Seventeen Blocks

On the afternoon of October 23, 2008, Curtis Bancroft showed up at his father's house in Ogden, Utah, and knocked on the door. Jeffrey Bancroft didn't answer. Curtis was 23; his father was 47. As he got back in his car to leave, he saw his father's head poke up at the door. That was the last time Curtis saw him alive.

Jeffrey had recently started working the night shift at Williams International, a machining and manufacturing plant. Around 3:30 AM—lunchtime on a night shift—he slid behind the wheel of his 1996 champagne Honda Accord, picked up a quick bite, and headed to see a friend. He was driving from work toward 17th Street and Grant Avenue. He never arrived.

Hours later, Curtis's older brother shook him awake. "We needed to get up to the hospital," Curtis recalled. "Our dad had been in an accident." They assumed mechanical failure. But police found Jeffrey in the driver's seat of his crumpled car. The autopsy revealed a bullet wound. This wasn't an accident. It was murder.

The Seventeen-Block Gap

Detectives pieced together Jeffrey's final movements from surveillance video. The footage showed him at a drive-through window—same car, same clothes—buying a burrito. After that, the next place anyone could place him was the crash scene. The distance between those two points was roughly seventeen blocks north on Wall Avenue.