OGDEN — An Idaho inmate will likely be extradited soon to face charges for the 1983 sexual assault and beating death of an 11-year-old Ogden girl, police said Sunday.
An arrest warrant for first-degree aggravated murder and rape was issued Friday for Gregory L. Seamons, 44, in the slaying of Rebecca Lemberger.
“We are really convinced that he’s the one involved (in the homicide),” Ogden Police Lt. Scott Conley said Sunday, adding he is optimistic Seamons will be returned to Weber County quickly to face charges.
Rebecca was last seen at 8 a.m. March 2, 1983, when she left home to walk to Edison Elementary School at 935 E. 1050 North. She never made it to school.
The next day, Rebecca’s body was found in a shed in a field west of 729 N. Mountain Road in Ogden.
She had been sexually assaulted and died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.
The homicide remained unsolved until July 2011, when Ogden Police Detective Richard Childress received a letter indicating that a match had been made by the National DNA Index System between DNA evidence from the crime scene and Seamons, an inmate at the Idaho Correctional Institution south of Boise.
Childress researched Seamons and his personal identifying information through Ogden police databases, which placed him in Ogden and living in Rebecca’s neighborhood at the time of the crime.
Police will also investigate whether Seamons may be a suspect in other local unsolved crimes, Conley said.
Seamons is currently serving a sentence of four to 11 years for a 2007 second-degree kidnapping conviction in Ada County, Idaho.
He is scheduled to be released from prison in 2017.
The ability of police to use DNA evidence to link Seamons to a crime that occurred more than 29 years ago is rewarding, said Conley.
“It shows how technology has advanced,” he said.
Ogden police have solved at least two other cold case crimes in the last year through DNA.
Sergio Arturo Hernandez, 43, was sentenced in April to five years to life for a Jan. 23, 1997, early morning rape behind Mount Ogden Middle School.
He was charged in September 2011 after DNA recovered from the crime scene and preserved was matched by the state crime lab with DNA recorded in a national database.
Hernandez, formerly of Ogden, was held at the time in the Arkansas State Prison for a similar attack on a woman in that state in 2009.
In November 2011, Deon Lucero, 39, was sentenced to 15 years to life in Utah State Prison for an Aug. 29, 1996, rape and robbery in Newgate Mall.
A DNA match by the state crime lab found him in Mississippi State Prison on sexual battery charges.
He’ll finish his time there by 2016, then be transported to Utah.
KBOI interview with Gregory Seamons in 2006
Comments