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UTAH STATE PRISON — A Uintah County man who raped a woman in 2012 and then killed an acquaintance in 2013 while out on bail in the rape case will serve 32 years in prison before he sees the state parole board for the first time.
That means Jesse Anthony Saenz will be 56 years old when he gets his first chance at being released. The date was set after a standard administrative review of Saenz's file by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, according to Greg Johnson, the board's administrative officer.
In August, a jury found Saenz guilty of murder in the shooting death of Elvis Zachary Olsen. He was later sentenced to serve 15 years to life in prison.
The jury also found Saenz guilty of theft and possession of a weapon by a restricted person, which earned him prison terms of one to 15 years for the theft and weapons possession convictions. A judge ordered the three sentences to run consecutive to each other.
Saenz, 25, shot Olsen in the face, chest and arm on April 21, 2013, and left him dead in a field of tall, yellow grass 100 feet from the home where Saenz's grandfather lived, according to testimony given during the trial. A motive for the killing remains unknown.
Prosecutors presented evidence during the trial that showed a .44 magnum revolver was missing from the grandfather's home when it was searched shortly after Olsen's body was found. The same gun was found when Saenz was arrested the following day in Arizona while driving Olsen's car.
At the time of Olsen's death, Saenz was awaiting trial for raping a Vernal woman and was out on bail.
Four months after his arrest in the murder case, he pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated sexual assault for following the woman off a shuttle bus in the summer of 2012 and brutally attacking her in a vacant lot. He was sentenced to serve 15 years to life in prison.
When he was sentenced in the murder case in October, the judge ordered that prison term to run consecutively with the sentence in the sexual assault case.
