On July 22, 1987, 73-year-old Janet Marie Armstrong and her husband Norman B. Armstrong of Bountiful, Utah, were killed after a day of target shooting with a man they knew, Russell M. Anderson. Their bodies were found near an I-80 overpass at 6000 West. Anderson, who had been drinking with the couple that day, later said he “just went berserk” and shot them; the gun used was one Anderson obtained from Norman Armstrong. The Armstrongs’ son said his parents had been trying to reunite their family and get their children back from foster care.

Anderson was arrested in connection with the couple’s deaths. He went on to kill another man, Frank R. Boulton, on August 29, 1987, after drinking together in a church parking lot in Bountiful. Anderson pleaded guilty but mentally ill to the three murders and received three consecutive sentences of five years to life, with a judge ordering him sent directly to prison rather than to a state hospital.