- Tianna Grace Talbot was sentenced to probation for stealing an urn with a murdered Sandy man's ashes.
- She pleaded guilty to theft; a second charge for desecration of a human body was dismissed in a plea deal.
- The ashes belonged to Chance Eggett. Three people have been sentenced to prison in relation to his 2020 killing in Tooele County.
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah woman was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to theft in a case accusing her of stealing an urn full of ashes from a woman whose son was murdered.
Tianna Grace Talbot, 23, pleaded guilty on Aug. 11 to theft of under $500, a class A misdemeanor, as part of a plea deal. In exchange, a charge of abuse or desecration of a human body, a third-degree felony, was dismissed.
She was sentenced to one year in jail, but that sentence was suspended and she was ordered to serve two years of probation.
Surveillance video shows Talbot placing the urn in her jacket, an urn that was recovered later by the Sevier County Sheriff's Office, according to charging documents.
Talbot was accused of taking the ashes of 21-year-old Chance Eggett, a man who was killed after being lured to Tooele by friends in May 2020, according to his mother, who called police about the theft.
The mother, Melissa Eggett, told KSL that Talbot knew about the circumstances of her son's death. She said she was devastated when his ashes were stolen, and taking ashes should be treated as seriously as desecrating a human body. The judge overseeing the case did rule there was probable cause to support the charge for desecrating a human body in this case, although it was dismissed later in the plea deal.
Three individuals pleaded guilty to different roles in Chance Eggett's killing and were sentenced to prison in 2023.
Izaiah Kirkpatrick, 26, of Draper, was sentenced to four terms of six years to life in prison for conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping, felony discharge of a firearm and manslaughter, all first-degree felonies, in April of 2023. Those sentences were ordered to run consecutively, so he will spend at least 24 years in prison.
In his plea statement, Kirkpatrick said they invited Chance Eggett to go target shooting in Tooele County in May 2020, but had planned on Killing Egged and disfiguring him to conceal his identity. He said that when he shot Eggett, it was intended to be a fatal injury.
Wyatt William Smelser, 26, of Cottonwood Heights, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a second-degree felony, and was ordered to serve between two and 20 years in prison in July 2023.
Hakop Jack Keshishain, 25, of Sandy, pleaded guilty to murder, a first-degree felony, and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in February 2023.
