Fed Claim 10: "Nothing Was Hidden"
:::caution Attributed claims only No agency, contractor, university, or official named here has been found by any court to have destroyed or concealed evidence. Every item below has an ordinary institutional explanation, and several of them probably are exactly that. What this page argues is about the count, not about any single item. :::
Claim snapshot
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| The official claim | A thorough, transparent, by-the-book investigation with the ordinary restrictions any capital case carries |
| What sits against it | A long list of records, recordings, and physical evidence that stopped being available — from two independent camera systems, a crime scene, an autopsy, and a flight archive |
| Status | THE PATTERN IS THE FINDING |
The argument this page is making
Take any one item below on its own and there is a boring answer. Retention policies expire. Universities repair courtyards. Utah law restricts autopsy release. Judges issue gag orders in capital cases and always have. Bodycams fail. Flight-tracking archives roll off. Every one of those is true, and this site has published exactly that correction where it applied — including retracting a claim that a tracking page had been taken down when a control test showed the site returns the same error to any automated client.
The argument is not that any single item is proof. It is that the list is long, that the losses run in one direction, and that the things lost are consistently the things that would have answered the disputed questions. Evidence that survives at this rate in a routine case does not survive in this one.
The list
The scene. The courtyard beneath the tent was excavated and paved within days — paving timeline, September 14, dirt removed before pavers, site alteration evidence. Explosive-residue sampling of soil is not possible after the soil is gone.
Two camera systems at the surrender. Washington County told a state GRAMA hearing that a search for bodycam footage of the intake found none — despite Utah Code § 77-7a-104 requiring activation. The lobby CCTV of Robinson walking in has separately been described as no longer available. Bodycam GRAMA: no footage, missing surrender footage, sheriff video withheld.
A bodycam that died on the roof. Officer Bagley bodycam gap.
Witness video. Multiple witnesses report their phone footage was gone by the time they got home — videos deleted remotely, FBI asked to delete video, the Simmons video deletion.
Campus footage. UVU HD footage withheld, selective 4K release, rooftop video trimmed, SD cards and cameras removed.
The autopsy. Not published in open court; the medical examiner did not testify at the preliminary hearing; the report was summarized by an investigating agent. Autopsy sealed, autopsy report not public, and the Utah autopsy law that changed around it.
The transport vehicle. The SUV was destroyed — the vehicle that carried the burnt object investigators want examined.
Flight data. Records for aircraft of interest are gone from tracking archives; this site has spent real effort recovering them and distinguishing genuine removal from retention rolloff. Deleted flight records, Erika flight logs erased, Flight Data Recovery, and the discipline page What a 403 means.
Discovery and speech. Discovery and Brady disputes, gag orders and sealing, censorship of investigators.
The counterarguments, stated fairly, and taken seriously
This is the page where intellectual honesty costs the most, so here it is. A university with a shattered public space and a traumatized campus has an obvious, humane reason to repair it fast. Utah does restrict autopsy release, and the medical examiner not testifying at a preliminary hearing — where the standard is probable cause, not proof — is procedurally normal. Gag orders in capital cases are routine and protect the defendant as much as anyone. Phone video disappears because phones are phones. Flight archives genuinely do have retention boundaries, and this site has published control tests proving as much and has retracted at least one claim because of them.
The correct response to that is not to abandon the pattern argument. It is to hold it at the right strength: the pattern is a reason to compel production, not a proof of intent. That is precisely why the remedy this site argues for is four federal forced-disclosure laws modeled on the Epstein Files Transparency Act rather than a conclusion announced from a keyboard.
What would settle it
- A statutory forced-disclosure regime with a deadline and penalties — see the four laws.
- The written reports Utah Code § 77-7a-104(10) requires from every deputy whose camera was not running.
- A preservation and retention audit of every agency that held material in this case.
- Independent custody of the remaining physical evidence, held by someone with no institutional stake.