A Utah man, Darrel Eugene Choate, 74, was arrested and charged in connection to the murder of 21-year-old Vietnam veteran Gregory Dahl Nickell and the kidnapping and rape of his 18-year-old date in 1972, authorities say.
Choate, now a Tooele resident in Utah, was charged with first-degree murder.
On Nov. 26, 1972, officers responded to a vehicle set on fire with Nickell’s body inside. During the investigation, authorities discovered the victim had been shot multiple times, and his date that night had been kidnapped and raped multiple times. At the time, a rape kit was administered at the hospital, and DNA evidence was collected.
According to FOX 13, a man had approached the couple in their car pretending he needed help due to a car crash. While Nickell, who had been home for Thanksgiving, was distracted, he shot him multiple times, and two men kidnapped and raped her after burning the car.
Over the years, the case became cold after investigators ran out of leads, but authorities believed there were two suspects involved in the homicide. Then, in 2019 and with DNA technological advances, the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office resubmitted the evidence, and on the 50th anniversary of Nickell’s demise, Daniel Arthur Bell was identified as one of the suspects. However, investigators could not make an arrest because the 88-year-old Bell died in 2019 in Yakima Washington.
As the investigations continued, Bell’s widow told investigators that Choate was a close friend of her late husband, who was convicted of rape in Washington, as her brother in Utah in the 80s. Soon, authorities obtained a DNA sample from the defendant in an unrelated matter and submitted it to the crime lab for testing. It was a match for Choate!
“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 to find who did this to him,” said Nickell’s sister Lynnette Nickell Ray, reported The Independent.
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