On October 12, 1973, Douglas Brick walked out of his dorm at the U and vanished. For decades, after lost police records, unsuccessful searches and conflicting reports about Brick’s last known whereabouts, his disappearance remained a mystery known only by an ever-shrinking circle of people who knew Brick as a brother, a friend, or a roommate.

Without any knowledge of who Brick was, when he was last seen, or where police searched for him, it seemed impossible that he could ever be found — until a recent discovery and a stunning sequence of events. After 51 years, six months and 19 days, University of Utah Police finally has some answers to its only known cold case.

Results from an out-of-state lab that specializes in extracting DNA from weathered bones confirmed last week that skull fragments found in the foothills above the U in 2024 were a 99.9 percent genetic match with one of Brick’s living relatives. Brick was no longer missing.

“We never stopped hoping for answers about Doug’s disappearance,” Brick’s family said in an issued statement. “Many years ago, we pushed for the cold case to be reopened with the addition of DNA evidence. We are relieved to finally have some answers. After 52 years, this result, while sad, is nothing short of a miracle.”

Though Brick’s case was unknown to many until recently, the details surrounding its discovery and subsequent resolution have had an impact that reaches across generations, linking friends, strangers and family.

Unusual coincidences

In 2022, University Police hired a crime data analyst, Nikol Mitchell, who, in her work with Utah’s Statewide Information and Analysis Center (SIAC) discovered that the U had a cold case that had been lost for at least 20 years.

Major Heather Sturzenegger was the investigations lieutenant at the time, and she immediately agreed to reopen a new case. Although cold cases are rare, and solving them are even less common in the lifetime of a police officer, Sturzenegger made a goal that year to find Brick.

“For me, I just wanted to try to bring closure to the family and solve the case so they can have some peace,” Sturzenegger said. “I have always had a really strong feeling that we would be able to solve this case.”

Initially, Sturzenegger and Detective Jon Dial, who was assigned to work on the case when Sturzenegger was promoted, had very little information to build on. There were claims Brick had dropped out of school and hitched a ride to Ogden to start a new life, or that he had fled the country, or that he had disappeared in the foothills behind the U. They had no records of those who knew him. They knew he lived in Austin Hall—which has since been demolished—but they didn’t know who was his roommate, who reported him missing, or where police searched for him.

Then, the first glimmer came. They discovered that Brick’s sister had called university dispatch in 2018 to ask about her brother’s case, which couldn’t be found. Using information from that call, Dial flew to California to meet Brick’s sister and retrieve her DNA through a cheek swab. If Brick was a John Doe in the national system, they would know as soon as they added that sample.

It didn’t get any hits.

Brick’s sister gave Dial contact information for Brick’s out-of-state girlfriend at the time. She shed more light on the person Dial was looking for, but they were still missing key information that would help them know where to search.

In December 2022, Sturzenegger happened to go with her daughter to a doctor’s appointment in the office of Steven Warren, whom she had never met. They began chatting about what kind of work Sturzenegger did, and where, when Warren off-handedly said, “That’s strange, when I was a student at the U in 1973, my roommate went missing.”

Sturzenegger was stunned.

It turned out that Warren was the one who reported Brick’s disappearance, and called his family, and found his abandoned car. He confirmed what Dial and Sturzenegger needed to know: the search area where he and police officers had hiked over and over, looking for Brick. It was a huge breakthrough, found completely by coincidence.

For about a year, the case stalled, but Sturzenegger kept it open because of the DNA they had on file. Then, last October, almost to the day Brick had first gone missing in 1973, hunters found two fragments of a human skull about six miles above the white block U on the hill. A news story about the discovery caught Sturzenegger’s attention — it was close to the same area that Warren confirmed the searches initially took place. A medical examiner and an anthropologist at the U confirmed the age of the bone, which was weathered and worn.

University police received permission to send the bone to a specialized lab, and after 5 months of waiting, Sturzenegger received the news. It was Brick.

“When I got the report, I lost my breath,” Sturzenegger said. “My heart was pounding. I was shaking. I was thinking, am I reading this right? Is this him?”

Sturzenegger and Dial flew to California days later to let the family know.

Discovering Doug

Public information about Brick is hard to find, aside from a few facts peppered across a handful of cold case discussion groups on Facebook, and two faded stories printed in the Daily Utah Chronicle.

He graduated from Pocatello High School as a top student in 1968. He was smart, and studied physics at the U. He was a National Merit Letter commendation winner, a member of the Boys Council, Key Club and German Club. In her journals, his mother described him as sweet and kind. He was only 23 when he went missing. The last time his mother saw him was in September, when he packed up his car and headed off to start his fourth year at the U. Those who knew him said he was depressed when he went missing, and possibly suicidal.

Brick’s father, a pharmacist and naval World War II veteran, died in 1964 from a congenital kidney disease, and his mother, a schoolteacher, never remarried. When she died in May  2010, Donna Brick’s obituary didn’t mention Douglas — his family didn’t know if he was alive, or dead. They celebrated a memorial for him in 1990.

That year, Donna wrote an entry in her journal that, of all of the details he discovered from this case, Dial says he will never forget. While she was at a department store in Salt Lake City, Donna had a chance encounter with a store clerk who said she was a psychic.

Intrigued by the surprisingly accurate assessment the clerk had already made about her, Donna said, “Maybe you can tell me what happened to my son.” The psychic then told her details no one would have known — that he had gone to the foothills above the U, contemplating ending his life. He became afraid, and because it was dark, and he slipped and fell. “He really wants you to find him,” the psychic said.

“These details stuck out to me,” Dial said. “Where the skull was located, the terrain I was traversing as part of the search, it is extremely steep and loose on both sides, and I was having a hard time in the daylight keeping my footing under me and figuring out where I was going.”

Brick’s skull was found near the summit of Black Mountain.

Lasting impact

Although Brick’s case was cold for decades, he was never forgotten.

“I can still picture him in his glasses, going to class with his hard-cased briefcase,” Warren says. “I can still see all of his belongings in the back seat of his car — I never forgot one thing about it.”

When Warren learned that Brick had withdrawn from all of his classes one week before the end of the semester, every year he attended the U, Warren worked to influence university policy that now triggers an alert if a student withdraws from any class two semesters in a row.

Many of the original police officers who worked on the case, including Sergeant Gil Farnsworth, who was mentioned in The Daily Utah Chronicle as following up on the case a year later, are no longer alive. But Farnsworth’s son, Corey, still remembers joining his dad on a search for a missing student, crawling into a tiny cave, and finding nothing.

Dial says that even though they found one answer, he still has other questions that will never be resolved. University Police plans to go and search the area again, now that the snow has melted and the weather has cleared.

“I felt a very personal connection to Douglas throughout this investigation,” Dial said. “In a way, it’s hard to explain. There was a push and a connection that I felt was from Douglas to this case specifically, in moving it along and being persistent. I have felt very strongly that I will always have Douglas in the back of my mind, and his family.”

Brick’s family expressed their gratitude for the University Police in a statement on May 7.

“We thank the hunter who found him 6 months ago and reported it immediately, Detective Jon Dial and Major Heather Sturzenegger, search and rescue volunteers, and all the individuals and agencies that were involved in this case. We are requesting privacy during this time of transition.”