A young mother dies on her way home from work On a cold Tuesday night in Kearns, Utah, Dee Dee Kaye Wach pulled up to her parents' house on Thunderbird Way after her evening shift and stepped from her car toward the curb. She was a 19-year-old White woman. Within moments, a shotgun blast struck her in the chest. A neighbor heard the shots and someone cry out “Oh my God,” and a trail of blood led from the curb toward the front door as her parents called for help.
Deputies arrived to find she had been ambushed outside the home; she was rushed to LDS Hospital and died shortly afterward from the wound. Investigators fixed the time near 10:45–10:55 p.m. on December 13, 1988, as she returned from work.
In the weeks that followed, detectives described the killing as a targeted attack carried out at the edge of the driveway. Public records and contemporary reporting placed the scene at 3651 W. Thunderbird Way and sheriff's officials emphasized that no immediate arrest appeared likely despite intensive efforts to develop leads. The Utah Department of Public Safety later summarized the case: Wach had been living with her parents, came home from work around 10:45 p.m., and was shot outside—an unsolved homicide that remains open to tips.
Reporters also traced the contours of her young life in the days before the shooting. She had been working as a plainclothes security officer at a JCPenney in Bountiful and was talking about leaving Utah for a fresh start in Phoenix with a childhood friend she'd begun dating that fall. Family members said she was trying to put a tumultuous few years behind her; those plans ended at the curb in front of her parents' house.
As for suspects, early coverage noted that deputies were “still looking for suspects” and had made no arrests in the immediate aftermath. In a subsequent January 1989 court proceeding related to custody issues following her death, a detective testified that her estranged husband, Paul Wach, remained an active suspect in the murder investigation at that time; prosecutors present in court declined to elaborate, and no charges were filed. Decades later, Utah's state cold-case listing still classifies the case as an unsolved homicide and asks anyone with information to contact the Unified Police Department.
