Weber County detective named investigator of the year for solving 52-year-old cold case | News, Sports, Jobs

1/4

Detective Steve Haney of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office answers questions during a preliminary hearing for Cory Fitzwater and Dalton Aiken on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018, at Ogden’s 2nd District Court. On Aug. 31, 2022, Haney, now with the Weber County Attorney’s Office, was named investigator of the year by the Cold Case Coalition. In 2021, Haney solved the 1969 murder of LeRoy Ortiz in Ogden.

MATT HERP, Standard Examiner file photo

2/4

LeRoy Ortiz, 19, was shot and killed in Ogden in March 1969 and the case remained unsolved until Weber County Attorney’s Office investigator Steve Haney identified the killer, now deceased, and closed the case.

Photo supplied, Ortiz family

3/4

Steve Haney, a former detective with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office now working as an investigator in the Weber County Attorney’s Office, recently was named Investigator of the Year by the Cold Case Coalition of Utah.

Photo supplied, Cold Case Coalition of Utah

4/4

Detective Steve Haney testifies during a preliminary hearing on Monday, Oct. Haney, now with the Weber County Attorney’s Office, on Aug. 31, 2022, was named investigator of the year by the Cold Case Coalition. In 2021, Haney solved the 1969 murder of LeRoy Ortiz in Ogden.

BEN DORGER, Standard-Examiner file photo

❮ ❯

Detective Steve Haney of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office answers questions during a preliminary hearing for Cory Fitzwater and Dalton Aiken on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018, at Ogden’s 2nd District Court. On Aug. 31, 2022, Haney, now with the Weber County Attorney’s Office, was named investigator of the year by the Cold Case Coalition. In 2021, Haney solved the 1969 murder of LeRoy Ortiz in Ogden.

LeRoy Ortiz, 19, was shot and killed in Ogden in March 1969 and the case remained unsolved until Weber County Attorney’s Office investigator Steve Haney identified the killer, now deceased, and closed the case.

Steve Haney, a former detective with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office now working as an investigator in the Weber County Attorney’s Office, recently was named Investigator of the Year by the Cold Case Coalition of Utah.

Detective Steve Haney testifies during a preliminary hearing on Monday, Oct. Haney, now with the Weber County Attorney’s Office, on Aug. 31, 2022, was named investigator of the year by the Cold Case Coalition. In 2021, Haney solved the 1969 murder of LeRoy Ortiz in Ogden.

OGDEN — Homicide detective Steve Haney dug through dusty stacks of old case files, spent an afternoon collecting clues from a retired investigator and employed other “good old-fashioned police work” to solve a murder that haunted an Ogden family for 52 years.

Haney last year closed the case of LeRoy Ortiz, a 19-year-old boxer who was shot and dumped in the Ogden River in March 1969. Haney gathered evidence that showed Richard Rios, now deceased, was the killer.

Haney’s dogged pursuit of the case earned him the Cold Case Coalition of Utah’s inaugural Investigator of the Year award this week.

Jason Jensen, a private investigator and a co-founder of the Salt Lake City-based coalition, said Friday that more cases today are cracked with the use of DNA and genealogical evidence, “almost like you don’t have to have real skill to solve it.”

In Haney’s instance on the Ortiz investigation, “that wasn’t the case,” Jensen said. “It took real grit and determination to see it to its end, against all odds.”

In an interview Friday, Haney recapped the case, but he wanted it known he was “almost embarrassed” to be singled out. Haney and a fellow investigator at the Weber County Attorney’s Office are leaders of the Weber County Homicide Task Force, which pulls in detectives from departments throughout the area to jump on murder cases together.

“We solve 90% of the cases because of all these young detectives who are hungry and do a fantastic job,” Haney said. “That helps keep me going and to keep doing this.”

Haney was a homicide detective with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office in 2018 when the Cold Case Coalition introduced Ortiz’s family members to Haney. “He was almost too honest with them,” Jensen said. The case was really cold. Haney didn’t even know about it, never heard of it in the sheriff’s office. But he told the Ortizes he would do what he could do.

Haney plowed into the old sheriff’s office archives and found the Ortiz case file. Ogden and Weber County detectives had worked on it, “and then the case just kind of ended,” he said.

At that point of the interview, Haney noted the inexorable workload of a homicide detective. Cold cases get pushed aside because of the demands of new cases. It is a challenge to get back again to a cold case. “If you’ve been a detective for a long time, the cases start to blend together,” he said. “It’s tough to do.”

Haney, 47, has been in law enforcement for 26 years.

In 2019, Haney jumped at the chance to join the Weber County Attorney’s Office staff because he would have more time to devote to cold cases. He took the Ortiz file with him when he made the job switch.

Haney visited Marlon Balls, a former Ogden Police Department detective, long since retired. Balls had worked on the Ortiz case. Balls also worked with Haney’s father, Art, another longtime police officer.

In 1969, police reports were not nearly as thorough as today’s, Haney said. They lacked specifics such as dates of birth, addresses, height, weight, etc. “It was kind of difficult to sift through that and actually glean what had happened,” he said.

Balls retained a crisp memory of the case and filled in a lot of the blanks about how Ortiz died and who may have killed him. That led Haney to a nationwide search for Raymond L. Norman, who police interviewed about Ortiz.

Haney found a letter from the sheriff’s office to a law enforcement agency in Louisiana asking them to find Norman if possible and give him a polygraph exam. Haney said Balls figured Norman was there when Ortiz was killed or knew who did it.

Haney eventually found a report that said Norman told Louisiana authorities that Rios had confessed to him that he had shot Ortiz and disposed of his body. “It scared him so much that he fled to Louisiana,” Haney said.

Haney tried to track down Norman. There were five Raymond L. Norman in the country, he said, and the ones still alive said they had never been to Utah.

“We felt confident due to this confession that Rios killed Ortiz and we closed the case,” Haney said.

Haney called Balls to tell him the case was closed. “I was glad I was able to deliver that news,” he said. “It still meant a lot to him, and it was a highlight for me of my career.”

Jensen said the closing of the case “was almost a miracle — that’s what the Ortiz family called it.”

“Detective Haney found all the pieces of the puzzle,” Jensen said. “It was really good old-fashioned police work.”

Haney’s selection was unanimous on the coalition board. “We want to honor those true marks of excellence, and we felt that Detective Haney displayed that mark of excellence.”

Newsletter

Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter.