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NEPHI — A woman found dead at Yuba Reservoir in 1978 was positively identified by DNA testing in August, becoming the second named cold case victim in Juab County in the past two years, police say.
Marilee Bruszer (Case from 1978)
Marilee Bruszer, from Long Beach, California, was identified when DNA sample submissions from her mother and a sibling matched a hair sample provided by the Juab County Sheriff's Office to the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
Bruszer was 33-years-old when she went missing on Aug. 22, 1978. The state medical examiner's office ruled at the time she died by strangulation, said Juab County Sheriff Douglas Anderson. The Long Beach Police Department has said it will now reopen Bruszer's missing person case as a homicide investigation.
Bruszer's characteristics were matched against the cases of other missing women for several years, including comparisons with those women's dental records, but with no success.
"The case went cold with no new leads for a number of years," Anderson said.
After receiving some physical evidence from the Davis County Sheriff's Office that had been "unknown to anyone since 1978," Juab County investigators began again looking into the case in earnest.
Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. DeAnn Servey said Wednesday that a detective was searching through the agency's evidence room while investigating another cold case and found something that took him aback.
"He found some hair in the evidence locker, and it was only labeled: 'Hair from Yuba Lake body.' That's it," Servey said.
Retired Davis County Sheriff's Capt. Kenny Payne worked for both the sheriff's office and state medical examiner's office at the time and added that is the only conceivable reason "why we had that evidence in our locker."
He found some hair in the evidence locker, and it was only labeled: 'Hair from Yuba Lake body.' That's it.
–Sgt. DeAnn Servey
The detective sent the sample to Juab County, asking them to send it to UNT Health Science Center, which Servey says has "the best of the best" DNA profiling methods and nationwide DNA databases.
Juab County officials said they received the sample in 2013. The evidence from Davis County wasn't directly used because it had been in that county's possession unsupervised for so long, Anderson said.
However, the Juab County Sheriff's Office requested a sample of Bruszer's hair from the state medical examiner's office in 2014 and sent it to Texas for testing.
There, a DNA profile was created from the sample, and it matched with previous DNA submissions from two of Bruszer's family members. Long Beach police notified Bruszer's relatives, telling them she had been positively identified as of Aug. 22, Anderson said.
Juab County also announced Wednesday that in January 2014, investigators positively identified a 4-year-old boy whose decayed remains were found in the area of Juab Lake nearly 19 years ago.
Rene A. Romero (Case from 1996)
Rene A. Romero, of Reno, Nevada, was found dead in November 1996. In November 2013, the Juab County Sheriff's Office sent one of several bones obtained from the state medical examiner's office to the UNT Health Science Center. The center soon found the bone's DNA matched a forensic sample from Romero's mother, Ana Romero, indicating it was his.
Alvaro Ortiz, the boy's stepfather, was convicted of murdering his stepson in Reno, despite no body to use as evidence during his trial. Ortiz is currently serving a lifetime prison sentence with no opportunity for parole, Anderson said.
Ana Romero was also convicted for her role in her son's death and is currently out of prison on parole.
Prosecutors listed Nov. 24, 1994, as the date of Rene Romero's death. Reno police confirmed with Juab County that the boy had in fact been killed in Reno, despite his body being found in Utah, Anderson said.
The Juab County Sheriff's Office had separately investigated the discovery of Rene Romero's body as a homicide case, but investigators were unable to reach a resolution, despite listing information about his remains on a national missing persons database.
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