Do you know who killed Lisa Redmond in 1996? On the night of December 9, 1996, Lisa Redmond, a 36-year-old White female, left the Pizza Hut in West Valley City, Utah, for a delivery run in her 1994 teal green GMC pickup truck. It was a routine she had likely done many times, but this delivery would be her last. A short time after she departed, she was found unconscious and not breathing in the middle of a road at 3100 South 5200 West. First responders pronounced her dead at the scene, having been apparently run over by her own vehicle.
Her truck, a key piece of the unfolding mystery, was nowhere in sight. For her family, including her 8-year-old daughter Megan, it was the beginning of a long and painful wait for answers.
Investigators found Lisa's pickup truck the following day, abandoned just over a mile from where her body was discovered. The interior of the truck told a silent, violent story. There were clear signs of a struggle, and detectives recovered a knife, a palm print, and blood on a seat buckle. Blood evidence was also found underneath the truck, confirming she had been run over. Despite this evidence, the case grew cold. For years, there were few leads, and the identity of her killer remained a haunting unknown. West Valley City police periodically sought help from the public, hoping a forgotten memory might finally bring a breakthrough, while a daughter grew up with only faint memories of a mother she described as loving and generous.
Decades passed, but advances in forensic technology held the key. In 2019, a West Valley police lieutenant investigating the cold case submitted evidence for advanced DNA testing. The blood from the seat belt buckle yielded a DNA profile that was entered into the Combined DNA Index System a national database. The result was a direct hit, pointing to a man named Donald Eugene Younge Jr. Investigators also re-examined the palm print found on the knife in the truck and manually matched it to Younge. At the time of the breakthrough, Younge was already incarcerated, serving a lengthy sentence for two counts of first-degree felony aggravated sexual assault and one count of second-degree felony robbery.
In May 2024, nearly 28 years after Lisa Redmond's death, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office announced that Donald Eugene Younge Jr., then 57, had been charged with first-degree felony murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery in connection with the case. When questioned, Younge denied any involvement and could not explain how his DNA and palm print were found in the victim's truck. The charges finally offered a measure of hope for justice, promising an answer to the question of who was responsible for the violent end to a pizza delivery run on a cold December night.
