Utah murder spawned inheritance legislation
At parole hearing, slaying compared to Hacking case
She hired a lawyer and helped get him released from prison after he served 25 years for robbery. They married, then divorced in 2001 but continued to live together. The couple was building a cabin in the Duchesne area in 2002 when prosecutors say Harry shot his estranged wife in the back, killing her.
The reasons vary.
At Harry's parole hearing at the Utah State Prison on Tuesday, the Board of Pardons and Parole said there were no less than four excuses for the murder. One version involves a poodle jumping on a loaded gun, causing it to go off. Thinking no one would believe him because of his lengthy criminal record, Harry panicked.
"He loaded her body in an SUV and drove around distraught," said Board of Pardons and Parole member Keith Hamilton.
Harry told police he drove back and forth along I-80 and, after several days, dumped Kramer's body in a ditch near Elko. He went to a casino and confessed to a security officer, who alerted police. Harry later pleaded guilty and received a five-years-to-life sentence in the Utah State Prison.
"His expectation is that he's going to get a long rehearing or something worse," Hamilton told the Deseret Morning News.
Kramer's family also chose not to attend, but her daughter wrote a letter to the board that Hamilton read aloud.
"My family and I miss my mom every single day of our lives," Kramer's daughter, Allison, wrote.
Kramer was not sympathetic to Harry's claims of an accidental death.
"Despite claims of being distraught and confused, sometime while he had the body he did take time, in his grief, to stop by a bordello," Hamilton said. "To comfort himself, I guess."
Harry's case spawned legislation in January after it was revealed he could collect on Kramer's estate, including property, bank accounts and even her retirement benefits.
"No daughter of a mother who has been murdered should ever have to go to court to disinherit a murderer, and no murderer should ever inherit the estate of his victim," Rep. Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, told the Deseret Morning News at the time she sponsored HB63.
The bill passed the Legislature during the recently completed 2006 session.
At Tuesday's parole hearing, Hamilton compared the murder of Rosemary Kramer to the killing of Lori Hacking. Hacking was killed by her husband, Mark Hacking, who dumped her body in the garbage. Police found it in the Salt Lake Valley landfill after a search that lasted several months. Hacking pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six-years-to-life in the Utah State Prison.
"It's a similar murder of a loved one, the dumping of a body," he said, noting that Mark Hacking will have his first parole hearing 30 years from now.
Hamilton would not say whether Lloyd Alvin Harry would ever get parole but said keeping him in prison for his natural life may be appropriate.
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
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