Ballistics testing has failed to link Michael S. DeCorso to two recent unsolved murders in Salt Lake County.
Detectives working the cases of Bryan Ruff and Kimberly Evans asked for the tests after police recovered several guns owned by DeCorso, who is charged with murder in the death of Margarat Ann Martinez at a Payless Shoesource store."Nothing matched. . . . We know what we're looking for, and the match just isn't there," said Salt Lake sheriff's Sgt. Jerry Town-send.
DeCorso, a former emergency medical technician and Midvale firefighter, also faces rape, sodomy and kidnapping charges for three separate incidents dating to 1992.
Investigators and prosecutors across the Salt Lake Valley are trying to either link the man to or eliminate him from other unsolved rape, robbery and homicide cases.
"Our purpose was to check everything and then eliminate him. It looks like he isn't going to be a suspect in any of our unsolved cases," Townsend said.
Detectives focused again on the Ruff and Evans cases because of "very loose" ties between them and DeCorso - primarily the fact that DeCorso was living in the county at the times of the their deaths and may have owned guns similar to the one that killed them.
The body of Ruff, a Kennecott security guard, was found July 10, 1993, in a shallow grave southwest of Fairfield, Utah County. He died from multiple gunshot wounds.
Co-workers discovered him missing from his guard shack 18 months earlier. His half-eaten lunch was inside the shack, and his locked car was in the parking lot. Detectives were stumped but investigated many leads that he may have walked away on his own accord.
They now believe he was killed the night he disappeared and could have left the shack under duress.
Evans, 28, also died from multiple gunshot wounds. She was found Jan. 11, 1994, slumped in the front seat of her car at the mouth of Butterfield Canyon near a Kennecott gate.
Passers-by notified the sheriff's office of a possible suicide. But detectives discovered she had been shot six times, and there appeared to have been a struggle.
Deputies served a search warrant on an acquaintance of Evans not long after the shooting. They found lead particles on him characteristic of gunshot residue.
However, no arrests have been made, and no charges have been filed in her death.