Dogged Determination Sees Cold Case Solved

The murder of Loretta Jones went unpunished for 46 years — until her daughter and a detective teamed up to get the job done.

Loretta Jones and her daughter Heidi before the murder (Image: Heidi Jones-Asay’s collection via the Justice for Loretta Jones Facebook page)

Loretta Jones was 23 years old when she was murdered in the Utah town of Price on July 30th 1970, leaving behind a daughter aged only four.

Shockingly, the perpetrator of her brutal killing went undiscovered and lived as a free man for nearly five decades. He was finally caught and brought to justice only recently, with true grit from one detective and Loretta’s family making all the difference.

A devastating discovery

When Heidi Jones-Asay got up that summer morning, she could not have known that would be the day her whole world would be ripped out from beneath her. In the living room of their home in Carbon County was the prone body of her mother.

Loretta Jones was lying in a pool of blood on the floor and, although Heidi hurried outside to alert neighbours, it was too late. The young mother had died from stab wounds to her heart, lungs and pulmonary artery.

With little Heidi having been asleep in the room next door at the time of the murder, investigators came to the heartbreaking conclusion that Loretta had purposely…