This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A 76-year-old man accused of raping and killing a Price woman in the summer of 1970 appeared Tuesday in a Carbon County courtroom for the first time in 46 years.
Thomas Edward Egley, of Rocky Ford, Colo., has been charged with the first-degree felony rape and murder in the second degree, both punishable by up to life in prison, for the slaying of 23-year-old Loretta Marie Jones in 7th District Court.
It was the first time Jones' daughter, Heidi Jones Asay, had seen Egley face-to-face since 1970. Last week, Egley made an initial court appearance by video from the Carbon County jail.
Four-year-old Asay found her mother dead in the living room of their home on July 31, 1970 — the morning after Jones was raped and stabbed 17 times.
Egley, who once dated Jones, had originally been charged with the slaying later that year, but the case was dismissed by a judge for lack of evidence after a preliminary hearing.
The case was refiled in August.
On Tuesday, Judge George Harmond granted Egley's newly appointed defense attorney, David Allred, a two-week continuance, and set another scheduling hearing for Sept. 19.
Carbon County Sgt. David Brewer reopened the case in 2009 at Asay's request. Due to evidence lost through the years — including papers and a vaginal swab with a semen sample — Brewer had to start his investigation from the beginning.
This June, investigators exhumed Jones' body, an event covered by the local Sun Advocate newspaper.
Soon after, Egley, began asking a neighbor "how long DNA evidence and semen lasted," according to charging documents, and the female neighbor convinced Egley to "come clean" to investigators. She arranged for Egley to meet with Carbon County officers at his Colorado home, charges state.
On July 8, Egley admitted to investigators that he had slit Jones' throat, according to charging documents, and in a private conversation with his neighbor on July 16, Egley went into more detail about the rape and murder.
Asay and her husband and two of Jones' sisters attended Tuesday's hearing.
The hearing wasn't as emotional as she expected, Asay said, because none of Egley's charges were read and her mother's name wasn't mentioned.
Asay added that it was good to see Egley in person because she realized he "wasn't this big, strong man" she remembered from the '70s "that can hurt me."
"Even monsters get old," Brewer said he told Asay at the hearing.
Brewer hopes that following the Sept. 19 hearing, the case will move forward quickly.
"Forty-six years is a long time to keep dragging it on," Brewer said.
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