Parents of Dylan Rounds say “”For us as a family and for Dylan, this is a huge win” after suspect was detained

• The suspect in the Dylan Rounds murder case was arrested.
• This was a huge win for the family, said his parents.
• The suspicion grew after he didn’t contact anybody for a while.

As the guy accused of killing their son Dylan Rounds was legally charged, the parents of a 19-year-old Utah farmer who was allegedly murdered in 2022 say they are prepared to proceed.

According to court documents, James Brenner, 59, was charged last Friday with one count of aggravated murder in the death of Dylan and one count of abuse or degradation of a human body.

“For us as a family and for Dylan, this is a huge win. This cannot be swept under the rug. It’s out there, charges are filed and we can start moving forward,” Rounds’ mother, Candice Cooley, told the outlet Thursday.

When Rounds last spoke to his grandmother in May 2022, he told her he was moving his grain truck from his camper in northwest Utah close to the Nevada border to a shed about five miles away to escape a downpour. Rounds had bought hundreds of acres of land in the remote Utah desert several years earlier in pursuit of his dream to own a farm.

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On May 30, Cooley—who resides in Idaho—learned that no one in the family had spoken to Rounds since then.

“I would go three or four days without talking to him and then I’d talk to him five days in a row,” she told the media in June of last year. “But he was always in contact with somebody. So, when we all put together that nobody talked to him, that’s when we all headed down to the farm.”

In the shed, according to Cooley, they discovered his grain truck. According to EastIdahoNews.com, a search and rescue team later recovered his boots hidden under a mound of soil, one of which had a bloodstain that was positively identified as the missing teen’s through DNA testing.

Ball ammo, ignition caps, black powder, and speed loads were discovered by officials on June 16 during a search of Brenner’s trailer. These items were “all related to ‘muzzle loading,’ ” the complaint states. In another search on June 21, authorities confiscated boxes of ammunition and a muzzle loader.

After the youngster vanished and Brenner was questioned by investigators, a friend and neighbor of Brenner’s allegedly told officials that Brenner brought three black powder rifles to his home and “requested him to “asked him to ‘safe keep’ them,”  according to the federal complaint.

“When [the friend and neighbor] asked ‘why,’ Brenner stated that he needed to do this for ‘his own safety’ and that ‘the last time he had trouble with the law they took everything from him, and he did not want the things he had left to be taken again,” the complaint states.

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