Calvin Shane Myers kissed his girlfriend and talked about the beauty of nature seconds before violently stabbing her to death, according to court testimony Wednesday.
The parolee also knew the woman was pregnant with his baby.Myers, 21, is facing two counts of aggravated murder that could bring him face to face with the death sentence for the Dec. 4, 1994, killing of Irene Christensen and a 4-month-old fetus in her womb.
Snowmobilers found Christen- sen's snow-covered corpse a week before Christmas on the shore of Rockport Reservoir.
State assistant medical examiner Maureen Frikke testified that the woman's head "was practically pulled off" by the force of at least seven knife wounds to her neck and an ear-to-ear slash across her throat. She had also been stabbed repeatedly in the chest.
Frikke said the baby boy was healthy and died only because his mother died.
The case is the first test of a 1991 amendment to Utah's criminal homicide statute that now covers unborn children. Third Circuit Judge Roger Livingston was expected Wednesday afternoon to bind Myers over for trial.
Police may still be looking for suspects if not for Myers' fumbling friend, Steven Paul Howard. Howard testified he lost his black eel-skin wallet as the trio exited Myers' car about 400 feet from the homicide scene. Using a driver's license in the billfold, investigators later tracked Howard down and questioned him. "I denied everything . . . I told them it was stolen. That I had no idea how it got there," Howard said.
However the man later confessed to his parents, who urged him to go to police. Prosecutors subsequently charged Howard with obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony, for not coming forward sooner. The charge will be reduced to a third-degree felony in exchange for his testimony against Myers at trial, said Summit County Attorney Robert Adkins.
Howard said he and Myers joked about the killing at least three times afterward but stopped after agreeing they would put the incident behind them.
"It was driving both of us insane, so we decided to just get on with our lives." But before silence took over, Myers told his friend why he killed Christensen, Howard said.
"He said she had broken into his apartment and stolen some things and that he was angry about that," Howard testified.
Upon that explanation and out of curiousity, Howard said, he asked Myers if he had any regrets. "He said, `Yeah. She was pregnant with my baby.' "
Howard also testified that after the murder, Myers walked to the trunk of the car, wiped his hands on a rag, stepped into the driver's seat and said, "It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it."
By that time, Howard had jogged to the car and lit up a cigarette after he watched Myers make stabbing motions into the woman. He said he didn't try to stop his friend "because I didn't want to be laying there next to her."
Myers remains in the Summit County Jail on $100,000 bail.