Three years ago this week, 69-year-old Evelynne Derricott returned to her Tooele home and was apparently killed by an intruder.
Today, Tooele police are still pursuing leads but are asking the public’s help to close their most perplexing case.
“It’s been our most frustrating unsolved case, mostly because there is a life involved with it,” said Capt. Paul Wimmer of the Tooele City Police Department.
The murder is presumed to have happened the morning of Oct. 5, 2011, though an exact time has not been determined.
Derricott’s body was found on Oct. 7 by a friend who became concerned when she did not answer her phone or come to her door at her home at 410 W. Havasu Street.
Investigators from the Tooele City Police Department were not initially sure if Derricott’s death had been accidental or homicide, but an autopsy confirmed the woman had been murdered. Police have not released the exact manner in which she was killed in order to protect details of the investigation.
While there is no way to be sure what happened that night, Wimmer said clues at the scene point to a likely scenario.
“I think most of us have come to believe it was an interrupted burglary,” he said. “We believe she came home at a time she was being burglarized. The burglar killed her because she had discovered the crime in progress and he felt that was going to be the best way to keep her quiet.”
The suspect most likely entered her house through an unlocked back door, and was startled when she came in the front, he said. A confrontation probably ensued, with the argument ending with Derricott’s death, Wimmer said.
Derricott’s family members were enlisted to see what valuables might be missing from her home. Wimmer said the family could find nothing missing, though Derricott’s cell phone and car, a teal 1993 Pontiac Grand Am, were gone. Detectives put an alert on the car’s description to make other officers around the state be on the alert for the missing vehicle.
The car was found Oct. 8 in a neighborhood in Kearns near 5300 West and 5600 South. Further searches of that area turned up the missing cell phone on Oct. 13 about a block south of where the car was found.
Evidence from the home, car and cell phone were processed by the Utah State Crime Lab, and revealed a clue that would crack the case wide open in the last 10 minutes of an episode of “CSI”: DNA.
Unfortunately, unlike in television where a genetic match is found among thousands of others in conveniently timed seconds, the DNA profile so far has no match in the database.
Wimmer said the sample they have has revealed the suspect is male, but that is all the information the sample has volunteered. Having that piece of evidence, though, has directed their investigation, especially when they arrest a suspect in another burglary case.
“Every time we get a suspect in here for a similar crime, our goal is to pull their DNA, because we don’t know who it is and we want as many [samples] to compare it to. We want to do our part of getting people’s DNA into the database for comparison reasons,” Wimmer said. “We’re just hoping they’re going to make a mistake, they’re going to get their DNA [in the system] and we’re going to get a match.”
Although the clues have been more scarce in the years since Derricott’s murder, Wimmer said the case is still considered open and active in the department.
“We all know the case number by heart,” he said. “Every time we do anything on it, there’s a supplemental report tied to it. I hate to venture a guess of how many supplemental reports have been done on it.
“To this day, I’ll be approving reports and there will be an 1189 from 2011 and I know that’s more information on the Derricott case. There’s nothing we do related to the Derricott case that the detectives are not putting that information into the case file.”
Because the suspect took Derricott’s car, it is likely they arrived on foot or were dropped off near the address, Wimmer said. Statistically, he said, it is more probable the suspect was local; however, police are not ruling out someone from Kearns came to Tooele for some unknown reason, and committed the crime.
“We really struggled whether it was someone who was in the area for whatever reason was actually from Kearns, or if they were someone who committed a heinous crime and took off and that’s where they ended up [in Kearns] to make a phone call or get their thoughts together or get a ride back,” he said. “It’s just difficult to really know what their mindset was or to determine where this person is from, or where they were going.”
Wimmer said police believe there are still clues or witnesses who might hold the key to the case.
“We truly believe there are people out there with useful information who may lead us to her murderer,” he said. “Our hope is that shred of information that blows the case open is just around the corner. If we let [the case] down and people think for a second we’ve put this on the back burner, that’s not going to happen.”
“This is an open investigation,” he added. “It’s our most troubling unsolved crime, and it’s one we’re very interested in anything that may lead to the discovery of her killer.”
Anyone with information about the case is encouraged to contact the Tooele City Police Department at (435) 882-8900 or Tooele County Dispatch at (435) 882-5600. Information can also be submitted by text to TOOELETIP and a message to 274637 (CRIMES).