Extradition begins for man accused of murdering Ogden girl in 1983

Weber County prosecutors have filed paperwork seeking to bring an Idaho inmate to Utah for trial for allegedly raping and killing an 11-year-old Ogden girl in 1983.

Gregory L. Seamons, 44, was charged in October in 2nd District Court with first-degree felony counts of murder and rape for slaying Rebecca Lemberger, who went missing after walking to Edison Elementary School on March 2, 1983.

Nearly 30 years later, a DNA match led police to Seamons, who is serving prison time in Idaho for a second-degree kidnapping conviction.

According to court documents, a DNA sample taken from Seamons in July 2011 matched DNA from the 1983 murder scene, which had been placed into a national database.

Police also determined that Seamons, who was 15 at the time, was living in the same Ogden neighborhood as Lemberger.

The extradition paperwork, filed Monday and signed by Weber County Attorney Dee Smith, promises that immediately after Seamons' Utah trial is over, the man will be returned to Idaho, where his prison sentence is scheduled to end in 2017.

The girl's body was discovered by classmates in a wooden shed. She was underneath an old mattress, wrapped in a blanket. Police said her head had been smashed at least eight times with a rock, according to news accounts at the time.

In a letter sent to The Salt Lake Tribune, Seamons admitted to "fooling around" with the 11-year-old victim prior to her death, but said he suspects that his father, Larry Bingham Seamons, likely killed the girl. Larry Seamons died nearly a decade ago.

"One morning [my dad] picked me and this girl up at the Circle K on Monroe and said he would take me to school first then drop her off on his way back because he wanted to talk to my Mom. I never saw this girl again and a few days later it came out on the news that she had been killed," Seamons wrote in a letter sent from the Idaho prison where he is incarcerated.

Ogden Major Crimes Sgt. Tim Scott has said that Seamons pointing the finger at his father is "convenient" considering that the elder Seamons is dead. But he said police are confident the right man has been charged with the girl's rape and murder.

shunt@sltrib.com