The Salt Lake County sheriff's office has identified the man whose body was found in Big Cottonwood Canyon two weeks ago.
Kerry Shannon Kendley, 37, Sacramento, Calif., was identified through an automated fingerprint identification system after police reconstructed his thumb prints and checked them in the system, a news release said.Kendley's bloated body, missing eight fingers and both feet, was discovered by a goldpanner in Big Cottonwood Canyon Jan. 14. A driver's license found on Kendley said his name was Terry Gene Pendley, 33, of West Jordan.
But when deputies discovered a motorcycle accident in South Carolina killed the real Terry Pendley 10 years ago, they began to question who this fingerless man was and why he took on a dead man's identity.
Last May, after abandoning his car in Sacramento, Kendley somehow obtained Pendley's membership records from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which made it easy to get a driver's license, said sheriff's detective Darin Carr.
Sacramento authorities located that abandoned car, lifted Kendley's fingerprints and fed them into the fingerprint identification system, according to the release.
While in Utah, Kendley, then going by the name Pendley, bought a different car, opened a bank account and rented a weekly room at the Rio Grande Hotel.
Just before Christmas, a badly frostbitten Kendley was found wandering around the mountains in subzero temperatures. Surgeons at the University Hospital amputated every finger but his thumbs and more than half of each foot.
The last time anyone saw Kendley alive was at a convalescence home in December just before he apparently took a cab to the canyon.
Deputy Jim Potter said Kendley was a transient and authorities have been unable to locate any family members.