Police say they cracked 51-year-old Moab murder case

When Moab Police Detective Jeremy Drexler first started working one of Moab’s more high-profile cold cases — the murder of Ann Woodward on March 2, 1973, at Woody’s Tavern — he thought infamous serial killer Ted Bundy was his primary suspect.

After all, Bundy committed one of his many murders in Utah at around that time and a thorough investigation yielded no local suspects, at least any police could prove a case against. But Drexler went where the facts took him: To the Nebraska grave of Doug Chudomelka, who rented a Walnut Lane trailer for $100 a month as he worked for the Rio Algom Mine from the early to mid-1970s.

Chudomelka, a man with a history of violence, died at 67 in 2002, nearly 30 years after police say he strangled and probably sexually assaulted Woodward, 46, who was the wife of then-Woody’s owner Leslie “Woody” Woodward.

Drexler theorizes that Chudomelka, who would have been about 36 in 1973, was angry at Woodward for beating him at poker, but he admits it could also have been a crime of opportunity rather than rage.

He knows without a doubt that the pair played cards, that Chudomelka drank beer and smoked Camel cigarettes that night, and that he brutally murdered Woodward, leaving her half-dressed body on the floor between two pool tables. Her pants were off. The right leg was inside out and tied into a knot. Her shirt had been unbuttoned.

The pant leg, said Drexler, was used to strangle Woodward. It was still wrapped around her neck when her husband discovered her body at about 6:30 a.m.

“He (Chudomelka) was the only one in the world who could have been sitting in that chair,” said Drexler. He was also the only one whose DNA was found on the buttons of Woodward’s shirt and on the waist of her pants. But the deal closer was the DNA found on the inside of her pants.

“He could explain away having his DNA on the outside of her clothes, but not the inside of her pants. No way,” said Drexler.

Chudomelka was one of 25 suspects. Virtually anyone who had been in the bar or who was known to be a regular at Woody’s was a suspect, but Chudomelka had more going against him than the rest. His mid-1960s Ford sedan matched the car witnesses said they saw parked next to Woodward’s truck on March 1. She was killed between 1:40 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. March 2.

Chudomelka told investigators at the time that he had not been in Woody’s that night but had instead spent the evening drinking at the Westerner Grill. His girlfriend, Joyce, provided an alibi, telling police that Chudomelka came home at about 2 a.m.

He could have killed her and made it home by 2 a.m., but the bartender at the Westerner told police Chudomelka was not in at all the night of March 1.

On July 3, 1973, Chudomelka was arrested on a domestic violence charge. Joyce told police then that he was Woodward’s killer and that she would talk about the murder to the county attorney. He would later be convicted of cattle rustling in San Juan County and served a term of probation before he left the region.

She later recanted and refused to say anything other than admitting Chudomelka came home at 4:10 in the morning on March 2, not 2 a.m.

Thirty-three years later, when former Police Chief Mike Navarre reopened the case in 2006, she still refused to talk about what she knew.

The case languished until Drexler came along, armed with 21st-century science and law enforcement tools, but the detective credits a former police chief who investigated the murder in 1973.

A cop ahead of his time

If former Moab Police Chief Melvin Dalton were still alive, he would know the steps he took then would help solve Woodward’s murder.

“He was a forward-thinking guy,” said Drexler.

Indeed, Dalton took a number of steps in that direction. First, a few days after the murder, March 6, he asked for and received permission from Chudomelka to pull hairs from his body. “He took it from his belly button, his chest, his pubic area and his head and carefully preserved them in evidence. He took Camel cigarette butts found in an ashtray and preserved them. He asked the FBI to test the hair and to see if there was saliva on the cigarettes in order to determine the suspect’s blood type.

“This case hinged on the hair Dalton pulled in 1973,” Drexler continued. “I have no idea how he knew that we would be able to do that today. Dalton made this case very easy for us in that aspect.”

Dalton was so advanced in his thinking that when he sent the FBI the fingerprints of suspects and cigarette butts, the FBI returned the box, unopened, with a letter that essentially read: “This is a great idea, but we don’t have the technology to do that.”

Times have changed and now that technology is used to convict criminals — or eliminate them as suspects. Indeed, the technology has led to the exoneration of hundreds of incarcerated people in recent years.

Dalton’s work also allowed the case to be solved without having to exhume Chudomelka’s body.

While Dalton was meticulous in his investigation, the way things were done 51 years ago muddied the waters. There was no records management system in place then and the evidence, while “very neatly put together and ready for our taking,” as Drexler put it, was eventually removed from the Grand County Sheriff’s Office evidence room and placed into an outbuilding, due in part to its age and in part to better preserve it.

Once Drexler discovered the hidden evidence things broke open. “It was 50 years and six months later, but we got it and I knew we had it,” said Drexler. “I called my wife and told her I had the evidence in the backseat of my truck and I got emotional. It was a treasure trove.”

Drexler said Chudomelka not only murdered Woodward, but he also took $75 out of the cash register and the $50 she won from him playing poker out of the left pocket of her pants. He paid his rent two days later with five $20 bills. Drexler said he has no idea if he paid rent with the stolen money or not. There’s no way to know, but it’s a possibility.

He said there were tissues in every one of Woodward’s pockets, except for the left pants pocket. Next to the pants on the floor was one tissue and eight dimes.

Chudomelka and other suspects were asked to take polygraph tests. Chudomelka agreed, but they were unable to administer the test because Chudomelka was intoxicated when he arrived. “They were looking at Doug,” said Drexler. “They just couldn’t get him.”

Eventually, Chudomelka and a handful of other suspects stopped talking to police and asked for lawyers to represent their interests.

Modern techniques

Drexler, using modern techniques, was able to separate the 29 pieces of evidence that were part of the original case and break them apart into about 80 pieces of evidence, each with its own story to tell.

When The Times-Independent interviewed Drexler in November of 2022, he said he was confident he could solve the case if given the resources. He was indeed provided significant help and while he acknowledges he is the driving force behind solving the case, he also said many people in Moab, from his colleagues at MPD and Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins and people who were around in 1973, all the way to the FBI played key roles in finding Ann Woodward’s killer.

Now energized, both the MPD and the sheriff’s office are poised to open other cold cases and, once the Woodward case is officially closed, Chudomelka’s fingerprints and DNA will be uploaded into federal databases to possibly determine other crimes he might have committed in the 29 years he lived following Woodward’s murder.

This story was first published by The Times-Independent.