Trial date set in cold-case murder of Utah woman who was strangled

A three-week trial in June has been set for a man accused of the 1986 slaying of a Salt Lake City woman whose body was dumped in Memory Grove.

Thomas Pennington, 48, is charged in 3rd District Court with one count of murder in the second degree, a first-degree felony, in connection with the death of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Patricia Ramirez.

The trial is scheduled to begin June 8 before Judge Vernice Trease. If convicted, Pennington faces up to life in prison.

Ramirez's body was found on a hillside in Memory Grove on July 13, 1986.

Pennington was not charged with the slaying until June 2011, after police interviewed two witnesses who said they learned Ramirez had been killed when Pennington made statements at a party on the evening of July 8, 1986. A third man told police that he drove Pennington and two other men on an errand in which they appeared to dispose of a body.

At the time Pennington was charged he was serving a prison sentence in Missouri for child molestation and failing to register as a sex offender.

During an August 2012 preliminary hearing, a judge heard testimony from Joel Murray, who recalled being at the party on July 8, 1986, when Pennington and two other men asked him for a ride. The group stopped at an apartment complex and asked Murray to pop the trunk, Murray said. He said he felt the car depress as something heavy was placed inside.

Pennington directed Murray to a hill near Memory Grove, Murray said. Murray said he opened the trunk again and glimpsed a wrapped "package" large enough to hold Ramirez, with whom Murray sometimes smoked pot and earlier had given a ride to the same apartments where they had just stopped.

Pennington, who went by "Peanut," asked Murray if he wanted to see what was inside, Murray testified. His facial expression communicated, "I have this secret; do you want to know what it is?" Murray said.

Murray said he didn't want to know.

"I got this bad feeling, this weird feeling," he testified. "... I believed it was a human body."

Five days later, police found the woman's body on a hill above Memory Grove, near 700 North Bonneville Boulevard.

State medical examiner Dr. Todd Grey testified that the condition of her body indicated she had been dead for about five days. Officers found her shirt open and her bra torn in half; one half of the bra was around her neck, apparently used to strangle her, Grey said.