Author: Dave Cawley

Dave Cawley: I’m standing at a gravel pull-out on the side of the Old Snowbasin Road. I’ve just finished putting a microphone on Terry Carpenter, tucking it under his collar in a futile effort to shield it from the breeze.

Terry Carpenter: He says this is where it was. Right up in here.

Dave Cawley: It’s May of 2021 and I’ve met Terry here on a bluebird Saturday so he can show me where Doug Lovell claimed to have buried the body of Joyce Yost. We walk a path between thick patches of oak brush, up and over a berm a hundred feet or so from the road.

Terry Carpenter: This is one of the first places that he, this was all flat. These, these have been added since then.

Dave Cawley: We come to a clearing. I can see the east face of Mount Ogden four miles off in the distance, the ski runs carved through the trees below the peak still decked with winter snow. To my left, the ground drops away to a valley. To my right, it rises to a ridge. I’m impressed in this moment how much smaller the terrain makes the search area seem compared to what I’d pictured. It’s still large — say, three or four acres — but not so expansive as to make a search impossible.

Terry Carpenter: Anything that would indicate there was a disturbance there, we dug in those areas and we, with the permission of the Forest Service we dug that area to try to locate what we thought might be Joyce’s grave.

Dave Cawley: There are signs of recent use all over the place: campfire rings, beer cans, shell casings. I pick my way into the oak brush at one point and find a rusted out metal drum surrounded by partially burned scrap lumber. It’s obvious people come here with some regularity. Terry’s eyes grow distant as he talks about that search back in the summer of ’93.

Terry Carpenter: We, we just exhausted every effort we could think of hoping that we could come across something that might produce Joyce.

Dave Cawley: What’s most frustrating is the uncertainty.

Michael Bouwhuis: Let’s suppose that he did remember exactly where he’d put the body…

Dave Cawley: This is Michael Bouwhuis, the attorney who represented Doug during his 2015 murder trial.

Michael Bouwhuis: …the challenge is that after eight years there wouldn’t be hardly anything left, if anything at all.

Dave Cawley: In an interview for our companion podcast Talking Cold, Michael said he learned the police in ’93 had not consulted a forensic anthropologist before they started sticking shovels in the ground.

Michael Bouwhuis: And so if Doug left her at the spot where he took the authorities, the way that they processed the scene would have produced nothing. … He could have been telling the truth that she was here and simply was either moved from that spot — a bear certainly could have done that, a mountain lion could have done that — or through the process of disarticulation scattered to the wind.

Dave Cawley: Disarticulation is when a body comes apart. The connective tissues holding the skeleton together break down in the later stages of decomposition, leading to scattering of individual bones. With a badly disarticulated set of remains, bone chips or a single tooth might be all that’s left.

Michael Bouwhuis: So if the body had been there, eight years earlier, the scene was obliterated.

Terry Carpenter: You would’ve thought with the animals that roam the area of natural habitat, coyotes, they would’ve dug that up. That something would’ve been exposed on the surface. Somebody would have found a bone. (Sighs)

Dave Cawley: Terry asserts Joyce was never here, that Doug lied. But Michael contends that’s not the only plausible explanation.

Michael Bouwhuis: It could be that he didn’t know at all, he didn’t remember it but he thought ‘if I act like I do and I put an effort in and they appreciate that, maybe they cut me a break.’ Or it could be that he knew it wasn’t there, it was somewhere else.

Dave Cawley: Somewhere else. This is a bonus episode of Cold, season 2: Location, Location, Location. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. We’ll continue after this break.

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Dave Cawley: Any conversation of where Joyce Yost’s remains might be — if not where Doug Lovell claimed  — requires engaging in speculation. During Cold season 2, you heard a few different places mentioned, like the ghost town of Yost, or even Causey Reservoir. But in this episode, we’re going to visit three other places where Joyce Yost’s remains might rest. They are: a cement dump site near where Doug worked in 1985, behind the cabin Doug’s family owned at Sunridge Highlands and in the Monte Cristo Range where a wildlife officer spotted Doug and Rhonda weeks or months after Joyce Yost disappeared.

If we’re going to draw any meaningful conclusions though, we need to buttress our conjecture with fact. So let’s review what we know, starting with the timeline of Joyce’s murder. When Rhonda Buttars first confessed her involvement, she said she’d dropped Doug off outside Joyce’s apartment…

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): I’d say, I don’t know. 11, between 11 and 1.

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

Dave Cawley: …between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. In later court testimony, Rhonda would describe seeing Joyce’s car parked outside the apartment, which would place the drop-off sometime after Joyce returned home from the officer’s club around midnight. Rhonda said she’d received a call from Doug the following morning telling her to meet him at the Wilshire, a movie theater in South Ogden…

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): Umm, I would say 4 to 5 in the morning.

Dave Cawley: …between 4 and 5 a.m. Rhonda based this on her observation that the sky was dark at the time of the call but just starting to get light when she’d made it to the Wilshire.

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): What time does the sun come up? 6?

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): I’m not really sure, then. I think maybe around 5.

Dave Cawley: I’ve checked an almanac. Sunrise in Ogden, Utah on August 11, 1985 was at 6:34 a.m. The sky would’ve been fully light by then, so we need to wind back the clock about an hour to get to the start of the pre-dawn twilight. That would likely place Doug’s phone call between 5 and 5:30.

Rhonda’s account, if accurate, tells us Doug window’s of opportunity was open a maximum of five hours, from 12:30 to 5:30. I stress, this is the max. What was Doug doing during that time? By his own account, he entered Joyce’s apartment, scuffled with her on the bed, cut her, bandaged her bleeding wound, stripped the bedsheets, flipped the blood-stained mattress, remade the bed and packed her suitcase. Rhonda said Doug had told her this all took “quite awhile.”

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): So he said that took quite awhile and that he was in her apartment for quite awhile.

Dave Cawley: But what’s awhile? 15 minutes? An hour? Rhonda wasn’t specific, so we have to make an assumption. As a rough guess, let’s say Doug’s activities in the apartment took half an hour. I’d consider that a conservative estimate. That leaves, at most, four-and-a-half hours for Doug to take Joyce out to her car, travel to wherever he took her, conceal her body, then drive back and find a payphone in order to call Rhonda. Doug had premeditated Joyce’s murder, so we can assume he knew in advance where he was headed and drove straight there and back.

Terry Carpenter (from May 1, 1991 police recording): How was, what’s he acting like, what’s he, how is he coming across to you?

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): He’s kinda nervous, kinda not, not really nervous.

Dave Cawley: Trim off a little more time to account for Doug’s actions at the drop site and we’re left with a maximum of four hours for travel, round-trip. Which means the drop site was likely within a roughly two-hour drive one-way from South Ogden. The Old Snowbasin Road site Doug identified as being the place he left Joyce’s body is a 30-minute drive from Joyce’s apartment. One could argue it’s too close. It would’ve left Doug with too much time.

Remember as well that Rhonda said Doug’d told her he’d taken Joyce “up by Causey.” And Doug told Rhonda in the second wire recording at the prison Joyce was in the mountains, at a place where she was covered by years of accumulated leaves. With all that in mind, let’s take a look at our first alternate theory for the location of Joyce Yost’s remains: the cement dump site.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Let me introduce you to “Dangerous” Dan and his wife LuAnne.

“Dangerous” Dan: You’re playing on an old fart’s memory.

LuAnne: (Laughs)

“Dangerous” Dan: Good Lord. Let’s get it straight for the record. I’m almost 70.

Dave Cawley: You don’t look it.

“Dangerous” Dan: Oh yeah, you funny guy too.

Dave Cawley: I’m not using Dan’s last name, at his request. But I can tell you he and LuAnne were neighbors of Doug Lovell’s dad and step-mom back in the early ’80s. In fact, they were in a bowling league with Monan and his second wife, Dorothy.

“Dangerous” Dan: We were on the same team. We went to, at the time it was called Davis Lanes in Layton. … On a regular weekly basis we were going bowling so, it was a mixed-doubles. Husband and wife and husband and wife. Or boyfriend and girlfriend or nowadays boyfriend and boyfriend or girlfriend and girlfriend.

Dave Cawley: To look at Dan now, you might not peg him for a bowler.

“Dangerous” Dan: For missing that finger, I carried a 202 average.

Dave Cawley: Yes, Dan is missing his right pinky and left ring fingers as a result of a mishap when he was a teenager in the ‘60s.

“Dangerous” Dan: When I was a younger kid I played with explosives. And it blew off two of my fingers, split my hand in half, got a scar on my right leg from my knee clear up to my crotch. Busted both of my eardrums. That’s why occasionally I go ‘eh.’

Dave Cawley: That’s also the origin of his nickname “dangerous.”

“Dangerous” Dan: It was my friend that convinced me to make the little bomb.

Dave Cawley: I don’t have enough time to tell you the whole story of how Dan lost his fingers. Suffice it to say, he liked to make rockets as a teen, but had more understanding of chemistry than safety procedure.

“Dangerous” Dan: The powdered aluminum that was in this with it just burnt the holy hell out of my face. I didn’t even feel that until I walked, was in the hospital. … That’s when they told me that the finger’d blown off and the neighbor found the finger stuck on the wall.

LuAnne: Oh my gosh.

“Dangerous” Dan: I thought ‘oh my God.’ (Laughs)

LuAnne: Gross.

Dave Cawley: Dan found more constructive outlets for his chemistry hobby as he grew. In the mid-‘70s he took a job at the Ideal Ready Mix cement plant in Layton, Utah. He and his new bride, LuAnne, bought a house. They joined the bowling league where they met the Lovells, who lived just up the street. Monan was 20 years older than Dan — literally old enough to be his father — but they became friends. LuAnne told me back then, the Lovells never talked much about Doug.

LuAnne: I do know that the problems that Monan was having with Doug, Dorothy was very reluctant to speak about him in front of Monan because Monan was always very defensive of him.

Dave Cawley: And maybe that’s because around this time Doug landed in prison for armed robbery. A little while after Doug got out, probably sometime in ’84, Monan and Dorothy brought him to meet Dan and LuAnne at their home. Monan had been urging Doug to get his life right and to stop committing crimes. The first step to going straight was getting a job.

“Dangerous” Dan: So they asked me if I could possibly get their son — which is Monan’s son, not Dorothy’s son — a job up at where I worked which was at the time Ideal Ready Mix.

Dave Cawley: Multiple people who’ve spoken to me on condition of anonymity have described feeling baffled by the hold Doug seemed to have over his father. They’ve said Monan was a good man who struggled to understand or accept the deceitful decisions of his youngest son.

“Dangerous” Dan: I know when Dorothy asked me to, when they asked us to, if I could get him a job up there that he had been a problem child but I don’t recall if they ever came out and said what kind of problems.

Dave Cawley: Doug was a terror as a teen. One anonymous source told me “Doug’s high was seeing other people suffer.” I’ve heard from multiple sources Doug was credibly accused of a sexual assault — independent of the Joyce Yost case — but that it never resulted in a criminal charge. People who knew Doug in the 1970s are still terrified of him today.

LuAnne told me when her friends the Lovells brought Doug over to her home to ask for help finding him a job, Doug’s step-mother took her aside with a warning.

LuAnne: She just basically was saying ‘beware.’

Dave Cawley: Yeah. Ok.

“Dangerous” Dan: But back then I was a pretty strong, healthy little feller. So could I whomp him around? I’m sure I could.

Dave Cawley: In any event, Dan agreed to see what he could do for Doug.

“Dangerous” Dan: Yes, I got him a job up there.

Dave Cawley: By that point, Dan had nearly a decade of experience driving and delivering concrete. He knew how to route his jobs and time the mix so he showed up on site ready to pour. He did what he could to pass that knowledge on to Doug.

“Dangerous” Dan: I was the actual one that trained him. … He seemed to be dependable at the time that when he did get the job up there.

Dave Cawley: Remember, this was a time before turn-by-turn navigation. Cement truck drivers had to know the roads and developments for miles around.

“Dangerous” Dan: We had paperwork of subdivision plats and where the addresses were. … I’m sure Doug had one of those so that, give him a fairly good knowledge of the area in Davis County. North and south, east and west.

Dave Cawley: Dan and Doug had a lot of time to talk during those weeks of training. At one point, Dan’d heard a restaurant a few miles up the road…

“Dangerous” Dan: That was called the Dew Drop Inn.

Dave Cawley: …had been robbed…

“Dangerous” Dan: I thought ‘uh oh, we got problems.’

Dave Cawley: He wondered if his new apprentice might’ve had a hand in the heist.

“Dangerous” Dan: And when I asked him, he didn’t really come out and say yes or no but man, was the sweat pouring down his head so I assumed — so just that’s my assumption — that he did.

Dave Cawley: To be clear: Doug Lovell was never arrested or charged in connection with a robbery at the Dew Drop Inn. Dan told me Doug didn’t seem to make many friends at the cement plant. Dan wasn’t able to spend much time with him either, once the training period ended.

“Dangerous” Dan: He was more or less a loner from what I recall.

Dave Cawley: Dan stopped seeing Doug at all after several months. Dan didn’t know it, but Doug had been arrested for DUI and had faked an injury and gone out on worker’s comp to avoid being fired. Dan told me he doesn’t remember when he first discovered Doug was no longer working at Ideal Ready Mix. But he does recall the other drivers talking when they heard their former coworker was a murder suspect.

“Dangerous” Dan: I don’t know if they were ever approached by the police to talk to management but us drivers did talk and discuss a few things.

Dave Cawley: One of those “things” was the possibility Doug might’ve used his knowledge of subdivision plats and concrete pours to find a perfect hiding place for the body of Joyce Yost.

“Dangerous” Dan: You go out to a construction site. You pour footings and foundation. Well, you know the floor and the garage floor’s gonna about be poured as well. So if the middle of the night, could you go out and dig a hole in the graded floor and then grade it out and make it look nice?

Dave Cawley: The problem with this idea is Doug went out on worker’s comp at the start of June. Joyce didn’t disappear until mid-August, so the likelihood of Doug knowing where a pour was happening that much later is pretty low. But the drivers did have another theory.

“Dangerous” Dan: A lot of us assumed that he could have buried her in where we, the cement truck drivers, were dumping our excess concrete at the end of the day which was directly south of South Weber Basin.

Dave Cawley: Back in the ‘80s, Dan and his fellow drivers knew of a place about a mile-and-a-half up the road from the cement plant where they’d unloaded their leftovers.

“Dangerous” Dan: I’d have no damn clue how many yards would be there. Thousands and thousands of yards of concrete. Thousands of ‘em.

Dave Cawley: When Dan says a “yard” of concrete, he’s talking about a cubic yard. Dan took me to the general location, but there’s no sign of the concrete dump site today. That’s because a subdivision has been built on top of it. I was able independently verify the story of the dump site though by contacting the son of the former owner of that property. For decades, this man’s family had owned a large field just south of Utah State Highway 193. At the far southwestern corner of the field, the family had excavated a pit. You can actually see the pit on aerial photos from ‘70s. I’ve posted one such image at thecoldpodcast.com so you can see for yourself. At some point, the family had given permission for the cement truck drivers to fill in the pit with their leftovers.

“Dangerous” Dan: People’ll over order, your tax dollars at work, by 10 yards of concrete. … And is it heavy? Each yard of concrete weighs a little over 5,000 pounds. So yes. And does it get hard? You’re not going to dig through it. No way in hell you’re going to.

Dave Cawley: The theory goes, Doug would’ve known about the pit from having dumped there himself. He could’ve placed Joyce in the pit on the night of the murder. Later the next day — and for who knows how many days afterward — drivers like Dangerous Dan would’ve poured concrete over top of the body.

“Dangerous” Dan: Be a hell of a tombstone. … But that’s not the way people should be buried.

Dave Cawley: It’s a creative idea and one that might explain why Doug might not take police to the site, even today: there’d be no way to recover the body. But a couple pieces don’t line up.

First, the timing. From Joyce’s apartment to the concrete pit is a drive of only 10 to 15 minutes. Remember, Doug had upwards of four hours to fill, presumably by driving. This theory would’ve left him with hours of idle time. Second, Doug had told Rhonda he’d left Joyce’s body out in the open. He’d worried hunters might find her, so he’d returned to bury Joyce sometime later. This doesn’t make any sense if Joyce had already been covered over by hardened concrete. And third, the risk of discovery. Ideal Ready Mix used what are known as Rite-Way trucks that pour from the front. So a driver emptying excess concrete into the pit would’ve been looking straight into it while doing so.

“Dangerous” Dan: It’s hard to recall back that far ago. And when you do hear of the evil that Doug did, you try to put it aside and forget it. … I mean, it’s gonna come to a time that he has to meet his maker. And he ain’t going to take too kindly. That’s one thing we’ve been taught. Murder is not good in the eyes of the Lord.

Dave Cawley: Yeah, I seem to remember there a commandment about that one.

“Dangerous” Dan: Thou shalt not kill.

Dave Cawley: Dan didn’t tell me he believes Joyce’s body is at the concrete dump site, only that it could be. He’s aware it could just as easily be at another place, perhaps one he and LuAnne once visited with Monan and Dorothy Lovell.

“Dangerous” Dan: They’d invited us up to their cabin and we went there what, once or twice?

LuAnne: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: The Lovell family cabin.

“Dangerous” Dan: It’s a little bit of a bugger to find.

LuAnne: Couldn’t find the place now if we wanted to.

“Dangerous” Dan: No. I just remember the long road to it and then once we get inside hang a left. Go up the other side and then hang another left and they’re off to the right.

LuAnne: Yeah.

“Dangerous” Dan: Where those turns are at out of, have no clue of it now. Been so doggone long.

Dave Cawley: He might not remember, but I know exactly how to find the cabin. Because now I’ve been there, too.

[Scene transition]

(Sound of wind through leaves)

Dave Cawley: A light breeze rustles the tops of the aspen trees.

Anthropogist: Uh, the good news really for the dogs, because when we’re in situations where bone might be exposed in the sunlight, the odor’s so low they don’t pick it up but they will in the shade. Lots of shade provided. So I like that for the noses.

Dave Cawley: It’s about 7:30 a.m. on July 9, 2021 and I’m sitting on the deck of a cabin in the Sunridge Highlands area of northern Utah. A forensic anthropologist is providing an informal briefing of what’s about to happen: a search for the remains of Joyce Yost.

Anthropologist: So, uh, if you’re comfortable in discussing, y’know, what we’d be looking for it would now be skeletal material. And likely skeletal material that’s been scavenged and scattered and chewed on.

Dave Cawley: A search by cadaver dogs of the property Doug Lovell’s dad Monan owned, prior to Monan’s death in 2014. It feels a bit surreal standing here, knowing its a place many people believe Doug might have taken Joyce, a place that for decades has been off-limits to police. But whatever I’m feeling, it must be tenfold for retired police Sgt. Terry Carpenter. We drove up together as guests of the searchers, here to observe and to share whatever input we can.

Officer: Terry, how you been?

Terry Carpenter: Good. Good, good. How ‘bout you?

Officer: Just happy to be here.

Dave Cawley: The drive from Joyce’s apartment to this cabin takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s within range for Doug on the night of the murder. But the last eight miles are on a bumpy dirt road and you have to pass through two locked gates. No key, no access. Terry and I watch as staff from the Weber County Attorney’s Office unload gear. With them are search and rescue team members, CSI specialists and four dog teams from a non-profit organization called “Colorado Forensic Canines.”

Bryan Bennett: Colorado Forensic Canine specializes in clandestine graves or old, old burials, old umm, y’know years-old type stuff. Their dogs are trained to look specifically for small amounts of odor, small particles, small pieces of bone. So that’s what we’re doing.

Dave Cawley: That’s Brad Bennett. He’s volunteer commander of Weber County’s search and rescue team and himself a former search dog trainer.

Bryan Bennett: Y’know, moisture and shade is a better, is better for preserving that odor than just laying out in the sunlight. So, y’know if it’s been buried it could uh, produce odor for awhile.

Dave Cawley: The Colorado Forensic Canines website says they don’t accept any payment for their services. I’m told they drove seven hours to be here on their own dime, with Weber County and the Utah Cold Case Coalition pitching in to cover their lodging and food expenses. Colorado Forensic Canines maintains a strict “no media” policy, so I’m not allowed to interview their team.

(Sound of dog whimpering)

Dave Cawley: The closest I get is just dangling my microphone over one of the dogs.

Officer: I don’t know what the dog has to say this morning.

Dave Cawley: Hey, that’s the one I want to talk to the most.

Officer: (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Bryan Bennett says the dog teams did a lot of homework prior to making this trip. They consulted a geologist to get an idea how odor from a buried body might travel through the types of soil found on this particular mountain.

Bryan Bennett: Human decomposition is what it is. So… a body decomposes into the ground, that ground absorbs the human decomposition odor.

Dave Cawley: They studied the types of vegetation that grow here.

Bryan Bennett: That’s what this area is, is an aspen grove, it’s just all aspens.

Dave Cawley: When the searchers deploy, their dogs disappear into the waist-high underbrush. I can only keep track of where they are by listening for the bells the dogs each wear.

(Sound of bell on dog)

Dave Cawley: There’s a ravine that runs behind the cabin. That’s where the search is focused, the theory being it would’ve been an easy place for Doug to conceal Joyce’s body thanks to thick tree and ground cover there.

Bryan Bennett: The slope of the hill that we’re working on will, starts off fairly gradual, maybe 20 degrees but then it slopes off to about 38, 40 degrees y’know, as it gets farther down the hill.

Dave Cawley: If you talk to enough people about the Joyce Yost case, you’ll eventually hear some interesting stories about the Lovell family cabin. Like this one, Joyce’s daughter Kim Salazar shared when she recently visited Sunridge Highlands.

Kim Salazar: Some neighbor said that they’d seen him here in a truck, he had something large enough that it was wrapped in a tarp in the back of his truck and he left. And when he came back later that day whatever was in the tarp in the truck was no longer there. The truck was muddy, the shovels were muddy.

Dave Cawley: Sourcing is a problem here. Without knowing who said this originally, it’s just folklore.

Kim Salazar: I don’t think we have any peace until we have something.

Dave Cawley: I’ve heard another variation on this, which was attributed to the owner of a cabin on the opposite edge of the ravine behind the Lovell cabin. That man, who unfortunately died many years ago, supposedly used to tell a story of sitting out on his back deck which overlooked the ravine. He’s said to have seen Doug and a woman walking up the ravine carrying a large, black plastic bag. Take from that what you will.

Back to the dog search. The ground in the ravine is littered with deadfall, scattered at odd angles, which the dogs and handlers have to go around, over or under.

Bryan Bennett: Y’know, one deviation left or right around an obstacle is the difference between a find and a miss. Y’know, and that’s where the dogs come in, right? I mean, if the wind is carrying the odor and the dog’s downwind, that little deviation doesn’t mean a thing. But, but if all’s we’re relying is our, is our vision, you can miss pretty easy.

Dave Cawley: Yeah, right on top of it and you walk over—

Bryan Bennett: That’s why the dogs are so amazing.

Dave Cawley: Yeah.

Bryan Bennett: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Each dog wears a radio collar, which ties back to a GPS unit carried by its handler. And each handler is accompanied by a second person, whose job it is to scan the ground for any visible evidence, like tiny bone fragments. That’s easier said than done. The thick, leafy understory makes that visible search practically impossible because the searchers can’t even see their own feet.

(Sound of dog moving through vegetation)

Dave Cawley: After a time, the dogs come out of the brush panting.

(Sound of dog panting)

Dog handler 1: Yeah as much as anything, he’s tired from jumping logs.

Dog handler 2: Oh yeah.

Dog handler 1: Yeah it’s uh, it’s hard.

Bryan Bennett: We did divide the areas up into, into little less than one acre. So to tell you how methodical the dogs were performing, are performing, y’know, it’s taking them almost two hours to search that area.

Dave Cawley: The handlers pick burrs out of their pant legs and pour water for the pups.

Dog handler 1: No, don’t put your paws in it.

Dog handler 2: Oh but c’mon mom, it’s puppy swimming pool.

Dave Cawley: After the animals have cooled down, the dog teams head back out into the thick.

Bryan Bennett: And the handlers are still coming out telling us that their probability of detection is pretty low so we rotated the areas.

Dave Cawley: They re-check the same areas, but using different dogs in each zone.

Bryan Bennett: I mean, I saw the GPS tracks and there’s, there are some holes but not like you’d think.

Dave Cawley: The breeze that’d rustled the trees when we’d first arrived has now settled. The air grows still. The handlers do what they can to keep their dogs from overheating.

Bryan Bennett: If you’re working a dog you prefer a little wind. That way your dog doesn’t have to run right over the top of it. The wind will carry the odor.

Dave Cawley: Hours pass as the rest of us sit and wait. There’s no cell service so we swap stories, gathering in shrinking patches of shade as the daytime temperatures climb. I picture Doug and Rhonda doing the same here one summer day in ’85, as Doug used a family gathering at this very cabin for an alibi. Maybe he’d sat on this same porch as he’d tuned in to the radio, hoping to hear a story on the news about a murder in South Ogden carried out by his hired hit-man, Tom Peters. A hit that hadn’t happened. The heat is turning into a real problem. In Salt Lake City today, the temperature reaches 101 degrees Fahrenheit, the fifth day out of nine so far in July with a triple-digit high temperature. When the breeze returns in the afternoon, it feels uncomfortably warm.

Bryan Bennett: Probably wasn’t the best timing, y’know, to bring dogs in for this but it was scheduled and, and we figured if we could get started early we could get a couple of half-days out of the dogs.

Dave Cawley: The search comes to an end for the day. We receive word the dogs haven’t detected any odor. It’s a disappointment, but not a surprise. Once off the mountain, I call Joyce’s daughter Kim Salazar and give her the news. The dog teams aren’t done, I tell her. They want to try again the next morning.

Bryan Bennett: So they’ll go back tonight and they’ll debrief. And they’ll figure out ‘ok, what’d we do right, what’d we do wrong, how, how can we improve it tomorrow?’ … There’ll be some holes. We have some GPS tracks and there’ll be some holes and we’ll focus on those holes that we didn’t, that we didn’t get to today.

Dave Cawley: But the result on day two is the same: no indication. Which isn’t the same as saying “Joyce isn’t here.” It just means the dogs didn’t detect that very faint odor in the very specific part of the ravine behind the cabin, in the challenging July heat.

On a later follow-up visit to the cabin, I walked down the ravine myself. There’s a spot at the bottom where the ravine meets the road. An excavator recently dug a small trench there to access a water line. In the pile of disturbed earth beside the trench I came across a few bones. Bones that had been buried: a femur, a tibia. And a couple of crushed Budweiser cans, the kinds with pull tabs from ‘70s or early ‘80s. Investigators gathered the bones and determined they had come from an animal, likely a deer. But who would’ve buried a deer in the thick willow patch at the base of the ravine below the Lovell family cabin? One possible explanation: perhaps this deer had been poached.

Which brings me to our final location: the place where Doug and Rhonda encountered a wildlife officer in the nearby Monte Cristo mountains after Joyce Yost disappeared. I’ll take you there after the break.

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Dave Cawley: Dan Cockayne looks at home in this country. He’s wearing a blue plaid shirt, suspenders and pale-colored straw cowboy hat, all of which would’ve been just as in style here a century ago as today.

I have followed Dan on a drive east out of the city of Ogden over the top of the Monte Cristo mountain range, to our third and final location, a spot beside Utah State Highway 39. It’s just shy of an hour-and-a-half away from Joyce Yost’s apartment, approaching the outer edge of Doug Lovell’s possible travels on the night he murdered her. Here, in a gully identified on topographic maps as Walton Canyon, the road cuts through stands of sagebrush, following a tiny stream as it is descends toward the town of Woodruff 10 miles to the east.

Dan Cockayne: And this is where Von Thomas stopped Rhonda Buttars and talked with her and then later found Doug Lovell in the truck with her.

Dave Cawley: The poaching stop. It occurred right here. Dan was chief deputy for the Rich County Sheriff’s Office at that time in 1985.

Dan Cockayne: There was 8 or 10 inches of snow on the ground and her truck was parked right there. And he was just right here.

Dave Cawley: This is cattle country, a fact made plain as we step off the pavement into a mess of bleached cow bones and desiccated dung piles. They’re leftovers from the drives ranchers make up and down this stretch a couple times each year, moving their stock between winter pastures and summer range in the nearby national forest.

Dan Cockayne: The last ranch is probably three or four miles down and so yeah, there’s just not a lot going on up here.

Dave Cawley: Dan and I have to swipe at horseflies as we talk to keep from getting bit.

Dan Cockayne: Yeah, I, I don’t, too late? Got ya? (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: But it’s well worth it, because Dan is probably the last person who remembers with any clarity the events surrounding the poaching stop, aside from Doug and Rhonda, that is.

Dan Cockayne: There was only two game wardens in the whole county.

Dave Cawley: I described Rhonda’s meeting with the wildlife officer in episodes 4 and 5. But my account of it was based on fragmentary records. None of the surviving paperwork had included the date, precise location or name of the wildlife officer. Thankfully, Dan heard those episodes and sent me a message.

Dan Cockayne: I’ve listened to both of your podcasts and it’s interesting and I believe it’s important.

Dave Cawley: Dan suspects as I do that the wildlife officer’s chance encounter could be a significant clue in the search for Joyce Yost’s remains.

Dan Cockayne: Oh, I’ve been up here quite a few times looking. Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Rich County was home to only about 2,000 people in ’85, a number that’s hardly changed over the last century. The county has only four towns: Woodruff, Randolph, Laketown and Garden City. The sheriff’s office has never had a huge workforce.

Dan Cockayne: Probably three of us, plus jailers and dispatchers.

Dave Cawley: Dan knew both state wildlife officers assigned to work the county back then. He told me the one who’d seen Rhonda here was named LaVon Thomas. Unfortunately, LaVon — or Von, as he was better known — died several years ago. But I learned he’d been a fish and game cop since before Doug Lovell was even born.

Dan Cockayne: Von was an old-school conservation officer. I think until like 1981 when Claude Dallas killed the game wardens in Idaho, the game wardens weren’t required even to carry a weapon. And he didn’t often.

Dave Cawley: Okay, hang on, because I’m about to take a long tangent to explain who Claude Dallas is. It’s important background that illustrates just how dangerous what happened between Rhonda, Doug and Von Thomas was.

Dan Cockayne: Yeah, I always felt that we were lucky that something bad didn’t really happen right here.

Dave Cawley: It requires we jump back in time to January of ’81 and move 280 miles west to the desolate stretch where the borders of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada meet. It’s a high desert region known as the Owyhee.

A pair of Idaho conservation officers visited a camp on the South Fork Owyhee River on January 5^th of ’81. Claude Dallas, a former cowhand-turned-trapper, was living there for the winter. A rancher had told the officers Claude was trapping bobcats out of season. The officers — Bill Pogue and Conley Elms — confronted Claude. They disarmed him of a handgun he wore in a shoulder holster, but failed to notice the .357 revolver strapped to his hip.

At one point, Elms ducked into Claude’s tent to confiscate several animal pelts. Claude drew his hidden revolver and shot Pogue, then spun and fired on Elms. After both men were down, Claude retrieved a rifle and shot each man in the back of the head, to make sure they were both dead.

John Hollenhorst (from March 8, 1987 KSL TV archive): The crime was stunning because it seemed all out of proportion. Two game wardens were merely trying to enforce fish and game laws. They paid with their lives.

Dave Cawley: A friend of Claude’s had been at the camp delivering supplies at the time of the shootings. Claude enlisted his help in dumping Elms’ body in the river. They’d then used a mule to haul Pogue’s body out of the canyon to the friend’s truck. Claude drove Pogue’s body to a place called the Bloody Run Hills, where he’d stuffed the deceased wildlife officer into a coyote den. The friend confessed the killings to police the next day, but by then Claude had disappeared into the desert.

Frank Weston (From January 9, 1981 KSL TV archive): He’s a very, a mountain man type. Loves to live off the land. Uh, he can lived days without uh, without anything other than just a little place to lay down and possibly just live off of the, what he can gather to eat and stuff from the land.

Dave Cawley: Nevada sheriff’s deputies recovered Elms’ body from the river two days after the shooting. But they weren’t able to find Pogue. Investigators began to believe Claude had fled the Owyhee. They offered a $20,000 reward. Possible sightings of Claude poured in from across the country in the months that followed. The manhunt came to an end in April of ’82, with an anonymous tip that Claude was living in a trailer on the outskirts of Paradise Valley, Nevada, not far from where he’d last been seen more than a year earlier.

Chuck Smith (from April 19, 1982 KSL TV archive): On Sunday afternoon, 18 officers including a SWAT team and men in a helicopter converged on the trailer. When the officers pulled in from the road, Dallas was in front of the trailer in his truck, driving it back and forth. Apparently he’d just repaired it. And when Dallas saw the officers he drove the truck east across this field and the officers pursued.

Dave Cawley: The officers and agents peppered the truck with bullets. Claude surrendered. He waived extradition and later that year stood trial in Idaho for charges that included two counts of murder. Claude’s lawyers portrayed him as a man who’d feared for his life when an overzealous officer had come unannounced into his camp and threatened to haul him to jail just for living off the land.

Paradise Valley resident (from March 9, 1987 KSL TV archive): I only met him once and he seemed like he was real nice. A real nice guy.

Dave Cawley: Claude told the jury he’d felt threatened. He said Pogue had drawn his weapon and fired first. He claimed to have returned fire in self-defense. But that couldn’t explain why Claude had then shot both officers in the head, execution-style. Or why he’d spent hours concealing Pogue’s body, which had still not been found. The mythology of mountain man Claude Dallas continued to grow. He’d become something of a folk hero among anti-establishment types during his time on the run.

Paradise Valley resident (from March 9, 1987 KSL TV archive): He’s just that type of person. He was born too late. Y’know, he should have been born, y’know, a hundred years ago or something.

Dave Cawley: Even the jury seemed to sympathize. They convicted Claude, but not for murder, instead finding him guilty on lesser charges of manslaughter. A judge sentenced him to a term of 30 years in prison. Only then did Claude reveal where he’d hidden Pogue’s remains.

The Old West-style killings of the two Idaho wildlife officers sent shockwaves through Idaho’s fish and game department, as well as other wildlife agencies across the West. It highlighted the dangers inherent to the job. Wildlife officers, like Utah’s Von Thomas, often interacted with people who were armed and possibly intoxicated, in places where backup was far, far away.

Dan Cockayne: So he was up here by himself in a place with no radio contact so we kind of watched out for him.

Dave Cawley: Dan Cockayne told me Von had been by himself when he’d spotted Rhonda in this canyon in late ’85, just a few years after the capture of Claude Dallas.

The way Dan remembers the story, Von was coming down the canyon when he’d seen Rhonda pulled off to the side of the road facing the opposite direction, westbound, pointed toward Ogden. It was an odd place for a woman to be parked alone, especially that time of year. Von had stopped to check on Rhonda, but she had brushed him off.

Von had continued on down the canyon but at some point pulled over. Lo and behold, there came Rhonda, driving eastbound now toward Woodruff as if following him down the canyon. And Von could see a man in the cab of the truck with her. He pulled the truck over. That’s when Rhonda had lied, telling Von the man was a hitchhiker. There were no dead animals in the truck that Von could see and no gun either. He hadn’t had probable cause to detain the pair, so he’d let them go. Then, once out of the canyon and back in radio range, Von had called Dan.

Dan Cockayne: Something wasn’t right. Didn’t know what wasn’t right. … I had a K9, and so we came up and searched the area. Just looking for evidence, didn’t know what was going on at the time so we just came up and looked around, found the tracks in the snow where he’d been, where he’d actually been hiding just right over here while Von was talking with Rhonda.

Dave Cawley: As Dan says “right over here,” he points to large piece of sagebrush alongside the road. It’s no more than 15 to 20 feet from where Von would’ve been standing when he’d stopped to talk to Rhonda the first time. Her hitchhiker — who was actually her husband Doug — had likely watched that encounter unfold from just feet away.

Dan Cockayne: If all these things that we learned later are true, if he was indeed moving a body or he’d poached deer, Von had no idea he was here.

Dave Cawley: Dan and his dog didn’t find anything during that search, which isn’t surprising considering the ground was covered with snow. It wasn’t until later — days or months, it’s not clear just how long — that Von came across the carcasses of two deer on the opposite side of the road, across the creek and partway up the hill.

Dan Cockayne: I mean he was an investigator so I’m sure he was up here every day watching for birds and finally found those deer.

Dave Cawley: But how did Von connect his case with the Joyce Yost murder investigation? I’m not sure, but it’s probable he would’ve taken Rhonda’s information when he’d pulled her over. He might well have made a few phone calls after finding the deer, discovering in the process who Rhonda’s hitchhiker had actually been.

Von and the South Ogden police had to have known their evidence couldn’t support a poaching charge. But they’d worked with a prosecutor to file one anyhow. When detectives Brad Birch and Terry Carpenter grilled Rhonda after her arrest in March of ’86, she had denied involvement in any poaching. She’d said she and Doug had simply been headed to Woodruff to meet friends and go snowmobiling. She’d explained she’d lied about Doug’s identity because she’d been embarrassed: Doug had been relieving himself in the bushes when Von had first rolled up on her.

Dave Cawley: Take a second and just kinda glance through there then we’ll talk about what you see in there.

Dave Cawley: I had Dan read the detectives’ reports from their interrogation of Rhonda.

Dan Cockayne: That’s about how I remember the story.

Dave Cawley: Is it?

Dan Cockayne: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: But those reports left out a lot of detail, like the actual date when Von had seen Doug and Rhonda in the canyon. That’s an important thing to know, if the encounter has any connection with the location of Joyce Yost’s body. Here’s why: the highway over Monte Cristo is seasonal. It’s only open from around Memorial Day to Thanksgiving each year. The state blocks it with metal gates once there’s enough snow up top for snowmobiles.

Dan Cockayne: It’s remote. The time of year that they were up here, the chances of a deputy or game warden coming up the canyon might be once a week.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda had told the detectives she and Doug had driven over the top, meaning the gates were still open. But Dan’s description of snow on the ground at the time of Von’s encounter suggests it happened just before the gates would’ve closed.

Dan Cockayne: I’m sure it was after all the hunts had ended, which would be first of November. But it hadn’t closed the road yet. Which, which means, going to Woodruff snowmobiling is not a thing. That didn’t happen.

Dave Cawley: Dan told me he remembered the detectives bringing Rhonda to his jail after they’d arrested and interrogated her.

Dan Cockayne: She was pregnant at the time and I wouldn’t let her smoke. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: The facilities weren’t equipped to house women, so Dan had shipped Rhonda to neighboring Cache County.

Dan Cockayne: I rode to Logan with her. Tried to talk her into telling us about this. But she wouldn’t. Didn’t want to say anything about it. She was really loyal, to him, at that time. Really loyal.

Dave Cawley: Dan wasn’t surprised six weeks later, when a judge dismissed the poaching case.

Dan Cockayne: ’Cause it was weak. Y’know, if you don’t have a weapon and you don’t have, ever can show them touching that deer and… I suspect the reason that the case was not a very good one was, umm, it was used for leverage.

Dave Cawley: It hadn’t worked. Rhonda had stood by her man.

Dan Cockayne: There’s a reason to be here. If it’s just poaching then, y’know, they weren’t able to make a very good case.

Dave Cawley: You might remember that in June of ’86, a prison snitch told South Ogden police Doug had been revisiting Joyce’s body when Von had first talked to Rhonda. I was perplexed when I first came across that, because there are no records in the Joyce Yost case files to suggest detectives followed up on that lead. But Dan told me they did. South Ogden detectives had come to visit him in the summer of ’86. The snow had by that time melted.

Dan Cockayne: We met right here. Talked about this, searched again with the dog. Y’know, in those days we’d never even heard of a cadaver dog.

Dave Cawley: Dan’s dog had a skilled nose, but wasn’t trained to detect the odor of human decomposition. The officers didn’t have handheld GPS units to record precisely where they’d walked. They didn’t know if they were looking for a body out in the open, possibly scattered by animals, or a shallow grave.

Dan Cockayne: Y’know, we did the best we could. But… I would think that if it was a matter of life-and-death, which it is to Doug Lovell, that you would want to make sure that things were good, covered, whatever.

Dave Cawley: Another five years passed before Rhonda confessed her role in Joyce’s murder to Terry Carpenter. Her account of the poaching stop changed at that point. Rhonda told Terry Doug had, in fact, shot the two deer. But she said he’d done it the night before they’d bumped into Von.

Dan Cockayne: It’s just quiet that time of year. No one really up here.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda said Doug had wanted to retrieve the antlers. That’s why they’d gone back up the next day. Dan told me that’s a common modus operandi for poachers.

Dan Cockayne: If he would have caught him right here with a gun, then he’s a convicted felon, he’s got that problem and he’s got a dead animal. But he drives up the next day and finds a dead deer on the hill and cuts the horns off and tells the game warden ‘I found a dead deer and cut the horns off.’

Dave Cawley: If this version of Rhonda’s story was true, it would mean Doug had likely shot the deer from the road using a spotlight. The canyon walls would’ve provided him cover.

Dan Cockayne: Good place to do it. You don’t notice, unless you’re right here, a spotlight like you would close to town.

Dave Cawley: As far as I know, Rhonda’s never been questioned in detail about this. She’s never testified to it from the witness stand.

Dan Cockayne: I think that’s why you dare shoot a deer on the side of the hill. ‘Cause the odds of getting caught are lower.

Dave Cawley: I do wonder though, would shooting two deer have been Doug’s sole reason for driving so far in the middle of the night, at a time he was under suspicion for murder and was just weeks away from standing trial for rape? When he knew the eyes of police were on him? Or were the deer just an opportunity that’d popped up while Doug was in the area taking care of other business?

Dan Cockayne: I would say most of the poaching incidents like this that are, those people that are arrested have all kinds of different offenses on their record.

Dave Cawley: The deer Doug had shot were covered by snow within hours. Which means it could’ve been snowing when he’d shot them. With that in mind, consider the words Doug used when negotiating a plea deal in ’92. He’d told his defense attorney he’d be able to find Joyce’s body in the dark and even in a blinding snowstorm.

The entire trip from Joyce’s apartment to the site of the poaching stop is on pavement. There’s a Forest Service campground 10 miles back along the highway, but at the time of night Doug was transporting Joyce in August of ’85, few if any drivers would’ve gone beyond the campground down into Walton Canyon.

Dan Cockayne: From basically the Monte Cristo campground to Woodruff at night in the summer, there’s no people.

Dave Cawley: If Doug had come here on the night he killed Joyce, he might’ve feared returning during the hunting season shortly after because of the greater risk of being spotted. He might’ve waited until after the deer hunt ended in November before taking the risk of revisiting Joyce’s body. Then, under dark of night with snow swirling, he could’ve scraped out a shallow hole and buried her. On his way out of the area, he might’ve spotted a couple of deer on the hillside and shot them from the road. If so, while taking Rhonda on that same drive the following day, might he have pointed out the spot to her?

Dan Cockayne: Maybe he wouldn’t share that with Rhonda.

Dave Cawley: Yep.

Dan Cockayne: But he shared quite a bit.

Dave Cawley: I stress this is only a hypothetical. I’ve not been able to ask Rhonda about this theory, as she did not respond to my inquiries.

Dan Cockayne: Yeah, I wish that, yeah I wish she’d, if she’s gonna clean her soul, clean her soul.

Dave Cawley: Doug Lovell is likely the only one who really knows where he left Joyce Yost. He claimed to have already pointed out that spot. But Dan Cockayne doesn’t buy the idea Doug left Joyce along the Old Snowbasin Road.

Dan Cockayne: If he told me the sun was up I’d have to call NASA and make sure.

Dave Cawley: The site of the Monte Cristo poaching stop is an open, and by my estimation, promising lead in the search for Joyce Yost. It checks a lot of boxes. It fits the timeline. It fits Doug’s descriptions of the murder site. It’s up past Causey. It’s never been searched by cadaver dogs. With what we know now, maybe it’s time that it is.

Dave Cawley: South Ogden police were on a literal witch hunt. It was the summer of 1990. An informant was telling detectives a satanic coven had killed Joyce Yost. Sgt. Terry Carpenter had heard a version of this story once already, a couple of years earlier, from an anonymous caller who’d asked to go by the false name “George.”

“George” (from March 28, 1998 police recording): And then her body was burned.

Terry Carpenter (from March 28, 1998 police recording): Her body was burned.

Dave Cawley: “George” had refused to reveal the source of her information about Joyce Yost’s death. If this sounds familiar, it’s because I shared much of this already in Cold season 2, episode 5. But there are parts I didn’t tell you, like how that informant in 1990 told police who “George” really was. The informant said “George” was actually a psychologist named Peggy who worked with victims of satanic ritual abuse.

“George” (from March 28, 1998 police recording): I think that both of us believe that folks that engage in that sort of activity ought not to be running loose.

Terry Carpenter (from March 28, 1998 police recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: Police needed to verify this, so an officer called Peggy while posing as a concerned parent in order to prove “George” and Peggy were the same person.

Officer (from August 22, 1990 police recording): I’ve got a child that’s been involved, having some problems and they gave me your name that you might be someone I could look to to get some help for him.

Peggy (from August 22, 1990 police recording): Uh huh.

Officer (from August 22, 1990 police recording): Seems like there’s some strange things that I’ve heard a little about satanism and that’s kind of what I think what he’s involved in.

Peggy (from August 22, 1990 police recording): Uh huh.

Officer (from August 22, 1990 police recording): So, and I didn’t know if you handle anything like that or—

Peggy (from August 22, 1990 police recording): I have, I have worked with that—

Officer (from August 22, 1990 police recording): Uh huh.

Peggy (from August 22, 1990 police recording): —kind of a problem, actually quite a lot.

Officer (from August 22, 1990 police recording): Okay.

Dave Cawley: Police came to understand Peggy, in her anonymous phone call as “George”, had been relaying information provided by one of her patients, a woman named Barbara. Barbara had been undergoing therapy related to some severe childhood trauma. In the process, she’d recovered memories of a seeing woman raped and murdered by a satanic cult. Barbara at first believed that woman had been Joyce Yost.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording): And you believed that it happened and I believe that it—

Barbara (from undated police recording): I don’t believe that a murder occurred.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording): You did for a long time.

Dave Cawley: But by the time Terry Carpenter interviewed Barbara, she’d come to distrust her own memories.

Barbara (from undated police recording): Part of me would like to say ‘ok, it’s this person and this person and this person and this person’s involved and go find out what you can find out.’ But part of me just wants to, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: Peggy had diagnosed Barbara as having multiple personalities. Because of this, Barbara’s credibility was compromised. But for Terry Carpenter, Barbara’s account was the only lead he had in a murder case that’d gone cold. And so he’d pushed her to name the members of the coven.

Barbara (from undated police recording): ‘Kay, I’ll give you some names but I want a statement made that I feel that it was a mind game and I don’t put much credence in it.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording): I agree a thousand percent and I will do that with you however you want to do it. We will write it down on a piece of paper if you want and have you put those names on that piece of paper. I, I have no problem with any agreement you want to make that way. Until we work them out and understand what they are. You feel good about that?

Barbara (from undated police recording): Yeah. But I want it made because I really feel like you’re going the wrong the direction.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: Terry took the list of names Barbara provided and started tracking down the suspected satanists. This next clip comes from an interview with one of them, a man named Dave, who was at the time incarcerated in the Utah State Prison.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): Dave, were you ever involved in anything associated with the occult?

Dave R. (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): No.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): Weren’t you?

Dave R. (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): No.

Terry Carpenter (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): Well, the information that we’ve got is that you were. You were involved in a—

Dave R. (from undated police recording at Utah State Prison): Well you better check your [expletive] sources because I’m just, I don’t even know, I don’t read science fiction. If it ain’t got something to do with auto mechanics, I don’t even read it.

Dave Cawley: Every effort to verify the existence of the coven had run into a roadblock but Terry hadn’t given up. He’d assembled a task force and pushed even harder, refusing to let his only lead die.

Mike King: And I remember the Yost case very well. I remember walking through fields with Terry Carpenter looking for pieces of bone fragment or something else that would somehow support this testimony that they had a ritual and they burned a sacrifice right here and buried ‘em over here.

Dave Cawley: That it is Mike King, who was at the time an investigator for the Weber County Attorney’s Office. Mike didn’t know it then, but his career was about to take a wild turn, thrusting him into the center of a national debate about satanism.

Mike King: And we found ourselves in the early days getting spun up, much like the public was, with the Satanic Panic. Umm, could this really be happening? Is Satan out there abusing children. Are there cults that are sacrificing and doing things? And if you look back in time, I mean the stories were horrendous.

Dave Cawley: This is a bonus episode of Cold, season 2: Satanic Panic. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. Back with more right after this break.

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Dick Nourse (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): The practice of devil worship has existed in various cultures for centuries but recently it has become a very real part of what psychologists are calling the adolescent or teenage subculture.

Lynn Bryson (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): We have become so uninformed that we are playing their music and their doctrines for our kids to dance to.

Dave Schmertz (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Lynn Bryson lives in Provo. He’s a songwriter and singer by trade. During the past 3 years, Bryson has been speaking at LDS churches across the nation. His message is clear: Satan is working overtime and our teenagers are his prey. We caught up with Bryson here in Champagne, Illinois.

Lynn Bryson (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): If we’re gonna talk about witchcraft, we have to talk about some of the doctrines and how they’re preaching them. And I know of no other way than to tell it like it is. You cannot practice witchcraft unless you practice murder, cannibalism and the like.

Dave Cawley: Widespread panic over the perceived dangers of satanism and all things occult ran rampant in America during the 1980s. Comic books, Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal music all made easy scapegoats for concerned parents of wayward teens.

Lynn Bryson (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): All you have to do is play the record backwards by recording it onto a reel-to-reel tape deck, turning the reels around and listening to it backwards and it says, right were it says ‘another one bites the dust’ it now says ‘start to smoke marijuana.’

Dave Schmertz (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): In Bryson’s view of satanism, the last front in the war against devil worship lies in the home.

Lynn Bryson (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Forbid it.

Dave Schmertz (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Who?

Lynn Bryson (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Forbid the youth from dabbling with it. Forbid it. In other words, parents have the strongest arm there. I can’t worry about the people who are calling me alarmist because I have seen too much.

Dave Cawley: The concern seems a bit parochial by today’s standards, but many people took this all very seriously back then, including obviously many news reporters and police officers.

Shelley Thomas (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Last March, Utah County police acting on a tip found evidence that a small bird had been killed on a granite stone as part of a sacrificial rite. Investigators also found several papers with handwritten symbols and a prayer.

Jim Tracy (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): The prayer states ‘our father who art in hell, hallowed be thy name. We place before thee this sacrament in appreciation and recognition of thou, the divine. Make pure this offering and sanctify our souls. Blessed be the blood of our enemies and make us one with thee. Amen.’

Dave Cawley: These news reports come from a series aired by KSL TV in 1986 called “Satanism in Utah: A Teenage Underworld.”

Shelley Thomas (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): There are people in Utah who practice satanic worship. Most of them are teenagers who’ve been drawn to the occult for a variety of reasons and for most it is only a passing fancy, a brief flirtation with morbid curiosity but for others satanism can be very real and very serious.

“Tina” (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): Satan rules and anybody that believes in god or has anything to do with god should be killed, should die.

Dave Cawley: The series aimed to be more educational than alarmist.

Con Psarras (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): While most teenagers are mildly amused by signs and references to Satan in the popular culture, others can be deeply intrigued. Some kids turn to devil worship as a way of seeking an identity, belonging to a group.

Richard Ferre (from May, 1986 KSL TV archive): When a group meets together for a special kind of rite or a special kind of involvement in something that’s very symbolic such as this, it’s like a club.

Dave Cawley: Adolescent experimentation with what you might call alternative religious ideologies is pretty normal and usually harmless. But there’s a darker side to the satanic panic scare of the ‘80s and early 90s than just this generational hand-wringing. It involved widespread reports similar to the one Barbara had provided in the Joyce Yost case: claims of secret cults that tortured and killed people without consequence.

Duane Cardall (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): The woman we call Jane remembers horrific things happening in this canyon near Kamas. She believes her father and others raped, tortured and killed people in their worship of Satan.

“Jane” (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I know it happened because I was forced to commit murder. I committed several sacrifices myself and umm, I became very good at it.

Dave Cawley: These reports of satanic cult activity tended to take one of two forms: children confessing current satanic sexual abuse at the hands of adults, or adults recovering repressed memories of past satanic worship and human sacrifice. Both forms often arose in similar fashion.

Duane Cardall (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Jane’s memory of ritual abuse came out during psychological therapy. One day she simply remembered bad people hiding in the trees.

Janice Marcus (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I wasn’t going after that information. I had no clue that this had happened to her. I knew that she had been abused, that she was a victim of abuse and that’s all I knew.

Duane Cardall (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Janice Marcus diagnosed in Jane a multiple personality disorder or MPD. She says the details surfaced naturally through Jane’s various personalities including a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old.

Dave Cawley: This comes from a January, 1992 KSL TV special called “Ritual Abuse – The Unthinkable.”

“Jane” (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): Oh god, they had a furnace here. They had a furnace here they put bodies in.

Duane Cardall (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): The memory of people dying and disposing of bodies in a furnace stunned Jane. This day there was no furnace and we don’t know if one ever existed there. Jane understands why stories of ritual abuse are hard to believe. She wishes it weren’t true.

Jane (from January 29, 1992 KSL TV archive): I feel like everything that I held dear, that I believed in has been ripped away. I’m not what I thought I was, my parents aren’t what I thought they were. I don’t want a witch-hunt to happen. I just want the abuse of the children to stop.

Dave Cawley: The more bizarre instances even involved claims these secrets satanists were grooming young women, raising them to be “breeders” who as adults could then be impregnated. The breeders would give birth, only to have their newborn babies taken away and killed in sacrificial ceremonies.

Covens were sometimes said to include hospital workers or morticians, professionals who knew how to cover up the disappearance of a human body. They conveniently left no evidence. Skeptics argued these memories were false, perhaps unintentionally so, a result of pressure or outright coercion employed by social workers and psychologists who were intent on rooting out satanic influences.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Let me briefly tell you about one such case. It centered around a social worker named Barbara Snow. Snow led an organization called the Intermountain Sexual Abuse Treatment Center. In ’85, she began interviewing several children from a neighborhood in the city of Lehi, Utah about possible sexual abuse at the hands of a babysitter, who happened to be the daughter of a local church leader.

Tom Walsh (from December 18, 1987 KSL TV archive): State officials took bishop Keith Burnhams children from the home and LDS Church relieved Burnham of his duties.

Dave Cawley: The accounts started out simple — older children molesting younger children — but through repeated interviews with Snow, the accusations grew more severe. Snow elicited stories about adults in the neighborhood coordinating to prey on children, using costumes, masks and satanic imagery. These shocking stories weren’t supported by any other physical evidence. In fact, prosecutors declined to file charges and the bishop’s children were returned to him. But the accusations had already done tremendous damage. Soon, other parents from the neighborhood were bringing their children to see Snow, hoping to learn if their kids had been targeted by this secretive occult child sex ring. One of them was a man named Alan Hadfield.

Tom Walsh (from December 18, 1987 KSL TV archive): Hadfield testified he became an accuser when his daughter said members of his LDS bishop’s family had sexually abused her. Hadfield said he was upset and confused.

Dave Cawley: Snow repeatedly interviewed Hadfield’s 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. The daughter’s initial disclosure of abuse was narrow, but over time both kids would go on to say as many as 40 people in the neighborhood were involved in bizarre and grotesque instances of child sex abuse that included satanic ritual.

Tom Walsh (from December 18, 1987 KSL TV archive): Hadfield says therapist Barbara Snow told him this thing is really big. This case will draw national attention. But Hadfield says things just didn’t add up. ‘How could this happen without me knowing about it?’ He says Snow told him the abusers are sneaky. They’ll move through fields and crawl over fences at night. Ironically it was Hadfield who began pushing for the Attorney General’s Office to do an investigation. He then realized ‘I was the only man left in our neighborhood group who wasn’t accused.’ In May of 1986, Alan Hadfield turned from accuser to accused.

Dave Cawley: That’s when Hadfield’s children told Barbara Snow in graphic detail that their father had sexually abused them. In July of 1987, the state of Utah filed seven felony counts of sodomy and sex abuse of a child against Hadfield. He stood trial and his children both testified. So did Barbara Snow, whose methods came under attack.

Tom Walsh (from December 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): A Utah County detective says Snow’s questioning technique was aggressive and she would often ask leading questions of the children about possible abuse.

Dave Cawley: Alan Hadfield maintained his innocence. But the kids did not recant. So who was the jury to believe? In closing arguments, the prosecutor said the children had no motive to lie.

Tom Walsh (from December 18, 1987 KSL TV archive): Hadfield’s defense attorney Brad Rich countered by saying ‘children have been accusing parents falsely since the Salem Witch Trials.’

Dave Cawley: The jury found Hadfield guilty on all counts.

Joel Munson (from December 19, 1987 KSL TV archive): While Hadfield’s friends and family wandered in a state of shock, prosecutors voiced satisfaction with the verdict. They said the key to the case was the testimony of the children. But Hadfield’s supporters argued child therapist Barbara Snow coerced the youngsters into pointing the finger at their father. Defense attorneys said they’ll appeal the verdict while Hadfield’s family vowed to take Snow to court.

Hadfield supporter (from December 19, 1987 KSL TV archive): We are going to see that this man is innocent and we’re going to see that Barbara Snow is the one behind bars because she has abused these children. And we see that justice is done.

Dave Cawley: I don’t know the truth of whether Alan Hadfield abused his children or not. But no evidence ever surfaced to support the broader stories of a covert neighborhood child sex ring practicing satanic ritual abuse.

In his appeal, Hadfield noted Barbara Snow had brought forward strikingly similar stories in at least two other cases in different cities. The Utah Supreme Court overturned Hadfield’s conviction in 1990, due to lingering doubt about Snow’s techniques. In a separate but similar case, the 10^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later called Snow’s conduct “disturbing and irresponsible.”

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Similar storylines were unfolding in communities across the U.S. during the ‘80s. One of the most famous cases occurred in Los Angeles, California, where the McMartin family operated a preschool. A therapist there uncovered claims of child sex abuse against the McMartins, some of which involved satanism. A sprawling investigation ensued, with more than 300 potential victims identified.

Members of the McMartin family were arrested in 1984 and charged with hundreds of criminal counts. The court case dragged on for years and concluded without a single conviction. Afterward, it came to light the statements of many potential child victims might’ve been coerced.  Other people were accused, charged and even convicted on some pretty flimsy evidence in cases around the globe because of the panic surrounding satanism at the time.

I want to be clear here: child sex abuse is real. It does happen. And it’s important we not dismiss the disclosures of potential victims. At the same time, we need to recognize the fallibility of memory. Kids are impressionable and trauma can affect how they perceive the world. Child sex abuse cases can be notoriously difficult to prosecute for this reason. This is even more true when those cases include a ritual aspect.

Mike King: And ritualism isn’t satanism. Now, the Legislature, the media, the public want, every time you say ‘ritual’ even today, immediately think ‘satanism’ and it absolutely isn’t.

Dave Cawley: That again is Mike King, a former cop and an expert when it comes to the investigation of ritual abuse. He’s making an important point. Ritual abuse can mean different things to different people depending on how it’s defined. “Ritual” by itself doesn’t necessarily mean satanic or occult. It just means rites or ceremonies that are repeated. Those can be religious rites just easily as satanic ones.

Mike King: Never in the beginning did I think of the Zion Society as a ritual crime because I didn’t even know what that really was. We looked at it as child sex abuse.

Dave Cawley: The Zion Society. We’ll get into what that was in just a moment. First, let me set the stage. Mike King had spent the better part of a decade working as a cop in Ogden, Utah in the 1980s, before accepting a job as an investigator at the Weber County Attorney’s Office. In July of ’91, he was heading up an undercover operation aimed at busting car theft rings and chop shops.

Mike King: One day I walked into the county attorney’s office and the receptionist grabbed me and said ‘there’s a woman who’s been waiting to talk to an investigator but nobody’s available. Can you just talk to her for a moment?’ So I walked over. Just an attractive 20-year-old woman sitting there who stood up very confidently and introduced herself and the first words out of her mouth was ‘I’ve been involved in a cult that’s sexually abusing children. Do you have a minute to talk to me?’ And so I invited her back to the office where we could get a tape recorder out and start interviewing and my mind was racing. I’d never investigated sexual crimes other than as a patrol officer and then it was handed off to detectives. It was completely out of my wheelhouse and after that first interview I went into the county attorney and I laid it on the table and said ‘you’ve gotta get somebody.’ And he said ‘guess what, buddy? You’re gonna do this one.’

Dave Cawley: The informant had told Mike about a group of people called the Zion Society, who were practicing polygamy and child sex abuse as part of a religious philosophy. The county attorney, a man named Reed Richards, saw that Mike had managed to built a rapport with this informant.

Mike King: When I laid this out with the county attorney, I remember Mr. Richards’ first comment was ‘if this is true, we have to move quickly because children are being injured.’ And so the dictate from him was to drop everything, assemble a team that I needed to be successful and day-and-night investigate. And we were putting in 18, 20 hour days for a month just because we were so terrified that if it was true, children were being raped and sexually assaulted daily.

Dave Cawley: Mike conducted several follow-up interviews with the informant. She provided detailed information about the inner workings of the Zion Society and also described how she’d fallen into the orbit of its leader, a self-proclaimed prophet named Arvin Shreeve.

Mike King: The very first words out of her mouth were ‘I joined this group to get away from a failing marriage and I’d never planned on joining a cult.’ Once she got inside and realized that they were teaching polygamist practices which she didn’t believe in but frankly was saying, ‘y’know, if I’ve gotta live that way to have a safe place to live and a roof over my head, maybe I can do that.’ But as the doctrine perverted, she then got word and started witnessing that it wasn’t only women who were having relationships with the leader of the group, Arvin Shreeve, but that he was then dictating that they should have relations with each other, a same-sex relationship, all in what he believed was his god’s approval. And then it continued to pervert, as always it seems these sexual predations do, and it soon became ‘now the children need to be involved.’ And then she became involved in the instruction of how to prepare these children to have relationships with Arvin or the adult women and men in the group.

Dave Cawley: Shreeve didn’t outwardly appear like a suave, charismatic cult leader. He was short, double-chinned and had receding hair that was gray at the temples. He wore thick glasses. But he could talk the talk when it came to the language of Utah’s predominant religious culture. Arvin had grown up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that back then embraced the nickname the Mormons.

But Arvin had been kicked out of the church for publicly advocating his personal beliefs favoring polygamy. It was then he’d taken his philosophy underground. He’d held “scripture study” meetings with friends and neighbors, perfecting his pitch that he’d received personal revelation about a pathway to exaltation. That’s how the Zion Society was born.

Mike King: Knowing that Shreeve was  a Latter-day Saint in the early days of his life — he’d been excommunicated almost 30 years before his arrest — he was taking what he had learned as a youth and again, in my opinion, corrupting that and turning it into something else. And so that’s a term that he picked up and designed.

Dave Cawley: Arvin exerted extreme control over the lives of his flock. The women all had to wear dresses and heels. The men needed to keep their suburban yards meticulously landscaped. All of Arvin’s edicts tied back to his own personal gratification.

Mike King: He took seemingly intelligent people who had likeminded beliefs of wanting to just be a little better than anyone else, to have more light and knowledge than the next guy and slowly crafted and groomed them to the point that they believed that this, okay as distasteful as it might be, is my pathway to heaven. I guess I better do it.

Dave Cawley: Mike’s informant explained Zion Society members — who were said to number more than 100 — mostly lived together in a single subdivision.

Larry Lewis (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): Neighbors describe the people on this street as a tight-knit group. Some call them polygamists, an accusation they deny.

Stan Belnap (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): We don’t consider ourselves a cult, a church of any kind.

Mike King: We started looking at the neighborhood as a group. And there were up to 14 homes in this neighborhood that were all working together. They were interconnected by alarm systems. They were stockpiling semi-automatic weapons and food storage and medical supplies. … The thing that became so troubling to us is that two of the homes we identified as you enter the neighborhood were security residents. And their responsibility was to watch 24 hours a day. Any traffic, foot or vehicle, that came in through this narrow pipeway into the neighborhood. And if they saw something, they would then notify leadership. … We had that information, we had information from our informant that the members were being trained in anti-sniper and how to use weapons and that one day we’re going to have to defend our space. … And so as we started to put this doomsday belief system and the reality of what had been revealed by this informant, we realized that, that we had to get in there and serve search warrants.

Larry Lewis (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): According to court records, someone within that very group came forward complaining that the adults were showing children a pornographic video tape. The tape was described as sexually explicit and used as an instructional tool for the children.

Dave Cawley: The informant described how Shreeve and one of his lieutenants had created manuals for the others, instructing them on how to abuse children.

Mike King: In one case, a couple revealed that they witnessed probably 50,000 dollars worth of pornography that Shreeve had purchased over the years and then systematically cut out to be presentation material during his instruction of what to do. And so we knew that we could potentially find a treasure trove of evidence to support. … Along the way, we learned some odd things that really were troubling. And one of those was that an individual had been purchasing sex from children in the group and that the adult leaders in the group were, were in effect prostituting the children out to people that were not cult members. Well, this was so far beyond the belief system that they were purporting that we had to follow up. And I actually took the county attorney with me on this particular one and we went and found the individual in Logan who later confessed that yes, he was involved in this. So every time I would walk in and say ‘you’re not going to believe this one, Reed.’ We would be able to prove that it was true. And so the informant’s credibility continued to grow which made it much more easy to go into a judge and justify an affidavit.

Dave Cawley: Just weeks after his first encounter with the informant, Mike went to court to obtain a series of warrants. He sought permission not only to raid the Zion Society homes, but also to arrest Arvin Shreeve and to take up to 32 children into protective custody.

Mike King: We knew that we had to get in and go with a show of force so that we could quickly get control. But we knew that with that, there would be a price to pay because that would be traumatizing to children who we needed to take into custody. So we also reached out to the Utah Division of Family Services and got case workers on hand with vans so that we could immediately get the children into professionals to get help. And if you think back, this was July and August of 1991. We had just opened a brand new children’s justice center — the first one in the state of Utah. And it was in its first month of infancy. And we notified them ‘get ready. We’re not going to tell you why, but get ready.’

Dave Cawley: The Children’s Justice Center concept was a new invention, meant to avoid some of the pitfalls observed in cases like the Alan Hadfield prosecution a few years earlier. Staff there received special training in how to conduct forensic interviews with child victims of crime. They took great care to avoid tainting memories or coercing confessions.

Raiding the Zion Society compound took a lot of coordination and manpower. Mike arranged a strike team composed of roughly half the entire Ogden city police force. They executed the raid just before sunrise on August 2, 1991.

Larry Lewis (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): Police raided five homes in this North Ogden subdivision, removing four children from one home and five from another. The children range in age from four to 11 years old. Stan Belnap’s house was one of the five raided.

Stan Belnap (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): They took my kids a little before 8 o’clock. They were still in bed.

Mike King: I remember walking out of the judge’s office after getting the warrant signed, and uh, and I remember the judge saying ‘happy hunting.’ And as I walked out I thought ‘I’ve put my credibility on the line’ because this, this is kind of a big deal. And, and when I got inside the homes and started seeing the secret passageways, the food storage, the medical supplies which were incredible. They had been going into area hospitals, faking injuries and then stealing all of the supplies they could to, to build up their medical facility inside the cult. It was incredible. I was so troubled because we weren’t finding the weapons that they spoke about. And I remember sitting on the floor in the corner of one room with my map that my informant had drawn, saying ‘here’s where there are some guns’ and thinking ‘she missed the mark on this one. There are no guns here.’ And subconsciously I was tugging on the shag carpet and I felt the carpet give way and I heard a ripping of velcro and I peeled back the velcro and panels of uh, wood piled up, in there were stacked fully-loaded mini 14 semi-assault rifles. It was surreal.

Dave Cawley: No one fired a shot that morning. The children were whisked away to be interviewed. The parents, caught unprepared, stood aside as officers scoured their homes. But the search teams found no trace of the pornographic instruction manuals or training videos the informant had described.

Mike King: Yes, in fact what we believe happened is when this informant left the cult, uh it took her a couple of weeks until she got the courage to come into the county attorney’s office and confess that the cult was smart enough to realize that we might be into a little bit of trouble. And what they did, they burned boxes and boxes of pornography, according to the victims and the people who were later testifying. Uh, got rid of as much information as they possible could and so we did lose a treasure trove, even though we moved at breakneck speed.

Larry Lewis (from August 2, 1991 KSL TV archive): The children will remain in protective custody through the weekend. A hearing is scheduled for early next week to determine whether they’ll remain wards of the state or be returned to their parents.

Dave Cawley: The children were slow to open up to the investigators. police in time came to learn Zion Society members had coached them to instill a fear of police. During the raid Arvin Shreeve was nowhere to be found.

Mike King: We had warrants for Arvin. He was not there on the morning of the raid and was, we later learned was traveling, either in Arizona or California. Some of us — me — believe that he was hiding in a bunker that we couldn’t get a search warrant for.

Larry Lewis (from August 9, 1991 KSL TV archive): Wednesday, an Ogden judge issued an arrest warrant for Shreeve, charging him with aggravated sexual assault and sodomy on a child after two children told police Shreeve told them to perform a sex act. The accusations follow a lengthy investigation into Shreeve and others in his neighborhood who allegedly practice polygamy and have group sex.

Dave Cawley: Arvin surprised everyone by surrendering. A week after the raid, he walked into the police headquarters in Cedar City, Utah, nearly 300 miles to the south of Ogden.

Larry Lewis (from August 9, 1991 KSL TV archive): Shreeve walked into the police station, identified himself and told police he was wanted. A friend of Shreeve’s who was contacted by police apparently convinced him to give up.

Dave Cawley: Prosecutors waged a series of court battles against both Shreeve and a number of his adult followers, in the months that followed. The state lost custody of the children, most of whom were returned to the very parents who stood accused of facilitating their abuse. Time and again, the young victims were hauled into court to testify during preliminary hearings.

Mike King: We made a conscious decision that we can’t continue to force the children to testify because back then, if you remember, the courts required that the child testify in a preliminary hearing. Well, defense attorneys could get away with a whole lot more aggression in a prelim without a jury than they would ever dare try in front of a jury. And it was so distressing to us to see the children go through this badgering during the questioning phase.

Dave Cawley: The prosecutors believed they had evidence to support more than 700 felony counts of child sex abuse, but they filed only the most egregious. In the end, all but one of the people charged as a result of the Zion Society raid took plea deals and admitted to the abuse. Arvin Shreeve included.

Gary Gale (from December 23, 1991 KSL TV archive): What he was trying to avoid was a sentence of 15 years to life to run consecutively. That’s what he was trying to avoid, that’s what we were trying to avoid, that’s what we’ve avoided.

Dave Cawley: He spent the rest of his life in prison and died there in 2009, at the age of 79. Arvin had used zealotry and religious rituals to coerce his followers into doing the unthinkable. It was ritual abuse, but not satanic.

Mike King: They were using religion or a belief system as a guise for power. They were using it as a guise for intimidation and control. They were using it as a way to justify what was wrong and make it something special because we can’t really wrap our minds around deity or things like that. … I mean, I had some real struggles thinking of the horrors. It was impacting my own life. I had children the same age as these victims were at the time. And uh, for anyone to think that a police officer can just isolate the job is, is really unfair.

Dave Cawley: Mike recently published a memoir of his work on the Zion Society case. The book, titled “Deceived,” goes into more depth about the investigation and aftermath than I have time to explore here. And that’s because we still need to talk about the next phase of Mike’s career.

Mike King: It was way outside of normal police work to say we’re gonna pursue Satan.

Dave Cawley: That’s after the break.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: In March of 1990, Utah’s governor established a task force to study to the issue of ritual abuse. Leading the task force was a psychologist named Noemi Mattis, herself a firm believer in the stories of secret satanic ritual abuse. The group included members from the fields of mental health, law enforcement, education, the courts and religion. The task force’s stated goal was to study ritual abuse and educate both professionals and the public about it.

At the same time, Utah’s predominant religion — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — was also conducting an internal study about claims of satanic ritual abuse. This comes from an October, 1991 KSL TV news report, after a confidential church memo validating the idea of widespread satanic activity became public.

Jane Clayson (from October 25, 1991 KSL TV archive): Jody is one of the victims LDS Church general authority Glenn Pace interviewed for the internal, confidential church memo printed in an anti-LDS Church newsletter yesterday. The year-old memo estimates up to 800 people may be involved in such abuse along the Wasatch Front. Church members, some church leaders. Jody says LDS doctrine was twisted and distorted in the ritual ceremonies.

“Jody” (from October 25, 1991 KSL TV archive): There was a lot of violence and sexual perversion that went along with different scriptural settings.

Dave Cawley: The task force issued a report in 1992. It acknowledged the members had at first differed about whether they believed widespread ritual abuse was taking place. Some were skeptics. But, the report said, all had read literature on the subject. A bibliography attached to the task force report showed among the reading was an article titled “Ritualistic Child Abuse in a Neighborhood Setting,” co-authored by none other than Barbara Snow, the social worker who as I described earlier in this episode had been accused of coercing Alan Hadfield’s children into making disclosures of ritualistic abuse.

I should note, the prosecutor from the Hadfield case, Robert Parrish, was also a member of the governor’s ritual abuse task force. A task force that spent a lot of time hearing from people who claimed to have been victims of satanists.

Robert Parrish (from October 25, 1991 KSL TV archive): With those reports, it’s very difficult, even though it’s currently happening, to find any corroborative evidence. If it’s happening, these people are extremely careful and maybe the best at keeping quiet about what they do.

Dave Cawley: There was no mention in the task force report of the very real ritual abuse that’d been exposed just a year earlier in the Zion Society case. It didn’t fit the mold because it hadn’t involved satanism.

The task force said groups that ritually abused children were typically satanists, pagans or practitioners of ceremonial magic. The report also said satanic abuse was sometimes carried out by secretive generational cults. These cults were said to have existed for centuries, with practitioners being born and raised into them. The report said “members are often well-known and respected within their larger communities” and “their continued existence as successful, prestigious and powerful persons in outer society depends upon absolute secrecy of the inner group activities.”

Noemi Mattis, the task force’s figurehead, explained away the lack of firm evidence backing this up when interviewed about the report.

Noemi Mattis (from May 20, 1991 KSL TV archive): Very difficult to prove any cases in a court of law which involve ritual abuse simply because the people who are involved with it have real expertise at hiding their tracks.

Dave Cawley: Mattis and the task force members were hardly alone. A January, 1992 public opinion poll showed a stunning fraction of Utah residents — 90 percent — believed satanic ritual abuse of children was occurring. The task force recommended the creation of a new unit within the Utah Attorney General’s Office, which would have statewide jurisdiction to root out ritual abuse and generational satanism.

Here’s where Mike King comes back into our story. He was at the tail end of the prosecutions in the Zion Society case when the governor’s task force made its recommendations.

Mike King: So, I was reached out to by the attorney general and invited to come to the Attorney General’s Office having what they considered to be probably one of the more robust backgrounds now in organized, cultic behavior.

Dave Cawley: The Utah Legislature allocated a quarter of a million dollars to the AG’s Office. The money came with a mandate: investigate these ritual abuse reports. If satanists were sacrificing babies and burning bodies, Mike was supposed to find the evidence.

Mike King: There was so much going on and there were allegations all across the state that the local police departments were, frankly, ill-equipped to manage.

Dave Cawley: Mike and his new partner at the AG’s Office spent the next two years digging into the reports.

Mike King: And I can’t tell you how many wild goose chases I went on. I can’t even tell you how many times I went into, into central Utah to look at cows that were dead because an alien or Satan or something else came down and, and dissected this cow and carefully removed its eyes or whatever else. And I remember on one occasion I was with a fish and game officer and I was getting sucked into this. I’m looking at this cow and it was surgically, perfect around the eyes where the eyeballs had been removed. … I was laser-focused on this and I’m going ‘what do you think here’ and the fish and game cop just bursts out laughing and he says ‘well, I think two things: number one, birds and predators go for the softer squishy parts’ and he said ‘all of this magpie mess around the fur by the eye should be an indication to you.’ And it was like, we all were getting so focused on the tree that we were missing a big forest.

Dave Cawley: Time and again, Mike went looking for hard evidence to support the accusations, only to return empty-handed.

Mike King: It took us awhile to figure out we need to pull back on the reins a little bit and we need to investigate these the way we know how to investigate. We need to investigate the child sexual abuse and then bring that ritualism in as an aggravating factor during sentencing or at the appropriate time during the trial. But quit allowing, uh, the courts and the public to drag us down into the weeds to talk about Satan when it really is about children being sexually assaulted.

Dave Cawley: This was something Mike had learned from the Zion Society case.

Mike King: So there were a number that resulted in prosecution for a number of different things as we identified the sexually assault. We were only able to truly get confessions where someone had used satanism or satanic beliefs or doctrine as part of their control mechanism in about three or four.

Dave Cawley: Three or four instances of satanism out of hundreds of reports. And even then, the form satanism in those cases wasn’t the generational kind, infiltrating through every facet of society. It wasn’t black masses or human sacrifices. It was instead a show: the use of scary imagery to terrify a victim into silence.

Mike King: It’s bunch of smoke and mirror and a bunch of terror.

Dave Cawley: Mike and his partner put together a report of their own, detailing their findings. They published it in 1995.

Duane Cardall (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): Mike King and another investigator have been looking into what some call the satanism scare. This governor’s task force wanted it done and the Legislature came up with $250,000 to support it.

Mike King (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): We started with about 225 cases over the course of that period.

Duane Cardall (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): Cases of alleged abuse of adults remembering horrific stories from their youth of mutilations, torture, even human sacrifice.

Mike King (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): We found sites all across the state, not in great numbers, but all across the state that support the fact that there are dabblers out there.

Dave Cawley: More than 25 years have passed since Mike’s report went public. You can still find it online — I’ve included links to it in the show notes and at thecoldpodcast.com — and it’s an interesting read.

Mike King: Because the Latter-day Saint population is so prominent here in Salt Lake and in Utah, many of the allegations were that this person would pray like a Latter-day Saint or something else. Well, what we found so interesting is that if we talked to our peer investigators in Chicago that were doing this, where the Catholic Church was strong, they prayed like Catholics. If they were down in the South they prayed like a Christian down there. And so we started to also recognize that this is geographically and historically going to be influenced. I don’t know why that wasn’t picked up on before but we felt like that was an incredibly important point.

Dave Cawley: Mike’s report walked a fine line. It didn’t call out the satanic hysteria, but it also didn’t validate it. At least, not much.

Duane Cardall (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): So what about all the people who have been coming forth in recent years with sudden memories of being involved in ritual abuse as children and recalling that Satan worship was involved?

Mike King (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): My personal belief is that we have pedophiles who are using this as one of the ways to keep their crimes secret.

Dave Cawley: Mike’s report invoked to the Zion Society case to make this point. Arvin Shreeve had used religious ritual to manipulate his victims.

Mike King: I mean it’s theatrics. It’s power, dominion and control and how am I going to accomplish that? For some people it’s brute force. For others its emotional pressure. I mean, we see it in domestic violence cases where we see people who stay in a relationship that others would walk away from screaming.

Dave Cawley: There’s a huge gulf though between the concept of secret generational satanic sex abuse cults and one-off abusers who simply use occult imagery to keep their victims quiet.

Duane Cardall (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): Yes, their 58-page report concludes there are isolated, verifiable accounts of people doing horrible things to others, sometimes in the name of Satan. But they also conclude it is not widespread.

Mike King (from April 25, 1995 KSL TV archive): We found absolutely no evidence that would support that there are generational cults or members of cults that have infiltrated every level of government or religious organizations or community organizations.

Dave Cawley: Let me underline that. No evidence of generational satanic cults. That part wasn’t real.

Mike King: Is it possible we missed a coven or a group of people that were dressing up in robes and, and worshipping Satan? Absolutely. But by focusing on the crime we were able to solve and make arrests and get help for children, umm, and then hopefully learn lessons along the way.

Dave Cawley: This was a tricky thing to communicate in the report, because Mike didn’t want to invalidate the experiences of child sex abuse victims who believed they’d witnessed or been a part of satanic ritual abuse. But the fact was, ritual abuse allegations involving human sacrifice, generational satanism and a widespread conspiracy could not be corroborated.

Mike concluded the report by writing “the investigation of ritual crimes may be in its infancy today, as child sexual abuse investigations were 25 years ago.” It seems to me this left the door open for true believers of the satanic abuse myth to say “just because you didn’t find evidence, doesn’t mean it’s not there.” But what we see from the Zion Society case — or even the sex abuse scandals that have engulfed the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and other trusted organizations — is that child sex abuse rarely involves pentagrams, demons and blood sacrifice.

Mike King: Hopefully we took enough of a fact-based delivery into account that people see how we backed up what we said. But to a true believer for us to say ‘we didn’t find it’ is really troubling. And again, to me it goes back to that notion of if we believe something, we’re going to twist everything we can to make it look real.

Dave Cawley: That twisting had huge consequences for people who were accused on the basis of coerced confessions or implanted memories. With the satanic panic, investigators were often tasked with hunting for evidence that would support the public’s or even a psychologist’s pre-determined conclusion: that satanic ritual abuse was occurring, even if it wasn’t.

Mike King: And you don’t want to allow those things to drive the investigation. A police officer’s responsibility is to just gather facts.

Dave Cawley: Which takes us full circle back to the Joyce Yost case. The unfounded report that a satanic coven had killed Joyce came very near to knocking that investigation permanently off track. Had Rhonda Buttars not confessed the truth of her ex-husband Doug Lovell’s actions, Sgt. Terry Carpenter would’ve continued on searching for evidence to support the idea Joyce’d died in a ritual ceremony. That evidence, of course, didn’t exist because that’s not what’d happened. At some point, the trail would’ve gone cold and the truth of what Doug did to Joyce might never have come to light.

Mike King: The real wisdom that came from that ritual crime report, from looking at the Zion Society, looking at Joyce Yost’s case and the amount of tentacles that that case had, imagine how much more could have happened if we’d have focused on the elements of the crime rather than all the tertiary stuff that was just kind of sexy and needed to be chased.

Dave Cawley: Sean Young, one of the attorneys who’d represented Doug Lovell during his 2015 capital murder trial, met with the attorney handling Doug’s appeal of his death sentence in March, 2019.

That second attorney, Colleen Coeburgh, made an audio recording of their conversation.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): I don’t care what happens to Doug. I used to care. I don’t care anymore.

Colleen Coebergh (from March, 2019 recording): Ok. And I appreciate that.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): He’s a manipulator and a sociopath and I’m done with him. You can tell him I said that. Hi Doug.

Dave Cawley: If you didn’t catch that, Sean called Doug “a manipulator and a sociopath.” But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so let’s a take a moment and review.

Doug Lovell’s rape and murder of Joyce Yost in 1985 had created a legal mess. His guilty plea to capital murder in ’93 — followed by his conviction for the same crime at trial in 2015 — meant he’d twice received a death sentence. But by 2017, the case had once again become bound up by an appeal. Doug’d had claimed Sean Young had torpedoed the 2015 trial by failing to call many people Doug’d identified as potential character witnesses. He’d also claimed lawyers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had interfered with the testimonies of several people Sean had called to the witness stand.

Doug also opened a second front on Sean by filing a complaint against him with the Utah State Bar, which he mentioned in this letter to Judge Michael DiReda.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): The Utah State Bar investigated Mr. Young and on March 2, 2017, voted to direct the Office of Professional Conduct to file a formal complaint against Mr. Young in District Court.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s wasn’t the only bar complaint pending against Sean. There were others rising out of at least 20 different cases. Sean reached an agreement during the summer of 2018 to settle all those complaints. As part of that agreement, he signed a statement admitting fault in Doug’s case.

The statement said Sean had failed to screen all but two of the 18 witnesses assigned to him during Doug’s trial; that he’d failed to question the witnesses who did testify about their beliefs Doug was a remorseful man and that he’d capitulated to the church’s lawyers. A judge suspended Sean’s law license for a period of three years. Sean told the Deseret News at the time he didn’t agree with the claims in the statement, but had signed it simply to put the matter behind him.

Meantime, Doug’s new appellate attorney, Colleen Coebergh, was dogging Sean. She’d learned he possessed hundreds of emails that could be relevant to Doug’s appeal. In a sworn affidavit, Colleen wrote Sean had repeatedly told her he would provide them, then repeatedly failed to do so. She had to ask Judge DiReda to issue a court order demanding Sean surrender his emails, which the judge did. And so that’s why Sean and Colleen met at a courthouse in Salt Lake City, to make that exchange in March of 2019.

Colleen Coebergh (from March, 2019 recording): Ok, you’ve given up every document that you have?

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): To Sam, yeah.

Colleen Coebergh (from March, 2019 recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: Sean told Colleen he disagreed with any suggestion his representation of Doug had been ineffective.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): I did my best to help him. I actually cared about Doug. I did my best I could. I gave him advice. I said, ‘hey, waive your jury, waive the jury and go back to Judge DiReda like you did with judge uh, the original judge on the case.’ I forgot. And he didn’t want to do that—

Colleen Coebergh (from March, 2019 recording): Taylor.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): Judge Taylor. And he said ‘no, Judge Taylor already sentenced me to death one time. I’m not going to waive my jury. I want a jury.’ He said, ‘no jury’s going to convict me.’ And I told him to take the stand. Those were my two pieces of advice that we talked about the whole time. And last thing he backed out. So he, he manipulated me the whole time. And I’m done with him. I’m done.

Dave Cawley: Sean said he refused to spend any more time on Doug.

Colleen Coebergh (from March, 2019 recording): I sit and waste hours and hours on this case. I haven’t been paid a dollar. I’m out $100,000 on this case and I’m kind of done with it. I’m frustrated. You guys get paid, Sam got paid, everyone gets paid except me. I’m kind of sick of it.

Dave Cawley: Sean said he wouldn’t get his law license back, even if the court decided his work for Doug had been up to par.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): You’re not going to help me. You’re not there to help me.

Mitigation expert (from March, 2019 recording): Well we’re, we’re trying to help Doug.

Sean Young (from March, 2019 recording): I don’t care about Doug. He’s a manipulative sociopath. I’m kind of done with him. He manipulated me. He manipulated Sam. He manipulated you. He’s manipulated everybody. It’s what he does. That’s all he does. He’s manipulative.

Dave Cawley: Doug Lovell hadn’t been able to convince a single juror he deserved a chance for parole, but he was about to work his way out of maximum security at the Utah State Prison and one step closer to his ultimate goal: freedom. 

This is the finale of Cold, season two, episode 13: Last Chance. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. Back after this break.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Doug Lovell happened to be listening to the radio on April 3, 2019 when he heard a woman named Candice Madsen on the airwaves of KSL NewsRadio.

Candice Madsen (from April 3, 2019 KSL NewsRadio archive): With your kids, you want to be the hero, right? You want to be in charge of everything. I think it’s okay for your kids to see you be vulnerable and to let your kids know that you struggle but that you got help.

Dave Cawley: Candice worked as a producer for KSL TV and was promoting a documentary called “Hope in Your Darkest Hour.” The 22-minute program profiled several people affected by suicide, including some who described their first-hand struggles coping with thoughts of self-harm.

Candice Madsen (from April 3, 2019 KSL NewsRadio archive): Life is hard. We can’t do it alone. We just need to reach out and support each other and validate without judgement. I think people are so afraid of being judged.

Dave Cawley: Doug wrote Candice a letter that same day.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Dear Ms. Candice Madsen, I just got done listening to you talk about suicide on KSL radio. I thought your comments were spot on.

Dave Cawley: The letter wasn’t the only item Doug put in the envelope.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Enclosed is a pamphlet which has a story about a little mouse I crossed paths with here at the prison many, many years ago. I decided last year to write about my experience with the mouse in the hope that it could be used to help prevent suicide here in Utah and elsewhere.

Dave Cawley: The front of the pamphlet included an illustration of a rather plump gray mouse holding a small cube of yellow cheese. Above the mouse were printed the words: Unforeseen Angel. Candice opened the pamphlet and started to read.

Candice Madsen: It was pretty basic. It didn’t give very much information about him other than that he was an inmate.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): When I was a little boy, our family of five moved out to the country to live on a small farm. I found that I had a love for animals and a special way of connecting with them.

Dave Cawley: Let’s fast-forward through the bits where Doug described his parents’ divorce, his brother’s death and his descent into drug and alcohol abuse.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): Eventually, I did the unthinkable, for which I was sent to prison — taking the life of an innocent person.

Dave Cawley: He did not bother to say who this person was, or why he’d killed her, but said his arrival at the prison had sent him into a well of depression and “spiritual darkness.”

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): One day, a little, furry-faced mouse came wandering into my cell clearly looking for trouble or an easy snack. This was the happiest moment on A-block. I was happy to give the little guy anything he wanted.

Dave Cawley: Doug spent the next four paragraphs detailing his interactions with this mouse, describing how he’d lured the critter by rubbing peanut oil between his fingertips. He said he’d talked to the mouse, finding it an attentive listener.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): May sound strange to most people, but that little creature that God put on this earth distracted me just long enough to help get me through the darkest, loneliest, most unstable time in my life.

Dave Cawley: He concluded with a proclamation that all people are children of God with value and purpose. He offered suicide prevention resources.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): If you find yourself in a very dark place struggling to find hope or purpose in life, please take the first step toward a brighter, happier, more fulfilling life.

Dave Cawley: Doug used the word “I” 30 times in this narrative. The name Joyce Yost did not appear once.

Candice Madsen: This pamphlet was so well produced. Y’know, it was professionally done. So I was kind of, was he able to do that in prison? And so, I just thought that was interesting.

Dave Cawley: Candice turned the pamphlet over and saw a logo on the back. It read “Rising Star Outreach.” Candice showed the pamphlet to a friend, who asked if she knew who Doug was or what he’d done. A quick search through the KSL archives refreshed her memory. She discovered the evidentiary hearing tied to Doug’s appeal had not yet happened, but was just around the corner.

Candice Madsen: And I started thinking, ‘I wonder if he’s just trying to kind of get character witnesses.’”

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Utah 2^nd District Court Judge Michael DiReda spent most of the month of August, 2019 on that evidentiary hearing.

Michael DiReda (from August 5, 2019 court recording): Alright, let’s turn to the matter of State of Utah versus Douglas Lovell. This is case 92-1900407. Counsel, will you state your appearances for the record, please?

Dave Cawley: Doug’s appeal of his 2015 death sentence revolved around the idea his defense team hadn’t done a good job. This is a typical step in many death penalty appeals. But the Utah Supreme Court had wanted more information before making a ruling on Doug’s claims of ineffective counsel, so it’d sent the appeal back to Judge DiReda on what’s known as a Rule 23B remand.

Russell DiReda (from August 5, 2019 court recording): This is the time scheduled for evidentiary hearing … On an order from the Supreme Court to this court under Rule 23B.

Dave Cawley: I’ve reviewed hours of this testimony but rather than plow through it all chronologically, I’m going to jump around a bit to better focus on a few particular points. I’ll start with Doug’s mouse. During the hearing, former prison guard Carl Jacobson recalled Doug having once befriended a rodent, but it wasn’t a mouse.

Carl Jacobson (from August 13, 2019 court recording): He had a pet squirrel once — Clusters — trained it and had it in his room for the whole summer. And one day I confronted him and said, ‘y’know Doug, this, this is disgusting. You and your roommate Chewy have done things wrong and you’re in jail for a reason. This squirrel has done nothing. It needs to be out chasing girl squirrels and it needs to be gathering nuts.’ And I says, ‘you keep it in a prison as your little pet. You are disgusting.’ And I left. Next day I come back. Doug Lovell, I go, ‘where’s the squirrel?’ He’d let it go.

Dave Cawley: Kent Tucker, who was married to one of Doug’s cousins, also brought up Doug’s treatment of animals.

Kent Tucker (from August 16, 2019 court recording): So, I’ve always, y’know, you hear about bad, bad guys and usually they don’t want nothing to do with animals. They’ll kill animals and stuff like that. Doug is never, that’s never been his nature. He’s, he just got a kind heart.

Dave Cawley: Kent said he’d seen that kindness all the way back in Doug’s earliest years, when he was just a boy on the farm.

Kent Tucker (from August 16, 2019 court recording): I mean he’s had skunks and squirrels and down at the prison they even had a mink come in that they brought to him and asked Doug if he was interested in this mink which, it was a wild animal, and Doug actually got it to where he could put it in his pocket and he was working at the print shop at the time and he was taking this mink with him to work.

Dave Cawley: So was the mouse mentioned in the pamphlet a real thing? Or was it an amalgam: part squirrel, part mink, part story borrowed from the movie The Green Mile? Doug’s character witnesses painted him not just as a protector of animals, but also as a shepherd of men. Leon Denney, who’d served time in the Utah State Prison in ’88, described how Doug had helped him overcome his anger.

Leon Denney (from August 5, 2019 court recording): I think I stopped hating so much. I was really filled with, with hate. Because … it made me start looking at myself and realizing that, y’know, I had to, I had to step up to the plate.

Dave Cawley: Leon had not testified at the trial, but said he would have gladly done so had Doug’s defense team bothered to ask. Other witnesses told of how Doug had cared for fellow inmates when they were ill or despondent.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): He encouraged them and he’d say ‘you can still go back to God, you can still get your life right.’ And how do I know that? Because he would say to them ‘if you don’t believe me, write Becky Douglas.’ Well I have had more than 40 prisoners writing to me because Doug Lovell said to them ‘there is a way spiritually for you to come back to the Lord.’ I have been writing to these people.

Dave Cawley: Becky Douglas had discovered in Doug an enthusiastic booster for her non-profit, Rising Star Outreach.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): The more I got to know Doug, the more I was very impressed with how remorseful he was, how much he wanted to do good, how much he cared about the children at Rising Star.

Dave Cawley: Doug had spent the last decade talking up Rising Star to anyone who would listen. In fact, several of his witnesses — including his bishops — confessed he’d talked them into contributing. Becky said Doug had spent years taking correspondence classes on religion. He’d watched a TV series about the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and another about the New Testament, then sent her letters explaining how each had strengthened his faith.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): These aren’t the actions of a person who’s pretending to be suddenly come-to-Jesus or religious in order to get a light sentence.

Dave Cawley: And yet, one of the bishops who’d ministered to Doug — a man named Brent Scharman — admitted deep discussion of spiritual matters had been the exception rather than the rule during their Sunday visits…

Brent Scharman (from August 28, 2019 court recording): It was more typically about everyday issues and what was going on in his life and my life and in the world at large.

Dave Cawley: …which led the state’s attorney to ask if Doug’s turn to religion might’ve been an act.

Brent Scharman (from August 28, 2019 court recording): If it’s an act, it’s a very good act.

Dave Cawley: Doug had once told his ex-wife Rhonda you “can’t be in control unless you manipulate. Russell Minas, the attorney who’d helped Doug arrange visitation with his son in the late ‘90s, said he didn’t see their friendship that way.

Mark Field (from August 5, 2019 court recording): You don’t think he’s manipulating you.

Russell Minas (from August 5, 2019 court recording): No.

Mark Field (from August 5, 2019 court recording): And that’s on the basis of telephone calls.

Russell Minas (from August 5, 2019 court recording): Right.

Mark Field (from August 5, 2019 court recording): That he controls.

Dave Cawley: One of those phone calls had come shortly after Doug had received the death verdict in 2015. Doug had called Russell, upset, wanting to know why he’d turned his back on him.

Russell Minas (from August 5, 2019 court recording): He thought that I had changed my mind about appearing to testify. He had no idea why I hadn’t, why I wasn’t there. He felt that I’d betrayed him. I did everything that I could to reassure him that I wasn’t there because nobody ever called me to testify.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: I noticed a pattern as I listened to all this testimony. Day after day, witness after witness, the questioning almost seemed to follow a script. Appellate attorney Colleen Coeburgh would start, eliciting answers that suggested trial defense attorney Sean Young had dropped the ball.

Colleen Coebergh (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Had you had any communications with Mr. Young before he called you to the witness stand such that he would understand and know what you were even going to say when he asked you questions?

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): No.

Dave Cawley: She asked the witnesses who’d dealt with the attorneys for The Church of Jesus Christ to explain what the church’s lawyers had said and done.

Colleen Coebergh (from August 16, 2019 court recording): And what do you think their focus was?

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Well, I think they were interested in protecting the good name of The Church.

Dave Cawley: Assistant Utah Attorney General Mark Field would then take over. He’d use cross-examination to reveal how little any of these people knew about what Doug had done to end up on death row. That was true even for Leon Denney, who’d met Doug in prison when Doug was still denying having raped Joyce.

Aaron Murphy (from August 5, 2019 court recording): Is it possible that Mr. Lovell really was falsely accused of rape?

Leon Denney (from August 5, 2019 court recording): I, he never told me that. I, I’ve never sat down with him and discussed what he was in for. Ever. … Y’know, it isn’t something you go around asking people what they’re in prison for it can cause just some problems, okay?

Dave Cawley: Mark Field would also point out how none of the witnesses who’d met Doug since he’d received the original death verdict in ’93 had ever interacted with him outside of maximum security.

Mark Field (from August 28, 2019 court recording): Have you ever seen how Doug Lovell reacts when a woman refuses his advances?

Brent Scharman (from August 28, 2019 court recording): No.

Mark Field (from August 28, 2019 court recording): Wouldn’t you think that someone who is capable of murdering another person in order to not go back to prison would be at least as capable of feigning remorse in order to get out of prison?

Brent Scharman (from August 28, 2019 court recording): Sure.

Mark Field (from August 28, 2019 court recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: The point Mark was making here was that the trial defense team might’ve had good reason not to deeply probe all of Doug’s supporters in front of the jury.

Mark Field (from August 5, 2019 court recording): Because you don’t want to call people who are going to testify that Lovell should have life without parole. Right? You can’t call those people. You can only call people who will say unequivocally ‘Doug Lovell should be out.’ Because if they say anything different, then they’re say— then, the way Doug Lovell’s set it up, it’s got to be death.

Dave Cawley: Remember, Doug had refused to allow the jury the option of life without parole. Mark suggested Doug had for years intentionally kept his supporters in the dark with the singular goal of someday getting out of prison.

Mark Field (from August 16, 2019 court recording): You know, you said that Mr. Lovell is honest. And I want to kind of get to the bottom of that because you’ve also said that you never talked about the crime. Is that right?

Kent Tucker (from August 16, 2019 court recording): That’s right. I think he would have told me if I’d have asked him.

Mark Field (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Well, did he ever volunteer it?

Kent Tucker (from August 16, 2019 court recording): No.

Dave Cawley: This meant each witness was vulnerable to facing those facts for the first time on cross-examination.

Mark Field (from August 5, 2019 court recording): You would let him out of prison because you think—

Russell Minas (from August 5, 2019 court recording): Well, I certainly have heard things here today that I haven’t heard before. So, as you indicated and I acknowledged, it gives me some reason for pause.

Dave Cawley: Mark exposed other vulnerabilities, like how Gary Webster, the former bishop and parole board member, had actually signed the papers that let Doug out of prison early in the armed robbery case.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): That was when you were there at the Board of Pardons and Parole, is that right?

Gary Webster (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Yeah, yes.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): So, I mean, I guess what I’m saying is, how are, how do you know that Doug Lovell won’t do the same thing when he gets out this time?

Gary Webster (from August 12, 2019 court recording): I don’t.

Dave Cawley: What would the jury have made of that statement in 2015, when weighing the choice of giving Doug a chance at parole? I’m going to focus for a moment on the testimony of Becky Douglas, to provide a better sense of how the state’s line of attack worked. Mark asked Becky if she knew about Doug’s conviction for armed robbery in ’78. She said no.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): So, you didn’t know that he’d been released in three years. Right?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Right.

Dave Cawley: This queued up a string of follow-up questions.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Do you know what he did two years later, three years later?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): No, I’m sure you’re going to tell me.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): He raped Joyce Yost.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: He drew out each detail of the crime, starting from when Doug had first seen Joyce at the Pier 3.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): He watched her come out of that restaurant. And when he saw her get in her car, he followed her home. Did you know that?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Umm, I knew that. Could I say that what he did was unbelievably heinous and atrocious and horrible. And as a woman, I think as women we all live in fear of this exact kind of thing happening. And I feel for what happened to Joyce Yost. And I feel, and I don’t think I need to know the details of what happened to Joyce Yost. What I need to know is what happened to Doug Lovell after that happened.

Dave Cawley: But Becky was not in control of this narrative. Mark continued, describing what’d happened when Joyce had arrived home.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Did you know that he then looked at her and said ‘you’re attractive, do you want to go have a drink with me?’ Did you know that?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): No. I think I’ve made it very clear that I didn’t know what happened at that time.

Dave Cawley: Mark forced Becky to acknowledge what she knew — or didn’t know — never flinching away from the facts.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Well did you know that after he did that he was aroused enough to then sodomize her? Did you know that?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): No, I didn’t know that.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): He didn’t tell you that, did he?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): I think I’ve been very clear about that.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Is that ‘no, he didn’t tell you’?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Seriously? You don’t think that’s a no? (Laughs) Of course it’s a no. I mean, this is almost, this is almost an insult, right? Can you just simply tell me what you want me to say no to and I’m happy to say no.

Dave Cawley: He asked about Doug’s efforts to hire a hitman who’d then failed to follow through. Becky said that, she knew.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Did you know that he hired a second person?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): I knew that also.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): And do you know that that person said no?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Yes, I read all this on the internet.

Dave Cawley: Mark described the night of Joyce’s murder, how Joyce had begged for her life as Doug force-fed her Valium and drove her into the mountains.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): And he choked her until she was unconscious. Were you aware of that?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): No, but I think if you’ll turn around you’ll see that there is remorse. The man that you’re talking about is crying.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Your honor, your honor, this is not responsive.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): As you talk about these terrible, horrible things that he did, he’s over there weeping. And you ask me how I know he’s remorseful. I think that answers, that’s one answer to your question.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): So tears to you indicate sincerity?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Well, I think tears show sorrow.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Well, I guess that’s your opinion.

Dave Cawley: Becky came through this gauntlet, only to then face perhaps the most critical question.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Wouldn’t you agree that there’s at least some risk that if Doug Lovell gets out, he may harm another person?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): I think that risk is so low, it’s negligible.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Ok, but it’s not zero.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): It’s not zero for me either or you either. We all have the possibility of harming another person.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Well, but we know that Doug Lovell raped and murdered another, murdered a woman, don’t we?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Yes we do.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s character witnesses were not unified in their responses to this final question. Some said their newfound knowledge of Doug’s crimes did give them pause in supporting his bid for parole. Others, like former bishop John Newton, equivocated.

Mark Field (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Wouldn’t life without parole just satisfy, be the safest alternative?

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Well, y’know, you’re saying ‘safest.’ Would it be a safe alternative?

Mark Field (from August 16, 2019 court recording): The safest.

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Well, that implies that you know how Doug’s going to act in the future. And I don’t and you don’t.

Mark Field (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Yes, but you know Mr. Newton, one of your daughters is now the age that Joyce Yost was when that man raped and took her life. Do you understand that?

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): Y’know, give me the dignity of being a professional. Of course I do.

Dave Cawley: On one point though, the witnesses all seemed to agree: the Doug they knew was not the same man who’d killed Joyce all those many years ago.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Doug and I have not spoken about this so I think all this is—

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Is what?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Irrelevant. I’ve already testified—

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): I’m sorry, did you just say—

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): —that we haven’t spoken about it.

Mark Field (from August 12, 2019 court recording): —did you just say it’s irrelevant?

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): Yes. Because, because I don’t know that Doug. I only know the Doug that I met in 2007.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: One final point before we move on. During the evidentiary hearing, several of Doug’s witnesses said something like this:

John “Jack” Newton (from August 16, 2019 court recording): And I know on more than one occasion he’s declined an opportunity to be interviewed because he’s concerned that somehow the publicity of this will reach his victim’s family and he feels, in my opinion, a great amount of remorse and is aware of the, at least to some degree, the suffering he’s put them through and doesn’t want to make that worse.

Dave Cawley: Candice Madsen, my colleague at KSL TV who’d received that pamphlet from Doug in the mail, attended parts of the evidentiary hearing. She noted how much older Doug looked compared to his appearance in ’85 or even ’93.

Candice Madsen: And then the other thing that was kind of heartbreaking is, Joyce’s daughter was in that courtroom alone.

Dave Cawley: I asked Kim Salazar about this idea Doug not talking about Joyce was somehow meant to spare her family additional pain.

Kim Salazar: If he were trying to minimize our pain and suffering at this point, we wouldn’t still be on a 23B remand 35 years later. He’d be done. This thing would be done.

Dave Cawley: But it’s far from done.

Kim Salazar: He hasn’t even scratched the surface of the appellate process. We’re still arguing about ineffective assistance of counsel. It’s ridiculous. So he is not trying to spare us anything.

Dave Cawley: Candice wrote a letter of her own to Doug in the fall of 2019.

Candice Madsen: And umm, I just said basically that I was interested in interviewing him. I wanted to bring a producer. … And sent it. I think it was only a paragraph long.

Dave Cawley: Doug’s reply arrived soon after.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I appreciate your offer to come to the prison to interview me, but I must decline. When ever I am in the news, I know that it is very upsetting to the family and loved ones of Ms. Yost. Each time I am in court, I believe it is very difficult for them.

Candice Madsen: Well, I wrote back and made it clear that Joyce’s family knew that I had reached out to him and I never heard back.

Dave Cawley: Doug had included another full-color pamphlet containing a different inspirational message about his life in prison published again by Becky Douglas’ charity, Rising Star Outreach.

Candice Madsen: I mean, I believe in redemption and that people in prison should have an opportunity to do good, but I question his motives.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: I’d been working as a radio news producer at the time of Doug’s 2015 trial. I was aware of it then, but only superficially, as the story of a very old murder which had been solved but was back in court on technicality. It wasn’t until Candice came to me and talked about receiving the letter from Doug that my interest was piqued. Like Candice, I dove into the archives. The stories I found all seemed to focus on Doug. It became clear to me that Joyce’s story — like Susan Powell’s — had not been told. I couldn’t shake the feeling Joyce deserved better. So I spent more than a year tracking down sources, digging up old audio, pouring over court transcripts and searching for a secluded mountain gravesite.

Bill Holthaus: Like I say, the only thing I believe is she’s not where he took us.

Dave Cawley: Yeah.

Bill Holthaus: Got to be somewhere else. I can’t believe that he, I refuse to believe that she doesn’t know where she’s at.

Dave Cawley: Bill Holthaus doesn’t believe cougars or coyotes are to blame for Joyce not being on the mountain below Snowbasin. Neither does former South Ogden police sergeant Terry Carpenter, for that matter.

Terry Carpenter: He went back there how long after he killed her and buried her. He knows exactly where she’s at. He knows exactly where she’s at.

Dave Cawley: Joyce’s son Greg Roberts is likewise skeptical.

Greg Roberts: I mean, it’s such an intense situation I know he could take you right to the spot immediately.

Dave Cawley: But where is that “spot?” Police and prosecutors showed with the Joyce Yost case they could prove a murder without a body. But their inability to bring Joyce home has left some deep scars.

Terry Carpenter: My wife and my two little kids went up one time to Snowbasin area to, on a picnic, if you will. And we’re having lunch and I says ‘why don’t we just walk down this area.’ And my wife looked at me and says (pause) ‘you’re still looking, aren’t you?’ I says ‘yeah, I was just walking.’ So we’ve got our little kids and we’re just walking and I’m looking, y’know and all the sudden my wife yells at me and says ‘Terry, what if we find something?’ We tried. She’s not there.

Dave Cawley: Terry is a Christian. He told me he believes in a resurrection. He expects to see Joyce again.

Terry Carpenter: Someday we’ll know. I look forward to that day and wonder if it’s not something that I missed.

Dave Cawley: But the question of where to find Joyce, if not along the Old Snowbasin Road, isn’t the only one still in need of answers. You’ve heard Terry say in this podcast he believes Doug might have killed other people. There are others who call this is far-fetched. And they may be right. I don’t have firm evidence linking Doug Lovell with Sheree Warren, for instance. But Sheree’s case is, like Joyce Yost’s, long overdue for a fresh look. I’ll have more to say about that in the future.

Kim Salazar told me she believes the discovery of her mother’s remains — if it happens — will be a matter of random chance.

Kim Salazar: I don’t believe that even at the 11^th hour, if we ever were to reach the 11^th hour, that Doug would be the one that would give us that information and I truly in my heart believe that he won’t. So I do think we’re going to have to get there by some other means.

Dave Cawley: Perhaps, as I tend to suspect, Joyce is not far off the side of the highway that crosses the Monte Cristo Mountains, where a wildlife officer observed Doug and Rhonda together in late 1985. That’s a piece of the puzzle that hardly anyone knew about before this podcast.

Bill Holthaus: I did not know about that at all.

Dave Cawley: I’ll show you some documents and—

Bill Holthaus: That’s, that’s, no that’s interesting.

Dave Cawley: I suggested to Bill Holthaus Joyce might be in one of those aspen groves, buried under branches and leaves, out of sight of the hunters who frequent those hills, waiting for someone to step in the just the right spot. Or maybe not. I made a vague reference to this theory in a letter of my own to Doug Lovell. Doug did not respond.

Candice Madsen: And it’s a pattern with him that, y’know, he doesn’t, y’know, wanna disrespect the family or disrespect Joyce’s memory. You’re disrespecting Joyce by not saying her name. By not remembering her. She’s not, I mean we, she is a person. She was a living person. And it’s just, when you read that letter, I don’t think he got it. And I still don’t think he gets it.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: The Utah Supreme Court’s order sending Doug’s appeal back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing had carried a 90-day deadline. The hearing had not taken place until more than two years later. Judge Michael DiReda had told both sides at the conclusion to submit their proposed findings to him by the end of January, 2020. Doug’s appellate attorney Colleen Coebergh asked for a one-month extension with just days remaining, due to a death in her family. She requested another delay in February, citing “attorney health and workload.” Then, March happened.

Announcer (from March 11, 2020 KSL TV archive): This is breaking news from KSL.

Dave McCann (from March 11, 2020 KSL TV archive): Good evening, we’re following breaking news tonight. Jazz All-Star Rudy Gobert is confirmed to have the Coronavirus, prompting the NBA to suspend the season indefinitely.

Deannie Wimmer (from March 11, 2020 KSL TV archive): This comes as international health officials have declared the coronavirus a pandemic…

Dave Cawley: The Utah Jazz — the state’s premier professional sports team — became a flashpoint in the global spread of Covid-19. Much of American society went into lockdown within hours of that announcement.  A magnitude 5.7 earthquake rattled northern Utah a week later. It dealt damage to the building that houses the Utah State Archives.

Garna Mejia (from March 18, 2020 KSL TV archive): Luckily no one was injured. Officials say damages are primarily cosmetic and the building is closed as authorities continue monitoring the aftershocks.

Dave Cawley: Colleen requested another extension, citing these unforeseeable circumstances. Month by month, delay by delay, the goalposts moved farther into the future. Doug lost touch with his lawyer, as he revealed in a letter to the court that July.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I have had no contact with my attorney for some time. I have no idea as to what is going on? Please send me a copy of my court docket for the last 90 days.

Dave Cawley: The Utah Attorney General’s Office submitted its proposed findings that fall. Colleen again asked for more time, prompting another letter from Doug in November.

Richie Steadman (as Doug Lovell): I ask this court to not grant Ms. Coebergh any more extensions. Enough is enough. I am very frustrated.

Dave Cawley: Judge DiReda allowed one final delay, but warned if Colleen didn’t submit her proposed findings by the end of January, 2021 — a full year after the original deadline — he would go ahead and issue his ruling without her input. Doug’s attorney did get her proposed findings in, after the deadline. A few weeks later, at the end of February, Judge DiReda released his conclusions.

The nearly 170-page document went against Doug on every point. In short: trial attorney Sean Young had not acted deficiently. A full point-by-point analysis would take more time than I have, so just a few observations.

First, Judge DiReda said he’d found many of Doug’s witnesses lacked credibility and exhibited bias, brought on by their disappointment at the outcome of the 2015 trial. He said many of them had become “hesitant or outright evasive” when confronted with the facts of Doug’s crimes at the evidentiary hearing.

Second, Judge DiReda found no evidence that Church lawyers had threatened any witnesses or interfered with their testimonies.

Third, the judge said the settlement agreement Sean had signed over Doug’s complaint to the state bar after the trial was “unreliable” and contained “numerous factual inaccuracies.” He placed little, if any, weight on what it’d said.

And fourth, Judge DiReda noted it was Doug’s own insistence on refusing to allow the jury the option of life without parole that caused most of his defense team’s problems. Michael Bouwhuis and Sean Young had repeatedly pressed Doug to reconsider. They’d known the best chance of saving his life was to push for life without parole. By denying them that strategy, Doug had effectively limited the value of his own witnesses.

So where does all this leave us now? Doug’s appeal is now back in the hands of the Utah Supreme Court. If the justices allow the latest death verdict to stand, it won’t mean a quick end to the case. Years, if not decades, of additional appeals will likely follow. These could potentially drag the case into the federal courts. And, if Doug loses every step of the way there, he will still have a chance to beg for commutation from the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. If, on the other hand, the Utah Supreme Court overturns the death verdict, it will pave the way for yet another trial.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: The tragedy is, this all could’ve been prevented right from the start, in the summer of 1985. Doug repeatedly slipped through the fingers of police, the courts and jail staff. But it was Joyce who paid the price for those failures. Utah created a state office for victims of crime two years after Joyce’s rape and murder, in part because it recognized people like her had too often been left to fend for themselves.

Gary Scheller: There would have been much more care and safety wrapped around Ms. Yost to prevent this.

Dave Cawley: That’s Gary Scheller, the head of the Utah Office for Victims of Crime.

Gary Scheller: She didn’t have any knowledge. She didn’t have the opportunity to protect herself.

Dave Cawley: In ’94, the year after Doug’s first death sentence, Utah voters ratified a crime victims bill of rights.

Craig Wall (from October 12, 1994 KSL TV archive): Supporters of proposition number one say it’s an important first step in making the court process more victim friendly.

Paul Cassell (from October 12, 1994 KSL TV archive): What we’ve seen with crime victims in the state of Utah is that they’re treated like pieces of evidence. They’re not really given any dignity at all.

Craig Wall (from October 12, 1994 KSL TV archive): The amendment says victims have the right to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect. They also have the right to be notified of important court hearings. But supporters say most importantly, the amendment says victims don’t have to testify at preliminary hearings. Someone else such as a police officer could do that for them.

Dave Cawley: This point strikes me as significant. It’s a bit of a balancing act, because Bill Holthaus told me the entire rape case might have fallen apart in 1985 had Joyce not testified.

Bill Holthaus: I don’t think if she hadn’t been to the prelim and they hadn’t allowed … the Davis County Attorney secretary to read that, he, he might not have been convicted on the rape.

Craig Wall (from October 12, 1994 KSL TV archive): The argument is, if victims don’t have to take the stand it eases some of the trauma. There is some opposition to the amendment from criminal defense attorneys. But the only aspect they’re really against is the one that would eliminate the need for victims to testify at preliminary hearings.

Richard Mauro (from October 12, 1994 KSL TV archive): A police officer testifying from what a third person told him that’s written in a report doesn’t always accurately tell us what happened in the case. And live witness testimony is the best mechanism available for discovering the truth.

Dave Cawley: The amendment passed in spite of that opposition. But Gary Scheller told me these rights, which are now enshrined in Utah’s Constitution, are largely symbolic.

Gary Scheller: They’re important and they’re critical but at the same time they’re just kind of warm and fuzzy and feel good and have no teeth.

Dave Cawley: What did have teeth was a massive federal crime bill passed into law by the U.S. Congress that same year, spearheaded by a senator who is now serving as President of the United States: Joe Biden. Much can — and has — been written about the more controversial provisions of this crime bill in the years since.

Charles Sherrill (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): The legislation provides $8 billion for new prisons, $7 billion for crime prevention and outlaws 19 types of assault weapons.

Bill Clinton (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): We will finally ban these assault weapons from our street that have no purpose other than to kill.

Dave Cawley: That ban on the possession, manufacture and sale of some semi-automatic firearms has since expired.

Charles Sherrill (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): Lots of new cops can soon be hired with funds from the bill but Salt Lake’s mayor admits it might be hard to meet the payroll when federal funding expires.

Deedee Corradini (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): I’m always concerned about that but I’m willing to take that risk. I think we can do it, I’m quite confident we can do it and we will be applying. We need those officers right now.

Dave Cawley: That bulking up of police ranks has come under increasing scrutiny since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The crime bill expanded the death penalty, making many more federal offenses eligible for capital punishment.

Charles Sherrill (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): Fulfilling the President’s promise to get tough on crime will make lots of new work for Utah’s U.S. Attorney.

Scott Matheson (from September 13, 1994 KSL TV archive): We’ve got to get on top of the provisions in this bill very quickly and there are many that could potentially affect our work.

Dave Cawley: But most relevant for the purpose of our story is a portion of that crime bill known as the Violence Against Women Act.

Joe Biden (from August 25, 1994 U.S. Senate recording): We have significant penalties in here to deal with, uh, providing women with some genuine, uh, protection, particularly women who are battered and abused by their spouses, their loved ones quote-unquote, uh, those with whom they’re familiar.

Dave Cawley: Joe Biden, then a Democratic senator from Delaware, had personally authored that part of the package.

Joe Biden (from August 25, 1994 U.S. Senate recording): The only thing in this bill that I wrote from scratch was the Violence Against Women Act. That is a small part of this, maybe that’s why I was so emotionally attached to it.

Dave Cawley: Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch had railed against the crime bill, calling it stuffed with pork.

Orrin Hatch (from August 25, 1994 U.S. Senate recording): There are a lot of us who are just plain sick of trying to stop this gravy-sucking hog called the federal government and its liberal friends from eating us alive.

Dave Cawley: But Hatch had supported one small piece — the Violence Against Women Act — even crossing the aisle to co-sponsor that bit with Biden. The Act aimed to close gaps that existed between police, prosecutors, courts and non-profit service providers in their support of victims of domestic abuse, stalking and sexual violence. Its method of doing so came largely in the form of grants: federal money handed off to the states.

Over the past two-and-a-half decades, Violence Against Women Act grants have helped fund domestic violence hotlines and rape crisis centers. They’ve allowed colleges and universities to crack down on stalking and sexual assaults. They’ve provided legal support to survivors. States have come to depend on these funds to provide critical services to women. But those grants are not eternal. They only continue if Congress votes to keep funding them every five years or so. At the time I’m recording this, Violence Against Woman Act funding has lapsed and lawmakers have so far failed to reauthorize it.

Joyce’s experience proves one of the most critical needs for any survivor is information. Think back to that question she asked only hours after her rape: how safe am I?

Joyce Yost (from April 4, 1985 police recording): He, he kept threatening me that if I didn’t cooperate and if I didn’t go with him, it was going to be the end of it for me.

Rob Carpenter (from April 4, 1985 police recording): That’s exactly how he put it, it was just going to be the end of it for you?

Joyce Yost (from April 4, 1985 police recording): Yeah, he was going to rip my vocal cords out here.

Dave Cawley: Joyce’d had no way of tracking Doug Lovell in the weeks and months after his arrest. Was he in jail, out of jail? She didn’t know.

Gary Scheller: For a long time, that was really kind of treated as none of the victim’s business, what we’re doing with this person.

Dave Cawley: Again, that’s Gary Scheller from the Utah Office for Victims of Crime. He told me most states now use a system called VINE to keep people like Joyce informed about their attacker’s status.

Gary Scheller: They can receive a notification if they’re going to be released, if they have a hearing coming up with the Board of Probation and Parole, if they’re moved from one facility, correctional facility to another they get a notification. So they can have some, some piece of mind knowing that they’re at the moment safe.

Dave Cawley: Technology also now allows cops, courts, probation officers and the like to more easily share information across jurisdictional lines. But lapses can and do still happen because people make mistakes, exhibit bias, are overworked or undertrained or just burn out and stop caring.

Joyce had trusted that the system would protect her. But her son Greg Roberts told me she’d also just wanted to move on with her life.

Greg Roberts: She didn’t tell me that she had been raped until a couple months after it happened. And then she really played it down.

Dave Cawley: Joyce’d feared the humiliation of being labeled a victim and having her private life dissected in court, as she’d seen happen on TV. That’s less likely to happen now than it was in ’85, because of state and federal rape shield laws. These laws say defendants cannot use information about an accuser’s past sexual behavior or sexual predisposition as evidence, with only a few narrow exceptions. But while shield laws have strengthened protections in the court of law, one look at social media will show they hold no sway in the court of public opinion.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Retired Clearfield police detective Bill Holthaus told me he thinks the chances of Doug ever getting out of prison are low. But maybe that’s not the point.

Bill Holthaus: I think that is the glimmer that he’ll someday get out. I personally believe that he could con people then and he can con people now.

Dave Cawley: Back in episode 8, I described how prison staff moved Doug into maximum security in ’92, after Terry Carpenter served him with the murder charge. Doug had gone from living in a dormitory setting, where he was free to work and interact with others, to spending all but three hours each day locked alone in his cell.

Doug Lovell (from May, 1992 prison phone recording): I’m hoping we can get this straightened out, y’know, pretty quick with the attorney and whatnot. ‘Cause I’d like to go back to work at the sign shop. I hear they’re keeping my job for me, but, y’know, they can’t keep it forever.

Dave Cawley: When Doug wrote to my colleague Candice Madsen in 2019, the envelope showed he’d sent the letter from Uinta 1: the maximum-security cell block at the Utah State Prison that for decades has housed the state’s death row inmates. But something interesting has happened in the time since. The Utah Department of Corrections moved Doug out of max. He’s now living in medium security. I’ve been told he has a job again, working in the prison’s welding shop. Fewer fences now separate him from the outside world.

I was curious why this change, so I asked Corrections Director Brian Nielson to explain it.

Brian Nielson: Those that have a death sentence, they’ve been in very restrictive housing traditionally for a very long time, without the option to do anything else.

Dave Cawley: Brian wouldn’t talk specifically about Doug’s case, but said the department implemented a policy in 2005 called “Last Chance.” He says it allows inmates to earn their way out of max.

Brian Nielson: So they’ve really had to demonstrate that they can function in that setting ahead of time and then we test the waters in small incremental ways to help them get there.

Dave Cawley: But something doesn’t add up, because at the time I’m recording this, the department’s own website says the policy doesn’t apply to death row inmates. The website says the only way off of max for them is to have their convictions overturned or sentences commuted. Which contradicts what Brian told me.

Brian Nielson: We’ve had a couple make it that far but it’s taken, y’know, 13, 14 years to get there.

Dave Cawley: More than a couple. Prison records show of the seven inmates under sentence of death in Utah in June of 2021, only two of them are still in maximum security at the Uinta facility.

Brian Nielson: That risk is going to be inherent in that process and we keep our guard up all the time while looking for opportunities to help people advance.

Dave Cawley: There is logic in allowing inmates a path forward. The vast majority are only in prison temporarily. It’s the goal of the department to help offenders change their ways and avoid coming back once released. Even people serving life without parole sentences might be easier to manage if given an opportunity to better their own situations in some small way. But Utah’s courts have twice said Doug should die for what he did. Which means the state now finds itself in the awkward position of simultaneously arguing in court Doug is a manipulator who’s conned people into supporting his bid for parole, while at the same time granting him additional freedoms based on his ability to convince prison staff and social workers he’s not a threat.

Bill Holthaus: And I know these are professional counselors that he’s with. Y’know, I understand that and they got a lot of training and so do I, but he’s a con artist.

Dave Cawley: I requested a copy of the Last Chance policy under Utah’s public records law. The department refused to provide it, claiming it was “protected” because release could interfere with investigations or audits. Doug Lovell murdered Joyce Yost to keep her from testifying. He tampered with Tom Peters to try and intimidate him into not testifying. He used his last stint on the outside, after convincing the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole he’d changed, to rape and to kill. How does all that balance now against Doug’s good behavior while in prison?

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: Two part question. One: does he have a realistic chance of ever getting out of prison? Two: does he have a realistic chance of ever being put to death?

Bill Holthaus: One: no. Two: also no.

Dave Cawley: Bill Holthaus told me he believes it’s unlikely prosecutors will win a death verdict a third time, if Doug gets yet another trial.

Bill Holthaus: If there’s another jury here, it’s going to be a jury of people who weren’t even born when this happened and they’re not going to be able to relate. … But I think he’ll be convicted again, if we go back to trial. The evidence was good, it’s still good and I have no doubt. But I would be surprised if they once again pursued the death penalty.

Dave Cawley: Utah has not executed a death row inmate since 2010. It hasn’t added someone to death row — excepting Doug’s 2015 return — since 2008. Utah’s Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice released a report a few years back that noted public support for the death penalty in the U.S. has waned to its lowest point since 1972. The report cited a Gallup poll which showed death penalty support in the 1990s — when Doug was first sentenced to death — was near 80-percent. As of a few years ago, that had fallen to about 55-percent.

As of 2020, half of the states in the U.S. had abolished the death penalty or placed capital punishment on indefinite hold. Joyce’s family, meantime, remains steadfast in their push to see Doug Lovell die…

Greg Roberts: I don’t see it ever happening.

Dave Cawley: …even though Greg Roberts acknowledges they are swimming against the currents of culture and criminal process.

Greg Roberts: That’s why I just don’t know if they’ll ever carry it out in this case because it’s still got so many years to go.

Randy Salazar: Do I think in my lifetime that I’ll ever see Doug get the, the death penalty. Will it, will it ever go through? No.

Dave Cawley: Kim and Randy Salazar have each been ground down by the decades of never-ending court hearings.

Randy Salazar: And Doug, if you were any kind of man, you’d be dead right now because you’d ask for the death penalty just to be over with.

Dave Cawley: Neither believes Joyce’s killer will ever win parole.

Kim Salazar: Somewhere in his mind he believes he’s going to. I mean, I think he really believes that some day he could walk out of there.

Randy Salazar: The taxpayers have paid so much money for him to be down there and to get lawyers and tell his side of the story … Well, the son of a bitch is guilty. And you sentenced him to death. Get it over with.

Dave Cawley: Meaning Doug Lovell might just remain in limbo until the day he dies of natural causes, as has happened to two other Utah death row inmates in recent years.

Kim Salazar: I think that we have a better chance of him dying of old age in there than we do of him dying by the hand of the state.

Randy Salazar: Do I think that’s fair? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But do I hope one day that he has to see Joyce again? Hell yeah. And do I hope that Rhonda has to see Joyce again? Hell yeah.

Dave Cawley: I’m not here to advocate for Doug’s life or death. It’s not my intent to take a position on capital punishment. But it’s worth considering the collateral damage of a case like Doug’s. The justice system finds itself struggling to balance the cries for vengeance from people like Joyce’s ex-husband Mel Roberts…

Mel Roberts: I’m probably the one person that could’ve got on an airplane, went up there and shot that son of a bitch, got up and left and got away with it and nobody’d have known the difference. And trust me, I thought of it. I swear to God I thought of it.

Dave Cawley: …against Doug’s civil rights and the pleas for mercy from people like Becky Douglas.

Becky Douglas (from August 12, 2019 court recording): When you talk to someone and they’re crying so hard they can’t talk to you because they feel so bad about what they’ve done, that’s, you say angry, angry with himself. Yes. He was furious with himself over what he had done.

Dave Cawley: It is, perhaps, an impossible balance to strike.

[Scene transition]

Dave Cawley: A bit earlier I talked about how I first came to know Joyce’s story. What I didn’t tell you was the sense of dread I felt at taking on the assignment of telling it. I knew from the outset I would have to contend with a very sensitive topic. I worried about all the mistakes and missteps I might make as a man in this space, trying to share Joyce’s perspective.

It was, in some ways, similar to how I felt in season one, telling the story of Susan Powell’s abusive marriage. The difference is Susan left us a better record of her thoughts, actions and feelings. Much of what I know about Joyce’s life comes only secondhand. Yet the more I’ve learned about Joyce as a person, not just as a name in a news story, the more empathy I’ve gained for what she went through.

Look, I enjoy a place of privilege in society as a white heterosexual man. Strange guys don’t follow me home when I go out to dinner with a friend. I’ve never worried that a woman might grab me by the throat and tear my clothes off outside my own house. This privilege can breed complacency. It can make me blind to what Joyce and so many other women experience every day. And that is injustice.

This season bears a subtitle — Justice for Joyce — and I have to be honest: I don’t love it. It seems trite to me. It doesn’t capture the way I felt the first time I heard Joyce’s voice in that tape recording with Bill Holthaus just hours after her rape. It can’t convey how I hurt for her when I listen to her voice cracking saying the words “I have been raped.” How I still break down and cry when she asks a police officer “how safe am I?”

“Justice for Joyce” reduces what she went through to a tagline. And I hate that. I voiced this complaint and was challenged to come up with something better. And I couldn’t do it.

Bill Holthaus: There is no justice for Joyce. Let’s preface it by saying that. When you kill somebody, you kill somebody. There’s no such thing. It’s justice for what he did to Joyce.

Dave Cawley: Joyce hadn’t wanted to go to detective Bill Holthaus after Doug Lovell followed her home, raped her, kidnapped her and raped her again. She’d simply wanted what so many other people who experience unexpected trauma want: a return to normalcy and a restoration of safety. Joyce would have been justified if she’d chosen to stay silent. But she spoke up because she felt a responsibility to help protect whomever Doug might’ve targeted next. And for a brief moment it seemed the system might work. Bill believed Joyce. Doug landed in jail. She spoke her truth in court.

Then, all the mechanisms of law and civil society that were meant to protect her failed. The people who were closest to Doug repeatedly rewarded him — the handsome white guy from a good Christian family — with the benefit of the doubt, even after he’d proved he didn’t deserve it. They chose to believe him when he said he’d been falsely accused, or at least decided to look the other way.

Some are still doing so even today, dissociating the Doug they know from the one who chose to kill Joyce Yost.

Joyce paid for her courage with her life. So what message does that send to every other woman who’s ever been groped, catcalled, stalked, assaulted or raped and feared coming forward? Imagine the tragedy of a Joyce who’d lived by keeping the rape a secret, spending her entire life plagued by undeserved guilt and self-doubt, wondering how many others that man had gone on to terrorize.

How many men have allowed — still allow — their privilege to blind them to what so many women endure in silence? I don’t want to be one of them.

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.

[Ad break]

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.

[Scene transition]

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.

[Ad break]

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.