Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Darrel Eugene Choate, 74, is charged with murder in a 1972 cold case.
- DNA testing linked Choate to the 1972 murder of Gregory Dahl Nickell, police say.
- Choate has a criminal record and was identified through surreptitious DNA collection.
VERNAL — More than 50 years after he was killed, criminal charges were filed Friday in connection with the 1972 shooting and burning death of a 21-year-old Army soldier from Vernal.
Darrel Eugene Choate, 74, was charged in 8th District Court with murder, a first-degree felony.
On Nov. 26, 1972, 21-year-old Gregory Dahl Nickell was shot multiple times and his car was set on fire while his body was still inside. Nickell's date that night, an 18-year-old woman, was kidnapped and held hostage for several hours and raped multiple times.
In 2022 — on the 50th anniversary of Nickell's death — the Uintah County Sheriff's Office announced that through extensive DNA testing, Daniel Arthur Bell, who used to live in the Uintah Basin, was one of the two men involved in the heinous crime. Bell, however, died in 2019 at the age of 88 of unknown causes and was never arrested for Nickell's death.
At the time of the announcement, it was hinted that investigators also had promising information about the second man, who was younger.
Now, according to charging documents filed Friday, after more DNA testing, "Darrel Eugene Choate is a direct DNA match for one of the suspects who had murdered Greg Nickell and raped (the woman). This direct DNA match is proof that Darrel Eugene Choate is one of the two suspects and is not just a close familial match to one of the suspects."
Choate, who lives in Tooele, has an "extensive criminal record which did include sexual offenses in Price. Darrel Eugene Choate has also made statements in records that he believes he is able to read minds," the charges state.
The crime
Early on the morning of Nov. 26, 1972, Nickell — who had recently come home from the U.S. Army — was on a date with an 18-year-old woman. The two had parked their vehicle at a scenic overlook along Highway 40 when someone knocked on the car window. The man claimed he had been in a crash and asked for a ride back into Vernal, according to the sheriff's office. Nickell agreed to help.
Moments later, Nickell was shot at least three times.
"(The woman) stated that Nickell had attempted to shield her from the barrage of bullets and that she believed some of those shots had been intended for her," the charges state.
The gunman then drove Nickell's car with Nickell and the woman still inside and a second man soon began to follow. They went to the area now known as Brough Reservoir where the vehicle was set on fire with Nickell still inside, according to the charges.
The woman was then held hostage for the next four to six hours and raped twice, the second time near Duchesne, the charges state. She was then released.
When police started testing DNA in 2019 and came up with Bell as a suspect, they traveled to Yakima, Washington, to talk to his widow. They learned that before his death, Bell was convicted of rape in Oregon in 1987 and that his friend "Gene" was involved in a rape in Washington and the last time he had seen him was in the 1980s or '90s, according to the charges.
Investigators then learned that Choate also had ties to Ballard and Price.
"A surreptitious DNA sample was collected from Darrel Eugene Choate by law enforcement who had responded to his residence on an unrelated call for service. The surreptitious DNA sample was then sent to the Utah State Crime Lab for comparison against the DNA sample of the unknown male suspect" collected in 1972, and determined it was a match, the charges state.
