Several days ago I visited Gerald Kory Lloyd in Oxbow Jail, where he is currently incarcerated for a burglarly conviction and undergoing treatment for a meth addiction. I wanted to consult him on the Sherry Black murder.---

Black, 64, was the co-owner, with her husband, of B& W Billiards and Books on 3466 South and 700 East, where she was found brutally murdered on November 30, 2010. Several years ago Lloyd sold her several Mormon artifacts connected with a burglary that had led to his current stay in jail.

The last time I saw Lloyd he was a walking cadaver, an accelerated Hunter S Thompson-like figure, machine-gun firing his thoughts and often profane comments about women, meth addicts and the burglary of a house in the 9th and 9th district that led to my cover story, Ripped Off. We sat on a grass verge outside Westminster College until a police car pulled close to his red mustang. He became paranoid and took off.

After a year in jail, Lloyd is a different man. His face has filled out, he still speaks quickly, but with deliberation rather than a mix of venom and spite. Black's murder, he says, was definitely "Mormon memorabilia, meth-related." He's convinced that someone in the world he knew on the outside was responsible - although he did not know who - and wondered if there was a connection with the theft of several Mormon artifacts in Hurricane, including one of Porter Rockwell's gun, several days before Black's death.

"I feel a little guilty," he says, regarding Black's demise. He recalls how, when he took her a Nauvoo Book of Mormon first edition in very poor condition, she offered him $9,000 up front, another $9,000 a month later. When she sold it the next day, she called him and not only paid him the rest of the money but added a little more, since she had made more than she expected.

He talked about Black's "sweetness, her generosity" to his cohorts in the dark world of meth addicts who steal to pay for their habit, where he's seen things, he said several years ago, "that would turn your balls blue." Before he took her that Book of Mormon, he says, she wasn't identified as someone who meth addicts possessing stolen Mormon artifacts would go to sell their wares. After Lloyd sold her the book, he put the word out and she was added to a small group of secondhand book dealers and antique dealers who were known to be interested in such material. 

What surprises Lloyd is that Black's son-in-law, the Utah Jazz's owner, Greg Miller, has not offered a reward for information. "Meth addicts will sell anything for money," he says drily.