Ice Cold Utah Murder Solved Thanks To DNA

On Jun. 26, 1965, cute little high school student Tanya Weber had just returned from a wedding reception, her friends saying saying the high school senior had had the time of her life.

After being dropped off by her friends at her house on Center Street in Logan, Weber elected to go for a walk, despite it being near midnight.

Sadly, she would never make it back home.

Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. Weber was abducted, assaulted (though not sexually, thankfully) and strangled to death.

Her lifeless body was dragged into the bushes in a backyard just two blocks from her home.

The violent crime was a shock to the community of Logan, which had not had a murder for more than 35 years before Weber's case.

Police worked the case hard, trying to ease public concern while investigating a man named Owen Hodges Kimball, who had been seen in the area the night of the murder.

Hodges, a 26-year-old who lived in the neighborhood was the top suspect, but when he took his own life a few weeks after the murder, the case went cold.

It seemed as if the murder of Tanya Weber may never be solved.

But on the 59th anniversary of Tanya's death, police say they know who killed her.

Logan City Police recently were able to exhume Kimball's body and find DNA that absolutely linked him to evidence found on the lifeless body of Tanya Weber.

“Upon review of the numerous statements and evidence collected from the 1965 investigation, as well as the recently obtained DNA evidence, the evidence showed Mr. Kimball did, in fact, kill Ms. Tanya Weber,” LCPD said in a recent press release. “This evidence would be sufficient to obtain a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt.”

And while this evidence will never bring back Tanya Weber and the life she would have had (she would be 76-years-old now), it certainly could at long last provide some closure to the Weber family.

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