Ogden police say they have resolved the homicide investigation into Richard Roy Billmayer’s 1997 disappearance after Richard Annis, an Iowa inmate serving a life sentence for an unrelated homicide, confessed during a recorded interview. Billmayer’s remains have not been recovered, and a second person investigators identify only as “Tom” remains unidentified.
The confession, reported by KSL.com and Gephardt Daily, followed a renewed investigation that began in 2019. Police said new witnesses helped corroborate important details from the original inquiry, and one witness independently identified Annis. Investigators later interviewed him in Iowa, where police said he described striking Billmayer with a hammer and disposing of his body in a dumpster.
The case illustrates an important distinction in long-term missing-person investigations: authorities may conclude that a disappearance was a homicide even when there is no body to recover. In Billmayer’s case, the public record still leaves significant questions about the location of his remains and the identity and role of “Tom.” The Weber Metro Cold Case Task Force lists “Tom” as a continuing focus of the investigation.
A late report, then a long investigation
Billmayer’s family lost contact with him in 1997 but did not report him missing to Ogden police until March 2008, according to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. The state agency says Ogden police validated him as a missing person in November 2015. The delay helps explain why the case remained dependent on later witness development rather than an immediate missing-person response.
Billmayer was listed as 5 feet 11 inches tall and 165 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes and tattoos on both arms. His case was entered in the national NamUs system as case No. MP1851, according to the Charley Project.
Where the case fits in Utah’s cold-case system
Utah’s statewide cold-case framework provides a formal place for cases like Billmayer’s. The Utah Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Identification says Senate Bill 160 requires Utah law-enforcement agencies to enter specified unsolved homicide, missing-person and unidentified-human-remains cases into the state database after three years.
The system is broad rather than limited to homicide investigations. As of April 27, 2024, it contained 429 cases: 253 unsolved homicides, 130 missing-person cases and 46 unidentified-human-remains cases, according to the Utah State Bureau of Investigation. Those figures describe the size and categories of the database, not a measure of how often cases are solved or proof that the database caused the Billmayer breakthrough.
The state bureau also cautions that the database is a central resource while local agencies retain ownership of individual cases and responsibility for keeping their information accurate. That division matters here: the statewide system can make information easier to organize and compare, but Ogden investigators and their local partners remain responsible for developing the evidence in Billmayer’s case.
Why the missing remains still matter
The absence of remains does not make the case irrelevant to missing-person and unidentified-remains systems. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System says it helps investigators compare long-term missing-person cases with unidentified remains. Its statistics, however, include only cases reported to NamUs and do not represent every missing, unidentified or unclaimed person in the country, according to the system’s reports and statistics page.
That means the Billmayer investigation remains open in a practical sense even after police announced its resolution. A future search, evidence discovery or identification of “Tom” could clarify what happened after Billmayer disappeared. The Weber task force says donations support expert investigators, witness re-interviews and searches for new evidence in older cases, resources that remain relevant while those questions are unanswered.
