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DRAPER -- A man in prison for killing a Utah Valley State College hockey coach will not have a chance at parole until 2031.
Christopher Eugene Wright, 36, was convicted of murder in the Nov. 15, 2007, shooting death of Ken Dolezsar in the parking lot of a Village Inn restaurant in Sandy.
The Board of Pardons and Parole last week set his first parole hearing for August 2031.
Dolezsar's wife, Leslie Dee Mower, filed a lawsuit in November against another man, David Novak, claiming he hired someone to kill her husband over a financial dispute. She is seeking more than $19 million.
Mower said Novak, a consultant for federal prison inmates, told her and her husband he could get their sentences commuted after they were convicted of tax evasion. She said they each gave him $25,000.
In the lawsuit, Mower said Novak introduced Dolezsar to Wright and arranged a meeting the day Dolezsar was killed.
Wright's wife has said she also suspects Novak in the murder and claims her husband was home sick that day. Wright has appealed his conviction.
Novak was interviewed by police after Dolezsar's killing but has since disappeared.
The parole board also made decisions last week on two other convicted killers.
Ernest Gabriel Hernandez, 46, who pleaded no contest to aggravated murder in the Jan. 23, 1991, killing of a convenience store clerk in Salt Lake City, was ordered to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.
And a January 2013 rehearing was set for Tyson Yellowbear, 26, who pleaded guilty to criminal homicide by assault for shooting two people, one fatally, at a party in South Salt Lake on March 25, 2006.
E-mail: pkoepp@desnews.com.
