A 63 year old woman is found murdered in her Roosevelt, UT home
Fontella Galloway, a 62-year-old Caucasian female, was a retired school teacher living a quiet and independent life in Roosevelt, Utah. She had dedicated over eight years to teaching in both Roosevelt and Manila before her retirement. Neighbors last saw her gardening in her yard on the afternoon of June 14, 1969. The days that followed were unusually still at the Galloway residence. A neighbor noted that the lights in Fontella's home remained off from June 15th onward. An attempt to call her on June 17th was met with a peculiar response; the phone rang only once before it sounded as if someone had picked it up and immediately hung up.
The grim discovery was made on June 19, 1969, by a 14-year-old boy named Lynn Casto, who had come to mow her lawn. Glancing through a window, he saw Fontella slumped over on her bed and immediately ran to a neighbor's house to alert the authorities. When police arrived, they found a disturbing scene. Fontella was partially nude, with her hands bound behind her to the headboard of her bed. An open window with the screen found on the ground outside suggested a possible point of entry for her attacker.
An autopsy revealed the brutal nature of her death. Fontella had been tortured and sexually assaulted. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation, resulting from the weight of her upper body slumping forward due to the way she was tied, which restricted her breathing. Evidence of a struggle was present, including bruising and a broken fingernail. The medical examiner concluded that she had been deceased for more than 24 hours before her body was found.
In the investigation that followed, a prime suspect emerged. An unidentified man who worked for a local landscaping business abruptly called his boss on the morning of June 16, 1969, to request a week of vacation. He then left his job and never returned. When investigators attempted to interview this man, they were confronted by his daughter, who was reportedly upset by their interest in her father in connection with the murder. Despite this lead, no arrests were ever made in the case. Over the years, the investigation has been revisited, with evidence being submitted to the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project in 2000 to be compared with other unsolved murders. However, the murder of Fontella Galloway remains unsolved to this day.
