when she got that. that she got married so soon, just 18, and right out of high school seemed reasonable at the time. at least to coco it did. living in utah? that kind of happens, huh? that was nothing new. i just figured, well, karin did it, too, you know? she and steve strom were in love, after all. i didn t know steve that well. he didn t talk, very quiet. this is karen s high school friend melody fairbourne. she really did love him, and enjoyed his company. but then it was about seven years in when the bad times started to outweigh the good. the problem said melody was steve who could be, she said, a mean drunk. when he would start drinking, he would start verbally degrading her. and there had been rumors of some physical abuse.
winter settled in and snow piled up on ski runs around salt lake city. the karin strom murder case faded out yet again, as another season went by and the snow melted and the city bloomed into another summer. and her killer, whoever that might be, remained free and the prosecutor did take some heat from people who might not have been aware of what his team was up to. an exhaustive reexamination of all the evidence, which sometime in the summer of 2008 produced what was, shall we say, a tiny discovery. two barely perceptible spots, indications of blood, on karin s underwear. minuscule spots. major implications. that blood matched the dna profile of ed owens. i think that karin was fighting him off and scratching his hands. he s got her pinned down with one hand, he s trying to
in his 50s to let him know he had reopened karin s case. would steve provide a comparison sample of his own dna? i told steve that if he came up and provided those samples, it could do as much good eliminating him as a suspect as it could actually pointing the finger at him. he agreed and within 48 hours drove to utah from his current home in nevada and freely gave up a sample of his dna. but was he worried? oh, yes, he was said his friend dick cantonwine. he says, they re going to try to hang me again. they just were focused in on him from day one. and they just wouldn t let go. and in less than two weeks after benson supplied the samples, a result. and benson looked at the name and well, i was a little confused at first. confused? once benson absorbed the news,
friendship had developed. they had gone four-wheeling together and once steve and karin took ed and his wife patricia on a double date. but really casual acquaintances. so how would ed owens dna end up beneath karin s fingernails? good question. when detective benson went through the file, he discovered that, in fact, ed owens had drawn a mention. in the original investigation. so benson, all these years later, tracked him down. he was listed as a person of interest or possibly a witness, and i wanted to go over his statement and make sure we had everything correct. they had put him on record back then. yes. back in 1980 steve strom told police that when he arrived at work at 12:45 a.m. june 6th, ed owens wasn t there as he should have been to turn over the machine they both worked on. he finally did show up, said steve, a little after 4:00 in the morning drunk and throwing up, claiming he left work at
she described the guy as six foot, 6 2 . i m 5 10 . in 1973, he was charged with kidnapping, robbery, rain and assault with intent to commit murder. according to the case file, the young woman was hitch hiking, he picked her up, drove her to an isolated place, raped her, stabbed her with a screwdriver and tried to choke her to death. though the woman positively identified ed and the car he was driving, he was acquitted. ed was out on parole at the time of that incident after another young woman accused him of raping her back in 1969. what about the one when you were 18? you know, that one you could have had they done a date-rape type thing, yeah, i was probably guilty then. he was charged with rape, kidnapping and robbery, pleaded guilty to robbery. the other two charges were dismissed. but that was then. now he was claiming that karin s death was an accident and a