James Brenner, in the courtroom, admitted to killing Dylan Rounds, inset. (Courtroom screenshot from East Idaho News; photo of Rounds from the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office)
A Utah squatter has admitted to murdering a young farmer after agreeing to lead authorities to the location where he buried the body.
James Brenner, 60, pleaded guilty in the May 2022 death of Dylan Rounds. As part of a plea deal, Brenner had to tell law enforcement where he buried the body, prosecutors said in a news release.
In exchange, he received a reduction from first-degree felony aggravated murder to second-degree felony murder, prosecutors said. The second charge — desecration of human remains — was dismissed. Brenner also pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a firearm by a restricted person. The plea deal also includes an agreement that the sentences for the charges run consecutively, and prison is mandatory. He’s set to be sentenced on July 1 and faces between three and 30 years in prison.
Rounds’ mother, Candice Cooley, told the East Idaho News outside court he should have gotten more.
“More than likely, Brenner will die in prison, but it shouldn’t even be an option,” she said. “It should be a 25 to life. It should be an aggravated murder. The justice system forced us into this type of plea … and only 1 to 15 is for murdering Dylan. The rest is gun charges.”
As Law&Crime reported, Rounds last spoke to his grandmother on May 28, 2022, but after no one heard from him the next day, his family drove from Idaho to his property in Lucin to check on him, according to his parents.
He was gone. They said there was no activity on his phone or bank account.
What they did find, however, were his boots. The footwear was yards away from his grain truck in the opposite direction of his RV camper. It had a spot of blood in it. His mother called this “bizarre” because her son was always particular about the kinds of boots he wore from a young age.
“At that point, it should have been treated as foul play,” she told NewsNation. “You just don’t see someone’s boots in the desert that’s missing.”
She also said that his key fob was missing.
At the time, Cooley voiced frustration with the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office, saying officials there provided spotty support to the family in the early days of the search.
“When Box Elder County came out, they came out Monday, May 30,” she said, later saying investigators left after dark. “And they did a good job. Don’t get me wrong, especially volunteers. They did a good job. But by the next day, when they come out and the sheriffs and everybody came back out, it was around 2, 3 in the afternoon — they called it. They literally left our family out in the desert to figure out what happened.”
Authorities were led to Brenner, described as a squatter living on property near Rounds’ trailer, after finding Rounds’ cellphone in a pond. The phone had a time-lapse video of Brenner bloodied and cleaning a gun, Rounds’ mother told Fox News Digital last month.
“That phone told us a lot, besides having the video on it and the data,” Cooley told the network. “Amazing they got the video off of it.”
Brenner was charged in March 2023 with aggravated murder and abuse or desecration of a human body. He led deputies to the body nearly two years after the young man was reported missing. With the help of the FBI, Rounds’ skeletal remains were recovered in Lucin on April 9 of this year.
Rounds, an Idaho native, moved to Lucin after purchasing cheap land to pursue his dream of becoming a farmer.
Law&Crime’s Alberto Luperon contributed to this report.
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