Utah's Cold Cases: Investigators take new look at case involving body found at recycling facility

OGDEN — For the last 12 years, an unsolved case has haunted family members and investigators alike — a man's body found in a recycling facility two states away.

Today, detectives from the Ogden City Police Department and the Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force are still trying to figure out what happened to 20-year-old Ryan Bush.

"This should have been impossible," said deputy chief Tyler Ziegler, with Ogden police. "It should have been something that somebody knew about."

According to investigators, Bush was between living situations and trying to get out on his own as an adult when he was last seen by his mother on April 15, 2013.

"He's like, 'I'm sober. I'm going to work,'" said his mother, Tina Ross. "And he walked away, and he waved at me, and that was the last I seen him."

Nearly two weeks later, Bush's body was discovered at a transfer facility in a California neighborhood called Wilmington.

"It was a facility where they take recyclables and kind of separate them for processing," Ziegler said.

According to him, the Los Angeles Police Department initially took the case and traced it back to Ogden.

"What we discovered is that we had had a couple trucks from the county transfer station go to this facility in April, around the time of Ryan's disappearance," Ziegler explained. "And so, we've surmised, based on that, that Ryan's body was on one of those trucks."

Ziegler said that likely meant Bush's body was somehow processed through the Weber County Transfer Station, 867 W. Wilson Lane.

"How does somebody end up at a transfer facility in Ogden and transported to Wilmington, California, without nobody knowing about it?" Ziegler questioned. "The unfortunate reality of this case is that in order for him to get on that truck that ended up in Wilmington, his body would have gone through a compactor process, a baling process. There is almost zero probability that he's alive at the time that he gets on the truck to go to Wilmington."

Ziegler said detectives went through Bush's social media and messages, conducted numerous interviews, scoured through hours of surveillance footage as well as alarm logs at the transfer station. They even reviewed garbage routes and the weather at the time, but all leads proved to be dead ends.

"We shifted our investigative focus to the nighttime and who would have been able to know, who would have been able to operate that baler and who would have been able to access the facility at nighttime without anybody knowing," he said.

Ziegler said there was ultimately no evidence that someone showed up at night and defeated or turned off the alarm systems and surveillance cameras.

"That's what we're struggling with," he said.

The lack of answers has been tough for Ross ever since her son's disappearance and death.

"It's still hard after 12 years," she told KSL-TV. "I'm very angry about it."

Ross grew emotional talking about how kind her son was and how much he loved his family.

"He made me a mom — he was my firstborn," Ross said. "Not having no answers has been just too hard to move forward in life."

Ross expressed frustration about the process but said she still hoped for answers in her son's death, which she called "sickening" and "disgusting."

"Like, how dare you put a human in a garbage can," Ross said. "I just want answers. Why?"

Investigators with the Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force said they were continuing to raise money for advanced testing in this and other cold cases.

As they took a fresh look at the Bush case with Ogden Police, they urged anyone with information to call 801-399-8672.

Utah's Cold Cases is a series of KSL-TV stories and podcasts that highlight unsolved homicides, deaths and disappearances in our state. The Utah's Cold Cases podcast can be found wherever you listen.

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