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Ogden • In August 1985, Douglas Anderson Lovell kidnapped a woman and took her to the mountains above Ogden to kill her, Deputy Weber County Attorney Gary Heward told a jury Monday.
Wearing gloves and a nylon stocking over his head, Lovell broke into Joyce Yost's 40th Street apartment, Heward said, and threatened her with a knife.
The prosecutor claimed Lovell then drugged Yost, staged the apartment to make it seem as if she had left town of her own accord, and took her to the mountains, where he strangled her and stomped on her neck. He left her body beneath a pile of leaves.
And Lovell did it all, Heward said, to keep Yost from testifying that he had raped her months before.
Heward asserted Monday during the first day of testimony in Lovell's death penalty trial that prosecutors will convince jurors of Lovell's guilt "beyond any doubt," telling them they will hear Lovell confess to the crime twice: once while under oath at a previous court proceeding and once to his ex-wife who was wearing a police recording device.
When Lovell's defense attorney Michael Bouwhuis stood before jurors for his opening statement, even he didn't contest his client's guilt in the 1985 murder.
"The trial phase is about horrible decisions Doug Lovell made in 1985," Bouwhuis said. "You are going to hear all this evidence. And we don't dispute this evidence."
Rather, Bouwhuis told jurors, the defense attorneys will focus on the second phase of trial and saving Lovell from the death penalty.
It is at that phase, Bouwhuis said, that they will ask the jury "whether you are willing to give a life."
Lovell, who is now 57, has already been sentenced to death once for murdering 39-year-old Yost. But after Lovell and his attorneys spent years fighting a judge's 1993 decision to end the defendant's life, the Utah Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that Lovell could withdraw his guilty plea because he should have been better informed of his rights during court proceedings.
And now, a four-week capital murder trial is underway for the man, who is charged with aggravated murder.
It took attorneys a week to select the jury, and opening statements and testimony began Monday.
On Monday, jurors heard Yost describe the April 1985 rape in her own words when a preliminary hearing transcript was read aloud. This same transcript was used at Lovell's rape trial to convict him of the crimes, for which he is currently serving a 15-years-to-life sentence at the Utah State Prison.
Prosecutors say Lovell was a stranger to Yost before the rape, and that he followed her home from a Clearfield restaurant one night and asked her out for a drink. She said no, and he attacked her.
"There was a lot of anger," Yost said at the 1985 preliminary hearing, according to the transcript read Monday. "… He threatened me. He said he had a gun."
Yost testified that Lovell raped her in her car.
Heward said Lovell later claimed that the sexual encounter was consensual, and that Yost said it was rape because she was upset it had been only a one-night stand. And Heward said that Lovell began plotting to kill the woman to keep her from testifying.
The prosecutor said Lovell allegedly offered $600 to a friend to kill Yost. After that friend failed to carry out the murder, Lovell offered between $600 to $800 to another friend, who didn't kill Yost either, Heward said.
Lovell then decided to kill the woman himself, Heward said, and Aug. 10, 1985, he allegedly went to Yost's apartment.
Lovell came into the apartment through an unlocked window and held a knife to the sleeping woman, according to Heward. The defendant cut Yost's hand, Heward said, and her blood dripped on the mattress.
"She is pleading for her life," Heward said, saying that Lovell told her, "'I'm not going to kill you, I'm just going to hide you out. I need to keep you away from being able to testify again.' "
But Lovell flipped the woman's bloody mattress, packed a bag and then took Yost to the mountains, where he killed her, Heward said.
Yost's son-in-law Randy Salazar testified on Monday that several months later when they went to clean out the missing woman's apartment, he noticed the blood spots under the mattress and reported it to police.
He also testified about an encounter with Lovell after the defendant was convicted of raping his mother-in-law. Salazar testified that he called the rapist "a f——er" and flipped him off as Lovell was led into a holding cell, and the defendant spat back, "She's gone, buddy. She's gone. You'll never see her again."
Yost was missing for six years before Lovell's ex-wife broke the case for police and confessed what she knew about the crimes.
Lovell himself pleaded guilty to murder in 1993 as part of a deal to spare him the death penalty. Prosecutors agreed not to seek his execution if Lovell could lead authorities to where Yost was buried. But despite several trips to the area around Snowbasin Ski Resort to search for the body — buried eight years earlier under only leaves, brush and handfuls of dirt, according to court testimony — Lovell, accompanied by police officers, was unable to locate the woman's remains prior to his sentencing date.
Lovell's trial is the first death penalty case to go to trial in Utah since 2008, when Floyd Eugene Maestas, now 59, was sentenced to die for stomping 72-year-old Donna Lou Bott to death during a 2004 break-in and robbery at her Salt Lake City home.
Twitter: @jm_miller