Charges to be dropped in Payson killing; new suspects arrested
County prosecutors are dropping all state charges against two people accused of killing former BYU professor Kay Mortensen and have arrested two other people.
Martin Bond, 23, and Ben Rettig, 23, both of Vernal, were arrested in Vernal over the weekend and will be charged with aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and aggravated kidnapping in the Nov. 16, 2009, killing of Kay Mortensen. They were transported to the Utah County Jail Tuesday night.
Roger and Pamela Mortensen had previously been charged with the Nov. 16 killing of Roger’s father, Kay.
During a news conference at the Utah County Jail on Tuesday, Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy said that detectives had continued to follow leads in the case even after Roger and Pamela Mortensen had been indicted by a grand jury. Though county prosecutors had believed that there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a case against the couple, Tracy said that the investigation had continued in an effort to locate Kay Mortensen’s missing guns. During that investigation, he said the sheriff’s office had recently received a tip, and that tip led to a search warrant being issued in Vernal.
“We had to move really fast on this,” county prosecutor Tim Taylor said at the news conference.
When investigators served the search warrant they found stolen guns that they believe belonged to Kay Mortensen. That find led to the arrest of Rettig and Bond. Taylor said that based on the guns and other evidence, he is confident that they now have the individuals responsible for the murder in custody.
He said that a possible motive for the killing was to steal the guns, and that one of the suspects may have previously visited Kay Mortensen’s home.
“We believe one of the individuals actually knew Kay,” Taylor said. “He had been to the home before.”
On the night of Kay Mortensen’s death, Roger and Pamela Mortensen were at the home and said they walked into a robbery in which three men tied them up. They indicated in a 911 call that they found Kay’s lifeless body with his throat slit. However, police allegedly found several guns at their home, including high-powered assault rifles, and county prosecutors decided to take the case to the grand jury. They were arrested on July 29 after being indicted by a grand jury. Prosecutors now believe that there is evidence to support the couple’s account of the incident.
“In our opinion she didn’t commit the crime and has zero culpability,” said Gregory Skordas, Pamela Mortensen’s attorney, who was also once Roger Mortensen’s attorney. “My understanding is that the homicide occurred exactly how my clients described it.”
Anthony Howell, Roger Mortensen’s attorney, said the grand jury system is flawed, and the Mortensens’ case is a perfect example of that.
“The problem with the grand jury system is that it defeats any confrontation from the defense standpoint,” Howell said. “So the prosecutors go to the grand jury, and give them their take on the case. And there’s no checks and balances. You don’t have anybody there to say, ‘Wait a second though, can’t we look at it this other way?’ And to witnesses, ‘Are you sure it happened that way, and is that an exaggeration?’ Anybody who thinks differently isn’t part of the grand jury. It’s secret. I mean, the defense doesn’t even know what’s going on.”
It is now expected that Pamela Mortensen will be released from jail Wednesday.
“I anticipate that tomorrow when we can find a judge, an order of the dismissal of the charges will be signed,” Skordas said. “It would have been signed today but we couldn’t find a judge.”
Skordas also said that his client is relieved to be exonerated.
“She is very happy,” Skordas said. “She’s very relieved. People don’t believe it when they say they didn’t do the crime, but she’s always told us the truth from the first day we met her.”
Roger Mortensen still faces federal charges relating to weapon possession and will likely be transferred to the Weber County Jail to face those charges. Howell said Roger was handling the weapons to wrap up his father’s estate, but because he has a prior conviction he may not have been allowed to handle them. None of the weapons Roger had, however, were implicated in the murder case, Howell said.
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