Ann Marie Hammer was born on February 4, 1927 to Maxwell Algernon and Agnes Marie (nee Sutton) Hammer in Aberdeen, SD. She had an older sister named Cecelia Mae (Boyce) and a brother named Lowden William, who was born in December 1921 and sadly only lived to the age of three. Maxwell was born on April 7, 1887 in Hubbard, Iowa, and Agnes was born on August 31, 1890 in Illinois. I wasn’t able to find out very much about Ann’s background, and wasn’t even able to find the name of the high school she graduated from. According to Ancestry.com, the Hammer family lived in Aberdeen, SD in 1930 and in 1935 they moved to Rural, SD. Ann’s father was a WWII vet and was the owner and operator of the Hammer Realtor Company, and president of the Co-operative Building and Sales Company. Sadly he shot himself in the chest in November 1940 with a .410 shotgun, and according to his obituary he had been in poor health for several months prior to his death and had recently learned he had malignant cancer. In late 1940 Mrs. Hammer took her two daughters and moved to Maricopa, AZ.

Ann was married twice: she wed her first husband Clarence George Sutherland in Juárez, Mexico, and her second Leslie Harrison ‘Woody’ Woodward on November 17, 1953 in Gallup, NM (she was his third wife). Sutherland was born in June 1912 in Peoria, Illinois and died in June 1996 in San Diego. ‘Woody’ was born on March 19, 1921 in New York, and the couple had four children together: Leslie Ann, Maxwell Joseph, Suzan Edna, and Guy Thomas.

In the early morning hours between 1:40 and 2:30 AM on March 2, 1973 Woodward was killed in the bar she worked at and owned with her husband. After his wife failed to return home Leslie went into the establishment between 6:30 and 6:45 AM to look for her, and stumbled upon a gruesome sight: Ann, deceased. She was half-dressed with her shirt completely unbuttoned and bra exposed, and she had no pants on and was lying on the floor in between two pool tables, with the right leg of her white striped slacks still tied around her neck. Next to her discarded pants were eight dimes and one tissue, and Moab Detective Jeremy Drexler said there were tissues in every one of Ann’s pockets, except for the left pocket. The mother of four had been beaten, raped and strangled. Woody immediately called his friend Heck Bowman, who was the Grand County Sheriff even though the bar was outside his jurisdiction. Typically the case would have fallen into the lap of the Moab PD instead of the sheriff’s, and that ended up playing a large role in how the investigation was handled and why it was mishandled. Detective Drexler commented that based on the notes he read in Woodward’s case file, there seemed to be some bad blood between the two policing agencies, and they didn’t really get along and couldn’t really seem to work together.

In the early morning hours between 1:40 and 2:30 AM on March 2, 1973 Woodward was killed in the bar she worked at and owned with her husband. After his wife failed to return home Leslie went into the establishment between 6:30 and 6:45 AM to look for her, and stumbled upon a gruesome sight: Ann, deceased. She was half-dressed with her shirt completely unbuttoned and bra exposed; she had no pants on and was lying on the floor in between two pool tables, with the right leg of her white striped slacks still tied around her neck. Next to her discarded pants were eight dimes and a single Klenex, and Detective Drexler said there were tissues in every one of Ann’s pockets except for the left one. The mother of four had been beaten, raped and strangled. Woody immediately called his friend Heck Bowman, who was the Grand County Sheriff even though the bar was outside his jurisdiction. Typically the case would have fallen into the lap of the Moab PD instead of the sheriff’s, and this ended up playing a large role in how the investigation was handled (and why it was mishandled). Detective Drexler commented that based on the notes he read in Woodward’s case file, there seemed to be some bad blood between the two policing agencies, and they didn’t really get along or work together.

Found at the scene were two sets of bar glasses as well as some cigarette butts which helped point investigators to where Ann and her killer were most likely sitting. According to Detective Drexler, ‘they wanted to identify that person who sat next to Ann in the worst way. You can see from the original case notes that they were really hoping that fingerprints on the bar glasses would identify him.’ But, sadly that never worked out, and the glassware was sent to the FBI but came back inconclusive.

In recent years Moab police admitted that they didn’t handle the crime scene as well as they should have, and a lot of important evidence was mishandled and lost. While the (now retired) Police Chief Melvin Dalton was meticulous in his investigation, the method in which things were done 51 years ago muddied the waters, and while ‘very neatly put together and ready for our taking’ there was no records management system in place at the time. The two boxes of information related to Woodward’s murder were eventually removed from the sheriff’s office and placed in a building off campus and was eventually forgotten about. Once Drexler discovered the evidence that was lost so many years before things broke wide open: ‘it was 50 years and six months later, but we got it and I knew we had it. 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.’

The evidence related to Woodward’s murder sat collecting dust in the archives of the Grand County Sheriff’s Department until September 14, 2023, when Detective Drexler found them after taking over the investigation. According to him, ‘it was actually on a shelf back next to some Geiger counters. So the evidence was not labeled as evidence, I guess you could say. It’s just a beat-up cardboard box with dust on it.’ … ‘It was truly amazing. We found these boxes in a store room, and they were absolutely pristine. We opened one box and saw that it was Ann’s clothing. I knew right then: we’re going to get him.’ Two months later DNA related to the case was sent to the Utah State Crime Lab for analysis. In May 2024, that genetic evidence was returned and pointed to Chudomelka. Drexler said: ‘He could explain away having his DNA on the outside of her clothes, but not the inside of her pants. No way.’

Upon taking over the case, Detective Drexler initially thought Ted Bundy was his guy using the logic that he was known to be in the general area at the time Ann was killed… but this isn’t really the case, and a quick glance at the ‘1992 TB MultiAgency Investigative Team Report’ would have told him that Ted was nowhere near Utah at that time. In March 1973 Bundy worked for the King County Program Planning and he was still in a long term relationship with Liz Kloepfer (although by this time he was seeing multiple other women and wasn’t being entirely faithful to her). He wouldn’t go on to commit his first (proven) murder until the beginning of 1974, and wasn’t even active in the state until October 2 when he killed Nancy Wilcox.

In recent years former Moab Police Chief Melvin Dalton sat down with The Deseret Morning News and shared that when he arrived at the scene of the crime it was chaotic and almost like a party: ‘people were going in and out like they were going to church.’ The former police chief also said that because the sheriff’s had taken over the investigation the Moab PD didn’t have access to very much evidence, and that the case was not handled well by them despite his admission that he and his officers weren’t trained to handle a murder: ‘I wasn’t really trained in homicide, I always felt if we had a really good trained detective, we’d have been in a lot better shape.’

Shortly after the murder took place in March 1973, the Deseret News newspaper reported that Sheriff Bowman had a good lead in the case, but nothing ever came of it. Chief Dalton recalled administering polygraph tests and even came up with a few strong potential suspects, however they both got lawyers and stopped talking. The investigation quickly went cold but was reopened in October 2006 after Ann’s daughter Suzan (who was 16 when her mom was killed) sent a letter to (now retired) Moab Police Chief Mike Navarre asking him for help. The homicide remained unsolved until the summer of 2024 when forensic experts were able to determine that a man named Douglas Keith Chudomelka killed the 46 year old wife and mother.

Detective Drexler speculated that Ann’s killer was angry at her for beating him at poker, but clarified that he wasn’t 100% sure and it could also have been a crime of opportunity versus rage. He said that he does know without a doubt that night that the two played cards and Chudomelka ‘drank beer and smoked Camel cigarettes.’ Using modern scientific techniques, he was able to separate the 29 pieces of evidence (which included ashtrays, fingernails, hair, fingerprints and salt shakers) that were part of the original investigation and break them down into about 80, helping the department analyze the components more thoroughly.

Chudomelka worked at the Rio Algom Mine in the Moab area during the early to middle 1970’s and rented a trailer in the Walnut Lane Mobile Home Park for $100 a month. He was known to frequent Woody’s Tavern when he was done with work for the day and had a long paper trail of documented violence. After he killed Woodward, he went into the establishments cash register and helped himself to $75; he also took the $50 out of her left pants pocket that she won from him playing poker (some sources say it was an undetermined amount of money), and two days later he paid his rent with five $20 bills. Detective Drexler said he has no idea if he gave the landlord the stolen money but it’s definitely a possibility.

The current Moab Police Chief Lex Bell said: ‘that pair of pants is what led us to her killer,’ and Detective Drexler said that in addition to the inside of the slacks Ann was wearing, all the buttons on her shirt had Chudomelka’s DNA on them as well. Forensic testing was also done on items found at the bar as well, which confirmed his presence at the establishment on the night Woodward was murdered.

According to Moab reporter Emily Arnsten, the area was much more conservative in 1973, and the Mormon Church had a much greater influence on the community than it does today. But at the same time, there was also a large, blue-collar mining community that contained a large amount of transient workers that may not have been the most pious of people, and Woody’s was the perfect stomping grounds for these individuals. The establishment was perhaps a bit more wild than it is today as well, as they used to employ the likes of go-go dancers and there was lots of gambling that took place on the premises.

According to Ann’s granddaughter Annie Dalton, Woodward was unlike most of the other more ‘traditional’ women in the area: firstly, she was Catholic, not Mormon, and wasn’t originally from the area. She also ran a bar in a conservative area where a lot of people maybe didn’t drink and was a pretty avid card player. Dalton and Woodward family friend Tim Buckingham wonder if her grandmother’s worldly lifestyle had anything to do with the Moab police’s lack of urgency regarding this murder: ‘’I think that when something that horrific happens in a town like this, to convince yourself that it could never happen to you, to feel safe in that, you do what you can to distance yourself from the person that it happened to. That’s most of what I got, the sense of people who were trying to come up with stories that made sense.’ About her grandmother’s murder, Annie said: ‘it was this thing that my mom carried that was grief and loss, and she ended up passing away from COPD. They say that you carry grief in your lungs, and I’ve always felt like it was just grief that she never was able to process. So they were all carrying this burden in different ways and it never got resolved. It’s a tragedy that just keeps being tragic over and over.’

When questioned Chudomelka told investigators that he had not been in Woody’s on the night of the murder, but had instead spent the evening drinking at The Westerner Grill. His girlfriend, Joyce, provided him with an alibi, and told investigating officers that he came home at about 2 AM, however the bartender at The Westerner Grill told police that he was not in at all the night of March 1. Law enforcement asked Chudomelka if he was willing to take a polygraph test, to which he agreed, but in the end they were unable to administer it because when he arrived at the station he was drunk. Eventually, he stopped talking to police and asked for a lawyer and no charges ever stuck. Before he left the area Doug would later be convicted of cattle rustling (which is ‘the act of stealing livestock’) in San Juan County and served out a term of probation. Detective Drexler said he was found guilty of additional crimes in other states, including an atrocity involving a 10-year-old child in Alabama. In 1978, Chudomelka returned to Nebraska, where he managed to (mostly) fly under the radar until his death.

Chudomelka was always considered to be a prime suspect in Woodward’s murder and was one of 25-30 suspects, a number that included acquaintances, bar patrons, and members of the Moab community. Anyone that had been in the tavern on the night of the homicide or was known to be a regular at the establishment was considered a suspect… but he had more going against him than the others: the mid-1960’s Ford sedan that he owned matched the description of the car witnesses reportedly saw parked next to Woodward’s truck late in the evening on March 1, 1973. According to Detective Drexler: ‘they were looking at Doug, they just couldn’t get him. He easily could have killed her and made it home by 2 AM, but the bartender at the Westerner told police Chudomelka was not in at all the night of March 1.’ … ‘They wanted to solve it. All the evidence was there, but they just didn’t have the technology at the time to solve this case beyond a doubt.’

Douglas Keith was born to Paul and Magdalena (nee Arps) Chudomelka in rural Dodge, NE on February 7, 1937. On February 9, 1954 he joined the US Marine Corps and he was married three times: he wed Thelma Mae Scheulz on May 16, 1958 in San Diego, California and the couple had four children together. After they parted ways he met Ernestine Winnie Jolly, and the two were wed on December 3, 1976 in Galveston, TX; I don’t know any details about their divorce but he married Vickie Flowers for a third time at some point before his death. Chudomelka left the military on December 13, 1961 with the rank of sergeant after serving in Korea, then went on to get his CDL and worked as a long haul trucker for several companies across the United States. According to his obituary, at some point after Ann’s murder he moved to Fremont, Nebraska, where he became a lifetime member of the VFW Post 7419 in Nickerson. According to his obituary he had no kids (this is a complete lie) and only left behind siblings (five sisters and two brothers) and three ‘special friends…’ He died on October 18, 2002.

Just a few days after Ann’s murder on March 6, Chief Dalton received permission to pull hairs from the suspects body, and took samples from his belly button, chest, pubic area and head; cigarette butts (which were Camels, like the ones found at the scene of the crime) were also recovered from an ashtray in his residence to see if a saliva sample could be pulled. After the evidence was meticulously collected and preserved it was sent to the FBI, however in 1973 the Bureau was not yet equipped to test hair or saliva, and according to Drexler, ‘this case hinged on the hair Dalton pulled in 1973. 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.’ The box of evidence was returned (unopened) to the Sheriff’s department along with a letter that (essentially) read: ‘this is a great idea, but we don’t have the technology to do that.’

Douglas Keith Chudomelka was born to Paul and Magdalena (nee Arps) Chudomelka in rural Dodge, NE on February 7, 1937. On February 9, 1954 he joined the US Marine Corps and he was married three times: he wed Thelma Mae Scheulz on May 16, 1958 in San Diego, California and the couple had four children together. After they parted ways he met Ernestine Winnie Jolly, and the two were wed on December 3, 1976 in Galveston, TX; I don’t know any details about their divorce but he married Vickie Flowers for a third time at some point before his death. Chudomelka left the military on December 13, 1961 with the rank of sergeant after serving in Korea, then went on to get his CDL and worked as a long haul trucker for several companies across the United States. According to his obituary, at some point after Ann’s murder he moved to Fremont, Nebraska, where he became a lifetime member of the VFW Post 7419 in Nickerson. According to his obituary he had no kids and only left behind siblings (five sisters and two brothers) and three ‘special friends…’ He died on October 18, 2002.

After Ann died Leslie went on to remarry Jane Jaramillo on November 17, 1985, in Las Vegas (I also saw the date listed as November 11, 1984); the two stayed together until his death on Christmas day in 2015 at the age of 84 in Newton, Kansas. According to his obit, Woody served in the US Navy during WWII, where he earned 13 battle stars. He was an entrepreneur and ran several businesses across Moab, including laundromats, gas stations, and Woody’s Tavern, and in his spare time he enjoyed hunting, fishing and exploring the country while on vacation.

Ann’s sister Cecelia passed away on August 12, 2004. As of November 2024 three of her four children have passed away and the only one remaining is her older daughter Leslie Ann (Estes). According to Estes, ‘there’s no closure for me. It’s still going to go on. She’s still going to be gone tomorrow, and my grandkid, my children have never seen her and don’t ever know what a wonderful grandmother she would have been.’ Max Woodward died in early November 1999 at the age of 43, and Ann’s daughter Suzan passed away on June 1, 2019. According to her obituary, she ‘loved sewing, cross-stitching, driving across the country on adventures, playing with her grandchildren, talking to her daughters and friends, laughing and joking with Pug, going to the mountains, watching sunsets, making pots, and staying in little old hotels with character.’ Guy ‘Bugsy’ Woodward died at the age of fifty on March 13, 2009, and according to his obituary in The Times-Independent, he was a sweet, funny, and loving brother, dad, son, uncle and friend that loved the outdoors, music, yard work, fishing, hunting, making jewelry, heckling his sisters, and being a part of Narcotics Anonymous. His three daughters were the jewels in his crown and were the ‘best accomplishments of his life.’

According to Detective Drexler, ‘if he was alive today, I would be asking Grand County District Attorney Stephen Stocks for an arrest warrant for Douglas K. Chudomelka for the crime of first-degree murder for his actions on March 2, 1973.’ Stacks seemed to be in agreement with Drexlers statement, and said, ‘had he not passed, we would have filed criminal information against him. I hope today brings some closure to the family. I truly believe if this case would have been presented to the jury, he would have been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt for the murder of Ann Woodward.’ Leslie Ann said that her father was the first suspect that LE investigated, and the locals always seemed to be whispering that he was the one responsible for her death; Estes hopes that now these rumors can finally be put to rest. About her father, Leslie Ann said ‘he was larger than life, and it just, it broke our, it broke his heart, but it broke our family, like the splinter never was healed. It never really did even begin to heal.’

Chief Bell said that (as of June 2024) his department was still testing additional items found at Woody’s Tavern, and Detective Drexler commented that both the Moab PD and the Grand County Sheriff’s are ready to start digging into other cold cases. 

Works Cited:
‘Leslie “Woody” Woodward passed away Dec. 25.’ Published on December 28, 2005 in The Times-Independent. Taken on October 28, 2024 from https://www.moabtimes.com/articles/leslie-woody-woodward-passed-away-dec-25/
McMurdo, Doug. “Two raves and a Rant.” Published on July 3, 2024 in The Times-Independent. Taken October 28, 2024 from https://www.moabtimes.com/articles/two-raves-and-a-rant/
McMurdo, Doug. “MPD solves 51-year-old cold case murder.” Published on July 10, 2024 in The Times-Independent. Taken October 28, 2024 from https://www.moabtimes.com/articles/mpd-solves-51-year-old-cold-case-murder/