Answered prayer: 21 years after her daughter was murdered, Martin City mother learns that a suspect has been arrested

By KRISTI ALBERTSON

The Daily Inter Lake

Vicki English has spent the last two decades praying for answers.

Twenty-one years ago in March, her daughter was murdered in Salt Lake City. For 21 years, English has sought justice, waiting for Tiffany's killer to be found. For 21 years, her prayers went unanswered.

Until now.

On Jan. 12, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson called English at her home in Martin City. Police had arrested an Arizona man for Tiffany's murder, he said. New DNA evidence allegedly linked him to the crime.

"I just couldn't believe it," English said. "It was like, oh my God, our prayers have been answered. It was very exciting, very … relieved, that's the word."

English hoped police would find her daughter's killer before anything happened to her parents.

"I wanted it solved before my mom and dad died. My mom's real sick, so the timing was good," she said. "They took it so hard. We have been praying, all of us; we never quit praying. We never gave up hope, never."

After talking with Anderson, English called her three living daughters. They'd been praying just as hard and just as long as she had.

"The kids were shocked," she said. "I told them, sit down. I've got something to tell you."

TIFFANY Hambleton was 14 when she died.

She was an eighth-grader, still a child, "but thinking she wasn't, like all 14-year-olds do," English said.

She was her mother's "baby," the youngest of four daughters, but she wasn't at all spoiled, English said.

"She was a little tomboy. She loved to get dirty," she said. "She had that scraggly hair - I couldn't keep her looking like a girl."

"She was free-spirited and fun-loving," English added. "She was spunky. She wasn't one of these well-behaved, prissy girls. She wasn't one of those.

"If she got in trouble, which she did sometimes, she would just 'fess up to it."

Tiffany was a popular girl, but her tender heart made her a champion for youths who weren't.

"She was popular, but she would go for the underdog and want to help those kids," English said. "She had a lot of compassion.

"She loved little kids and animals. She probably would've had a lot of kids, because she loved kids. I think she would've went to college, but I think her goal would've been to be a mom, to be a good mom."

School came easily to Tiffany, English said. She was supposed to be moved up to the ninth grade, but she disappeared about a week before the promotion would have taken place.

"She was good at English. She was an excellent speller." English paused a moment, then shrugged. "She was really good at everything.

"She was just a good girl, very good girl. Very smart. I'm sure she would've went to college and made something of herself."

Tiffany might have become a dancer, English said. "She loved music, loved to dance. She always had the radio on, listening to music and dancing."

HER DAUGHTER especially loved rock music. The last time English saw her alive was Feb. 17, 1986, when Tiffany left with some friends to see Kiss in concert.

"I really didn't want her to go, but somebody bought her a ticket, so I let her go," she said. "I thought that one of the girls' fathers was going to bring her home."

Instead, Tiffany told her friend's father that she had a ride. She left a post-concert party with a man named Dan Peterson, then 23, whom English had never met.

She was last seen with Peterson in the early-morning hours of Feb. 18. Peterson later told police he was taking Tiffany home to her mother when he ran out of gas. He said he last saw the girl walking north.

For six weeks, English waited and prayed, hoping for news of her daughter. It came March 31, when Tiffany's body, naked from the waist down, was discovered in a ditch. According to the autopsy, she died from multiple stab wounds to her neck and chest.

For whatever reason, Salt Lake police failed to perform rape and stomach-content analyses. A number of suspects, including Peterson, were questioned, but none was charged. The case went cold.

It was unbearable for English, knowing the person who'd murdered her daughter was free.

"I just wanted to get out of Salt Lake," she said. "It was a nightmare there."

ABOUT three years after Tiffany died, English moved to Hungry Horse with then-husband George, whom she'd met shortly after the murder.

"He's been one of my major supporters," she said. "He brought me up here. His family had property in Glacier National Park, and he had lived here prior. I just loved the mountains. I just fell in love with that."

But the beauty of the area wasn't enough to heal her heart. In the early 1990s, English contacted the parents of three other Salt Lake girls whose murders were unsolved. The victims' families wanted police to reopen the investigations, but they couldn't persuade them without help from a lawyer.

A number of people recommended civil rights attorney Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson. When English and the other parents contacted him, he agreed to take their cases.

"He's a good one," English said. "He took my case on pro bono. I asked him, 'How much am I gonna owe you?' And he said, 'You can't afford me.'"

He worked on the case for years without success. Finally, after becoming the mayor of Salt Lake City, Anderson was able to use his influence to get the cases reopened. A fresh investigation began in 2003, shortly after Salt Lake police came under fire for their handling of the Elizabeth Smart abduction.

"It wouldn't have happened without Rocky. He had the pull," English said. "It was him saying, 'Come on. We can't let this die out.'"

New officers at the Salt Lake City Police Department also were integral, she said. In the 1990s, three officers lost their jobs after criticizing the department's investigations of the four murders.

"They got fired for sticking up for us," English said. "I give a lot of credit to Detective Cordon Parks. He really went after it."

PROCESSING DNA evidence was an important part of the newly reopened investigation. Police might not have had evidence from a rape or stomach-content analysis, but they did have traces of semen from Tiffany's shirt and skin taken from under her fingernails.

Sorenson Forensics, a private laboratory that opened in Salt Lake last November, analyzed the evidence using new DNA-testing technology. The method singles out the Y chromosome and can match DNA with its male owner with more than 99 percent accuracy.

"There were two girls that really, really worked on it very, very hard," English said. She declined to give their names, but said, "I got their phone numbers, and I'm going to call them and thank them. Without them, we would have no evidence."

The lab's results allegedly tied Peterson, now a resident of Glendale, Ariz., to the crime. He was charged Jan. 12 with first-degree felony murder. On Thursday, he was extradited to Salt Lake City, where he'll remain in jail on a $1 million bond.

English hopes his arrest will serve as a warning to other would-be criminals. It's the reason she's telling her story, she said.

"Maybe … that will deter them from thinking they can go out and do stuff like that," she said. "Because they will get caught. The way DNA is getting so sophisticated, they better think twice."

Peterson may be arraigned as early as today in 3rd District Court. When he goes to trial, English will be there.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," she said. "I'm kind of stressed about it, but I still want to look at him."

She was surprised when she saw Peterson's photo for the first time.

"He looks normal. You can't tell by looking at him," she said. "I don't even know how he can live with that for 20 years and have a normal life.

"How can you do this? How can you live with this?"

IT'S NOT something a person can just forget. English lights a candle for her daughter every day atop the chest of drawers she has turned into a shrine. It's a tradition she began shortly after Tiffany's murder.

A large photograph of a girl with brown, feathered hair, a pretty smile and her mother's big, brown eyes anchors the memorial. It's Tiffany at 13, English explained, taken about a year before she died.

Fourteen-year-old Tiffany smiles out of a smaller, oval-shaped frame. Baby Tiffany's new, squinty eyes gaze out of another. Her student ID card from Glendale Intermediate School shows an eighth-grader with no reason to dread school-picture day.

The 23rd psalm is printed on a card from Tiffany's funeral, reminding English, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." A small statue of Mary watches over the shrine, a gentle sentry with folded hands, a symbol of English's Catholic faith.

A small note English rediscovered a few years ago is the memorial's most recent addition.

"Hi Mom. I'll be home soon. I luv you. Tiffany," is printed across the top of a newspaper clipping. The bubbly, girlish writing stands in sharp contrast to the date printed in neat, rigid font: Feb. 5, 1986, less than two weeks before Tiffany disappeared.

Inexplicably, the note wasn't immediately thrown out. At one time, it would have been just another scrap of paper. Now it's a treasured possession, a tangible reminder of a compassionate girl who loved children, dancing and rock and roll.

But memories are only shadows, and not even closure will heal the wounds of the last two decades. English may never get all the answers she seeks, and she'll never recover the daughter she lost.

"One of my daughters told me, 'Everyone says, you should be so happy, and I am. But Mom, we still don't have Tiffany back.'" English paused, then repeated softly, "We still don't have Tiffany back."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com