On Oct. 19, 1973, The Daily Utah Chronicle released a missing person report for Douglas Brick, a University of Utah student, who went missing from his dorm room seven days prior.
Brick, an undergraduate from Pocatello, Idaho, was 23 when he disappeared. Some speculated that Brick was dealing with mental health struggles at the time of his disappearance.
This became the university’s first and only known cold case.
Reopening a dead end
In 2022, university police hired crime data analyst Nikol Mitchell. She discovered this case and how it had been lost for almost 20 years. University Police Major Heather Sturzenegger, who at the time was the investigations lieutenant for the U, reopened the case.
“The problem was that we didn’t have any police records from 1973. We couldn’t find them in the archives,” Sturzenegger said.
She explained that it was a “no-brainer” for her to reopen the case.
“We’re going to open it, look at everything that we can and try to solve it,” she said.
Detective Jon Dial and Sturzenegger began the investigation with newspaper clippings from the Chronicle and other local papers. One article said police joined the Salt Lake County Search and Rescue to search in the mountains behind the university, but they didn’t have any luck.
“Ultimately we were able to find that Douglas had a living sister,” Sturzenegger said. “I sent detective Dial to talk to her and try to get an idea of what happened in 1973 and she was able to provide quite a bit of information.”
In talking to Brick’s sister, Dial and Sturzenegger were able to get leads from her mother’s journal entries. The two also collected a DNA swab from the sister to see if it matched any unidentified bodies in a national database. They also spoke with an old girlfriend of Brick’s.
Sturzenegger explained that the university didn’t have any of Brick’s records other than his transcripts. He lived in the old Austin Hall dorms, which have since been demolished.
These pieces of evidence didn’t lead to any conclusions. University police left the case open for the next several months, feeling like they had reached a dead end.
Everything changed with a single doctor’s appointment.
A new lead
In December of 2022, Sturzenegger went to a doctor’s appointment with her daughter. Sturzenegger and Dr. Steven Warren, a U alum, talked about the work she was doing for the university at the time.
“[Warren] said, ‘Well that’s so interesting. My roommate went missing in 1973,'” Sturzenegger recounted. “It was a huge break, because not only was he the one that reported him missing, but he was the one that found his car here on campus, and also went on the search for Douglas.”
In October of 2024, about six miles out from the mountains behind the university, a couple of local hunters came across a piece of a human skull. They contacted the Salt Lake County police.
About a week after this discovery, the university police joined the search. There were no further findings.
The skull was sent to the medical examiner’s office, and the police worked to get permission to send it to an outsourcing lab to look at the skull’s DNA.
“We got the results from that DNA test, and the DNA that they were able to extract from the skull and the DNA from Brick’s sister have a 99.9% probability that they have the same mother,” Sturzenegger said. “We found him and I was surprised, shocked, and flabbergasted.”
The investigation continues once again
Dial and Sturzenegger flew out to California to notify Brick’s family of their findings.
“We thank the hunter who found him six months ago and reported it immediately, Detective Jon Dial and Major Heather Sturzenegger, search and rescue volunteers and all the individuals and agencies that were involved in this case,” Brick’s family told the university. “We are requesting privacy during this time of transition.”
The university police plans to reopen the investigation to find the cause of Brick’s disappearance and death.
