In exchange for his confession, alleged serial killer Roberto Arguelles got a cell on death row and a color television.
Arguelles' statement to a prison investigator Friday solves four of the most baffling Salt Lake County killings in recent history, including the deaths of Margo Bond, 42, Tuesday Roberts, 15, and Lisa Martinez, 16.He admitted to killing another teenage girl, but officials have asked her name not be released until her family is notified. Based on information from the inmate, police from several agencies were digging up an area in American Fork Canyon late Friday night. Her body is the only one that hasn't been found.
In a room with officer Jenny Glover and attorney Bob Steele, Arguelles spent all day Friday detailing whom he'd killed and how. The 33-year-old prison inmate is already serving time for three sex crimes and criminal homicide.
In exchange for his candor, Arguelles asked prison officials to move him into a cell block in the maximum security unit, where inmates sentenced to die are housed, and to let him have a color television. Inmates usually have to earn a television through good behavior and then they pay $9 per month for the machine.
Margo Bond disappeared from her job as a janitor at a West Valley junior high school Feb. 21, 1992. Her body was found four months later in a shallow grave near road tracks in Tooele County. An autopsy couldn't determine what caused her death.
Martinez and Roberts disappeared March 30, 1992. Arguelles led investigators to their bodies July 26, 1995. They were buried together on a pig farm owned by a relative of Arguelles, who said he'd seen a group of men burying the girls but was afraid to report it because he was on parole.
There was no information about the unidentified girl except that she disappeared around the same time and is a teenager.
News of the confession was bittersweet for relatives. Martinez's grandmother, Rose Edwards, said she heard about the inmate's admission on the television news.
"A friend called and told me it was on TV," Edwards said. "I just didn't know what to do . . . it hurts, but it's better to know who did it."
Edwards was anxious for more details about her granddaughter's death.
"I do want to know how she died," she said through sobs. "I don't want my daughter (Lisa's mother) to know, though. . . . (She's) taking it very hard."
Arguelles served more than 11 years in prison for sex crimes and a killing when he was paroled in June 1991. His parole was revoked in December 1992.
The 3rd District judge who sentenced him to prison recommended that he never be paroled.