but life, no matter how well we prepare, is full of rude surprises. as it was for kay mortensen. it was november 16th, 2009, just before thanksgiving. we have the police one the way to help you there. are you sure your dad s cold to the touch? kay did not shoot some intruder, as he promised he was prepared to do. no, someone killed him. without firing a shot. yes, he s leaned over, face forward in the bathtub with his throat sliced. and the man on the phone reporting the crime? roger mortensen. kay s eldest son. they sliced his throat. it wasn t long before kay s wife darla had made it to the mouth of the canyon, and was led to the command post that was set up beyond the hill before their home. that s where they gave her the news. your life just comes tumbling down. you had it all planned out, you thought you knew it was going
again. the family marked a grim anniversary of kay mortensen s murder. as case on roger and his daughter-in-law pam cooled their heels in jail, all the while maintaining their innocence, they waited in jail. pam said she was offered a deal if she turned against roger. if you tell them what they want to hear, you can go home. but for me, i was not going to lie just so that i could be a free person. i public defender anthony howl believed his client was innocent. i was looking for that piece of evidence oh, there is that thing i can t explain but there was nothing. here s the rub. new juries and but he was deeply unsettled. i was worried he would be convicted regardless of what i tried to do. why? because this is the kind of case where a jury would be
when he met kay s son roger, and roger s wife. pam roger had found the body was already suggesting possible killers. he told me he had appointment for lunch at noon with a guy named mike kit, discussing $25,000 worth of guns. mike kit? mike was kay s former student. roger and pam identified him real quick, saying he s involved. he owes my dad money. he s the one that did this. roger told detectives that kay was holding a connection of mics weapons. about 30 of them, mostly pistols and rifles. and some shotguns. kay put the guns in his bunker. roger thought there might be a grudge involved. when detectives went to look for the guns they were gone. so we pile in michael cape and we interview him and we can get his alibi as quick. nothing suspicious about it turned out. mike had not nothing to do with
the night of the murder he they were interviewed. my name is eric by the way. did they seem nervous or agitated? not really nervous or agitated. just kind of an emotional. even at times, cold towards the victim. roger s father. he was a cantankerous old far and he says his mouth everybody. and as they told their stories. detective started noticing subtle differences. and they had blue, fuzzy gloves. they looked like women s winter driving gloves. or something. they had i know they had purple gloves. purple, you know, your medical gloves. lots of details in which they didn t agree. so the sergeant decided to employ a well-known prerelease interview technique. he got tough. accusing. quite frankly, i think this story is a bunch of crap. i think this story is a bunch of crap that you and roger have come up with. okay? and sorry you can t believe me. but
to them. even if i thought roger had done it, i would not have abandoned him. and they did it? absolutely, not only did they abandon, they crucified him. months went by and roger and pam were headline news in utah. but the absence of physical evidence meant they remain free. day-by-day, they went about their business, as though their lives were still quite normal. then, on july 28th, 2010, utah county prosecutor tim taylor took a dramatic step to break the logjam. he presented the case against roger and ban to a grand jury. so why call the grand jury? why not just charge them? we thought the grand jury was a great tool to force them to come in to talk. it was a secret proceeding. no defendants, no defense attorney. only prosecutors, police, some members of the mortensen family,