Officials say victim had received threats

The slaying of a 21-year-old woman at Jordanelle State Park was premeditated, state officials said Monday.

Ashley Sparks was shot four times and was left near a building at the park Friday, according to jail documents and Utah State Parks officials. She was found by two park visitors who called 911. Sparks was taken to a local hospital but died a short time later.

On Sunday, 22-year-old Joshua Binkerd and 19-year-old Christopher Alvey were arrested for investigation of aggravated murder and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail. The men were arrested separately in Taylorsville and Salt Lake City.

Sparks, Binkerd and Alvey were all acquaintances, said Sid Groll, law enforcement director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Sparks had received several threats over the past few weeks, Groll said. Some of those threats may have involved a gun, he said.

"She expressed concerns about her safety," Groll said.

Those concerns were expressed to friends and family members but not law enforcement officers, he said. Pamela Larsen, Sparks' mother, told KSL-TV that she became concerned about her daughter when no one had heard from her after Christmas.

She had a phone conversation with one of the arrested men before her daughter was discovered.

"I wanted to know where she was, and he said he had no idea and that he wouldn't do anything like that to her, that he hadn't done anything. But he told me that if she snitched on them, that he would, and that was out of his own mouth," Larsen told KSL.

Groll could not confirm a motive for the slaying. During a news conference Monday, he addressed rumors that Sparks was working as an informant for police, which may have led to her being shot.

"We cannot substantiate she was an informant," he said.

But Larsen told KSL that her daughter, who had been involved with drugs in the past, was trying to turn her life around and was trying to get information against Alvey and Binkerd that would "put them away."

"They knew directly what they were doing when they did it, and it just makes me ill thinking she was left all alone and scared and wondering, I'm sure just wishing that her mom was there," Larsen said. "She was left by herself bleeding and in the cold, you know, and I don't think they deserve any mercy for that."

Based on conversations with family and friends, investigators were able to identify and track down the possible shooters in the case. Alvey is believed to be the shooter, Groll said.