VERNAL, Utah — A murder charge was filed against a 74-year-old Tooele man in the 1972 shooting death of Army veteran from Vernal.
The Eighth District Court charged Darrel Eugene Choate with murder, a first-degree felony offense.
On November 26, 1972, Army veteran Gregory Nickell, 21, took his 18-year-old date to a scenic overlook near Vernal.
A man approached the car and knocked on the window, saying there had been a crash and that he needed help. When Nickell turned away, the man shot him multiple times with a pistol.
He and his accomplice burned the car on a backroad with Nickell's body inside.
The woman was kept with them until sunrise, eventually being released 60 miles from where the incident started.
Lynnette Nickell Ray, Greg's sister, realized something was wrong the following morning when Greg didn't go to work. Eventually, she says Sheriff Arden Stewart showed up to their home with Greg's date.
"Where's Greg? She said they killed him," said Ray.
Finding out who "They" was took decades.
In 2019, the evidence in this case was sent to the Utah State Crime Lab for DNA processing. That led to the identification of one of the suspects, Daniel Arthur Bell,
"Which it turns out was deceased at the time, But that was a start," said Ray.
In September 2020, Bell, who died in 2019 in Yakima Washington, popped up as a match for the DNA that was collected.
With help from surviving family members as well as criminal records, officials learned Bell lived in the Uintah Basin in 1972 and was familiar with the area's backroads.
He moved away from Utah after 1972, was convicted of rape in Oregon in 1988 and paroled in 1999, after which he moved to Washington and was remarried.
According to a probable cause statement, interviews with Bell's wife in Washington revealed that her husband told her his friend "Gene" had been involved in a rape that took place in Washington. Bell's wife went on to say Bell and "Gene" hadn't seen each other since the 1980's or 1990's.
A DNA sample was eventually collected from Darrel Eugene Choate by law enforcement, who had responded his residence on an unrelated call.
That sample was compared with the DNA sample of the unknown suspect. The Probable cause statement went on to say that Choate is a direct DNA match for one of the suspects who murdered Nickell.
"When my brother was killed, I talked to him, of course he wasn't there, but I knew he was there in spirit, and I told him 52 years ago that I was never going to stop, I was going find who did this to him," said Ray.
Now, Ray just has one question she's hoping to get answered.
"I just want to be able to look him in the face and ask him why," said Ray.
According to the probable cause statement, Choate lives in Tooele, but is not currently in custody.
FOX 13 News made calls to the Uintah County Attorney's Office and Uintah County Sheriff's Office, as well as the Tooele City Police Department to see if we could get answers to why he isn't in custody. We have not heard back at this time.
