Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Boland podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. In June of 1980, a car jolted to a stop in a parking lot on the outskirts of a small Utah suburb.
The car door opened and a man stepped out into the darkness and he stumbled across the parking lot towards the large building where he worked.
He'd been drinking and he was definitely feeling it.
So he stood outside the building for a minute and tried to collect himself.
He knew this might be the last moment of peace he or anyone in his community would have in a long time because he knew something that nobody else inside that building would even imagine.
He knew for a fact that someone had just committed the first murder ever recorded in this safe, quiet Utah town.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please set a fake crack screen wallpaper on the follow button's new phone and watch them panic.
Okay, let's get into today's story. On the night of Thursday, June 5th, 1980, 25-year-old Karen Strom pulled her yellow Camaro into the front driveway of her two-story house in Woods Cross, Utah, a small suburb of Salt Lake City.
Karen and her husband Steve stepped out and approached the house, which was yellow like the car.
And that was not a coincidence. Karen just really loved yellow, and Steve had been more than happy to go along with her when they bought the place.
The two of them had just come from dinner, and when they were all dressed up for a night out, some people found it hard to believe that Karen and Steve were just this average couple who lived in a small Utah suburb.
Instead, they thought the pair looked more like a Hollywood couple.
Karen had long blonde hair and light eyes, and she always looked right at home behind the wheel of her sleek sports car.
Steve was tall with red hair and a red beard, and whenever they had their photo taken together, it was like they knew exactly how to pose.
However, despite what some people thought about them based on their good looks, those who actually knew Karen and Steve understood that they were just like most young people in the area.
They worked hard at their jobs, they talked about starting a family one day, and they loved living in the safe, secluded neighborhood not far from the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.
Karen and Steve headed inside the house and Karen turned on the TV and then both of them sat down on the couch to watch.
But while Karen leaned back and got comfortable, Steve couldn't seem to settle down.
They'd gone out to dinner to celebrate both Steve's 27th birthday and also their seventh anniversary.
Now Karen was ready to relax for the rest of the night, but she knew Steve couldn't really do that because he still had to go to work that night.
He had a late shift at a local factory that went all the way until 7.30 the following morning.
So as Karen sat there, Steve tried to sit for a little while, but then just began getting up and collecting things he would need for work.
And then he would come back to the couch, but would be anxious and get up again and get something else that he would need for work.
Now, Karen knew that Steve would much rather finish the birthday and anniversary celebration at home with her than go to the factory.
But the truth was, Karen actually couldn't wait for Steve to go to work.
Because even though she'd gone out with Steve to celebrate and she was now laughing and chatting with him on the couch, in reality, Karen didn't want to even be in the house with her husband anymore.
And she'd felt this way for months. Karen and Steve had been high school sweethearts, so they'd been together since they were teenagers.
Back in school, Karen had been outgoing and extremely popular, while Steve had always been quiet and a bit shy.
But when they'd met at school, they'd gotten along right away, and they had fallen in love fast.
So in 1973, not long after they'd graduated from high school, they got married, and then they moved into a small apartment together and began their lives together.
And for a time, the marriage had been everything Karen had dreamed of.
She and Steve weren't rich by any means, but they were smart with their money, and they had eventually saved up enough to move out of their first small apartment and buy the yellow house that Karen had loved so much.
And back then, the two of them had seemed like partners in everything.
They had the same goals, and they truly supported each other.
But the longer they stayed together, the more Karen had begun to see a side of Steve that was nothing like the reserved, caring man she fell in love with. because Steve had begun drinking a lot.
In fact, there were some nights when Steve and Karen would go out with a couple they were friends with, and Steve would get so drunk that Karen and the other couple would have to literally carry him out to the car.
And then they'd have to carry him from the car to his bed when they got back to the house.
But as much as that upset Karen, she didn't even consider those nights to be the worst nights.
Because sometimes when Steve drank, he didn't just get sloppy, he got angry and aggressive.
And when Karen's sister and friends had started to worry that Steve might be getting violent with her, Karen would defend Steve, saying he was a good guy who just had some bad nights sometimes.
But finally, about three months before their seventh wedding anniversary, Karen couldn't take Steve's heavy drinking and mood swings anymore, and she'd made what she considered to be the hardest decision of her life.
She told Steve that she wanted a divorce, and she'd started spending most nights at her stepmom's house.
Even though they were now separated, Karen still went out with Steve sometimes.
She still came by the house to see him, and she would even sleep there with him some nights.
She knew Steve hoped that that meant they could maybe patch things up, but in reality, she just didn't see any hope for their marriage anymore.
Back at the house, Karen continued to watch TV, anxiously waiting for the moment when she could be alone and go to sleep by herself in her old bed.
And a little after midnight on June 6th, Steve finally said it was time for him to go to work.
So, Karen got off the couch, walked with him to the front door, and Steve gave her a kiss.
Karen told him to have a good night at work, she said she was going right to bed, and she would see him in the morning when he got home.
And once Steve was gone, Karen did head right down the hallway to the bedroom, changed out of her clothes, and climbed into bed.
However, she had so many things running through her mind that she couldn't sleep.
As upset as she was about Steve's alcohol issues and her crumbling marriage as a result of those issues, this relationship was basically all she'd known since she was a kid.
And part of her did still really love Steve.
She knew that was why she had not been able to fully walk away yet.
But as she lay in bed, Karen felt sure that even if leaving Steve for good would be challenging, it was something she just had to do. and she just had to finally make a clean break and stop staying at this house altogether.
She had to start living her own life somewhere else.
About eight hours later, around 7.30 a.m. on June 6th, 1980, Steve unlocked the front door of the yellow house, walked inside, and headed right to the bedroom.
Steve felt exhausted from his overnight shift, and he couldn't wait to get some sleep.
He'd called Karen before he left work, but she hadn't answered, and he'd seen her yellow Camaro still parked out front, so he figured she just hadn't woken up yet.
However, when he opened the bedroom door, he froze right there in the doorway.
The room was completely trashed. The small TV had been knocked off its stand, one of the bedside tables had been pushed over, and the bed's brass headboard was broken.
Then Steve looked down at the floor, and he began to scream.
Because there, on the ground, sticking out behind the bed, was Karen's feet.
Steve ran into the room, hysterical, shouting Karen's name, but when he got to her, he saw that she was totally motionless, just laying there in a t-shirt and her underwear.
He crouched down and tried to get her to wake up, but he could tell very quickly that she must be dead.
Steve stood up and the room felt like it was spinning.
He stumbled outside, made his way to the phone in the kitchen, and dialed 911.
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Later that morning, Detective Clarence Montgomery of the Woods Cross Police walked towards Karen and Steve's front door.
He was responding to a call that had come into the station that said a young woman, Karen Strom, had been found unresponsive inside of her home.
As he approached the door, Detective Montgomery saw a uniformed officer standing in the front yard, along with a red-haired man who had his face buried in his hands.
Montgomery walked past the red-haired man and the uniformed officer and walked into the house.
There, he connected with another uniformed officer who'd arrived first at the scene, who would tell Montgomery that Karen was deceased.
And then he led him down the hallway to the bedroom.
At the threshold of the bedroom, Montgomery slipped on a pair of gloves.
Then he walked inside, and right away he noticed the TV on the floor and the broken bed.
Then he walked around the bed and crouched down over Karen's body, and he saw there were deep purple bruises on her neck and throat.
And Montgomery just couldn't believe it, because he figured that these bruises were a clear sign that Karen had been murdered, strangled to death.
But Woods Cross, Utah, where Montgomery had worked as a cop for a decade, was a very safe and quiet town.
And in the 45 years since the town had been founded, there had literally never been a reported homicide.
Montgomery stood up and told the other officer to radio in for a forensics team.
While Montgomery waited on the forensics team, the other police officer, the one who was first on the scene, radioed the station to have them inform the medical examiner's office about the case.
And then that officer left to go contact Karen's family to tell them about her death.
So while that was happening and while Montgomery was just waiting, he just did a complete sweep of the bedroom on his own.
Now, despite having never handled a homicide case before, Montgomery knew instinctively that for the room to look like this, to be in complete disarray, could indicate that perhaps a robber was here and had ransacked the place in addition to, you know, killing Karen.
However, after doing the sweep of the bedroom, Montgomery did not come to that conclusion.
Instead, he believed someone had come into this bedroom with the sole intent to kill Karen.
And the broken bed and the TV on the floor meant one thing.
Karen had put up a real fight for her life.
So Montgomery went back to Karen's body, and what he saw now seemed to support his theory.
The detective found scratches on Karen's arms that looked like defensive wounds, and he also saw that parts of her fingernails had broken off.
Not long after Montgomery had fully searched the room, the small forensics team arrived and they did the same thing.
And they came to the same conclusion that Montgomery had, that very likely this was a targeted attack on Karen and that Karen had fought back really aggressively.
And so they thought that if that was the case, very likely her attacker then had physical marks left on them from Karen.
The forensics team dusted the room and the entire house for fingerprints.
They also clipped parts of Karen's fingernails and took blood samples from her clothes to save as evidence for possible testing at the crime lab.
So in 1980, DNA testing was still in its earliest phase, and it would be years before police departments would use it in investigations.
Still, forensic technicians were aware that advances in investigatory technology could happen fast, so they would often collect evidence that they knew they couldn't really test yet in the hope that maybe at some point in the future, if a crime remained unsolved, new technology and testing would make that evidence viable.
As the forensics team continued their work in the house, Detective Montgomery headed outside to speak to the red-haired man he'd seen when he first arrived.
The man Montgomery now knew was Karen's husband, Steve.
Montgomery could immediately see that Steve was a mess.
He was sobbing and looked like he was struggling to catch his breath.
Montgomery honestly felt bad for him. However, in a case like this, the spouse was the first suspect.
So, after approaching Steve and introducing himself, he began by asking him where he'd been that morning and also where he'd been the night before.
Through tears, Steve told Montgomery about his and Karen's dinner, how he'd left her to go to work at the factory around midnight, and that he'd gotten back home around 7.30 that morning.
Steve said he'd unlocked the front door, gone right to the bedroom, and found Karen.
As Montgomery heard this, he immediately focused on the part where Steve said he unlocked the front door.
Because Montgomery had not found any evidence of forced entry into the house.
But if Steve was telling the truth about the door being locked when he got home, Montgomery thought whoever attacked Karen had to have a key.
Or it had to have been someone Karen would open the door for late at night.
But before Montgomery could question Steve further, he heard the sound of a car screeching to a halt right outside the house.
The detective looked up, saw the car door fly open, and watched as a young woman, who was maybe 20 years old, marched towards him.
And this young woman pointed right at Steve and shouted, "'He finally did it!
He killed her!' Steve stammered, and Montgomery rushed over to the young woman, trying to keep the situation from getting out of hand.
Montgomery tried to calm this young woman down, but it clearly was not working.
She said that she was Karen's little sister, Coco, and she'd rushed over as soon as she had gotten the news about her sister's death.
And she said again that she was sure Steve had killed her.
However, as Montgomery was trying to keep Coco separated from Steve, something happened that made Coco break down even more.
The front door of the house opened, and members of the medical examiner's staff wheeled Karen out in a black body bag.
And Coco saw it and just crumbled. She started sobbing uncontrollably, and then she told them not to do that, not to take Karen away.
Everything about this was new for Detective Montgomery.
He'd never dealt with a murder case, and he already felt like the situation at the house was spiraling totally out of control.
He knew he needed to act fast before things got worse, so he called an officer over to stay with Karen's sister and to make sure she was okay.
He had no idea if there was any truth to the accusations Coco had thrown at Steve, or if it was just how she was dealing with her anger, shock, and grief.
But that didn't matter right now. Montgomery marched back across the yard and told Steve they needed to talk down at the station right now.
Not long after that, Detective Montgomery led Steve into a small office at the police station.
And once they were sitting down, it was clear Steve was still visibly shaken.
Montgomery asked him a few basic questions about his and Karen's marriage.
He wanted to know if they'd been fighting or had been experiencing any financial problems, anything like that.
Steve admitted that he and Karen had hit a rough patch recently, but he said they were working things out.
They'd been in love since they were teenagers and they were both committed to trying to make the marriage work.
He said they'd just gone out the night before to celebrate their anniversary, and then Steve said again that after that he'd gone to work right around midnight, and he said everything seemed fine, and that Karen had told him she would see him in the morning.
As Steve spoke, Montgomery made a note of Steve's work schedule.
Then, he asked if there was anyone other than family that Karen might open the door for late at night.
Steve nodded and gave Montgomery a list of some of their closest friends.
After that, the two men talked for a bit longer, and then eventually, Montgomery told Steve he could leave for now.
However, the police would soon follow up.
After Steve left, Montgomery sat alone for a while, thinking through Steve's story.
It'd be easy enough to follow up on his work alibi at the factory, but right now, Montgomery had no idea of Karen's actual time of death.
For all he knew, Steve was her killer, and maybe he killed her before he even went to work, and everything he said about discovering Karen's body could just be a complete lie.
However, for the time being, he had no evidence pointing directly at Steve, or really anybody else.
So, he looked down at the list of friends that Steve had just given him, and he saw one name that might help him verify Steve's alibi, and allow him to learn more about Steve and Karen's marriage all at once.
The man's name was Ed Owens, and he was Steve's coworker and one of the couple's friends.
Late in the afternoon on June 6th, so several hours after Karen's body had been discovered, Detective Montgomery sat down with Ed Owens in an office at a factory in town.
Ed sat there in silence for a minute, with a stunned look on his face.
He couldn't believe the news Montgomery had just given him about Karen's murder.
He said it didn't make sense. People loved Karen.
She was beautiful and kind and caring. Montgomery acknowledged that, but he stayed on task, and he asked Ed if he'd seen Steve the night before.
Ed told him that they had briefly crossed paths at the factory, but he and Steve had worked different shifts, so they didn't really talk or anything.
Then Montgomery asked about Steve and Karen's relationship.
And at this, Ed began to shift a little and got an uncomfortable look on his face.
Eventually, he said that he and his wife were good friends with Steve and Karen, and they would go out together and usually things were great.
But sometimes Steve would drink really heavily to the point where they would have to literally carry him out to the car and even carry him up to his bed on occasion.
But Ed was quick to say that despite his alcoholism, Steve loved Karen more than anyone, and that Steve really was a good guy.
After Montgomery finished with the interview, he tracked down Steve's manager, who did have a record of Steve clocking in and clocking out at the times he had said.
And also, several other employees vouched that Steve had worked the late shift.
But again, this didn't really prove anything to Montgomery.
He needed to know a time of death to know if Steve showing up for work really was an alibi or not.
Like, he could have killed her before he showed up for work.
Over the next couple of days, Detective Montgomery and his small investigative team interviewed Karen's friends, family, and coworkers.
And a pattern quickly started to emerge.
Almost all of them said similar things to what Karen's sister Coco had told police.
They had worried about what Steve might do to Karen after he'd been drinking.
And some of them said they'd even seen bruises on Karen that clearly she had tried to cover up.
This felt like a big discovery to Detective Montgomery.
If he could prove that Steve had a history of violence towards his wife, well, he could then connect that to the violent attack that led to Karen's death.
And in addition to that, Karen's friends all said something else that also made Steve look bad.
They told Montgomery that no matter what Steve said about the marriage, Karen had genuinely been ready to end the marriage.
In fact, they told Montgomery that Karen hadn't just brought up divorce and gone to stay with her stepmom.
She'd actually started dating somebody else, a car mechanic whose name was Buff Bangetter.
And Steve knew all about it. This immediately made Montgomery start to rethink his whole case, or at least it made him consider other possibilities.
He'd been so focused on Steve because he believed that Karen's decision to move out of the house could have potentially pushed Steve over the edge and led to him attacking and killing her in a moment of rage.
And also, finding out about Karen's new boyfriend could definitely have made Steve even angrier.
But now, Montgomery also wondered if the man Karen had started dating, Buff, might have gotten jealous that Karen still spent time and even still spent the night occasionally with her husband Steve.
And so maybe if that was the case, Buff could have potentially shown up to the house late at night to confront her.
And there was a good chance Karen would have opened the door for him and let him inside.
So now it was clear that Montgomery had a potentially angry and jealous husband and a potentially angry and jealous boyfriend.
On June 8th, so two days after Karen's body had been found in her room, Detective Montgomery sat down with the man Karen had started dating before she died, Buff Bangetter.
Buff was cordial and cooperative right from the start.
He said he was 35 years old, so about 10 years older than Karen, but he said the age gap really hadn't mattered.
He said the two of them had hit it off soon after they had met a couple of months earlier.
They both loved cars, and they both dreamed of starting a family someday, and they both desperately wanted to be in a healthy relationship that was built on kindness and mutual respect.
Buff also said that he knew all about Karen's relationship with her husband Steve, and he never did anything to stand in the way of it.
In fact, he said he didn't have any issue at all with Karen spending time at the house and even staying with Steve overnight.
He knew they'd been together a long time and they were still married, so Buff said the last thing he wanted to do was get in the way if there was a chance that maybe Karen and Steve could save their marriage.
As Buff said all this, Montgomery got the impression that Buff was truly heartbroken about Karen's death, like he did not come off as if he was lying.
Still, that didn't mean he was innocent.
After all, Buff's alibi was pretty weak.
He said on the night that Karen got murdered, he'd been at home by himself.
After their talk, Detective Montgomery let Buff go.
He wasn't going to cross Buff off his suspect list by any means, but the interview with Buff didn't do much to change Montgomery's mind about Steve.
He believed there were just too many factors that still made Steve the most likely killer.
Now, Montgomery just needed some piece of hard evidence that would help him cement that theory.
The next day, June 9th, so three days into the investigation, Detective Montgomery sat at his desk reading over the autopsy report that he'd been waiting for.
The medical examiner had determined that while there were clear signs of a physical altercation before death, there was no indication of sexual assault.
He also stated that the cause of death was indeed strangulation.
Now, this did not surprise Montgomery. It had seemed clear to him that Karen had been strangled from the moment he saw her body.
But as Montgomery continued to read, he saw there was a note from the medical examiner that made him feel like suddenly everything was falling into place.
Because the autopsy report stated that Karen's time of death could have been anywhere between 10 p.m. on June 5th and 2 a.m. on June 6th. which meant that Karen's husband, Steve, who did have an alibi for being at work just after midnight, could have, based on timeline, killed her in the couple of hours before he left.
And so Detective Montgomery stood up at his desk and sprung into action.
He sent officers out to go get Steve and bring him back to the station.
Later that afternoon, Montgomery was once again sitting across from Steve.
But this time, Steve wasn't crying and trying to catch his breath.
Instead, he just had an angry and annoyed look on his face.
And Steve didn't waste any time. He told Montgomery that everything he'd said in their first meeting was the truth.
Karen had been fine the last time he saw her.
He also said he loved his wife and would never hurt her.
Then, Steve did something that took Montgomery completely by surprise.
Steve leaned in across the table and literally demanded that the police give him a polygraph test right now.
Now, even highly cooperative suspects do not volunteer to take polygraphs before the police have even mentioned it.
But Montgomery said he'd be happy to accommodate Steve's wishes.
So, a little later that afternoon, officers hooked Steve up to the polygraph machine and asked him a series of questions pertaining to his relationship with Karen and to his whereabouts on the night of June 5th and the morning of June 6th.
And when the results quickly came back, it showed that Steve had failed.
Going over those results, Detective Montgomery was now absolutely convinced Steve was the killer.
However, he knew polygraph tests were not admissible evidence in court, so he had to find something more tangible if he wanted to put together a case that the district attorney would be willing to take on.
So again, Montgomery had to let Steve go.
And this really frustrated him because Montgomery was feeling an enormous amount of pressure to solve this case.
He wanted to get justice for Karen and her family, but he also knew that since this was the first murder case in the community, he was now setting a precedent.
And he wanted to prove that the people of Woods Cross could trust their police force to get the job done.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
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Throughout the end of June and all of July, Detective Montgomery and his team dug deep into every aspect of Steve and Karen's lives.
The forensics unit had found Steve's fingerprints all over the crime scene, but of course that didn't help Montgomery.
It was Steve's house, so it would have actually seemed more incriminating and like Steve had wiped the place clean if none of his prints had been found.
So Montgomery and his investigators interviewed and re-interviewed Karen's sister Coco, Steve's co-worker and the couple's friend Ed Owens, and anybody else they could find who was even remotely close to Karen.
And during these interviews, talk of Steve's drinking and potentially violent nature towards her kept coming up.
Then, Montgomery talked to one of Karen's co-workers, who he hadn't spoken to at the beginning of the investigation.
And she said that a few months earlier, when Karen had come into work, it was plainly obvious that she had caked layers of makeup onto her neck and throat.
But the woman said that despite all that makeup, she could clearly see there were dark bruises on Karen's neck.
Seeing these bruises, this co-worker had gotten really concerned and had asked Karen what was going on.
And she told her that she had gotten the bruises when Steve tried to strangle her.
And as soon as Montgomery heard this, he believed he'd finally gotten the break in the case that he needed.
As far as he was concerned, this proved not only that Steve had a history of violence, but that he had already strangled his wife at least once.
And so Montgomery knew his next step was to secure an arrest warrant for Steve Strom.
By August of 1980, so about two months after Karen's murder, Steve had been arrested and was being held in custody.
And over the next month, as Steve sat in prison, Detective Montgomery believed that he and his team had put together a very strong case and that Steve would soon be found guilty of murder.
But in September, Montgomery got a phone call at his desk and he heard the district attorney's voice on the other line.
And the DA said he'd just gotten some really bad news.
The judge had ruled that the story Karen's coworker had told about Steve strangling Karen was inadmissible as evidence.
The judge had determined that witnesses could only testify on what they'd seen, not just what they'd heard.
And Karen's coworker had simply passed on information about Steve strangling Karen that she said Karen had told her.
Nobody, including that coworker, had actually seen Steve strangle Karen.
As Detective Montgomery listened to the DA, he got a sick feeling in his stomach, and things only got worse.
The DA said the issue with the coworker's story had raised concerns about any story from one of Karen's friends or family who said they believed Steve had physically assaulted Karen.
Because, like that co-worker, all those people had never actually seen the abuse firsthand.
Montgomery knew how this conversation was going to end even before it happened.
But hearing it out loud still felt like a kick in the gut.
Because the DA said he no longer believed they had enough evidence to win in court.
And they couldn't risk putting Steve on trial and losing.
Because if Steve was found not guilty in Karen's murder case, by law, he could never be tried for Karen's murder again.
So for the time being, the case would be dismissed and Steve would be set free.
The call from the DA left Detective Montgomery reeling.
He knew the forensics team in Crime Lab had done all they could do at this point.
So unless a new eyewitness came out of the woodwork or some new piece of concrete evidence materialized, there was little Montgomery could do to propel the case forward.
And as months passed by, nothing new surfaced.
And so by early 1981, Karen's murder case had gone cold.
Still, Montgomery continued to work the case whenever he had time.
And he fielded regular calls from Karen's sister Coco, who desperately wanted updates.
But Montgomery never had any news for her.
Eventually, Detective Montgomery retired from the force.
And at that point, the first reported murder in the history of Woods Cross, Utah, basically disappeared from the public eye.
However, decades later, Karen's name would once again dominate the local news.
In 2006, over 26 years after Karen's murder, Detective Brad Benson of the Woods Cross Police Department walked into his boss's office.
Detective Benson had been a rookie on the force back in 1980 when Karen had gotten murdered.
He hadn't been part of the investigation, but he'd never forgotten about the case.
Over the past two and a half decades, Woods Cross had remained a small, quiet suburb with a relatively low crime rate.
And so today, Detective Benson found himself in a situation that was pretty common.
He had no major criminal cases to work. So he asked his boss if he could take up a cold case, the murder of Karen Strom. his boss stared him down for a second.
Like Benson, his boss knew all about the case and the huge impact it had had on the community back in the 1980s.
But he wanted to know why, after so many years, Benson thought he could possibly crack the case when nobody else could.
And Benson said, well, because technology had advanced leaps and bounds since Karen had gotten killed.
And Benson's boss couldn't argue with that.
And he said Benson could go work the cold case until another case came his way.
After Benson left the office, he didn't necessarily think Karen's murder would suddenly be an open and shut case, but he knew the original investigators had a strong suspect, Karen's husband Steve, but they just could not put enough evidence together that would hold up in court.
Benson quickly made his way down a brightly lit set of stairs into a much more dimly lit basement.
And once he was there, he looked over shelves stacked with boxes that were filled with evidence from old or forgotten cases.
Eventually, he found a box full of evidence from Karen's murder.
And when he opened it, he said a silent thank you to Detective Montgomery.
Because it was clear to Benson that before Montgomery retired, he had made sure that all of the evidence in that case was securely stored and cataloged in detail.
And within days, Benson was able to send two major pieces of evidence to the crime lab for testing, clippings of Karen's fingernails and the underwear that she'd been wearing when she was found dead.
Now that it was 2006, the lab could run a series of in-depth DNA tests on those pieces of evidence that back in 1980, those tests simply were not possible.
Now, Detective Benson knew that since so much time had passed, there was a chance that any potential DNA samples could have become corrupted by now.
But he hoped that the care that Detective Montgomery and his team had clearly shown for these pieces of evidence would mean they were still viable for testing.
It would take some time for the results to come in, but in early 2007, now 27 years after Karen's murder, Detective Benson was sitting at his desk staring down at a crime lab report, and his hands were literally shaking from excitement.
After reading through the whole report, Benson dug through a file folder and found a phone number.
Then he grabbed a cell phone and called it.
A moment later, a woman in her mid-forties answered.
It was Karen's little sister, Coco. And with his voice shaking, Benson told Coco that after all this time, he finally had the evidence police needed to prove who killed her sister.
Based on DNA test results, evidence found at the crime scene, and interviews conducted off and on over the course of 27 years, this is what police believe happened to Karen when she was murdered in early June of 1980.
The killer opened the front door of the house and walked inside.
It was dark and quiet, and they slowly made their way down the hall towards the bedroom.
When they reached the bedroom, they opened the door.
In the moonlight shining through the window, they could see Karen lying in bed.
But as the killer stepped into the room, Karen woke up, startled, and she sat upright.
The killer then moved towards the bed and said something out loud.
Karen could smell the alcohol in their breath and shouted for them to get out.
But the killer moved fast. They lunged towards the bed and grabbed Karen by her shoulders.
Karen dug her fingernails into the killer's arms and gashed them, and the killer stumbled backwards.
Karen leapt out of bed and tried to run for the door, but the killer caught her and grabbed her again.
Karen kept fighting. The two of them stumbled through the dark room and slammed into a table, and a small TV crashed to the floor.
Karen kept slashing at the killer's arms and face, but she just couldn't break free.
The killer pushed her back across the room.
They knocked against the bedside table, and the killer threw Karen onto the bed.
The killer then leapt on top of her, but she just kept fighting back.
Both of them hit against the brass headboard, and the two brass bars just broke.
Karen kicked and clawed, and she did get away from the bed again, but this time, the killer grabbed her and slammed her down to the floor.
Karen felt the wind knocked out of her and she couldn't even move, so the killer pinned her down and tried to sexually assault her.
But Karen still fought back, and so the killer panicked and just wrapped their hands around her throat and began to squeeze, and Karen choked and gagged and struggled to breathe until she died right there on the floor next to her bed.
After that, the killer stood up, stumbled out of the room in a daze, ran down the hall, out of the house, slamming the door behind them.
They ran past the yellow Camaro parked in the front driveway and climbed into their own car.
Then they hit the gas and sped off into the darkness.
It was still dark out, early in the morning.
The killer exhaled and relaxed a bit once they were gone.
They knew it would be at least a few hours before Steve got home from work.
Despite Detective Montgomery, his team, and Coco's wholehearted belief that Karen's husband Steve had killed her, that was not the case.
Karen's murderer was also not the man she'd recently begun dating before she died, Buff Bangetter.
Instead, the person who had killed her was Steve's co-worker and Karen and Steve's friend, Ed Owens.
It would turn out that at some point during their platonic friendship, Ed had decided that he wanted more.
He had become sexually attracted to Karen.
And on the night of the murder, he'd left work, gone to a bar to have a few drinks, and decided that that was the night he was going to try to have sex with Karen.
After all, he knew that Karen was staying at that house and that Steve was going to be out all night working.
So Karen was alone. So Ed went to the yellow house and he found the front door was unlocked, which was actually pretty typical for homes in this town.
In fact, police were never sure if the door had actually been locked when Steve got home the following morning, like he said, or if he just misremembered.
And so once Ed was inside the house, he went right to the bedroom and attempted to sexually assault Karen.
And in the process, he killed her. Now, police had questioned Ed back in the 1980s.
And in the initial interview, Detective Montgomery had noticed scratches on Ed's arms and face.
But Ed had told him that he got scratches on him like that all the time from working the machines in the factory.
And several of his coworkers backed that claim up.
A number of people had also said they saw Ed at a local bar around the time Karen had been killed.
But moreover, Montgomery and the police just could not find any clear motive that would lead Ed to kill Karen.
But over two and a half decades later, when Detective Benson took over the cold case, he sent evidence back to the crime lab and using the latest technology, the lab was able to detect traces of seminal fluid under Karen's fingernails and blood on Karen's underwear.
And that indicated to them that the killer had attempted to sexually assault Karen, but she had fought him off and drawn drops of the killer's blood that landed on her underwear.
And both of those DNA samples found on Karen matched Ed Owens.
Once Benson had this information, he tracked down Ed Owens, who was 56 years old at the time, and Ed would eventually confess to the murder.
Ed was found guilty, and he received a sentence based on Utah's legal statutes from when the crimes had occurred.
This meant Ed was sentenced to five years to life in prison, which had been the maximum sentence back in 1980.
He would die in prison in 2021. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
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