A Colorado man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a murder charge in the 1970 cold case rape and slaying of a woman in east-central Utah, prosecutors say.
Thomas Edward Egley was taken into custody in Colorado in August on a warrant for the slaying of Loretta Jones, according to Utah’s attorney general. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said he pleaded guilty on Tuesday to second-degree felony murder.
He faces a penalty of between 10 years and life behind bars at a Nov. 22 sentencing.
Egley is 76 years old and was living in Rocky Ford, east of Pueblo, at the time of his arrest, court records show.
According to The Associated Press, charging documents say Egley was an original suspect in the 23-year-old woman’s death, but a judge found there wasn’t enough evidence against him and dismissed the case.
Egley is accused of killing Jones in Carbon County, Utah, 45 years ago in a case that was reopened in 2009 by a sheriff’s investigator there. Prosecutors say Egley confessed.
“We’re grateful for the hard work that Carbon County investigators put into solving this 45-year-old cold case,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said in a statement at the time of Egley’s arrest in August. “I hope this arrest brings some measure of closure to the family, even after all these years.”
