Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
PRICE — A Carbon County family expressed hope Wednesday that justice could still be served in a 45-year-old murder case, as detectives retrieved new potential DNA samples from the victim’s exhumed remains.
“I would hope that nobody has to exhume their own mother,” Heidi Jones-Asay said after holding a rededication and graveside service for her mother, Loretta Jones, at the Elmo City Cemetery. “It was something that I had to do.”
On July 30, 1970, Jones-Asay — then a 4-year-old girl — opened her bedroom door and found her mother dead in the front room of their Price home, located near 400 South and 500 East.
Detectives said Jones had been raped, strangled, stabbed multiple times and her throat was slit.
Carbon County Sheriff’s investigators said a man had originally been arrested and questioned in connection with the homicide, but was ultimately let go without enough evidence to move the case to trial.
Jones-Asay said that man had bought her and her mother hamburgers the night before. After the murder, the family learned the man had attempted earlier the same evening to grab a child a few blocks away and was chased near Jones’ house.
With her mother’s death nearly two decades in the rear view, Jones-Asay said she began reaching out to law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to revisit the case, but had no success.
Finally in 2009, a conversation with Jones-Asay at the Helper Arts Festival led Carbon County Sheriff’s Sgt. David Brewer, a former high school classmate, to take a closer look.
“The drive Heidi has is amazing,” Brewer said. “She will not let it go.”
Brewer, however, quickly encountered a major roadblock — all the original evidence in the case had vanished. He said it was still unclear why or how it disappeared.
“There were samples taken at the medical examiner’s office that would today be able to get a DNA profile,” he said.
Tuesday, Sheriff’s deputies exhumed Jones’ remains from the cemetery in Elmo, with hopes they may be able to retrieve DNA samples that would provide key evidence.
Brewer said many of the original witnesses in the case were now deceased, but detectives within the past two weeks located transcripts from some of the original court proceedings.
“I’m confident that I’m where I need to be in this case,” Brewer said. “Anything we can add to it would help.”
Jones-Asay shared the same hope for justice in her mother’s murder.
“There is hope — there has got to be hope,” she said. “I mean, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.”
