Johanna Tabitha Virginia Strong Leatherbury was born on May 17, 1953 to Jack and Gayle (nee Strong) in Cedar City, UT. Mr. Leatherbury was born on September 16, 1916 in Eureka, UT and her mother was born on July 21, 1920. The couple were wed on May 22, 1939 in Heber City and eventually settled down in Holladay outside of Salt Lake City. Jack was a graduate of Brigham Young University and worked for the Union Pacific railroad for 43 years. The couple had ten children: six boys (Jack, Charles, Paul, Christopher, Marshall, and Greg) and four girls (Roxanne, Johanna, Suzanne and Jacquine, who died the same day she was born on February 22, 1940).
Johanna stood at 5’3″ tall and weighed 135 pounds at the time of her murder. In 1971, she graduated from Olympus High School and was employed at Ballast Hall, a dormitory at the University of Utah. She was also a member of the Holladay Sixth Ward Chapel, a branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The evening of August 20, 1971 was no different than any other: before she left her family home to go hang out with her friends the 17 year-old said goodbye to her parents and siblings. It would be the last time the Leatherbury’s would see her alive. The night turned into morning, and she never came home. This wasn’t like Johanna at all and her family knew right away that something was wrong. Immediately they began to search the area in hopes of finding her.
Described by one of her brothers as ‘thoughtful and kind,’ Johanna was very well liked by her peers and was deeply loved by family and friends. She always made time to visit her grandfather at the VA, who was an injured World War II veteran and loved spending time with her nieces, who said their aunt would often take them out for coffee with her friends and never treated them like children. Like most teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, Leatherbury liked going out with friends and ‘hanging out:’ on the evening of Friday August 20th, she met up with friends at a popular hangout referred to as ‘The Complex,’ which is best described as a vacant field where kids from the areas high schools went to hang out. Leatherbury had just graduated and was moving on to college (most likely the University of Utah where she worked), and it’s important to keep in mind it was the end of August, which is right before school starts up again. Of the spot, Jack Leatherbury said that it was just a normal teenage haunt, and that the areas two schools (Skyline and Olympus High) were just a five minute, 1.7 mile drive apart so many of the students knew each other from growing up in the same area: ‘the kids from Skyline and Olympus High School all hung out at this area. They played games and did what teenagers do.’
I have two different reports as to where Johanna was last seen: in an article published by The Ogden Standard-Examiner on August 24, 1971, it stated that ‘Miss Leatherbury was last seen Friday night when she drove a friend home.’ However the more frequently given account is that she was last seen getting into a car with two unidentified gentlemen containing an unknown number of people by friends near The Complex (which was located at the intersection of State Street and 2100 South Street) at roughly 11:00 PM on August 20, 1971 (I read one source that said it was as late as 11:25 PM and listed the location at 2500 South State Street and West Temple). No one caught the type of car that Johanna got into, however the public was given a description of two different makes and models that were said to be in the area where she was last seen: on August 26th just days after Leatherbury was murdered LE issued an all points bulletin on two cars and their drivers that were reported to be near The Complex. One of them was a 1959/60 black (or dark green) Chevrolet Impala with an engine that ‘sounded like a washing machine’ that was driven by an approximately 24 year-old male with ‘hair down to his ears.’ The second vehicle in question was a 1970/71 Dodge Charger with white racing stripes painted on the sides and a black stripe on the rear that was driven by a person described as ‘young and blonde.’ Unfortunately, it seems that police were unsuccessful in their search efforts.
The day after Johanna was last seen her older brother Jack heard a report on the radio that immediately alarmed him: ‘it was a bulletin on the radio that said there had been a body discovered in the surplus canal out by the Great Salt Lake.’ … ‘Good Lord, I could tell you where we were about every hour from the day to the time they discovered her.’ Per KSL, her younger sister, Roxanne said that ‘when she didn’t show up, we all began to panic.’ The Leatherbury family’s search attempts didn’t yield any answers; however her body was quickly discovered the next day.
On August 21, sometime between 4 – 4:45 PM the naked remains of Johanna Leatherbury were discovered in a marshy area near the Great Salt Lake by David Russell and Neal Draper. The men happened to be fishing in the canal, which was located about a half mile west of the west stock bridge on the Goggin’s Drain by the Great Saltaire, an abandoned entertainment complex that had been destroyed in a fire in November 1970. Goggins Drain is a bypass canal that drains water from a surplus canal and helps transport water from 21st South to the Great Salt Lake. At first the two fishermen thought they found an old department store mannequin, however after they brought it to shore and further inspected it they quickly realized that wasn’t the case at all: it was the corpse of a young woman.
Because it was 1971 and not 2023 the men had no cell phones, so they drove to the closest town of Magna, UT to inform law enforcement about their discovery. Once detectives arrived on the scene and pulled the body out of the water it was obvious to them what happened to the young woman: she had been shot in the chest and head nine times and stabbed in the chest and stomach four times (I did see it reported she was stabbed five times and another that said was shot only three times). She had also been raped and pistol whipped. In the very beginning, responding officers thought the body may have belonged to 17-year-old Sheri Martin, who disappeared from her POE of Winchells Donut House on August 12, 1971. Martin’s body was eventually found by two hikers 15 miles south of Wendover on September 6; she also died from gunshot wounds.
Captain Pete ‘ND’ Haywood of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department told the public that they’re ‘looking into many leads in the killing of Leatherbury, but we have no suspects at this time.’ Strangely enough, a 20 year-old woman named Leeora Looney disappeared the same evening in August 1971 that Johanna was murdered after she was reported missing from her POE at a doughnut shop in Lakewood. According to court documents, her car and purse were also both left behind, completely untouched. Several witnesses reported seeing two men in the shop just before she disappeared that were later identified as serial killers Sherman Ramon McCrary and Carl Taylor. Three days after Looney disappeared her naked remains were found in a remote field; she had been strangled, raped, and shot in the head. It was later determined McCrary and Taylor were responsible for her death as well as Shari Martins. The McCrary family is suspected of at least 24-26 additional murders (I’ve read varying amounts) and all involved young women that were last seen alive at doughnut shops throughout Colorado, Texas, Florida, Kansas City and Utah between 1970 and 1971. In 1988, 62-year-old Sherman Ramon McCrary hung himself in his cell while serving time in prison; he would have been eligible for parole in 1997.
It wasn’t long before police identified the woman as Johanna Leatherberry. After she was found, SLC deputies thoroughly combed the marshes that bordered the Great Salt Lake for clues. Additionally, on August 22-23 two Utah National Guard helicopters helped in the search and they combed through the area where her remains were found; unfortunately, this failed to find anything of value. Detectives speculated that she was killed early in the morning after she disappeared then was transported to Goggins Drain. After arriving, her assailants dragged her body into the water, where it floated for roughly eight hours before it was discovered. Investigators found multiple tire tracks and footprints near where the remains were recovered as well. On August 26, 1971 detectives executed a search warrant to enter an undisclosed Salt Lake residence, where they confiscated a .22 caliber gun as well as a switchblade, which may have been connected with the crime. Ballistics tests were done on the weapon and comparisons were made with slugs taken from the girls remains. A total of three .22 caliber pistols as well as the knife were sent into the FBI crime lab in Washington DC; also sent in were the victim’s fingernail clippings, hair samples, her Chrysler car, and her purse as well as its contents. Captain Haywood told the media that all possible leads were being investigated and any pistol which deputies came across in their routine duties were being run through ballistics.
At first, the investigation was on a fast track and LE were certain an arrest would quickly be made, however all leads were deemed to be a ‘dead ends’ and fizzled out; the case quickly went cold. Weeks turned into months, which turned into years, then decades. Hopes for a quick arrest vanished after multiple persons of interest were questioned and cleared. In an article published on August 27, 1971, it’s reported that at one point five full time detectives were assigned to the Leatherbury case. They conducted interviews with hundreds of Johanna’s family members, friends, school/church mates, acquaintances, and coworkers, but no one could provide them with anything of value. One of Captain Haywood’s ‘hottest leads’ was a phone call from a man that wished to remain anonymous that claimed he had seen a girl abducted near the County Complex the same night Johanna was last seen. Officers asked the man to call them back and Haywood even offered to protect his identity.
Captain Haywood said that one of LE’s biggest handicaps regarding the investigation was that no one that was with the victim at The Complex the night she disappeared ever came forward to offer information. Because of this, investigators had to keep going back to find individuals to check out certain pieces of information, which took up a lot of valuable time and made their job much harder. Haywood speculated there were at least a dozen kids at The Complex the night Leatherbury disappeared (if not more), but nobody wanted to come forward and volunteer anything helpful. It also made him wonder if maybe there was some form of illegal activity going on that night that nobody wanted to get in trouble for.
According to KTSU, today the vacant lot where Leatherbury was last seen is now occupied by The Salt Lake County Clerk’s Office and an assisted living development. One odd fact about this case is that her wallet and checkbook were found on the roof of the World Motor Motel which was located at 1900 South and State Street in SLC. Eventually, two juveniles (one of them was an industrial school escapee) came forward that had items in their possession that belonged to Johanna; they were questioned, cleared, and released. The boys admitted to rifling through her Chrystler early on Saturday, August 21st and stealing her purse, which she left behind on the backseat. The two then went through the bag, throwing its contents on the roof of the motel; they threw the purse itself in some nearby bushes. LE found the belongings thanks to a breeze that blew several of Leatherbury’s papers off the roof of the motel, which alerted them to the location of the items as they combed the area for evidence. Detective Haywood said that Leatherbury’s vehicle was found a couple blocks away from The Complex parked on Westminster Avenue between State Street and 200 East near the Salt Lake County Complex in the early morning just hours after she disappeared.
A night watchman from the Morton Salt Company told LE that he saw a brown International Harvester Scout driving in the area where Johanna’s remains were recovered at around 5 AM on August 21; this is the same time that investigators suspect her remains were dumped. When detectives located the vehicle’s owner and spoke to him, he was cleared as well. Captain Haywood said of the killer, ‘there’s no doubt in the world that this is a crime committed by a local person.’ The SLC Chief of Detectives seemed to back him on his claim, saying that Leatherbury’s body was found in ‘practically an unknown spot’ and that the individual would have had to had to have known the area ‘intimately’ to find his way in and out on the three trails leading to the area. One of those three paths was useless and led directly to a muddy mess.
On September 5, 1971, Haywood announced that he saw links between Johanna’s case and the brutal murders of William Rulon Shaw and a young delivery driver named Mike Bown. Shaw was a 65 year old florist that was killed three days after Johanna on August 24, 1971 after he was shot during a robbery of his shop. Michael Preston ‘Mike’ Bown was a 23 year-old deliveryman in Provo and was shot in the back of the head on September 2, 1971 while dropping off bread at Natter’s Market on South 700 East Street. The bullet struck him in his left cheek and exited through his right eye, killing him instantly. Another employee, 33 year-old Carolyn Kingston was also shot in the head through her right temple but survived. The suspect got away with less than a hundred dollars. There was a second delivery man on the scene and I read conflicting reports that either the suspect’s gun jammed or that he ran out of ammo, but regardless as to what happened that person’s life was spared that day. According to him, the robber was between 18 to 20 years of age, had curly hair, was short and well groomed. Left behind at the crime scene was a gold Timex watch with a dark blue face and a blue and gray striped nylon band. The timepiece used Roman numerals rather than numbers and is strongly believed to have belonged to the suspect. Additionally, there were reports of a 1959 Black Chevrolet Impala four-door sedan at the scene with its engine running, much like the one seen the night Johanna disappeared. Haywood said that he saw similarities in the deaths of Bown, Leatherbury, and Shaw: they all involved a .22 caliber pistol and that the ‘mode of operation’ in the Bowe and Shaw homicides were similar.
At the time Johanna was murdered Bundy was living in Seattle at the Rogers Rooming house on 12th Avenue and was in a long term relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer. He was also an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Washington (although he was in between semesters at the time, as it was the middle of August). At the time he was a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, which was a family-owned medical supply company (he was there from June 5, 1970 to December 31, 1971). One of the first things that jumped out at me regarding Johanna being a possible Bundy victim is the fact that she was shot multiple times. None of Ted’s victims were ever shot, and aside from Carol DaRonch’s claim that he pulled out a gun during her attempted kidnapping I never heard of him using such a weapon in any capacity. The only other unconfirmed victim I wrote about that suffered from gunshot wounds is Susan Wickersham. On July 11th, 1973 at 11:30 PM, the 17-year-old dropped the family car off at the restaurant her mother was working at in Bend, Oregon then left to wait across the street for some friends to pick her up. When they never showed up, she decided to walk home instead and was never seen alive again. Wickersham’s skeletal remains were found in the woods by a man collecting firewood on January 20, 1976. Examination of her skull by the state medical examiner’s office determined she had suffered from a gunshot wound to the head. Personally, I don’t think Bundy killed Susan and it seems like her family doesn’t either (I briefly spoke with one of her SIL’s on FB and she agrees with me).
Officials in charge of Leatherbury’s murder said that most of the files related to the case were damaged by flooding at the police station years ago. Despite going cold, her case is still considered ‘active’ and officials exhumed her body in 2017; the results of this examination have not been shared with the public or even her family, which deeply upsets them. Johanna’s niece Sandy said that they ‘weren’t privy to hardly anything. We appealed for the file, and we were denied.’ … ‘She deserved more. She deserved to have whoever did this to be caught.’ … ‘We just didn’t have any follow-through. There was no follow-through. It was just put up on the shelf and left.’ … ‘I am so angry and frustrated because there was a door being slammed in our face all of the time.’ However, a spokeswoman for the Unified Police Department named Melody Gray disagreed with that statement, explaining that the case is still active and that they ‘have a full-time cold case investigator and he has actively been working this case including right now.’
A newsletter for the police society VIDOCQ dated December 15, 2015 mentions a presentation the organization put on regarding the case of Johanna Leatherbury (looking through their website I couldn’t find any additional information on her). In the article, Deputy Police Commissioner Bill Gill reported that Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Todd Grey was able to secure a sample of Leatherbury’s DNA as well as her mandible for further testing. The same article mentioned that the group was going to speak with a serial killer named ‘Robert Lee Sales,’ who was serving time at the Utah State Prison for murders similar in nature to Leatherbury’s. Incarcerated since 1973, Sells raped and murdered multiple young woman around Johanna’s age in the early 1970’s. He was convicted of the murder of JoAnn Poulsen from Corinne, UT, who was recovered from the PineView Reservoir on September 26, 1971. Oddly enough she disappeared on August 21, 1971, which is the same day that the remains of Leatherbury’s were recovered.
About her sister, Roxanne Leatherby-Brough said that Johanna ‘was a good kid. She tried hard to please other people, help us all. I don’t know. I miss her a lot.’ The remaining members of the Leatherbury family haven’t gotten much information related to Johanna’s case over the years, and unfortunately both of her parents died before seeing their daughter’s killer brought to justice: Gayle passed away at the age of 64 on November 6, 1984 and Mr. Leatherbuty died at the age of 73 on May 6, 1990. Their son Jack said he watched as the gruesome details and gnawing unknown tore his parents apart, and because of the death of their daughter they both went to their graves completely changed people. A few of Johanna’s siblings have passed away as well: her brother Paul died at the age of 55 on November 23, 1997 in Murray, UT (which is coincidentally where the Fashion Place Mall is located, which is where Carol DaRonch’s attempted abduction took place). According to his obituary, he was a past President of the Utah Arabian Horse Association and he loved his horses, fishing, and traveling. He had a great zest for life and was known to those who loved him as ‘the world’s greatest salesman.’ On July 5, 2012 Greg Leatherbury died of complications from diabetes at the age of 61. He was known to loved ones as ‘the great organizer’ because he excelled at planning events and activities, including an annual Father’s Day Open Golf Tournament. Charles Leatherbury died at the age of 73 on December 27, 2018; he was in the US Army and fought in the Vietnam War.
Because of their extreme dissatisfaction with the way law enforcement handled the investigation, the Leatherbury family recently joined forces with the Utah Cold Case Coalition to help get answers in Johanna’s case. The coalition is a Utah based organization that helps to bridge the gap between police and the families of cold case murder victims. Two of Johanna’s nieces, sisters Sandy and Cindy, said they were told that information related to their aunt’s case could not be shared because it is still an open and active investigation. Cindy Leatherbury-Grange commented that: ‘we really have felt the case was solvable, but now it’s so many years past.’… ‘We’re wondering if these people are dead, what has happened. Thirty years ago, we might have had a chance.’ The coalition’s co-founder Jason Jensen is certain Johanna’s killer is local to Salt Lake City. In a post on their FB page about the Leatherbury case, the ‘Cold Case Coalition’ commented that: ‘it’s been exactly 48 years since Johanna Leatherbury was found dead in a drainage ditch near Saltair in Salt Lake County. She had been raped, shot, and stabbed. 48 YEARS. Yet Unified P.D. won’t release any records because it’s ‘still an open case’s This is the same response we get from Unified in every case. If you haven’t solved the case in nearly half a century, can someone else have a try?’
In an article published by ABC4, Johanna’s family got an email from a Salt Lake detective in mid-February 2022 with news they’ve been waiting many, many years to receive: ‘They have identified new DNA from the crime scene and he was securing funds to send it to their lab for testing and hopefully he’ll be able to use genetic genealogy.’ Jensen commented that this new evidence could be a variety of things: ‘if it was an article of clothing or something that was handled by an investigator 30 or 40 years ago chances are great that it’s an incidental from an investigator. But if it’s something concrete like semen, then it’s going to be the bad guy.’ This technique is quickly becoming very common with law enforcement and helps to identify familial DNA, and from there authorities are able to narrow down the search in hopes of finding a possible suspect. The article said it would be months before LE got the results of the DNA analysis and considering it’s now the end of 2023, I’m leaning towards them not finding anything of value from the sample. As a side note, in early 2023 Rita Curran’s killer was found in the same manner, and it was determined that her neighbor William DeRoos killed the pretty young teacher in her bed on July 19, 1971 in Burlington, VT.
Another Bundy Blog. 