Part 1 – The Woody’s Tavern Murder

In 1973, Ann Woodward was murdered at Woody’s Tavern, the bar she owned with her husband. One night after closing up, she didn’t come home. The Moab Police and the Grand County Sheriff got involved. Both departments bungled the investigation, kicking off a slew of mishaps that would lead to the disappearance of a crucial box of evidence for over half a century, until recently.

This fall, a criminal investigator with the Moab Police found that missing evidence in a storage unit of the Grand County Sheriff’s Department. The evidence is now at the Utah Department of Public Safety’s forensics lab, and thanks to DNA testing, the investigator is pretty certain he’ll be able to name a culprit once he gets the results back.

In this episode, we talk to Jeremy Drexler of the Moab Police about the new investigation.

Photo: Portrait of Ann Woodward, courtesy of the Utah Department of Public Safety.

The music in today’s show was produced by Maxim Novak.