Utah detective with no interest in homicide investigations recognized for cold case expertise

SALT LAKE CITY — When Unified police detective Ben Pender was asked nearly a decade ago if he would be interested in taking over the cold case division of the department's homicide unit, his initial reaction was 'No.'

"Actually, I wasn't," he said, while telling his superiors, "I have no interest."

It was the same answer he gave several years earlier when he was first asked to join the homicide squad.

"I've never had any interest in homicide," Pender admitted.

Yet last week, Pender — the man who never had any intention of becoming a homicide investigator, let alone one that focuses exclusively on cold cases — was recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice with the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in Community Policing. He met briefly with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland after receiving his award and had a picture taken with him.

Pender received the award for solving the 2010 murder of Sherry Black, 64, the mother-in-law of former Larry H. Miller Group CEO Greg Miller, who was stabbed to death inside her bookstore, B&W Billiards and Books, at 3466 S. 700 East.

'Six months and I'm out, right?'

For Pender, after dipping his toe into the field of homicide cases nearly 15-years ago, he discovered that he "really enjoyed the investigative part and the challenge part of homicide," he said.

"I just connected with it. I just really felt connected to it. I don't know what drew me there but I just really enjoyed that challenge. But I also wanted to make sure those families were getting answers, and in some cases justice with someone being held responsible for what they did," Pender said.

Since taking on cold case investigations, Pender has either solved or assisted in numerous cases, including the killings of Flora Rundle, Buddy Conti, Timothy Glashien, Jack Richardson, and Stephen Angel Lopez.

This year marks Pender's 31st year in law enforcement. His career began at the old Salt Lake County Jail, in downtown Salt Lake City. From there, he had a strong desire to join the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, which he said was a hard position to get. Because of that, he initially accepted a job with the South Salt Lake Police Department. Less than a year later, a position unexpectedly came open at the sheriff's office and Pender jumped at the chance to take it.

He was initially in the patrol division and worked with the motor squad for 10 years. Pender then moved to narcotics and became a member of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Metro Narcotics Task Force, consisting of local, state and federal officers. It was a position that Pender enjoyed, which is why he didn't want to switch to homicide.

But the sheriff's office was looking to start up a cold case unit at the time and needed to move someone to the homicide division to fill the slot of the person who would become the cold case detective. Pender eventually reluctantly agreed to the transfer — on condition that it was temporary.

"'Six months and I'm out, right?' So I came over, got all cleaned up, put the shirt and tie on and after six months, I begged to stay," he said. "I never looked back."

Several years later, Todd Park, a detective decorated for solving cold cases, was promoted and was moving on from the cold case division. That's when Pender was asked if he would be willing to fill that slot. Again, after some prompting, he agreed. And once again, Pender found it was a position he enjoyed working.

A day he'll never forget

One of the cases that stood out to Pender during his career solving cold cases is the 2009 killing of Lester Lloyd Janise.

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On Jan. 13, 2009, police were called to 7895 S. Candlestick Lane (80 East) to perform a welfare check, after apartment managers hadn't heard from Janise for a while and noticed newspapers were collecting on his porch, according to charging documents. His decomposing body was found inside. Investigators believed Janise, who had belts wrapped around his neck, had been dead for a month.

Nine years later, in 2018, two women were charged in connection with the killing.

When Pender got the case, he said started looking at it from scratch, as he does with any of the cold cases he reviews, giving it a fresh set of eyes. That case stands out to Pender because it's an example of his team's philosophy that all homicide investigations deserve equal attention, no matter who the victim is.

"It sticks out because I believe sometimes some families feel as though maybe they're not as important as another family," he said. "Whether it be a race issue, or whether it be somebody involved in drugs or whatever their lifestyle was. I think sometimes some families feel as though they're not looked at as important as anybody else.

"One thing I've always done in these cases, and throughout my career, is — it really doesn't make a difference to me who the person is, as far as I don't care about their financial status, I don't care what race they are. To me, it's always somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's daughter, it's somebody's mother, and I look at it that way. And I work just as hard on those cases as I do any other case. The status doesn't make a difference to me when it comes to the case."

With the Sherry Black case, Pender said he and his team put in numerous hours of work, trying everything from a new technique called phenotyping to genetic genealogy with Parabon Nanolabs. The Miller family even put Pender in touch with a person who worked in the genealogy department at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pender said his team had hundreds of names to check out, and followed the possible lineage of potential suspects back to the 1800s.

"I was traveling all over the United States, meeting with families, making a lot of phone calls, making a lot of contacts with individuals trying to figure out these different lines and stuff. And we just kept getting dead end and dead end after dead end. Probably went through over 300 to 500 names of people that we were in contact with, trying to figure out their ancestors' lines," he said.

Then, in 2018, the investigation lead to the name of Adam Antonio Spencer Durborow. As part of the investigation, detectives were able to obtain a sample of Durborow's DNA. Pender took it to the State Crime Lab to have it compared with DNA evidence collected from 2010. He met with the lab director personally and one of their top forensic scientists at 4:30 p.m. They said they would contact him when they got the results.

Pender said it was a day he'll never forget.

After working through the night, Pender got a text from the crime lab at 2 a.m., telling him they had a match. The next day, a plan was put into place to take Durborow into custody.

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"I believe when we initially arrested him, he knew what it was for. I believe he's probably been looking over his shoulder for the past 10 years. I believe at some point he felt like it was coming. But I think he just kept hoping he had one more day. He just kept hoping he would have another day before this would happen," he said.

It was for his efforts in the Black case that Pender was recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice. Though, he admits receiving awards isn't his favorite thing.

"I'll be honest, I really don't like to be recognized. And I know some might disagree with that, but I really don't like the recognition. But, I appreciate the recognition. I put a lot of work into the Sherry Black case, like I do all my other cases," he said.

Initially, Pender was at a conference in Atlanta when he learned he would be honored the next day over a Zoom meeting. But when he found out he was at the same conference in which Garland was the keynote speaker, he was able to arrange an in-person meeting and went shopping that night for a shirt and tie, neither of which he had brought with him for the conference.

Putting in the work

Despite his success, Pender humbly doesn't believe he is any better than any other detective. Instead, he simply credits his wins to putting in the hours.

"It's the work. I put in the hours. I work a lot of nights, I work a lot of weekends, I work a lot of holidays. I think it's just the work ethic. I think it's something I got from my parents early on in life, and I attribute it really to that. I just feel like I outwork people that way. But definitely not smarter than anybody," he said.

Pender also believes that advances in forensic technology have made cold case investigations more successful in recent years.

Additionally, the way DNA evidence is collected and preserved now is much better than in the 1970s. However, without the leg work — without a good team of people to connect the dots — he said, simply putting DNA evidence into a national database and waiting for a "hit" doesn't always work.

A great example of that is the Black case, Pender said.

Outside of two minor infractions, one of which was dismissed in court, Durborow was not arrested after he killed Black and his DNA was never put into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database that is used by police across the country to link criminals to other crimes, based on forensic evidence collected at those crime scenes.

"So, assuming Adam continued to live the life he was living, he'd never be in CODIS. We'd never match that up through CODIS. So, in my opinion, the DNA is great. But had we not proceeded the route we proceeded with in this particular case, I don't believe the Sherry Black case would have ever been solved. We had to do other things. If we were waiting for him to get into CODIS, as far as we know he went 10 years without a problem. So, if that's true, and if he actually went 10 years without a problem, who's to say he couldn't have done 20, 30, 40, 50 years without a problem? And again, that case would have never been solved because his DNA was never in CODIS," Pender said. "I don't think we can just put everything in a basket and wait for the call."

The Unified Police Department currently has 34 unsolved cold case homicides and 15 missing person cases in which foul play is suspected. Pender said he typically juggles seven to eight cold case investigations at a time. At least once every year to 18 months, he will review each of those cases to see if there is any new information that has come up. He will then work on the ones with the most promising leads and put the others on the shelf until their next review — though, he stresses, the cases are not forgotten.

Pender credits Unified's administration, starting with Sheriff Rosie Rivera, for giving him the freedom and flexibility to do what needs to be done to investigate cold cases, which typically involves a lot of traveling. Pender said he prefers interviewing a suspect in person rather than doing it over a phone call or having an outside agency that isn't familiar with a case conduct an interview.

He is also quick to credit people behind the scenes who don't get the credit, publicly, that he does.

"When I have these successes, they're not my successes. They're everybody's success," he said.

But most importantly, Pender credits his wife of nearly 30 years for supporting him in his efforts, which typically involve long hours and working nights, weekends and holidays in addition to his extensive traveling.

"I tell her, 'This is us.' I couldn't have solved the Sherry Black case, I couldn't have solved the Lester Janise case, I really couldn't have solved any of these cases without the support of her. And the support of the administration," he said. "Really the backbone here is my wife. I've got such great support from her. I couldn't have a better wife."

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