During 2005 a string of suspects have been indicted in an investigation into the 1995 disappearance and presumed murder of Spanish Fork teen Kiplyn Davis. The latest arrest occured last Friday, as reported in Utah County's
Daily Herald:
Christopher Neal Jeppson, 28, of West Jordan, was arrested Friday on charges of lying to a federal grand jury... with six counts of perjury and three counts of making false statements to the FBI...
Though this story has failed to make national news, several nationally known GOP pundits and politicians have been tracking the grand jury investigation carefully from its inception, and were quick to claim vindication for Jeppson, and others similarly accused.
continued...
Some additional info from the Herald's report:
[Jeppson] said no one ever told him they were involved in Davis's disappearance or anything about disposing of her body. Nor had he ever told anyone he was involved in her disappearance or disposing of her body, he told the grand jury. Based on the testimony of others, the grand jury says he lied under oath and to [FBI investigators]....
Three other men also have been charged with lying about the 10-year-old case:
Timmy Olsen, 28 of Spanish Fork, was arrested in September and faces 20 counts of perjury in a trial set for Jan. 9.
Garry Blackmore, 25, was arrested in August on charges of perjury and lying to an FBI agent about asking an unnamed person for help moving a woman's body. He is in jail pending a Jan. 17 trial.
Scott Brunson, 28, of Spanish Fork, was arrested in April and accused of conspiring with Timmy Olsen to fix a false alibi and lying to the FBI and the grand jury. He is free pending a Jan. 23 trial.
No one has been charged in Davis's presumed death, and her body has not been found.
Here are some of the responses coming from the right...
Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson (R-TX) had laid out markers prior to this latest indictment, on Meet the Press:
I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that it says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime.
William Safire, NYT Op-Ed emeritus, speaking on Meet The Press:
The most important single fact that emerged from the [Jeppson] indictment is what was not in it. This whole thing started as an investigation of the violation of a law. And the law that was violated was, "You must not [murder]." And what the [prosecutor] found is, that law was not broken.
David Brooks, Mr. Safire's successor at the NYT, also on Meet The Press:
...the American people have to know that the wave of hysteria, the wave of paranoia, the wave of charges and allegations about [Jeppson, Olsen] and everybody else so far is unsupported by the facts.
Charles Krauthammer, politico-psychologist, on Fox News Sunday:
Nobody was indicted on that [murder] charge, the original charge that sparked the investigation. If there were a crime committed or at least a suspicion of it, this prosecutor would obviously have indicted someone. He did not.
Bill Kristol, Chairman of PNAC (of Lewis Libby fame), wrote in the Weekly Standard:
[The] investigation came to an underwhelming conclusion with the indictment...not for any underlying crime but for impeding the investigation through perjury and false statements...But let's not forget that [Jeppson] has not yet had his day in court.
Right wing bloggers also pounced on this latest indictment as further proof that no crime was ever committed in the Kiplyn Davis case. They point primarily to the investigator's failure to recover Davis's body, but also highlight alleged lies being told to the media by the victim's father, Richard Davis, who has stated publicly, "I think Kiplyn wanted to be popular, wanted to know people, and things just got out of hand. I think she was raped, beaten. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." That story began to unravel immediately under the sharp scrutiny of conservative bloggers who demanded to know how Davis could know his daughter was raped when her body is still missing - that is, unless he himself played some role in the crime. Furthermore, by combing the web for scraps of information, bloggers were able to cast doubt on the notion that Kiplyn wanted "to be popular." For example, they have found a 1995 photograph that shows Kiplyn wearing a hairstyle which by today's standards is considered to be lacking in style and out-of-date. Additionally, a search of Social Security Administration online databases proved that in 1995 the name "Kiplyn" was not even among the top 1000 most popular girl names, suggesting that if Davis were seeking popularity she would have requested a name change. No evidence of such a request exists.
Subsequent press accounts suggest that the investigation is ongoing and the federal prosecutor believes more charges are likely to be filed in the future. According to assistant U.S. attorney Richard Lambert, "It's really the grand jury that made the difference."
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