The case had stumped investigators for almost two decades: Jason Royter, a father of two, had been found stabbed to death in his Salt Lake City-area home.
There were no signs of forced entry and no apparent motive. Little for detectives and Royter’s relatives, including his now-adult children, to go on in the unsolved homicide.
But a DNA hit finally provided a breakthrough in the cold case, leading to the arrest last week of Mark Munoz, 53, a homeless man, in Royter’s killing, authorities said during a news conference Friday.
At the briefing held by the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, two of Royter’s sisters and his son joined investigators for the announcement that Munoz had been charged.
“I know this could have stalled,” Niki Price, one of Royter’s sisters, said. “They would not stop until it was done.”
Investigators said that DNA collected from Royter’s home in Magna, Utah, matched a sample that had been collected from Munoz, who was included in a national forensic database used by law enforcement agencies when he was arrested in a separate matter in another state.
They declined to say which state the other case was from or what it involved, citing the ongoing investigation into Royter’s murder.
“These cases go cold,” Rosie Rivera, the Salt Lake County sheriff, said at the news conference. “Some of them go 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.”
It was not immediately clear whether Munoz, who was taken into custody Thursday, had a lawyer. Requests for comment were left Monday with the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association and the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office seeking that information.
Ben Pender, the detective who took over the cold case investigation, said Friday that Munoz had been difficult to track down because of his transient background.
“He really doesn’t have a stable residence,” he said.
Rivera said that investigators still had not established a motive in the case and that Munoz had not been cooperating with investigators.
“He knows what happened,” she said. “We don’t.”
The sheriff credited the homicide investigators who initially responded to the crime scene with preserving evidence, saying that advances in forensic science over the years had helped solve cases like Royter’s murder.
Stephani Perschon, another one of Royter’s sisters, said that Munoz’s arrest had helped to ease a heavy burden on her family.
“I just want to say how much of a relief this is,” she said. “It has been a long 20 years.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
