Nonprofit’s extensive search leads to vehicle being recovered from Utah reservoir with body inside

KSTU

By Chris Arnold

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    DUCHESNE COUNTY, Utah (KSTU) — Investigators from multiple agencies were at Starvation Reservoir on Monday, where a car with a body inside was pulled out of the water.

Police say this is related to a decades-old cold case.

The road was blocked off into the evening, and investigators with Duchesne County, Salt Lake County, and Utah State Parks are now working to piece together what they say is a 20-year-old case.

Duchesne County Sheriff Travis Tucker said he was at the scene since noon. He confirmed to FOX 13 News that a body was found in the vehicle, but he could not provide the name, age or gender of the person.

“Until we prove otherwise, we investigate like they are homicides — that’s why we’re here from the very beginning, to make sure we are not missing anything,” Tucker said.

The car was found by Doug Bishop with United Search Corps, a nonprofit that specializes in missing person cases. He has been working with Dave Sparks, of Sparks Motors and the reality TV show Diesel Brothers, for the past six months on this cold case.

They said their search originally started at Flaming Gorge before ending up at Starvation Reservoir, where they’ve been working for multiple days — leading to Monday’s recovery of the vehicle.

“This is a process of elimination with the type of search we specialize in, which is underwater,” Bishop said. “That is what led us to Starvation Reservoir. Our search at this reservoir did uncover a vehicle that is connected to a case that we have been working on.”

“It’s the vehicle — 1000% confirmed the vehicle,” Sparks added. “Obviously forensics will have to tell us what remains we found, but there were remains and it was the vehicle we were after.”

Police wouldn’t confirm where this cold case originated from. Tucker said they are working on getting warrants before they start processing the car. What they find dictates where it goes from there, he said.

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