They Opened the Tiede Family’s Christmas Gifts — Then Killed Mom and Grandma and Abducted the Daughters By Christina Coulter

The Tiede family’s snowy Christmastime retreat in the Utah mountains turned to horror when two fugitives broke in, murdered a mother and grandmother, filmed themselves opening the family’s gifts, and set the cabin ablaze before kidnapping the two surviving daughters.

On December 22, 1990, Rolf and Kaye Tiede, their daughters Linae, 20, and Tricia, 16, and Kaye’s mother, Beth Potts, drove to their remote cabin in Oakley, Utah, for the holidays, according to CBS News. The isolated property was surrounded by dense woods and snow, and the family arrived unaware that two men — Von Lester Taylor and Edward Steven Deli — had already broken in earlier that day.

Taylor and Deli, both in their mid-20s, had recently been released from prison for robbery and theft and were living at a Salt Lake City halfway house. On a supervised furlough, they walked away from the facility, hiked into the mountains armed with a .44 Magnum revolver and a .38 Special, and began targeting cabins to burglarize for money, food, and gifts, according to the Deseret News.

When Kaye, Beth, and Linae entered the cabin, the men confronted them at gunpoint, forced them into a bedroom and tied them up.

“My mom was saying to ’em, ‘What is it you want? Why are you here? I’ll give you anything,’” Tricia told 48 Hours. “Seconds after she had said that, gunfire started imploding, exploding, explosion. From everywhere I saw my mom go down. I turned at that point. And looked over my shoulder to my Grams. And saw her get shot in the head. And blood spray everywhere… I heard her gasp for some breath.”

By the time Rolf and Tricia got home, both Kaye and Beth had already been killed. Taylor then shot Rolf in the face — but the weapon was loaded with birdshot, and the father survived.

As Rolf played dead, the fugitives doused him and the cabin with gasoline and set the building on fire. He managed to crawl from the burning cabin, start a snowmobile despite his injuries, and drive through the snow to get help.

Meanwhile, Taylor and Deli abducted Linae and Tricia and forced them at gunpoint to load the family’s snowmobiles. The men made the girls drive, each with a gunman riding behind.

“There was a sense of urgency to get out of there,” Tricia later recalled in her 48 Hours interview. “They began telling us we got to hurry and load the snowmobiles and get out of here.”

“My sister and I drove these awful men on the snowmobiles out of the cabin,” Linae told the show. “I drove one man behind me and my sister drove the other man behind her.”

Tricia considered wrecking the snowmobile to get away, but said “all I could think of is I couldn’t leave my sister.”

As they made their escape, the unusual convoy passed by the girls’ uncle, Randy Zorn, on the snowy trail.

“I seen the snowmobiles come up the trail, and I go, ‘Look, there are my nieces!’ But they had boyfriends on the back or something. I didn’t know what was going on. They just drove by me, and I go, hmm, that’s weird. That’s not my nieces. They don’t do that to me,” Zorn told 48 Hours.

The sisters stayed silent because, as Tricia later explained, they feared the men would hurt their uncle if they acknowledged him or cried for help.

Eventually, Taylor and Deli abandoned the snowmobiles and forced the girls into the Tiede’s car as they tried to evade police.

Shortly after, Rolf arrived at Zorn’s cabin.

“His face is just huge and full of blood and just—just big. Eye swollen shut. Bloodcicles—’cause it was cold…he was in really bad shape,” Zorn told 48 Hours. “And he says, ‘I’ve been shot. My wife has been killed and my daughters have been kidnapped.’”

Rolf’s escape and call for help had already set off a major manhunt in the canyon. With no cell service, the priorities were clear.

“There are two things on my mind — save the girls, get [Rolf] on a Life Flight,” Zorn told 48 Hours.

Police ultimately tracked down Taylor and Deli in the stolen car after a chase and gunfire, rescuing Linae and Tricia, who survived physically unharmed.

Back at the burned cabin, investigators would make a chilling discovery. “When I watched the videotape—that had been taken from the crime scene… I expected to see pictures of family talking, playing games, doing what family folks do. But as it turns out, there were the two suspects. They were opening the family’s Christmas presents,” lead investigator Joe Offert told 48 Hours.

Later, during court proceedings, Tricia remembered seeing the realization creep across Deli’s face as her father walked in alive: “It was very apparent to me that he did not know my father had survived. And the look on his face was just priceless, like he had been defeated. My dad survived. We won.”

Taylor pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder and was sentenced to death. Deli, who maintained he did not fire the fatal shots, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Taylor’s conviction and sentence have been repeatedly upheld through multiple appeals.

Both men remain in prison today — Taylor on Utah’s death row in Salt Lake City and Deli serving life without parole at Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison per online Utah Department of Corrections data.

“After the cabin had burned…we went and rebuilt it and made it even better than it was before,” Linae told 48 Hours. “I can remember my dad. He would say this to me — quite often. He would say, ‘Linae, I know lightning strikes.’ He says, ‘But lightning never strikes twice in the same location.’ And I would find great peace in that… Sometimes — if I ever would have fear… I would just hear my dad say, ‘Linae…You’re gonna be safe.’”