Utah, Oct. 31, 2017 (Gephardt Daily) — The suspect in the murder of Peggy Sue Case, who disappeared from Spanish Fork in 1988, has been extradited to Utah and booked into jail for murder, police said Tuesday.
Michael Ignatius Kufrin was taken into custody and arrested on a warrant by detectives from Forest Park Police Department in Illinois, according to a news release from Spanish Fork Police Department spokesman Lt. Brandon Anderson.
This arrest took place on July 17, and Kufrin remained in custody in Illinois until Monday, when he was extradited back to Utah and booked into the Utah County Jail for murder.
Case was reported missing to SFPD in July 1988, the news release said.
She was last seen alive leaving a party in Payson, Utah, on July 9, 1988, with a live-in
boyfriend, Kufrin.
At the time of Case’s disappearance, she and Kufrin lived at a residence at 80 N. 800 East in Spanish Fork.
On May 22, 2017, Spanish Fork Police Officers were dispatched to this residence on a report of skeletal remains being found in a cement cellar behind the residence. The remains were sent to the Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office and were determined to be Case.
With evidence from the original investigation that started back in July of 1988 and
evidence from the investigation after the remains were found, investigators drafted an
affidavit in support of an arrest warrant for Kufrin, which was approved
by a judge.
Case’s body was discovered by a man who was moving out of the residence. He told Spanish Fork Police officers he had been removing stored items from the cellar and noticed a sunken area in the cellar’s dirt floor.
The resident and a friend helping with the move dug down about 18 inches before finding a human skull. They left the residence and summoned police. The skull was wrapped in a blanket and plastic mesh, according to a previous SFPD news release.
The man told officers that about a year earlier, a neighbor had informed him that a previous tenant, Case, was declared a missing person, and she had never been found. The man moving out said that the sunken dirt in the cellar made him curious whether someone was buried there.
Case was reported missing by her co-workers at a Medford explosives plant on July 15, 1988. She was 27 at the time she went missing.
Case’s disappearance was investigated by the police department, and the search included a partial excavation of the cellar soil, but no evidence was found, according to a statement from police.
Kufrin’s mug shot will be posted by Gephardt Daily when it is made available by officials, which will be 24 hours after his booking.
