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SALT LAKE CITY — When 10-year-old Anna Palmer was killed in September of 1998, it was like one minute she was alive and the next she wasn't.
She was running home from a friend's house and then she was found dead on her own front porch. It was clear what had killed her, but there was no clue as to who had done it.
And there wasn't for years.
On Friday, the man who was charged years later in 2010 with her death — Matthew John Breck — pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison without parole.
A month after Palmer died, police and volunteers handed out fliers, incredulous that no one on busy 300 East had witnessed the slaying — or anything leading up to it.
The girl's mother, Nancy Palmer, has rarely granted interviews, but always thanks the public for their concern and expresses her wish to see the case resolved.
In court hearings, she has described her daughter, a girl with dark brown hair and a sweet smile, as a "little socialite," known to have a number of friends.
The case went unsolved for years, quickly becoming one of Salt Lake City's most notorious cold cases. It wasn't until advances in DNA technology led to a breakthrough in the case, leading to charges against Matthew John Breck, who was 19 and living in Palmer's neighborhood at the time of the murder.
DNA recovered from under Palmer's fingernails was matched to Breck, now 32, who had been in the Idaho Correctional Institution-Orofino, in Clearwater County, Idaho, since 2001, when he was convicted of sodomy/lewdness of a child under 16.
He was charged with aggravated murder, aggravated sex abuse of a child and child abuse in connection with Palmer's death and a three-day preliminary hearing was held on the charges.
Friday's hearing, before 3rd District Judge Judith Atherton, was to include a decision on whether the man would stand trial on the charges, but changed after a plea deal was brokered.
"I think it's a good resolution," prosecutor Vince Meister said. "It's a resolution (the family) was happy with. Since day one, they wanted to see that Matthew Breck would never get out and hurt another little girl."
Nancy Palmer thanked police and prosecutors who worked on the case.
"It's been a long time coming," she said. "Hopefully now we can get past her death to the good things."
Email:emorgan@ksl.com
