There are families in Wasatch County who have been waiting years for answers. Some of them stopped expecting any.
That’s not okay.
The Problem Nobody Was Talking About
When serious criminals — people wanted for homicide, child abuse, violent crimes — fled Wasatch County, there was no formal system to go after them. No list. No dedicated plan. No one whose job it was to keep pushing.
They just disappeared. And the cases went cold.
It wasn’t that nobody cared. It’s that there was no structure in place to make sure someone was always caring — always pushing — always working to bring those cases to a close.
What That Means for Real People
Think about what a cold case actually is. It’s a family that buried someone and still doesn’t have the full story. It’s a victim who can’t move on because the person who hurt them is still out there. It’s justice that got deferred so long it started to feel like it was never coming.
In a county like Wasatch — where most people know each other, where communities are tight — that silence hits differently. These aren’t statistics. They’re neighbors.
What Sheriff Rigby Built
Starting in 2019, Sheriff Rigby established a formal Most Wanted list — posted inside the sheriff’s office and kept top of mind for every deputy on the floor. For the first time, there was a name on a wall and a plan behind every name.
Beyond the list, the office developed a strategic apprehension plan — a documented, active approach to tracking down individuals who had fled the county, sometimes the state, sometimes the country. Each cold case got a plan. Each victim’s family got a commitment that their case wasn’t forgotten.
The cases being pursued aren’t minor. They involve homicide. Child abuse. Serious violent crimes. The kind of cases where closure isn’t just procedural — it changes lives.
The Work Isn’t Finished
Cold cases by definition take time. Some of these individuals have been running for years. Some cases need more evidence, more interviews, more patience.
But the difference between then and now is that there’s a system. There’s accountability. There’s a deputy who wakes up knowing that case is their responsibility — and a sheriff who built the structure to make sure it stays that way.
Sheriff Rigby’s plan going forward is to keep those resources in place, keep the pressure on, and make sure that no victim in Wasatch County ever again has to wonder if anyone is still working their case.
Because in Wasatch County, we don’t forget.
Sheriff Jared Rigby is running for re-election as Wasatch County Sheriff. See his full plan at sheriffjaredrigby.org.
