The latest turn in the 2009 disappearance of a Utah mother has led investigators to a farm in Oregon.

Authorities investigating Susan Powell's vanishing will spend a third day at a remote property east of Salem, Ore., that has ties to the Powell family, the Associated Press reported.

Chuck Cox, Susan Powell's father, confirmed to local NBC affiliate KSL that he told police the farm was a place Susan's husband Josh Powell spent a lot of time. Police searched the area, but found no evidence of remains, according to Cox.

Josh Powell had long been a person of interest in the case of Susan Powell, who vanished in December 2009. Josh Powell blew up his Washington residence on Feb. 5, 2012, killing himself and the couple's two young children. 

Josh Powell was never charged in his wife's disappearance, but unsealed police documents say authorities found Susan Powell's blood in the couple's Utah home. Investigators also found life insurance policies on Susan Powell and determined that Josh Powell had filed paperwork to withdraw her retirement account money about 10 days after her disappearance.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Rick Bowmer / AP file

Jose Lopez, points to a undated photo of Riccardo Portillo, center, his brother-in-law, following a news conference Thursday, May 2, 2013, at Intermountain Medical Center, in Murray, Utah.

A 17-year-old boy accused of delivering a fatal punch to a soccer referee after being penalized during a game in Utah was charged with homicide by assault on Wednesday.

Though the teen was charged in a juvenile court, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a statement that his office will seek to prosecute him as an adult. The teen was not named in the formal charges.

The third-degree felony carries a lesser charge than manslaughter, with a sentence of up to five years in prison for adults.

"We did not believe we could demonstrate the premeditation or intent to justify those charges," Gill told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Those other charges require another type of mental state. We did not believe that type of mental state was present."

Ricardo Portillo, 46, was refereeing a youth soccer match near Salt Lake City when he called a penalty against the goalie. He issued the teen a yellow card, and the player retaliated by punching Portillo in the jaw, NBC's Salt Lake City affiliate KSL reports.

Portillo died after being in a week-long coma. Court records obtained by KSL state that an autopsy revealed his death was "a result of injuries related to the blow to his head."

The teen has remained in juvenile detention since the April 27 attack. He is five months shy of his 18th birthday.

A juvenile court judge will decide if the suspect will be tried as an adult. He is currently being held on $100,000 bail.

Funeral services for Portillo, who leaves behind three daughters and four grandchildren, were set for Wednesday.

Tim Sharp/Reuters file

A statue of a Scout stands at the entrance to the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas.

The Boy Scouts of America said Monday that the Utah Pride Center — a LGBT advocacy group — could not charter a troop, even though the group said it would comply with the youth organization's controversial policy banning gay Scouts and leaders.

The Utah Pride Center submitted its application in late February to sponsor a troop with heterosexual leaders and middle-school age boys several weeks ago, said Valerie Larabee, the center's executive director. She said the bid, which comes ahead of the BSA vote in May on whether it should keep the ban, was not a stunt.

"We feel great concern for youth that may be involved in Scouting right now that are hiding something and we don’t ask our kids when they come to our campus here whether they are gay, straight or anything else," she told NBC News by phone. "We assume that they're here because they think this is a safe place and as a safe place we think that we can offer an incredible opportunity to young people who want to be involved in BSA."

Larabee said they submitted their application to Rick Barnes, the chief executive officer of the Great Salt Lake Council. Barnes referred questions to the BSA headquarters, "since this was a national decision."

When contacted for comment on who had reviewed the application and why it was rejected, the BSA said in a two-sentence statement: "The BSA is engaged in an internal discussion about its membership standards policy and is working to stay focused on Scouting’s mission. Based on the mission of this organization [the Utah Pride Center] we do not believe a chartered partner relationship is beneficial to Scouting.”

Larabee said she knew their file was passed higher within the BSA, but did not know if it reached the national headquarters and said they'd had no response from the organization -- just that their application had been returned without remarks on March 4. The center took it as a denial.

"We are disappointed," she said. "It's almost like they don't even want to acknowledge that we even applied. It's like they just want us to go away." 

A call placed to a Boy Scout leader who The Salt Lake Tribune said would lead the new troop committee, Nile Eatmon, was not immediately returned. Eatmon, a member of the Great Salt Lake Council's executive board, told the newspaper that he didn't see a problem with the center hosting a troop.

"I was surprised. I thought the Pride Center application complied with the Boy Scouts’ policies," Eatmon said. "All the adult members and youth that were submitted with the application were straight."

Faith-based organizations, civic and educational groups often charter Boy Scout units, providing meeting facilities and leadership among other things. More than 70 percent of the Scouting unit in 2012 were chartered to faith-based organizations, and Larabee believed their application may be a first by a LGBT group, although the BSA did not respond to a question about that.

Related: Can a gay Boy Scout share a tent with another boy? Boy Scouts survey members on anti-gay policy

The BSA announced in late January that it may ditch the national policy banning gays, instead leaving that up to local sponsoring organizations to decide. It then pushed back a decision on the policy to May, when some 1,400 members of Scouting's National Council will vote on a resolution that Boy Scouts' officers are crafting.

The membership guidelines have roiled the organization in recent years.

Last July, the BSA said it was sticking with the ban following a confidential two-year review of the policy. That review was announced months after Jennifer Tyrrell was dismissed from her post as leader of her son’s Tiger Cubs den because she is a lesbian, and a few months before California teen Ryan Andresen was denied his Eagle award because he is gay.

Both cases made national headlines for several weeks, and led a few hundred Eagle Scouts to turn in their hard-earned regalia in protest of the ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2000.

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the BSA's upcoming decision on the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related stories: 

Boy Scouts: We need more time for decision on gay Scouts

After years of heartache, gay Scouts and supporters react warily over proposal to lift ban

'Gravely distressed': Religion looms large over Boy Scouts decision on gays 

'BATTLESTATIONS!': Call-in war waged over Boy Scouts' ban on gays

Scott Smith

Corona Arch near Moab, Utah. The arch has become popular for adrenaline junkies seeking a thrill by swinging through the 140-foot sandstone arch.

A 22-year-old man recreating what has become a popular stunt was killed after apparently leaving too much slack in the rope he was using to swing through a sandstone arch in Utah, police said Monday. 

Kyle Lee Stocking, of West Jordan, and five friends hiked to the Corona Arch in southeastern Utah on Sunday to attempt the stunt made famous on YouTube.

But Stocking miscalculated the length of the rope he used to swing from the 140-foot sandstone arch and struck the ground when he jumped, according to the Grand County Sheriff's Office.

County deputies, search and rescue personnel, and paramedics all responded to the accident, but Stocking was pronounced dead at the scene.

Internet videos have popularized the dangerous activity, which involves using a rope to swing like a pendulum through arches and canyons. A YouTube video titled "World's Largest Rope Swing," shot at the same arch where Stocking attempted his swing,  has garnered more than 17 million views since being posted last month.

By Monday night, the comments page attached to the video had largely turned into a debate about the safety of the activity and the wisdom of bolstering it through a well-produced video.

Previously, hiking and adventure companies could charge to take daring patrons to the top of the arch for their chance to get the swing of a lifetime, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

But earlier this year Utah state officials outlawed the activity, largely because of the danger posed — and a forthcoming land exchange between the state's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) and the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The arch has nevertheless remained open for private parties wishing to climb or swing. 

"If people want to huck themselves off a cliff or arch, that’s their business," John Andrews, SITLA’s general counsel, told the Tribune in February. "There is a general principle that owners who hold their land open for recreational use are insulated from liability. We felt there was more risk [exposure to the state] if someone operated under a permit and someone got hurt."

Yet prohibiting commercial outfitters from professionally charging for swinging adventures has raised objections from those who say people will swing regardless, so it would be better to do it with some professional oversight.

"If you don’t do it exactly right, you can die," Thad James, owner of the Utah outfitter High Adventure, told the Tribune when the ban first went into effect.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management told the Associated Press on Monday the agency will be  "taking a closer look at appropriate ways to balance and manage these activities on public lands."

SALT LAKE CITY - A miner was killed and another injured on Friday when part of a tunnel roof collapsed at a coal mine in central Utah, authorities said.

The miner was killed in the cave-in at the Rhino mine in Bear Canyon, 10 miles from Huntington in central Utah, which was reported shortly after 3 p.m. local time, the Emery County Sheriff's Office said.

Rescue workers recovered one injured miner at the site, who was taken to the Castleview Hospital in Price, Utah, for treatment, Sheriff's office spokeswoman Molly Barnes said.

"Members of the Rhino mine rescue team have recovered the body of the second coal miner," Barnes said. She said his identity would not be released until his family had been informed.

The Rhino mine is part of the Castle Valley Mining Complex, according to news reports. A call to Rhino Resource Partners, which owns the operation in Emery and Carbon Counties, Utah, was not returned.

The mine is just a few miles from a coal mine at Crandall Canyon, Utah, where a collapse in August 2007 trapped and killed six workers 1,800 feet underground in a cave-in so powerful that it caused a magnitude 3.9 seismic waves.

Three rescue workers were killed in a second collapse ten days after the initial disaster.

Joe Piccolo, the mayor of the nearby mining town of Price, where the injured miner was taken for treatment, said local communities in the Utah coal belt had "always sustained themselves through grief stricken situations."

"It's a dangerous occupation, but we will pull together," he told Reuters.

Barnes could not confirm the condition of the injured miner. Piccolo said he had been treated and released from hospital.

Related:

Workers rescued from mile-deep Idaho mine

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office

Michael Conder and Carrol Lee Leazer

A Utah couple claimed they swallowed razor blades hidden inside store-bought doughnuts, but police say their story had a hole in it — the couple planted them.

The couple, identified by authorities as Michael Condor, 35, and Carrol Lee Leazer, 39, were arrested Monday. Among the charges was aggravated assault because the couple let one of their co-workers at a Dollar Tree store bite into one of the doughnuts, police said.

Police got a call last week from someone who reported finding a triangular piece of sharp metal in a doughnut purchased from Smith’s Food Store in the city of Draper, outside Salt Lake City.

Hospital X-rays showed several razor blade pieces the size of fingernails in the couple’s stomachs, police said. But as detectives looked into it, “things weren’t adding up,” Draper police Sgt. Chad Carpenter told NBC affiliate KSL in Salt Lake City.

Investigators told the Deseret News newspaper that the couple were trying to win a settlement from the store. The couple were in debt, the newspaper reported, citing a police statement.

The co-worker bit into the suspect doughnut but did not swallow it and was unhurt, Carpenter said. The co-worker is the one who reported the metal to police, Carpenter told KSL.

Smith’s initially pulled that brand of doughnut off its shelves.

“Those doughnuts were actually manufactured out of state and sent to that store in sealed, tamper-proof packaging,” Marsha Gilford, a spokeswoman for the grocery store, told the newspaper.

Three people are dead near Salt Lake City after a shooting on Tuesday morning, police told local NBC affiliate KSL.

A fourth individual was taken to the hospital and considered to be in critical condition after the shooting. Police hunted for David Fresques, 25, after the shooting at a home in the city of Midvale.

The shootings were reported at 8:06 a.m., according to Salt Lake City's Deseret News.

Police have not released details on the circumstances surrounding the shooting. They told KSL that they are searching for Fresques’s white Nissan Maxima. The Deseret News reported that Fresques is being considered a "person of interest" in the shootings.

KSL reported that Fresques was sentenced to one to fifteen years in prison in 2007on robbery and simple assault charges, citing state court records. The man was also recently charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication.

“We don’t know if there are other suspects out there as well or who was involved,” Unified Police Lt. Justin Hoyal told KSL.

Schools in the area went into lockdown, and police officers were stationed at Midvale Elementary, Midvale Middle School, Copper View Elementary, and Midvalley Elementary while more than 70 officers went door-to-door seeking Fresques. The lockdowns were lifted by 10am local time, KSL reported.

Hoyal said the lockdowns were “precautionary.”

“I think it’s very important to note that the children are very safe right now,” Canyons School District spokeswoman Jennifer Toomer-Cook said.

Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET: A Utah woman got a startlingly rude awakening at her hillside home over the weekend: a boulder in her bedroom at 3 a.m.

Wanda Denhalter, 63, was home alone on Saturday when the enormous rock crashed into her room, breaking her jaw and sternum, and leaving a huge gash on her leg, The Salt Lake City Tribune reported. Her husband Scot, who was out of town for the night visiting his son, told The Tribune he estimated the boulder that he returned home to was about 12 feet long, 9 feet high, and 9 feet wide.

"I guess she heard the rumbling as it came down the hill and woke up," Scot Denhalter, 62, told The Tribune. "She rolled away from the oncoming noise to my side of the bed. If she had decided to swing her legs over the side of the bed and get up to investigate, it would have killed her."

Somehow, despite her injuries, Wanda Denhalter managed to get help.

"She stumbled around, probably in shock. She found her phone and called 911,” Denhalter told St. George local media source Spectrum.com. "I feel a bit guilty I wasn't there."

The couple just moved into the rental home in St. George in mid-December, local reports said. No one else was hurt when the boulder came loose. It's unclear what caused it to come rolling down the hill in the first place, but Scot Denhalter said a neighbor told him water appeared to be draining from a home on top of the ridge.

“It might have been a pipe that froze and broke," he told Spectrum.com. "It’s been kind of leaking into the fissures and cracks of the ridge, and I think last night when the water froze, it snapped and down it came.”

While police were not able to pinpoint exactly what sent the boulder rolling down the hill, St. George city spokesman Sgt. Marc Mortensen said Tuesday that no further investigation was planned on the incident, which he described as a "natural occurrence." 

"The boulder in the hillside was in its natural state. It evidently broke loose or the soil around it somehow came loose," he said. "In our county and in our city, we have hillsides all over the place. We're very hilly. So this type of occurrence, while not common, it does happen from time to time."

Usually, though, people aren't injured because the boulders are significantly smaller. Police are not concerned about more boulders falling in the area, he added.

Wanda Denhalter has been released from the hospital and is recovering from her injuries, he said.

"What a wake-up call!" Mortensen said of her 3 a.m. ordeal.

Scot Denhalter said he was relieved his wife was alright.

“When we first moved in, my wife said, ‘Don’t you love the backyard?,’ and I did because of the position of the ridge,” he told Spectrum.com. “[But] I said you could have a big boulder snap and come down and come right through the house, but she said that would never happen.”

“I’m greatly relieved she’s OK,” he said.

St. George is a desert community in the southwest corner of Utah, on the border of Arizona. 

Kristin Murphy / AP

The disappearance of 13-year-old Brooklyn Gittins prompted a massive search.

A 13-year-old girl whose disappearance this week without shoes or a coat in the chilly Salt Lake City area caused widespread concern was found unharmed, police said early Friday. 

Brooklyn Gittins telephoned her grandmother late Thursday night from a Wal-Mart store in South Jordan, Unified Police spokesman Lt. Justin Hoyal said. The woman then contacted police and officers located the child. 

"Brooklyn was not injured and is fine," Hoyal said. "She was still wearing the grey T-shirt and black pajama pants. She did not have on shoes, a coat." 

Hoyal said authorities suspect that she was harbored by someone and police are trying to find out who. 

She disappeared Tuesday evening wearing only pajamas and shirt. A major snowstorm Thursday prompted some 1,000 volunteers to join police in searching 17 square miles in the area near Gittins' home in Herriman, a Salt Lake City suburb about 18 miles southwest of downtown. 

A key concern had been the frigid winter weather. "Investigators believed she could have been a victim of the elements; it's been extremely cold," he said. 

The storm was expected to dump as much as 7 inches of snow and bring freezing temperatures. 

Police have been interviewing the child, trying to determine where she was. 

There were no signs of forced entry at the Herriman home where Brooklyn was last seen at bedtime Tuesday. 

"We believe she left her home through her bedroom window and was picked up and harbored by a person or persons," Hoyal told The Associated Press in an interview. 

Indiana boy abducted in 1994 found in Minnesota

Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder said Thursday before she was found that the circumstances surrounding the case concerned authorities, especially because it appeared her departure was unplanned. 

Gittins' grandfather Craig Hiller made a plea at the news conference that for her to come back. He said she's a typical teenage girl who is very outgoing in some cases and very subdued in others. 

The first time she ran away, she came back a short while later, Hiller said. 

"This was a successful investigation and we appreciate all the efforts by the community, public safety personnel, and the media in response to Brooklyn's disappearance," Hoyal said.