WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (ABC4) November 20th, 2017.
That was the last time Marilyn Stevenson would ever hear from her son, Justin Hooiman.
The pair chatted on the phone that morning and made plans to go to lunch that day. Justin never showed up.
“In my heart, I knew [he was gone] as soon as he wasn’t answering,” Marilyn said. “He was a mama’s boy.”
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Justin Hooiman’s family finally has answers now that a skull found in the West Valley pond was positively identified as him. (Courtesy: Marilyn Stevenson) -
Justin Hooiman’s family finally has answers now that a skull found in the West Valley pond was positively identified as him. (Courtesy: Marilyn Stevenson) -
Justin Hooiman’s family finally has answers now that a skull found in the West Valley pond was positively identified as him. (Courtesy: Marilyn Stevenson)
At the time, Justin lived at the Fortitude Treatment Center that’s a Salt Lake City halfway house for people on parole. He was in prison the year prior for crimes related to theft and drugs. He spoke about it in a parole hearing a year later.
“I started using drugs. I had a couple of surgeries. They had me on oxycontin and stuff like that,” Justin explained in 2017. “My father passed away and I started doing heroin and stopped working.”
So because of his background, when he disappeared, his mom said it was hard to get people to take it seriously.
“Trying to get him listed as a missing person was really really hard,” she said. “That’s typical across the country because as an adult, you have the right to go missing if you want. Because he’s an adult, no one wanted to take it.”
Marilyn said she felt “so broken.”
But that feeling slowly changed March 25th, 2025.
On that day, a West Valley man Phillip Morfin found himself fishing at a pond near Stonebridge golf course when he came across something.
“I saw some bones right there on the corner,” he remembered. “I reached out with my fishing pole and I hooked it, and I flipped it over and I saw it was a skull.”
When word got out about the skull in a West Valley pond, there was a lot of speculation in the area about whose skull it was. Like with many missing persons cases, you don’t always get the answers as quickly as you might hope. But for one Utah mom who’d been waiting for seven and a half years, answers did come.
In June, Marilyn got the news that the skull belonged to her son, Justin Hooiman.
Today, the West Valley City Police Department confirmed that the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office positively identified the skull using DNA, answering a family’s longtime mystery.
Marilyn said the long-awaited news comes bittersweet.
“Such relief,” she said, describing her feelings about it all. “I feel bad for everybody else who doesn’t have it. I… came out here and just walked around and sat down in the weeds where Justin had been found.”
Marilyn went back again, too. Not just to meet with our ABC4 News crew. She met with someone for the very first time who helped provide her answers: a West Valley City fisherman.
“Oh my gosh, it has been so long. Thank you,” Marilyn said tearfully to Phillip Morfin. “You are such an angel… We’re just glad we can bring him home… Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Phillip responded. “Just wanted to do the right thing.”
Questions may remain about the case of Justin Hooiman, but where is he? We now know the answer. Bringing some peace to West Valley Pond, 7 and a half years later, where 2 strangers became friends.
