This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It became known as Utah's "bodiless murder."

The remains of Michael Johnston were never found following a bloody 1981 altercation at a Brigham City motel with his girlfriend's jealous ex-husband.

But based on an abundance of evidence, Rudy M. Rebeterano was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder and sentenced to a five-years-to-life prison term.

According to the Utah Supreme Court, it was apparently the first time anyone in Utah was convicted of murder without a body.

But it was not the last:

l Douglas Lovell is on death row for the 1985 murder of a South Ogden woman whose body is still missing.

l Joseph Troy Memmott is in Utah State Prison for killing a drug dealer nicknamed Scarface.

Scarface, whose real name was George Zahos, was shot to death during a drug dispute in December 1983.

Memmott and an accomplice then dumped Zahos' body into a Dumpster near 1000 East and 1700 South.

Salt Lake Police detectives discovered the murder a year later while investigating an unrelated robbery and shooting.

A diary of a woman involved in the robbery wrote that her friend, Memmott, had killed a man named "Scarface."

Detectives decided against searching the landfill because of the enormity of the task, given that a year's worth of garbage had accumulated over a large area.

"We called the dump and they just kind of giggled and said, 'good luck,' said former Salt Lake Police Detective Ken Farnsworth.

Though they had no body, police were able to obtain a confession from Memmott, who pleaded guilty to keep his grandmother from having to testify against him, Farnsworth said.

In April 1985, Lovell kidnapped and raped 39-year-old Joyce Yost. But in August 1985, after Yost testified against him at a preliminary hearing, she disappeared.

It was later proved that Lovell had kidnapped Yost from her home, driven her to the mountains east of Ogden and strangled her to prevent her testifying at his trial.

But despite Yost's unavailability, Lovell was convicted of the initial kidnapping and sexual assault based on a transcript of her prior testimony and other evidence.

Meanwhile, police pursued Yost's disappearance by enlisting Lovell's ex-wife, who had helped him dump the body and dispose of Yost's car and clothing. The ex-wife also visited Lovell in prison and wore a hidden microphone to record his account of the slaying.

Prosecutors charged Lovell with capital murder, but agreed not to seek the death penalty if he helped them locate Yost's body. But despite Lovell's efforts - including accompanying searchers and being hypnotized - he could never find the burial spot.

In August 1993, Lovell was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

In the 1981 death of Michael Johnston, Rebeterano appealed his murder conviction claiming prosecutors failed to prove corpus delicti, or "body of the crime," in that the body was never found.

But according to the Utah Supreme Court, the evidence was sufficient to convince jurors that Johnston was dead and that Rebeterano was present when fatal knife injuries were inflicted.

Rebeterano also had taken a polygraph test, which proved unfavorable to him. The high court said Rebeterano freely allowed himself to be tested and had signed a stipulation that the results could be used in court.

The defendant's ex-wife also provided key testimony, saying her ex-husband was waiting in her motel room when she and Johnston returned from a tavern on July 21, 1981.

When a fight erupted, the woman ran to a phone booth to call police. While fleeing the motel, she said she turned and saw Rebeterano putting a large bundle into the trunk of the victim's car, according to news reports. When police arrived, both men and the car were gone.

The car was found abandoned in downtown Brigham City with a large amount of blood in the trunk. Rebeterano was released from prison in 1995.