This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The only chance for 53-year-old William Carl Schick to leave Utah's prison system before he dies could be a trip to California to face a murder charge.

Schick was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the April 2011 violent rape of a motel worker in Nephi. He is nearly six years into that life term, currently residing in the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison.

But prosecutors in San Bernardino County, Calif., want the Chicago native extradited so they can try him for the murder of 38-year-old Lisa Marie Talarico, whose body was found in the desert near Barstow on April 18, 2011.

Two days before authorities found Talarico's body, Schick went into a motel around midnight and told the pregnant clerk his car had broken down and he needed a job to earn money to fix it and a place to stay. When the clerk told him he couldn't stay, he left. After the clerk came out of her locked room four hours later, Schick grabbed her, put a knife to her neck and raped her.

Within hours, police found Schick in a broken-down minivan at a nearby truck stop, where he said he'd been staying for a week, according to court documents.

While he was quickly arrested and within months convicted for the Nephi rape, Talarico's death became a puzzling final mystery for now-retired Detective Keith Libby, the Barstow Police Department and the victim's mother.

"It was my last case," Libby recently told The Tribune.

Along with the pressure that comes with trying — and failing — for more than five years to solve a cold case, Libby faced the prospect of retiring without giving closure to Debbie Peek, Talarico's mother.

Libby would dread seeing Peek's number on his caller ID when she would routinely call for updates he didn't have.

"Sometimes she would call and start talking about her family," Libby said. "It would be nice hearing she was doing OK, but I knew I didn't have anything for her. It would be depressing that I wouldn't have any info for her."

"I was a thorn in his side," agreed Peek, who last saw her daughter eight years ago.

Talarico had been dead for several days when her body was found, and it had begun decomposing. The coroner wasn't able to determine a cause of death, other than to say it was a homicide, Libby said.

For five years, Libby would send bits of evidence to an overloaded crime lab that he said could only test two or three items every few weeks from the department.

"I just got to the point where I didn't want to send anymore," he said. "I was thinking I wasn't going to get anything" that could identify the killer without DNA from the crime scene. He pursued other leads.

The case led to a trucking company in Arkansas, where Libby was interested in drivers who had been in the Barstow area about the same time as Talarico's death. That, too, was a dead end.

In 2015, Libby said, he met with supervisors from the crime lab in San Bernardino to talk about more untested evidence in the case. He was interested in Talarico's jeans, found at the crime scene, but he was told it wouldn't be tested for several months.

Meanwhile, Schick was in the Utah prison, which in hindsight bothers Peek.

"He knew this sitting in prison, he knew what he'd done," Peek said. "It's just inhumane."

In December, Libby finally got the call he'd been hoping for. The San Bernadino County crime lab found DNA from the pair of jeans that identified a man who was convicted of rape in Ohio in 1985: William Schick.

Libby and his partner drove to Utah to interview Schick in person and collect more DNA.

"We spoke to him and during the interview we gained additional evidence against him," Libby said.

On the way home from Utah, Libby called Peek to tell her they may have cracked the case.

Schick was charged with murder in California's Superior Court in January.

"These situations don't actually come up that frequently when someone's already doing life and we decide to bring them back [to our jurisdiction]," said Shannon Faherty, the prosecutor in the murder case. "It's pretty unique."

Utah and California will now work through the process of extraditing Schick to face charges in California. If convicted, he will return to Utah to serve the rest of his sentence, said Assistant Utah Attorney General Amanda Montague.

"We are only temporarily giving custody [to California] to resolve the charges," Montague said. "He would still be our inmate."

Peek, who said she hasn't slept well in five years, said she hopes the case moves along quickly. She is dreading the prospect of seeing Schick in court if the case goes to trial and she must testify. But she believes a conviction in California will help her family heal.

"A lot of people think it's kind of a waste of time and money," Peek said. "It'll be total closure for me, and hopefully I can move on."

Twitter: @TaylorWAnderson