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As a Utah father and son were brought back to their home state Thursday to face kidnapping charges after fleeing to Wyoming, police continued gathering evidence that could link the two men to the slaying of a Utah Transit Authority employee whose body was found Tuesday in rural Wyoming.
A key piece of evidence — Kay Porter Rick's work-issued UTA truck — was found Thursday morning near Half Moon Lake, according to Sublette County sheriff's Sgt. Katherine Peterson. An FBI agent flying overhead in an airplane spotted the white F-150 pickup truck amid trees off the road as other police authorities combed the area outside of Pinedale and searched nearby lakes for the missing vehicle.
Ricks, 63, was found dead Tuesday night near a dirt road in the high desert south of Kemmerer, in Lincoln County. He had disappeared from a Salt Lake City UTA TRAX light rail platform on May 12, the same day authorities believe father-son kidnapping suspects, Flint and Dereck Harrison, eluded a Utah manhunt by leaving the state.
But police officials in Utah and Wyoming have been unable to say with certainty that the two cases are connected.
"It would be an amazing coincidence if they were not," Centerville Police Chief Paul Child said during a Thursday afternoon news conference outside the Davis County Jail, where the Harrison's had just been booked.
At about the same time the UTA truck was located Thursday morning, Centerville police had left Pinedale in a caravan of unmarked vans with an escort of Wyoming Highway Patrol vehicles to return the Harrisons to Davis County, where they were charged last week in 2nd District Court with tying up and assaulting a mother and her four teenage daughters in a Centerville home on May 10. The women managed to escape and the Harrisons eventually fled to Wyoming.
The motive for the Centerville abduction and assaults, police have said, appears to have been meth-fueled paranoia that the mother had informed police on their drug activities.
At the Thursday news conference, the Centerville chief thanked the many law enforcement agencies that were involved with the investigation.
"It has been a very complicated and strenuous and stressful case to all involved," Child said.
Centerville police Lt. Von Steenblik said the Harrisons have refused to speak with police because they didn't have attorneys. He added that the two defendants had been kept in separate areas and were driven to Utah in separate cars so they could not communicate with one another.
Police do not yet know where Kay was killed. If it was in Wyoming and homicide charges are filed there, Steenblik said the respective county attorneys will have to decide whether to first prosecute the Utah kidnapping case or the Wyoming homicide. But for now, Steenblik said, the Harrisons will remain behind bars without the possibility of bail.
"Our case is almost complete," Steenblik said of the kidnapping investigation. "This will give the Wyoming authorities time to complete their investigation … They won't have to worry about filing any charges right away."
Peterson, while acknowledging that the pickup's recovery likely was a big break in the Wyoming homicide investigation, said it likely would be "some time" before any charges can be brought.
"[Investigators]y need to see what evidence they have and go from there," the Wyoming sergeant said.
Peterson did not say whether firearms the Harrisons were believed to have with them also had been found in or near the truck, but she did confirm that FBI and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents were processing evidence at the scene.
Efforts to find both the weapons used in the Centerville episode, and Ricks' missing UTA truck, had focused on Half Moon and Fremont lakes near Pinedale, where the Harrisons had been camping prior to their arrests by Sublette County sheriff's deputies on Saturday.
Flint Harrison, 51, turned himself into police and then helped authorities locate his 22-year-old son. Both men have specifically refused to discuss with police how they traveled to Wyoming.
While confirming that Ricks' death was a homicide, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and the FBI, have remained mum about how Ricks was killed. Authorities say they are awaiting results of an autopsy.
Maryann Harrison, mother of Dereck and ex-wife of Flint, remained in the Sublette County Jail pending her release, expected next week, to the Utah Department of Corrections. She allegedly violated terms of her parole by traveling to Wyoming last weekend with money to try to bail out the two men.
UTA police say that Ricks' maintenance truck was last seen May 12 at 5:10 p.m. near the Ballpark TRAX station, at 1300 South and 200 West in Salt Lake City. A male was behind the wheel, but it was unknown whether the driver was Ricks, or whether there were passengers.
The Harrisons, meanwhile, had been staying at a Ramada Inn just 2 miles from where Ricks had been working prior to his disappearance.
The UTA truck was caught on a security camera Thursday night in Wyoming, in a town north of where Ricks' body was discovered in an isolated spot off U.S. 89, 16 miles south of Kemmerer, late Tuesday.
Ricks' remains were returned to Utah by a UTA police caravan of four police vehicles late Wednesday. The body was to be autopsied Thursday at the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner, according to Ricks' family spokesman Richard Massey.
Meanwhile, the Ricks family announced plans for a funeral on Saturday, beginning at noon in the American Fork West Stake Center, 579 N. 680 West. Burial will follow at the Lehi City Cemetery, family spokesman Richard Massey said.
Kay Ricks Funeral Information
Public Viewing
Friday, May 27
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Anderson Mortuary
49 East 100 North
American Fork, Utah
Funeral
Saturday, May 28
12:00 pm
LDS Chapel, American Fork West Stake
579 North 680 West
American Fork, Utah
Burial
Lehi City Cemetery, following funeral services