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These 6 unsolved Utah mysteries continue to baffle experts

These 6 unsolved Utah mysteries continue to baffle experts

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Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

Ranging from the kooky to the downright heartbreaking, Utah has been the setting for more than a few unsolved mysteries. These cases have one thing in common: there are no sure answers to what really happened.

Where is Susan Powell's body?

The disappearance of Susan Powell and its tragic aftermath has stoked burning questions from the public for years.

Susan Powell, a West Valley resident and mother of two, was reported missing along with her family in December 2009 when her children didn't show up to daycare. Joshua Powell returned home claiming he took his children on an overnight camping trip in the Utah desert while Susan slept at home. Despite traces of blood on the floor of the home—and other evidence pointing to Joshua—Susan's body could not be found.

In 2012, Joshua murdered his two children before killing himself. His brother Michael, widely believed to be his accomplice, committed suicide a year later.

The Powell case received a resurgence of interest due to the massively popular "Cold" podcast begun by KSL in 2018. In 2022, Dave Sparks of the Diesel Brothers excavated a mine shaft in the vicinity of where Joshua Powell claimed to have gone camping the night Susan disappeared. They discovered bones and clothing fragments, but the bones were found to be non-human.

Susan remains a missing person.

Who placed the Utah Monolith in the desert?

Aliens, pranksters, or performance art? There are still no answers as to who placed the 10-foot-tall metal statue—known as the Utah Monolith—in the Utah desert.

A helicopter manned by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources discovered the shining metal pillar while flying over a remote area of red rock. The monolith went viral after photos of it were posted to Twitter on Nov. 20, 2020.

Here's where the story gets weird: the monolith disappeared a week later. The same day, a replica appeared in Romania. Copycat versions continued to pop up and subsequently disappear in cities around the world in the following weeks.

It was later revealed that a group of passionate Utah outdoorsmen took down the monolith because they were concerned about the delicate ecosystem being swamped by monolith gawkers. The mystery remains, however, of who put it there.

Who was D.B. Cooper?

The shocking case of D.B. Cooper is a part of Northwest lore, but many theories point to a Utah connection. The facts of the case are simple: In 1971, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie informed a flight attendant on his Portland-to-Seattle flight that he had a bomb in his briefcase. He demanded $200,000, four parachutes, and a flight to Mexico.

The man then parachuted out of the plane mid-flight. Some of the ransom money was discovered near the Columbia River in 1980, but the rest has never been recovered.

The man—who identified himself as "Dan Cooper," then misprinted by a reporter as D.B. Cooper—was never found, despite the FBI building a massive case with 800 different suspects. Enter: the Utah connection.

The next year, in 1972, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. parachuted out of an airplane over Provo with $500,000 in ransom money. McCoy was an army vet and Brigham Young University student. He was soon arrested and convicted, but escaped prison a few years later and died in a shootout with police. With the striking similarities between the two cases, some believe McCoy was a Cooper accomplice or Cooper himself.

In fact, according to a Deseret News article, a Utah probation officer and a retired Utah FBI agent collaborated on a book that said McCoy Jr. and D.B. Cooper were the same man.

Did Butch Cassidy fake his death?

What would Utah's Wild West history be without the notorious Butch Cassidy?

The outlaw was born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866 to English immigrant parents who came to Utah as Mormon pioneers. He grew up on his parent's ranch in Circleville, Utah (you can still visit his childhood home in Piute County!)

Cassidy began his life of crime in the late 1880's robbing banks and trains across the West. After roughly a decade wreaking havoc on sheriffs and bankers throughout the region, Butch and his partner Harry Longabaugh (A.K.A the Sundance Kid) absconded to South America.

According to lore, the two men died in a shootout in Bolivia in 1908.

Or did they?

Cassidy's sister Lula Parker Betenson wrote in her book "Butch Cassidy, My Brother" that the outlaw returned to Circleville in 1925 to visit his dying father and attend a family wedding. She claimed Cassidy lived out his days in Washington State under an alias, then died in 1937 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

What's more, researchers tested bones from Cassidy's supposed grave in Bolivia. They were not a match to the DNA of Cassidy's remaining family members. It's possible he was buried somewhere else, but without conclusive evidence, the fate of the world's eminent outlaw remains a mystery.

Who killed Elizabeth Salgado?

Elizabeth Salgado was a recently returned LDS missionary from Mexico who vanished in Provo on April 16, 2015. Salgado, who had moved to Utah just weeks before she went missing, was last seen leaving her English class in downtown Provo. The community rallied in support of the missing woman, holding vigils and volunteering to search.

Three years later in 2018, a man stumbled upon skeletal remains in an off-trail area of Hobble Creek Canyon. They were identified as Elizabeth Salgado.

Because of the remote location of where the remains were found, the case is being treated as a homicide, but DNA testing turned up no new evidence. The search continues for Salgado's killer.

The lost Rhoades gold mine

The legend of a lost gold mine in Utah includes plenty of twists and turns. The gist is that Spaniards exploring Utah as early as the 16th century uncovered a source of gold known to the Native Americans in the area.

When the pioneers came to Utah, "several Indian chiefs in Utah converted to Mormonism. As a gift, they allowed Bringham Young to appoint someone to be shown the secret, sacred gold mines," according to astonishinglegends.com. "The man Young chose was Thomas Rhoades and it is rumored that the early Mormon currency and golden decorations of their temples comes from the gold of these mines."

Reportedly, the location of the mine was lost after the death of Thomas Rhoades and his son Caleb. An article in utahstories.com explains some believe the lost mine contains sacred and valuable artifacts in addition to massive amounts of gold.

While the tale seems far-fetched, there are plenty of believers and through the decades the story has been the inspiration for more than a dozen books.

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