Utah's Cold Cases: Detectives take new look at 17-year-old shooting, crash in Ogden

OGDEN — Detectives are hoping for new leads to crack a 17-year-old shooting and crash that left a man dead.

On Oct. 24, 2008, officers responded to the 1900 block of Wall Avenue to what initially appeared to be a car crash.

According to Ogden police detective Darren Goff, however, doctors subsequently found a gunshot wound in the back of the driver, identified as 46-year-old Jeffrey Bancroft.

"He was an individual who ended up, it sounds like, in the wrong place at the wrong time," Goff said during an interview with KSL-TV.

Bancroft, a machinist and mechanic, had only recently started working at Williams International and had gone on his lunch break in the middle of his night shift.

"I mean, everyone who really took the time to get to know him loved him," Bancroft's son, Kurtis Bancroft, said.

Even today, the memory of what happened is painful for family members.

"A lot of time went by where I didn't speak of him, and I would choke up with just the mentioning of him," the son said. "Enough time went on that I felt like in not speaking of him, I was letting his memory die."

In hopes of answers, investigators with Ogden police and the Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force have taken a fresh look at the circumstances surrounding Bancroft's death.

Goff said investigators knew that Bancroft had gone to a drive-thru near 36th and Washington Boulevard on his lunch break and there was a half-eaten burrito inside the wrecked vehicle.

"We know he bought the burrito," Goff explained. "He probably was driving down Wall Avenue and there was some sort of encounter.

According to investigators, one witness near 21st and Wall heard a gunshot, while two other witnesses said they had confrontational encounters with a group of three men in that area.

One of those two witnesses later recanted his statement, however, Goff said.

It wasn't until five years later that detectives found a possible person of interest.

"He had been in the Ogden area, Weber County area, doing some carjackings," Goff said.

The man was in federal custody in Florida and was willing to talk, according to Goff.

"He told us, 'I was there,'" Goff said. "'I was with two other individuals. This guy had pulled out of the drive-thru. We were trying to carjack a car.'"

The inmate said one of the other men shot Bancroft that night. Goff said the inmate also claimed the shooting took place just beyond the drive-thru.

The detective had two names from the Florida interview, and Goff said one man was in custody at the Utah State Prison.

"This guy has quite a history," Goff said. "He's very well known in the crime world in Ogden and the surrounding area. He's got a rap sheet, very long, just a well-versed individual in all things criminal."

Goff called it the "strangest" interview he had ever done in his life.

"He comes out and he's in his typical prison gear, or his clothing, and he has a beanie hat on, and we start with the introductions and while we're there and once we told him what was going on, he looked at us and he just stood up," Goff recalled. "And he took his beanie off. And he did a 360 in that spot, and he sat back down and said, 'I'm done talking to you.'"

The other man was also uncooperative. It was a promising lead until it wasn't.

"We have these three individuals," Goff said. "We have one who's speaking to us saying that, 'A' and 'B' did it, and 'A' and 'B' didn't want to talk."

Goff said the matter of the half-eaten burrito continues to come back to him, since he doesn't believe Bancroft would have been able to consume half of it by the time he would have been shot just beyond the drive-thru, which suggests the shooting likely happened somewhere other than where the inmate said.

"I don't see him eating his burrito after he got shot," Goff said. "I mean, if he did, that's weird."

Goff believes somebody out there holds the right information to help crack the case, and police encouraged anyone with information to contact them through the Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force at 801-399-8672.

The task force continues to raise money for advanced testing in this and other cold cases through its website.

As Kurtis Bancroft and his brothers await answers in his father's death, they now plan to meet every August — their dad's birth month — for a fly-fishing trip.

"It's just kind of an unspoken thing, like we know when we're together, like he's just there too," Kurtis Bancroft said.

Friends and family maintain that Kurtis looks just like his dad.

"It can be a painful look in the mirror sometimes, though, like I said, but good memories can be painful memories after a traumatic event," he said. "Love is pain, they say."

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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