Utah police find body believed to be missing 5-year-old girl
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Police say they have found a body believed to be a 5-year-old Utah girl taken from her home and killed by her uncle five days ago.
Logan Police Chief Gary Jensen said Wednesday that the body believed to be Elizabeth "Lizzy" Shelley was found in a heavily wooded area less than a block from her home.
Jensen said her 21-year-old uncle told his lawyer where the body was hidden. A positive identification is pending.
Jensen says prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for the map provided by suspect Alex Whipple.
The discovery came hours after Whipple was charged with aggravated murder, child kidnapping and other counts.
Whipple's lawyer Shannon Demler says his client knows he did something inexcusable but wanted the family to find some kind of closure.
In previous interviews with police, Whipple didn't acknowledge involvement in the disappearance but alluded frequently to "how evil the world we live in is" and talked about his struggles as a child, prosecutors said in court documents.
He also told police alcohol makes him "black out" and sometimes do "criminal things," the documents said.