Murder suspect may have tried to cover his tracks, police suggest.
Robert Stevens
Managing editor
4-4-2017
MT. PLEASANT—A Mt. Pleasant mother of two children is dead, the victim of suspected domestic assault by her live-in fiancée who, based on evidence shared by police, may have tried to cover up the crime.
Kammy Edmunds, 34, died of blunt force trauma to the head, according to Mt. Pleasant police who discovered her body in her home Friday afternoon, March 31.
The next day, authorities arrested Anthony Christensen, 35, of Mt. Pleasant, and booked him into the Sanpete County Jail on suspicion of criminal homicide, a first-degree felony; obstructing justice, a first-degree felony; and desecration of a human body, a third-degree felony. At press time, the Sanpete County Attorney’s Office was screening the case for formal charges.
According to a probably cause (PC) statement prepared by Mt. Pleasant police, the investigation began at about 12:45 p.m. when Sanpete County Dispatch received a call from distraught man at Edmunds’ home,
Sgt. Daniel Mower responded to the home. There Christensen directed him to the bathroom where Mower found Edmunds, already dead.
According to the PC statement, Christensen told Mower that he, Edmunds and a friend had been drinking the night before at the house. Christensen said he had gone to bed while Edmunds and the friend stayed up.
Christensen told police that when he had awaken the next day, Edmunds was not in bed. He claimed he had discovered Edmunds’ car was gone and then had found Edmunds dead and bleeding in the bathroom.
According to the PC statement from Mower, Christensen him he feared Edmunds had left the house, crashed her car and walked home.
Sanpete County sheriff’s deputies later found Edmunds’ vehicle in an area east of Mt. Pleasant. It appeared to have been driven into a dry creek bed near Power Plant Park.
According to the PC statement, investigators used cell phone records to confirm that Christensen’s cell phone had been present at the location of the crashed car during the time he had told police he was sleeping off the previous night’s drinking.
When Edmunds’ phone was inspected, authorities discovered it had been erased or factory reset approximately within the previous 24 hours.
Officers investigated both the home where Edmunds body was found and the scene where the car was located.
According to the PC statement, officers found muddy footprints in the bathroom had been made by shoes belonging to Christensen, and that the footprints had been made prior to Edmunds bleeding over them. The shoes themselves were found to have blood on them.
Investigators also discovered what the PC statement described as “a path through the living room that appeared to be light, but still visible blood.” When the carpet was examined, it showed evidence of a recent attempt to clean up stains.
In the PC statement, Mower also reported finding marks in another room “that suggested a person was dragged in the area.”
Police said Christensen had previous convictions in Wyoming for child abuse and assault and battery of a household member.
Edmunds was the mother of Franky Lopez, 12, and Sophya Lopez, 4. According to friends, both have autism.
In reaction to the death, Edmunds’ friends and family took to social media en masse. They launched a GoFundMe crowd-funding campaign to help with funeral costs. It can be found at http://www.gofundme.com/kammy-edmunds-funeral-funds.
Tory McArthur, Edmunds’ longtime friend, said, “She was a great person who would have done anything for anybody.”
McArthur recalled a time when he and his family had car trouble driving through Nephi Canyon in the middle of the night. Edmunds came to their rescue.
“When I heard [about her death], my stomach dropped,” he said. “I was in shock. I had just been talking about her an hour before I found out.”
Services for Edmunds will be Saturday at noon at the Spring City LDS Chapel. Visitation will be Friday, 6-8 p.m. at Rasmussen Mortuary in Mt. Pleasant, and 9:30-10:30 a.m. Saturday at the chapel.
