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SALT LAKE CITY — Police on Thursday announced they have made an arrest in connection with a 12-year-old cold case killing.
Ricky Vincent, 48, was arrested for investigation of obstruction of justice related to the Aletha Jo Williams case.
Williams, 25, went missing in either late 2001 or early 2002. Last week, Salt Lake police homicide detectives officially reclassified the investigation from a missing person's case to a murder investigation after a witness recently stepped forward with new information and after additional evidence was collected. They also announced at that time that they had a person of interest.
On Thursday, Salt Lake Police Sgt. Cody Lougy said Vincent is "connected to the person of interest" in the case, but declined to say how. But as Vincent was being led by police out of the Salt Lake police station to a waiting patrol car to be taken to jail, he told reporters that the person of interest is his brother.
The police officer who booked Vincent into the Salt Lake County Jail wrote: "I have firsthand knowledge that the suspect in the murder investigation told (Vincent) details about the death of a female."
But when investigators interviewed Vincent on Wednesday, "he denied ever speaking to the suspect about this murder investigation," the report states.
Vincent was convicted of two counts of felony theft in 1987, according to court records. Since then, his criminal record in Utah has been minor outside of several traffic violations, court records state.
Williams' body has not been found.
After years of little to no information being released, there has been a flurry of recent activity in the past month, including the serving of search warrants last week, the seizure of a motor home, and searches conducted at a residence in Kearns and a business in South Salt Lake for forensic evidence.
On Feb. 28, police invited the media along as they searched the Jordan River for evidence.
A possible motive for the killing has not been released. Email: preavy@deseretnews.com Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam
