looking for another missing woman, hinting at, but not actually saying the name Sheree Warren.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Is that speculation? Sure it is. But what other explanation is there for this odd behavior from this man who calls and does not give any helpful information?

Dave Cawley: Michael suggested that anonymous call was the first mention of Causey attached to Joyce’s disappearance, from which all others had spawned.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Rhonda didn’t say anything to anybody about Causey until 1991, four years later. Jared Briggs doesn’t say anything about Causey until he reads Doug’s paperwork.

Dave Cawley: Michael was calling Causey a red herring. And if that were true, he suggested, it would mean Jared Briggs was a liar. Michael summed up by saying Doug had spent 30 years in prison improving himself.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): So the fact that in 1991 Doug is trying to cover up this murder doesn’t mean that he’s not on his way to becoming something better.

Dave Cawley: A slow process, but one which Michael said was well underway at the time Rhonda recorded her ex-husband while wearing a wire.

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): There’s a spark of humanity, there’s a spark of remorse, there’s a spark of a recognition that his behavior, his conduct, hurt other people.

Dave Cawley: You’ve heard those tapes and can judge for yourself whether or not they reveal Doug as a man who’d felt a “spark of remorse.”

Michael Bouwhuis (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Certainly in 1985 Doug fell to the bottom, no question about it. But he has tried to climb up.

Dave Cawley: Michael asked the jury to return a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. Judge DiReda then turned to the issue of allocution. Allocution is an opportunity for a defendant to make a statement to a judge or jury ahead of sentencing. It’s a chance to show remorse, to apologize to the victims of the crime, to plead for a particular punishment. To show that “spark.”

Michael DiReda (from March 31, 2015 court recording): And if you were going to elect to make a statement in allocution, it has to be made at this juncture.

Dave Cawley: Allocution is not sworn testimony. It wouldn’t open Doug up to cross examination. It would simply allow him to speak in sincere terms to the jurors who would very soon decide if he should live or die.

Doug Lovell (from March 31, 2015 court recording): I will not be making a statement.

Michael DiReda (from March 31, 2015 court recording): Okay. I appreciate that.

Dave Cawley: And so, just before 3 p.m., the jury retired for a second time. This time, they began debating the question of Doug’s sentence.

Sandra Yi (from March 31, 2015 KSL TV archive): Those two options: death, or life in prison with the chance of parole. A unanimous vote is required for the death sentence. The jury has been deliberating for about three hours now.

Dave Cawley: Back in episode 9, I talked about how state death penalty laws changed in the 1970s, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Those changes were meant to take bias out of the sentencing process in capital cases. Utah’s law required the jury in Doug’s case to consider aggravating and mitigating factors. Part of that calculation involved looking at seven instances of alleged criminal conduct for which Doug had not previously been convicted. The jurors would determine his guilt or innocence, then use those findings to help decide if the death penalty was warranted.

Here were the seven alleged crimes and the jury’s decisions on each.

For sexually assaulting Joyce Yost in her car the night of April 3, 1985, the jury found Doug guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You might recall, Doug had at first faced two counts of rape in ’85 but the sexual assault count which had sent him to prison was specific to what had occurred in his home. It had not covered the initial assault in Joyce’s car.

And speaking of what’d happened in Doug’s home, for forcing Joyce to perform oral sex there that night, the jury again found Doug guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime of sodomy. This count had been dropped from the case in ’85 over Joyce’s unwillingness to talk about those humiliating specifics.

The next special verdict form focused on the claim Doug had conspired with Billy Jack to murder Joyce. The jury found him guilty. Likewise, for conspiring with Tom Peters to do the same.

The jury also said Doug was guilty of tampering with Tom Peters as a witness in ’91, while they were both in prison, when Doug had given Tom that kiss on the top of the head.

The remaining two instances of uncharged crimes both arose from claims made by Jared Briggs. Jared had testified Doug had asked him to kill Tom Peters in 2007.

Gary Heward (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Did he ask you to do anything very specifically to Tom Peters?

Jared Briggs (from March 30, 2015 court recording): Yes, to get rid of him.

Dave Cawley: And Jared had told investigators Doug had once again sexually assaulted Joyce on the night of the murder.

Jared Briggs (from December 15, 2006 police recording): He said he just wanted to hurt her and, uh, so he said he sexually assaulted her when they got everything done.

Dave Cawley: For both of these alleged crimes, the jury said Doug’s guilt had not been proven. The decision suggested the jurors felt incertitude over Jared’s credibility. So, in total, the jury found Doug guilty on five of the seven instances of uncharged conduct.

Debating all of this had taken time and no one outside of the jury room had any idea just how much longer the sentencing decision might take. All Kim, Greg and the rest of Joyce’s family could do was wait.

Sandra Yi (from March 31, 1985 KSL TV archive): Yost’s family has been in the courtroom during this long trial. They told me they’ll make a statement after the jury reaches a decision.

Dave Cawley: Shortly after 9 p.m., Judge DiReda adjourned the court and sent the jury home. They returned the next morning to continue from where they’d left off the night before. Several more hours passed before, in the early afternoon, the jurors informed the bailiff they’d at last reached a decision. Once again, Doug stood while Judge DiReda read from the form provided by the jury.

Michael DiReda (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): We the jury in the above entitled case unanimously render a sentencing decision for death.

Dave Cawley: Death. The Weber County prosecutors had achieved that outcome twice in the same case, 22 years apart. First with a judge and now with a jury. Joyce’s children, Kim and Greg, felt relief.

Greg Roberts: I thought they frustrated Doug Lovell again. Big time.

Kim Salazar: Yeah.

Greg Roberts: I thought it was awesome.

Dave Cawley: Judge DiReda signed a warrant of execution bearing Doug’s name. It commanded the Utah Department of Corrections to end his life by lethal injection on May 29, 2015. This was formality because the judge next ordered a stay, putting the execution on indefinite hold pending an automatic appeal of the sentence required by state law.

Kim and Greg spoke to reporters outside the courtroom.

Greg Roberts (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): We think it’s just a very, very, very good day for Joyce and a good day for our family.

Sandra Yi (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): Relief for the children of Joyce Yost…

Kim Salazar (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): Until you’ve walked in these shoes, you just don’t have any idea how, how difficult it is to get through.

Sandra Yi (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): …who say Douglas Lovell deserves to be put to death for what he did to their mother in 1985.

Kim Salazar (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): The things that he did, incredible, horrible things to do to somebody that he didn’t know, that didn’t deserve it.

Dave Cawley: Defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis had made it out of the courthouse by the time those same TV cameras caught up with him in the parking lot.

Sandra Yi (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): Lovell’s attorney says Lovell hoped he would get out of prison one day.

Michael Bouwhuis (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): The hope was that they wouldn’t want to, to impose a death penalty and they’d go with life with the possibility.

Sandra Yi (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): Still, he doesn’t think Lovell, who is 57 years old, will ever be executed.

Michael Bouwhuis (from April 1, 2015 KSL TV archive): He’s looking at least 20 years before he runs out of appeals and probably longer than that.

Dave Cawley: This fact had not escaped Kim and Greg. In a sense, they were right back where they’d been in August of ’93.

Greg Roberts: It felt like it was too much square one.

Dave Cawley: As if to prove this point, Michael Bouwhuis filed a motion asking for a new trial.

Kim Salazar: Now you’re back to square one again. It’s all ahead of you now. The appellate process, the everything just starts over.

Dave Cawley: Michael cited five reasons why he thought Doug deserved one, all of them dealing with decisions made by Judge DiReda. They included DiReda’s refusal to sign off on the plea deal, to notify the jurors of the plea negotiations, to admit Doug’s many letters into evidence, permitting the testimony of Jared Briggs and the judge’s rejection of Doug’s pre-trial motions. Kim knew from experience this move asking for a new trial alone could result in years of legal delay.

Kim Salazar: But we have not moved an inch in all these years as far as the judicial process goes.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Doug’s other attorney Sean Young, submitted a sworn statement to the court several weeks later. In it, he made a rather stunning claim. Sean said the lawyers representing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had interfered with the trial. Sean wrote that the church’s attorneys had shown up at the courthouse on the day those three bishops were set to testify and “threatened to interfere with the testimony” if he didn’t limit the scope of his questioning.

Judge DiReda denied the motion for a new trial. The verdict would stand. Unless, that is, Doug could once again win a reprieve from the Utah Supreme Court. For that, he would need a new lawyer.

The county also had to fund Doug’s appeal. So it tapped another of the attorneys it kept on contract for indigent defense work and signed him to a second contract devoted exclusively to the appeal. That attorney’s name was Samuel Newton.

Samuel went right to work and, on August 3, 2015, filed the appeal with the Utah Supreme Court. Doug’s appeal soon hit some road bumps. Samuel Newton struggled to get a complete copy of trial defense attorney Sean Young’s case files. He ended up pursuing a court order to force the issue, an effort that chewed up almost a year.

Samuel also started talking regularly with Doug, a fact Doug himself pointed out in a letter the Utah Supreme Court.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I have a great working relationship with Mr. Newton. I completely TRUST him with my life and in his judgment in doing what is best for my legal case going forward.

Dave Cawley: Samuel reached out to many of the people Doug had listed as possible character witnesses in the lead-up to the trial, trying to understand why so many of them had failed to show up and testify. What he heard, over and over again, was that they’d never been contacted by the trial defense team. Or, if they had, that the calls had been brief and superficial. Some told Samuel they would have happily testified, if they’d only been asked.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Mr. Young failed to contact over a dozen witnesses for the 2015 penalty phase. Once it was learned that Mr. Young failed to contact my character witnesses, Weber County terminated his contract solely because of my case.

Dave Cawley: In May of 2016, Samuel asked the Utah Supreme Court to send Doug’s appeal back to the trial court so they could get to the bottom of this. The Supreme Court agreed to the request in March of 2017. The high court’s order instructed the trial judge, Michael DiReda, to hold what’s known an evidentiary hearing.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): As for Mr. Bouwhuis, he was lead counsel in charge of Mr. Young. I believe the upcoming hearing will clearly show that Mr. Bouwhuis failed when it came to overseeing Mr. Young’s work.

Dave Cawley: Here were the questions Judge DiReda had to answer: Had Sean Young acted deficiently in failing to prepare several of Doug’s witnesses for their testimony? Was Sean Young deficient for failing to even call 14 of the potential witnesses Doug had identified? Had Sean Young’s cross-examination of Carl Jacobson been inadequate? Did Sean Young fail to properly prepare the defense team’s mitigation specialist, whose job it had been to research and make initial contact with many of these witnesses? Should Sean Young have raised an objection to the alleged interference of The Church’s lawyers? And, if the answer to any of these questions was yes, had that, in the end, prejudiced the jury?

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): The hearing will also show there was a lot of confusion and a complete lack of communication when it came to my character witnesses.

Dave Cawley: The sheer number of potential witnesses covered by the order meant the evidentiary hearing would likely take longer than had the entirety of Doug’s trial. The remand order instructed Judge DiReda to report his findings within 90 days. He didn’t meet that deadline. Not even close. Here’s why.

Appellate attorney Samuel Newton had, by the start of 2017, expended the $75,000 allotted by the county for the appeal. He anticipated the evidentiary hearing was going to require hundreds more hours of work. He began talking with county staff and commissioners about the need for additional funding.

The county suggested Samuel was overestimating the time required. They offered an additional $15,000, but also expressed skepticism over how much time he was spending communicating with Doug.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): For the first time, I got an attorney who represented me to the fullest, who knows my case inside and out and now the county has pulled the rug on funding him.

Dave Cawley: Samuel claimed in a sworn affidavit the county had refused to pay him $120,000 for work he’d done on a different death penalty appeal. That had caused stress which had in turn exacerbated a heart condition. This drew the Utah Attorney General’s Office into the funding dispute. In a letter, an AG’s Office staff member said Samuel had developed a conflict of interest: his health and Doug’s defense were now at odds.

In a court filing, Samuel referred to his situation as “involuntary pro-bono.” He asked Judge DiReda to intervene and force the county to pay, but DiReda declined, on the grounds it was a civil matter that didn’t fall within his jurisdiction. Doug argued to the contrary. In a letter to the court, he said his very Constitutional rights were at stake.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I have the right to effective assistance of counsel for my defense. And I had just that. I had an attorney who was competent, who actually read my entire file, who met regularly with me and who, I believe, had my best interests at heart.

Dave Cawley: Doug pointed out the county would have to hire another appellate attorney for him, if the court allowed Samuel to withdraw. That lawyer would start from scratch. The tens of thousands of dollars already spent on two years of Samuel’s work would be for nothing.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I ask this Court to PLEASE intervene & see to it that Mr. Newton will remain as lead counsel in my case going forward.

Dave Cawley: Judge DiReda released Samuel from the case at the end of August. This drew media coverage, including editorials scathing in their assessment of Weber County’s handling of the matter. The bad publicity didn’t help as the county sought to find another qualified attorney willing to take up Doug’s appeal. In fact, it could find only one: Colleen Coebergh. She signed a $100,000 contract with Weber County at the end of September.

Weeks later, the Weber County Commission sent Samuel a letter informing him the county was terminating his contracts. The commissioners accused Samuel of making untruthful comments to the media which had harmed the county’s reputation. Samuel struck back, filing a federal lawsuit against Weber County and its commissioners, accusing them of violating his First Amendment right to free speech. And none of this had much of anything to do with Joyce Yost, a fact that wasn’t lost on her children.

Greg Roberts: I think Doug Lovell likes the limelight. He likes the attention and that’s exactly how it plays out. … Especially over time, the victim becomes much less important—

Kim Salazar: The victim gets lost in it.

Greg Roberts: —this horrible perpetrator becomes the story. And it’s rough, it is difficult. That’s difficult. So—

Kim Salazar: I don’t see any remorse.

Dave Cawley: Quiet pervaded the room. No music, no chatter of voices, just the soft hum of the lights and the breathing of one man.

William Andrews (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Whatever happens, I’m ready for it. It’s that simple.

Dave Cawley: A pair of needles were inserted into the man’s arms. Tubing snaked away from them, disappearing through a hole in the cinderblock wall. The man, William Andrews, reclined on a padded plank covered with straps. Across the room were a series of windows. On the other side sat a small group of people who were there to witness William’s execution.

William Andrews (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I feel very comfortably spiritually with the aspect of dying, with the prospect of dying because I am a very spiritual man.

Dave Cawley: William had been scheduled to die at the stroke of midnight on Thursday, July 30, 1992. A last-minute plea for reprieve to the U.S. Supreme Court had delayed the lethal injection for about an hour and a half. The Supreme Court justices had just declined to intervene. So now, at 1:35 a.m., a state official signaled to an unseen executioner in the other room to push the plunger and deliver the fatal drug cocktail into William’s veins.

William Andrews (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I have come to terms with … the idea of dying. Umm, I don’t want to die but I don’t want to continue to live the way I have been living.

Dave Cawley: The rising and falling of William’s chest slowed. His fists unclenched. This man, barefoot and clad in a white jumpsuit, stopped breathing. Doug Lovell was well aware of William Andrews. And though Doug didn’t see the execution himself, he spent that night wondering if he, too, might soon face the same fate.

This is Cold, season 2, episode 9: High Fidelity. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. We’ll be right back.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: The execution of William Andrews came just weeks after South Ogden police Sergeant Terry Carpenter served Doug Lovell with a capital homicide charge for the murder of Joyce Yost. The charging document made clear the stakes for Doug. If he were convicted, the death penalty was on the table. The execution of William Andrews showed it was not an empty threat. Yet, William’s death had proved anything but expeditious.

Protester (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): The whole world has its eyes on Utah.

Deannie Wimmer (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Emotion ran high among the few hundred people who attended what they knew might be the last night of this week-long vigil at the governor’s mansion. They prayed and sang that peace would prevail on this night. Speakers at the vigil urged the crowd to keep hope and challenge what divides society.

Protester (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): White people need to come out and speak against racism because it destroys children and life and dignity.

Dave Cawley: William was black. He’d been convicted by an all-white jury of capital homicide for his role in one of Utah’s most notorious crimes: the April, 1974 Ogden Hi-Fi Shop massacre.

William had been just 19 years old when he and a fellow helicopter mechanic stationed at Utah’s Hill Air Force Base — 21-year-old Dale Selby Pierre, who later changed his name to Pierre Dale Selby — hatched a plan to rob the Hi-Fi Shop. They rented a storage unit, in which they planned to stash the stolen speakers, amplifiers and turntables. They used multiple vans to shuttle the stereos to the storage unit. They had another airman act as lookout. They intended to leave no witnesses.

William and Dale were both armed when they entered the Hi-Fi shop on the evening of April 22, 1974. They rounded up the two young clerks who were inside — Michelle Ansley and Stanley Walker — and forced them into the basement. The thieves went about their work but as they did so, a teenage boy named Cortney Naisbitt came through the door. Cortney was cutting through on his way to the rear parking lot after having visited a nearby photo lab. Andrews and Pierre took him hostage as well.

Some time later, Cortney’s mother Carol Naisbitt came looking for him. Orren Walker, the father of clerk Stanley Walker, did the same. And so the number of hostages bound in the Hi-Fi Shop’s basement grew to five.

William and Dale had watched the film “Magnum Force” over and over in the days leading up to the crime. The movie, a sequel to the original Clint Eastwood crime drama “Dirty Harry,” featured a scene in which a pimp killed a prostitute by forcing her to drink drain cleaner. William and Dale had taken note of that scene. They’d purchased a bottle of liquid Drano and brought it with them to the Hi-Fi Shop. Orren Walker would later testify about how his captors sought to deliver the poison.

Orren Walker (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Pierre had the cup. Andrews poured the Drano into the cup. Pierre handed it to me to give to Michelle, Cortney and Stanley. And I just stood there. When I stood there, then Andrews pointed the gun at my head. He says, and threatened me, he said, ‘man, there’s a gun at your head.’ The thought went through my mind, ‘well, if he shoots me, he shoots me. I’m not about to take it and give it to ‘em.’

Dave Cawley: They gagged Orren and shoved him face-first onto the floor. Then, they propped up the other four hostages and poured the caustic cleaner into their mouths. Hollywood had not reflected the actual horror of what would occur. The Drano caused chemical burns and blisters, not immediate death. The men attempted to place duct tape over their victims’ mouths to quiet their screams, but their skin just sloughed off under the adhesive.

Frustrated by the delay, Dale then shot the hostages one by one. The first round he fired at Orren Walker missed and the second just grazed his head. Dale attempted to garrote Orren and when that failed, had William place a ballpoint pen against Orren’s ear. Dale then kicked the pen.

In the middle of this, Dale told William to leave him alone for a bit. He then raped the female clerk, Michelle, before shooting her in the back of the head. Orren Walker and Cortney Naisbitt survived. Carol Naisbitt, Stanley Walker and Michelle Ansley did not. Orren would go on to testify against William and Dale at their trial.

William Andrews (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): When Mr. Walker testified at trial, at that time I felt he was a very sincere and I felt that he was the only person at the trial that maintained his honor. That did not mix up the facts or try to add, add anything to it. I thought he was very honorable and told the truth the way he saw it as best he could.

Dave Cawley: That is William Andrews’ own voice. It and the clips at the start of this episode come from the archives of KSL TV. William and Dale were tried and convicted together. Both received the death penalty. Dale Selby died first, in 1987, by lethal injection.

Con Psarras (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): But by then, it was probably too late for William Andrews. He was locked on to the same legal track as Selby, the man who actually pulled the trigger in the basement of the Hi-Fi Shop. In the eyes of the law, Selby’s and Andrews’ cases were never separated until Selby was executed five years ago.

William Andrews (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): There was never any distinction made between my participation in that crime and Pierre’s. No one can deny the viciousness of what took place there that night but I did not commit all of those vicious acts.

Dave Cawley: The fact William was going to die in spite of not having directly killed anyone himself prompted public outcry from those who believed the prosecutors and jurors had been motivated by racial bias.

Unidentified woman (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I’m going to write the story of Utah the murderer of blacks in Utah, a state that had made history for killing, murdering someone who has not killed anybody.

Man-on-the-street (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): How can you kill a man for a crime that he didn’t commit?

Dave Cawley: On the other hand, the prosecutors pointed out William was the one who planned the heist. He was the brains, Dale was the muscle. William had also done nothing to prevent the murders.

Robert Wallace (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): A person can be found guilty and receive capital punishment if they kill someone, if they have other intent to kill, if they attempt to kill, if they contemplate that someone will die, if they use lethal force.

Dave Cawley: The debate raged for weeks ahead of William’s scheduled execution. Protesters held a days-long vigil on the streets of Salt Lake City.

Deannie Wimmer (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Others told the crowd that no matter what happens to William Andrews, their fight will continue.

Protester (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Thank you William Andrews for bringing us all together. And we will fight on no matter what.

Rocky Anderson (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Let’s all of us insist of our political leaders that they hear this community and do away with this death penalty once and for all.

Dave Cawley: This formed the backdrop against which the death penalty prosecution of Doug Lovell was set to play out. And the attorney representing Doug in his capital homicide case was the same man who had nearly 20 years earlier represented William Andrews: John Caine.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: John Caine had lost the William Andrews case, but he’d gone on to represent defendants in other capital homicide cases. None had resulted in a death verdict. But the circumstances of the Joyce Yost murder gave him pause. Years later, Caine would say “this was one where I thought if it ever got imposed, this could be the one.”

Joyce’s disappearance had made the news at various times over the years but it’d never captured the public’s attention the way the Hi-Fi Shop murders had. Still, John recognized what’d happened to Joyce was in some ways on par with that horrific crime.

“I thought this case had things in it that made it as egregious as Hi-Fi in some respects,” John later said, noting it would “be particularly abhorrent to general citizens.”

Caine was a religious man and an outspoken opponent of capital punishment. His hopes of saving Doug from death relied on keeping Rhonda’s story out of the courtroom or, failing that, cutting a plea deal with the prosecution. He’d opened those negotiations with Weber County Attorney Reed Richards at the end of 1992. In early ’93, however, Reed left that job to become Chief Deputy Utah Attorney General.

On March 26, 1993, the Utah Supreme Court formally declined to take up Doug’s interlocutory appeal, the one challenging the admissibility of Rhonda’s testimony and the wire recordings.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): How did he get in?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): He told me he went through a window.

Dave Cawley: That meant nothing more stood in the way of a trial. Judge Stanton Taylor signed an order, ordering Doug to appear on March 29^th. John Caine was already in the courtroom when the bailiffs brought Doug in that afternoon.

“So today’s the day, huh,” Doug asked, apparently believing he was there to enter his guilty plea.

John told Doug he had some bad news. Their appeal had failed. The tentative agreement he’d reached with Reed Richards was now off the table.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Doug said.

Doug had come clean to his family and to the other inmates in his section at the prison, telling them he was going to admit to killing Joyce Yost. Any one of them could now turn against him and testify. He was furious. John did what he could to salvage the situation. He asked for and received a two-week delay, buying time to re-open talks with the prosecutors.

Utah law provided two possible sentences for the crime of capital murder at the time when Doug killed Joyce in August of ’85: death or life in prison. But there was a huge asterisk after that word life. It meant life with the possibility of parole. Which would mean if Doug were convicted and sentenced under that law, he might some day win his freedom. That law had changed though in April of ’92…

Rep. Merrill Nelson (from Utah State Legislature archive recording): This bill creates a new sentencing option of life without parole.

Dave Cawley: …just weeks before Terry Carpenter served Doug with the charges.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And I, uh, would have hoped that one of the things that would have saved you the capital aspect of it would have been cooperating with me on that but obviously you refused to do that.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well—

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That may be the thing that costs you your life, Doug.

Dave Cawley: The state lawmakers had talked in their debates about the hesitance jurors in some fringe capital cases might feel, if their only choices were death or life with the possibility of parole.

Rep. Merrill Nelson (from Utah State Legislature archive recording): These dangerous people are subject to parole under current law and, uh, will likely be paroled.

Dave Cawley: The new option of life without the possibility of parole — or LWOP for short — was not without controversy. Some feared it would weaken the death penalty by reassuring reluctant jurors the killers they convicted would not be set free in just five or ten years. Those concerns did not derail the bill. It became law and was in effect at the time of the initial plea negotiations between John Caine and Reed Richards in late ’92 and early ’93. But Reed’s first proposal was for the old standard of life with the possibility of parole.

Kim Salazar: I thought that in the very beginning when we discussing all this … that LWOP wasn’t on the table.

Dave Cawley: The other members of the prosecution team started the negotiations anew after Reed departed the case. And prosecutors Bill Daines and Gary Heward were not as generous. They told John Caine at the March 29^th hearing if Doug returned Joyce’s remains, they’d leave it up to the judge to decide between life with or without the possibility of parole.

Doug returned to court two weeks later, on April 12^th. The hearing that day ended up being postponed but as bailiffs were taking Doug out of the courthouse, he spotted Terry Carpenter who was there booking someone else on an unrelated drug case.

Doug told Terry he wanted to talk to him.

“You can’t talk to me without your attorney,” Terry said.

Terry Carpenter: And he says ‘no, that’s where you’re wrong. I can talk to you, you just can’t talk to me.’

Dave Cawley: Terry thought it over and decided this was correct, as a matter of law. They stepped aside into a small conference room and sat down.

Terry Carpenter: He says ‘y’know, I’ve wanted for a long time to get Joyce back. I just didn’t know how.’

Dave Cawley: Doug didn’t outright admit to killing Joyce, but said he’d hoped for years to figure out a way to pass the location of her body to Joyce’s family. When Doug had said his piece, Terry said…

Terry Carpenter: ‘You need to sit down with, with your attorney and make sure we do this the right way but that will be up to you completely.’

Dave Cawley: In the meantime, Joyce’s children Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts told the prosecutors they did not support any deal which would leave open the possibility of Doug ever being paroled.

Terry Carpenter: You talk with them and you say ‘okay, now this guy’s at least told us he’s killed her. We have a chance to get the ultimate penalty for him.’

Greg Roberts: I think we wanted the death penalty, death penalty, death penalty.

Dave Cawley: Terry and the prosecutors were confident they could secure that sentence even without Joyce’s body. But their best chance of bringing Joyce home was making a deal with Doug. They played hardball. No more letting the judge decide on the question of parole. Their final offer was Joyce’s body in exchange for life without the possibility of parole.

Doug learned of the new terms at his next court hearing, on April 19^th. He was, once again, furious. That same day, Judge Stanton Taylor scheduled the trial to begin on June 28, 1993. It would not be delayed again.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: At the start of May, Doug mailed a pair of letters: one to John Caine and the other to Judge Taylor. In both letters, he expressed frustration over the plea negotiations and said he was firing John and intended to represent himself. Prison staff transported Doug to the Weber County courthouse for a pretrial hearing a month later, on June 1^st. He entered the courthouse and found John there waiting for him.

“What are you doing here,” Doug asked. “Didn’t you get my letter?”

John explained the court was not going to allow Doug to fire his attorney in a capital case. The stakes were too high. Like it or not, they were stuck with one another. Doug’s back was to the wall. Ten days later, John told the prosecution his client would accept the offer. He would plead guilty, return Joyce’s body and take life without parole. The prosecution agreed to the terms. All that remained was to put them in writing. Would Doug really follow through? Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts had their doubts.

Greg Roberts: I think that as we were going through that, that Carpenter and even those, the prosecutors and things—

Kim Salazar: Bill Daines.

Greg Roberts: —they were letting us know that they thought that Doug was playing them.

Dave Cawley: Terry Carpenter and U.S. Secret Service Agent Glen Passey, picked Doug up from the prison a few nights later. They were transporting him up to the Weber County Jail ahead of a meeting planned for the morning of June 17^th, at which time Doug would sign a formal “memorandum of understanding” outlining the plea deal.

They took a detour before dropping Doug at the jail. Terry picked up a pizza and they went to a park next to South Ogden police headquarters. John Caine showed up there as well with a six-pack of beer. They all got to talking while Doug got to drinking.

Doug said he didn’t want to be there when police recovered the remains. It was too traumatic, too emotional. But he said he could point out the spot on an aerial image. He asked for one showing the terrain below the Snowbasin ski resort on the back side of Mount Ogden.

Terry Carpenter: But he says it’s the only place where there’s a guard rail on the curve.

Dave Cawley: The more Doug drank, the more he seemed to loosen up. Sometime after 10 p.m., as the summer evening took on the veil of darkness, he changed his mind, saying he was willing to go to the spot so long as they went right then, before his courage faltered.

Terry Carpenter: You’ve got somebody who is fighting emotions, you got somebody who is wanting on one side of him to do something and maybe for the first time in his life to do something right.

Dave Cawley: Terry made a series of phone calls to the prosecutors. They told him to wait until the next day, after Doug had signed the agreement. The next morning Doug read through the memorandum of understanding at the jail. It said in order for the agreement to be binding, he had to lead investigators to human remains that could be positively identified as those of Joyce Yost. Finding just her purse, for instance, wouldn’t be enough.

“If the mountainside has moved, if the animals have carried her off,” Doug said, “if for any reason we can’t find her, I’m [expletive]ed.”

He was right. He signed his name anyway.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: A string of cars cruised east on Utah Highway 39. They entered Ogden Canyon, one after another, winding along the narrow two-lane road like a slithering snake. Doug sat in the back of the lead car, next to Terry. John Caine sat in the front passenger seat while Glen Passey, the Secret Service agent, was at the wheel.

Terry Carpenter: So, we’ve pretty well got him covered and he’s shackled and handcuffed of course.

Dave Cawley: Terry observed Doug’s body language. He noted the clenched jaw and heaving sighs. The cars passed by Pineview Dam as they exited the top of the canyon. They began to slow as they approached the right-hand turn for the access road leading to Snowbasin. This was the place Doug said he’d taken Joyce on the night he’d killed her in 1985.

“I don’t want to do this yet,” Doug blurted out. “Keep going.”

And so they continued another mile down the road. There, the cars pulled into the parking lot of a small restaurant and gas station called Chris’. Doug’s nerves were acting up again. He wanted another beer to help calm down.

Terry Carpenter: And a cigarette and a, y’know. I can tell you how many times I’ve bought beer and cigarettes.

Dave Cawley: All for Doug Lovell?

Terry Carpenter: Ah, yeah. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Terry doesn’t drink or smoke, on account of his religion. And so, I was a bit perplexed when I first heard this part of the story. I asked Terry why he’d allowed Doug the courtesy of beer and cigarettes. He told me it was a matter of doing everything he could to try and recover Joyce for Kim and Greg.

Terry Carpenter: They would like to be able to bury their mother. So do you, do you not do everything you can to get it out of him? He’s right there. Supposedly just up this road is where he says, or is he telling us the truth or is he lying to us? The guy’s a great liar. I don’t know. So, if him having a beer or a cigarette is going to help him have enough courage to take us up to where: yes or no. Your choice.

Dave Cawley: Doug drank and chatted with Terry and John for the better part of an hour before at last telling them he’d calmed down and was ready to go. The train of cars flipped around and headed back to Snowbasin Road. The first section of that road was steep, climbing two-thousand feet in just two and a half miles. It then crested a ridge and dropped into the small valley of Wheeler Creek. Beyond the valley, the road rose another thousand feet before reaching the parking lot at the foot of the ski resort.

Doug said the spot he remembered was near a downhill grade, at a place where the road curved. There were guard rail posts along the right-hand side of the road and beyond it a field of sagebrush and a line of trees. Joyce was in the trees.

Terry Carpenter: You know, he tells us you’ve got to go over the guard rail and then go up and then I stomp on her throat right here.

Dave Cawley: Doug and Terry walked through the brush to the spot where Doug claimed to have killed Joyce. But the story didn’t add up for Terry.

Terry Carpenter: We know from the bed, there’s no way in hell that he could have walked her over that guardrail. It just couldn’t have happened. She’s lost too much blood on the mattress for him to walk her over that guardrail. So he’s got to be carrying her all this way.

Dave Cawley: Doug described how he’d at first concealed the body with leaves and branches.

Terry Carpenter: But then he tells us, too and I mentioned to you earlier, that he goes back and moves her.

Dave Cawley: As they walked around the site, Doug told his attorney John Caine how he’d scraped out a small depression and placed Joyce’s body into it on the return visit. Calling it a grave was a stretch. John Caine had, up to that point, been under the impression Doug had done a better job of burying Joyce. Remember, Doug had promised his attorney he could find the remains in the dark or in a snowstorm. Now, John worried his client wouldn’t be able to make good. The shoddiness of the burial raised the possibility Joyce’s body might have since been uncovered and scattered.

Terry told the other officers who’d come along this was their search area. Clearfield police detective Bill Holthaus, who’d first arrested Doug for the rape of Joyce Yost in 1985, was among them.

Bill Holthaus: We kinda just followed along behind. It was South Ogden’s case, y’know, and we were just there to help.

Dave Cawley: They returned the next day, without Doug. They brought coroners from the state medical examiner’s office, covering their trucks with a phony “Joe’s Bakery” logo to avoid drawing attention to the search. The detectives worked with picks and shovels, digging a network of trenches between the trees. They brought in cadaver dogs and consulted with a botanist.

Bill Holthaus: The botanist had told us that there would be certain kinds of fresh plant — because you’re unfortunately good fertilizer — that there would be certain kind of plant life you should look for in little groves.

Dave Cawley: Day after day, they returned to the search area and carried their tools into the patch of oak trees.

Bill Holthaus: We never found any evidence of anything growing at the same time in a small group like he told us we might find up there. Everything looked like pretty much old growth. There wasn’t anything fresh.

Dave Cawley: Doug had claimed to have left Joyce’s purse with the body. Could they at least find that?

Bill Holthaus: No, we didn’t find anything like that. We had metal detectors. Supposedly she had a necklace which wasn’t found at the house.

Dave Cawley: Not a trace.

Kim Salazar: I think that was just a bunch of [expletive]. There was never, he was trying to create mitigation. She’d never been there. He’d never been there. They overturned that hillside and there wasn’t so much as a fingernail.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: The date scheduled for the trial — June 28, 1993 — arrived with no recovery of Joyce’s remains. Doug pleaded guilty to the charge of capital homicide. Judge Stanton Taylor dismissed the kidnapping and burglary counts. Another significant question faced Doug at that point. Under Utah law, he had the right to choose whether a jury or judge would decide his sentence. The jury would have to be unanimous in a finding of death. Otherwise, the sentence would revert to life without parole.

Defense attorney John Caine told Doug, Russ and Monan Lovell privately he believed winning over even one juror was unlikely. He said the smarter play was having the judge choose the sentence.

“In my professional opinion and in my experience with Judge Taylor,” Caine said later, “I don’t think he would impose the death penalty.”

Kim Salazar: He coulda had a jury or he could’ve had the judge. But he knew that that judge had never handed down a death sentence in all his years on the bench. And so he banked on that. He didn’t think Judge Taylor could do it.

Dave Cawley: John wasn’t the only one who believed Judge Taylor might show mercy. So did Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts.

Greg Roberts: I think Bill Daines kind of warned us of that. He said ‘He’s a devoutly religious person.’ Y’know, will he follow the law? Will Stanton Taylor follow the law? Will he uh, just maybe follow his religious beliefs.

Dave Cawley: Terry Carpenter brought Doug back up the mountain after the plea hearing. They watched as a team of cadaver dogs scoured area, again. Terry and Doug went up again later that night, after sundown.

Terry Carpenter: And we drive up the van and he insists on going in the dark, ‘cause that’s when he goes. And we, we do this, or we pick to do this on a night that’s a full moon so we can see well.

Dave Cawley: They parked and stood at the roadside, the sound of crickets in their ears. Doug became emotional. He fell to the ground, rolling onto his side in the gravel, and began to weep. Slobber fell from his mouth, so much so that Terry had to retrieve a towel from the car. Terry noticed something else. There were no tears falling from Doug’s eyes.

Terry Carpenter: Doug was able to, to put up a great front and able to do a lot of things that would show you he was emotional and he was sincere but just that fast it was gone.

Dave Cawley: The Deseret News published a story on July 14, 1993, detailing the search effort. Terry Carpenter told reporters he had one goal.

Terry Carpenter (from July 21, 1993 KSL TV archive): Ideally we would like to locate Joyce, be able to have her be given a decent burial and bring this thing to a close.

Dave Cawley: The search was now public knowledge.

Larry Lewis (from July 21, 1993 KSL TV archive): Investigators have spent hours using shovels and hand tools digging dozens of trenches but so far they’ve found no sign of Joyce Yost. And now they’re bringing in heavy equipment.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording):  At one point, I got a permit from the Forest Service and took a backhoe up there and we destroyed that hillside trying to find her.

Dave Cawley: Kim and her husband Randy drove up Ogden Canyon to watch it work.

Randy Salazar: And after you seen somebody coming out from the shrub and everything, you’re hoping they’re, they got some news. But it was always no.

Dave Cawley: Doug kept making suggestions.

Terry Carpenter: She’s not within an acre of where he says ‘this is, or maybe this is, oh maybe this.’

Dave Cawley: Maybe, he said, he could pinpoint the spot if hypnotized. That didn’t work. Terry even brought Doug up the mountain with a self-described psychic.

Randy Salazar: And Doug cries and says ‘I know she’s here’ and ‘I can feel her here, this is the place.’ But again, he’s full of crap.

Dave Cawley: Terry, who was already skeptical of Doug’s story, wondered if there might be another explanation.

Terry Carpenter: She’s not there. She was never there. … She’s not even at Snowbasin. She is someplace else and honestly to this day, I believe Sheree Warren’s with her. Otherwise, if we go up and dig and find Joyce and find Sheree, that negates all the agreements that we’ve had with him and not executing him. And he knows that. So he’s not going to take us to Joyce.

Dave Cawley: Still, the work continued.

Greg Roberts: The show of like manpower when they were looking for her up near that Old Snowbasin Road with dogs and horses and men and bulldozers and backhoes and everything, it was, you’d think if there was something there that, y’know, maybe they will find her but yeah I do think he was just fully leading them on a wild goose chase to, to act like he’d tried.

Dave Cawley: Someone even suggested they try truffle-sniffing pigs, which were said to have noses more sensitive than even cadaver dogs. The searchers procured pigs from Colorado but they didn’t find anything, either.

Larry Lewis (from July 21, 1993 KSL TV archive): Meantime they say, they’re running out of patience and they’ll seek the death penalty for Lovell if they don’t find Yost by the end of the month. Larry Lewis, KSL News, Weber County.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: I opened this episode talking about the 1974 Ogden Hi-Fi Shop murders. That case made news in its day not only because of the brutality, but because it was one of the first death penalty prosecutions in the United States following a federal moratorium on executions.

Con Psarras (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): It was a time of high emotion and legal turmoil. The justice system was grappling for another approach to capital punishment that the courts and the public would accept.

Dave Cawley: The full story of capital punishment in the United States extends well beyond the scope of this podcast, but Utah has played a key role in that story, dating back to before it even became a state.

In 1877, a man named Wallace Wilkerson shot and killed another man at a saloon in the Utah Territory during a dispute over a game of cribbage. Territorial law mandated the punishment for the crime of murder was death. Prior to 1876, the law had provided for three possible methods: hanging, decapitation or firing squad. At his sentencing, the judge ordered Wallace to die by firing squad.

Wallace then appealed his sentence, arguing it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The appeal made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court which for the first time in its history weighed the constitutionality of a specific manner of capital punishment. The decision came in March of 1879 and it was unanimous. The high court upheld the sentence. Death by firing squad, it said, was neither cruel nor unusual punishment.

Wallace’s actual execution tested that conclusion. The archives of the Deseret News indicate the firing squad missed the mark. Instead of shooting Wallace through the heart, the rounds went high through his chest. Wallace shouted “Oh God” and fell forward were he remained writhing in agony for another 27 minutes before dying.

In an editorial days later, the newspaper defended capital punishment by citing biblical precedent. “The dread of a violent death is greater than any terrors of imprisonment,” the paper read. It went on to argue against life imprisonment as an alternative to death, saying, “a tender hearted Executive may at some time grant a pardon, and a bare probability at least exists for escape in some way. But the sentence of death rigidly enforced carries with it a strong deterrent.” Whether capital punishment in fact has such a deterrent effect remains a matter of debate today.

Nearly a century passed before, in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a decision in a case called Furman v. Georgia.

Warren Burger (from U.S. Supreme Court recording): Arguments next in 69-5003, Furman against Georgia.

Dave Cawley: The decision actually covered three separate cases, all involving men sentenced to die: two for rape, one for murder. Each argued on appeal that their sentences amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Anthony Amsterdam (from U.S. Supreme Court recording): Capital punishment is regarded as indecent. As inconsistent with civilized standards today.

Dave Cawley: Every single justice on the high court bench wrote a separate opinion, with five of them agreeing the death penalty as imposed in the Furman cases was unconstitutional. The gist of the majority position revolved around the idea that the death penalty was too often applied arbitrarily. This meant people who were sentenced to die were more likely to be young, uneducated or a member of a minority group. All three of the defendants in the Furman cases were Black.

Anthony Amsterdam (from U.S. Supreme Court recording): The jury comes back with death. The defendant is black, the victim is white. That’s all the aggravation in the case.

Dave Cawley: Several of the justices noted judges and juries rarely applied capital punishment to rapists when they were not Black. The Furman decision had an immediate impact.

Con Psarras (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Death rows emptied all over America. In Utah, killers Myron Lance and Walter Kellback, who brutally murdered and then bragged about it, were re-sentenced to life in prison. The public wasn’t happy.

Dave Cawley: States scrambled to rewrite their death penalty laws, looking for a way to re-establish capital punishment without running afoul of the Supreme Court. Many, including Utah, coalesced around a system by which judges or juries would have to balance specific aggravating and mitigating circumstances before deciding if death was warranted. The Utah Legislature passed its revised law in 1973.

Con Psarras (from July 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): A new law was designed. A test case was necessary. And then came the murders in Ogden.

Dave Cawley: The 1974 Ogden Hi-Fi Shop killings. William Andrews and Dale Selby Pierre were tried, convicted and sentenced under Utah’s new death penalty framework. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court said these rewritten capital punishment laws resolved the inadequacies identified in the Furman decision. The nation’s moratorium on executions came to an end. Here again, Utah found itself in the crosshairs of history.

John Hollenhorst (from January 17, 1977 KSL TV archive): A lot of attention will be focused on Utah today. Some people will say Utah is backward, barbaric place because it put a man to death for the first time in years.

Dave Cawley: In January of 1977, Utah executed convicted killer Gary Gilmore by firing squad. Gilmore had killed two men on back-to-back nights in 1976: a gas station attendant named Max Jensen and a motel manager named Bennie Bushnell. He faced trial for only one murder — Bushnell’s — and was convicted. At his sentencing, Gilmore told the judge “you sentenced me to die. Unless it’s a joke or something, I want to go ahead and do it.”

He refused to appeal his sentence, fast-tracking his own execution. Religious groups and the ACLU attempted to intervene, against Gilmore’s wishes. The execution was twice delayed, including one time when Utah’s governor issued a last-minute stay. Gary told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole he was not happy.

Gary Gilmore (from KSL TV archive): I’d personally decided he was a moral coward for doing that. I simply accepted a sentence that was given to me. I’ve accepted sentences all my life. I didn’t know I had a choice in the matter. When I did accept it, everybody jumped up and wanted to start to argue with me. It seems that the people, especially the people of Utah, they want the death penalty but they don’t want executions.

Dave Cawley: The actual day of Gilmore’s execution came a little over three months from the date of his sentencing. Prison staff escorted him from his maximum security cell, walking him past the neighboring cells housing the HiFi Shop killers.

John Hollenhorst (from January 17, 1977 KSL TV archive): I’m told that in maximum security, the mood there is somewhat restless. The other inmates apparently are kind of keyed up about this thing.

Dave Cawley: “Adios, Pierre and Andrews,” the Deseret News quoted Gilmore as saying on his walk out of maximum security. “I’ll be seeing you directly.”

(Sound of phone ringing)

Kenneth Shulson (from January 17, 1977 KSL TV archive): Shulson. Thank you. The order of the 4^th Judicial District Court of the State of Utah has been carried out. Gary Mark Gilmore is dead.

Dave Cawley: Gilmore made history as the first person executed in the United States following the Supreme Court’s 1972 moratorium. His death was the first execution in the country in nearly 10 years. Dale Pierre’s execution wouldn’t come for another 10 years.

John Hollenhorst (from August 28, 1987 KSL TV archive): The prison warden asked for Selby’s last words. The warden wrote them down and later read them to reporters.

Gerald Cook (from August 28, 1987 KSL TV archive): ‘Ask the pastor to send any money left to William Andrews.’ I asked him if he had anything else to say, he says ‘I’m just going to say my prayers. Thank you.’

Dave Cawley: He died by lethal injection in August of ’87.

John Hollenhorst (from August 28, 1987 KSL TV archive): Less than five minutes after Selby’s last words, the beating of his heart faded away. The soles of his feet changed from healthy pink to lifeless white. A doctor quietly entered the room, checked for a sign of life. There was none and by 12 minutes after 1, the murderer was dead. A human life had been taken away as quietly as a child drifts off to sleep.

Dave Cawley: William Andrews, as you’ve already heard, followed suit in ’92. He’d been on death row for nearly 18 years by that point. News reports at the time said his was the longest active wait for any death row inmate in the country. This delay could largely be attributed to the flurry of appeals that are typical in death penalty cases. Very few condemned individuals follow the path of Gary Gilmore and spur on their own executions.

Which brings us to July of ’93 and the impending sentencing of Doug Lovell for the murder of Joyce Yost.

[Scene transition]

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): No matter what words are wrote, or decision made, no one has had it harder than Joyce’s family. Her family and loved ones lives have been changed and altered forever and more than likely will never totally heal and I’m to blame for that.

Dave Cawley: Doug wrote this letter to Judge Stanton Taylor…

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Eight long years for them of not knowing is a hell that no one should have to go through, and I am truly sorry.

Dave Cawley: …in hopes of swaying the decision on his impending sentence.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Sir, I tried to turn over Joyce’s body to her loved ones even before I was charged with her murder. I just didn’t know how to do it.

Dave Cawley: Fear, he said, was what had kept him from coming clean years earlier. He’d only lied to protect to Rhonda, the mother of his child. In the time since, Joyce’s body had vanished.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): The place that I have taken the police time and time again is the place where I took this young lady’s life and left her there. I can’t explain why she’s not there.

Dave Cawley: He didn’t even hazard a guess. Doug went on to talk about the painful experiences of his childhood. The source of his problems, Doug wrote, was his refusal to ever discuss his feelings.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): On the outside I may have looked OK but on the inside I was going through a haunting hell. I was so unhappy and hateful of myself.

Dave Cawley: Doug said that had changed. The therapy he’d received since entering prison had made all the difference.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Change for me was very hard and painful. I had to work at it every minute of every day. It didn’t happen over night, it took several years.

Dave Cawley: Going forward, he said he hoped to use his experience to help troubled kids avoid falling into the same trap.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I know that if I was able to talk openly and honestly with young people I could make a difference. I want them to know and understand that talking is the key to helping yourself, that it’s not a bad thing to admit that you’re having problems.

Dave Cawley: Nowhere in this letter did Doug make an explicit plea for Judge Taylor to spare his life. He did though, in a roundabout way, acknowledge what might await him on death row by referencing the Hi-Fi Shop murders.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Where I am housed right now is 30 to 40 feet away from where William Andrews was executed. The night his life was taken was a night that I will never forget. I didn’t sleep all night and wasn’t able to eat for days. … I remember thinking of my children, my family and my victims family.

Dave Cawley: Who were Joyce’s loved ones? Doug either couldn’t or wouldn’t mention Kim and Greg by name.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I asked Terry Carpenter if I could speak to Joyce’s family to allow them to vent their anger to me. I feel they have the right to do so and ask me any questions they want.

Dave Cawley: He wrapped up the letter by saying if he could, he would ask God to bring Joyce back. He called her a “young woman,” ignoring the fact she’d been more than 10 years his senior when he’d murdered her.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I see visions of Joyce Yost each and every day and it is very painful to me to see what I have done.

Dave Cawley: He did not explain why he’d killed her. Instead, he used his final paragraph to note all of the great achievements of his own childhood: championships in wrestling, tennis and motocross.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): One of the many messages I want to get across to young people is that we are all capable of being many good things in life. I want to tell them to stay close to sports, religion, school and family.

Dave Cawley: He’d written more than 2,600 words to say, frankly, very little.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Sir, the man you sentence today is not the same man that took this young woman life 8 years ago. I am truly sorry for what I did. Thank you, Doug Lovell.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: The date of Doug’s sentencing arrived. The three-day hearing began on July 29, 1993. The prosecutors, Bill Daines and Gary Heward, argued for a sentence of death. They began making that case by spelling out Doug’s criminal history. They put Bill Holthaus on the stand to explain the details of the rape case. They called Cody Montgomery to testify about the guns stolen from his home. They called Rhonda, who told the story of Doug’s attempts to hire hitmen before carrying out the murder himself.

Doug passed a note to his attorney as Rhonda spoke. On it were a list of questions he wanted John to ask her. John looked them over and decided they would do more harm than good. He did not ask Rhonda the questions. Joyce’s daughter Kim Salazar had a tough time with Rhonda’s testimony.

Kim Salazar: There was a recess in the court and I went outside and she was outside, she came outside to smoke and she came right over to me and, y’know, tried to talk to me and I don’t have anything to say to her.

Dave Cawley: Kim’s husband Randy likewise had strong feelings.

Randy Salazar: Back then, I thought to myself ‘Rhonda deserves more than what Rhonda ever got.’ Rhonda got off pretty darn easy.

Dave Cawley: And yet, if hadn’t been for Rhonda, Terry Carpenter would likely never have broken the case. He would’ve never learned of Billy Jack or Tom Peters.

Terry Carpenter: Tom was a pretty good dude. I ended up spending quite a bit of time with Tom Peters.

Dave Cawley: Tom testified against Doug, saying when they’d first met while Doug was in prison for robbery, he thought Doug was “just a young kid that was going down the wrong street.” That had changed. Tom said Doug scared him now.

Terry also took the stand. He went through the whole history of his investigation, culminating with the fruitless search below Snowbasin. He still gets emotional recalling it now, all these decades later.

Terry Carpenter: The times that I spent with our team, pretty frustrating.

Dave Cawley: On cross examination, John suggested the five trips Doug had taken to the mountain search area showed his willingness to help. Terry agreed.

“Doug enjoys getting out of prison to come and do about anything,” Terry said.

The defense began presenting its case on day two. John called a pair of prison guards, who talked about how easy to manage Doug had always been. He called Colleen Bartell, the social worker who’d provided group and individual substance abuse therapy to Doug. She said she’d seen great improvement in Doug’s behaviors of denial and minimization. He’d confessed the murder to her in April of ’92, she said.

Randy Salazar: I think somebody got up and testified that he was a, uh, he was an inmate that was always trying stop conflict inside the prison. Give me a break. Quit giving him credit.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s dad, Monan, took the stand and described how the overdose death of his middle son Royce had affected Doug. Monan said he believed — but couldn’t prove — Royce had been murdered, though he didn’t say by whom. He did mention though how Royce and Doug had been involved in a “brotherly fight” the day before Royce died.

“To this day I don’t know if he’s ever acknowledged that to anybody, what they fought about,” Monan said.

I described Royce’s death and this argument between Royce and Doug way back in episode 1. Remember, Royce died just six days before he was due to testify as a state’s witness in a robbery case. I’ve recently obtained old court records from that case. They show Royce received a subpoena the day before he died — the same day as this mysterious fight with Doug.

And the man who was charged in that case was not convicted. The judge dismissed the charges because the victim and primary witness — Royce Lovell — wasn’t available to testify at trial. An interesting precedent for Doug to have observed, considering what we know he later did to Joyce Yost.

Joyce’s family listened as one of Doug’s aunts and step-sisters testified. They told of how he’d tried to return Joyce’s body, how he’d written them letters expressing grief, how he’d tried to set one of his teenage step-nephews straight when the boy had developed a drug habit.

Then, Doug took to the witness stand himself.

John Caine talked Doug through his prison disciplinary record. They talked about his job at the prison sign shop, which he’d lost after Terry served him with the murder charge. Doug said he’d since accepted a new job tutoring illiterate inmates.

Under cross-examination, he at last admitted on the record to having raped Joyce. He even confessed having forced her to perform oral sex, a fact Joyce herself had not had the heart to share with her own son Greg.

Greg Roberts: It was the first that I was hearing all that and it was really something to, to go through just to listen to the person that did it and the reality of it all. Extremely painful.

Dave Cawley: Doug said he’d startled Joyce awake after sneaking into her apartment through the window on the night of the murder. They’d struggled and he’d and slashed her hand with his hunting knife.

Randy Salazar: And that’s when he’s telling her, he’s not gonna kill you. I’m, I’m just gonna take you away until the trial’s over.

Dave Cawley: Doug said he gave Joyce a handful of Valium to calm her down and keep her from crying out for help.

Greg Roberts: I remember just being blown away by him. You could tell he was trying to minimize maybe how, maybe the cruelty of the act by saying he gave her drugs and put his hand over her mouth and things over that when…

Dave Cawley: Doug said he’d taken Joyce out to her car and ordered her to get into the trunk.

“Please don’t put me in the trunk,” Joyce had begged, according to Doug’s story.

Just how honest was Doug in this testimony? Joyce’s children couldn’t be sure.

Greg Roberts: At that point in time, he felt like he had something to gain by being honest and just telling what happened.

Dave Cawley: His account was very similar to the one Rhonda had given, with a few notable exceptions. He denied having told Rhonda he killed Joyce up by Causey Reservoir, saying he’d never even been to Causey except once as a young Boy Scout. Doug said he hadn’t previously been to the place on Snowbasin Road where he’d killed Joyce, either. But he contradicted himself here, having earlier confirmed he and Rhonda had picnicked near Snowbasin a couple of times.

Greg Roberts: I mean, I don’t think he was trying to inflict more pain on us at that point, it was just painful to hear.

Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Bill Daines made his closing argument, pointing out Joyce’s children in the courtroom and noting how Doug’s actions had deprived them of their mother. But they weren’t the only victims.

“The system itself was struck in the heart with this case,” Bill said. “We cannot maintain a criminal justice system in this country if people are allowed to kill the witnesses who come before our courts.”

Defense attorney John Caine made no attempt to dismiss Doug’s actions. But he said death was not warranted for the three reasons: Doug’s efforts to return Joyce’s remains, all of the progress he’d made during his years of incarceration and what he called the “proportionality of conduct” between Doug and Rhonda. That’s a fancy way of saying it wouldn’t be right to execute Doug for a murder while Rhonda, an accessory to that same crime, escaped with no punishment whatsoever.

Here, John called back to the Hi-Fi Shop murders and to his work defending William Andrews. The evidence in that case had not shown William did the actual killing, John said, yet he’d been executed for his part in the crimes. How would it be fair to execute Doug and allow Rhonda to go free?

John said Doug Lovell was not the same man he’d been in 1985. He still had a long way to go in the journey of self-improvement, but his life had value and should be spared.

Judge Taylor did not render a decision on the spot. He wanted to think it over, so he instead told everyone to return on August 5^th, at which time he would announce the sentence. He did not waste time when that day came, telling Doug to stand before him.

Randy Salazar: He says, ‘In all my years on this bench, I’ve never given out the death sentence.’ … And I remember his voice cracking. And, and I remember him telling him … ‘I sentence you to death.’

Dave Cawley: The defense’s strategy, choosing judge over jury for sentencing, had backfired.

Kim Salazar: He banked on the fact that that judge had never had a capital case in front of him before.

Dave Cawley: Relief washed over Kim and Greg.

Greg Roberts: We felt great that he followed the law.

Dave Cawley: One final question faced Doug: what manner of death would he prefer?

Randy Salazar: And he asked Doug, back at the thing, I think back then they had lethal injection and the firing squad.

Dave Cawley: John Caine said Doug would remain silent on that question, leaving the decision to Judge Taylor.

Randy Salazar: ‘Gee, this guy just don’t get it. He don’t care.’

Dave Cawley: Judge Taylor selected lethal injection. He scheduled a date, but in the next breath postponed it indefinitely, due to the automatic appeal of the sentence required by state law. Joyce’s family, including her aging sister Dorothy, were met by TV cameras as they exited the courtroom.

Larry Lewis (from August 5, 1993 KSL TV archive): Yost’s family expressed relief over the death sentence.

Dorothy Dial (from August 5, 1993 KSL TV archive): You take a life, uh, y’know, this is fair. This is fair. He planned this a long time, so it’s fair.

Larry Lewis (from August 5, 1993 KSL TV archive): Yost’s daughter thinks Lovell still knows where the body is, but isn’t telling.

Kim Salazar (from August 5, 1993 KSL TV archive): He’s gotta second judgement day still ahead. Y’know, maybe before he’s executed he’ll tell us what we need to know.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Kim wasn’t the only person hoping for answers now that Doug Lovell sat on death row. Police in the city Roy were interested in questioning him about the disappearance of Sheree Warren. So was Terry Carpenter.

Terry Carpenter: In my mind, that’s why he didn’t ever take us to where Joyce was. ‘Cause I believe they’re together.

Dave Cawley: A detective from the Salt Lake City suburb of Woods Cross also wanted to know if he’d had a hand in the unsolved disappearance of another woman named Theresa Greaves, who’d vanished in 1983.

“I don’t know either of these women,” Doug told an Associated Press reporter a couple of weeks after his sentencing.

The AP article noted some of the investigators who’d taken part in the search for Joyce’s body believed Doug might have intentionally led them away, to keep them from finding other bodies he might also have disposed of in the mountains.

Greg Roberts: Bill Daines, that Weber County attorney had expressed that theory to me a long time ago and it just seemed to make a lot of sense. I mean, he’s a smart guy.

Kim Salazar: It’s my belief that the reason that he won’t tell us where my mom is is because there’s not just one body.

Dave Cawley: “They’re making me out to be a serial killer,” Doug said, “and that’s not the case.”

Dave Cawley: Doug Lovell’s relationship with his ex-wife Rhonda Buttars had soured, so much so that on Sunday, May 10, 1992 he’d told her off in an angry letter.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I have done everything I can to be a friend to you Rhonda. I have never bad-mouthed you behind your back & I have treated you as kind as possible on the phone.

Dave Cawley: You’ve heard most of his this already, at the end of the last episode.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): As I said earlier Rhonda, you win! You don’t need to hide behind the answering machine, or ask the kids to lie, or even make up lies yourself, I won’t call, write or send anything anymore.

Dave Cawley: What you didn’t hear was the aftermath. Days later, on Wednesday of that same week, Weber County Attorney Reed Richards signed a formal immunity agreement for Rhonda. This was something South Ogden police sergeant Terry Carpenter had promised Rhonda more than a year earlier.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): There was an agreement made between you and I that immunity would be sought for you, and that there would be no charges filed against your, per se your involvement with Joyce Yost. Is that correct?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Yes.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Okay. And there was a condition I put on that. Do you remember what it was? That provided you didn’t pull the trigger, we wouldn’t have any problem with that.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Right.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): And the reaction was, to that, was that she hadn’t been shot. Is that right?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Right.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: But that original verbal agreement had not carried the force of law. Rhonda had incriminated herself without a signed and sealed immunity agreement.

Terry Carpenter: That’s really the first solid lead that we had, that she knew and that Doug had done it. We knew he’d done it, but we could never prove it.

Dave Cawley: Terry’s entire case depended on Rhonda. She’d spent months assisting his investigation with no lawyer, no safety net.

Terry Carpenter: We got so much information from her that we would never have gotten without her.

Dave Cawley: She had twice worn a wire into the Utah State Prison, placing immense trust in Terry.

Rhonda Buttars (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): I don’t do court. You’re not listening.

Doug Lovell (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): You do well in court.

Rhonda Buttars (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): No I don’t.

Doug Lovell (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): Yes you do. If you look at your track record, they’ve never been able to keep you.

Dave Cawley: The time had come for Terry to reward that trust. The formal agreement signed on that day in May of ’92 promised Rhonda would receive “transactional immunity” from charges, like the capital murder case prosecutors were about to at long last file against her ex-husband.

This is Cold. Season 2, episode 8: Help Me, Rhonda. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. We’ll be right back.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: The ink had barely dried on Rhonda Buttars’ formal immunity agreement when, on Thursday…

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): The date today is the 14^th of May, 1992. It’s approximately 1602 hours.

Dave Cawley: …Doug Lovell received word he had a visitor.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): This is Terry Carpenter. I’m currently at the Utah State Prison awaiting Doug Lovell to come and talk with me.

Dave Cawley: Terry had brought a summons, ordering Doug to appear in court to answer for charges related to the disappearance of Joyce Yost. The counts included capital murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated burglary.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I want to give him a chance to talk to me. I hope he will talk to me.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I hope so, too.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’ll be surprised, but I, I want to at least give him the opportunity to.

Dave Cawley: It’d been more than seven years since Doug had first followed Joyce home and raped her, a crime that had landed him in prison. Doug was living in SSD, the prison’s special services dormitory. Colleen Bartell, a social worker at the prison, had made space for him in a group substance abuse therapy program there earlier that year. Doug was in the middle of one of those group sessions when a corrections officer came to get him. Doug headed over to the prison offices where Terry was waiting.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): How you doing?

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): How you doing?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m doing good. Good to see you.

Dave Cawley: It was almost a year to the day since Terry had last visited Doug at the prison and told him he intended to charge him for Joyce’s murder.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Doug, I’m keeping promises today.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Alright.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): ‘Kay. Uh, come down to talk to you. If you want to talk about it. I’m here to serve you with a summons on a capital murder.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I don’t know what to say.

Dave Cawley: Doug eyed Terry’s micro cassette recorder. Terry reassured Doug he could speak freely.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): It’s not on. Haven’t even put a tape in it. There’s the tape. 

(Tape clatters on table)

Dave Cawley: Of course, he neglected to mention his second — hidden — recording device. The one capturing this copy of their conversation.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): If you want to talk about it, I’d, I’ll be glad to work what I can with it. Umm, I made you a promise before if I could get the body back, I would drop the capital aspect of it. Or we would submit it that way. But those were the only terms that I would work with.

Dave Cawley: Doug had refused that earlier offer.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m gonna read it to you so you understand it, Doug. It says, the undersigned complaint upon the oath states that the complainant has reason to believe that the above named defendant on or about the 11^th day of August, 1985 in Weber County, state of Utah committed—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Have they they proven she’s even dead?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): —committed a capital felony. To whit, aggravated murder, which is murder in the first degree, and then it gives the codes for it, as amended as follows, said defendant intentionally or knowingly caused the death of Joyce Yost under any of the following circumstances…

Dave Cawley: The circumstances included preventing Joyce from testifying, retaliating against her for testifying and hindering the government’s investigation into her rape.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): This information is based on the information from both myself, Gordon Kaufman and Brad Birch, who are the people that gave me the information.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Who’s Gordon Kaufman?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Gordon Kaufman is the person who she was with on Saturday night. He was one of the last people that saw Joyce alive, ok? That’s why we used his information.

Dave Cawley: And that was just count one. Terry read the other counts: kidnapping for taking Joyce with the intent of terrorizing her and preventing her testimony and burglary for breaking into her apartment with the intent of causing her bodily harm.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): So you’re saying they’ve found Joyce Yost?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m not saying that. What I asked was for your cooperation and you refused to give that to me, regardless.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well I, I don’t know anything about Joyce’s disappearance.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Ok.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I didn’t then and I don’t now.

Dave Cawley: Terry whipped out his pen, signed his name on the summons and provided Doug a carbon copy.

(Sound of pen scratches)

Dave Cawley: The cogs must’ve been turning in Doug’s mind. If police didn’t possess Joyce’s body, what evidence could they have? The only person — other than himself — who knew what’d happened to Joyce was…

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): My concern is, uh, for Rhonda. Can you tell me anything that’s happened to her?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Yep. I’m going after Rhonda right now, Doug. And I can prove her involvement, too.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Involvement in what?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): In the murder and death of Joyce Yost.

Dave Cawley: The two men stared at one another.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Are you saying that I or Rhonda, I or Rhonda, or I took the life of Joyce Yost?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m saying you and that Rhonda assisted. That’s what I’m saying.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That Rhonda insisted in a m—, assisted in a murder?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Assisted you in that.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): You’re saying I killed her.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I am, yes. I sure am, Doug.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): You’re wrong, Carpenter. You’re, you’re dead wrong.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, I think things will prove to show otherwise, Doug.

Dave Cawley: Terry said he wished Doug had cooperated when they’d met a year earlier. His refusal would likely cost him his life. Doug seemed unfazed.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m telling you I didn’t kill Joyce Yost and Rhonda certainly wasn’t.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And I’m telling you I don’t believe you and I know that that is not true.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): If you think Rhonda was involved in something, I guess you’re crazy.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I could tell you a whole bunch about it. It’s not gonna do me any good to tell you what I know. I wouldn’t have a warrant for you and I wouldn’t be going to pick up Rhonda if that was not the case.

Dave Cawley: This was, of course, deception on Terry’s part, but it had the intended effect. It watered the seed of Doug’s paranoia, his fear Rhonda might crack.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I know what I know, Doug and, uh—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Do you, do you got a warrant for Rhonda?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): The time for, the time for blowing smoke is all done. ‘Kay?

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Yeah, it is.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And I’m not gonna play anymore. Uh, I gave you a long time to do it, so I’m—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And to be honest with you, I’m glad it’s here. I’m glad it’s here so we can finally get it out because I’m tired of it being held over me. I honestly I am.

Dave Cawley: The cards were on the table and Doug believed he held a hand that could beat the house.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): If you think I killed Joyce and you think Rhonda was even so much involved in a, a criminal homicide case, you’re umm, you’re wrong.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, I don’t think so. And I think without any question I can prove it. So, we’ll be glad to submit it and work with it from there.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Fine. Is that it?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That’s all have. Yep.

Dave Cawley: They stood…

(Sound of them standing)

Dave Cawley: …and walked out into the hallway. Terry expected to find prison staff there, waiting to take Doug over to Uinta, the prison’s maximum security building. But they weren’t there. Doug took off down the hallway, as if headed back to SSD.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Doug, come back to me here. I don’t think they want you to go anywhere.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Huh?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I don’t think they want you to go anywhere.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Where am I gonna go?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I think they want you to wait right here.

Dave Cawley: Doug did as ordered and, while they stood and waited, lit a cigarette and wished Terry good luck. Terry replied this was a good chance for Doug to consider what he’d done.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): The last time I faced you, I stood eyeball-to-eyeball with you and told you that I’d made arrangements to get you out of jail to take you to your mom’s funeral. Do you remember that?

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Yeah.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That was true, Doug. That was—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And if we would have been on the streets, you would have approached me with that, I would have took your [expletive] head right off.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Using my mother like that.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I didn’t use your mother for anything.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Oh, the hell you didn’t.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That was an opportunity for you, Doug, to be able to get out of here and do something on your own. Otherwise you’d have never got it. And obviously you didn’t get it. Right?

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): If you’d have brought it to me that, that way on the streets—

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, if you was on the street, you wouldn’t have had to have any help to get there.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): The way you used my mother like that, that was bull[expletive].

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, I didn’t use your mother. You knew about it, you was the one who commented on it.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): You used the death of another person, my mom had just barely died you son of a bitch. We was on the streets Carpenter, I would have took your [expletive] head right off.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, that would be welcome, y’know?

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And I, and I’m not no basket mental case like I was in Joyce’s trial. You guys got a hell of a fight on your hand and I’m glad this is here.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That’s good. I’m glad it’s here too, Doug. And obviously nothing’s got to you, there’s no conscience involved and that probably tells me basically what I needed to know.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I did not take the life of Joyce Yost. If she is in fact dead, I did not take the life of Joyce Yost. Nor was I there.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Okay.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): And Rhonda was no way, no way involved.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I uh, think that will prove otherwise, Doug.

Dave Cawley: Doug doubled down.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Well, I, y’know, it would have been nice to have gotten to the point where you’d even talk about it or give us what information you did have about it and uh, you obviously didn’t want to do that.

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): What information do you want? I don’t have none.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): That will change.

Dave Cawley: Doug turned and walked away from Terry again. He found a prison guard and asked to go back to SSD.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Okay, whatever. I don’t—

Doug Lovell (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’ll see you.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Alright, I’ll be there.

Dave Cawley: Terry was not finished, though. He went to find the duty officer as Doug headed across the yard.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): How’s you doing?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): I’m doing good. I’m doing good. Your inmate’s not doing so good though. I just served capital homicide warrants on him.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Oh, I bet he’s not a happy camper.

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): He is pissed.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Where’d you put him at?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): He went back. I stood out here in the hall for 15 minutes with him and he walked right back and says, ‘I’m going back to SSD.’

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): (On radio) SSD duty officer. (To Terry) What was his last name again?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Lovell.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): (On radio) Hey Langley, send uh, Lovell back over here to the building. Yeah. He should be on his way back. Don’t even let him come in the building. Just send him right back over here.

Dave Cawley: Terry had taken the advice of a prison informant named William Babbel, whom you heard in the last episode. William had told Terry the prison would be able to place Doug in maximum security once the murder charge was filed. Terry had arranged to make that happen. Doug was losing his place in SSD, with all its privileges.

The officer-in-charge of the prison that evening was Carl Jacobson, the guard with whom Doug had for so many years watched the 6 o’clock news. Carl had by this point in ’92 promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Carl took the call from the duty officer and headed over to SSD to intercept Doug. Terry Carpenter, meantime, warned prison staff to be cautious.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): He’s uh, not hostile, is he?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Oh, he’s pretty upset, yeah.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Oh, he is?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): He’s pissed.

Corrections officer (from May 14, 1992 police recording): He doesn’t know he’s going to three?

Terry Carpenter (from May 14, 1992 police recording): Nope. Not yet.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Doug’s brother Russ received a collect call from the prison on the evening of Friday, May 15, about 24 hours after Doug’s move out of SSD.

Operator (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): This is US West communications. You have a collect call from ‘Doug.’ Please answer the following question yes or no. Will you pay for the call?

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: But it wasn’t actually Doug on the line.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Hello. Uh, hey uh, I’m a partner of Doug’s, man. They got him in a lockdown situation right now. And uh, he’s over here in Uinta 2. It’s maximum security. Before he was in Uinta 3. And uh, he asked me to call you. … Uh, I don’t know if you’ve heard the news or not.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah, it’s in the paper. It’s supposed to be on the news in a few minutes.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah, it’s already been on at 5:30 on 4. It should come on 5 at 6 o’clock.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Uh huh.

Dave Cawley: The man told Russ Doug had an urgent request. He needed his brother to call Rhonda.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Rhonda, yeah. He wants to know how her and the kids are doing. And he says if she isn’t home, please call the Weber County Jail and see if she’s been booked yet or not. They told him they was gonna charge her.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Oh really?

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah. They told him that yesterday. He says, ‘Well I’m—‘ the detective told him, ‘I’m going up there to arrest your wife now, your ex-wife now.’

Dave Cawley: The man asked Russ if he knew whether or not Rhonda had been arrested.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Oh, I have no idea.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Uh, could you call and then, if she is—

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Sure.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): And I’ll call back in 30 minutes and you can—

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Okay.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Okay.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Alright.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Alright then.  Thank you for accepting the call.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s friend called Russ again a short time later.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Hello there.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): How you doing?

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): (Laughs) I talked to Rhonda. She’s, they haven’t, they didn’t pick her up or anything. She has to be to court the same time Doug does I guess Wednesday morning.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Did they go talk to her?

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): And uh, they’re charging her too?

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, they haven’t yet.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Mmmhmm. But they’re gonna charge her Wednesday?

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Probably.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Uh huh.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, all she said is she had to be to court Wednesday.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Okay, well he just wanted me to find that out, and—

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah so, she’ll be there, probably when, I guess probably the same time he will.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Okay.

Dave Cawley: The man told Russ his brother wasn’t in a great state of mind.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, that’s the way Rhonda is. Tell him Rhonda’s not very good, either.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Uh huh. Yeah, it’s sort of a complete shock to him, y’know, but, uh, there isn’t too much I can say over the phone so—

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah, okay.

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Okay, I better let you go.

Russ Lovell (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Alright

‘Partner’ (from May 15, 1992 prison phone recording): Alright. Thanks you for accepting the call.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Doug’s move to the prison’s Uinta facility had triggered TRO, or temporary restrictive order. Solitary, in other words. He’d spent hours stewing alone in a cell, wondering what pressure police were then applying to Rhonda. The very first call Doug made when he came out of TRO on Saturday morning was to Rhonda’s phone. She didn’t answer. So, he called his brother Russ.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Hey, have you heard anything?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): About?

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Huh?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): About what?

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): With Rhonda? How’s she doing?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Oh, she’s okay. Well, I mean, she’s not good but, she’s got to be there, oh, to that court thing on Wednesday, too.

Dave Cawley: Doug told Russ he didn’t understand what the police were doing, since neither he nor Rhonda had had anything to do with Joyce Yost’s disappearance.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Uh, they, they still don’t, to my knowledge, have any proof that this woman’s even deceased. Y’know, everybody down here is telling me that they’re bluffing, that there probably ain’t even gonna be any charges. Yet, Doug seemed most concerned about how his ex-wife was responding.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Was Rhonda ever charged?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): No, I guess she will be Wednesday.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): See, that’s kind of weird too, don’t you think?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I mean, usually when they have a warrant for someone, especially, what are they going to charge her with?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I don’t know.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Conspiracy to commit?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Probably.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): That’s a serious charge. That’s a five-to-life. Y’know, they would have arrested her and took her right downtown. Booked her, questioned her, interrogated her, the whole bit. Doesn’t that seem odd?

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Doug begged Russ to call Rhonda and give her one simple direction.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Y’know, Rhonda’s got nothing to hide and I got nothing to hide but, y’know, you need to get ahold of her, Russ, if you can and tell her not to say anything to anybody at any time.

Dave Cawley: Russ told his baby brother not to worry so much. There was nothing Doug could do about any of it until his arraignment hearing the following Wednesday. Still, Doug couldn’t help but bemoan his situation.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): [Expletive], I’ve lost my job. Y’know? Now, if I win this, they’ve got to reinstate my job and everything but in the meantime they’ve took me from my job, they’ve took me from my facility. I’ve lost everything. I’m sitting here in a [expletive] orange jumpsuit. Looks like I want to go deer hunting. Bright orange jump suit with, with blue floppers. I’ve got nothing over here. They don’t let you smoke over here. God, it’s crazy.

Dave Cawley: Russ suggested maybe Doug should sue the police for harassing him. This made Doug hesitate and he again brought up Rhonda.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, listen. I can’t leave a message on Rhonda’s telephone machine. Would you please call, leave a message on her telephone machine and have her call you immediately? When she does call, tell her that everyone down here is telling me that this is bull[expletive]. They probably ain’t even gonna charge us. And, y’know, it, it’s a big bluff thing to see if anybody does know anything to see if they’ll crack or not. Tell her not to say nothing to the police, to nobody.

Russ Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: Doug had to get in touch with his ex-wife. In the back of his mind was the angry letter he’d sent her at the start of that week. How would she respond to it now? When Rhonda at last answered one of Doug’s calls, the letter was the first thing he wanted to discuss.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Did, did you get my last letter?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah I did.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, dis, disregard it for now. I had it coming at a bad timing. I mean uh, I was going through a lot of changes over the kids, Rhonda, but I think right now we need each other. Can we at least have that?

Dave Cawley: Rhonda told Doug she might soon be joining him at the prison.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Rhonda, you didn’t do anything. You didn’t do anything and I didn’t do anything. We got nothing to worry about. Anything they got, some reliable people have told me down here they’re shooting for the stars. They didn’t even arrest you, did they?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): No, but I’m supposed to be in court Wednesday.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Right, doesn’t that seem a little odd that they didn’t arrest you?

Dave Cawley: Rhonda knew full well why she hadn’t been arrested, but she conjured a different story for Doug. She said maybe detectives hadn’t wanted to haul her away in front of her two kids. Doug reminded Rhonda this was an eventuality they’d always known might come.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I mean, as soon as we first seen it on the TV, I says, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna believe that I did it from, from day one. They’re gonna believe that I had something to do with her disappearance.’ So we always kind of knew that there might some [expletive] over it, right?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I don’t know what we thought, Lovell. I’m sick of this [expletive], okay? I’m sick of it. You’d better do something about it. ‘Cause I’m out here living with the kids and what the [expletive] am I supposed to say?

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): That you didn’t do anything, Rhonda. You didn’t.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I know I didn’t but I still got to go to court, Doug.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I know it. But Rhonda, if they don’t have anything—

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): They got to have something, Doug.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Really?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): They won’t just take us to court because they have nothing better to do.

Dave Cawley: Doug rattled off a list of past news stories about Joyce’s disappearance, noting how none of the supposed breaks in the case had ever amounted to anything. He said he intended to go to arraignment and have his court-appointed lawyer file a discovery motion. That way, he could learn exactly what evidence the police had. Doug told Rhonda he had it under control.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Remember like I did on that poaching thing, Rhonda? I knew what the hell I was doing. I knew exactly what I was doing and I should have done that with John but, y’know, because of my injury to my back, y’know, I was on all those Percodan and Valium and, and stuff. Y’know, I just, I laid down, Rhonda. That’s exactly what I did is I laid down.

Dave Cawley: Doug said even if police arrested Rhonda, they’d have to give her bail. If needed, his dad or brother could arrange a property bond for her, just as they’d done for him after his arrest for rape in April of ’85.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): If in fact Joyce is dead, they’re gonna have a hard time proving that she’s dead. First off, they have to prove that there’s, that there’s a death before they can say that there’s a murder. Don’t you understand that?

Dave Cawley: Doug, it seemed, understood well the concept of corpus delicti. He begged her to trust in him and to trust in the system. Underlying this though was Doug’s actual fear. He toed up to the brink of it, like a person easing over ever-thinning ice on a frozen lake.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Y’know, this has all kind of come about since you and I split up. And, y’know, it kind of makes me wonder. … Not, y’know, not about you but umm, it just, I don’t know. It makes me wonder about a few things. … I hope you’ll fight this with me, Rhonda. And I, I just ask that you please trust my judgement. I, I won’t let anything happen to you.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda told Doug she didn’t want to hear it. He wasn’t in control. He couldn’t protect her.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I need you Rhonda. I think we need each other.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I’m gonna go, okay?

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Honey?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Don’t give me that, okay? I can see right through it, Doug. I’m going. I’m going now.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Please don’t hang up on me.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I’m gonna go. I’m not hanging up. I’m saying goodbye.

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Rhonda—

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): What?

Doug Lovell (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): Please, please don’t leave me like this.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 16, 1992 prison phone recording): I don’t want to talk anymore, Doug.

Dave Cawley: If Doug’d had doubts about Rhonda’s loyalty before that call, they could have only grown more ominous afterward.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Doug called Rhonda again the following day, on Sunday, one week after writing her the angry letter. Rhonda told him she wasn’t feeling well.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Well I feel a little better today than I did yesterday. I had a lot of time to think. That’s all you got to do over here is think. Right now nothing to do. Think or fight. Take your pick. Rhonda, I don’t know how things are going to turn out but I want you to know and, uh, and have faith that I will do the right thing. Y’know, when the time comes. Y’know? Let’s see what happens and y’know see what kind of cards are dealt to us.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda didn’t say much, even as Doug peppered her with more questions. What time was she supposed to be to court? Had the police given her a list of charges? Did they leave her any papers?

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): And it’s extremely odd how they did it to you. I mean, if they want to charge us, they would come up and say, ‘Mrs. Buttars—’

Rhonda Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I ain’t no Mrs.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Well, ‘Ms. Buttars, we’re South Ogden police department. You know who we are. We have a warrant for your arrest. Uh, would you please, uh, turn around put your hands behind your, put your hands behind your back.’ You’d do that. They’d probably have a lady officer with them. They would take you down to court. They would book you, fingerprint you, take your mugshot and then they’d question you, ask you if you want an attorney. They’d read you your rights. They never did none of that. That’s why I, I question the whole thing. And I’m not saying they won’t charge us.

Dave Cawley: But, Doug said, the odds of a conviction were very low.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I mean, there’s probably 10 people in all of America that’ve ever been convicted on a, on a homicide charge without first proving that there’s been a murder. Y’know, a body. I mean, it’s extremely rare. It’s never been done in Utah, not on a capital homicide. It’s never been done in Utah.

Dave Cawley: That number’s not quite right. There have obviously been more than 10 no-body homicide convictions in the United States. But Doug was correct that no-body capital homicide convictions — which qualify for the death penalty — were and are rare. Rhonda was not much interested in this bit of trivia. So Doug pivoted, making an emotional appeal.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I miss you, Rhonda. I miss everything we had. And I’m sorry I blew it. I really am. I mean, I can’t believe what direction I have sent my life in. I just can’t believe it.

Dave Cawley: He apologized for acting selfish, for spending their money, for causing her unhappiness. Rhonda bit her tongue.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Is there anything you want to say to me?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): No.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Nothing at all?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Hmmnmm.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I wish we hadn’t grown apart. Do you ever regret that?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): What?

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Uh, growing apart the way we have.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): No. You’re the one that did it, not me.

Dave Cawley: Standing on sentiment was not a strong play for Doug.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Do you just want to go?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Yeah.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): You’re sure not too talkative with me, honey.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I don’t feel good. Did you forget that part?

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): No.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Oh.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): I feel extra bad when you don’t feel good ‘cause I know what you like. And I can be that. I can very easily be that. Do you believe that?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): No.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): You ain’t gonna give me a glimpse of hope, are you?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Mmmnmm.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): You’re not gonna let even a little bit of light in, huh?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): You had your chance.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): And that’s, that’s it, for life, forever, for eternity?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Hah.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Huh?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Hmm.

Doug Lovell (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Sounded like a perfume for a minute, didn’t it?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 17, 1992 phone recording): Yep.

Dave Cawley: Doug concluded this call by telling Rhonda no matter what, he would do the right thing in the future. The next morning, he came out of his cell for breakfast just in time to witness a brawl. He told his brother Russ about it on the phone.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Boy, they got one of these sections down here, [expletive], right at breakfast, man, a big old fist fight. [Expletive]. Y’know, like I gotta get up and go through this [expletive]. It’s crazy, man, it’s crazy. [Expletive], there’s been probably a half-dozen fist fights just, just since I’ve been over here. Since Thursday.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Really?

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): It’s bizarre.

Dave Cawley: Doug vented to his brother about how much worse life was in the Uinta facility compared to SSD. He figured it wouldn’t be long before he could force the prison to send him back.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): ‘Cause technically I’ve done nothing wrong, to be moved. I’ve done nothing in the institution to be moved. And technically right now they have to keep my job for me and they have to keep my spot at SSD. So, you know, I’m not too worried about all that. Because as long as I’m moved for court reasons or health reasons or something, something that has nothing to do with something that I’ve done since I’ve been in here, you know, they can’t uh, they can’t do anything. So all that’s still good, but y’know, how long that’ll be good, I don’t know. I mean, I hope this ain’t even gonna go to a preliminary hearing.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Oh yeah.

Dave Cawley: Of course, the real motive for Doug’s call was to make sure his brother would be at the arraignment hearing the next day, to support Rhonda.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): To be honest with you, I’m not worried about it because I know I wasn’t involved in anything like that. And I know Rhonda wasn’t. But, you know, if they’re going to try to attack Rhonda, y’know, I don’t want my children’s lives disrupted. That’s what it boils down to.  Y’know, and Rhonda doesn’t deserve to go through this. You know what I mean?

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah, oh yeah.

Dave Cawley: Doug suggested if Rhonda were arrested at the arraignment, Russ and their dad, Monan, should put up a property bond to cover her bail.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Like, you know, when dad put that $25,000 for me. He didn’t lose a thing. I mean, there’s no way I’d skip out on you or dad and I know she wouldn’t. [Expletive], she’s got nowhere to go. She ain’t even got a relative that lives out of the state. And Rhonda wouldn’t do that anyway.

Dave Cawley: Russ said he wasn’t sure why they should be on the hook for Rhonda’s bail instead of her own family. And he said he didn’t understand why police would arrest her anyhow, considering she wasn’t involved in any crime. Doug told Russ it was all a ruse. The police couldn’t have anything on him, because of course, he hadn’t done anything. Neither had Rhonda. And, he said, it’d been seven years.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): I can’t believe that after all this time, Russ, they’re, they’re trying to pull something.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, see we’ve got this kid out at work that we’d always thought he’d killed his wife a long time ago. And uh, they just charged him with it. His name’s Wetzel.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Never heard of him.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): And that, goll. That was back in, oh man, that was back in, oh man, that was long before you was locked up and they just charged him with that this year.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): No [expletive]?

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Yeah. Jon Wetzel’s the name.

Dave Cawley: Jon T. Wetzel. Let me pause here and tell you a bit about the Jon Wetzel case. Like Doug, Jon Wetzel hailed from the Ogden area of Utah. His estranged wife, Sharol Wetzel, had served him with divorce papers on November 13, 1985. A week later, Sharol turned up dead, having been shot once in the head and left in her car parked near the Ogden River.

A month later, around the same time Doug was standing trial for the rape of Joyce Yost, Jon Wetzel’s girlfriend Kittie Eakes was pleading guilty to murder. She admitted to the crime but said she’d acted alone. She refused to implicate her lover in his estranged wife’s execution.

Kittie headed to prison in January of ’86, just like Doug. And like Doug, she entered therapy once there. It took a few years, but Kittie ended up telling the full story of Sharol’s murder to an attorney she met through Alcoholics Anonymous.

With that, let’s go back to Doug’s phone call with his brother Russ.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Well, this one lady, they found his wife dead in a car somewhere and this one lady that Jon knew I guess took the rap for it. Now all the sudden she’s sitting crying the blues and ratting on him. So I don’t know.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): Hmm.

Russ Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): The papers just didn’t have a lot on it.

Dave Cawley: Weber County prosecutors — the same ones who were charging Doug with capital homicide — had also filed a capital homicide charge against Jon Wetzel just a few months prior. Kittie would eventually testify against Jon, saying he’d hounded her for weeks to kill Sharon, to prevent her from taking his assets in the divorce. Jon had told Kittie when and how to do it. He’d given her drugs, as well as the money she’d need to buy a gun. Kittie had gone along and even taken the fall for it, she said, because she was in love with Jon.

The parallels to Doug’s situation were striking. The timelines of the two cases were almost identical. Both involved a sort of murder-for-hire plot, an abandoned car and a female victim who’d held a position of power over a man.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 prison phone recording): God, and I know I was going to win my appeal, Russ, too. I mean, it would have took probably 18 months to two years but I know I was gonna win that. As soon as that hit the feds, they were gonna throw that thing up in the air and say, ‘Bull[expletive.’ Y’know? ‘You can’t [expletive] do this.’ Because there was so many points, man, we was gonna get them on. That I would have won on. I know it. And I don’t know if this has triggered something or what but it seems like every time my case gets in court they pull some [expletive].

Dave Cawley: Doug finished the conversation by once again imploring Russ to protect Rhonda. To post her bail, if necessary. Later that afternoon, Doug made one final call to his ex-wife ahead of the arraignment. He struck a different tone this time, as if nothing were wrong.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): How’s my kids?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): My kids are fine.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Huh?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): My kids are fine. Two can play that game.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): It’s a joke. Please take it as a joke.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda was not laughing.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I’ll uh, well hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I’m sure you will.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I’ll probably be, like, handcuffed. Uh, can I get a hug?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): From me?

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yeah.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): You’re pretty brave asking that.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Is that a possibility?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I doubt it.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Really?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Put me through more changes Lovell than anybody I know.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): What if it’ll bring us together someday.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I doubt it. It brought us apart.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yeah, I know but all, through it all I wonder if it will maybe bond our relationship.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Well, don’t count on it.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Well, you never know.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yeah, I do.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Miracles do happen.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yeah, they do.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I think, I think maybe if I work my butt off, what do you think?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Nope.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): You think no way for us?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): No way.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Why, hon?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): ‘Cause you put me through a lot of [expletive], Doug.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Rhonda, people can change. People can honestly, sincerely change.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Well, you haven’t to me. If you’d changed, you’d be doing something right now and you ain’t doing [expletive]. It’s pissing me off. So, you haven’t changed a bit in my eyes, Lovell.

Dave Cawley: Doug complained Rhonda she wasn’t making his life any easier. She scoffed.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): My life’s hell, Lovell. Hell.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Mine is too.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Then do something.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Oh, that’ll make it easier?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yep.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): For me?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yep.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Really?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yep.

Dave Cawley: A long pause. Rhonda lit a cigarette. Its smoke hung in the air, along with all the unspoken context behind her words.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Whether you believe me or not, Rhonda, I do love you. I have always loved you. And I, and I do care more than any person’s ever cared about you. I’ve just had an odd way of showing it.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Yeah. (Laughs) I’d say.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Please don’t laugh at me. I’m serious.

Dave Cawley: Doug promised one day, he’d have an opportunity to “completely blow” her away.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I know that I, I can give you the life that you deserve and the children the happiness that they need and deserve.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Doug, give up.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I’m serious, Rhonda.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I know you are. So am I.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Well, you, hey. You can fight it all you want.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): (Laughs) I’m not fighting.

Dave Cawley: Doug had to go. It was time for count and he had to go back to his cell. He told Rhonda he would see her in the morning.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Well uh, remember I’ll be thinking about you.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): ‘Kay.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Just remember, be strong, Rhonda. You got nothing to worry about. You didn’t do anything. Ok?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): ‘Kay.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Give my love to the kids.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): I will.

Doug Lovell (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Bye bye.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 18, 1992 phone recording): Bye.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Doug arrived at the Weber County courthouse on the morning of May 20, 1992 for his circuit court arraignment. He was assigned a court-appointed defense attorney, a guy named John Caine. John’s name might sound familiar. That’s because John was the same lawyer who’d represented Doug 14 years earlier, during his 1978 trial for armed robbery.

The prosecutors assigned to the case were the county attorney Reed Richards, who coincidentally happened to be John Caine’s old law partner and whose father Maurice Richards also represented Doug in the ’78 robbery case, as well as a man named Bill Daines.

I know that’s a lot to keep track of, so let’s just focus for the moment on Bill Daines. Joyce’s son-in-law, Randy Salazar, told me he remembered first meeting Bill sometime around Pioneer Day. That’s a state holiday in Utah, celebrated each July 24th with parades and rodeos. Bill had entered the room dressed not in a suit, but instead in denim pants and a cowboy hat.

Randy Salazar: And I seen how he put his hands on the desk and just kind of talked to us and I just thought ‘Geez, I hope this guy…’ But I tell you what, that dude knew his… In fact, he was giving us dates and times and I was thinking ‘damn, you guys are going to do your job. You guys are going to do well with your job.’”

Dave Cawley: The first real courtroom clash between these two sides came not at the circuit court arraignment, but instead at a preliminary hearing on July 28. That’s when the prosecution put Rhonda on the stand. At that moment, Doug knew for certain who had betrayed him.

Terry Carpenter: She told me about the night that she’d taken Doug up there…

Dave Cawley: It was the same account she’d given to Terry Carpenter.

Terry Carpenter: And that he’d laid in the bushes across the street from Joyce’s house and waited for her to come home.

Randy Salazar: Can you believe she drove him up there? And then picked him up? What kind of person is that?

Dave Cawley: Joyce’s son-in-law Randy Salazar sat, stunned at what he was hearing.

Randy Salazar: Y’know, you think to yourself, ‘How the hell do you think this didn’t happen? How is this lady telling this story,’ y’know? ‘How are you still with this man? Why are you sticking up for him? What kind of lady are you?

Dave Cawley: At one point, Doug bolted upright.

“That’s a lie, Rhonda,” he shouted. “You know that’s a lie.”

The judge, Parley Baldwin, told Doug to take his seat. 

“Your honor, she is lying,” Doug said.

Baldwin again instructed Doug to be quiet, or else the bailiffs would remove him from the courtroom. Doug flung a curse word or two at Rhonda as the bailiffs approached.

“Sit down, [expletive] [expletive],” Doug said to them.

Terry Carpenter: He could let you believe that he was telling you the truth and emotional about it and the next second he was angry and mad and no remorse whatsoever.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda had told Terry she feared Doug. His courtroom outburst only emphasized that. Joyce’s son Greg Roberts told me over time, he’s come to feel sympathy for Rhonda.

Greg Roberts: Somewhere along the way I’ve forgiven her. I think Kim would rather see her pay a penalty for what happened, but I think that she was under the huge influence of this psychopath and she, she was in some sort of a fog that she, those options weren’t real for her.

Kim Salazar: My whole thing with her is that she is in my mind the one person that could have stopped it that night. She held all the cards. And I get fear. I understand fear. But my mom literally lived across the street from the police station. She could have dropped him off. She could have gone straight to the police station. And before he had a chance to do anything, they could have been there. And he’d have been locked up for a long time. She didn’t have anything to be scared of.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda’s testimony was more than enough to allow the judge to determine probable cause existed to proceed. He concluded the hearing by sending the case to the district court where, a month later, Doug pleaded not guilty to the charges. The district court judge, Stanton Taylor, scheduled a jury trial to begin on February 2, 1993.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Several weeks before the preliminary hearing I just described, Doug’s friend Ron Barney met with a Las Vegas Metro Police detective in Nevada. Ron had something to turn over to the police. Two somethings, actually: a Browning model BL22 bolt-action rifle and a Beretta M301 12-gauge shotgun. The serial numbers for both guns were listed in NCIC, the FBI’s national crime information database, as having been stolen out of Weber County, Utah on May 5, 1985. They were two of the guns taken from the home of Cody Montgomery, Sr. by Doug Lovell and Billy Jack.

Terry Carpenter: The guns went to Callao, where they were buried.

Dave Cawley: Terry Carpenter had at long last linked the stolen guns to Doug Lovell. He’d also tracked down Billy Jack in Colorado, interviewed him and in the process discovered evidence corroborating Rhonda’s account of the Mother’s Day weekend outing when they’d buried the guns.

Terry Carpenter: Coming back home, they pull off to the side of the road and have to take a leak, to be blunt. And a trooper stops and catches them at the side of the road and we’re able to verify that that happens and who they are.

Dave Cawley: But how then had the guns ended up in the hands of Doug’s old hunting buddy Ron Barney?

(Phone ringing sound)

Dave Cawley: I called him to ask that question.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Hello, this is Ron.

Dave Cawley (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Hey Ron, my name is uh, Dave Cawley. I’m with uh KSL, uh radio up here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Do have a sec?

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Yep.

Dave Cawley: At the time of this phone call in May of 2020, I knew quite a bit about the history of these guns.

Dave Cawley (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): I’m trying to figure out how they ended up down there with you. Can you help illuminate that for me?

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Uh no, I really can’t. I can’t remember exactly how that went by.

Dave Cawley: I knew they’d surfaced in October of ’85 when somebody had inquired about pawning them at place in Ogden called the Gift House. I described that back in episode 4. Ron Barney at that time resided in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley. He didn’t move to Logandale, Nevada until sometime after 1988. I knew Terry Carpenter had paid Ron a visit in Logandale in May of ’91. I described that in episode 6.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Was that, Carpenter. Was that the detective’s name that came down to Las Vegas?

Dave Cawley (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Yep, that’s the guy.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Terry had asked Ron what he knew about the stolen guns. Ron had declined to disclose at that time he possessed two of them. He hadn’t conceded that fact until Terry had made a second trip to Nevada to apply additional pressure.

Terry Carpenter: And he denied up and down and we finally says ‘well, we’ll give you so long and then if we have to charge you, we’ll charge you with possession.’ And then he cooperated.

Dave Cawley: And so that’s why Ron had surrendered the guns to Las Vegas Metro police in 1992.

Terry Carpenter: No charges were ever filed against him and the guns surfaced, anyway.

Dave Cawley: My conversation with Ron didn’t last long. He told me he didn’t want to discuss his friendship with Doug, saying he’d only known him through having gone hunting together. He considered that relationship part of his past, a past he did not want to relive.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Okay.

Dave Cawley (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Alright.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Good luck with your uh, your uh, research.

Ron Barney (from May 12, 2020 phone recording): Thank you Ron, appreciate your time.

Dave Cawley: Terry’s recovery of these two guns provided further evidence of Rhonda’s honesty. And they would be a compelling piece of evidence to show a jury, hinting at Doug’s intent to kill.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Defense attorney John Caine had a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. With just months to go before the scheduled trial, John attacked the prosecution’s case first by challenging the kidnapping and burglary counts, arguing the statute of limitations on them had expired. He also filed a motion to suppress the evidence gathered from the two wire recordings of Rhonda at the prison…

Doug Lovell (from January 18, 1992 wire recording): If I would have been mentally together, physically together, I wouldn’t be here. They’ll never convict me if I go back to court. There’s no way.

Dave Cawley: …as well as Rhonda’s damaging testimony from the preliminary hearing.

Autumn turned to winter. Subpoenas went out, ordering the investigators, Joyce’s family, Rhonda and the other potential witnesses to all appear at the February trial. With just a week and a half to go, Judge Taylor issued an order rejecting the motion to suppress. Rhonda’s testimony and the wire recordings, he said, were fair game.

John Caine immediately asked that the trial be delayed while he appealed that decision. He would ask the Utah Supreme Court to block the use of Rhonda’s testimony and the wire tapes. Judge Taylor agreed to the delay. The trial was placed on hold.

John told Doug if they won this appeal, he stood a very good chance of also winning the entire case. If the appeal failed, however, John warned his client they would get “hammered.” Everything hinged on Rhonda. John also started talking to the county attorney, his old friend Reed Richards. They were frank with one another. Reed said the only leverage Doug had was that Joyce’s children Kim Salazar and Greg Roberts wanted her body returned.

Greg Roberts: We definitely were willing to compromise if he really gave us her body.

Dave Cawley: And so, Reed said he was willing to take the death penalty off the table if Doug would return Joyce’s remains. It wasn’t a formal offer, more of a testing of the water. John didn’t want to commit before discussing it with Doug, so he went to the prison for a face-to-face. He posed the question: would Doug be willing to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life with the possibility of parole? Doug said yes. John needed more assurance. He didn’t want to get down the road with the negotiation and have it fall apart because Doug couldn’t deliver.

He asked could Doug really locate the body, given all the time that had passed? Doug said he could find it in the dark. In fact, he was willing to go do it right that moment. John reminded him it was the middle of winter. Doug told his attorney that didn’t matter. He’d be able to find Joyce’s body even in a blinding snowstorm.