HEBER, Utah (ABC 4 News) Former GOP activist and accused rapist Greg Peterson was found dead at his cabin in Heber in the Timber Lake estate. Wasatch County dispatch and Salt Lake County District Attorney said it was most likely a suicide.
Petersen was a man who mingled with some of the
Republican party’s elite like Mitt Romney, Orrin Hatch or Governor Gary Herbert, but now Greg Peterson is dead.
He was recently released from jail on a $2 million dollar bond, and was expected to appear in a preliminary hearing for his upcoming rape case. On Tuesday afternoon he was found dead in his cabin near Heber.
Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill told ABC 4, Peterson shot himself in the head. The Wasatch County Sheriff said Tuesday near 5:00 p.m. two bail bondsmen went to check on Peterson at his cabin. With Peterson’s pending rape case, he was under court order to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. The Bondsmen told police the signal on his bracelet was weak.
“They tried texting him to plug it in, it’s a rechargeable unit, and he had not been responding to their text messages,” said Wasatch County Sheriff Todd Bonner.
The men walked into his cabin, and found Peterson lying down in an upper bedroom. As of Tuesday evening, investigators searching his home found no note.
An attorney representing Peterson’s alleged victims didn’t know what to make of it.
“It’s been a tragedy of case from the beginning, a tragedy all the way through,” said Wasatch County Attorney Scott Sweat.
When ABC 4 spoke to the Wasatch County Attorney, he said Peterson’s death stops all criminal legal action against him, but the attorney could not say whether or not it a civil lawsuit would move forward.
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