I grew up with Heidi Black Miller in a house around the corner and a block from the Black home, I went over a few times to play Barbies as a kid. We attended elementary through high school together. I was driving past the Black home on the day of the murder and was rather alarmed to see the police mobile headquarter RV parked in front of the Black home, a fleet of police cars, and a tent over a manhole cover, so when I got to the gym I turned the television by the treadmills to the news to see what was going on and learned that the mother of my childhood friend had been murdered. Having turned to true crime in the days when Ted Bundy was active in the greater Wasatch front metropolitan area during my elementary school years as a way of conquering my fears of the unknown boogie man, I followed developments on the Sherry Black murder minutely. I reported one neighbor as a possible person of interest about 2 days after the murder and the police were there within two hours to check into the lead, it turned out to be coincidental connections, but I wanted to be sure every possible clue was reaching the police.
Last June I was listening to a true crime podcast, most likely from True Crime Brewery and in the episode a mother was trying to find her daughter's killer. In that case a phenotype was developed and the mother spent a lot of time looking through yearbook photos to find a match, which she eventually did, at the same time a friend of the victim told police that the victim had lent the use of the apartment to her for a romantic encounter with her boyfriend and that he had injured himself, leaving the drops of blood discovered, so the cold case stayed cold, but that got me thinking about the phenotype in the Sherry Black murder. I took to the internet to refresh my memory of the profile generated by the Vidocq Society and also the phenotype images. The Vidocq Society predicted the perpetrator would live nearby, possibly within a half mile of the murder scene, that he would be young, possibly still in his mid teens, so that would mean that the killer most likely attended Granite High School, less than 2 blocks from the murder house.
While refreshing my memory of the details, I came across a podcast on the Black case from an obscure source, which I listened to, then became alarmed when I read a very lengthy comment by someone who went to school with Heidi Black Miller (and myself), saying he knew who the killer was and why, a rather sordid fantasy about wanting to marry Heidi, but a conspiracy to force him to marry another person to shut up the victim of a rape by the son of a prominent judge, claiming that numerous other deaths were all related to the crime to cover the matter up. It was obvious to me that the guy was seriously disturbed, with a fixation on Heidi and was exactly the type who might view the mother as standing in the way of his marrying Heidi. So I called the tip line and left a message, meanwhile going over the yearbooks to check into the guy. I reasoned that a seriously disturbed person might skew the projected age of the perpetrator and that it was possible that he might have had an accomplice, who might have left the blood, so I also checked for possible matches to the phenotype, finding only 3 African American students, one of which bore a resemblance to the phenotype.
When the weekend was over, I received a call from a detective, who was a year behind Heidi and myself in school. I laid out the information and and we discussed various geographical ties but he informed me that they had already eliminated the writer of the comment (who had an outstanding restraining order which he had violated at least once, according to Heidi) but that he couldn't go into the reasons why. So I went on to tell him about the phenotype image and if the Vidocq Society profile was accurate, that he would have attended our alma mater, I also gave him the names of persons from the yearbooks, he was friends with the best match, agreed he didn't seem like the type, but that people always say that about a suspect once arrested. He agreed that the police should expand their search of yearbook photos. I did ask about whether DNA was done on all people entering the county jail and he informed me that only felony cases were tested. I may have made a throwaway comment about crimes being solved through geneology databases in passing. He complimented me on my analysis and organization. When nothing came out in the subsequent weeks, I assumed that no match was found.
I was on Facebook when KSL went live with a press conference on the Sherry Black case, which I watched and was shocked by the last name of the confessed killer, Durborow, because a family of Durborows lived two blocks due west of me and south west of the murder scene. I instantly went searching for the news story of Joseph "Joe" Durborow's arrest for child *advertiser censored* because at that time he had been living in Orem, the same area where Adam Durborow was when he was arrested. Searches of various sites showed me the names of other young men associated with Joe Durborow who's ages bracketed Adam's and that an Adam was a known family member of Joseph Durborow of Orem. I informed Dave Cawley of KSL whom I have come to know through his work on the Cold Podcast on the disappearance of Susan Powell and informed him of the familial and geogrphical connections, at the time I thought that the elder Durborows might still have owned the home at the time of the murder and that when Joe went to prison, some of the 12 children might have been farmed out to relations because the mother was overwhelmed with so many on her own (two other brothers graduated from different high schools in spite of the family never moving from the Orem home was evidence this might have happened).
I commented on a facebook post from another old school chum and was contacted by Marcus Ortiz of KTVX who had seen my comment and wanted background information. Meanwhile I was working with Dave Cawley on KSL, providing information and bouncing ideas back and forth. I gave him the links to the various Durborow family members and he along with another reporter from the station identified the Jace Ranting profile as being Adam Durborow, I'd spotted it, too, but was concentrating on others. Expecting the profile to be shut down by facebook, I copied many disturbing posts to the facebook group I had created 2 weeks previously True Crime Utah. I let Marcus Ortiz that he might want to check out the profile, he was in a, hurry to meet the story deadline, so I put him into the group so that he could see the important posts at a glance. He cited the group as being the source for the name of the fake profile which wasn't actually true, I'd avoided identifying it publicly, fearing that too much attention would get it removed. So I'm the source that outed the profile. Dave Cawley was rather shocked by the geographical ties, because he lived about 5 doors down from the old Durborow house, which had been sold prior to the murder, but discovered that at the time of the murder, Adam Durborow's bioligical mother was living in an apartment a few blocks further south on the same street. Meanwhile Marcus Ortiz identified another address in the apartment complex due east of the first where Adam Durborow had also lived (the mother moved around a lot).
I just spotted another news story saying that the sheriff's office in Utah County are checking into possible links to the 2005 murder of Elizabeth Salgado of Provo, a city that adjoins Orem, where Adam lived most of his life. I wonder what other unsolved murders there are out there in places where Durborow was living at the time. He was in Clearfield, Utah attending Job Corps and I believe at another location in Kentucky, I wasn't paying attention for victims of a potential serial killer.
The whole situation feels very surreal. Not only have I known the victim's daughter since 1975, Joe Durborow chased my older sister, trying to get her to date him (and in an alternate universe she might have been Adam Durborow's adoptive mother), the youngest Durborow brother asked me to the prom and tried to get me to date him. The youngest sister was a year behind Heidi and I in school and I knew her quite well through church. The Durborows were a strange family, having moved to Utah after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, near the family's dairy farm. The family would get calls to dump that day's milk periodically, as radiation levels were too high and the milk wasn't fit for human consumption. If the cows were getting radiation, so were those who lived on the land with the cows. Bill, the youngest brother underwent brain surgery shortly after high school graduation and the mother, Kathy, had some major issues, too. Many of the family members had an unusual physiological appearance, bringing up the question of what effect radiation played on their physical and neurological development. Since Adam wasn't biologically related, it seems irrelevant, but if you look at it as a factor in the makeup of the adoptive father's history, it could have played a role in the "nurture" side of the equation.
