SHORT READ
Dumped in a Ditch and Became a Cold Case
Johanna Leatherbury was raped, stabbed and shot with no witnesses coming forward for over 40 years.
I get often asked how I decide which case to write about, and I don’t have a great answer. I look over the cold cases in Utah and some just speak to me, it’s a weird feeling. Maybe this one hit home because I am a female living in Utah and I have daughters, who knows.
This case takes us back to August 1971 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Typically, it's the “perfect weather” season for us Utahns, 80s during the day and 60s at night. Johanna Leatherbury an18-year-old Olympus High School graduate would become the victim of rape, who was stabbed and shot to death, her case would go cold almost immediately.
In an interview with KSL in 2017 Johanna’s younger sister Roxanne Brough said “When she didn’t show up, we all began to panic,”
They drove all over hoping to spot her, or her car. “Maybe she’d been in an accident,” Roxanne said.
When the family found Johanna’s car, a white Chrysler they knew in their guts something terrible had happened to her. The car was found on Westminster Ave, away from where Johanna was seen hanging out the night before. In the 70s this area could be described as an open field where teens from around the salt lake valley would hang out during the summer.
The day after her car was found two men were out fishing and spotted her body at the surplus canal drainage (this drains into the great salt lake)they drove to Magna to call the police. It’s worth noting this murder took place prior to DNA being in the picture, so no DNA evidence was extracted at the time of the murder.
In 2015 Johanna’s body was exhumed by detective Pender. He sent whatever evidence technicians could collect to a crime lab for analysis.
“I really believe if I didn’t take this step it would always be one of those things I would think, ‘What if’.” Pender said in his interview with KSL.
With over 40 years passing since this murder, Johanna’s family has done some detective work themselves. They have collected names of people Johanna was seen with or would often hang…