SPANISH FORK — Could a skull unearthed by a pair of friends in a backyard cellar belong to a woman who went missing three decades ago?
Spanish Fork police believe it might be that of Peggy Sue Case, a 28-year-old secretary last seen July 9, 1988.
"If it is indeed her, it'd be a great day," said Carl Johnston, the retired Spanish Fork investigator who formerly led the probe into Case's disappearance.
Detectives are reopening the cold case after receiving a call Monday morning from a tenant on a busy suburban street 50 miles south of Salt Lake City, Spanish Fork police said. Case and her boyfriend lived in the home in 1988, officers said.
The caller Monday was unpacking belongings from the concrete cellar as he prepared to move to a new home and noticed a patch of sunken, dirt floor.
The tenant recalled a neighbor telling him that the person who lived there before him had gone missing and never had been found. So he and his friend began digging, said Spanish Fork police Lt. Matt Johnson.
About a foot-and-a-half below the surface, they found the remains wrapped in plastic mesh and a blanket. They called police immediately, said Lt. Matt Johnson.
A suspect was sought in connection with Case's disappearance, but was never arrested. No witnesses reported seeing her death, Johnston noted Monday.
With the discovery Monday, "I think we would have significant and very strong evidence toward being able to do an arrest warrant," and determine the cause of death, Johnston said.
Spanish Fork police officials said the agency investigated the disappearance extensively and that it had dug through the cellar soil at the time but found no evidence.
On July 15, 1988, Case was reported missing by her co-workers. Her colleagues told investigators they last saw her leaving a Payson hot-tub party following a gathering at Canyon View Park hosted by her employer, the manufacturing company Ensign Bickford, Johnston said.
Friends reported that Case left the party with her boyfriend Michael I. Kufrin, who she lived with, Johnston said. Friends told detectives that Kufrin was upset with her and accused her of flirting with other men that night.
Two years after Case was listed as missing, Kufrin, then 34, was in the Utah State Prison related to a conviction of attempted theft, a third-degree felony, after police said he stole his boss' truck and drove to Nevada with firearms, where officers took him into custody.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss all charges if Kufrin would produce evidence that Case was still alive, but he declined the offer. He was in prison after he violated his probation twice by returning to his home state of Illinois, according to a Deseret News report.
At an October 1990 parole proceeding, he refused to answer questions about her from members of the Utah Board of Pardons.
"I don't want to talk about it," Kufrin said.
On Monday, a man reached at an Illinois phone number did not provide his name but said he was Kufrin's father.
"I don't know where he is. He's not here," the man said.
Spanish Fork police also acknowledged they do not know where Kufrin is.
After the July party, Kufrin called her office and said she was sick, detectives said, then told the company the following day that she had left town to buy a car.
Police questioned Kufrin several times, saying they received differing reports about where Case was. Kufrin initially said she was keeping in touch with him by phone, but he later declined to talk about her with police.
He was released from prison in 1995, said a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Corrections.