The Utah squatter who was accused of shooting the 19-year-old teenager on his farm back in 2012 has admitted to having shot him on a rainy day. He admitted Wednesday to second-degree homicide.
James Brenner, 60, was suspected of murdering Dylan Rounds for many years. However, there was very little proof.
Rounds’s mom Candice Cooley had said, “It was amazing that they were able to get the video from it.”
Brenner killed another Marylander in the 1980s, during a dispute at work. Brenner is already a felon, and his firearms are banned for life.
The transient killer, in exchange for a reduced charge and a drastically shorter prison sentence, revealed Rounds’s location. First-degree felony aggravated murder was reduced to second-degree felony murder.
A case of assault and an accusation of desecration were dismissed by the prosecution.
The state charges and the federal conviction for possession of firearms will still require him to serve many years in prison. Prosecutors insist that the sentences should be served sequentially, not simultaneously.
It is amazing what people can accomplish with their tireless effort.
He stated that over 30 law enforcement agencies from Utah, as well as other states, were involved in the case. The family of Rounds also offered a reward to volunteers for spending weeks searching the rural area, which was dotted with caves.
In May 2022, Rounds vanished after telling his grandmother that he had to park his grain trailer under an awning when it started to rain.
Brenner squatted in a trailer he set up near the shelter without permission from its landowner.
Brenner confessed to the murder, and the FBI located his remains in Lucin. The teen was living on a farm in Lucin, which is about 200 miles from Salt Lake City.
His mother revealed to him that he was an Idaho native who grew up as a farmer in Idaho. When he died, he had just planted his first crop.
He didn’t play video games or use drugs.
Cooley calls on Utah voters to demand harsher punishments for violent criminals.