A Salt Lake man who said the Army's Central Intelligence Division, the Mafia and his former employer killed his wife has been found guilty of second-degree murder.
Doty Lyn Brown, 29, faces sentencing March 12 before 3rd District Judge Raymond Uno in Tooele.A jury late Saturday found Brown guilty of shooting his wife, Sandra Brown, 41, whose body was discovered by Boy Scouts in the mountains southwest of Tooele.
"We never did know the motive for sure," said Tooele County Attorney Ronald Elton. "He was running from the law. And we found out during the trial that he often had to choose his mother over his wife, who was quite aggressive. We also found out he had a girlfriend."
Defense attorney Paul Gotay refused to speak to the Deseret News, but Elton said the defense case tried to show that someone else was responsible for the homicide.
Though never reported missing, Sandra Brown, originally of the Ogden area, had last been seen Dec. 10, 1988, at the Salt Lake International Airport, where she was to have caught a flight to Denver to see her husband.
A witness on Dec. 24, 1988, heard Doty Brown say that the Mafia had killed his wife. That same witness later saw Doty Brown in possession of a .41-caliber Magnum revolver.
Boy Scouts found Sandra Brown's body on March 24, 1989, near Lookout Pass. She had been shot once in the head, but police were unable to identify her until last August after a relative saw a Deseret News story that showed a photograph of an artist's drawing of the victim's face.
A short time later, detectives located a .41-caliber handgun that had been pawned by Doty Brown in Salt Lake City on Jan. 27, 1989. The gun was matched ballistically to the bullets recovered from the victim's body and the scene.
In an interview after his arrest last August, Doty Brown told police that his wife was killed during a gun battle with the Army's Central Intelligence Division and that afterward he buried the body near Lehi and threw away the guns. He said he didn't report the killing out of fear and loyalty, Elton said.
During the trial, Doty Brown gave a different story, saying it was his former employer who killed his wife.
The state, however, called the employer to the witness stand and was able to disprove that theory, Elton said.
In unrelated cases, Doty Brown faces a trial Tuesday, Feb. 27, in Salt Lake County on charges he raped his stepdaughter's 16-year-old friend in May 1988, the same month he and Sandra Brown were married.
Brown is also charged with stealing a semiautomatic rifle in Box Elder County in September 1988 and then failing to appear for a preliminary hearing.