On July 31, 1970the peaceful community of Price, Utah, was rocked by a crime atrocious that left an indelible mark on the life of a family. Loretta Jones, a mother single, 23 years old, was brutally murdered on your own home.
The tragedy was discovered by his daughter of 4 years, Heidi Joneswho upon waking up saw the body lifeless of his mother in a puddle of blood. The little girl, terrified, ran to look for help in the home of his neighbors, who immediately called the police. Behind the crimeHeidi was left under the care of her maternal grandmother.
That night, uAn unknown man had entered Loretta’s house, raped her and slit her throat before fleeing. Despite the brutal attack, there were no signs of forced entry, leading authorities to believe Loretta knew her attacker.
The only clue they had was a kidnapping attempt which had occurred a few hours earlier in a nearby house. Lori Kulow, 10, was approached by a man while she was playing in her yard, but she managed to escape after screaming loudly, scaring her attacker.
A month after Loretta’s incident, police arrested Tom Egley, a man who had had a sporadic relationship with the victim. Egley became the main suspect since Lori identified him as her attacker in a lineup. However, with no physical evidence directly linking him to Loretta’s murder, he was released after spending only 90 days in prison for Lori’s attempted kidnapping. Over time, Loretta’s case went cold.
Years passed before Heidi decided to take action to solve her mother’s murder. In 1989, she began sending letters to various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, but received no responses. It wasn’t until 2009 that fate unexpectedly intervened. Heidi posted a quote on her Facebook profile and received a response from David Brewer, a childhood friend who was now a detective in the Sheriff’s Office. Upon learning of her situation, Brewer decided to help her reopen the case.
Upon reviewing the files, Brewer discovered that all the original documents of the case had disappearedso he had to question the witnesses and officers involved at the time. Heidi, for her part, remembered that her grandmother had kept a diary related to the investigation. Reading the diary, Heidi remembered important details, including that her mother knew her killer.
Among the memories that emerged was an old photograph that Heidi had saved. In the image, taken days after the murder, Heidi was seen in front of a blood stain at the crime scene. Upon analyzing the photo, they discovered something surprising: in the pool of blood, Loretta had written the letters “T” and “O,” signaling that her killer was Tom Egley.
With this new clue, Brewer decided to exhume Loretta’s body in search of the killer’s DNA. Unfortunately, the state of the body after more than four decades buried did not allow any viable sample to be obtained. However, they leaked to the press that DNA evidence had been found, which generated an unexpected reaction.
“I was living in California and saw a TV show about unsolved mysteries in 1989, so I wrote to the show and started writing to the authorities. But I hit one brick wall after another, so I let it go,” Heidi confessed about how she decided to take on the case, in an interview for A & E True Crime.
An Egley neighbor, alerted by the news, contacted the police and offered her help in obtaining a confession. Using a hidden microphone, the woman got Egley to confess to Loretta’s murder. He claimed that they had had consensual sexual relations, had fought and, In a fit of rage, he killed her.
Tom Egley was arrested in August 2016, 46 years after the murder. During the trial, Egley, now 86, pleaded guilty to criminal homicide in exchange for the rape charge being dropped. He was he is sentenced to life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole in 10 years. Her first hearing for parole will be in 2027, when she will be 96 years old, and it is not yet certain that she will be granted it.
“I always knew it was Tom. When the investigators came, when I was 4, I told them, ‘Tom did it.’ And again. The keyhole in my bedroom opened into the front room where the murder took place. What I do remember vividly is looking through the keyhole and seeing something lying on the floor. My mind, my brain, has decided not to remember it; If I saw him raping my mother or stabbing her, I don’t know.“Heidi assured A&E True Crime
This case, solved thanks to Heidi’s tenacity and the unexpected collaboration of David Brewer, closed a painful chapter in Heidi’s life. Although she will never get her mother back, she has at least managed to find some peace by seeing her killer finally brought to justice.
