The Deck - Anthony Adams (Ace of Hearts, Utah)

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Our card this week is Anthony “Tony” Adams, the Ace of Hearts from Utah)In November 1978, 25-year-old Anthony “Tony” Adams was found viciously murdered in his Salt Lake City apartment. For more than 40 years, Tony’s case has remained unsolved, but not for lack of theories about what might have led up to his slaying. Was Tony targeted for his political beliefs, his sexuality, or his race? Was he the victim of a random robbery? Was this a bar pick-up gone horribly wrong? These are the questions police and community members have pondered over the past four decades that have never been answered.If you have any information about the murder of Anthony “Tony” Adams in February of 1978, please call the Salt Lake City Police Department at 801-799-3000. Or you can submit a tip by texting TIP-SLCPD to 274637. His case number is 1978-86442. To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org

Our card this week is Anthony Tony Adams, the ace of hearts from Utah. Tony was a rising star in Salt Lake City who had nothing but a bright future ahead of him in politics. Until one night in 1978, when someone entered his apartment and viciously attacked him, leaving behind a still unsolved mystery and complicated questions of motive. Was Tony's murder a political assassination, a hate crime, or a random attack? I'm Ashley Flowers, November 6th 1978, and a man who will call Thomas and his wife who will refer to his Allison had just arrived at their friend Tony's apartment building.

Tony's place was kind of the hangout hub for lots of people in the area, so Thomas and Allison had been there plenty of times, but this time was different. They weren't there to hang out. They were there to check on Tony. No one had heard from him in a day or two, which was odd, but they hadn't thought much of it until he missed a super important political rally on Sunday. You see, Tony was this brilliant 25-year-old guy

who was well known for his involvement in local Salt Lake City politics, and he was a campaign manager for Congressional hopeful William Hoyle. 25-year-old guy who was well known for his involvement in local Salt Lake City politics, and he was a campaign manager for Congressional Hopeful William Hoyle. Thomas and Allison were also involved with William Hoyle's campaign. So when Tony never showed up to his rally on Sunday, his friends started to worry. I mean, this was the weekend before the election, so they knew that Tony wouldn't have missed that rally for anything.

And their worry only grew as the day crept by and they still hadn't heard from him. So by the time Monday evening arrived with no word from Tony, Thomas and Allison had a gut feeling that something was terribly wrong. When they got to his apartment building, they noticed his van was in the parking lot. It was unlocked so Thomas glanced around inside. He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, but the fact that his van was there meant that Tony had to be home. So Thomas and Allison went inside. As they approached Tony's apartment, they noticed something odd. His door was cracked open a few inches.

That's when Allison's stomach dropped. Something told her that whatever was on the other side of that door would be something she could never unsee. Thomas agreed to go inside the apartment by himself and look around while Allison waited in the hallway. When Thomas came barreling back out the door a few minutes later, he frantically told Allison that they had to call the police now. He'd found Tony and all he could tell her was that he had some kind of wound in his chest.

Within minutes of their 911 call, a dozen police officers rushed to Tony's apartment, and what they found was truly gruesome. In the bedroom, propped up against a radiator and slumped over a TV stand was Tony. He was naked, and his body was covered in blood. Before police even processed the scene, words started to spread that Tony had been found murdered, so news reporters started lining up outside the apartment building. Here's a 1978 interview local news channel KUTV did with a responding officer the day Tony was discovered. Not only had Tony's throat been cut, he'd been stabbed several times. And since he'd been dead for a while, police had already lost valuable

time, so they got right to work. They immediately started searching the room for any clues they could find, but the scene was a lot to take in. The drawers of Tony's dresser had been pulled out and rifled through, the bedsheets had been torn off, blood was pulled on the bed and smeared across the wall. Then, on the floor, a top-the-watered bedsheets, police found the possible murder weapon. A large, wooden-handled butcher knife covered with blood. Based on his other cutlery, it appeared to be a knife taken right from Tony's own kitchen. Outside the bedroom, police found even more blood, I mean lots of it. They found blood on the door jam in the kitchen, on the front door, and all over the bathroom. As officers looked around the bathroom, they started to wonder if that's where Tony had first been attacked. Here's why. The bathtub had a ring of blood around the inside of it,

and there was a big gouge on the wall above a bloody handprint. Still not sure exactly what happened. Officers definitely thought it looked as if there had been a violent struggle in the bathroom. They even wondered if Tony had been taking a bath when his killer first struck, since he wasn't wearing any clothes.

But then they noticed something else. There was stuff floating in the bloody water in the tub, some pieces of clothing, and what looked like the contents of Tony's wallet. Our reporting team went to Salt Lake City and interviewed Kere Porter, the co-founder of the Utah Cold Case Coalition. And she said that the stuff from inside Tony's wallet

was all accounted for in this bathtub, except for one thing. He had just gotten paid and he had deposited his check. He had made a withdrawal of some cash. They found some receipts of some stores that he had spent the money. So they did some math and believed he maybe what should have had $30 cash on him now that assumes he didn't go by Groceries and you know we used cash a lot more often in the 70s than they do now But so they thought maybe somebody had stolen 30 bucks just because he didn't have receipts for the for the remaining $30 In 1978 that amount of cash had the purchasing power of about $130 today.

Obviously, no amount is worth killing over, but it was enough that at the time police at least pondered robbery as a motive in the beginning. But other than the money, nothing seemed to be missing from the apartment. Sure, everything had been ransacked, drawers have been rifled through, but it seemed like everything was accounted for besides that $30. So police continued collecting evidence, and as they did, detectives got major deja vu, because they had just been at that exact apartment complex building less than a year before investigating an entirely different murder. In November 1977, a 16-year-old girl was found dead

in her bathtub at Tony's apartment complex. According to KUTV, Sharon Scholemeier had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Now, Sharon's murder hadn't been solved yet, but despite the fact that they both lived in the same complex, and she was found in a bathtub and Tony was thought to have maybe been taking a bath. Police were pretty adamant from the get-go that there was no connection between the two

killings. Now, maybe it was the fact that Tony had been stabbed and Sharon had been strangled, or that the victims had nothing in common besides where they lived. It's not entirely clear, but it seems like detectives didn't want to go too far down that road, and they wanted to look at other possibilities. Once police finished processing the crime scene, they got to work right away trying to figure out what Tony had been up to in the days leading up to his death. They thumbed through his address book to find friends and acquaintances to call. Finding his little black book at his apartment meant police had pretty much everyone Tony knew and they they had their phone numbers right at their fingertips. So, they started dialing. One person detectives reached was a co-worker

of Tony's. They worked together at Utah Transit Authority, or UTA, both as bus drivers. The co-worker said that the last time he saw Tony was the morning of November 3rd, which was the Friday before his body was found. Another co-worker said that Friday was the last time he saw Tony too. He saw him sometime that evening, though, from police reports it's not clear where these two co-workers saw Tony last, whether it was at work or somewhere else. Police also talked to one of Tony's friends who said that the last time they'd spoken with him was November 1st, which was the Wednesday before he was killed. And what this friend had to say really intrigued police.

They said Tony complained about a quote unquote lady friend. He said he'd recently gotten into a heated argument with her, whoever her was. But Tony didn't really elaborate beyond that. It seemed like Tony was possibly turning down a relationship of some kind, but it wasn't super clear. This same friend said that they tried to call him back that weekend on both Saturday and Sunday, even on Monday, but there was no answer. And his friend never got to the bottom of who this lady was or what they were arguing about. Please talk to another friend of Tonys who'd only known him

for a few months. And the last time he saw Ton Tony was either Friday or Saturday night, he wasn't sure. But he was certain about one thing. The last time he saw Tony, he wasn't alone. Tony was hanging out with a man who looked to be in his mid-20s, about average height with long hair, a mustache, and a beard. It was a loose description, but detectives took it and ran with it. They can vest all the bars in the area that Tony was known to hang out at, but they didn't find anyone who could pass for a match.

So, police continued making calls. According to reports, another acquaintance police talked to said that they knew of a very suspicious man living in Tony's apartment building. In fact, the guy in Tony even lived on the same floor. Now, it's never clarified in the police report why this man was deemed very suspicious, but police learned that this man supposedly knew which apartment Tony lived in and that he was also a bus driver.

But when detectives talk to this suspicious man, he flat out denied knowing Tony or where he lived. Police didn't find any of his fingerprints at the scene, but they still wanted to give him a polygraph, just to be safe, and he lived. Police didn't find any of his fingerprints at the scene, but they still wanted to give him a polygraph just to be safe. And he passed. So just like that, the man was cleared as a possible suspect. As the days and hours crept by, more and more tips came trickling in.

But the one that intrigued police most came from a coworker of Tonys who told police that he knew a man who will call Dave and Dave knew a man who'd killed somebody. So he's basically saying that he knows somebody who knows somebody who might have done something. It was a long shot, but police did end up tracking down this Dave guy just to hear all of this straight from him. And Dave said it was true. There was a man that he knew who'd suddenly told him one day that he needed to find $1,200 so he could either pay for a lawyer or skip town because he'd just murdered someone. Of course, detectives' ears perked up when they heard this, but there was one small problem. Dave didn't know how to get in touch

with the man who'd made this confession, and he was only able to offer a vague description. 6, 3, 200 pounds, dark hair. But the police officer who talked with they didn't buy it. I'm going to read from a redacted police report that our journalists obtained. Now wherever it's redacted, you're just going to hear a noise. The officer wrote, quote, it is this officer's opinion that Mr. is covering up some sort of business transaction with. It is also this officer's opinion that Mr. knows who is and is withholding information.

End quote. But police had to move on. Every day the murder went unsolved meant another day of vicious killer was roaming the streets. Police continued making calls and chasing dead and leads. Nothing was panning out. But then on November 9th,

three days after Tony's body was found, Detective Ron Miller decided to pay a visit to Tony's apartment. Now, the scene had already been cleared, but Detective Miller had just been assigned to the case, and he just wanted to go over everything once more. Quadruple checked that the other detectives hadn't missed anything, but here's the thing, they had.

They'd missed something big. Here's Kera Porter again. She told us what Detective Miller found in Tony's apartment all these days later as he walked into the kitchen. At that time, the reporting officer observed a bloody fingerprint on the drawer next to the sink in the kitchen. Upon checking the contents of this drawer, another blood spot was observed in the bottom of the drawer under another blood spot was observed in the bottom of the drawer

under several kitchen utensils. But what he saw at the bottom of the drawer wasn't just a blood spot. It was a bloody knife, a second knife that police had just completely missed. After reviewing this case, this is what I keep getting hung up on. If Detective Miller hadn't gone back to Tony's apartment on November 9th, would that knife have just never been found? I mean, the scene had already been cleared, so I have to think the answer is yes. If he hadn't gone to double check things,

no one would have even considered that a second knife ever existed. After finding this second knife and the bloody fingerprint, Detective Miller called a sergeant with the crime lab to the scene. According to the police reports, the sergeant processed the inside of the drawer and its contents for fingerprints, but the results were negative. As for the bloody fingerprint detective Miller found on the drawer itself, it's not clear what was done with that.

The report doesn't specify. But reports do say that the bloody knife was taken into evidence. Now even though the police had found this second knife by a stroke of luck, they still weren't any closer to catching the killer, and rumors were running rampant around the city. Plenty of people didn't buy the robbery gone wrong theory because they thought Tony's murder was a carefully planned, targeted assassination. And this wasn't some bogus claim out of left field. Honestly, this theory did hold some water because Tony definitely stood out as a target

in Salt Lake City in the 1970s, particularly because of three things. Tony was an openly gay, black socialist. To provide some contacts for what life was like for the gay community in Utah back then, our reporting team talked with Salt Lake City resident and self-described gay historian Ben Williams. Ben's dedicated a significant amount of his life to researching and documenting LGBTQ plus history in Utah. He's what most would consider an expert, not only on Salt Lake City's gay history, but also Tony's case.

Ben and Tony actually had some mutual friends, and he spent countless hours interviewing Tony's loved ones and documenting his life to keep Tony's memory alive. Ben was in his 20s when Tony was killed, and he remembered the atmosphere of Salt Lake City during that time well. So let's set the stage. The year was 1978, Salt Lake City had roughly 600,000 residents, and then estimates that fewer

than 100 of those residents publicly acknowledged that they were gay, because locals were still holding tight to the stigma surrounding homosexuality at the time. And honestly, a lot of people were unwelcoming to anyone who had opposing views or lived differently than they did. In fact, it was still illegal in Utah to be a homosexual and you could be arrested. And so, most people kind of could lose your job, you'd be arrested, you could be kicked out of your apartment. And so there was a lot of pressure for most people to kind of stay in the closet that time. So there was a lot of pressure for most people to stay in the closet at that time. But Tony was one of the few people in Salt Lake City who refused to stay closeted. He was active in the gay community, and he even helped organize the state's very first

gay protest in 1977, which was a bold move and props to him. But even though he was a trailblazer making waves in a conservative city, I couldn't find any threats he'd received or anyone who openly hated Tony specifically. In fact, Tony's friends say that he was a really well-liked and respected guy within his circles. He was passionate about topics that were important to him, but he wasn't in your face aggressive about it. He just wasn't afraid to shake things up.

Tony was known for writing letters to the editor talking about controversial topics. We actually have two of those letters that you can read on our website at thedeckpodcast.com. Tony's letters caused such a stir in the city that readers would actually write back to him in other letters to the editor trying to argue with him. If his point hadn't been clear and effective, then people wouldn't be trying to robot him, so he did do that. Tony was also a leader in the Salt Lake City chapter of the Socialist Workers Party. And like I mentioned earlier, he was the campaign manager for William Hoyle, who was a socialist running for Congress.

And again, Tony's murder happened the weekend before the election. So, the question is, was Tony's murder a carefully timed political assassination? Did someone have it out for him for being a socialist in the very conservative state of Utah? These assassinations in hate crime theories were gathering traction with Tony's family and friends. Even his pastor thought Tony had been targeted because he wasn't afraid to depart from the norm. But, detectives weren't really buying it. They didn't think that Tony's murder was politically motivated or related to his sexual

orientation at all. And we aren't really sure why police didn't consider this motive more seriously because the Salt Lake City Police Department rejected several opportunities to talk to our reporting team about Tony's case. Regardless, it didn't take long for the hate crime theory to hold more weight, because later that same month, another member of the gay community was murdered. Doug Coleman, another gay man in Salt Lake City, was found shot to death inside a railroad car just three weeks after Tony's murder. Police didn't think Doug was targeted because of his sexual orientation either, but that was of little comfort to the local gay community.

And their murders paired with the violence against the gay community across the country at the time left Salt Lake City's gay community petrified. In California, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office, had just been assassinated. And there was also a string of murders targeting gay people across California. Ben told our reporting team that after Tony and Doug's murders, the gay community in Salt Lake essentially went back into the closet for fear of their lives. So there was just this kind of climate of fear. There were serial killers going on in California. There was gay people were just seeming to somebody that if you killed a gay person,

you were doing society of favor at that time. So it was, and that's why a lot of people just kind of, not only for their curves, they stayed in the closet out of fear. And especially after Tony Adams, death, he was so prominent in the closet out of fear. And especially after Tony Adams, death, he was so prominent in the community, so many people knew of him and his death, that it frightened the leaders that were out at that time,

to the point that it took almost four to five years after Tony's death for the gay community insult later recover. Detectives didn't think Doug and Tony's murders were connected, but they didn't want to totally dismiss the possibility either. So once investigators got a suspect in Doug's murder, they took the suspect's photo and brought it to the leaders of the socialist workers' party to see if they recognized the man or had seen him hanging out with Tony, just in case Tony's murder was connected to

Doug's. But the leader said that they didn't recognize the man in the picture at all. So detectives asked for a full list of all party members, so they could be interviewed one by one and shown the picture. But the leaders didn't like the idea of just handing over the names of everyone in the party, the very party that was being extremely vocal about Tony's murder, maybe to the point that it made police uncomfortable. So instead of handing over all the party members, the leaders proposed a different approach. They suggested that police give them a copy of the suspects picture so that they could

show everyone within their party. This request would protect the members of the Socialist Workers Party, but still would get the investigators the answers that they were looking for. But police flat out refused. They weren't going to budge on wanting that list of names. And this really rubbed the Socialist Workers' Party the wrong way. In 2018, investigative journalist Eric Peterson wrote a two-part series for the Salt Lake Tribune in partnership with the Utah Investigative Journalism Project about Tony's murder. He interviewed a member of the Socialist Workers Party and friend of Tony's

named Clemens Bach. Clemens remembered the party's interaction with police vividly. In the article, Eric Peterson wrote, quote, Bach feared officers armed with a party membership list would show up at people's workplaces for interviews and get them fired. To this day, he harbors no doubt about the police's intent." By the end of December, the socialist workers' party was fed up with how the police were handling the investigation. It had been almost two months since Tony was killed, and the investigation had gone nowhere.

They felt that police weren't being open about the investigation and that they weren't taking Tony's murder seriously. So party members took matters into their own hands. They banned together and wrote a long letter requesting that the US Attorney for Utah investigate Tony's murder. In the letter, Clemens Bach wrote, quote, The Salt Lake City police are not pursuing this case with the attention which a political crime of this type would merit.

Conflicting and confusing reports from the police as to physical evidence and the progress of the investigation raised questions in our minds about the competence of the police to investigate the murder of a man to whom they were actively hostile. End quote. And listen, the party's allegation that police were hostile toward Tony wasn't a baseless accusation. Because just a few months before his murder,

Tony had been arrested for solicitation, and his arrest turned out to be quite controversial. According to reports, here's what police said happened. They stumbled upon Tony's phone numbers crawled across a wall in a public restroom, and they called him posing as a man who was interested in sex.

They say that Tony agreed to meet the man at a local hotel. Now, it's not clear if an exchange of money was mentioned during this conversation, but regardless, when police arrived at the hotel, they arrested Tony and charged him with engaging in sex work. But Tony said he was innocent, and many of his friends thought that he was targeted just

because he was an openly gay man. The socialist workers' party even published an article in their newsletter, The Militant, alleging that Toney had been framed, and police were trying to bully him into spying on other party members and anyone in the gay community. But even if Toney did write his number on that bathroom wall, Ben William said there's a good chance that it wasn't in an effort to find sex work. Well, in the 1970s, there were no grinder or anything like that. People would connect today to sexual partners and things like that.

And a lot of people did write their numbers on bathroom walls or installs and to basically hook up with other people. Since Tony wouldn't plead guilty to the prostitution charge, he was scheduled to go to court. But for an unknown reason, the case was dismissed at the last minute, just a few days before the court hearing and less than a week before his murder. But it wasn't just Tony that police were accused of being hostile toward.

It was the entire gay community. You couldn't go to the place for protection. The place was seen as the enemy to gay people at that time. So there was nobody reported any kind of bashing protection. The police was seen as the enemy to gay people at that time, so there was nobody reported any kind of bashing or being hit or anything that was going on because for one thing it might be reported in the newspapers and if you lose your job, sorry, but the police weren't really interested in investigating. And it seems like the gay community's fears really weren't unfounded.

Police were rumored to have joked with each other about Tony's murder and used offensive slurs when talking about him. Tony's brother said police even used an anti-gay slur in front of him referring to Tony. And the name calling didn't stop there. Ben Williams told us that a clos officer later came forward story about his fellow officers. Who said that when Tony

Adams is murdered, they used three real disparaging terms to describe Tony Adam, you know, using the word inward for him, calling him a communist and calling him a queer, and basically saying three strikes in your out, like they were laughing about the fact that, you know, that he was, you know, kind of like a worthless person.

The days and weeks and months started passing by with no tips and no new leads. Tony's case grew colder and colder, and the buzz surrounding his murder seemed to wear off. That is until January 1981, more than two years after Tony was killed. That's when the Socialist Workers Party received an alarming message. On January 19th, according to reporting by the Daily Herald, the state headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party was vandalized.

There were broken windows, a shattered glass door, and a note. The note read quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote,

quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, end quote. But the note didn't stop there. Next to this threatening statement was a picture of a lynching. Obviously, this was deeply unsettling to party members, especially in

light of Tony's semi-reset murder that was still unsolved. But once again, the socialist workers' party felt that police weren't taking them seriously. In the Daily Herald's article, William Hoyle is quoted as saying, The police claim this is a single act of vandalism and have refused to launch an investigation. But we consider this a serious act of intimidation, especially since one of our officials was murdered two years ago. End quote. But maybe the reason police didn't connect the two crimes is because they had already settled into their own theories about what happened. There wasn't a ton of evidence pointing one way or another, so speculations were a bit all over the place.

According to Eric Peterson's reporting for the Salt Lake Tribune, one Salt Lake City detective thought that Tony was killed by someone he'd picked up at a bar that weekend. Maybe that 20-something-year-old man with the mustache that he was seeing hanging out with a couple of days before his body was found. But police were never able to track that man down or get a better description of him, so it was a pretty loose theory. Other detectives believed Tony was targeted for being a supposed sex worker, but a lot of investigators thought the murder wasn't premeditated at all.

Because if it had been planned, why didn't the killer bring their own weapon? Another detective thought it was a crime of opportunity. Maybe some quote-unquote street kids wanting to make a quick buck. For years, a few mediocre theories were all police had, and theories aren't enough to solve a case. So once tips stop trickling in, the investigation came to a screeching halt. And it stayed that way for more than 30 years. Until one day, when police made a discovery that proved one of these theories wasn't so far-fetched after all.

In 2010, the Salt Lake City Police Department decided to do a cold case review of Anthony's murder. Part of this process involved submitting the fingerprints found in Anthony's apartment in 1978 to a database that didn't exist in the 70s. It was called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, also known as AFIS. And one of those fingerprints that they submitted got a match that they hadn't seen before. A fingerprint lifted from Tony's TV matched a woman named Mickey Henson. Now Mickey's name hadn't come up at all over the course of the decades-long investigation, not as a friend or acquaintance, not as a suspect.

So why was her fingerprint found at Tony's apartment? Was she possibly the killer that police have been looking for all these years? But here's the thing, by the time police matched the fingerprint to Mickey, she was already dead. She died in 2004 from Lupus according to a case document filed by the Department of Justice.

But even though their brand new possible suspect was long gone, investigators still wanted answers. So they tracked down Mickey's friends and family to find out why she would have been at Tony's apartment in 1978, and to find out if she had it in her to kill him. Police learned that Mickey would have been just 16 years old and living in Salt Lake City at the time of Tony's murder. A friend of hers from that time said that even though she was just a teenager, Mickey had already lived a turbulent life.

She ran away from home when she was just 11 years old and started running with a rough crowd and hanging out with other kids who were into hard drugs and robbery. This friend, police interviewed, used the words wild and violent to describe 16 year old Mickey. And an ex-boyfriend said that Mickey definitely had a violent side. Once during a particularly heated argument, he said that Mickey went as far as brandishing a butcher knife and threatening to kill him. But Mickey's violent streak wasn't the only reason police saw her as a promising suspect.

According to the DOJ, Mickey was known to have an extreme hatred of gay people. She was even suspected of associating with a group known for specifically targeting and robbing gay people. Now Mickey's sister actually disputed that claim, that Mickey was homophobic when she was interviewed for the Salt Lake Tribune article. The sister said that Mickey herself was bisexual, and she even had a girlfriend at the time of Tony's murder. But the LGBTQ plus community wasn't the only marginalized group Mickey was rumored to despise. She was known to be viciously racist, specifically toward black people. According to the DOJ, Mickey's friend was asked if Mickey would have ever been associated with a black person.

Her response was an emphatic no. Mickey only looked more suspicious when investigators learned that she was briefly acquainted with none other than Joseph Paul Franklin, an infamous serial killer and self-proclaimed white supremacists who targeted people who were black, by racial or Jewish. He went on a killing spree between 1977 and 1980 and murdered at least 15 people. But the stack of suspicion against Mickey didn't even stop there. Much later in her life when Mickey was super sick and convinced she would die at any moment, a friend came to visit her.

According to the DOJ, during that visit, Mickey said something alarming. Out of the blue, she blurted out, quote, I did something really, really, really bad." End quote. But then she just stopped talking. The friend said that Mickey never did elaborate on what she was talking about, but the friend got the feeling that it was the start of a confession.

In 2012, Mickey was officially named a person of interest in Tony's case, but that's as far as things have gotten. I mean, Mickey's dead and the only evidence against her is circumstantial. Even the fingerprint, the most damning evidence against her, could potentially be explained away. If Mickey was by and a member of the gay community, she may have gone to Tony's apartment at one point to just hang out.

Like I mentioned, Tony's place was kind of the hangout spot for many people, especially those in the gay community. So, since it was far too late for a confession, and no eyewitnesses were coming forward, putting Mickey at Tony's apartment the weekend of his murder, the case went cold again. But then, six years later in 2018, the Utah investigative journalism project dove headfirst into Tony's murder and brought new life to the case. They interviewed law enforcement, scoured public records, you name it, and some of the information they uncovered was jaw-dropping. Eric Peterson's two-part series for the Salt Lake Tribune details their research findings,

and you should definitely check out those articles. I'm going to link to them in the blog post for this episode, which you can find on our website. Anyway, as police were being interviewed by the Utah Investigator Journalism Project, and going back over Tony's case with a fine tooth comb, they realized something very important was missing, the murder weapon. You heard me right, the butcher knife police had initially found the day Tony's body was discovered had vanished. But the Salt Lake City Police Department said that the knife wasn't in their possession

when it vanished. They said that the lab they sent it to must have lost it. So bit of context here. Back in the 70s, Utah's state crime lab hadn't opened yet. So police supposedly would send their evidence to the University of Utah to be tested at the Center for Human Toxicology. So essentially police were saying it wasn't their fault. They couldn't have lost the murder weapon because it hadn't been in their possession since

they'd sent it to the university. But here's where things get really weird. The Center for Human Toxicology's director, at the time of Tony's murder, Brian Finkle, said that the allegation that his lab lost the evidence was preposterous. It literally wasn't possible, not because his lab had some immaculate organization system or anything, but because the lab did not handle

physical evidence. Brian Finkle told reporter Eric Peterson, quote, no, no, we wouldn't do anything with physical evidence. We dealt strictly with toxicology, end quote. So basically, Brian was saying there's no way they ever took the murder weapon in the first place because this lab only dealt with swabs to test for things like alcohol or drugs or poison,

never physical evidence. Utah's chief medical examiner at the time of Tony's killing said, Brian's right, the university's Center for Human Toxicology would have never accepted physical evidence like a knife. And according to Eric Peterson's article, the police department now admits that they have no idea if the university's lab-lost evidence. So the million-dollar question that no one can seem to answer is where is the knife that killed Anthony Adams?

How do you lose a bloody butcher knife? And you must be thinking like, oh, there must have been some clerical air or horrible misunderstanding that led to the murder weapons disappearance. But we tell you here this. A spokesperson told Eric Peterson, there could be other cases also missing evidence. But the department doesn't know how many cases because they don't have the manpower to do a complete inventory of all of the evidence from their cold case files. So, members of the Utah Investigative Journalism Project submitted a records request asking for the evidence status of the city's cold cases

from around the time Tony was killed from 1978 to 1984. That's 17 cases in total. And police did review those 17 cases as requested. And the report police generated listed only three of those cases as missing certain pieces of evidence. The first was Tony's case, the second, Douglas Coleman, the gay man who was gunned down the same month that Tony was killed. And the third was Mona Olibary, a lesbian who was murdered in April 1979. Again, missing from Tony's file was the murder weapon, and police wouldn't comment on the status of the second knife. Missing from Doug's case were some cigarette butts found near his body, and missing from Mona's were fingernail cigarette butts found near his body, and missing from

Mona's were fingernail clippings collected from the scene. Three members of the gay community all killed within months of each other, their cases remain unsolved, and now key evidence was missing in all three. So was this mere coincidence, or was there something more sinister going on? And the answer to that is something only police would know for sure. So I want to reiterate that our reporting team did reach out to the Salt Lake City Police Department back in January, hoping to get some clarity, but they declined our request for an interview.

We reached out again in April after hearing conflicting information about who discovered Tony's body, like police reports say that Tony's two friends from William Hoyle's campaign found his body, like we said at the top of this episode. But to this day, there are rumors that Tony's boyfriend at the time, a guy named Bill Woodbury, was actually the one who'd found Tony. So we reached out to the police department for a second time, just asking them to confirm what we read in the police report and they responded, quote, we have no additional information to release on this matter." End quote.

Our efforts with that second query were to simply fact check conflicting information that's been reported, but the department wouldn't even entertain our email. And since we weren't able to talk with police, it's a bit unclear what their theories are today about what happened the day of Tony's murder. It seems like the Mickey Henson robbery theory is the most likely scenario, but Kera Porter told us that she's not convinced. In this case, it's not just a knife. It's a knife with a guy who's naked in his bathroom.

To me, that adds another layer that does make it likely that he would have known someone, because if it was someone who got into the apartment and just wanted to do a quick burglary thing, you'd be thrilled that the guy's taken a bath in the bathroom and you would just look around and then leave again, you wouldn't go looking for the guy. Because of the way it is, it does seem personal. It really does. Tony was a passionate and brilliant young man who dedicated his life to doing what he could to make the world a better and more accepting place, but that life was senselessly and violently cut short.

For more than 40 years, questions about what happened to Tony and why have gone unanswered. His family and friends have never known justice, but someone out there has the power to change that. If that person is you, if you have any information about the murder of Anthony Tony Adams, please speak up. His family and friends and everyone who knew him deserves closure, and Tony deserves justice. You can call the Salt Lake City Police Department at 801-799-3000. His case number is 1978-86442. Or you can text tip-slcpd to 274637. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.

To learn more about the Deck, visit the DeckPodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Do you approve? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH