Stacy Robert Willis is currently imprisoned in the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. He is serving an indeterminate 15-years-to-life sentence for the 2018 murder of California mother Merrilee Cox-Lafferty.Utah’s Board of Pardons will not consider him for a first parole hearing until 2034, and violent-offender statistics suggest he could remain behind bars well into the 2040s.Stacy Robert Willis' inmate location and earliest parole timetable are confirmed by court records filed at his March 11, 2019, sentencing and by the Department of Corrections’ current roster as per a Desert News report dated March 12, 2019.Investigation Discovery’s long-running CCTV series See No Evil revisits this case in season 14, episode 4, The Dog Knows, premiering Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ID and streaming the same night on Max and Discovery+.How a routine search for a missing woman spiraled into homicide, placing Stacy Robert Willis at the center of the crime View this post on Instagram Instagram PostCox-Lafferty, 37, drove from Oroville, California, to Hyrum, Utah, with her ten-year-old daughter and an Australian-shepherd mix on August 17, 2018, to meet former boyfriend Stacy Robert Willis. She vanished the next day. Surveillance cameras later captured Willis turning up for work with the therapy dog but without Merrilee, a contradiction that sent detectives combing nearby Blacksmith Fork Canyon.A month-long search ended on September 14 when volunteers located the victim’s body in a shallow grave. Phone-ping data placed Cox-Lafferty’s handset in the canyon on the day she disappeared, and witness statements put Willis at the burial site. Arrested the next evening, he initially faced a capital murder charge.As per the Deseret News report dated September 15, 2018, Logan Police Chief Gary Jensen said of the canine clue that cracked the case,“The dog was pivotal. It offered us some information that we just simply didn’t have and may not have had had we not taken custody of this animal and ultimately release it to people that knew more about Merrilee and her circumstance.”A plea deal, a scathing sentence, and Willis’ whereabouts today View this post on Instagram Instagram PostStacy Robert Willis, already a felon for a 2014 road-rage shooting, avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to first-degree murder on January 23, 2019. As per the Deseret News report dated January 23, 2019, defense attorney Shannon Demler told reporters that he didn’t take her to the canyon intending to kill her. Judge Kevin Allen rejected claims that the beating was accidental.As per the Deseret News report dated March 12, 2019, the judge wrote in Stacy Robert Willis' sentencing memorandum,“You don’t have outburst disorder. You are just a mean, uncaring, self-absorbed horrible person.”Allen ordered 15 years to life, branding Willis a “coward full of excuses” and recommending that he spend the rest of his life behind bars. Utah’s indeterminate-sentence system places release decisions with the Board of Pardons. Publicly available dockets list his first potential hearing in August 2034.Cache County Sheriff Chad Jensen summed up the lingering mystery. As per the Deseret News report dated September 15, 2018, he remarked after Stacy Robert Willis' arrest,"We do not know the motive and we will get to the motive.”Until that motive is fully understood, Stacy Robert Willis remains classified as a high-risk, violent offender and housed in the state’s most secure unit. The Dog Knows stitches together convenience-store surveillance, workplace CCTV, and cell-tower logs to chart Cox-Lafferty’s final hours.The episode also recreates the moment Stacy Robert Willis turned up on video with Merrilee’s therapy dog, a silent witness that dismantled his alibi and inspired the title. Producers promise previously unseen interrogations and body-cam clips that highlight the digital paper trail modern detectives rely on.For true-crime viewers, the broadcast offers a concise 42-minute timeline of a case driven as much by technology as by an ordinary companion animal. And for Merrilee Cox-Lafferty’s family, it is another venue to keep her memory alive while Stacy Robert Willis serves a sentence with no guaranteed end date.Stay tuned for more updates.