After murder charges were filed in the case of a missing teenage farmer, prosecutors in Utah revealed that a crucial piece of evidence was mysteriously captured on the victim’s phone.
Dylan Rounds (Family photograph via Box Elder County sheriff)
James Brenner, 59, was charged on March 3 with aggravated murder in connection with the disappearance last year of Dylan Rounds, 19, who lived by himself on his small farm near Lucin, in Utah’s northwest corner.
In his last phone call to family, on May 28, Rounds told his grandmother it was going to rain and he needed to put his grain truck in a shed that was five miles from where he was living. Brenner lived in a camper near that shed.
Rounds’ boots, spotted with his blood, were found near the shed on May 30, the first day his family went looking for him. Three weeks later, his phone was recovered from a nearby pond.
A forensic examination of the phone yielded a startling clue: video that reportedly showed Brenner wearing a bloody shirt while he cleaned blood from his hands and from a gun. That shirt was seized by investigators, and it was found to have Rounds’ DNA on it, the Box Elder County district attorney’s office said.
Rounds’ mother, Candice Cooley, told the East Idaho News that the video was time-stamped 7:27 a.m. on May 28 — half an hour after her son ended his call to his grandmother. She said the family was shocked to hear that the phone captured the scene when Rounds was believed to have been dead.
“How did that phone start recording? It has driven us crazy,” Cooley told the News. “I’m pretty sure when Brenner took the phone, he just hit the wrong button or had a wrong swipe and had no clue.”
Brenner is to be arraigned April 24. He has been in custody on firearms charges since June.
The search for the young man’s remains continues.
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Source:: The Mercury News