On the evening of March 28, 1980, 33-year-old Kaysie Sorensen was at Bill’s Lounge in Magna, Utah. Witnesses said she was intoxicated, singing along with the jukebox and dancing by herself. She left the bar shortly before 10:00 p.m. in the company of 23-year-old John Charles Bolsinger.

Sorensen was found dead the next day, March 29, 1980, in the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, firefighter Mark Anger. She was on the bed with a clock radio cord around her neck. The scene showed signs it had been staged as a burglary: Sorensen’s purse contents were scattered and a stereo was missing.

Bolsinger was arrested April 1, 1980. He gave differing accounts, at one point saying he wrapped the cord around her neck after she got weird and later testifying that Sorensen had put the cord on herself during consensual sexual activity and asked him to pull it. He was convicted of second-degree murder, but an appeal reduced the verdict to manslaughter on the ground that intent to kill had not been proven.