Roberto V. Arguelles (February 14, 1962 - November 15, 2003), known in Utah as the Salt Lake City Strangler, killed a woman and three teenage girls in and around West Valley City between February and March 1992: Margo Bond, 42, Stephanie Blundell, 13, Lisa Martinez, 16, and Tuesday Roberts. He had convictions for attempted homicide and aggravated sexual assault dating from 1980, and was on parole at the time of the killings.
The cases went cold. Four years later, while serving a life term for child molestation, he asked to meet investigators and on April 26, 1996 confessed to all four murders, saying he had recently become a father and could not live with them. He led police to the bodies of Martinez and Roberts, buried on his stepfather's hog farm outside Salt Lake City, and to Blundell's grave in American Fork Canyon.
He pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated murder, waived his right to counsel at the penalty phase and told the court that death was the appropriate punishment. He was sentenced to death on July 20, 1997. His conduct on death row was severely disordered: he attempted to hang himself with a laundry bag, and court filings recorded that he routinely ate his own faeces and swallowed foreign objects, including court papers. A firing-squad execution set for June 27, 2003 was stayed for a competency evaluation, and he died in the prison infirmary on November 15, 2003 of a bowel obstruction, aged 41.
His forename is Roberto; the form Robert appears in some listings. Several accounts give the date of death as November 23, 2003; contemporary reporting from Deseret News and KSL places it on Saturday 15 November.