Man convicted of killing Kiplyn Davis to be released from prison Tuesday

GUNNISON — A man convicted of killing Spanish Fork teenager Kiplyn Davis in 1995 will walk out of prison on Tuesday after serving his full sentence.

Timmy Brent Olsen, now 48, was convicted of manslaughter, a second-degree felony, in 2011 and sentenced to a term of one to 15 years in the Utah State Prison. On Tuesday, he will be released from the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison and will not be on parole because his sentence will expire.

Kiplyn was 15 when she vanished from Spanish Fork High School on May 2, 1995.

As part of Olsen's plea deal, he did not have to reveal the whereabouts of Kiplyn's body, which has never been recovered. But the hope that he would eventually do so has been at the forefront of the minds of Kiplyn's parents for 30 years.

"Just tell me where Kiplyn is. You don't need your lawyers. All you need to do is tell me where Kiplyn is, and we'll go on with life," Richard Davis, Kiplyn's father, pleaded with Olsen during his lone parole hearing in 2021.

Olsen had the chance to be released early. But during that 2021 hearing, he again declined to tell the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole the location of Kiplyn's remains.

"The board finds that Mr. Olsen has not cooperated in good faith in efforts to locate the victim's remains," the board wrote in its decision to deny parole. "If at any future date Mr. Olsen can present evidence which leads to the location and recovery of the victim's remains, or that shows he acted in good faith to do so, the board will reconsider the decision of expiration of sentence."

In December, the pardons board again rejected an early release and stated that its 2021 decision, "which found that the victim's remains have not been recovered and that Mr. Olsen has failed to cooperate in good faith," still stood.

"We certainly hoped that he would tell us where Kiplyn was," Mariane O'Bryant, who prosecuted Olsen, told KSL. "I hope certainly at some point we'll be able to find her and bring her home."

The crime

Kiplyn, a 15-year-old sophomore at Spanish Fork High, disappeared on May 2, 1995. But she was never located, and there seemed to be no movement in the investigation for 10 years until five men — including classmates of Kiplyn — were indicted by a federal grand jury for lying about their roles in the teen's disappearance.

Olsen, Scott Brunson, Garry Blackmore, Christopher Neal Jeppson, and David Rucker Leifson, were all accused of perjury. Investigators say they uncovered a conspiracy of silence among the group. Olsen was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.

In 2006, Olsen and Jeppson were charged with murder in 4th District Court. The case was eventually transferred to 3rd District Court in 2010. Olsen pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in 2011 as part of a plea deal. Jeppson pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of obstruction of justice in 2009 after signing an affidavit saying he had nothing to do with Kiplyn's disappearance. He was released from prison after his sentence expired in 2014.

Leifson, Blackmore and Brunson were found guilty of lying to a grand jury.

Charging documents filed in 2006 say Olsen admitted to multiple people that he raped and killed Kiplyn and made her "disappear."

In 2011, Olsen's attorney, Jeremy Delicino, said Olsen saw another person strike Kiplyn twice in the head with a softball-size rock, then helped that person move her body. That other individual was never identified in court.

In previous court hearings, Olsen was accused of making statements to police that placed Leifson at the scene of the crime. Of the five men indicted on perjury charges in the case, prosecutors believe Leifson was probably the closest to Kiplyn. Both attended the same school and had developed a friendship through the school's drama club.

Parole hearing

In 2021, Olsen went before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. His appearance came shortly after Utah lawmakers passed a new law stating that a person convicted of a homicide cannot be released early if the victim's body has not been recovered or the inmate has not cooperated with authorities in locating a victim's remains. Although Olsen pointed out to investigators a place where Kiplyn was allegedly buried, investigators could find no evidence that collaborated his claims.

During that hearing, board Chairwoman Carrie Cochran asked Olsen to talk about what happened on the day Kiplyn disappeared and "give you an opportunity to explain the events of that day." Asking an inmate to recount their crime is common at all parole hearings.

"Without asking my lawyer and speaking to her about it, I'm not going to answer that question until I can do that," Olsen said in a recording of the hearing.

"So you don't want to talk about the events of that day?" Cochran asked.

"Not until I can speak to my lawyer, no. It's a serious matter, and I take it very seriously, and I don't want anything to be misconstrued in a way that I answer it incorrectly."

Olsen also talked about how he had been attending Bible college for four years at that point and how he believed he was a much better person at that time in his life than when he was 17.

"I just decided it was time to grow up and start acting like a man and the way that I should rather than just acting like a kid all the time and worrying about things that are worthless in your life," he said. "Unfortunately it took prison to make me grow and change into a person I'm OK looking in the mirror at."

But when it was Richard Davis' turn to speak, he questioned how much Olsen had really changed.

"He's not making things any different," Kiplyn's father said. "I say forget the lawyers and listen to your heart. Listen to what your conscience is saying to you. ... To be a man you got to have integrity."

At that hearing, Davis said he assumed Olsen was going to just serve his full sentence and walk out of prison. But he believes Olsen's conscience will still be burdened by not revealing where Kiplyn's body is.

"I'm saying that I will be your biggest advocate right now, and I'll ask the court to let you free if you'll just come out and tell us where she is so we can put her in a proper place," Davis said. "All I'm asking is if Tim will soften his heart and tell my family where Kiplyn is buried, and we recover her remains, we as Kiplyn's family will advocate for his release so he can start a new life and we can end a nightmare that my family has experienced for 26 years."

Despite Davis' pleas, Olsen responded by saying several times, "I've done everything I can."

"I take full responsibility. That's why I pleaded guilty for my role in all this stuff. But there's nothing else that I can do," he said. "I can't do any more than I have already done."

On Monday, O'Bryant recalled how prosecuting Olsen's case was challenging "because so many different stories were told at the time."

"We were fairly certain of who was involved. We never could exactly figure out what happened to (Kiplyn)," she said, while adding that the goal during the entire process has always been to "bring her home."

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