HEBER CITY — Half of the father-son duo accused of killing two deer hunters in eastern Utah 2 1/2 years ago will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Michael David Heffelfinger, 25, of Albuquerque, N.M., changed his earlier not-guilty pleas to guilty pleas Friday morning in Judge Anthony W. Schofield's 4th District courtroom in Heber City. He admitted guilt to two capital counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of Kelly Jack Carter, 27, and Brad Wesley Gross, 23, both of Vernal, near Flaming Gorge Reservoir on Oct. 21, 2001.
Heffelfinger also pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree felony aggravated robbery. The pleas were part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty for the capital-murder charges.
He was sentenced immediately after entering his pleas. Schofield issued the sentences recommended by prosecutors as part of the agreement: two life prison sentences without possibility of parole, to run consecutively. For the robbery charges, he received two five-years-to-life sentences, which will run concurrently to Heffelfinger's other sentences. Heffelfinger is already serving time in the Utah State Prison for a shootout in Carbon County that he and his father took part in shortly after Carter's and Gross' deaths.
In a statement of the facts drafted by prosecutors but agreed to by Heffelfinger and his attorneys, Heffelfinger admitted that he and his father, Lewis Francis Heffelfinger, killed the two hunters and stole Gross' truck and Carter's money. Michael Heffelfinger said he shot Carter with a .44-caliber pistol after his father shot and killed Gross with a .38-caliber pistol. When Carter, the passenger in the truck, tried to run away, Michael Heffelfinger shot him again, killing him, according to the statement.
Family members and friends of the victims wept in the courtroom as Schofield read the statement.
Heffelfinger, when asked by the judge whether he wanted to say anything, struggled with his emotions. After a long pause, he tearfully said, "I would like to say to both of the families that I'm sorry for both their losses, that I hope this day that they will be able to find some closure. I'm very sorry for what I did."
But Kasey Carter, Kelly Carter's wife, said Heffelfinger deserved punishment regardless of his regrets.
"He had a choice that day on the mountain, and I think he made the wrong choice," she said after the hearing. "It's hard every day. He was my soulmate," she said, sobbing. "It's hard. I'm alone. I'm lonely, and when my kids see other children with their dads, it's really hard on them. It's just lonely. It's like a big part of us is gone. The happy part."
Lewis and Michael Heffelfingers' court proceedings were separated because attorneys had planned to have Michael testify in his father's defense. Schofield on Friday ordered Michael Heffelfinger to testify honestly if he was called by either the defense or prosecutors in his father's case. Daggett County Attorney Dennis L. Judd would not comment on whether he plans to call Michael Heffelfinger as a witness in Lewis' case.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com