I just returned from a trip to Salt Lake City to visit my dad and wouldn’t you know it, a buzzy Utahn crime story broke on my second day there!
But it’s far from the only notable crime that has taken place in Utah and spawned true crime texts.1
Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped by a religious fanatic at fourteen and kept in captivity for almost a year. She has written two memoirs about her experience, and I always recommend reading the survivor’s own words when possible.
In 2018, University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey was murdered on campus after repeated requests from campus and Salt Lake police to keep her safe from her ex-boyfriend, who was stalking and threatening her. She was failed by every institution that was supposed to keep her safe, and the university eventually settled with her family for over ten million dollars for their negligence (which they used to open a violence prevention foundation in her name). ESPN, always a reliable source for documentaries exploring the intersection of sports and crime2 (Lauren was a track and field athlete), premiered a film on her story this year.
If you’re fascinated by true crime of the serial killer variety, Ted Bundy murdered five of his victims in Utah, and the Green River killer was born in Salt Lake City.
I will read any book Jon Krakauer writes, and his devastating investigation into a series of rapes at the University of Montana exposes another way universities fail women, and includes some authentic self-examination of the author’s own masculinist biases. Just as good is Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, in which the murder of a woman and her daughter exposes the brutal misogyny and child cruelty endemic to the FLDS church based in southern Utah.3
Murder Among the Mormons (Netflix) is a fascinating under-the-radar documentary about a series of bombings in Salt Lake that ropes in forgery, counterfeiting, coin collecting, and the esoteric world of rare books.
I’ll close with a non-recommendation. Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979) is often cited along with In Cold Blood as one of the “true crime novels” that legitimized the genre and helped to usher in the twentieth-century boom in American true crime. It even won a Pulitzer! However, I read its 1136 pages so you wouldn’t have to, and let me assure you, it is NOT GOOD. Mailer uses the occasion of Gary Gilmore’s crimes (murdering two people in Orem and Provo, Utah) to endlessly (1136 pages) pontificate about cowboy mythology, the American West, and individualist ideology. You know what he doesn’t pontificate about so much? THE VICTIMS. I kid you not when I share that there are a total of three (out of 1136) pages that consider the lives of the people Gilmore killed in any way other than tangentially. Mostly, it’s the psychobiography of Norman Mailer as told through the crimes, trial, and execution of Gilmore. There’s also some super-cringey sex stuff. Save yourself.
CW: This post will mention texts that include rape and violence against women.
Including O.J.: Made in America, which makes my top five list of the decade.
If you’d like to have a visceral reaction to the phrase “keep sweet” for the rest of your natural born life, the Netflix documentary on FLDS “prophet” Warren Jeffs is a harrowing watch.