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A 911 tape released by Orem police describes the grim scene Joseph Berg's father found Monday morning when he arrived to pick up his son for a meeting with attorneys.
"I just came into the house and walked into the bedroom and he and his girlfriend are both dead in bed. Stone cold dead," Albert Warren Berg Sr. told police dispatchers.
Joseph Berg, 47, was released from the Utah County Jail on Thursday after serving a sentence for drug possession and kidnapping charges related to an altercation involving his fiancée, Lucy Schwartz, 49, last November.
According to police and family members, Joseph Berg and Schwartz had dinner with the elder Berg on Sunday evening.
"After that, nobody saw or talked to them," said Orem police Sgt. Craig Martinez.
When the dispatcher asked Berg's father if he believed the couple were beyond help, he responded, "Absolutely." She then asked whether someone should be sent to try to resuscitate them.
"If someone comes out and thinks they can, I would love it if you can," he said, but declined the dispatcher's offer to guide him in giving aid.
"No, they're clearly dead," he said.
Berg's father, who spoke calmly although he sounded shocked, told dispatchers he could see no obvious injuries on the couple.
"Not that I saw," he said. "I didn't want to disturb them. I just touched them and said, 'Oh my goodness.'"
Martinez said autopsy results were inconclusive and that it will likely be several months before toxicology results are available that may hold clues to what happened.
"We don't know how they died," Martinez said Thursday. He declined to describe any evidence found in the bedroom where Berg and Schwartz were discovered Monday.