Friday morning, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff - appearing on KNRS AM 570 - said that "several dozen" of the hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees were "convicted murderers."

But amid a rising storm of news media queries, Shurtleff's spokesman quickly said the AG misspoke, revising the number of transplanted killers to Utah to "a small handful . . . less than five."

Shurtleff later said he got bad information from the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS).

"Last week, I was given 22 to 23 homicide convictions," Shurtleff said. "Then this afternoon, a [DPS] captain, I didn't get his name, who had good detailed information, said seven to eight."

Shurtleff said he has asked his chief deputy attorney, Kirk Torgensen, to nail it down.

"I told him, 'Talk to whoever you have to talk to. Get a number,' " Shurtleff told The Tribune.

Earlier on Friday, Torgensen had said that more than 40 of the approximately 560 evacuees who came to Utah had been convicted of a felony. About 225 people are now left at Camp Williams, where the evacuees have been housed.

"But no one was wanted, none had outstanding warrants. If anyone was on parole, they are in the parole system. One had to register as a sex offender," Torgensen said.

"The vast majority were convicted, had done their time and paid their price and it's behind them."

Local news organizations have been seeking information about the evacuees' criminal backgrounds for two weeks.

Last week, a DPS spokesman told The Tribune that none of the evacuees had a felony record, that two had warrants for misdemeanor charges, and one person was on federal probation.

On Wednesday, however, DPS clarified that some evacuees had prior felony arrests.

But the agency has adamantly declined to specify how many or what type of crimes were involved.

Shurtleff's radio comments on Friday were prompted by a caller who asked him who was going to foot the bill for the services provided to the evacuees in Utah.

Shurtleff replied that he had been talking this week with attorneys general from other states that had taken in storm victims, and that the AGs "had a number of questions."

"While we are all happy and excited about the wonderful charity the states are offering these poor people," Shurtleff said, "I have to kind of be the Scrooge.

"There's a lot of questions people are asking. For example, who are these people? Especially if they are going to start going in people's homes."

Talk-show host Bob Lonsberry mentioned an incident in which jewelry with price tags was found in the possession of one evacuee.

Replied Shurtleff: "We've actually found out that several dozen are convicted murderers."

"Holy cats!" Lonsberry responded.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I said," Shurtleff said. "We know now that some prisons were opened, and jails, because they were flooding, and there hadn't been a real good screening process in place.

"We've done what we can," he continued.

"Salt Lake County and Utah County sheriff's offices have put in some police out there [at Camp Williams]. But, obviously, people need to be wary and make sure everything's kosher before they open their house up to somebody. They're talking about some of these people now, obviously, taking homes in our neighborhoods. There's a lot of them, but there's a lot of good people there, too. And I don't want to be too much of a Scrooge, but we need to know what we're getting."

Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had not heard about Shurtleff's comments Friday, but said she had heard about the background checks and had reported that to her national headquarters.

"They said, 'If they are doing checks on the Louisiana people, then they should do them on other folks who come to Utah, including tourists,' " Williams said.

The evacuees, most of whom are black, "were not coming for a vacation," she added. "They were forced here. Some didn't even know they were coming here to Utah. Is this the way you treat guests in your home?"

She said if she learns of background checks being performed in a discriminatory manner, "the NAACP will be filing a lawsuit."