MPD solves the murder of a 51-year-old man

When Moab police Detective Jeremy Drexler began working one of Moab’s more high-profile unsolved cases — the March 2, 1973, murder of Ann Woodward at Woody’s Tavern — he believed his prime suspect was infamous serial killer Ted Bundy.

After all, Bundy committed one of his many murders in Utah around this time, and a thorough investigation turned up no local suspects, at least none against whom guilt could be proven. But Drexler went where the facts took him: to the grave in Nebraska of Doug Chudomela, who rented a Walnut Lane travel trailer for $100 a month while working at the Rio Algom mine in the early to mid-1970s.

The skinny man, a man with a violent past, died at age 67 in 2002, nearly 30 years after police say he strangled and possibly sexually assaulted Woodward, 46, the wife of then-Woody’s owner Leslie “Woody” Woodward.

Drexler theorizes that Chudomelka, who was about 36 in 1973, was angry at Woodward for beating him at poker, but concedes it could also have been a crime of opportunity rather than anger.

She knows for a fact that the pair had been playing cards, that Chudomelka had been drinking beer and smoking Camels that evening, and that he had brutally murdered Woodward, leaving her half-clothed body on the floor between two pool tables. Her pants were off. Her right leg was turned inside out and tied in a knot. Her shirt was unbuttoned.

A pant leg, Drexler said, was used to strangle Woodward. It was still wrapped around her neck when her husband discovered her body around 6:30 a.m

“He (Chudomela) was the only person in the world who could sit in that chair,” Drexler said. He was also the only person whose DNA was found on the buttons of Woodward’s shirt and the waistband of her pants. But closer to the truth was the DNA found on the inside of her pants.

“He could explain that he had his DNA on the outside of her clothes, but not on the inside of her pants. No way,” Drexler said.

Chudomelka was one of 25 suspects. Virtually anyone who had been to the bar or was known to be a regular at Woody’s was a suspect, but Chudomelka had more evidence against himself than most. His mid-’60s Ford sedan matched the car witnesses said they saw parked next to Woodward’s truck on March 1. She was killed between 1:40 and 2:30 a.m. on March 2.

The skinny man then told investigators that he had not been to Woody’s that night but had spent the evening drinking at the Westerner Grill. His girlfriend, Joyce, provided him with an alibi, telling police that Chudomela returned home around 2 a.m.

“He could have easily killed her and gone home at 2 a.m., but the bartender at the Westerner told police that Chudomela was not home at all on the night of March 1.

On July 3, 1973, a skinny woman was arrested on charges of domestic violence. Joyce then told police that he was Woodward’s killer and that she would tell the district attorney about the murder.

She later retracted those words and refused to say anything except to admit that Chudomelka returned home at 4:10 a.m. on March 2, not 2 a.m.

Thirty-three years later, when former police chief Mike Navarre reopened the case in 2006, she still refused to talk about what she knew.

The case stalled until Drexler showed up, armed with the tools of 21st-century science and law enforcement. But the detective concedes that the murder was the fault of a former police chief who led the investigation in 1973.

A policeman ahead of his time

If former Moab Police Chief Melvin Dalton were alive, he would have known that the steps he took then would help solve Woodward’s murder. Dalton went to his grave thinking that he had not done enough to find Woodward’s killer.

“He was a forward-thinking man,” Drexler said.

Indeed, Dalton has taken a number of steps in this direction. First, a few days after the murder, on March 6, he asked the Chudomela for permission to pull hair from his body and received it. “He took them from the navel, chest, pubic area and head and carefully kept them as evidence. He took some Camel cigarette butts he found in an ashtray and preserved them. He asked the FBI to examine the hair and see if there was saliva on the cigarettes to determine the suspect’s blood type.

“This case was based on hairs that Dalton pulled in 1973,” Drexler continued. I have no idea how he knew we would be able to do this today. Dalton made it a lot easier for us in that regard.

Dalton was so progressive in his thinking that when he sent the FBI the suspects’ fingerprints and cigarette butts, the FBI returned the box unopened, with a letter that basically said, “That’s a great idea, but we don’t have the technology to make it possible.”

Times have changed, and technology is now used to convict criminals – or eliminate them as suspects. Indeed, technology has led to the exoneration of hundreds of incarcerated people in recent years.

Thanks to Dalton’s work, the case was solved without the need to exhume Chudomelka’s body.

Although Dalton conducted the investigation meticulously, the way it was done 51 years ago muddied the waters. There was no records management system in place back then, and the evidence, though “very carefully collected and ready to go,” as Drexler put it, was eventually removed from the Grand County Sheriff’s Office evidence room and placed in an annex, partly because of its age and partly to better preserve it.

When Drexler discovered the hidden evidence, the case opened up. “It was 50 years and six months later, but we got there and I knew we had it,” Drexler said. “I called my wife and told her I had evidence in the back of my truck, and I got really emotional. It was a treasure trove.”

Drexler said that Chudomelka not only murdered Woodward, but also took $75 from the cash register and $50 from his left pants pocket, which she had won from him playing poker. Two days later, he paid the rent with five $20 bills. Drexler said he has no idea whether he paid the rent with stolen money or not. It is not known, but it is a possibility.

He said there were tissues in every pocket of Woodward except his left pants pocket. On the floor next to his pants were a handkerchief and eight dimes.

Chudomelka and the other suspects were asked to take polygraph tests. Chudomelka agreed, but they couldn’t administer the test because Chudomelka was intoxicated when he arrived. “They were looking at Doug,” Drexler said. “They just couldn’t get him.”

Eventually, Chudomela and a handful of other suspects stopped talking to police and asked for lawyers to represent their interests. He was later convicted of cattle rustling in San Juan County and served probation before leaving the region.

Modern techniques

Drexler, using modern techniques, managed to separate the 29 pieces of evidence that made up the original case and divide them into approximately 80 pieces of evidence, each with its own story to tell.

When The Times-Independent interviewed Drexler in November 2022, he said he was confident he could solve the case if given the resources. He was indeed given significant help, and while he acknowledges that he was the driving force behind solving the case, he also said that many people in Moab, from his colleagues at the MPD and Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins to people who were around in 1973 all the way to the FBI, played a key role in finding Ann Woodward’s killer.

Now, both the MPD and the sheriff’s office are poised to open more unsolved cases, and once Woodward’s case is officially closed, Chudomelka’s fingerprints and DNA will be sent to federal databases to possibly determine other crimes he may have committed in the 29 years since Woodward’s murder.