This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A 76-year-old Colorado man has been extradited to Utah to stand trial for the 1970 rape and murder of a Carbon County woman.
Thomas Edward Egley, of Rocky Ford, Colo., was charged earlier this month in 7th District Court with murder in the second degree, and first-degree felony rape, for the stabbing death of 23-year-old Loretta Marie Jones at her Price home on July 30, 1970.
Egley was booked into the Carbon County jail on Tuesday.
An initial court appearance was set for Wednesday afternoon.
In 2009, Carbon County sheriff's Sgt. David Brewer reopened the cold-case homicide at the request of family members of the victim.
Egley and Jones had dated in the past, Brewer told The Salt Lake Tribune in an interview last year, and when Jones' body was exhumed last spring, Egley asked his neighbor "how long DNA evidence and semen lasted," according to charging documents.
The neighbor convinced Egley to "come clean" to investigators and arranged for Egley to meet with Carbon County investigators at his Colorado home, charges state.
On July 8, Egley admitted to police that he had slit Jones' throat, according to charging documents, and in a private conversation with his female neighbor on July 16, Egley went into more detail about the rape and murder.
Egley told the neighbor he was at Jones' home "for sex ... I was turned down for sex ... [It made me feel] like shit ... she went to the kitchen or something after that ... and when she came back I stabbed her ... in the living room. She fell ... in front of the couch," charges state.
Egley then told the neighbor that, believing Jones was still alive, he had sex with her and "cut her throat," charges state. He told his neighbor he left her on the floor.
The victim's 4-year-old daughter, Heidi, found her mother dead on the living room floor the next morning, charges state.
A doctor who examined Jones' body in 1970 testified that she died from "internal bleeding, caused by stab wounds in the pulmonary artery, lungs and heart," charges state. He added that he found semen in Jones' vagina.
Egley told his neighbor in July that when he returned to his hotel, he bathed with all his clothes on, and the next day got rid of the clothes he was wearing and "threw the knife in the river behind the hotel."
In November 1970, Egley was arrested and charged with the slaying in November 1970, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence following a preliminary hearing.
The case was revived in 2009 when the victim's daughter, Heidi Jones Asay, who is now 50, ran into Brewer, an old Carbon High schoolmate.
Intrigued by the long-dormant case, Brewer reopened it.
Due to evidence lost through the years — including papers and a vaginal swab with a semen sample — Brewer had to start his investigation from the beginning.