Doug Lovell, condemned to die for murdering a woman to prevent her rape trial testimony, says he had nothing to do with the disappearances of two other northern Utah women.
Lovell was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for raping South Ogden resident Joyce Yost in 1985. Earlier this year, he admitted he murdered her three months after raping her to keep her from testifying against him. On Aug. 5 was sentenced to death by lethal injection.The condemned man could have escaped the death penalty if he had led investigators to Yost's body, which he says he buried in Ogden Canyon but which has never been recovered.
Some investigators have speculated Lovell deliberately led searchers away from Yost's grave to keep them from discovering other bodies he buried in the mountains.
Police in Roy and Woods Cross are reviewing the disappearances of Theresa Greaves in 1983 and Sheree Warren in 1985 for a possible connection with Lovell. Both women are presumed dead.
Lovell said he would be willing to discuss the cases with police.
"I don't know either of these women," he said during an interview Friday at the Utah State Prison. "I welcome these officers to come and talk to me without my attorney present because I have nothing to hide. They're making me out to be a serial killer and that's not the case.
"I wish they'd talked to me before they started throwing my name around. I still have a family and friends out there."
He said he'd never met either of the missing women and doubted he even knew anyone named Sheree or Theresa.
Lovell also said he is angry about widespread accounts that he strangled Yost, then stomped the back of her neck.
"She was so far out of it I had to hold her up. I don't know how many Valiums I gave her, maybe 15. Although she could still move her legs, if I had let go she would have dropped to the ground," he said.
"Her hands were tied behind her back, sort of to her side, tied with part of a towel or a sheet. She struggled a little when I put my hand over her mouth and blocked her nose. Then her body went stiff, and then went limp and I knew she was dead."
Lovell was unemotional while describing how he killed Yost, but his eyes teared as he spoke of how he might have avoided killing her.
He said his family and friends shared the blame for his lies.
When he was first arrested for Yost's rape, "everybody pounced on me saying I couldn't have done it," he said. "If one person had asked me if I did it, my emotions were so thin I would have broke down and told them everything."
But no one did, and instead, a reaction began, he said, that in part led to the murder.
"It's complicated. I was embarrassed, ashamed at what I did," he said. "It was an issue of pride with my family and friends and it just started gears in my head and a denial thing set in, like I almost didn't believe I did what I did."