In 1966, two 18-year-old gas station attendants were kidnapped in Kearns and stabbed to death. The bodies of Steven Shea and Michael Holtz were discovered stripped of their clothing in a remote location. The brutality of the crimes caught Salt Lake residents off guard. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have robberies and murders in Salt Lake City at the time,” says Salt Lake Police historian Steve “Duffy” Diamond, who passed away in 2015. “It was the harsh nature of these killings that got the attention.”
On a wintry night of that year, two men—Myron Lance and Walter Kelbach—were drinking at Lally’s Tavern on the west side of Salt Lake City, on the corner of 400 South and 900 West, now a vacant brownstone. The bartender was chatting with them about the two bodies that had been found.
“The bartender (Lloyd Graven) said something like, ‘I wish I had the guys who killed those kids right here. I’d teach them a lesson,’” says Diamond. “Lance and Kelbach told him he had his chance, brought out their guns, and started blazing away.”
Fred Lillie, 21, James Sisemore, 47, and Beverly Mace, 34, were gunned down that night at the bar. Lance and Kelbach emptied the register and fled. They were captured later that evening at a police roadblock. The investigation uncovered that they had killed Shea and Holtz and that, before the tavern shootings, Lance and Kelbach had shot a cab driver, Grant Strong. The final body count was six.
“It was like sitting in a foxhole at the battlefront,” Graven told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1966. “He turned on me and shot point-blank. The concussion of the shot knocked me down. He leaned over the bar and shot at me lying on the floor. How he missed, I’ll never know.”
Lance and Kelbach were convicted and sentenced to death in April 1967. (Lance chose the firing squad; Kelbach decided he would hang.) But in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, and their sentences were reduced to life in prison. After the verdict, the duo gave a startling prison house interview for NBC.
Lance said, “I haven’t any feelings toward the victims.” Kelbach added, “I don’t mind people getting hurt because I just like to watch it.”
After capital punishment was reinstated, the state again sought the death penalty for the duo, but a Fifth Circuit Court judge rejected the state’s arguments because of the case’s age.
“They were without remorse,” Diamond says. “They were so cold-blooded. It shocked everyone.”
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In 1968, Lance attacked a prison guard with a sharpened spoon. In that same year, the duo escaped with seven other inmates but were captured in Idaho. During the ’70s, Kelbach attempted to adopt a younger, male parolee. His request was denied. Lance died in prison in 2010 of natural causes. Kelbach passed away in 2018 after serving 51 years.
Interested in learning more Utah lore? Read about Utah’s “Black Dahlia”
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