A Very Personal Crime

November 26, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

A Very Personal Crime

The night before Brian Pickett was murdered, he sat up late talking with his older sister Dorothy. Something had been troubling him for weeks. He'd come to her house, hugged her kids, wrestled with them, and then the two of them talked. "I said, 'Well Brian, you know, you can talk to me about anything,'" Dorothy recalls. "And he says, 'I know. I know. I just gotta work this out myself.' And I said, 'Okay, but don't let it go too long before you say something.' And of course, the very next night is when he was murdered."

The Night of February 9, 1980

Brian Pickett was 22 years old, working as a corrections officer at the Weber County Jail. He'd served four years in the Navy and was taking criminology classes at Weber State, hoping to eventually join the Ogden Police Department. On February 9, 1980, he finished his shift around midnight and went with a coworker to the Cokomo Club, a bar near the jail where cops and bikers alike would hang out. Brian played a game of pool, drank one beer, and turned down a second because he had a criminology exam the next day. Around 1:30 a.m., he drove away alone.

He never made it home.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:01) **A Sister's Unease** - Dorothy recalls that in the weeks before his murder, her brother Brian Pickett seemed troubled by something he couldn't bring himself to share.
2 (00:51) **The Night of the Murder** - On February 9th, 1980, Brian finished his shift and went to the Cokomo Club with a coworker before driving home alone.
3 (02:05) **Discovery at Sullivan's Hollow** - A couple driving home finds Brian's still-running Jeep stopped in the road and his body lying in the eastbound lane.
4 (03:16) **Reconstructing the 1980 Scene** - Detective Cam Hartman walks through Sullivan's Hollow, describing how dark and different the area was over 45 years ago.
5 (04:08) **A Personal Crime** - Brian died at the hospital from a single, close-range gunshot wound to the head, leading investigators to believe he was deliberately targeted.
6 (06:28) **Remembering Brian Pickett** - Dorothy paints a vivid portrait of her younger brother as a goofy, kind, and heroic young man who dreamed of becoming a police officer.
7 (09:49) **A Protector on and off the Job** - Brian's drive to help people extended beyond his job, as he secretly bought groceries for the family of an inmate he had arrested for domestic abuse.

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Show Notes

On February 9th, 1980, Bryan Pickett, a corrections officer at the Weber County Jail, went to a bar in Ogden with a colleague after work. Bryan left the bar around 1:30am, but he never made it home. A few minutes later, a young couple found his jeep stopped in the middle of a dark road and Bryan's body in the street with a gunshot wound to the head. Judging by the wound, investigators believe Bryan knew what was coming and that it was not a random shooting. But the case went cold and now detectives are looking for more answers.