A Vietnam veteran was murdered when his date was raped. Half a century later, the police made an arrest

A Utah man has been charged with murder more than 50 years after a 21-year-old Army soldier was fatally shot and his date was kidnapped and raped.

Darrel Eugene Choate, 74, was charged in connection with the 1972 murder of Gregory Dahl Nickell, according to charging documents filed Friday: KSL reported.

Nickell, who was home in Vernal, Utah, for Thanksgiving, was on a date with an 18-year-old woman on November 26, 1972, when they were ambushed.

They were parked at a scenic overlook when a man knocked on the window and claimed he had been in an accident, according to the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office. One of the men asked for a ride back to town and when Nickell agreed to help, he was shot at least three times.

The gunman and another man set Nickell’s car on fire with his body still inside. His date, an 18-year-old woman who was not named, was kidnapped and raped before being released several hours later.

Nickell’s date told the sheriff’s office her account of the night, recalling that “they” killed him.

But it would take investigators decades to figure out who “they” were.

In 2019, the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office resubmitted evidence collected in 1972 at the Utah State Crime Lab, including DNA evidence collected from Nickell’s date at the hospital at the time of the attack.

Then in 2022, on the 50th anniversary of Nickell’s murder, the sheriff’s office announced, through extensive DNA testing, that Daniel Arthur Bell was one of two men involved in the murder. But Bell was never arrested in the case. He died in 2019 at the age of 88.

However, detectives believed there was a second, younger suspect at large and continued their investigation.

When Bell first appeared on their radar as a suspect, detectives spoke with his widow and learned that Bell had been convicted of rape in Oregon before his death in 1987 and that his friend “Gene” was involved in a rape in Washington. The last time Bell saw “Gene” was in the 1980s or 1990s, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Authorities responded to the home of Darrel Eugene Choate after an unrelated call and obtained a DNA sample, which was compared to the DNA sample of the unknown suspect in the Utah cold case murder.

According to charging documents filed Friday, DNA testing revealed that “Darrel Eugene Choate is a direct DNA match for one of the suspects who murdered and raped Greg Nickell (the woman). This direct DNA match is evidence that Darrel Eugene Choate is one of the two suspects and not just a close familial match to one of the suspects.”

Detectives learned that Choate, who lives in Tooele, Utah, has an “extensive criminal record that includes sex crimes in Price.” Darrel Eugene Choate also stated in documents that he believes he can read minds,” the complaint states.

“When my brother was murdered, I talked to him, of course he wasn’t there, but I knew he was there in spirit, and I told him 52 years ago that I would never stop, I would find out who did this to him ” said Nickell’s sister Lynnette Nickell Ray told Fox13.

“I just want to be able to look him in the eye and ask him why.”