On the evening of August 27, 1981, Buddy Charles Conti, a 45-year-old White/Caucasian male, was nearing the end of his workday at the Kearns Drug Store, which he co-owned. As he and a female employee, Signa Atwood, prepared to close the pharmacy located at 4188 W. 5415 South in Kearns, Utah, a masked gunman entered the establishment at approximately 9 p.m.
The assailant fired a warning shot and demanded both cash and pharmaceuticals.
After Conti and Atwood complied with the robber's demands, he forced them out of the store at gunpoint, ordering them to run towards a nearby field. While Atwood continued to flee, Conti stopped and confronted the gunman. In that moment, the armed man fatally shot him.
Initial investigations into the homicide quickly identified two suspects: Richard David Gill, who was believed to be the shooter, and Clyde Leslie Dudley, the alleged getaway driver. Dudley later admitted to the police that he and Gill had been observing the drug store for several days with the intent to rob it. However, the path to justice took a series of unfortunate turns. In December 1983, Dudley died by suicide. Gill was later arrested in Missouri for an unrelated armed robbery, but due to investigative oversights, he was never questioned about or charged with Conti's murder.
For more than three decades, the case remained unresolved, a cold case that fell through the cracks of the justice system. It wasn't until 2015 that detectives with the Unified Police Department's Major Investigations Unit re-examined the files and discovered the mistakes that had stalled the original investigation. By this time, Richard David Gill had passed away from cancer on June 1, 2013, without ever being held accountable for the pharmacist's death. The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office reviewed the revived case and determined there would have been probable cause to charge both Gill and Dudley with criminal homicide and aggravated robbery. With both suspects deceased, the case was officially closed. In a public acknowledgment of the investigation's shortcomings, Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder offered an apology to Conti's family and the surviving employee for the failure to pursue justice in a responsible and timely manner.
