On what should have been a joyous celebration of his sixth birthday, June 22, 1983, a young Caucasian male named Troy Ward was instead met with a horrifying fate in Salt Lake City, Utah. That afternoon, Troy was waiting on a corner near his home for his mother to return with ice cream and cake for his party. It was then that a man, later identified as Arthur Gary Bishop, approached and abducted the boy.
Bishop, who was using the alias Roger Downs, lured Troy to his bungalow with the
promise of playing a game. Once there, the innocent birthday celebration turned into a nightmare. In the basement of the home, Bishop handcuffed and tied the young boy between two pillars. When Troy began to cry, Bishop brutally struck him with a rubber mallet until he fell silent and then proceeded to sexually assault him before ultimately drowning him in a bathtub.
For a time, the disappearance of Troy Ward, like that of other young boys in the area, remained a mystery that gripped the community with fear. However, a breakthrough in the case came the following month. Investigators realized that a man named "Roger Downs" had been questioned in connection with the disappearances of five boys, including Troy, and that he lived in close proximity to four of the victims and knew the parents of the fifth. This man was Arthur Gary Bishop.
Upon being brought in for questioning in July 1983, Bishop confessed to the abduction and murder of Troy Ward and four other young boys: Alonzo Daniels, Kim Peterson, Danny Davis, and Graeme Cunningham. He voluntarily led the police to the burial sites of his victims. Bishop's trial commenced in February 1984, where he was found guilty of five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of aggravated kidnapping, receiving a death sentence. He was executed by lethal injection on June 10, 1988.
