A true crime tale of the 1956 slayings of Mary Mayfield and Sammie Dailey
Excerpted from ‘Murder The Unseen’
Seventeen True Stories of Utah’s Famous Crimes and Criminals
It was 6:30 a.m., Monday, Sept. 24, 1956 and Steve Denos sat at a breakfast table eating two eggs, toast and bacon at the home of a girlfriend, 57 year old Elza Ann Olsen Lapori at her home at 454 Montrose Avenue in Price.
Denos seemed in pretty good spirits when Elza asked him, “Steve, do you want any more coffee?”
“Just one more cup, can’t have much, otherwise I will be keyed up all day long on my routes,” Denos replied.
At 7:05 a.m. Denos got ready to take off. He got in to his car and drove off.
Five miles away, just outside Wellington, Mary Mayfield was just finishing the clearing of the breakfast dishes for her husband, Earl, as well as for Kit and Sammie Dailey, who were staying with the Mayfields.
Mary placed a cloth over the top of the pan which contained the dough she had just rolled into cinnamon rolls, to let it rise before she baked them.
Mary and Sammie were going to drive Kit to Helper to catch a Utah Power and Light truck to work at Soldier Summit, some 50 miles away. Kit was as lineman.
Sammie and Mary were then going to Miller Creek, south of Wellington to buy some tulip bulbs. Mary wanted to get them in the ground before the first frost.
At 6:30 a.m. that morning, Mary, Kit and Sammie drove away from the farm house north of Wellington. Earl walked outside to wait for his ride to work at a coal mine and waved good-bye.
An hour later, Denos drove to the top of the little knoll that overlooked Mary Mayfield’s house. He got out of the car and began to pace back and forth, smoking cigarettes. The more he paced, the hotter he got.
Sammie had been his girlfriend for a while after she had separated from her husband, Kit. The 36-year-old Sammie had worked with 66-year-old Mary in the two boarding houses that Mary ran in Standardville.
Mary had become very hard and stern in the years when she ran the boarding houses, entertaining her male friends. She had shown Sammie some of the tricks of the trade, before Sammie and Kit got back together again the year before.
Sammie had seven children from a marriage to her first husband.
Denos felt he had been taken by the two ladies just for his money.
He waited until about 7:50 when Mary drove up the long lonely road from Miller Creek and Wellington into the driveway. He waited until they went inside and climbed down the hill and up to the front door of the house.
‘Oh, My God!’
It was three o’clock that afternoon when three women from the Jehovah Witness Church stopped at the home of Earl C. Mayfield, with tracts and bibles in hand. Mrs. Jack (Mable) Thompson, Mrs. Louise (Vesta) Robinson, both of Price, and Mrs. David Longfellow of Richfield all got out of the car and headed up to the front porch when Mabel screamed out, “Oh, my God.”
There on the front porch in a pool of blood lay Mary Mayfield.
The group ran next door to the William Krompel home and called Sheriff Albert Passic in Price, the county seat.
This was Passic’s first murder case since taking office. He knew he was going to need help, so he asked Price Police Chief Dave Safford to assist, along with Utah Highway Patrol Officers Sgt. Vic Thomas and Sgt. Joe Arnold, and Frank Whipple, grandson of Mary Mayfield.
Passic drove with Chief Deputy Charles Semkin and Deputy Frank Starvar.
Mrs. Mayfield had been shot twice, once through the forehead and once in the mouth.
“Take a look, here,” Safford proclaimed as he pointed into the woman’s mouth. The bullet had embedded itself in the flooring of the porch beneath her head.
“Somebody stood right over her to fire the bullet,” Safford said.
The officers mused that a suicide victim wouldn’t lie down before killing themselves. Whoever killed her wanted to make sure she was dead. Either shot would have killed her instantly, they thought.
Arnold knelt beside the body, “It appears to me she’s been dead for some time.”
“Al!” Semkin called from inside the house, “Take a look here in the kitchen!”
Blood stained the floor and splattered the wall.
“Somebody else has been shot,” Passic said, “This blood didn’t come from the porch. She dropped right where she was shot.”
Trooper Frank Whipple, upset by the death of his grandmother, detected a trail of blood leading to a nearby field. Brownish stains on the grass left a well marked path.
Lying in the Swamp
A huge swamp was a quarter of a mile away. Passic spoke up, “A couple of you fellows might go up to that swamp and take a look around. Be careful, though we don’t know the score.”
Passic, Safford and Arnold returned to the house to question the next door neighbors who lived close enough to have heard the shots. But Mr. and Mrs. William Krompel hadn’t heard anything. They had both gone out at nine in the morning and hadn’t returned until afternoon.
“Where is Sammie?” Mrs. Krompel asked.
“Sammie?” Al Passic asked back.
“She has been living with the Mayfields for several months and her husband moved in about a month ago. Rumors were that Sammie had not lacked for male attention during the year she and her husband were separated. Sammie is that kind of woman,” Mrs. Krompel told police.
Returning to Mary’s house, Al went through the rooms with Arnold. Arnold spoke up, “I’m positive this killing has a personal motive. The house hasn’t been ransacked. Even Mrs. Mayfield’s purse hasn’t been touched. A burglar surely would have taken something.”
Semkin said, “Take a look at these.” He held up two spent slugs in his hand. “The small one is a .22 I dug it out of the door jamb in the kitchen. It looks like the killer fired at whoever ran out of the back door and missed.”
“The big one is a .38 or a .45. We’ll have to weigh it to be sure. I got it from under Mrs. Mayfield’s head on the porch. It’s the slug that was fired into her mouth,” Semkin explained.
Passic decided to call out the volunteer posse and the Wellington Mountaineers. Passic had called on this group in the past to help search for lost hunters.
Starvar said he would get as many people as he could to cover the area before it got dark.
Mary Mayfield’s body was taken from the porch and sent to Mitchell Mortuary. The mortician was told that a post mortem by a pathologist from Salt Lake City would be performed later.
The place of Kit Dailey’s employment was called. It was revealed that he was working up in the Soldier Summit area and there was no way to reach him.
Sheriff Passic checked with the mine superintendent’s office where Earl Mayfield worked and found that he had been on the job since 8 a.m. and was on his way home.
When he arrived and heard what had happened, he nearly collapsed from grief, but managed to get his emotions under control.
“Sammie Dailey is missing,” Passic told him. “We have reason to believe that she may be badly wounded. Unless we can locate her and get her to a doctor, she may die too.”
Passic asked, “Who would want to kill Sammie?”
“It wasn’t Kit,” Earl said, “They have been real happy since they got back together from their year separation.”
Arnold asked, “Is it possible your wife and Sammie could have quarreled?”
“Nope, Mary was like a big sister to Sammie. You never saw two women who got along so good together. Sammie was always joking and laughing. It was good for Mary to have her here,” Mayfield explained.
Sheriff Passic asked, “Was Sammie seeing anyone in particular while she was separated from Kit?”
“Steve Denos had been a persistent caller, and he tried to see her several times after,” Mayfield said.
A Search for Denos
After questioning Mayfield the officers decided that Safford should go to Price and try to locate Denos.
More volunteer searchers arrived. They were sent out to join the others, who were having little success in locating tracks leading from the spot where the bloodstains had stopped in the center of the field.
A little after five o’clock, Kit Dailey returned from work; he was stunned by the news that Mrs. Mayfield had been killed and Sammie missing.
“Steve Denos has her!” Kit Said. “He’s got Sammie! If I find him I’ll break him in two! Denos has been trying to get Sammie to leave me,” Kit screeched, “I told Sammie if he didn’t stop pestering her, I’d give him a good thrashing.”
Kit was asked if Denos had caused the separation. Kit didn’t think Sammie had known Denos at that time.
“We were living in Dragerton,” Kit said. “That’s where I met Sammie. She was married before. She and her first husband had moved to Dragerton from Kentucky. Her husband worked in the coal mines during the war. After the war, Sammie’s first husband had returned to Kentucky. Sammie wanted to stay in Utah. They divorced,” Kit explained.
Soon the searchers were forced to give up the hunt in the fields and swamp because of dark.
At 8 o’clock in the evening, Chief Safford spotted Denos, with Elza Lapori at his side, driving his car down Price’s Main Street of Price. He was stopped.
Passic, Semkin, Arnold and County Attorney James Alger were summoned to question Denos about the disappearance of Sammie.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Denos said. “I have been on my route all day. I wasn’t anywhere near the Mayfield house and I haven’t seen Sammie. You ask Elza here. She’ll tell you. She’s been with me all day.”
Denos was asked about his relationship with Sammie.
“Sure, When she separated from Kit, we went around together,” he said.
“I met her after she came back from Kentucky. But I didn’t split her and her husband up. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“We hear that you tried to get Sammie to leave Kit after they went back together again,” Passic said.
“Sure I did. That was right after they first got together again. If Sammie would have divorced Kit, I would have married her. But when she made up her mind she was going to stick it out with him, I called it quits and found myself a new girl friend,” Denos said.
“Were you out to the Mayfield’s house this morning?” Passic asked.
“I told you I wasn’t.” Denos went on to speak with no show of emotion. “At half past seven this morning, I had breakfast with Elza. At nine o’clock, we left her house and went on my candy route. We stopped at Spring Glen and Kenilworth and had lunch in Helper. Then we went to Rains, Spring Canyon, and Royal. We had dinner on the way back at Castle Gate. You can go to the stores in all those places and they’ll tell you I was there.”
Elza Lapori reported that Steve wanted her to go on his route with him. She told him as long as they had to start so early in the morning, I’d have breakfast ready for him when he stopped.
“And have you been with him from then until you were stopped by Chief Safford?” County Attorney Alger asked.
“Except for when Steve was in the stores taking care of business,” Elza said, “I waited for him in the car.”
The officers knew that Mary Mayfield and Sammie Dailey were alive and in the home of Rollo Shaw at Miller Creek at 7:30 in the morning. The very earliest the shooting could have taken place was eight o’clock. More likely, Mrs. Mayfield had been killed after nine because the neighbors had not left until that time and would have heard the shots if they had been home when the shooting took place.
“Are you sure who ever killed Mrs. Mayfield was actually after Sammie?” Denos asked. “There’s one man,” Denos went on to say, “His name was Jessie. He was a uranium prospector from the southern part of the state near Kanab. Sammie had met him while she was in Dragerton and he was there working in the coal mines. That was after she had left her first husband and before she met Kit.”
“She told me about it,” Denos said. “She was absolutely scared stiff of him. It seems she was just kidding around with Jessie and she told him if he ever struck it rich, she’d marry him.”
“Do you know when she saw him last?” Passic asked.
“I didn’t pay too much attention to her story. I told her that she didn’t have anything to worry about.”
The Uranium Suspect
The first break came on Wednesday morning. Mine officials in Dragerton found the name of Jessie Lindquist in their employment records. A couple of people in Dragerton recalled the man and he fit the description given by Denos.
Passic telephoned this information to the authorities in Kanab and Kane County. The Kane County officials, however, had not heard of anyone by the name of Jessie Lindquist.
Just before noon the Kane County authorities called Passic. Jessie had been spotted when he came into Kanab for supplies.
Passic said he would send someone down by plane to question Lindquist and hold him for Passic.
Chief Deputy Semkin got a chartered plane to leave from Price, Thursday evening, Semkin called from Kanab. “It’s a bust,” he said.
“The wrong man?” asked Passic.
“No, he’s the fellow Denos talked about, all right. He knew Sammie and she promised to marry him if he struck it rich. But he hasn’t struck it rich and he hasn’t been away from here in months. I was able to get a complete alibi for him on Monday.”
“I may have a lead, “Semkin said. “After the plane had taken off from Price, the pilot flew directly over the Mayfield house. You know that knoll across the road from the house?” Semkin asked the Sheriff.
“Yes,” Passic said.
“The pilot told me he had seen a car parked on the knoll Monday morning as he flew over the house.”
The house is in direct line with the runway from the airport. The pilot had wondered about the car being on the knoll; it was the first time he had seen an automobile there and did not know that a road went up to it.
“What kind of car was it?” asked Passic.
“All the pilot knows is that it was a yellowish color. He didn’t pay much attention to it and can’t say for sure about the make,” Semkin said.
Early Friday morning, Passic, Semkin, Safford, Arnold and Alger drove up the knoll. They parked their car some distance from the top so they could approach it without disturbing any tire tracks in the soft dirt.
At the top, they found several good impressions made by the car when it had been turned around. They also found footprints and cigarette butts.
Some of the cigarette butts and tire tracks seemed to be older than the others, indicating that someone had driven up to the knoll several times.
Plaster casts of the tire tracks and footprints were made. The cigarette butts were carefully preserved. The officers also found several wooden match sticks that had been broken.
Denos Under Scrutiny
At four in the afternoon, Denos was brought to Passic’s office. “What were you doing up there on the knoll behind the Mayfield house? Spying on Sammie Dailey?” Passic asked.
“You can’t prove I was there,” Denos said.
“We have plaster casts of the tire tracks to match against the tires on your car,” Passic told him.
“So What? That isn’t proof I killed Mary or Sammie. It isn’t proof at all,” Denos repeated.
“Then Sammie is dead,” Passic questioned.
“Don’t ask me,” Denos said, “I have an alibi and you know it.”
Passic ordered Denos be taken to a jail cell.
Passic then called in Chief Safford, Sergeant Arnold and the county attorney. When they were all together they brought in Elza Lapori.
“Elza, you haven’t told us everything.” Passic said. “I know you haven’t and I am going to give you an opportunity to tell the truth.”
Elza admitted Denos picked her up at 10 a.m. and told her, “If the police talk to you, tell them I was with you until 9:30.”
Then after some discussion Elza said, “Denos told me he had killed Mary Mayfield and Sammie Dailey.”
Elza testified that they went to Denos’ home where he went down in the basement and ‘fooled around’ the furnace, returning to the car with a blue box and box of bullets, which he placed in her lap. He then brought a gray box and two single bullets which he told her to put into her purse. At the time, Elza said she did not know what was in the boxes.
Denos then bought a pair of trousers and a pair of shoes and got into the car and they drove out Utah Highway 10, about two miles out he turned east on a dirt road toward the by-products plant where he disposed of the items except the two bullets and the box of bullets which had been thrown out of the car previously.
After this, she told them, they returned to Denos’ home where they loaded some candy and went to Helper and other places in Carbon County to deliver it. During this time, Denos told Elza the boxes had contained guns.
She said they returned to Price in the afternoon and went to the office of Luke Pappas, Denos’ attorney, about a traffic ticket. Pappas advised him to take it to Judge Keller of the city court. After taking the ticket to the city court, they went to the Savoy bar in Price where they were picked up by Dave Safford.
Elza said, “Denos told me not to crack up, but to stand by him and take it easy.”
Police get a Confession
Denos was brought back in and under questioning broke down and told the police where Sammie’s body was located. Albert Passic later said, “So we radioed the search posse working in the fields and the body was found.”
In a confession, Denos revealed that at about 8 a.m. he came to the Mayfield house. About an hour and half later an argument over the furniture started between Sammie and himself. Mary was also in the room. Denos said he pulled out a .22 caliber revolver and began to load it. Mary ran from the dining room into the living in the front of the house. He shot her, then wheeled around and shot Sammie, hitting her hand. He then pursued Mary again, shooting at her as she got out on the front porch of the house. Mary was hit the second time in the head.
“I then chased Sammie, who had fled from the rear of the house and ran through the field to the south. I overtook her near the swamp and fired two shots, both of which hit her in the head,” Denos confessed.
Police soon recovered the revolvers and bloody clothes, which were found along the road where he told them they would be.
On a Sunday morning at 1:20 a.m. in February 1957, a jury of 11 men and one woman came back with a guilty verdict, first degree murder with a recommendation for a life sentence.
Denos was sentenced on Feb. 25, 1957 and transferred to the Utah State Prison the same day. On May 14, 1968, Denos was paroled from prison. He left the prison with $8,466.18 in a savings account and a $65 per month Social Security.
He lived longer than expected, dying a couple of years later in Price.