SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 16, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced Thursday that charges have been filed in the December 1996 murder of Lisa Redmond, a woman killed while working as a pizza delivery driver in West Valley City.
According to Gill, the suspect in the case is Donald Eugene Younge, 57, an inmate currently serving a 30-year-plus sentence at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison for two counts of first-degree felony aggravated sex assault and one count of second-degree felony robbery.
In a Thursday afternoon press conference, Gill said police were called to 3100 South 5300 West the night of Dec. 9, 1996, with reports of an auto-pedestrian accident. When police arrived, they found a woman, later identified as Richmond, dead in the street and wearing a Pizza Hut employee uniform.
Co-workers told police Richmond had been making a delivery in her GMC pickup truck, but the vehicle was not at the scene where Redmond’s body was found.
A day later, the pickup was located at 3291 S. 4400 West, a little more than a mile from the site of the reported auto-ped.
“Inside the truck there were signs of a struggle, as well as blood found underneath the truck, indicating someone had run over the victim,” the DA’s press release stated. “Detectives found a knife in the truck, as well as a palm print, and blood on the seat buckle. The prints and the blood were sent to a lab for testing.”
In March 2019, a West Valley police lieutenant investigating the cold case received a report that “Subsequent advanced DNA testing was performed by the State Crime Lab in which a DNA profile taken from the blood on the seat belt came back with a CODIS hit to Mr. Younge.”
CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System, a computer program which searches DNA databases nationwide for matching profiles of convicts, crime scene evidence and missing persons.
Also in 2019, a second “West Valley Police Department forensic investigator compared the prints from the knife to a palm print card with the name Younge and determined them to be a match,” according to a probable cause statement filed in Salt Lake County’s Third District Court.
After the lab findings, detectives interviewed Younge, who denied “knowing of or having any involvement with Lisa Redmond,” the PC statement said.
In November 2023, Younge was interviewed again and said he “could not explain why his DNA was found inside of the truck.” During the investigation Younge did admit to using UTA buses to get around the year of the murder. According to the probable cause statement, detectives learned that Younge worked in the area of 2100 South and 4400 West, on the border of Salt Lake City and West Valley, “approximately 4.3 miles from the Pizza Hut location where Lisa was employed.”
In a subsequent motion to keep Younge from making bail, the probable cause statement said, he had a “criminal history of aggravated sexual assault, robbery, assault and obstruction.
The motion also stated Younge “was, and remains, a suspect in a 1999 murder investigation and is suspected of multiple homicides in East St. Louis involving women.”
During Thursday’s press conference, Gill indicated the 1999 homicide investigation surrounded the death of University of Utah student Amy Quinton, but the case had been dropped “without prejudice” when prosecutors decided they did not have enough evidence to take the case to trial.
The case remains open according to Gill.
“We appreciate the hard work of our investigators and detectives and the West Valley City Police Department for their diligent investigation, which helped lead to the filings of these charges. While cold case homicides leave an open wound, a continuing injury, today’s filing is a first step toward closure for the victim’s family and our community,” Gill said.
