The Utah Pond Discovery and the Families Still Waiting

There’s a stillness to certain places that makes them feel like they’re holding their breath.

In West Valley City, Utah, just beyond a nondescript stretch of road framed by office buildings and golf course green, there’s a pond that looks like it belongs to no one. People pass by it every day: commuters, delivery trucks, the casual jogger. It blends into the background of suburbia. You wouldn’t look twice.

But on March 25, 2025, a fisherman stopped there, maybe looking for a little quiet. What he found instead was a human skull. And then bones. Scattered. Settled. Like they’d been waiting there all along.

That discovery shifted everything. Not just for investigators, but for the families of Utah’s missing. For the mothers and sisters who’ve spent years staring down silence, bracing for the worst kind of answer.

Emily Nardacci was one of the first to hear. When your sister is missing, you develop a radar for every headline, every police update, every whisper of an unidentified body. Anne Elliott disappeared from Salt Lake City nearly five years ago. She was 37 years old. The last time anyone saw her was near 2100 South and 500 East, walking away from the life she was trying so hard to fix.

The pond now swarming with law enforcement and search crews is just six miles from where Anne vanished.

Emily has learned to manage her expectations. She’s practiced at it. But the weight of this possibility presses in from both sides. There’s dread and there’s longing. She doesn’t want this to be Anne. And at the same time, she’s desperate for something to break the silence.

Anne wasn’t just another name on a flyer. She was born and raised in Douglas, Wyoming. She was fiercely intelligent and tenderhearted. She struggled, like many do, with addiction and trauma. She was also a mother. A sister. A friend. She mattered. And when she disappeared on May 5, 2020, she didn’t take her keys or her phone. She simply vanished.

The search turned up nothing. No security footage. No credit card activity. No confirmed sightings. Her family has spent years trying to keep her name alive. They’ve spoken to the media, pleaded with the public, lit candles, and cried through birthdays and holidays.

Now, this discovery is too close to ignore.

And Emily isn’t the only one holding her breath.

Marilyn Stevenson has lived this nightmare since 2017. Her son, Justin Hooiman, disappeared from Salt Lake City without a trace. He was 31. Funny, loyal, and quick with a smile that could cut through the worst day. He had a past too. Run-ins with the law. Addiction. Ongoing struggles. But he called his mom regularly. He checked in. He always came home.

Until he didn’t.

Marilyn has never stopped looking. She keeps boxes of flyers in her car and photos in her purse. She checks unidentified remains databases the way others check the weather. The discovery in the pond brought the grief back to the surface.

Every time a body is found, someone receives an answer. At the same time, someone else receives an ending.

Just one day after the remains were found in West Valley City, another discovery was made. This time, it was a black trash bag dumped along a rural road near Brigham City, about 60 miles north. Inside was a woman. Still unidentified. Reddish-brown hair. A small heart tattoo on her left bicep.

The bag had been there long enough to blend into the brush. Long enough to be overlooked, until someone finally noticed.

Investigators have not said whether the two cases are connected. But for families of the missing, the timing is impossible to ignore. Two women. Two days. Two sets of remains. Utah holds more than its share of missing persons. Cold cases rarely stay cold forever.

Eventually, the ground returns what it has been holding.

The Utah Office of the Medical Examiner is working to identify the remains. DNA testing is in progress. But results take time. Weeks, sometimes months. And for the people waiting on the other end of that call, time moves slowly and sharply.

Emily doesn’t know what outcome she wants. Neither does Marilyn. Closure is a myth they stopped believing in a long time ago. Nothing makes it whole again. There is only knowing or not knowing. Most days, they live somewhere in between.

One of the hardest parts is how easily these stories are overlooked. Anne Elliott wasn’t a stranger from a headline. She was from Wyoming. From the same kind of place that raises cattle and kids and women who will burn the world down for their families. Justin Hooiman wasn’t a statistic. He had people who loved him. People who still do. People who miss him every day.

And the woman in the trash bag? She belonged to someone too. Maybe someone who has been searching for her. Maybe someone who still doesn’t know she’s gone.

This isn’t just another news story. It’s a collection of unfinished lives. There are names we don’t know yet. There are people who went missing, and others who never stopped waiting.

The names of the people in the pond and in the bag are still unknown. But they mattered. They were loved. And someone out there remembers them. Someone knows what happened.

Now we wait. With the mothers. With the sisters. With the silence.

These are not just remains. They are people. They are stories. And they deserve to be brought home.

xoxo
-S

As an amateur true crime writer, I strive to provide accurate and well-researched information. However, please be aware that I am not a professional investigator or journalist, and my work is based on available sources and my understanding of the case. There may be inaccuracies or incomplete details in my posts. I encourage readers to seek out additional sources and verify information from official and professional channels. Thank you for your understanding and support.