Her car was later found abandoned in the foothill’s east of town.
She disappeared two months after testifying against Douglas Anderson Lovell at his preliminary hearing.
She had accused Lovell of kidnapping her in April 1985 and taking her to his home in Clearfield and raping her.
In December 1985 Lovell was convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault based on her testimony from the preliminary hearing.
He was sentenced to two terms of 15 years to life in prison.
He was long the prime suspect in Joyce's disappearance.
Investigators discovered that he'd twice hired friends from prison to murder her between the time of his arrest and the time of the preliminary hearing.
Lovell's wife agreed to wear a wire when she went to visit him in prison in 1991 and 1992.
He made incriminating statements about Joyce's disappearance.He said that he could get the death penalty for the crimes he had committed.
In 1993, on the day his murder trial was scheduled to begin, he pleaded guilty to Joyce's murder in a deal for prosecutors not to seek the death penalty.
He stated he broke into her apartment while she was sleeping and threatened her with a knife.
She then pleaded for her life and promised to drop the sex assault case against him.
Then he drugged her with Valium, packed a suitcase of her belongings to make it look as if she'd left on her own.
He then took her to a canyon outside of town and strangled her.
He said he buried her body in a shallow grave in the Ogden Valley, but her body was never found.
Since he could not provide the body, he was sentenced to death in August 1993He attempted to withdraw his guilty plea weeks later.
In September 2010, the Utah Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence.
In April 2015, Lovell was convicted of murder at trial, sentenced to death again and returned to death row.
Joyce was declared legally dead in 1992.
At the time of her disappearance she was 5'5" tall, 120 lbs, with strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes.
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