Barbara was very creative.
She was always very theatrical.
I always thought she was a genius
because everything came so easy to her.
[Narrator] Is found brutally murdered
in a mountain canyon. [suspenseful music]
[gunfire blasting]
We could see five or six gunshot wounds.
There was some speculation
that she had been sexually assaulted.
[Narrator] A clue left by the victim
leads to surprising suspects.
He finds this note addressed to all the Mormon roommates
that she was leaving to go be with her people.
Just how bad was this relationship
with her roommates,
and what could it cause anyone to do?
[Narrator] And a series of bizarre twists.
He's telling us that
bullet holes were in a triangular pattern,
and that that's a sign of a possible Satan killing.
Somebody took her up there into the woods.
This was potentially a sacrifice.
[Narrator] Until the evidence reveals a killer
no one saw coming.
There was DNA from the soil that was underneath her body.
It was like finding a needle in a haystack,
a big haystack.
He just didn't seem like somebody
who would kill somebody.
It was just the biggest shock you could fathom.
[dramatic music]
[bright music]
[Narrator] Provo, Utah, a small college town
in a picture-perfect mountain setting.
It sits in a county south of Salt Lake.
It's where the Brigham Young University campus is at.
It's a very safe community.
During the 1970s, Provo was definitely
a place that was very low on crime,
and you didn't have to worry
about locking your doors at night.
[Narrator] That innocence is lost
on a cold March afternoon in 1974,
when a grisly discovery in a nearby canyon
sends shockwaves through the community.
On March 11, 1974,
the Salt Lake County Sheriff's office
received a telephone call from a power company worker
who had started walking up from the power plant,
[dramatic music]
and as he was cutting through some brush,
he came across a white female
with gunshot wounds to her back.
The crime scene is essentially
a couple of miles up what we call
Big Cottonwood Canyon.
[Narrator] Investigators race to the canyon
where the utility worker leads them to the body.
We could see five or six gunshot wounds.
All of them looked to be in her back or in her arm.
The shot placements looked like execution type shots,
and it looked like she had been there
for a few hours at least.
With the way that her body was positioned,
we felt like sexual assault was part of this crime scene.
Her arms were tucked up underneath her.
That told us that she was in pain.
That she was fearful of what was happening to her.
We're looking for things like drag marks,
but the ground around the body was not disturbed.
It looks like where she was is where she was killed.
[Narrator] Detectives are stuck buy an unusual detail.
Her clothes were folded neatly
and piled towards the top of her head.
We suspected that the victim
was probably trying to buy some time.
As she was being told to undress,
she was stacking her clothes in this neat pile.
[Narrator] More evidence is revealed
when they turn the victim over.
We found some possibly
38 caliber bullets that were recovered
after they had gone through the victim's body.
We also picked up some soil
and logged it into our evidence room.
Detectives back in the '70s,
the didn't have the DNA that we have
in today's crime scene investigations.
They focused on all kinds of trace evidence
like the soil, fibers, hairs,
may link the suspect to that scene.
[suspenseful music]
[Narrator] While the body is taken to the morgue,
detectives interview their only witness.
The only thing we really knew at this point
was a utility worker had found this body,
and we were able to clear him fairly quickly.
But we didn't know who the victim was.
We didn't have any other real suspects
to go with at that point.
We got a hold of the local media.
Let them know that we had a white female Jane Doe
that we were trying to identify.
Later that night,
we received a telephone call
from the Brigham Young University Police Department
that they had received a missing person report
of a white female earlier that day.
The missing person in Provo
matched the description of our Jane Doe.
[Narrator] The missing person
is 22-year-old student,
Barbara Jean Rocky,
but police need a formal identification
to be sure she's also their murder victim.
[Todd] We made a phone call down to a couple of the guys
that were hanging out with Barbara.
Gerry Hicker is the one that filed
the missing person's report.
Gerry is also a student at BYU,
and he was a friend of Barbara's
and some of her roommates.
Edward Fisher and Gerry Hicker went to the morgue
to do an identification on our Jane Doe.
[Narrator] Edward and Gerry confirm
the murdered woman is Barbara Rocky.
Police now face the difficult task
of informing her family.
At the time of Barbara's murder,
my parents were living in California.
My mom found out first from the police,
and was crying, and from then on,
nothing was the same.
It was just
the biggest shock you could fathom.
[somber music]
It's like what you knew of the world has just imploded.
[somber music]
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] Born in 1952,
Barbara had an idyllic childhood
growing up in Menlo Park, California.
Barbara was very creative.
She was always very theatrical.
I always thought she was a genius
because languages and music
came so easy to her.
Barbara was always rooting for the underdog.
If somebody needed help,
she would open doors for them.
I mean, always doing something very sweet.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] When the time came to go to college,
Barbara's choice reflected a growing spiritual interest.
Barbara was always searching for a religion.
Barbara was interested in the Mormon religion.
My parents were very happy
for her to go to Brigham Young
because they felt that she would
get the safe group of friends
and the good education
and religion that she required.
When Barbara went off to college,
she seemed up and happy, and
like things were going well.
[Narrator] Investigators ask Barbara's loved ones
if they can think of anyone who might be responsible.
Since she was away at college and out of our supervision,
we had no idea
what she was doing.
We just didn't know what kind of friends she was making.
In speaking with the family,
they just had no idea on who could have done this to her.
[Narrator] With the family unable to provide leads,
detectives hope her college friends
might be able to point them
in the right direction.
Ed Fisher was dating one of Barbara's roommates.
When asked if he had any idea
who would have done this to Barbara,
he just had no idea.
He felt Gerry Hicker might have
more information about Barbara than he would.
Gerry Hicker is also a student at BYU,
and Barbara seemed to spend lots of time with him.
Gerry described that he was just devastated
that this had happened to Barbara.
He knew Barbara very well.
[Narrator] Police ask Gerry what led him
to file a missing person's report
just hours before Barbara was found dead?
He said that he had gone skiing the day before,
used Barbara's car to take the skis back,
and then he met up with Barbara on March 11th
at about 10 o'clock in the morning
and gave the car keys back with plans
to meet up later on to go grocery shopping.
After leaving Barbara,
Gerry spoke with one of Barbara's roommates,
and then he went to study at the library.
[dramatic music]
Later that day Gerry and Barbara
had plans to grab some food
but she didn't show up.
As Gerry left the BYU campus,
he walked past Barbara's house
and he didn't see Barbara's car,
so he continued towards his home.
And as he was passing the Park Plaza Apartments,
and sees Barbara's car sitting in the parking lot,
which was someplace that Barbara
would have never parked her car.
He said that was kind of odd
why it would've been parked
where it's not normally parked.
Inside the car he finds
this note that was left by Barbara.
It was addressed to all the roommates.
That basically said that she had found her people.
That she was leaving to go be with her people.
I think that he looked at it as a suicide note,
and so he took the note over to the roommates,
and that raised enough suspicion
to report her as a missing person.
[Narrator] In order to clear Gerry
as a person of interest,
detectives drill deeper into his timeline.
Gerry gave his timeline up until that evening,
and essentially once he found that letter,
he came and talked to us.
Gerry reported her missing.
He found the note.
He was cooperating with detectives,
so he really wasn't somebody
that fit as a suspect.
[Narrator] When detectives ask Gerry
about any conflicts Barbara may have had,
he mentions one unexpected source.
Gerry tells investigators that
the roommates and Barbara kind of have
an off-again on-again relationship.
Barbara Jean Rocky lived with seven other women
from Mormon families.
Barbara sometimes liked to do things for shock value,
and this is not a place people go to
to shock others.
There was a little bit of intimidation
between Barbara and some of the girls.
Gerry said things had gotten so bad,
that he had tried to find Barbara
another place to live.
[Narrator] Was it possible one of Barbara's roommates
could be the culprit behind her death?
Just how bad was this relationship
that Barbara Jean Rocky had with her roommates,
and what could it cause anyone to do?
[foreboding music]
[Narrator] Coming up
detectives uncover dark secrets.
The majority of the roommates
were very religious.
He had a relationship with Barbara Jean
and had been dating one of her roommates.
A love triangle could easily turn deadly
when there's jealousy involved.
He had pulled a dagger on her
and said that he was going to stab her.
[Narrator] And links to a terrifying killer.
She described him as a great warlock
and maybe even a devil worshiper.
There's women all over the American West
that are going missing and being discovered dead.
This guy turns out to be probably the most famous
notorious serial killer of all time.
[Narrator] Until the evidence reveals the horrific truth.
He was not who we suspected,
and so to learn that he was responsible
for killing her was very surprising.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] After 22-year-old college student Barbara Rocky
is found shot dead, police have discovered
she had clashed with her roommates
and bring them in separately for questioning.
The roommates had only known her since January,
when Barbara moved into the house, and going to
a predominantly Mormon school,
Barbara really didn't fit that mold.
She was from California,
and she was more of a free spirit.
She was somebody who was very opinionated
and was not a conformist.
Barbara Jean Rocky's roommates
say that she was kind of dating around,
not necessarily saving herself for marriage,
and it was generally not accepted.
The roommates were very religious.
They attended church faithfully.
I think Barbara would probably experiment
with different religions just to expand her knowledge
and at times would do things that would maybe scare them.
Barbara Jean's roommates
said she was kind of into witchcraft,
so she was attracted to that lifestyle a little bit.
They didn't want to be a part of Barbara's life,
and so they would keep her at arm's length.
[Narrator] Had one of Barbara's roommates
lashed out and done something unthinkable?
Being more of the typical LDS BYU student,
you just wouldn't think that somebody like that
could kill somebody,
but until you do the leather work on it,
you can't clear them.
[Narrator] Detectives work
to verify the roommates' alibis.
Once the investigators corroborated
all the stories and looked at the timelines,
they were able to clear the roommates as not being
somebody that had killed Barbara.
[Narrator] As detectives continue
asking the roommates about Barbara,
they learn some startling new information.
Investigators found out through the interviews
of the roommates that Barbara
would carry a 357 revolver pistol.
Some of the roommates described Barbara
as being maybe a little bit paranoid
where she would think people were following her.
In 1974, people weren't just walking
around with guns the way they do today,
so if a 21-year-old college kid
was walking around with a 357 magnum pistol,
who is she afraid of?
[Narrator] Detectives get more surprises
when they search Barbara's vehicle.
When the investigators looked in the rear of the vehicle,
they found ammunition and targets,
things that you wouldn't expect
in a female BYU student's car.
Did Barbara feel like
she needed to have a gun?
Did she practice with the gun?
Was somebody after her?
We weren't sure what all of that meant at that point.
[dramatic music]
The car was fingerprinted,
but there was just nothing
of good forensic value
that we could come up with at that time.
[Narrator] With more questions than answers,
detectives turn their attention
back to the note Barbara's friend Gerry
had found earlier in Barbara's car.
You found a victim shot multiple times,
and then someone else finds this note in her car
that says she's leaving to be with her people,
and what's the purpose of this?
The investigators were wondering
if the note was even authored by Barbara,
so they do some handwriting analysis on it
and send it out to have that done.
[Narrator] While detectives await results,
the autopsy report comes in.
At that time they came up with
six bullet hole entrance wounds.
The shot in the arm was probably
the bullet that killed her
because it went back into the chest
and hit some vital organs,
and the final wounds were
when Barbara was turned over and on her stomach
and the entrance wounds were in her back.
Being shot in the back is a good indicator that
the person is known by the assailant.
He doesn't want to see their face
when he kills them.
[dramatic music]
At the autopsy the medical examiner took swabs
of both her rectum and her vaginal area
to try to preserve any evidence
that might be there.
The autopsy report indicated
no definitive evidence
that she had been sexually assaulted.
[Narrator] With the autopsy offering no new leads,
investigators turn their focus
to any romantic relationships
Barbara may have had.
They were talking with the roommates
more about other men that may be in Barbara's life,
and they came up with a guy named Richard.
They knew that Barbara was
very much infatuated with him.
She spoke about him all the time,
even called him her boyfriend.
[Narrator] As police focus on Richard
they make a disturbing discovery.
They had asked if Richard
had ever been violent towards Barbara,
and Barbara had relayed one story that
Richard had pulled a dagger on her
and said he was going to stab her.
[Narrator] This was not the only alarming story
Barbara's roommates relayed to detectives.
About a month before Barbara was murdered,
she reported that her gun was missing,
and that raises all kinds of concerns.
She reported it to campus police,
and to my knowledge,
she never got that gun back.
A 357 revolver would have fit
with the potential murder weapon
that killed Barbara.
[gunfire blasting] She had expressed
concern to her roommates that
the person that had taken the gun
may use that gun on her,
and the roommates just kind of dismissed it.
But now that Barbara was found shot to death,
the roommates were concerned for themselves as well.
Having that information,
the investigators really
wanted to find out who Richard was.
At this point all we have is Richard's first name.
He's willing to maybe take a dagger and stab her.
[suspenseful music]
We strongly felt that he could have been responsible
for her murder.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] Three days have passed
since student Barbara Rocky
was discovered shot dead
in Big Cottonwood Canyon,
and police are hunting a man named Richard,
who they believe is her boyfriend.
This could be the person that killed Barbara.
But all we have is Richard's first name,
and so we're kind of running into a dead end.
[Narrator] With no way to identify
their potential prime suspect,
detectives catch a lucky break.
Out of the blue a guy named Richard Finder
calls into our department
and tells us that he knew Barbara Rocky.
Richard Finder initiated contact
offering his services to basically
try to help them solve this case.
First question we had was is this the Richard
that we've been looking for?
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] As investigators
prepare to meet with Richard Finder,
they learn everything they can about him.
We find out that he's in his 30s,
and he's a self-proclaimed psychic.
He lived in California.
Barbara was from California,
so that was one of the connections that they had.
We also found out that a 357 pistol
was registered to him,
which is obviously the same caliber that we're looking for.
[Narrator] Richard Finder arrives at the sheriff's office
and detectives begin by asking him about his relationship
with the 22-year-old college student.
Barbara heard Richard Finder
on the radio talking about the occult.
Barbara had called into the radio station.
They ended up exchanging phone numbers.
Barbara had gone up to see him at his hotel,
and I think Barbara at one point,
even felt that Richard was her boyfriend.
Richard claimed that it was just a spiritual relationship.
That he looked at Barbara not in a physical way.
[Narrator] Under further questioning,
Richard mentions something
that gets the detectives' attention.
The place that he was staying at
was very close to the mouth of the canyon
where it was that Barbara Jean was found.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] Detectives cut to the chase
and ask Richard where he was on March 11th,
the day that Barbara was killed.
He tells them that he was in Salt Lake
at the time of the murder.
He said that he had gotten up and had some breakfast,
and then he went over and helped a friend
do some construction work on a house all day long,
and then he went back home
and went to sleep on the couch.
[Narrator] Detectives set to work
checking out Richard's alibi.
The guy that Richard Finder was staying with,
did confirm that Richard was with him in the evening.
But he could not confirm the times
that Richard told us about during the daytime.
[Narrator] With holes in Richard's alibi,
detectives dig deeper into his claims
about his relationship with Barbara.
Our investigators talked to Barbara's therapist,
and she just really got the impression
that Barbara was in love with Richard.
[Narrator] The therapist reveals another way
the relationship was less innocent
than Richard made it seem.
Barbara described Richard as a great warlock
and maybe even a devil worshiper.
[tense dramatic music]
I think that the satanic and the witchcraft,
it's not too far-fetched to think,
"Okay, somebody took her up there into the woods.
"This was potentially a sacrifice."
[Narrator] When police confront Richard
with these allegations,
his response is even more alarming.
He's telling us that he's having these dreams,
and that she was shot in the back in a triangular pattern,
and that that's a sign of a possible Satan killing
or devil worship.
Richard also told us that he had a vision
that the murder weapon was also thrown into water.
How would he know that we didn't have the murder weapon?
So that really raised a question to us.
We're wondering is this guy confessing to us?
Is he telling us about our crime scene?
He has all of this knowledge.
Is this guy the one that killed Barbara that day?
When you start putting all of these things together,
it made Richard Finder a pretty good suspect.
[Narrator] Despite the circumstantial evidence
stacking up against him,
detectives need something more concrete.
So we collect all of his weapons for ballistic tests
with the projectiles that we located from Barbara's body.
We received the results from the ballistics tests,
and they were not a match,
[dramatic music]
and that pretty much blew up
most of our case with Richard Finder.
[Narrator] Detectives pin their hopes
on the results of the handwriting analysis
on the note found in Barbara's vehicle.
Maybe she wrote the note under duress.
Maybe she was forced to write the note.
It could be a significant clue,
especially if it's determined that
our victim didn't author the note.
It's like someone writing a suicide note for someone else.
The handwriting analysis came back,
and it showed that Barbara was the one
that had written the note.
The letter itself seemed
to be a valid letter to her friends,
and several people said that's Barbara's handwriting.
The investigators concluded that maybe
Barbara was thinking about moving home,
and she was just explaining that in the note.
At this point we're starting to run out of leads.
[Narrator] As the investigation stalls,
Barbara's family is rocked by another tragedy.
My dad would call the police practically every day,
when nothing was coming to fruition,
and he died like within a year after she died.
It killed my father,
[somber music]
and we had so many key relatives die
still wanting to know what happened to Barbara.
[Narrator] Detectives never give up on the case,
and a year later in 1975,
they notice a disturbing pattern of crimes.
There's women all over the American West
that are going missing
and being discovered dead.
College coeds with dark hair were found murdered,
and the serial killer was certainly
the big topic of conversation.
[Narrator] A surprising arrest
changes the whole course of the investigation.
In 1975, a Utah state trooper
makes an arrest west of Salt Lake city.
The suspect was arrested for a kidnapping case
and some of the evidence in the vehicle
definitely could have had something to do
with Barbara's murder as well.
The driver's name is Ted Bundy.
This guy turns out to be probably the most famous
notorious serial killer of all time.
Is he the one that killed Barbara?
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] A year and a half
after the murder of Barbara Rocky,
the investigation is sparked back into life
by the arrest of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
[dramatic music]
More and more that police start investigating Ted Bundy,
the more connections they find to missing
and murdered women all over the country.
In 1974, Ted Bundy was also in the Utah area,
going to school at the University of Utah.
Barbara Jean fit Ted Bundy's profile.
She was a college student.
She was a brunette,
and she was the age that Ted Bundy seemed to target.
Ted Bundy had a reputation
of being a very charming man.
You know, he was a good looking guy
and was kind of a smooth talker.
Ted bundy would act like he was hurt
and ask for some assistance from a female,
and that would have fit right
with the personality of Barbara.
She would have helped Ted Bundy
if he had approached her.
[Narrator] With Barbara fitting
the profile of bundy's victims,
detectives connect with the FBI.
The investigators were able to get a hold of a timeline
that the FBI had prepared to find out
what his whereabouts were on March 11, 1974.
When the investigators looked at Ted Bundy's timeline,
they found that he had an ironclad alibi for that day
because he was in Washington committing another murder.
[Narrator] With Bundy cleared,
the Barbara Rocky investigation
grinds to a halt.
The investigators had done
everything forensically that they could.
They had done all the interviews that they could.
They had looked at all the suspects that they could,
and the case just went cold.
Once the case was cold,
we pretty much accepted that
it was not going to be solved.
When a case goes cold,
it definitely affects the family,
every bit as much, if not more,
than the investigator.
They just want someone to be held accountable
for their daughter's death.
[Narrator] The case lies unsolved for 30 years
while Barbara's family yearns for answers.
The hope and the drive
to crack this case someday
was powered by losing so many family members
that were enraged and wanted justice.
So we had nothing to lose by trying.
[Narrator] In 2005,
Barbara's loved ones
make one last push for justice.
I asked mom, I said,
"Do you want me to try to open this,"
and she said, "Yes, because I need to know before I die."
I was a fairly new homicide detective,
and my phone rang,
and it was one of the family members saying,
"Hey, my sister was killed back in 1974.
"Our mom's getting up in years,
"and she'd really like to know
"who killed her daughter."
The family would expect us to just
do what needs to be done to solve their case,
and you can't put a price tag on this level of justice.
[Narrator] Digging into the 30-year-old case files,
detectives' attention is drawn
to one suspect in particular,
the self-proclaimed psychic, Richard Finder.
I was not convinced that law enforcement
had closed the door all the way on Richard Finder.
I wanted to look into Richard further,
because the timeline to me wasn't rock solid,
and I wanted to try to look more
into the forensic end of it.
DNA and the ballistics stuff
has come a long way since 1974.
As I'm looking through each piece of evidence,
I'm trying to figure out if that would have
any forensic benefit to having tested.
[Narrator] While evidence from the original crime scene
is sent to the crime lab,
investigators dig deeper into Richard's version of events.
As I started looking at Richard's alibi,
I spoke with some of the same people
that the investigators had spoke with previously.
As we re-investigated
and re-interviewed these people,
information that wasn't known back then was revealed.
What I learned was that Richard had been dating
and seeing a friend of Barbara's, Janelle.
But then Barbara also found that Janelle
was getting closer to Richard Finder than Barbara was,
and there was some animosity
from what I understand regarding that.
I learned that sometime very close
to the murder Richard had left town with Janelle Bock,
and Richard and Janelle became boyfriend and girlfriend.
That was kind of a blow to Barbara.
That really kind of stuck out to me.
Janelle came back to Salt Lake
for three or four days around the time
of the homicide with Richard Finder,
and they were staying at a house
just west of the mouth of the canyon
where Barbara was found.
[Narrator] Had Barbara confronted Richard about Janelle,
only for the encounter to turn fatal?
Because of this relationship
between Janelle and Barbara,
and because Richard Finder supposedly had guns,
and then because of his witchcraft
and the possibility of human sacrifice,
Richard Finder was up there
on the list as a potential suspect.
[Narrator] Investigators try to bring Richard in
for another interview.
Unfortunately, we found that Richard Finder
had passed away.
But really the only avenue I had
was to go talk with Janelle.
[Narrator] Was Janelle the only living person
who knew what really happened to Barbara?
I didn't see any information in the case file
where Janelle Bock had really given
a good interview about Richard Finder, and
so that was the place that I wanted to start.
Barbara was upset that
Janelle had essentially taken Richard Finder,
so when they came back,
there's this potential triangle
and some jealousy.
It placed some suspicion on Janelle.
Any time an investigation reveals
some sort of a love triangle,
that can easily turn deadly
when there's jealousy involved,
and all of a sudden the whole thing shifts
from one guy to the person that's least suspected.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] Three decades after Barbara Rockyic]
was found murdered in a Utah canyon,
cold case detectives want to speak
to Barbara's former roommate Janelle,
who had been dating Richard Finder,
the psychic Barbara had fallen in love with.
Janelle was looked at because
of this triangle and this dispute, and
Richard Finder was aware
that there was this jealousy.
[Narrator] Detectives want to know
if either Richard or Janelle
had the opportunity to kill Barbara.
They were back in Salt Lake
for three or four days on a ski trip
during the time of Barbara's demise,
but they never went skiing,
and they were staying at a place
that was close to the crime scene
where Barbara was found.
Janelle was able to give me
a timeline that she was with Richard that day,
and the hours that she wasn't coincided
with the times from the initial investigation.
It was confirmed with others
that she was very sick when she came up here.
She didn't even leave the house,
and she was being taken care of by Richard Finder
during the time of the homicide
and was not in that area.
Janelle Bock was able to give me enough information
to make me feel that he definitely
was not the killer of Barbara,
and she was not a suspect any longer.
[Narrator] Undeterred, detectives scour through
the files from 1974
looking for details the original investigators
may have missed.
As I was going through the case file,
Gerry Hicker's name kept popping up.
So Gerry's early role in the case was
he was one of the last people
to allegedly have seen Barbara Jean
at about 10 o'clock in the morning.
He reported her missing,
so he really wasn't somebody
that they were looking at
as having a role in her death.
They were really good friends.
That came through in the investigation,
but I wasn't satisfied about him
not being a suspect.
[Narrator] Detectives reach out
to Barbara's former roommates,
asking them about Gerry.
Some of the roommates told me that,
"You know, Gerry just didn't have a lot of friends,
"and Barbara was accepting of everybody.
"Gerry just kind of latched onto Barbara,
"and I think Gerry had more romantic feelings
"for Barbara than Barbara did for him."
I think that the roommates kind of looked at Gerry
as basically kind of a stray pet
that people were taking care of.
He just didn't seem like somebody
who would kill somebody.
[Narrator] When investigators dig into
Gerry's life after Barbara's murder,
they make a disturbing discovery.
Gerry had been accused of
rape in the Provo area after Barbara's murder.
When I found that Gerry was arrested for a sexual assault,
I wanted to know could Gerry
have been the one that killed Barbara?
Barbara's roommates
had been away from Gerry for a long time.
In the interviews I found out that
Gerry really had an obsession with guns,
and that he helped Barbara find the 357 that she bought.
He took her out,
showed her how to shoot the 357.
Gerry would always tell Barbara
about how to load her firearm,
leaving one of the cylinders in the revolver empty,
and then looking back and seeing that Barbara
was shot five times,
is that relevant in this case?
We actually looked at the ME's report,
and we couldn't really determine
if she had been shot five or six times.
There was the opinion that it was six,
but it could have also been
through the re-entries and fragments.
Could have been five.
As I'm going through these interviews
and I'm listening to what the roommates are telling me,
he was a rock solid suspect at this point.
[Narrator] Detectives race to track down Gerry Hicker.
I went to Gerry Hicker's house in Washington.
Explained to him that I was
looking at the Barbara Rocky case,
and Gerry immediately said,
"You'll have to talk with my attorney,"
and that he wasn't going to give me a statement.
So at that point,
I had nothing else to do but leave.
[Narrator] With Gerry refusing to cooperate,
investigators must find concrete evidence
to link him to Barbara's murder.
We wanted to see if with today's technology
that if there was a sexual assault,
that there might be something
suitable for DNA testing.
I was pretty excited to find that a vaginal
and rectal swab had been taken on Barbara
because by now we were utilizing DNA testing,
and I thought that I was going to be able to
match those up with DNA that we got
from whatever suspects were in the case file.
[Narrator] Investigators hope that the swab test results
will point towards Gerry.
They didn't know about DNA in 1974,
and they packaged everything in plastic.
Because it was packaged in plastic,
it ruined any DNA that was in
any of the biological material that was taken.
I was devastated.
I thought I was going to be able
to solve that case really quickly,
but that's not what happened.
[Narrator] Fearing that the case
will go cold again without solid evidence,
investigators gamble on another way
to obtain the evidence they're looking for.
[dramatic music]
I took items that had not been tested yet
from the original evidence to our crime lab
to have them tested.
[Narrator] The original crime scene evidence
includes a soil sample from beneath Barbara's body.
I was just more or less taking the dirt out
to have a sample taken in case
some seminal fluid had migrated down into the dirt.
There was still the belief,
based on the scene and everything,
that there was a possibility
of a sexual assault.
When I got the results of the test,
surprisingly we got a match that there was DNA
from the soil that was underneath Barbara's body.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] After 30 years,
had DNA analysis finally identified Barbara's killer?
What came back as a result of that testing was shocking.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]arrator] It's been
since student Barbara Rocky
was found stripped and shot
in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah.
In 2007, DNA in a soil sample from under her body
finally reveals her killer.
Finding that DNA in the soil
was like finding a needle in a haystack,
a big haystack.
The results come in and we've got a match,
and it's Gerry Hicker.
[dramatic music]
Just that little bit of information
was all that we needed to link Gerry Hicker
to this crime scene.
He was not who we suspected initially,
and so to learn that he was
the one responsible for killing her
was very surprising.
[Narrator] On November 6, 2007,
56-year-old Gerry Hicker is charged
with the first-degree murder of Barbara Rocky.
When I first found out that
the killer of Barbara was Gerry Hicker,
I was
surprised
because I heard that
he was just sort of a guy from next door.
It was a shock.
I never thought it would be solved.
[Narrator] As prosecutors prepare for their day in court,
they piece together a theory of how Gerry killed Barbara.
So our belief of what happened was,
Gerry Hicker knew that Barbara may be leaving,
because that next morning he was aware of the letter
before he brought the car back.
I think what tipped him over the edge was
he wanted Barbara
sexually, and her rejection and her indication
of leaving Gerry was more than he could take.
Hicker winds up talking Rocky
into going up Big Cottonwood Canyon
with this scenic view one more time before she leaves.
And when they get to this spot,
Gerry's trying to put the moves on Barbara,
and she doesn't want to have
anything to do with Gerry that way.
Hicker takes out a gun,
and in rage he tells her to strip down,
and she was probably folding the clothes
in order to buy herself a little more time.
Barbara's pleading for her life.
She's just trying to get anything
into Gerry's mind to not do this.
And then he shot her, [gunfire blasting]
apparently while she was standing up,
and then she went down,
and then he shot her
four times in the lower back region.
[Narrator] After the murder,
Gerry tried to cover his tracks.
Gerry has to drive back to campus.
He gets rid of the gun,
and he's trying to come up with alibis.
He knows he can't park the car
right there at Barbara's house,
so he takes it over to the Parkway Plaza Apartments.
That's where he decides
he's going to use this letter
making her a missing person.
This was a young woman who trusted somebody.
They're supposed to be going to a nice spot,
and instead she's shot and murdered.
I felt so horrible knowing that
she had gone through something like that.
She was probably so scared.
Nobody deserved to die like that.
Nobody. [gentle music]
I believe that Gerry was
being the concerned, loving friend,
and that may have put some thoughts
in the investigators mind that there's just
no way Gerry could have done this.
Beneath the facade just seemed to be rage
and anger that he'd been rejected.
I think Gerry Hicker was a sexual predator
that got away with a lot of crimes.
We were so glad and so grateful
[gentle music]
that the detectives had worked so hard.
It boggled my mind that they could solve it after 34 years.
[Narrator] Despite an airtight case against Gerry,
his declining health leaves prosecutors with a new dilemma.
When I went to arrest Gerry,
he had been diagnosed with cancer.
He was just the shell of a man.
We didn't feel that his life span
was much of five years, if that.
So we worked out a deal that he would plead
to a substantially reduced charge of manslaughter,
and that he would be sentenced
to the prison for five years,
figuring that would be a life sentence.
Going with the plea deal was my mom's decision.
She wanted him to say
in his own words that he did it.
She wanted those answers.
[Narrator] Gerry Hicker serves three years
in Utah state prison,
and in 2014,
five years after pleading guilty,
he dies of cancer.
I bet you he had been looking over his shoulders
all these years.
I felt that his ill health was Barbara's justice.
This is somebody that wasted away not only his life,
he ruined so many people's lives by his selfish act.
Barbara didn't deserve this.
She had so much ahead of her,
but the family does have some answers.
That's the goal in my investigation.
I think that in this case justice was served,
and that the family got answers
that they would not have otherwise had.
The thing I miss most about Barbara
was the times that we used to blast Beatles music
and sing and dance for hours.
Just being kids, you know?
I remember her then.
Barbara was such a giving person.
I feel inspired by her
ability to give of herself
and I try to emulate that.
[somber music]