This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
For more than three decades, investigators have suspected one man in the murder of Barbara Jean Rocky.
Since the 21-year-old Brigham Young University student's naked body was found riddled with bullets in 1974, detectives and prosecutors have agonized over whether their case against Gerald Walter Hicker would convict.
"We believed there was enough evidence," said former Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom, "just not enough for beyond a reasonable doubt."
The case sat filed away until last year, when the sheriff's "cold case" investigator began re-interviewing witnesses and this year submitted the evidence for prosecutors to review, Yocom said. Last month, the detective ordered a lab analysis of a soil sample that had been taken from the crime scene in 1974.
A tissue sample in the soil matched the DNA of Hicker, Rocky's former boyfriend and college classmate.
Hicker, 56, was arrested Wednesday in Tacoma, Wash., where he lives. He is charged with first-degree felony murder in Utah and with being a fugitive from justice in Washington. He is being held without bail in a Washington jail.
Hicker was 23 and majoring in chemistry when he first told police Rocky had disappeared. Hicker and Rocky were involved in a relationship, Sgt. Kris Ownby said Wednesday, but the nature of their relationship is not clear. Rocky's LDS Church bishop told police that Rocky was engaged to Hicker, while Hicker said they were only dating, according to stories that appeared in The Tribune shortly after her murder.
Just hours after Rocky had been seen pawning jewelry March 11, 1974, at a Salt Lake City business, Hicker showed police a goodbye letter he said Rocky had left for him in her car, according to a police affidavit filed Wednesday in 3rd District Court.
Investigators said Rocky, a junior social work major at BYU, wrote that she had "found her people and was going with them," Tribune archives indicate.
The next day, a utility worker found Rocky's body nearly 2 miles above the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon near the Ledgemere picnic area. Rocky had been shot several times in the back and arm, Tribune archives show. Her clothes were found untorn, folded and neatly piled near her head. Yocom said Wednesday there were indications Rocky had sex shortly before her death. At the time, authorities reported she had been raped, Tribune archives show.
The evidence implicated Hicker, Yocom said. Authorities learned he had helped Rocky buy an Astra .357-caliber revolver - the type of gun that fired the five slugs found at the scene, an FBI lab analysis showed. Police also learned Hicker had taught Rocky to shoot, instructing her to load only five bullets into the weapon, the affidavit filed Wednesday indicates.
Rocky's Astra pistol never was found.
Before an autopsy was done, court documents say, Hicker told a witness Rocky was shot five times in her vital organs. He said he learned that information from FBI files.
"No such information existed at the time Gerald Hicker made the statement," an investigator wrote in the affidavit.
The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and prosecutors felt they were close to filing murder charges. In March 1975, detectives said they had found new evidence and anticipated arresting someone in the near future. In July 1975, detectives told The Tribune they planned to submit evidence to prosecutors and seek charges in Rocky's death against a suspect who was no longer in Utah.
That suspect was Hicker, Yocom said Wednesday. Yocom was a deputy district attorney in the mid-1970s and worked with detectives on the Rocky murder.
Yocom recalled pondering what to do as Hicker neared the end of his studies and made plans to return to Washington.
"I remember trying to make a decision between stopping him from getting on the plane and charging him or letting him go," Yocom said.
In 1975, the day before he returned to Washington, authorities interviewed him one last time in Rocky's murder. Fearing the case might not stick, prosecutors held off on charges.
A day before the 1975 deposition, Hicker had been acquitted in a Utah County sexual assault case. Yocom said there's no indication the sexual assault case against Hicker was linked to Rocky's death.
In April 1975, Hicker also was accused of stealing and selling two handguns from his Provo roommate. He was charged with felony theft, Tribune archives show, though it was unclear Thursday whether he was convicted.
Rocky's brother in California declined to comment on Hicker's arrest. Her mother and sister did not return phone messages.
The following cold cases were aided by DNA evidence, according to authorities and Tribune archives:
* A blood sample from Utah inmate Westley Allen Tuttle, 55, linked him to the murder 14-year-old Lisa Chambers in 1982. Tuttle is serving a sentence of five-years-to-life in a maximum-security prison for a murder in 1983. The investigation into Chambers' case is ongoing.
* DNA matching Edward Lewis Owens was found under Karin Strom's fingernails, connecting him to her strangulation murder in Woods Cross in 1980. Owens' case is pending.
* Cathy Cobb, 40, was strangled in Salt Lake City in 1998 and DNA found under her fingernails matched her former husband, Michael Waddell Johnson. He is awaiting trial.
* A blood sample from Utah inmate Westley Allen Tuttle, 55, linked him to the murder 14-year-old Lisa Chambers in 1982. Tuttle is serving a sentence of five-years-to-life in a maximum-security prison for a murder in 1983. The investigation into Chambers' case is ongoing.
* DNA matching Edward Lewis Owens was found under Karin Strom's fingernails, connecting him to her strangulation murder in Woods Cross in 1980. Owens' case is pending.
* DNA found under the fingernails of Cathy Cobb, 40, who was strangled in Salt Lake City in 1998, matched her former husband, Michael Waddell Johnson. He is awaiting trial.