Confessed killer Doug Lovell wants his son to visit him at Utah State Prison, but authorities have a problem: The boy's mother helped detectives put him on death row.
Members of Lovell's family want no contact with ex-wife Rhonda Buttars, who caught Lovell on tape talking about the 1985 slaying of Joyce Yost.Buttars, meantime, doesn't want Lovell to even know where she lives, said Terry Carpenter, the South Ogden police officer who spearheaded the Lovell investigation.
"The last time Doug was angry at a woman, he hired two people to kill her," Carpenter said.
Testimony during Lovell's 1993 sentencing hearing, including that of Lovell himself, showed he hired two different men he knew from prison to kill Yost. When they backed out, he did the job himself to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape case.
Lovell was convicted and imprisoned on the charge anyway.
Detectives made the murder case after Buttars wore a hidden microphone during a prison conversation.
Lovell has filed papers in 2nd District Court to compel Buttars to allow him the visitation he was granted in their 1990 divorce. A hearing has been set for April 3 before Judge Michael Lyon.
In a letter to his ex-wife's attorney in 1994, Lovell said he wanted to see his son because, "Everything has calmed down now, and I feel it's time to move on with the father-son relationship that I very much desire."
Lovell last saw the boy, now 10, in 1992.
In 1996, Buttars turned down a visitation plan that would have had the boy visiting Lovell via Lovell's father.
However, Carpenter said he expected Buttars would probably allow the boy to visit his condemned father.
"No one's ever really sat down and told him why his dad is in prison," Carpenter said. "And he hasn't been that inquisitive about it. He's just been told he was put in prison because he's done something bad."
Meantime, Lovell was awaiting a 2nd District judge's decision on an appeal challenging his death sentence.
Lovell's attorney, Jim Bradshaw, contends Lovell's since-stayed execution order arose from a conflict of interest between his then-defense lawyer John Caine and then-Weber County Attorney Reed Richards.
The district court ruling, expected by the end of next week, will be forwarded to the Utah Supreme Court. The justices will then rule on whether the relationship between Caine and Richards adversely affected Lovell's defense.
Bradshaw said the longtime friendship between Caine and Richards led Caine to give his client bad advice regarding his defense.