This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A quarter century ago, William Michael Raine said he remembered almost nothing of the night Vivian Morse died.
On Tuesday, in his first parole hearing since 1988, Raine finally came clean before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
"It happened so long ago, but it's very recent in my mind," said Raine, now 49. "I think about it daily."
On the night of June 30, 1986, Raine picked up Morse, a 43-year-old transient, from a Salt Lake City bar and drove up Emigration Canyon. Then he raped her and bludgeoned her to death with a crowbar.
At the time, Raine pleaded guilty but mentally ill to a first-degree felony charge of murder. He said he spoke to cockroaches. He claimed to have blacked out that night and could remember nothing of Morse's death.
Before a Board of Pardons and Parole member on Tuesday, Raine said he was an alcoholic and had been drinking a case of a beer a day at the time of the killing.
"My brain, I guess you could say it was pickled," he said.
But Raine said he never blacked out from drinking.
"I remember everything," he said. "I did snap and it's something I totally regret and can't turn back now."
But why Raine bludgeoned the woman to death remains unanswered. "I have no idea why I reacted the way I did," he said. It's a lingering question a board member said would likely hurt the man's bid for parole.
A decision on Raine's parole will likely be made in the next month.
Raine's sister, Pamela Binnie, said she speaks to her brother regularly but saw him this week for the first time in 25 years.
"He's taken tremendous steps," she said outside the Utah State Prison.