MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Turquoise Necklace (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

On an evening in March 1974, an investigator in Salt Lake City, Utah sat across an interrogation table from a man who claimed he had psychic powers. The deputy had been skeptical… but now this self-described psychic was giving him a bunch of incredibly specific visions about the case. It was enough to make the deputy wonder… was this man really a psychic, or was he actually the killer?   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One evening in March of 1974, an investigator in Salt Lake City, Utah, sat across an interrogation table from a man who claimed he had psychic powers. Now, the investigator had naturally been quite skeptical of this man in his powers, but the man began giving him a bunch of very specific visions about the case the investigator was trying to solve. And in fact, some of the information he was revealing was enough to make the investigator wonder, could this man actually be a psychic? Or was he the killer? But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, delivered in story format,

then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please go on an unbelievable, amazing vacation with the follow button and volunteer to take pictures for them. But every time you take a picture of them, secretly turn the camera around and just take selfies of yourself. Okay, let's get into today's story. On March 11th, 1974, 22-year-old Barbara Rocky sat at a desk in her bedroom in Provo, Utah,

writing furiously. And as she was writing, eventually she paused for a minute to reread what she had written, but she wasn't quite happy yet, so she added a few more lines. The letter she was writing was for her roommates, and she knew it had to be perfect, because Barbara was saying goodbye. So Barbara was a junior at Brigham Young University, or BYU, which was a very religious school where most students were practicing Mormons, but not Barbara. She had chosen to go to BYU because of religion, but really just because she was fascinated by it

and thought going to a school structured around faith would be very interesting. But when she actually got there, she immediately felt out of place because her classmates went to church every week for hours at a time, and they all followed a pretty strict set of behavioral rules and values, which wasn't really Barbara's thing. Barbara was from California and considered herself more of a free spirit who liked exploring new ideas and trying new things. So over the last three years, Barbara had felt both frustrated and also alienated by the other students' very rigid lifestyles. She'd been hoping that that would change with her new living situation. She'd just moved in with seven other girls in January.

But now, just two months into that, it was already very obvious that those girls did not like her. They were just as religious as the rest of the kids at BYU, and they seemed to think Barbara was weird for doing things like dating around and experimenting with different religions. It just didn't make sense to them. So Barbara had decided that instead of trying to change her roommate's minds, she would just lean in to this kind of weird behavior, as they called it. Barbara basically started making them uncomfortable on purpose, like by saying she prayed to the devil, which totally shocked them.

And after a while, Barbara had really got the sense that these girls, They weren't just weirded out by her. They were now actively scared of her, which really alienated Barbara a whole lot more. And so all of that was why Barbara was now writing this letter. She was telling her roommates that she was just going to go ahead and leave campus for a while to be with people that actually understood her. And the people she was thinking of were people like Richard Finder, a self-proclaimed psychic that Barbara had connected with

after she'd called into a radio show where Richard had been giving psychic readings. And the two of them had connected immediately, Because even though Richard was almost a decade older than her, he understood Barbara in a way that no one else in her life did. And ever since, they'd had this really intense relationship that felt both romantic and spiritual at the same time. But since Richard lived far away, most of their relationship so far had been over the phone. And so Barbara thought it might be nice to be physically closer to Richard and also his circle of friends. But there was another reason Barbara wanted to get away from BYU. and that was because she had started to feel unsafe being a young woman on a college campus.

So recently there had been some scary national news stories about college women being attacked on campus. One student in Washington State had been beaten and almost killed in her dorm room in January, and another woman had gone missing the following month. And even though these attacks had not literally happened to BYU, it still freaked Barbara out. I mean, especially because these women who had been targeted just looked a lot like her, physically, with long, dark hair and sort of similar features. And so as a precaution, Barbara had been taking judo classes at school and even got her best friend, Jerry Hicker, to help her buy a gun.

Except Barbara had actually lost her gun recently. She'd not been able to find it for the last few weeks. She'd reported it missing to the campus police, but she really had no idea where it went. But for now, Barbara forgot about the gun and just took a deep breath and finished up her goodbye letter. And she glanced over at the clock and saw it was almost 10 a.m. And so she had to get to class. So she grabbed the letter and put it inside of her purse, where she also was holding a turquoise necklace, which she planned to sell that day.

It was the single most valuable thing that she owned, and she was going to pawn it to get some seed money to leave town. She'd figure out her actual destination based on how much she got for it. As Barbara threw her bag over her shoulder and got ready to leave, she heard a car pull into the driveway outside, which was a relief because she'd actually let her best friend Jerry borrow her car to go skiing the other day and she had been hoping he would drop it off before she left for class. And so clearly that's what he was doing.

And so Barbara hurried out her front door and sure enough there was her car and there was Jerry climbing out and waving her keys, basically being like, hey, I'm back. As Jerry handed the car keys back over to Barbara, he asked her if they were still on for hanging out later. But Barbara was busy thinking about getting to class and the logistic. of selling her necklace. She had decided that Salt Lake City would have more pawn shops that would pay better, and it was also less than an hour north. And so now that Jerry had dropped her car off, she could drive up there right after class. And so, you know, Barbara just kind of nodded at Jerry and whatever he was saying, and then she took the keys, jumped in her car, and she was off.

Over an hour later, Barbara was sitting in her social work class, waiting for the teacher to dismiss them. And as she was sitting there, she began to hear some students whispering behind her. And as they did, even though she couldn't quite hear what they were saying, she began to feel her face get red. Because even though she didn't know if they were talking about her, if they were, it certainly would not be the first time. People talked about her a lot. So Barbara just did her best to try to ignore them,

and then as soon as the teacher said they could go, she jumped up and shoved her books into her bag. And then she hurried out of the building to where her car was parked, she got in and pulled out of the lot. And as she made her way down the street, she actually felt a wave of excitement. She couldn't wait to sell this necklace and finally get out of this place. About three hours later, Barbara's best friend Jerry walked up the sidewalk to Barbara's house.

He thought they had plans to meet up that afternoon, but Barbara never showed. And Barbara did not usually just blow off plans without calling, so now he was actually at her house just to make sure she was okay. And now Jerry noticed that her car was not in her driveway. So he just stood there for a minute, wondering if maybe he should go in and ask her room, where she was. But he ultimately decided against it and just instead headed back to his place. But after beginning the walk back to his place, he passed by an apartment complex down the street from Barbara's place and he stopped because he could clearly see Barbara's car parked in the lot,

which was definitely out of the ordinary because Jerry was sure she did not know anybody who lived there. And so now really starting to worry about Barbara, Jerry walked up to her car to check it out. And when he looked inside, he saw there was a note. And so he just opened up her car because he found it was unlocked and he grabbed the note and he began to read it. And as he did, he felt his heart rate start to pick up. An hour later, Jerry ran into the campus police station with Barbara's roommates following right behind him. After finding the note inside of Barbara's car, Jerry had gone back to Barbara's house to show it to her roommates and ask if they had seen her. Because now he was worried that this note was some kind of suicide note.

The note was a goodbye letter that Barbara apparently had written, and it said that she was leaving to be with her people, and the tone of it was just kind of alarming. Now, Jerry could tell her roommates thought that he was overreacting to this note, but they had ultimately agreed to come with him to the police to just make sure everything was okay. And so as soon as the officer on duty came out, Jerry explained to him that he had had plans with Barbara that day and she had not shown up, which was very uncharacteristic,

and then he explained how he found her car, and then also this letter and his concerns about this letter, and the officer on duty said, okay, you know, we'll look into it. And so over the next few hours, the campus police did look into it. They reached out to some other kids on campus and also to Barbara's family, but nobody had seen or heard from Barbara since that morning. And so the police continued to look into this, you know, realizing this could be a missing person's case,

but technically not enough time had passed to officially call it that. So in this first day, it was all just kind of preliminary. The next day, almost 50 miles north of the BYU campus, a worker for a Utah utility company hiked up a trail in big Cottonwood Canyon, a hilly nature preserve on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Officially, he was there to check on some water lines. But he was also, you know, taking his time and enjoying himself. I mean, this area was beautiful. It was high up in the mountains and very remote and peaceful.

So this guy was genuinely shocked when he reached the top of the trail and saw he was not alone. There was a woman up there. But at first, the way his brain processed what he was seeing is he saw this woman who was lying on the ground and she appeared to be nude or partially nude and he thought, oh, she's sunbathing. Like that's what she's doing up here. But then he's like, it's march, it's cold. And she's face down. And she's definitely totally naked. And then he took a few more steps forward and his brain kind of processed what he was seeing, at which point he just gasped, turned around and ran back to his car to go alert the police. Within the hour, Captain Pete Hayward with the Salt Lake City Sheriff's Office

drove his cruiser along a remote access road that led to Big Cottonwood Canyon. So Hayward normally loved being in nature. All he really did in his spare time was hunt and fish. But right now, the scenery and remote location were actually kind of an inconvenience because he needed to get to his destination quickly and that was just very hard to do out here. Hayward had just gotten a call about a woman who had been found dead in the canyon by a worker for a company. And while a few responders were actually already there securing the scene, Hayward knew they wouldn't be able to really do anything until he got there. Because when he worked

a murder case, every single detail had to go through him. A few minutes later, Hayward saw some police cars up ahead on the side of the road and also a deputy waiting by a trailhead. And so he pulled over, got out, and then followed the deputy up a steep trail for about 300 yards. And he was pretty out of breath by the time he saw a few other crime scene texts and officers gathered around a bush where underneath the bush there was a body of a naked woman lying face down on the ground. Hayward walked over and crouched down to examine the body and right away he could see at least three bullet wounds in the woman's back. But other than that, he didn't see any other injuries and there were no clear signs of decomposition. His best guess was that this woman had been there for

maybe a day or so, which was actually sort of a miracle when he thought about it. I mean, this time a year, nobody came out to this area. And if it hadn't been for that utility worker, I mean, she might not have been found for months. Hayward looked next to the body, and he saw the woman's clothes and shoes were right nearby. And each item was actually folded very neatly, which struck him as a little bit strange. Hayward pulled on a glove and began examining the clothing, and he could see that there was really nothing ripped or damaged. And also, as Hayward kind of walked around the immediate area, he noticed the whole scene was just as neat as the clothes. There was no gun anywhere and no marks in the dirt or signs of a struggle or a fight,

and there was no indication that the body had been dragged around, and so Hayward felt pretty confident that this woman was likely shot and killed in the exact spot she was found in. Hayward stood in the middle of the trail and considered everything he was seeing. The neatly folded clothes could have been removed during consensual sex, and then maybe things turned violent, or that could mean the woman was maybe forced to undress at gunpoint. Either way, Hayward's got told him that this woman's killer was someone she knew. Because the thing was, getting up here from the road was not easy.

I mean, Hayward was pushing 50 and knew he was not in the best shape. But even for somebody who was young and fit, it would be hard to force another person all the way up a trail like this. It made more sense that this woman had first walked up willingly with someone she likely trusted. And then that person killed her once they were up there. But Hayward knew, you know, his theory didn't mean much until he figured out who this woman was. She didn't seem to have a purse with her, and there was no ID in the pockets of her folded clothes. So Hayward waved some other officers over to help him flip her body over so they could look underneath her. And when they did that, Hayward saw there were a few bullets gathered in the dirt.

They'd clearly gone straight through this woman from the shots in her back. And so Hayward quickly told a tech to go ahead and photograph and bag the bullets for testing, and also to get some of the dirt that the bullets had been lodged in in case there was some other evidence mixed in. So investigators in the 1970s did not rely on DNA yet, but they could test for things like clothing fibers or hairs and potentially connect that material to suspects. And so after giving his team their marching orders,

Hayward took a deep breath and then headed back down the trail. He needed to go find this woman's name. The next day, Wednesday, March 13th, Hayward hustled down a hallway towards a meeting room at the Salt Lake City Sheriff's Office. He was bleary-eyed and basically running on adrenaline because he'd been working this case non-stop since the day before. And he'd just come from a meeting with the ballistics expert who told him the gun that killed this woman was likely a 357 caliber. Now, this was obviously great for the investigation. However, a 357 was not particularly uncommon, so it didn't

really narrow things down a whole bunch. However, Hayward had uncovered something that was major for the investigation. And that was the victim's identity. It was 22-year-old Barbara Rocky. So Hayward's team had put a broadcast out over the news the night before about the discovery of this body. And after they had put that out, they had gotten a call from the BYU police about a student of theirs who had gone missing a day earlier. And just a few hours ago, some of this missing students' classmates had come up to Salt Lake City to identify the body, and they had confirmed it was Barbara. Now, Hayward had spoken to some of those kids already, and he had some other officers contacting Barbara's family. But right now, Hayward was on his way to get a formal

statement from a young man named Jerry Hicker. Jerry was one of the people who identified the body, and he was the first person to report Barbara missing. So Hayward was hoping he would have information that could point them towards Barbara's killer. Minutes later, Hayward sat down at a conference table across from Jerry. And from the looks of it, Jerry was very rattled. He kept shaking his head and looking away like he was trying not to cry. But Hayward was not a particularly gentle interviewer. So he didn't waste time with condolences or tissues, especially because Jerry was an obvious suspect. He was Barbara's closest friend at school apparently. And Hayward was sure Barbara was killed by somebody she trusted. So he just bluntly told Jerry that he needed to know every single thing that

happened on the day Barbara went missing. Jerry was sort of caught off guard by this level of bluntness, but he took a shaky breath and then explained how he'd borrowed Barbara's car the day before and then dropped it back off at her place on Monday morning around 10 a.m. And then he went to the library for a few hours. He then said he was supposed to meet up with Barbara. They had plans for later that day to hang out, but Barbara didn't show up. And when he went to her house to check on her, her car was gone. and so he began walking back home again when he actually saw her car down the block outside of an apartment complex that he didn't understand she would be at. Like he didn't think she knew anybody who lived over there.

And he said he walked up to the car, looked inside, and saw there was a note. He tried the door handle. It was open. He reached inside, got the note out, and he read it. And he said it was a pretty disturbing note. He thought it was maybe a suicide note. Hayward nodded. He had seen the note.

The BYU police had given it to him. It did seem to be from Barbara, telling her. her roommates, she was leaving town to be with people who she fit in with. But the note was kind of vague and Hayward really wasn't sure what to make of it just yet. You know, it could be a suicide note or it could be something entirely ordinary. And the truth was, he wasn't actually even sure that Barbara had really written the letter. Maybe her killer had written the letter. Maybe whoever murdered Barbara was attempting to make her disappearance look like a suicide or maybe imply that she had run away in the hopes that police would never find her body. And so Hayward had sent

the letter off to a handwriting expert to see what they thought. Now, Hayward asked Jerry about his relationship with Barbara, and Jerry explained that the two of them hung out a ton, and she had gravitated towards him since she felt sort of unwelcome at school and around her roommates, who didn't really like her, because she wasn't religious like they were. Jerry also told Hayward that Barbara had made the conflict with her roommates much worse by intentionally saying sacrilegious things in order to freak them out. So he said there was a lot of tension between them, and it had gotten so bad that at one point he had tried to find Barbara another place to live. This made Hayward perk up. I mean, knowing that Barbara had a potential domestic conflict

was an interesting lead. Even though a group of young, devout Mormon women were not necessarily obvious murder suspects, it was definitely worth looking into. Maybe one of them had been so horrified and outraged by Barbara's teasing that they'd snapped and tried to hurt her. Hayward didn't have any other questions for Jerry, so he stood up and told him he could go. He wasn't ready to eliminate anybody as a suspect just yet, but so far, Jerry seemed pretty unlikely. He had an alibi, and he was also the one who reported Barbara missing. And considering it was complete luck that her body was even found at all in the area that it was, you know, it really would have been in the killer's best interest to keep quiet and hope her body was never found. So why would Jerry go to police at all if he was the killer?

So Hayward headed out the door to wrangle some officers. They needed to go to Provo and have another word with Barbara's roommates. The next afternoon, just two days after Barbara was found in the canyon, Hayward pulled up to a pawn shop on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. If he thought he was tired yesterday, well, he was absolutely exhausted now because a lot had happened in the last 24 hours. They'd gotten in touch with Barbara's family, who were obviously shocked and devastated, but they didn't have any useful information for the investigation. They didn't know much about Barbara's friends or life at school, so they couldn't say if anybody would have wanted to hurt her.

And they'd had no idea if she had been planning to leave campus for any reason. But apparently, she was. Because the handwriting expert had come back and confirmed the note was authentic, and Barbara did write it. So her plans to leave appeared to be genuine, which is what the note basically was about, if you read it literally. But for Hayward, after speaking to Jerry, who talked about the tension between Barbara and her roommates and how she didn't fit in,

and also after Hayward literally spoke to all seven of Barbara's roommates, and they all actually admitted they did not like Barbara, it made Hayward think that the letter from Barbara should be interpreted literally that she was just trying to flee campus and get away, in particular from her roommates. But the roommates all had solid alibis for the day Barbara went missing. So for now, you know, Hayward basically had to rule out the roommates. But Hayward was not that upset about this,

because the roommates had actually given him another lead. According to one of the roommates, right before Barbara had disappeared, she had mentioned that she planned to pawn a turquoise necklace that she owned in Salt Lake City. So Hayward and some other officers had spent the whole day canvassing pawn shops in that area to see if maybe she had actually gone through with it. Now, so far, Hayward had not found the necklace or, you know, found the pawn shop that maybe Barbara went to, but he was very hopeful, maybe too hopeful in some ways. Because, you know, aside from this necklace lead,

the investigation really was kind of losing steam. They had searched and fingerprinted Barbara's car, but had not found anything significant. It also got in the autopsy back, and it was mostly unhelpful. The medical examiner had actually counted five gunshot wounds, not just three, so more than Hayward had thought, but they couldn't confirm whether or not Barbara was sexually assaulted.

And also, the forensics report had come back, and they had not been able to collect any fingerprints at the scene. And so all of this was swirling around in Hayward's head as he stepped into this particular pawn shop and he asked the woman behind the counter if they had recently purchased a turquoise necklace. And to his shock, the woman said, yes. And then she gestured towards a glass case behind the counter

where Hayward could see a long white necklace lined with turquoise stones on a red felt pad. About a half an hour later, Hayward was back behind the wheel of his cruiser, and his heart was pounding and his mind was racing so fast he could barely pay attention to the road. Because Hayward finally had a real trail here. The shop clerk's description of the person who had sold that turquoise necklace matched Barbara perfectly. Not only that, the shopkeeper also had a receipt for the sale that showed Barbara was at the store on March 11th at 12.50 p.m. the same day she went missing.

But the most incredible part of this new lead was that Barbara had apparently told this clerk that she was in a hurry, because her boyfriend was circling the block outside. And this was huge because Hayward and his team had spoken to a lot of people in Barbara's life, and no one had mentioned a boyfriend. Now, unfortunately, the pawn shop worker had not gotten a look at this person, this boyfriend that Barbara was talking about. So Hayward had just taken the necklace and the receipt for evidence, and now he was rushing back to the precinct to make some calls. He needed to see if anybody in Barbara's life knew about this boyfriend and maybe had just failed to mention it for some reason. But as soon as Hayward parked and hurried inside the precinct, he was stopped by a deputy, and this deputy seemed as excited and frazzled as Hayward felt. The deputy told Hayward that he wasn't going to believe this, but they had been continuing their background interviews, And some of Barbara's friends said that Barbara had mentioned a boyfriend named Richard.

This was great news for Hayward. I mean, he was literally looking for exactly this information. But this actually was not the reason why the deputy was so worked up, just the fact that she had a boyfriend. He explained that Richard was Richard Finder, a supposed psychic from California who just happened to be in town on a ski vacation at the same time Barbara was killed. And the reason they knew that was because Richard had just called the station completely out of the blue and offered to help.

A few hours later, Hayward sat down across an interrogation table from 30-year-old Richard Finder. Richard had on glasses and he had a goatee and he seemed very confident and also quite eager to help. But to Hayward, he just felt like he was putting on an act. He felt certain that Richard had to be Barbara's killer. After all, it actually was not unusual for murderers to actually insert themselves into the murder investigation, to sort of, you know, see what's going on and maybe deflect blame away from themselves. And so for Hayward, he felt like that was exactly what Richard was doing, you know, calling in to offer up his supposed psychic services. But also, Hayward had spent the last couple of hours digging into Richard, and he also discovered that he owned a 357 pistol,

the same kind of gun that had killed Barbara. And on top of that, he found out the place where Richard was staying was in Salt Lake City very close to Big Cottonwood Canyon, where Barbara's body was found. It was just too many coincidences. And so Hayward was prepared to get extremely tough with Richard to get a confession. But Hayward got a few of his background questions out of the way first. And after asking Richard how he knew Barbara,

Richard explained that they had connected after she had heard him speak on the radio. And he said that they'd actually never been physical, but they'd had a deep spiritual relationship. After that, Hayward cut to the chase and just asked Richard point-blank why he had called the station. And at that point, Richard became very serious and said that he needed to come forward because he had a feeling about what had happened to Barbara. He said, you know, he was a psychic and he had a vision that the gun, the murder weapon, had been thrown in some water somewhere. Hayward couldn't believe what he was hearing because, you know, the police. police had not announced the murder weapon was missing. Richard shouldn't have known they were looking for the murder weapon, but clearly he did. So at this point, Hayward did not ask more

questions about what his vision said. Instead, he demanded that Richard account for every single hour of his day on Monday, March 11th, the day that Barbara went missing. And for the first time, Richard actually seemed genuinely thrown off. He just sort of stared back at Hayward in what seemed to be complete shock. And then he said, he didn't kill him. He didn't kill him. Barbara. He said he couldn't have. He was with his friends the whole day. Hayward just kind of glared at Richard and then slid a pat of paper over to him to write down his friend's information so they could follow up. And as he watched Richard hurried to jot down some names and numbers, Hayward felt sure this was their guy. There was just a mountain of circumstantial evidence here against him. But he knew they

needed something more concrete to actually make an arrest. So Hayward first would have to check out Richard's alibi and then also test Richard's personal gun, his 357, against the bullets that had killed Barbara. So he told Richard that for now he could go, but they would need to take a look at his gun. A few weeks later, Hayward sat at his desk in the sheriff's office staring at some ballistics results from Richard's gun. And it would turn out it was definitely not the gun that killed Barbara. And Hayward literally couldn't remember a time when he'd been more frankly shocked and disappointed. I mean, he really had Richard pegged as the killer. Richard basically was his only suspect, and he was a great one, especially since they had checked

on his alibi, and it didn't really hold up. The friends he said he was with that whole day actually said, well, we were with him, but not the whole day. So basically, there were large chunks of time on the day she went missing, when Richard was unaccounted for. Hayward sighed and reminded himself that, you know, just because the gun he owned, wasn't a match, it didn't mean Richard was innocent. I mean, it's possible he used a different 357 and then just ditched the weapon. Still, though, Hayward couldn't believe they were back to square one like this. He felt like he had done everything he could at this point. He talked to who he needed to talk to. He'd analyzed the evidence they'd gotten, and he had really nothing to

show for it. Hayward was used to closing cases and giving families the answers they wanted, and now he was worried he was not going to be able to do that. And sure, Sure enough, over the coming months and then years, you know, Hayward did continue to investigate this case, but the leads got fewer and fewer, and then eventually he got promoted, and then before long he was pulled into other cases, and eventually Barbara's case just went cold. In the fall of 2005, so over 25 years after Barbara's murder, Detective Todd Park sat on the floor by his desk in the Salt Lake City Sheriff's Department. Around him on the floor, it was covered, with crime scene photos and interviews and evidence logs from the 1974 investigation of Barbara

Rocky's murder. Park was a brand new homicide detective, and he had taken on this case after getting a call from one of Barbara's sisters, begging the sheriff's office to reopen it. And Park wasn't sure if it was maybe just new guy enthusiasm, but he was already pretty obsessed with trying to solve it. He really wanted to find some answers for the Rocky family, since they'd been wondering what happened to Barbara for now over two decades. And Park asked, actually felt pretty optimistic about it. Because even though during the original investigation, they hadn't relied on DNA testing,

you know, they couldn't really even do DNA testing. Despite that, the investigators at the time had done a rape kit and saved all the evidence from the scene, like Barbara's clothes and even the dirt that was underneath her body, which meant that with the current advancements in DNA technology, there was a good chance they could actually solve this thing.

Park had already sent a few items over for tests, But while he waited for the results, he was going over the details of the case to get a sense of how it was investigated back in 1974. And he found it was a pretty unusual case. The murder had initially been investigated as a personally motivated crime. But while the case was cold, police had also begun to consider the idea that maybe Barbara had been murdered by the notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, that this was not personal, that she was just one of many victims. Ted Bundy had been arrested less than an hour away for him. from where Barbara lived in Salt Lake City in 1975, just one year after her murder.

And he had been killing college women all over the West Coast, including several in Utah, the same year Barbara was killed. But investigators in the late 1970s had ruled Ted Bundy out after determining he'd been committing a different murder in Washington State at the same time Barbara was killed, so he could not have been her killer. But it was still possible that Barbara had been killed by a different serial killer in the area. 1974 is notoriously known as the Year of Fear because there were so many killers operating in the United States at that time. But as Park read through the notes, he found himself agreeing with the original investigator's

first instincts, that Barbara's murder must have been personal. Also, just the amount of times Barbara was shot seemed emotionally charged. And so Park believed Barbara's boyfriend, Richard Finder, had to be the killer. I mean, after all, Richard had been in the area at the time of the murder. He basically had no alibi. And, you know, he brought up the fact that there was a missing murder weapon when the public didn't even know that. So he knows things about the crime scene that he shouldn't know. But Park felt like there were some other people in this case that also deserved a second look.

Like Barbara's best friend, Jerry Hicker. It was true. He did have an alibi. And Barbara had told that pawn shop owner, you know, before she was killed, that she was with her boyfriend, which she would not have referred to Jerry as. But if this was as emotional a crime as Park thought it was, Jerry had to be considered. After all, he was Barbara's closest friend at school, and maybe he heard she was leaving town and got mad at her.

And then Barbara's roommates, they all seemed to have solid alibis, but maybe one of them had gotten somebody else to kill Barbara. I mean, Park knew the original investigators hadn't found any evidence of that, but they also hadn't seemed to spend much time on the roommates one way or another. They just kind of quickly ruled them out. But Park also knew it could be someone that they hadn't even considered yet, like the utility worker who actually found the body, or maybe another student at BYU who didn't like Barbara and considered her an outsider or a weirdo. Park wasn't sure yet, but he was confident that they'd be able to pick up some DNA somewhere in the evidence, and once they did, they'd find their killer. Two years later, on an afternoon in October of 2007, Park paced around his office and periodically stopped to look at the

phone on his desk. He was waiting for a call from the lab, and with each passing moment, he got more and more anxious. So at this point in Park's re-investigation of Barbara's murder, the DNA testing had basically gotten them nowhere. Over the last two years, the medical lab had gone over almost every single item from Barbara's case, like her rape kit swabs and her clothes. But they hadn't been able to get any DNA from anything. It either wasn't there, or was just too old and not preserved well enough. And so the only thing left to test was the dirt that the original investigators collected from underneath Barbara's body. Park actually had not originally sent in the dirt because he didn't think it would have any DNA inside of it. But it was now the only piece of evidence that he had left.

So Park knew that when the lab called this time, he'd either be on his way to finding the killer's name or his case would basically be over. But then Park's phone finally rang. He immediately picked it up and his mouth went dry when he heard it was the lab on the other end. And before Park could even ask them, they told him they had a profile. They'd been able to find traces of DNA in that dirt sample taken from under Barbara's body. And when Park finally got his hands on that DNA profile and he ran it through their criminal database, he got a name. Based on DNA evidence and a decades-long investigation, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Barbara Rocky on

March 11th, 1974. Just before noon, the killer watched Barbara pull up to the sidewalk in her car. The killer immediately walked over and jumped inside and smiled at Barbara, and she smiled right back. And together, they drove to the pawn shop in Salt Lake City that Barbara wanted to go to. When they got there, Barbara hopped out of the car and went inside. And once she was inside, the killer moved over to the driver's seat, and so they basically were going to drive the car from that point forward. And as the killer sat in the driver's seat waiting for Barbara, their heart was racing. They couldn't wait for her to get back outside and get in the car because the killer was in love with her, and they had decided that today they were finally going to make their relationship physical.

So when Barbara came outside and hopped in the passenger seat of the car after selling her necklace, the killer very excitedly turned to her and said, hey, there's some trails nearby. Why don't we go for a hike? Barbara clearly hesitated, like she didn't really want to do this. But the killer knew Barbara was leaving Utah, and they knew she had written a goodbye note and was selling the necklace for funds to leave for good. So they kind of guilt-tripped her. They said, look, like, let's go enjoy the beautiful countryside before you leave town. Barbara shrugged and said, okay, fine. And so the killer very excitedly drove the car over to the canyon and parked near a picnic area.

Then the two of them got out, and as they began walking towards a trail, the killer reached down and touched the outside of their pocket, just to make sure the gun that they had stolen from Barbara was still there. Now, they didn't know if they were going to use the gun or not, but they just wanted to make sure it was there and ready. And so for a while, the killer and Barbara just hiked along this trail, you know, just chatting and making their way up and enjoying the scenery. But at some point, the killer just, they couldn't wait any longer. They had to make their move. And so they stopped Barbara and the killer after making sure nobody else was around, They moved forward and kind of made their move.

They touched Barbara in a way that was very clearly meant to be romantic. But immediately Barbara kind of recoiled and jumped back and told the killer that she didn't want that, which immediately made the killer incredibly angry. And so the killer stepped towards her again and could see Barbara had this alarmed look on her face, which made them even more angry. So they pulled out Barbara's gun and they aimed it at her and then told her to take off her clothes. And Barbara, I mean, she was horrified, but, you know, she did as she was told, but she intentionally was taking her time. As she took off a piece of clothing, she would painstakingly fold it very neatly, all the while begging the killer not to do this.

And then after taking off all of her clothes and stacking them next to her, you know, she continued to plead with the killer. But the killer was so humiliated and so angry that they decided enough was enough. And they shot Barbara right in the chest. And she crumpled to the ground and they fired wildly several more times until Barbara went still. And then once Barbara was either dead or dying on the ground, the killer just panicked and turned and ran back down the trail, back to Barbara's car. They hopped in and they drove back to Provo and the BYU campus.

But on the way there, they stopped and ditched Barbara's purse and the gun. And then when they actually got to Provo, the reason they parked Barbara's car down the road near that other apartment complex was so that when the killer got out of the car, Barbara's seven roommates would not see them doing so. Then they fled, leaving Barbara's note in the car. Barbara's note was not a suicide note. It was a literal goodbye note that she had written for her roommates. But the killer figured it sort of seemed like a suicide note,

so if they left it here, when they came back to find the car and find the note inside of it, they could tell the police that this seems like maybe Barbara has killed herself. It would send the police in a direction that would hopefully not lead back to the killer. It would turn out, Barbara's killer was her best friend, Jerry Hicker. The original investigators didn't suspect Jerry at first, mainly because of his cooperation, and since he was the one who also first reported her missing. But they did begin to get suspicious of him when he eventually revealed his violence streak. The year after he killed Barbara, he was connected to a few different rape cases on campus.

But they didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest until decades later, when the lab finally found DNA in the soil from the 1974 crime scene. They were able to match that profile to Jerry's DNA, which they had on file from his involvement in another unrelated crime. And so ultimately, Jerry killed Barbara with her own gun, which he had helped her buy so she could protect herself from killers just like him. By the time Jerry was arrested in 2007, he was dying of cancer. He confessed a barbarous murder for a reduced sentence and served five years before he was released. He died in 2014. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Witt Lacasio and Cole Lacasio. Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin.

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