Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
OGDEN — Kristin Perkins never knew her cousin, 14-year-old Gabriel DiStefano. But she heard stories from her grandfather — Gabby's uncle — while growing up.
"She was the apple of his eye. He told stories all the time about all the family get-togethers they had and just all the fun they had growing up. The girls were always at his house. It was just family fun. So that's why I made him the promise that I would push this case to get solved," Perkins said.
Gabriel was shot and killed in 1982. Her uncle died in 2019 before her murder could be solved.
"It ate him every day of his life. He never got over it, ever," Perkins said. "The not knowing ate away at him all the time. You could tell in his eyes it ate away at him."
That's why Perkins says she and her family are hopeful about a new effort by investigators in Weber County who are seeking information from the public that may help break two cold case homicides from over 40 years ago that are believed to be related.
On Aug. 11, 1982, Joyce "Tina" Gallegos, 21, was last seen alive at a bus stop near 25th Street and Washington Blvd. Her body was found Aug. 22 in the Ogden River. She died from two gunshot wounds to her head.
Four days after Gallegos disappeared, Gabriel was seen going to a party in Riverdale. It was the last time she was seen alive. Her body was found wrapped in a towel, which was wrapped in a plastic shower curtain, on Sept. 16, 1982, in a ditch near a construction site in Harrisville. She had been shot once in the head, according to police.
Despite police questioning several suspects over the past four decades, no one has ever been arrested for either crime.
In 2018, the Weber County Sheriff's Office confirmed that detectives had been actively working the case again since 2012 thanks to advances in DNA technology.
On Wednesday, the sheriff's office made its strongest statement yet that investigators believe the two killings are connected.
"It has become evident that these two cases are linked by the presence of matching bullets recovered from their bodies," the sheriff's office stated.
Officials from the sheriff's office, the Weber County Attorney's Office and the Harrisville Police Department held a press conference on Wednesday to ask the public for information regarding the towel and the shower curtain that Gabriel's body was wrapped in.
The towel is described as white with the inscription "Apartment 15" on one corner.
"It is unknown if it was embroidered or written on it with a marker or ink. The shower curtain has been described as very light yellow in color. It also had light green markings at the bottom of it," the sheriff's office stated.
"This towel and shower curtain may play a crucial role in this ongoing investigation," said Steve Haney, an investigator with the Weber County Attorney's Office who took over the two cold cases 10 years ago.
Haney is asking the public to search their memories and recall if anyone has ever stayed in a motel or apartment with similar towels and shower curtains, even if it wasn't in Weber County.
"Any motel, any hotel, any short-term apartment anywhere — not just in Weber County, but any county in the surrounding cities," he said. "It could be just outside the state lines."
Homicides are like a sweater that has a thread on it — you start pulling that thread and it all starts coming apart. All we need is that one thread we can pull on and things will fall apart.
–Steve Haney, Weber County Attorney's Office
Unfortunately, Haney said the original towel and shower curtain were lost at some point over the past 40 years.
"There's been many stories about how they were discarded prior to DNA analysis and the case was sitting stagnate. There was also a story of a possible flood that came through the Harrisville Police Department and evidence was destroyed. We're not really sure how they went missing, but they are missing," he said. "It was prior to DNA swabbing. We don't have any samples from either the towel or the shower curtain."
But Haney is convinced that finding out where those items came from could prove to be a major break in the case.
"Homicides are like a sweater that has a thread on it — you start pulling that thread and it all starts coming apart. All we need is that one thread we can pull on and things will fall apart. We're doing the things, we're looking at new angles on this case, re-interviewing old witnesses, looking at things differently because what we've been doing for 40 years hasn't worked. Let's look at it with different eyes and see what we can find. This evidence is significant, I can feel it," he said.
In addition to Perkins, Gallegos' brother, Roger Gallegos, attended Wednesday's press conference.
"I hope that somebody does come forward with some kind of clue or something, because it's been 40 years and I'm still waiting, and waiting and waiting," he said. "I think about her every year; we go visit her grave every year, put flowers on her pavement, pray for her."
Anyone with information can contact the Weber County Attorney's Office at 801-399-8618, or email Haney at shaney@webercountyutah.gov.
