Salt Lake County's lone cold case detective has driven 20,000 miles across eight states in 2026, chasing leads on 34 unsolved homicides and 14 missing persons cases.

Capt. Dustin Fowler of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office shared that figure Sunday, Sept. 20, at the Hope Conference, first reported by the Deseret News. The event brought together families affected by cold cases and missing persons. The Sheriff's Office provides police services to Draper and other contract cities across the county.

ABC4 reported it was the fourth biennial conference.

Detective Ben Pender, described by the Deseret News as the only full-time cold case detective in Utah, keeps photos of every victim on his office wall alongside the latest case information. He carries 48 active cases.

"Your loved one's case matters, whether it happened two years ago, 20 years ago or 90 years ago," Fowler told the families at the conference.

Cold case work is personal for Fowler. His brother was killed in California nearly eight years ago, and that case remains unsolved.

A father found after 20 years

Axel Anderson spoke about his father, Steven Willard Anderson, 46, who went missing in 2004 while driving to his cabin near Flaming Gorge. For two decades, Anderson said he wondered whether his father had fled to Mexico or started another life.

In 2022, an interview Anderson gave about his father reached Doug Bishop of the nonprofit United Search Corps, which specializes in underwater recovery. Bishop began investigating and eventually contacted Pender. Their collaboration led to the 2024 discovery of Steven Anderson's Toyota Sequoia roughly 70 feet underwater at Starvation Reservoir.

His remains were inside.

Anderson told the conference that finding his father meant losing him a second time, but it also gave him something back. He said he could finally talk about his dad as a person, not as a missing persons case.

A 2005 stabbing, a 2025 arrest

Niki Price spoke about her brother, Jason Mitchell Royter, who was found stabbed to death inside his Magna home on Aug. 6, 2005. The case went cold. An arrest came in 2025.

Price said she attended a previous Hope Conference and listened to Heidi Miller, daughter of murder victim Sherry Black, speak. Price told herself she couldn't wait until it was her turn to share her story.

Price also read a letter from Royter's daughter, Deborah, who urged the other families in attendance to hold on to their memories and not give up hope.

The Sherry Black case is among Pender's highest-profile solves. Black was found stabbed to death inside her South Salt Lake bookstore, B&W Billiards and Books, on Nov. 30, 2010. Adam Durborow, 30, of Orem, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in 3rd District Court in September, aided in part by advances in DNA technology.

Residents with information on any cold case can call the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit tip line at 385-468-9816.