Utah’s Cold Cases: Mother, investigators hoping for answers in 2017 Ogden killing

Utah’s Cold Cases is a series of KSL TV stories and podcasts that highlight unsolved homicides, deaths and disappearances in our state. The stories can be found on KSL 5, the KSL+ app and ksltv.com. Utah’s Cold Cases KSL Podcast can be found wherever you listen.

OGDEN — It’s been more than seven years since Brian Housley died, and more than seven years since his mother painstakingly chose the clothes to bury him in, something of which her son would have approved.

“All I had left down there was his suit that he'd go to church in, and that wasn't going to work,” Darcie Housley said.

She had to search through the drawers of the basement bedroom he had preferred and unwrap gifts meant for Christmas. Gifts he would never open, after being shot in the early morning hours of Nov. 27, 2017.

Ultimately, she corralled some new socks, a hoodie and a beanie.

“All his cousins said he's got to have the beanie on, and they were right. It was him, you know,” she said. “And so it was just odd how I had those clothes in the end.”

Brian Housley was 28 when he died. The youngest of three boys, his family called him “Mr. Friendly.”

“We did,” Darcie Housley said. “I mean, he'd approach anybody. And from everybody in the city, I haven't heard one person say anything negative about him. It's always: ‘He was the nicest kid,’ … and I think he was.”

She said her son was helping a tenant of a nearby apartment work on their car in Ogden when he was shot by a passing car. He died three days later.

The identity of the person who fired the weapon remains a mystery.

“It's on my mind 24/7,” Darcie Housley said. “I don't sleep real well. I'm constantly trying to think of ways that we can solve the case. What can we do now, you know?”

Steve Zaccardi, an investigator with the Weber County Attorney’s Office, recounted what happened that night and what law enforcement officers have pieced together in the years since.

At the time of his death, Brian Housley was living in a motorhome behind a house in Ogden that had been converted into multiple apartments. It had been a year full of violence between two rival Ogden-area gangs and Zaccardi said two brothers living in one of the apartments were believed to be leaders in one of the gangs.

Their vehicle, a Chevy Blazer, was the one Brian Housley was working on the night he was shot.

“We suspect that (the shooter) saw the Blazer in the driveway,” Zaccardi said. “They saw someone working on the Blazer. They assumed it was one of the guys that they were after. So they started yelling their nickname. We suspect Brian looks up, gets shot.”

Six rounds were fired, one struck Brian Housley in the head.

It was a simple case of mistaken identity.

“I mean, they shot Brian. He's the wrong guy,” Zaccardi said. “He's not the guy they were looking for. And that could have been anybody's kid.”

Detectives were eventually able to track down a potential suspect vehicle. They pulled surveillance video from a nearby gas station just hours before the shooting that shows known gang members from one of the gangs involved on camera.

Anonymous tips flooded in.

“A lot of tips come in on who the suspects were — and there was a lot of them,” Zaccardi said. “And more … tips came in about who the potential suspects were than would be able to fit in the car.”

Detectives chased down the leads, trying to eliminate some and establish alibis, but they ran into barriers as they tried to get solid evidence, especially in getting cooperation from those committed to gang culture and its code of silence.

“It's very hard and especially when you try to talk to people and they say I don't want to talk or whatever, so they don't give you the information,” Zaccardi said.

Police submitted shell casings from the scene to the state database to try and find another incident using the same weapon, but there were no matches.

They eventually obtained a video of the shooting from the single eyewitness. While valuable, the video doesn’t make it possible to see the faces of those inside the vehicle. The eyewitness made an identification in court of the passenger in the suspect vehicle the night of the shooting and later picked him out of a photo lineup.

“The prosecutors didn't feel that that was enough,” Zaccardi said. “We felt like we had to have a little bit more to do any type of case. And so it kind of just died. The case just kind of stopped and it went cold.”

Darcie Housley has been tireless in her efforts to raise awareness for her son. She said time has done little to heal her wounds. If anything, she said, they have festered.

“I'm more angry because I don't know who did this and I feel like seven years has gone by and they've lived their life and his is gone. You know,” she said. “What are they doing? And it just bothers me to the ends of the world. They should be sitting in jail, and you know, and they need to look at Brian's picture every day and have remorse.”

When Darcie Housley heard the Weber County Attorney’s Office was launching the nonprofit Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force, she was persistent then, too. Zaccardi said she was vocal about wanting to see her son’s case reopened.

“The hope is that with a new, fresh set of eyes or new technology or just discovering new information or just turning over rocks, you know, that weren't turned over, that you can maybe find some new information,” he said. “That … you can catch the people who did it and ultimately bring some closure to the families and punish the people that were responsible.”

Investigators were able to track down the original surveillance video that police had collected from the area of the shooting in 2017. They realized they have two days’ worth of video and can confirm that their suspect vehicle — a silver Jaguar — had driven by the house earlier in the day.

“They’ve been casing that place all day,” Zaccardi said of the vehicle in the video. “So now we have physical evidence that links the Jaguar to the crime scene before and we have information now that the Jaguar was in the area after the murder. So we really feel confident we have the right car.”

He said they believe they know who was driving the vehicle and have the eyewitness information on who the passenger is, but they still need something concrete to move the case forward.

“We think we're getting close,” Zaccardi said. “We're analyzing with new technology. We're analyzing the DNA that we possibly could have at the crime scene. We're hoping that we get some results … but what we really need is proof. We need proof to, you know, it's a high standard: beyond a reasonable doubt. It's a high standard in a court of law.”

He said they’re still hoping to track down physical evidence, like the gun used in the shooting, or that someone will decide to come forward.

“Time can hurt a case, but it can also help,” Zaccardi said. “Because people's lives — like in this case, 2017 — someone's life was different then than it is now. And maybe they found religion, maybe they have a guilty conscience, maybe something in their life has changed and they're willing to come forward with information that they, maybe for whatever reason, weren't able or willing to do at the time. We're really looking for someone that has enough guts, you know, and is brave enough to stand up and raise their hand and say: ‘You know what? I'll tell you the information.’"

Darcie Housley isn’t necessarily hoping for justice in the form of harsh punishment. She would just appreciate seeing some remorse from those who took her child’s life.

“You can't ever get closure for something like this when somebody steals your loved one's life,” she said. “It's just — it's not right. It's just so messed up in your mind."

“I just think that they need to spend some time in prison and think about what they did,” Housley continued. “I want things to be difficult for them, but I really, truly would love to see some remorse. I mean, it's just: How do you kill somebody that you didn't even know and don't even care?”

The Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force is raising money to help pay for DNA and other advanced testing on these cold cases through its website.

Anybody with information on these cases is asked to call or text the task force at 801-399-8672.

For more, check out KSL's Utah's Cold Cases YouTube playlist.

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