Attorney General's Office closes Utah unsolved-homicide Web site

A Web site that provided pictures and information on unsolved homicides, unidentified bodies found in Utah and missing residents has been taken down after the original Web manager quit paying for it.

The 4-year-old site, www.utap.org, was part of the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project, a group of various experts in state and local law enforcement.

The site was maintained by Mike King, an employee of the state Attorney General's Office who left in August 2002. King said after he left the office, he continued paying the Web hosting group to keep up the site as a "courtesy," although he was not receiving financial reimbursement or updated information about the cases featured on the site from the Attorney General's Office.

"Some of those cases have been solved," he said. He notified the Web hosting group he no longer would pay for the site, and the site was taken down in December.

"Basically everybody was surprised" when officials entered the blank gray site and found the case information gone, attorney general's spokesman Paul Murphy said.

The office, which maintains it owns the site, allowed King to use his personal server to access and edit the page outside of work, Murphy said.

It is unclear why the Attorney General's Office did not hire a new Web master. "There's a lot of issues I can't go into, mainly because they're personnel issues," Murphy said.

King now works for the state Department of Public Safety in homeland security. He hopes the Attorney General's Office will pick up where he left off.

"We're trying to get a UTAP Web site back up again. In the meantime, local law enforcement agencies and our investigators will be glad to work" on the crimes the site featured, Murphy said.

The site was for law enforcement and the public. But Meghan Laudie, whose mother was featured as a missing person on the site, did not know it was down.

Janis Marie Stavros was listed as a missing person from Salt Lake County since Jan. 3, 2001. Laudie wonders whether the site really affected the search for her mother.

The only people who go on those sites are the people who have missing loved ones, she said.

---

E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com