Cody Lynn Nielsen: Murder of Trisha Autry, Trial, and Appeal

Cody Lynn Nielsen is a convicted Utah murderer serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the June 2000 killing of fifteen-year-old Trisha Ann Autry in Cache County. Nielsen, then a maintenance worker at a federal wildlife research facility in Millville, abducted the Hyrum teenager, killed her on the grounds where he worked, dismembered and burned her remains, and buried what was left. A jury convicted him in January 2004, and the Utah Supreme Court affirmed his aggravated murder conviction in 2014.

How He Targeted Trisha Autry

Nielsen and Autry first crossed paths in April 2000, roughly two months before her death. Autry was walking home from school with a friend when Nielsen drove past repeatedly in his truck, then stopped to talk. He gave the girls his pager number, told them to contact him to “party, drink, whatever,” and introduced himself by the nickname “Sam.”¹

Autry became frightened. She told a friend and family members that the man in the green truck had been following her and calling her at home, and she began asking relatives to pick her up from school so she would not have to walk. Her sister Breanne later testified that Trisha was afraid of the man she knew as “Sam.”²³

Autry vanished from her Hyrum home on June 24, 2000. Her mother, JoAnn Autry, told investigators she believed her daughter had gone for a solitary walk in the early morning hours before a planned family conversation about her father LeRoy’s cancer diagnosis. Police initially treated the disappearance as a runaway case.²⁴

The Killing at the Predator Research Facility

Nielsen worked as a maintenance man at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Predator Research Facility in Millville, a 165-acre site used for coyote research. His job included operating heavy equipment such as backhoes and graders.⁵ In late May or early June 2000, weeks before Autry disappeared, a coworker named William Pitt saw Nielsen use a backhoe to dig a large, deep hole on the facility grounds. Asked what he was doing, Nielsen said he was testing how deep the machine could dig.⁶

Prosecutors alleged that on June 24, 2000, Nielsen brought Autry to the facility and killed her there. According to the state’s account, he dismembered the body using a knife, ax, and hacksaw, buried the remains, later exhumed them, burned them in a daylong fire, crushed the bones with tractor tires, and reburied what remained. Coworkers testified they had seen Nielsen pile trash and debris over a filled hole and burn it for an entire day.⁴⁶

How the Remains Were Found

Nearly a year after Autry disappeared, investigators turned their attention to the research facility. Cadaver dogs alerted on the exact spot where Nielsen had dug the hole. On May 14, 2001, excavators uncovered Autry’s jawbone about ten feet underground, along with her shoes, bra, and part of the waistband of her underwear. Several hundred charred bone fragments were recovered from other locations on the grounds. Dental records matched the jawbone to Autry.⁷²

Nielsen’s Confession and His Own Account

After Nielsen was arrested on unrelated charges, Cache County sheriff’s investigators interviewed him in jail on January 20 and January 22, 2003. He admitted killing Autry and disposing of her body, describing on audiotape and videotape how he buried her, dug her up twice, and burned the remains. “I dug her back up, put it in a box and put it in the fire,” he told investigators.⁷

He disputed the prosecution’s version of the killing. Nielsen claimed he and Autry had consensual sex, that she died accidentally after falling from a balcony at the facility, and that he panicked and hid the body. He admitted burying and burning the remains but denied dismembering them, saying, “I did not cut her up like they say.”⁸

The Trial and Forensic Evidence

Nielsen was tried in the First District Court in Logan before Judge Clint S. Judkins. Because of pretrial publicity in Cache County, the court seated jurors brought in from Box Elder County.⁶ Special prosecutor Scott Wyatt led the state’s case. A.W. Lauritzen and Shannon Demler represented Nielsen.³

The four-day trial ended on January 21, 2004. The state’s case was largely circumstantial. Witnesses described Nielsen’s pattern of stalking, Autry’s fear of “Sam” and his green truck, and the deep hole and daylong fire coworkers had seen. Physical evidence included the recovered jawbone, the clothing, and bone fragments bearing cut marks.³

Utah’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Todd Grey, testified that the case involved “the most extreme case of post-mortem dismemberment” he had seen in his career. He described how the jawbone had been meticulously cleaned by chemicals, boiling, or scraping, and how cuts on the bone were made with a thin, sharp edge. Grey also said blunt-force injuries to Autry’s face had broken out three of her teeth.⁹

Shannon Novak, a research assistant professor of anthropology, walked jurors through what had been done to the remains and in what order: cutting, then fracturing, then burning. She identified large chopping marks on the upper right thigh bone consistent with an ax or hatchet, and horizontal cut marks on the jawbone where someone had tried to sever the muscle connecting jaw to head. Most of the recovered bones showed evidence of having been cut, fractured, and burned close to the time of death.¹⁰

Prosecutors also introduced evidence that Nielsen had sexually assaulted two other women at the same wildlife research facility in the months before Autry’s disappearance, including a fifteen-year-old friend of the victim. They argued this showed a “plan to obtain sex, his motive to obtain compliance, and his intent to murder if his plan failed,” and noted that a threat Nielsen allegedly made to one of these women ten days before the murder was “strikingly similar” to the circumstances of Autry’s death.⁹

After four hours of deliberation, the jury found Nielsen guilty on all five counts: capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, kidnapping, and two counts of desecration of a human body.³ During the sentencing phase, prosecutors introduced a 1995 conviction for threatening a law officer while under arrest.¹¹

Sentencing

Judge Judkins sentenced Nielsen on February 9, 2004, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for capital murder, plus consecutive terms of one to fifteen years for kidnapping, one to twenty-five years for the merged aggravated kidnapping charges, and one to five years for desecration of a human body. The court also ordered $57,000 in financial penalties: a $10,000 fine for kidnapping, a $5,000 fine for desecrating a body, and $42,000 in restitution to the Autry family.¹²

Autry’s mother, JoAnn, described the impact of the murder as being “like a massive earthquake or a large boulder thrown violently into a small pool,” saying the “repercussions just go on and on.” She remembered her daughter as a “precocious redhead” with an “exuberance for life” who was “confident, opinionated and powerful.” Trisha’s brother, Aram Autry, pointed at Nielsen in court and said, “Evil has a face: It’s because of that man over there.” Trisha’s father, LeRoy Autry, did not live to see the trial. He died of cancer less than a year after his daughter’s disappearance, one month before her remains were found.¹³

The 2014 Utah Supreme Court Ruling

On April 29, 2014, the Utah Supreme Court issued its decision in State v. Nielsen, 326 P.3d 645. The justices affirmed Nielsen’s convictions for aggravated murder and desecration of a human body and left his life-without-parole sentence intact. They rejected his claims that the Box Elder County jury arrangement had prejudiced the trial.¹⁴

The court did reverse and vacate his convictions for kidnapping and aggravated kidnapping. Under the merger doctrine, the justices held that because the kidnapping was the aggravating factor elevating the murder charge to aggravated murder, separate convictions for the underlying kidnapping would punish him twice for the same conduct.¹⁵⁶ The reversal did not shorten his time in prison. His life-without-parole sentence for aggravated murder was unaffected, and he remains incarcerated in the Utah prison system.¹⁴

1
vLex. State v. Nielsen
2
Deseret News. High Court Upholds Murder of Teen, Tosses Kidnapping Conviction
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Deseret News. Nielsen Guilty of Murder
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Salt Lake Tribune. Utah Supreme Court Upholds Nielsen Murder Conviction
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Herald Journal. Who Is Cody Nielsen? Valley Residents Wonder About One of Their Own
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Justia. State v. Nielsen, Utah Supreme Court Opinion
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Deseret News. Man May Face More Charges in Killing of Hyrum Girl
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Daily Herald. Man Says Girl’s Death Was an Accident
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Deseret News. Nielsen Likely to Take Stand
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Utah Statesman. Murder Trial Recesses Until Tuesday
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Utah Statesman. Jury Finds Nielsen Guilty of Capital Murder
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Hard News. Nielsen Sentenced
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Deseret News. Autry’s Family Tells Jurors Evil Has a Face
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Herald Journal. Utah Supreme Court Issues Ruling in Cody Lynn Nielsen Appeal
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KSL. High Court Tosses One Charge, Upholds Others in Teen’s Murder