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OGDEN — She still shakes her head, trembles and tears up over what happened more than 29-years ago, and now a family member of an Ogden cold case murder victim says charges against an Idaho inmate have left her questioning everything she believed she knew about what happened.
Denise Lemberger Foran said she and other family members always believed her uncle Frank - Rebecca Lemberger's adoptive father - was responsible for her rape and murder in early March 1983. Frank Lemberger died not long after the crime.
"Even on his last dying words my father said please just admit what you did," Foran said Tuesday. "And he said, I didn't do it."
Now, 44-year-old Gregory L. Seamons - who would have been 15 at the time - faces extradition from the Idaho Correctional Institution on counts of aggravated murder and rape in the then 11-year-old Lemberger's death.
"I sincerely feel really terrible, really terrible about thinking that was [Frank Lemberger]," Foran said. "I'm glad it wasn't."
Still, Foran suggested in an interview the damage to her family had long since been done. It divided the family and many family members stopped talking to each other long ago.
Foran said believing her uncle was a murderer is something she had struggled with her entire adult life.
I can't explain it to somebody when you've lost trust because you think somebody in your family has killed somebody and you might be next.
–Denise Lemberger Foran
"I can't explain it to somebody when you've lost trust because you think somebody in your family has killed somebody and you might be next," said Foran. "You grow up believing that you're not a very good person because of your family choices."
Foran and her family lived with Frank Lemberger roughly two years before the crime, and she visited her cousin "Becky" regularly after she left. She said her uncle's anger and drinking problems ultimately fueled the family's suspicions he had done something unthinkable in an instant.
Rebecca Lemberger disappeared on her way to Edison Elementary School on March 2, 1983. Her body was found in a shed in a field near 729 N. Mountain Road the next day. Lemberger's father identified Rebecca's remains, Foran said.
"You don't know how good it makes me feel to know that there's not a killer in my family," Foran said.
Foran said she's truly sorry for ever suspecting her uncle and she hopes he is able to somehow understand that now. Prosecutors charging Seamons with the crime has been earth-shattering for her.
"It's like everything you thought was the way it was, isn't," Foran said. "Every lie you believed, every false accusation wasn't really true."
It may be months at the earliest before Seamons faces charges in a Utah courtroom. He is serving out a sentence in Idaho for kidnapping.
Foran said she is contemplating traveling to the Idaho Correctional Institution to explain to Seamons the toll the murder has taken on her family.
