Ogden couple faces questions in fatal stabbing

OGDEN — Police have arrested a man suspected of stabbing a man to death and kidnapping his wife just hours after being released from jail.

Kurt Hayes Wangler, 37, was being questioned by Ogden police detectives late Tuesday night and was expected to be booked into the Weber County Jail for investigation of homicide in the death of 22-year-old Tony Padilla. He is also accused of abducting his wife, Katherine Ann Wangler, 27.

The couple was found in Salt Lake City just hours after police issued an endangered person alert for her. She had taken a protective order out against her husband, and police were afraid she could meet with foul play.

Ogden Police Lt. Dave Tarran said the couple was found about 7:30 p.m. Katherine Wangler was reported to be OK.

"We've got to question her and him both," Tarran said late Tuesday, declining to release details about how they were found and where.

Police were called to an apartment at 503 26th Street about 1:40 p.m. Tuesday by two people who said a man had been stabbed. Officers arrived to find the body of Padilla. Investigators said he had been stabbed several times. Police named Kurt Wangler as a suspect and said he had forced his wife to flee with him.

Kurt Wangler was arrested Feb. 9 after a domestic violence incident involving his wife. On Feb. 11, she sought a protective order. On Tuesday morning, he was released from Ogden's Kiesel facility to begin searching for a job. He had been served with the protective order papers and signed an order not to contact his wife.

Ogden Police Lt. Tony Fox says Kurt Wangler showed up at their apartment anyway, forced his way in and got into a fight with Padilla. He then fled with his wife.

Police did not specify the nature of Padilla's relationship to the Wanglers. "Obviously, he assumed Mr. Padilla was interfering with his relationship," Fox said Tuesday.

At the apartment building on the corner of Adams Avenue and 26th Street, people who lived here had to duck underneath yellow crime scene tape to get to their apartments. Neighbors said the Wanglers had just recently moved into Apartment No. 7, coming from California.

"When I saw 'em, there was no squabbling," said one man who asked that his name not be used, adding that the police had been called "at least twice."

One woman said she saw Katherine Wangler just a few days ago and described her as "really happy."

"That kind of freaks me out," she said of the crime scene investigators going in to photograph the body inside the apartment.

E-MAIL: bwinslow@desnews.com