2 women are slain in Ogden

OGDEN — A man killed two transient women early Sunday morning and then walked into the police station and turned himself in, investigators say.

Jacob Daniel Ethridge, 31, of Roy, was interviewed by police and booked into the Weber County Jail for investigation of two counts of first-degree homicide Sunday afternoon.

A tenant at 2461 Adams Ave. found the body of a woman outside his back door as he was leaving his apartment around 6:30 a.m. Detectives were investigating the death when Ethridge walked into the police station, said Ogden Police Lt. Mike Ashment.

Ethridge led police to the body of another woman in a vacant apartment at 2579 Adams Ave., about a block away from the first slaying.

Police say Ethridge shot the first victim in the head. Investigators were still processing the scene of the second slaying and had not released a cause of death Sunday.

Ogden Police Lt. Scott Conley said officers are still trying to identify the women. The first victim was about 40 years old and the second was in her 20s, police said. Both "appear to have led a transient lifestyle."

There was no indication that the two victims knew each other. Police said Ethridge came in contact with the women through a "chance meeting" early Sunday morning.

"He came across them through his travels," Conley said.

Lilia Anguiano, a resident of the Peery Apartments, where the first body was found, said she was awakened by loud voices sometime between 2:30 and 3 a.m.

"I heard some people arguing outside the building ... then heard a really loud sound," Anguiano said. "It didn't really sound like a gunshot ... it was sort of muffled."

A lot of people in the building knew the victim, Anguiano said. The woman was not a tenant but frequently visited another person who lived there.

A woman who is a former resident of the Peery Apartments who was checking on a friend there late Sunday morning said that she moved out of the building in April after a man entered her apartment and raped her at gunpoint.

Police never made an arrest in the case, and the woman said she wondered if the man who raped her was also responsible for the slayings. The Deseret News does not name victims of rape.

The rape is a "point of interest" in the investigation, Conley said, "but right now, we're trying to develop all the leads on the homicide. We'll look at that at a later time."

In recent years, the building had become unsafe, overrun with addicts and prostitutes, the woman said.

"This building just became a bad place to be," the woman said.

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Contributing: Aaron Falk

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E-mail: araymond@desnews.com

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