TOOELE COUNTY, Utah — Three people who went missing from the Salt Lake Valley in 2022 are believed to have been murdered after their bodies were found buried together in a remote area earlier this year — and the suspect who police believe was behind the killings is already in prison for a separate incident.
West Valley City Police said they received a missing report for Rocio Baneulos-Bustamante, a 29-year-old woman, in late March of 2022. Then in early April, Carlos Sepulveda-Montes was reported missing to Taylorsville Police. And later, at an unspecified date, 35-year-old Zamir Sanchez-Hernandez was reported missing to Unified Police.
Baneulos-Bustamante's family told police she was last seen getting into a car with the two missing men.
Police said that in the next couple of months, two confidential informants told Baneulos-Bustamante's family that she was dead and they should stop looking for her, and that she was buried somewhere "up in the mountain."
The man who police believe killed the three victims is 26-year-old Cesar Matias Sevilla-Aleman — who was arrested in September 2022 for a non-fatal shooting at a large, unofficial rodeo party near Lincoln Beach, on the shore of Utah Lake.
In May of this year, Sevilla-Aleman pleaded guilty to two counts of felony discharge of a firearm (one 1st-degree and the other 2nd-degree). In July, he was given a sentence of five years to life in prison for one count, and 3-15 years for the other. The two sentences are to be served consecutively.
Sevilla-Aleman's phone was seized during the investigation into the shooting. Then at a later point, West Valley City Police executed a search warrant on his phone and its location data. They said his location overlapped with one of the missing victims, and the data showed that he was likely in the Rush Valley area, about 12 miles south of Tooele.
According to police, cadaver dogs were training near Mercur Trailhead in April of this year when they discovered human remains. The next day, police found three bodies and two bullets buried there. They were identified by various forensic methods as the three missing people.
Police say they were later informed by a "witness" that Sevilla-Aleman was talking about how Sepulveda-Montes owed him money on the morning of March 28, 2022. Sepulveda-Montes was reportedly unable to pay, so Sevilla-Aleman took them to the remote area, shot them, and buried them, according to the witness.
Sevilla-Aleman has not been charged with these three homicides at this time, but charges are expected to be screened this week.
