Less than four months after taking the oath of office, Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank was faced with the first high-profile case of his administration.
A young girl, Destiny Norton, was reported missing after going into the back yard of her Salt Lake home to play. She disappeared after leaving her parents' sight for just 10 minutes.
Eight days later, her body was found in the basement of next-door neighbor Craig Gregerson's apartment. Gregerson, 20, was arrested and charged in 3rd District Court with aggravated murder and child kidnapping. Destiny's body was found inside a well-concealed plastic storage container.
Looking back on the case during a sit-down interview with the Deseret Morning News from his office, Burbank said if he were to grade his department on the investigation, combined with the help they received in working in conjunction with the FBI, he would without hesitation give them an "A."
"It was almost a perfect situation. I couldn't have asked for more," he said. "From a police standpoint, from a detective standpoint, investigation (standpoint), everything was perfect."
But the work done by police didn't come without criticism. Close friends and extended family members of Destiny were initially outraged following the discovery of Destiny's body. Some first heard of the discovery through the media.
Angry friends, family members and neighbors gathered outside the Norton's house the night she was found, some carrying signs telling police they messed up. Officers at the house for crowd control were verbally abused and at least one was spit on.
Burbank said he wasn't necessarily surprised with the angry reaction.
"It was such a unique situation because of the relationships with the friends and everything. It was really a very large extended family . . . because they were not blood relatives, we could not provide them with the information we provided to the family so we had to protect that information especially until we talked to the prosecutor's office and had their review on it," he said. "I was not surprised necessarily. I never thought it would be to the level it rose to that evening. But there was a little girl who lost her life. That upset me, that upset my detectives . . . we were always going under the impression we were looking for a healthy little girl."
Burbank said he was driving home when he got a call from an officer at the scene who said the crowd was getting out of control. That's when he decided to drive to the house himself.
The angry reaction was unfortunate, he said, because most people didn't see the work done by detectives that went into the case. But he said he was willing to take a few verbal jabs if it meant being protective of the work done by his investigators.
"They can yell at me all they want," he said.
Some of those extended family members who publicly criticized the police department offered an apology a few days later during a news conference with Mayor Rocky Anderson.
"I was very pleased and impressed with their attitude and their willingness to come forward," Burbank said.
About 260 people were interviewed in the Destiny case, Burbank said. Very few of them had been completely ruled out before Gregerson was arrested.
"Everybody in the neighborhood in essence was on the radar," he said. " . . . family, everybody who had access to her. It was just a process of going through and eliminating those people, determining if they had an alibi, what their involvement was in the entire thing. So (Gregerson) was a person (being looked at) all along but until that evening never rose to 'this is the person,' and we could never say 'we have a specific suspect' or anything. We had a large number of suspects that we were constantly going through and eliminating."
A day and a night team worked in conjunction with each other 24-7 gathering and investigating leads. The teams would meet twice a day, when one shift was getting off shift and the other was coming on, and compare notes of what they found and what needed to be pursued.
Those teams were broken down into more teams who were each assigned a person or group of people to constantly investigate. Those teams would then come back to the table with information on each person under investigation.
"It wasn't a matter of them saying 'I don't think this person did it.' They came back and they more or less presented 'this is what we found out,'" he said. "In the case of Gregerson, that was a person they never let go of. There were always questions. A lesser detective or someone not as tenacious may have let it go. (But) there were always questions they wanted to follow up on."
Most of the pressure to find Destiny came from the officers themselves who, until the time her body was found, thought they were looking for a live girl, he said. That pressure drove many to work extremely long hours, and had the chief constantly evaluating how the investigation was going.
"That was a major concern for me: Were these people getting enough rest?" Burbank said. "Are we doing everything? Am I giving them all the resources they need to solve this in the most effective manner?"
During his 15-year law-enforcement career with Salt Lake City police, Burbank rose through the ranks and became assistant chief under Rick Dinse. It was during Dinse's administration that the department was faced with some of its most high-profile cases, including the abduction of Elizabeth Smart and the murder of Lori Hacking.
He said lessons were learned during those cases that affected how the Destiny case was handled, including the approach to a case and when or if to release information.
In the Elizabeth Smart case, police were criticized and later admitted they erred in not releasing sooner a sketch of a mysterious roofer named Immanuel, who investigators later learned was Brian David Mitchell.
Burbank's mentor, Dinse, called several times during the Destiny investigation to offer words of encouragement.
"He said, 'From what I've heard, what I've seen, you're doing everything I can think of.' "
For the past several years, Salt Lake City has been on a cycle of high-profile cases involving young girls or women who went missing during the summer months of even-numbered years.
Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her home in June of 2002. Lori Hacking disappeared in July of 2004 and Destiny Norton nearly two years later to the day.
Each case prompted throngs of volunteer searchers from throughout the state. And each case attracted national, and sometimes world media attention.
"It's very unusual. Generally cities go on a seven-year cycle (between high-profile criminal cases)," Burbank said, adding he'd very much like to see the trend come to an end.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com