Convenience Store Execution: Frantic Manhunt For A Stalked Model’s Killer

“Winter can smother the Pacific Northwest. There is a gloom, a shadow that hangs over the area. You believe that the sun has been extinguished.”

“Outside Seattle, a young model is in danger. She was a lamb among wolves. Her little girl vanishes.”

“We don’t know if this person could be a ticking time bomb. What could set them off again? The terror could be just beginning. It’s hard to believe it’s the people we let in our lives have the capability of doing such things. I would have been very, very scared.”

“During Pacific Northwest winters, snow-peaked mountains trap cold ocean air along the coastlines. When those dismal clouds hang heavy over Seattle, even the bright lights of the city can’t banish the despair.”

“Winter here in the Pacific Northwest is… um, yeah, it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s depressing. High percentage of suicidal rates and um just a lot of gloom. When it’s dark when you wake up, dark when you go home, you believe that the sun has been extinguished and that it’s never going to come out again. You’re waiting for that ray of sunshine. You’re hoping for it. You’re wishing it would happen. And when it does, you run toward it. You run toward it.”

“Just outside Seattle in Kent, Washington, 24-year-old model Maryanne Worley brings her own brand of sunshine to brighten the darkest days, especially for her daughter, Olivia.”

“People are drawn to Maryanne because she has an infectious smile. She’s very approachable.”

“You couldn’t help but look at her. She’s just very, very nice. She’s the full package.”

“She certainly had a fetching look. If she could look exotic on one hand and like the girl next door on—physically striking, she just—she just had perfect features. I mean, like really sharp.”

“Uh, she’s tall, too, as well. She’s extremely small, um, slender frame, and I was like, ‘She could totally model.'”

“Don’t peek.”

“The single mom has primary custody of her little girl.”

“You look so beautiful.”

“The most important person in her world.”

“Maryanne was a very engaged mother. She and her daughter did a lot of activities together.”

“My impression of her daughter was that she was a little bit of an entertainer and she was a beautiful child.”

“The daughter was the love of her life. In any conversations that we’ve ever had with anybody who knew Maryanne, she was the light of her life.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Do you want to?”

“Maryanne, still grieving from the recent death of her own mother, does her best to fill Olivia’s days with joy and promise. Realizing Olivia could be a model too, Maryanne makes a decision.”

“You ready to see it?”

“She wants to move to LA where they can have a shot at making it big. Maryanne had everything going for her. She was beautiful, um, she was bright. She just was full of life.”

“Before she can start fresh, everything changes. In the early morning hours of Friday, March 9th, 2007, Maryanne’s apartment manager goes to check on her with a maintenance man.”

“He just got a call from a friend of hers, Terrence, who’s worried.”

“Hey, will you check on my friend? I can’t get a hold of her and uh I’m really concerned about her.”

“And so the apartment manager did just that. When the apartment manager and a maintenance person went into Maryanne’s apartment to check, they found that the door was unlocked.”

“They discovered uh a bloody scene and a body in the uh living room.”

“Go call the police.”

“Female body, laying on her back. She was clothed. She was kind of partially covered in a uh comforter which had blood all over it, and there was a pillow that had been covering her face that also had blood on it. And they, you know, backed out and called 911.”

“Kent police respond.”

“There’s no question who the victim is. It’s Maryanne. The state of the body suggests she’s likely been dead more than a day.”

“Maryanne had been stabbed uh about 30 times in in various places in the neck, face, and torso area. There was no defensive wounds found on her. It didn’t appear she even had a chance to fight back, and for no apparent reason.”

“Her wallet with her debit card was found laying right next to her. Nothing was taken. Her TV was still there. Her computer was still there. Her phones and everything. What stood out was there was a chair, a white chair that had been moved into the center of the living room, and it was out of place in that location. There were blood stains on that chair. Blood droplets right here in front of the toilet.”

“A trail of blood leads to the bathroom. There, investigators find women’s clothing—a t-shirt, sweatpants, shoes, and two towels—all with traces of blood. It’s odd; Maryanne was fully dressed when she was killed.”

“The Washington State Patrol Crime Lab was called out to process the scene, and when they come in, they collect forensic evidence in in any source that they can find, whether it be latent, whether it be DNA.”

“They lift dozens of prints throughout the apartment to run through the criminal database and try to decipher what happened from the clues.”

“We speculate that she was seated in the chair. Someone either came up behind her or in front of her and inflicted the stab wounds to her neck area.”

“Robbery was clearly not a motive in this situation.”

“There was a feeling of it not just being very brutal, but there was a definite feeling of something personal about that killing.”

“Suicide. It doesn’t take 30 stab wounds to kill a woman, a young woman, a tall, thin woman.”

“30 times, that says anger. That says a passion, and in this case, a passion that was very negative.”

“Whoever did this did not want to see what she looked like after the fact, so they covered her face. Almost as if the killer were ashamed and didn’t want Maryanne looking at him anymore.”

“Detectives start at the beginning with Terrence Bradock, the friend who reported Maryanne missing.”

“Come on up here, buddy.”

“There are times that some people can call in and try to throw us off the situation a little bit more by pretending to be a concerned friend or witness.”

“Bradock’s a regular at an area skating rink. He claims he was supposed to meet Maryanne there two nights earlier on Wednesday.”

“Maryanne never showed up at the rink that night, and the friend tried to call her multiple times and never could get a hold of her.”

“Maryanne and the friend talked on the phone several times a day, and it was odd when he couldn’t reach her not only on Wednesday, but on the following day and then even on Friday.”

“He drove by Maryanne’s apartment the next day. He saw her car in the parking lot. Still no response. He started to become very worried and then called the apartment manager.”

“Bradock tells police he didn’t have anything to do with Maryanne’s death. Though they find it odd he doesn’t ask how she died. Maybe because he already knows?”

“You want to come skate with me?”

“He confesses to only one thing: He was falling in love with her. He was very, um, upfront about the fact that he had hoped to be more than Maryanne’s friend.”

“I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Detectives need to check his alibi and his prints.”

“Do you know if um Olivia’s okay?”

“We learned that she had a young daughter that lived in the home. There was no signs of her. We didn’t know where she was. That’s an immediate heightened concern that the child’s not there. I mean, that adds to it. Now do we have an abducted child? We have a child that’s missing and murdered somewhere? We don’t know what we had.”

“Investigators scramble to prepare an Amber Alert. Time is not their friend.”

“As a detective, I know what the statistics are. If you don’t find the child within the, you know, first few hours, the odds of finding them aren’t in your favor. And so there’s a sense of urgency to the investigation to try to locate the child as soon as you can.”

“We were worried we could wind up with two crime scenes. Those were very tense moments in the investigation, and there was an urgency to finding, ‘Where is this child?’ Those are rough moments in investigation, in the unknown, when you’re you know you already know that violence has occurred, that someone’s capable of that kind of violence, and then wondering about whether it’s being directed towards a child and she’s somewhere scared and terrified, whether she’s hurt, whether she’s killed—you know, trying to find her body or trying to recover where she may be. Time is of the essence there.”

“We don’t know where the daughter is. We didn’t know how long she was going to be alive, if she still was.”

“On Friday, March 9th, 2007, winter holds Kent, Washington in its grip. Police find 24-year-old model Maryanne Worley savagely stabbed to death. Her daughter, Olivia, is missing.”

“When we respond on a scene like that, you see the violence of what happened to a mother and the child is gone. You know, things start running through your mind: ‘Is the child okay? Is the child murdered?’ You know, what’s going on? Anyone that can do that to the mother certainly could do that to a child.”

“At that time, we didn’t know if Maryanne was the actual target or if somebody was trying to get to her child and Maryanne was trying to stop it, and Maryanne became the target of that rage.”

“As a father of two small children, um, it was difficult knowing that somebody’s daughter was missing. It was difficult to take.”

“The next question had to be: Where is the father? What’s the nature of his relationship with Maryanne? Is there some kind of trouble between them? Would he have had motive to be involved in this killing?”

“His name is Calvin Mathers.”

“We didn’t know if there was any past domestic situations between them two at the time, whether, you know, he was upset about child support or anything. But the most logical person at the time that would have a motive to have the daughter would be the biological father.”

“As investigators look for him and prepare the Amber Alert, they contact Maryanne’s loved ones to convey the double dose of terrible news.”

“And it’s hard to imagine anything being much worse than that, what—having to deal with this dreadful calamity of her own murder and wondering what had happened to her child. Those first few hours very difficult, very devastating, very emotionally gut-wrenching. A lot of people cared about Maryanne and loved her, and throughout the investigation of this case, that was one thing that stuck with me is the number of people who helped us and who wanted this case solved.”

“Turns out, Maryanne’s relationship with Calvin Mathers was rocky.”

“It was back and forth. They argued a lot, and uh and they just end up calling it quits because they knew they weren’t good for each other.”

“There had been some physical confrontations during their relationship.”

“Seems Mathers wasn’t happy about Maryanne’s plan to move to LA with Olivia. Maybe he reached his tipping point.”

“He had visitation rights. But that day, Friday, would have been Maryanne’s turn. Olivia should have been with her.”

“Police have to find Mathers fast.”

“Once we learned the child’s gone, we checked with the schools, found out she hadn’t been in school. We interviewed neighbors. We did a number of things to try to find out about the child.”

“And one of their own has a lead.”

“The day prior, which would have been a Thursday, March 8th, one of our uniformed police officers had responded to that apartment complex on an unrelated call and recognized the biological father standing there with the young daughter in the parking lot area. And they just—they described him as looking nervous, looking around nervously, and then peeled out his tires going out of the parking lot almost like he was upset about something.”

“Word spreads among loved ones about Maryanne’s death and Olivia’s disappearance.”

“When I got the call from the sheriff, my heart automatically dropped. He said that Maryanne was murdered and that she was stabbed 30 times and I cried. I was extremely fearful of what could have happened to her daughter, whether she was abducted or if she saw the murder herself and saw her being stabbed. It’s a frightful situation.”

“Detectives processing the murder scene at Maryanne’s apartment get a break.”

“As detectives were gathered at the scene, the father actually drove through the parking lot, and there was clearly police officers there and marked units. And the fact that he decided to leave was very suspicious in my mind.”

“The officers chase him down.”

“When he gets out of the vehicle, I realize that the daughter was with him in the car.”

“Little Olivia is alive and well. It was just an incredible sense of relief because we knew that she was safe.”

“Okay.”

“She was, in fact, on her way to school and she was very well cared for and very happy, and she was talking with police, and at that time she had no idea what had happened to her mother. And at some point, she was going to have to learn that she wasn’t going home to her mom, and that’s a horrible realization.”

“That was going to be the last, uh, every other day for Maryanne’s daughter.”

“Now police can focus on finding her mother’s killer. They start by questioning Olivia’s father, Calvin Mathers, who says he had no idea Maryanne was dead.”

“He has a fresh-looking new cast on his right arm, which also kind of heightened my suspicion. Why does he have a broken arm? How do you feel about—when you’re looking at people as possible suspects and you run upon someone shortly after the crime’s been discovered and they have a fresh cast, obviously that’s something you need to look at. You want to know, you know, when did the injury occur? Is it a real cast? You know, is there any blood spatter on the cast?”

“Got in an accident. Got in an accident.”

“His doctor confirms the broken arm was treated several days earlier, before the murder. The detectives had noticed no blood stains on the cast. And when they handed the father forms to either fill out or sign with his left hand, he was very uncoordinated with his left hand. He had a lot of difficulty doing anything. It just didn’t appear that he would have been physically capable of overpowering Maryanne and then carrying out these neat, precise stab wounds that we saw on Maryanne’s body.”

“To the issues, child support, there’s got to be a little bit of tension, right?”

“No, no, nothing violent.”

“He explains why he still had Olivia. He had tried to bring the child back on Thursday, the day before that Maryanne was discovered deceased, and there was no answer at the door. He tried her by phone multiple times and he never could get a hold of her. So he took the child back home.”

“He says he took off when he saw the cops because he didn’t want his daughter in the middle of a police situation.”

“With nothing linking him to any crime, they release him. He retains custody of Olivia. By all accounts, he’s a great dad.”

“Her baby’s father was involved in uh her life and um he didn’t seem like he was trying to run away from his responsibilities. He stayed there and became the father to that child.”

“But what about Terrence Bradock, who made that first call?”

“Babe, I have to go. Sorry about that.”

“When it comes to love, the motives are always kind of the oldest in the book.”

“It wasn’t easy for him to be placed in the friend zone. He clearly wanted more. But his alibi pans out too, and his fingerprints don’t match any found at the crime scene.”

“We took a real hard look at him and really never found any evidence to show that he had any involvement at all.”

“Another possible suspect cleared.”

“Bradock does his best to help.”

“At that point, we would take any information that we could get.”

“Turns out, the popular, beautiful Maryanne had a dark side. She was attracted to men with troubled pasts. Bradock gives them a partial name to go after.”

“He provided us some information about another male named Randy that Maryanne had seen and may have recently broken up with. Maryanne had told him that Randy had assaulted her in the past and she was afraid of him.”

“Just tell me who you been talking to.”

“Bradock believes Maryanne felt she was in danger. He told the detectives that he and Maryanne had sort of a promise or a pact together that if anything happened to her, that within 24 hours, this friend should call the police because something probably happened to her and it was probably at Randy’s doing.”

“But Bradock doesn’t know Randy’s last name or much else about him.”

“At that point, we simply didn’t know. Was Randy a real person? We didn’t know if it was a wild goose chase.”

“Somewhere in the cold of the Seattle area, a murderer still roams.”

“This type of killing, there was so much rage evidenced. We don’t know if this person could be a ticking time bomb. What could set them off? There’s a definite concern that they could kill again.”

“As winter’s chill covers Kent, Washington, like a shroud, the Maryanne Worley murder investigation heats up.”

“It was a headline grabber. It was talk of the town. And maybe it was because she was a model on the road to having a life that she had hoped and dreamed of. And it is always upsetting to realize that the dreams that anyone has are smashed or destroyed and destroyed in such a violent way.”

“The suburb always seemed a safe haven—an illusion now shattered like ice.”

“Come on.”

“It was horrifying to people, and so it does affect us. It affected the community quite a lot.”

“Olivia is safe, but her family has to figure out how to let her know her mother’s never coming back. It will be a devastating blow, coming less than a year after Maryanne’s own mother passed away.”

“Her grandmother’s in heaven, and now all we can do is tell her that’s where mommy is. Mary’s other mother. What else can I say?”

“Despite the family’s great pain, they know they must channel their grief.”

“She came from a family that dealt out justice. Her father had been a prosecutor in King County, the same county that Kent is in. And I think because of his experience with crime—certainly at a great distance, certainly nothing as close as his daughter—he knew that he needed us to talk about it. He needed to have her name in the paper, on television, on the radio. He needed the headlines, because that would be one really significant way to help the police find the person who killed her.”

“It’s always been my nightmare. She was such a beautiful and bright and lively and artistic and funny and a wonderful mom. And to take that life so brutally, it’s just—it’s beyond comprehension how anyone could be so savage.”

“Police get a lead. Maryanne was afraid of an ex-boyfriend, a guy known only as ‘Randy.’ Trying to find out who Randy is and seeking other suspects, they interview more friends.”

“They would hang out and they would dance and they would skate, and that’s the kind of thing she liked to do. She was in great shape. She liked to be out. She liked to be active.”

“Everyone says Maryanne attracted plenty of male attention, not all of it welcome.”

“It was a wide-open case because she had so many friends, because she had so many contacts. So they had a lot of work that they had to do and they had to do it quickly in order to try to solve the crime, because the longer the time goes, the harder it is to solve these crimes.”

“She come to our party today?”

“Sounds fun, but I’m going to think.”

“You sure? Are you sure? Positive.”

“Okay. Excuse me.”

“Oh, how you doing? Hey, let’s take a walk.”

“Maryanne dated tough guys because I felt like she wanted that sense of protection. She wanted to feel safe. But men tough enough to protect are sometimes strong enough to harm.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She didn’t feel like she belonged, just feeling different. Always feeling like an outcast.”

“Come on, it’s time to go.”

“Had she sought comfort with the wrong man who turned out to be a murderer?”

“The medical examiner finishes the autopsy. The results indicate Maryanne had been stabbed with a small blade like a pocketknife. She had suffered blunt force trauma to her head. She had bruising under one of her eyes. It’s likely that her death wasn’t instant and that she would have had some awareness of the fact that she was going to die.”

“The ME notes an oddity: Blood stains on the bottoms of her socks. She was wearing shoes when she was found.”

“The blood drops on her socks indicated that she obviously stepped in some sort of blood before putting her shoes on.”

“Estimated time of death: around 11:00 p.m. on March 7th, the night she failed to show up at the skating rink.”

“We believe that she was assaulted at least once, bled from that initial assault, changed her clothes for whatever reason.”

“Detectives surmised the first assault was the blunt force to the face. She might have talked the attacker down and gotten permission to change in the bathroom, thinking the worst was over.”

“She was so good with people, maybe she hoped to calm him enough to leave so she could call the cops. But when she emerged, somehow got into the chair and was attacked in the chair.”

“One by one, detectives eliminate prints left in her apartment by friends who have alibis.”

“It was unusual the number of people who showed up in the fingerprint evidence or physical evidence, either by touching a glass or an item in Maryanne’s home.”

“At best, DNA processing narrows the suspects to one. But in this case, it only raises more questions. From the crime scene, forensic experts collect three different DNA profiles. One is Maryanne’s, but the two others are unknown. They had DNA present from more than one male. Who are those two men and who wielded the knife?”

“Detectives still haven’t been able to get a full name for Randy, the threatening guy Maryanne had recently dumped.”

“Maryanne had told a number of people about this man in her life named Randy that she was afraid of, that may have been violent to her. And so he was a person we definitely wanted to look at.”

“Hoping for leads about the men whose DNA was recovered, police tried to reconstruct Maryanne’s final hours.”

“We wanted to find out, you know, what Maryanne had done, where she’d been, who she’d been in contact. We made a timeline for the last few days prior to her death based on her cell phones and home phones, her credit card receipts. We found that she purchased, um, some clothing at the store just a couple of blocks from her apartment.”

“They uncover the last known images of Maryanne alive with her daughter—that surveillance video from that department store. It caused me pause to watch it because I know in a few hours after that she’s going to be dead. It’s very hard to see her with her little girl.”

“What you see is just a mom and her daughter, you know, shopping, moving around the, uh, store. It’s a very normal day. Certainly not the last day of Maryanne’s life in her mind.”

“It’s always sad when you realize that a victim doesn’t realize that’s their last day. When you’re murdered and you’re taken away from all of your family and friends suddenly, that to me is always one of the saddest things, is that you don’t—you don’t appreciate those last moments.”

“We learned through a timeline reconstruction through her cell phone records and credit card receipts and computer kind of what she had done her last night. At roughly 11:00 p.m. on that Wednesday night, all activity of her life ceased.”

“That confirms the coroner’s time of death estimate. The phone records reveal even more about her final hours.”

“We looked at hundreds of phone numbers, starting from when we think she was deceased on, backwards. And one of the phone numbers that we got off there turned out to be this guy who was her new boyfriend.”

“It’s not the elusive Randy or even her heartsick skating pal Terrence. Turns out Maryanne had just started dating a man named Curtis Garvey.”

“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but um Miss Worley’s dead.”

“They had known each other in—the early 2000s at a local community college in the city of Seattle, and they had just recently hooked back up again.”

“Curtis says they often spoke on the phone and occasionally saw each other, but he had nothing to do with Maryanne’s murder. He claims the last time he saw her was Wednesday night—the night authorities believed she died. They hung out at his house and were intimate. Then she left, saying she was going to meet a friend at the skating rink.”

“His demeanor was just matter of fact, and he wasn’t overly emotional about it. He asked what happened, but I didn’t note any emotion. You know, ‘It is what it is.'”

“He admitted to being with her intimately on that Wednesday night. We didn’t know if he was just initially trying to cover his tracks, trying to be friendly to the police, and conveniently explaining away any of his DNA police might find at the murder scene. They collect a sample for comparison.”

“He was definitely somebody that we needed to check out a little bit more closely.”

“Maybe this suspect will stick. Maryanne’s family deserves justice and answers.”

“Why did this happen to Maryanne? She didn’t deserve any of this. She was a young girl trying to find her life and then someone ended it short. Why?”

“In Kent, Washington, single mom Maryanne Worley had a beautiful daughter, a modeling career on the rise, and the best of friends, until everything was slashed to pieces by a killer’s blade.”

“I mean, it takes a special brutality to murder in the way that this person did and a special emotion. So something, some passion, some anger, something that made him say, ‘This you must die in that fashion.'”

“Dedicated investigators have worked around the clock. Still no arrest.”

“There was a definite worry at times about the fact that this case could become cold and that it could end up being placed into one of those boxes and moved into the cold case files where the answers would never be known.”

“Trying to find the two people who left DNA at the crime scene, detectives focus on the men in Maryanne’s life, some of whom had serious troubles. Kind-hearted Maryanne always wanted to save them.”

“It did become apparent that Maryanne had a tendency to be drawn to individuals that she wanted to help. He was a lamb among wolves, though, I’m going to tell you that. No doubt about it.”

“Yeah, she’s too nice to everybody. And that’s what scared me about Maryanne—is that she did that a lot, where everything was okay. ‘Oh, they’re cool, Mrs. Owens. Oh, he’s cool, Mrs. Owens.’ I’m like, ‘No, that dude’s a psycho.'”

“Detectives ask Maryanne’s friends about her new boyfriend Curtis Garvey. But their relationship was so new, most had never heard of him. Until his DNA analysis comes back, they can’t cross Curtis off the suspect list. And what about the mystery man named Randy, of whom Maryanne was so afraid?”

“Then they get a new tip. Terrence Bradock, the friend who reported her missing, calls with more information about Randy.”

“The new friend one day had happened to drive by a house and saw a purse that matched Randy’s description. And he took our detectives to that house and we found that that address. And through some investigation, we learned his full name—Randall Connor, a felon on parole from an armed robbery conviction in California.”

“Connor is fully cooperative, saying he’ll do anything he can to help investigators solve Maryanne’s murder.”

“So Maryanne is your girl, how long you known her?”

“I’ve been knowing Maryanne since, uh, November 2005.”

“And how did you guys meet?”

“We met her at a Christmas party at, like, a little, like where they was giving toys to the kids and she was playing with the kids. I walked up to her, gave my phone number, and it’s been home ever since then.”

“Just she called me, like 2 days later.”

“I can see why she would have talked to him, cuz he’s big. Um, and then he’s also, you know, he’s not a bad-looking guy. So I think, you know, she would have fallen for him.”

“It was straight from the beginning, you know. And that whole time she was writing me. Saying, ‘Did you write her back?’ Hell yeah. It’s kind of cool, isn’t it?”

“He characterized their relationship as a steady girlfriend, intimate, romantic relationship that they possibly might be getting married. He says things then cooled down, but they stayed friends. He denies being abusive and says he still cared for her. Connor admits he had seen Maryanne earlier on the day she was killed in downtown Seattle but swears he hadn’t been anywhere near her apartment in Kent that night.”

“Have you been over to her house? Knock on her door?”

“No, cuz he just like the same policy she got from me: Never show up on me and I ain’t going to show up on you.”

“He says he was home surrounded by family. His family members confirm his alibi—he was there with them the whole time. Still, investigators collect a DNA sample to compare with the two distinct profiles found at the crime scene. When the results come back, they get not one hit but two. The net is tightening. Who will it end up catching?”

“Investigators in Kent, Washington have identified two DNA samples from Maryanne Worley’s murder scene. One set matches her new boyfriend Curtis Garvey, who says they were intimate the day she was killed. The other DNA profile belongs to Randall Connor.”

“Randy Connor admitted or—or claimed that he had been with Maryanne, and um he was right. Uh there was DNA found during Maryanne’s autopsy that was identified as being consistent with Randy Connor’s DNA, and um it it was hard to attribute any weight to that DNA initially, based on the fact that they were known to be intimate with one another.”

“The two men say they don’t know each other and Maryanne seems to be their only friend in common. That could mean that we had two different attackers. However, there was not any other evidence to indicate that there was two different attackers.”

“Detectives put both suspects under the microscope.”

“Her new boyfriend, we were able to clear him. He had a solid alibi through documents, family, phone records.”

“Curtis Garvey is out. That leaves Randall Connor, whose family vouched for him on the night of the murder. Detectives aren’t convinced. They keep up the questioning. Since Connor had violated his California parole by leaving the state, Washington police can hold him.”

“And we thought it was prudent to take him into custody um and further our investigation, see if he’d want to talk to us, see if we could gather any more information, any more evidence from him. And uh if he was responsible, we certainly didn’t want him on the street still.”

“Okay, so when was the last time then that you were at her apartment?”

“He acted cooperative, calm, never raised his voice, just acted like a regular person. He was playing the game with us and wanted to be our buddies, and he knew how to play the game and be cooperative. We knew how to play the game too.”

“The knife thing—when was the last time you had a knife? Carried a knife?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And what did you do with that knife?”

“I don’t remember it. It may be at my mama’s house, or one of my friends—I’m gonna have him look for it.”

“This guy appeared to have ice water in his veins.”

“Did you stab her, man? Not cut her?”

“Y’all believe if—if you—if you want to say that.”

“He claimed on the day of Maryanne’s murder he saw her in Seattle but hadn’t gone near her place in Kent. He doesn’t realize police can track both of their movements.”

“We were able to show through cell phone usage generally where Randy was and where Maryanne was at specific times from phones hitting off of cell phone towers. And the cell tower pings clearly show Randall Connor’s phone was in or near her apartment the same time she was on the night of her death. We could show that Randy had—had lied to us.”

“I knew in my heart of hearts, in my mind, that he was our guy. But that’s different than trying to convince a jury of 12 people. It was worrisome that we weren’t going to get a conviction, or justice wasn’t going to be served for for her daughter or her family.”

“Knowing he lied about his whereabouts, detectives re-interview his family, some of whom now admit he was not with them that night after all.”

“Some family members did tell us that Randy had said to them: ‘If anyone asked where I was, I was at, you know, this house at 9:00.'”

“You know, as a police detective, I’ve been doing this for a long time. People lie to me every day. And you know, when people do lie to me, I—I want to find out why. There’s usually pretty good reason.”

“Hi, Randy.”

“The, uh, other detective said he wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah. Camera on?”

“Yeah, I got to have it on.”

“I’m going to turn the camera off.”

“Yeah, and you want to talk to me?”

“I don’t want the camera on.”

“You want to talk to me without the camera on? Is that a yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“We can get somebody locked into a story, and if we can prove they’re lying, sometimes they don’t have to confess to the crime. We can just prove they’re not honest. And saying that you’re in Seattle with Maryanne on the day that she dies, but when in fact your cell phone’s at very near her apartment, that’s a big red flag.”

“He thought he would beat the detectives.”

“I think he thought he would win the game. And I think he didn’t know who he was up against. He had no idea how skilled the detectives were.”

“Kent police formally arrest Randall Connor and charge him with first-degree murder. On a bitterly cold February morning in 2011, a jury hears the details of the brutal murder of Maryanne Worley.”

“Maryanne planned on going skating that night. Randy called her multiple times—15 or so times in the matter of about a half-hour, 45 minutes—that night after she left her boyfriend’s house.”

“He caught a ride over to her apartment.”

“Then perhaps livid about her new boyfriend, he lashed out.”

“What is your problem?”

“It seems like she was assaulted inside the apartment because that evidence in the bathroom—it showed that she had bloody clothes in the bathroom that she changed her clothes. There was a bloody wash rag in there.”

“The DNA reveals he had sex with her, possibly forced. Whether that was consensual or not, we don’t know and we will never know.”

“She must have had a—a moment or two of hope at that point that it was ending. Maybe if she could get him to calm down enough, she could call for help.”

“I think you should leave.”

“I don’t think so.”

“He sat her in the chair and snapped.”

“We can imagine that, uh, what worked the killer up was some interrogation related to who she had been with earlier in the day, what she had been up to.”

“So what do you think?”

“And he had expressed utter rage that if he ever found out she was with someone, he would kill that man. But instead, in this situation, he killed Maryanne.”

“So cold. It was such a cold crime. Someone you care about, someone whom you thought cared about you, that person turning on you and turning on you in the most violent way.”

“The jury deliberates for just one day.”

“When he was subsequently found guilty by the jury, he turned to the prosecution table where Detective Kelly and I were sitting and the prosecutor, and he started talking to us, and you know raising his voice and he became angry.”

“I’ll see you on the second round of appeal! Monster, murderer! Say it how you want to, but I’ll be back on the second time, guaranteed!”

“It was very easy to visualize that this may have occurred with Maryanne the night she died in her apartment—that he snapped and inflicted those injuries out of rage and anger. It took years to bring him to justice, but it took one day for justice to be meted out. And so, Maryanne finally had justice.”

“Randall Connor is sentenced to 32 years for the first-degree murder of Maryanne Worley.”

“There was incredible satisfaction getting the guilty verdict. Justice had been served, and there was some sort of closure, hopefully, for her daughter and her family.”

“A beautiful, beloved young mom ripped from her daughter’s life for no reason at all.”

“What motive could there have been? Seriously? She doesn’t hurt anybody. Like I said, she just befriends everybody. I think that she was trying to do the right thing.”

“This case, uh, sticks with me. Not only the violence or savagery of—of what occurred, but it’s just a very—uh, sad story to me. I mean that you had this young, beautiful woman who had her whole life ahead of her. She had this beautiful daughter, um, she was close to, you know, finally being in a position where she could pursue her dreams. He took that all away from her.”

“In Idaho, snow muffles the sound of a slaying. Who did this brutal thing to this beautiful young lady? The pain is just beginning.”

“The hardest part was watching my folks try to bring that kid back to life. Here we just gone through one, and then there’s another one. And how could possibly happen? It was the third one that really made it into the—the sensation that it was. ‘Oh my God, there’s a monster out there.'”

“Icy rivers press the quiet town of Blackfoot, Idaho against snow-covered mountains.”

“A winter here can get really, really brutal. It’s generally a miserable time of year, with the roads covered with ice, the ground is covered with snow. You want to stay indoors as much as you can.”

“In one of Blackfoot’s convenience stores, 21-year-old newlywed Stacy Larson stays warm working the night shift.”

“She just loved to work. She was great with the customers, and she knew who to tease and who to just give a quick smile to.”

“Have a good night.”

“She was just the girl next door cuz she was just very simple. She—she was who she was. Stacy was a tough girl. She stand up for anyone. She’d stand up for her siblings. She’d stand up for a friend. She wouldn’t take any guff.”

“A kind young woman with a full life ahead of her.”

“But one winter night, evil comes her way.”

“February 28th, 1987, just after midnight, a group of Stacy’s friends heads to the store.”

“We decided, me and two of my friends, that we were going to rent some movies and hang out.”

“And the pickup basically comes straight at me.”

“Oh my God, hey, watch out!”

“I assumed that it was just a drunk driver. I mean, it’s the middle of the night.”

“They hope he didn’t give Stacy any trouble.”

“Stacy?”

“And I looked around. I’m going to go check the cooler. Even went back in the cooler, calling Stacy’s name.”

“I didn’t see her back there. She couldn’t have gotten far. I could see her purse sitting there. This is weird. She wouldn’t walk out on a shift and she definitely wouldn’t have left her stuff here.”

“Stacy’s nowhere inside. And then at that point is when we said we need to call the police.”

“When we arrived, on the register it showed that it was just after midnight was the last transaction. About $200 was missing from the till.”

“The women tell police about the truck.”

“It was a dark green pickup and I remember the hitch being on the front and I remember seeing a person inside the pickup with long dark hair, kind of a little bit bigger build, but they didn’t see a face.”

“Had someone robbed the place and grabbed Stacy?”

“We could see in their eyes that this was serious, that this was something that was not okay.”

“Stacy’s empty car is still in the parking lot. Police contact her husband.”

“Officers went to her house and her husband was shocked that his wife had disappeared. Every available officer searches in ever-widening circles from the Mini Mart. They check roadsides, open fields, canals. No sign of Stacy or the mysterious truck. The community joins in. A local dentist happened to be close to the family, had gone looking for her.”

“That morning, he drove past two dumpsters. There, in the blood-soaked snow, Stacy. She’s dead. Shot multiple times.”

“The sun was warming up and the snow was melting and the crime scene was disappearing. Detectives note truck tire tracks and two sets of footprints pressed into the snow.”

“There were shell casings that were found that were .38 caliber. They’re from a revolver which doesn’t eject casings.”

“There’s more. There was a hair. It was an 18-inch long hair on her sweater. The hair had a little curve in it. It doesn’t match Stacy’s. Could it be the killer’s?”

“Detectives also note what they don’t find. Their watch was missing. Many criminals take souvenirs so they can remember what happened.”

“Blackfoot police believe an assault started in the truck.”

“Come here. Come here.”

“Stacy would fight before she would let somebody sexually take liberties with her. She was of that nature, so she would not give in voluntarily.”

“It appears as she ran, her attacker missed with several shots until one hit her in the arm.”

“The killer dumped the casings while reloading. I think she had gotten down to hide.”

“I think that he went up and shot her from close range.”

“The wounds that Stacy had was not immediately fatal.”

“And then he leaves her. This is cold at night. Of course, it’s in a winter. The sadistic part of this was that he left her to die.”

“I wonder what Stacy was thinking, laying there. Why doesn’t somebody come help? Knowing that there’s nobody there.”

“There’s the mystery of who did this. Who did this brutal thing to this beautiful young lady? Is it money? Is it drug-related? Is it alcohol-related? Or is it sexual-related?”

“I was just wondering how—who. I had no idea. I couldn’t think of a soul that would have—would have done that. I—and I thought, ‘How could they have gotten away with it?’ She’s so tough. She would have fought like no other. Just—just no way that could have happened.”

“Detectives develop their first good suspect when another clerk at Stacy’s store tells them about a frequent customer.”

“How are you, Eric Whitney? How are you?”

“Oh, pretty good, now that I’ve seen you today.”

“Well, that’s good. We’re glad to see you.”

“He would go in and she was friendly to him. He was the kind of person that didn’t communicate very well with women.”

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Yeah, actually, I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me sometime.”

“Oh, um, I’m married.”

“What your husband don’t know won’t hurt him.”

“And no, I’m sorry. No, that actually fell.”

“He was a—a person that had a hot temper that was physically capable of being violent.”

“Police track him down.”

“When we talked to him, he had scratches on his face, and they almost look like fingernail scratches. We were looking at a victim that would have fought back.”

“They ask Whitney if he has any theories about Stacy’s murder. It’s a tactic that sometimes gets ego-driven killers to give themselves up, and some of the things that he said was pretty close to what really happened.”

“Had Whitney slipped in from the Idaho cold, grabbed an innocent young woman, and murdered her just because he could? That makes him very dangerous. That means he’s killing just for the pleasure of killing.”

“On the edge of Idaho’s Snake River in the chilling winter air, Blackfoot police investigate the merciless slaying of 21-year-old store clerk Stacy Larson.”

“Anytime you have a murder, it’s brutal and it’s very upsetting. This is going to be something that’s going to touch the lives of a lot of people.”

“Suspect Eric Whitney has a history of a violent temper. But he claims he was at work that night. When detectives check his time card, they see it’s true. He was there until long after Stacy was killed. Eric Whitney didn’t do it. So who did? Investigators have no witnesses, no leads on the truck.”

“We were looking for a bad person. It’s a very bad person. We always had the feeling that this person would probably do it again.”

“16 days later and 30 miles north in Idaho Falls, 23-year-old Nolan Hatton works his shift at a convenience store. On the night of March 16th, he gets a surprise visitor.”

“Hey.”

“Oh, man. You jump. How you doing?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“For some unknown reason, I drove across town. Never been to the store in my life, never knew where it was for certain, and I just—I drove right to it.”

“He liked the job very much. He thought this would be a great opportunity for a little spending money.”

“Nolan was going to school to become a—a radiation technician and he was just about to graduate. He was on his final semester.”

“You don’t have anything I could take back with me? Some coffee or something? No?”

“Come on. It’s cold out.”

“You know, he was happy-go-lucky. We were laughing, joking, and I guess I left the store around maybe 10:30 at the latest. Everything was—was normal.”

“It’s the last normal night the Hatton family will ever have. A little before 6:00 a.m. the next day, the clerk on the morning shift arrives to open up.”

“Hello?”

“But something’s not right.”

“Hello? Anyone here?”

“The front door was left unlocked. Nolan should have locked it when he closed last night.”

“The telephone was not on the hook and uh there was left hanging, dangling. Hello?”

“Cash register was open, and uh there was bloody footprints. And so she called her boss from inside the store and then he came over.”

“Oh my God, oh my God, it’s Nolan in a pool of blood.”

“He has to pause.”

“Hurry up! Call 911! Hurry up!”

“He was suffering from loss of blood and hypothermia. The owner tried to help with preventing more blood from being lost and called 911. Did everything that he could trying to save Nolan. There was still some life there and so they get him to the hospital as fast as they can.”

“ER doctors see Nolan has been shot several times. While the doctors do their work, Idaho Falls detectives do theirs.”

“I just began working my way from the outside in to—uh, find clues, and I lifted 149 fingerprints out of there. Not a lot for a busy store, but a challenging number to ID. They photographed the bloody prints, likely from boots. The owner had told us that missing was—uh, $116 around—out of the cash register and numerous cigarettes and numerous lighters. That was about all they could determine that was taken at that time.”

“Not taken: more than $1,900.”

“The attacker shot him for the thrill of it. The money was still in the safe and the safe was open—wasn’t locked. In the cooler, there was five bullets shot in there. We were able to recover some of the slugs that missed the victim. They’re .38 caliber. They were in pretty good shape. So we had a good—good look at bullets right off the bat. And it was a federal lead-based bullet.”

“Nearby, curious clues: partially burned grocery paper bags and a lighter. There’s no security camera, so investigators begin canvassing the area for witnesses. They also have to notify Nolan’s family.”

“We got a phone call very early in the morning that he had been shot, and he said: ‘This looks bad.'”

“You heard: ‘Oh, he’s been shot.’ Well, you don’t know how bad or anything. I was definitely in shock. I was so confused. I knew right where the hospital was, but I—I couldn’t find it. I don’t know how to really explain it. Just shock, confusion.”

“While Nolan undergoes emergency surgery, all the family can do is wait and remember.”

“Nolan was a very active person. He was always fun with friends doing things, you know, he’d take off and go to West Yellowstone or fishing or hunting. He was the youngest of our three boys, and he was a very easy child, very friendly.”

“It’s not just family thinking about the young man. Nolan was a good employee, well-liked.”

“I had been in there a few times as a customer, and he was always very nice.”

“The detective’s daughter was even more of a regular.”

“Detective Shaw’s daughter was a nurse at the hospital and she came in every night about 9, 9:30, and got an apple and, I believe, a drink. So he had known her.”

“Now Nolan is barely clinging to life.”

“We were all hoping that Nolan would pull through and that, uh, we’d be able to catch the person that did it quickly and Nolan be able to assist us in doing that.”

“While doctors struggle to save Nolan, police try to piece together how it all went down.”

“The cash register, each transaction has a time by it. And so we were able to go through the transactions. The last customer was at 10:17 p.m. The shooter likely slipped in around the 11:00 closing time.”

“Nolan was taken into the cooler, told to kneel down, and he was shot five times—execution style—probably with a .38 revolver, which doesn’t eject casings, exactly like the weapon used in Stacy Larson’s slaying.”

“Nolan didn’t give up. One of the bullets had severed his spine, so he was unable to get out of the cooler.”

“There’s bags in there, grocery bags. He was able to light a fire to—to keep himself warm. We found out that he’d been in there almost 8 hours before he was discovered.”

“We want to save life, number one, first and foremost. But as an investigator, I want a witness.”

“And they need to know if it was the same shooter who had attacked Stacy—the shadowy man with long hair.”

“They’re both convenience stores. They were both the late shift. They were both shot with the same caliber weapon. We wanted to compare because both were a .38. And so we did send the bullets to the ballistics people at the Idaho Crown Lab, and they matched. Definitely the same shooter.”

“There’s another strange connection between Stacy and Nolan.”

“A few days after Stacy’s murder, he had received a $5 bill that appeared to have blood on it.”

“We had heard that Stacy had been abducted and my husband warned Nolan about that. And Nolan said: ‘Oh Dad, they just go for girls.'”

“Nolan wondered if it might be cash from Stacy’s store.”

“So he called the police and the police up in Idaho Falls gave it to our officers.”

“That bill was taken and examined and it was determined it was probably bank dye that they use for bait money and bank robberies.”

“A false lead and an eerie omen.”

“Less than two weeks later, Nolan Hatton is also shot.”

“Everybody becomes a suspect.”

“Everybody you see, somebody drives by your house: ‘Are you the one?’ You know? ‘Are you the one?’ The only people who can answer that are the shooter and Nolan Patton who’s still struggling to survive.”

“Idaho police hunt a predator who murdered one store clerk, Stacy Larson, in Blackfoot, and shot another, Nolan Hatton, nearly three weeks later in Idaho Falls.”

“They’ve both happened at convenience stores. They were both shot, but the second one was male, not female. And so you’ve got your similarities and then you’ve got your differences.”

“Stacy was sexually assaulted. Why go after Nolan?”

“There was a lady that was supposed to be working that night, and Nolan had changed shifts with her. And so I believe that the—the perpetrator had been staking the place out and knew that that lady would be working, but Nolan was there taking that lady’s place.”

“Perhaps when the attacker saw Nolan, he decided to shoot him for the sick pleasure of it.”

“Now the young clerk is in intensive care.”

“But sadly, just like Stacy Larson, Nolan Hatton doesn’t make it.”

“His actual cause of death was hypothermia and loss of blood, which, uh, we all felt really bad about, cuz if we could have got to him quicker, he may have—may have survived.”

“The doctor came and told us. I think I was sort of in shock, or I don’t know that I reacted at all. My husband got up and punched a hole in the wall.”

“I remember finding my parents and we walked into a room where he was. He was laying there on the table and, uh, had five bullet holes in him and, uh, the hardest part was watching my folks try to bring that kid back to life. Yeah, that’s always been the roughest for me.”

“Well, you can’t imagine someone taking someone’s life just for few cigarettes and a little money. Was very difficult for any of us to comprehend. I never dreamed we’d have murder in our family. I guess I expected the whole world to stop and it didn’t. It really didn’t.”

“Clay’s one comfort: his unexpected visit to the store that night gave him one last chance to see his brother alive and happy.”

“They say things happen for a reason. I’ve learned in my life that is very true. It is very true.”

“Hearing the whole story about Nolan was unbelievable. You already just gone through one, and then there’s another one. And how could this possibly happen to people that I know? You know, you just wonder, ‘Is it going to stop? Is there more? What’s going to be next?’ Your imagination can run wild in a climate like that.”

“Men were like: ‘If I, you know, anybody tries that with me, I’m going to—I’m going to shoot that son of a bitch,’ you know. But women are like: ‘Oh my God, there’s a monster out there.’ I mean, you talk about worst-case and worst-nightmare scenarios.”

“We knew all the investigators there knew: We have a serial killer going here.”

“It was just a—a time when the community had to face certain things about where it lived and the times we live in. Before these homicides, there were a lot of people who might have said: ‘Well, that sort of thing—it’ll never happen here.’ And after that, I don’t think anybody was ever going to say that again.”

“Investigators continue searching for the truck seen at Stacy’s abduction.”

“Imagine 10,000 vehicles in Idaho Falls trying to find a pickup that matches. There’s hundreds of them. But you have to go through them.”

“As they scour the area, calls pour in from frightened residents.”

“There’s people who are giving you all sorts of information. You know: ‘I saw somebody. I think it was so-and-so.’ There’s a ton of information flying around, and you have to sift through it to figure out what’s good and what’s just somebody who wants to—wants to make a headline or something.”

“Most leads lead nowhere. Though one promising tip comes in from Firth, Idaho, halfway between Blackfoot and Idaho Falls.”

“We became aware of an a person that was booked into jail and had told the jailer that he should be charged with first-degree murder cuz he had killed someone.”

“He knows several details of Stacy’s murder police withheld from the public.”

“He says he took her from the store out into the woods and shot her in the back with a .38. And so at that time we thought we might have the person that had killed Stacy.”

“Hoping to cement the case, techs collect hair samples and shoe prints to compare to the ones from the crime scene. None match. Under pressure, the man finally admits it was all a lie.”

“He was angry at being arrested on what he thought were bum charges, so he falsely confessed just to waste investigators’ time.”

“He recounted the story and had alibis so we could eliminate him as a suspect.”

“More time lost and none to spare.”

“Everything stopped in our personal lives, and we were working on this case with nothing else in mind.”

“In a town like this, something that sensational, something that terrifying, people are talking about nothing but this. It was the subject in the stores, in the churches, in the workplace.”

“I was talking with a locksmith friend of mine, and he says he went from installing one or two locks on the homes every week to 10 or 20.”

“We all felt there’s going to be another victim soon. We needed to resolve this thing quickly so that others can’t be harmed. By that point, the police were getting really, really rattled about it too.”

“There’s just this general dread that says: ‘When’s this going to happen again? And to who?'”

“In Idaho, a shadowy gunman first kills 21-year-old store clerk Stacy Larson. Then, 23-year-old clerk Nolan Haden. Investigators believe he’s not done yet.”

“Based on his behavior, he was really into the murder part of it because didn’t have to murder either one of them. So this person’s going to keep murdering. We know that.”

“Officers stake out local convenience stores and ask neighboring counties to do the same, looking for a large man with long hair.”

“It was a prevention matter for us. So we had surveillance on every store in Bonneville County that were open after midnight.”

“The other store clerks were all frightened. This person was still on the loose. They didn’t know if he would come back or, you know, all the fears in their mind as they worked alone.”

“When Nolan Hatton is laid to rest, investigators discreetly videotaped the attendees. They’d also taped Stacy Larson’s funeral.”

“In a lot of murder cases, the perpetrators go to the funeral or go to the grave site. That I was going to film everybody who came and went from the funeral and also I went out to the cemetery and did the same thing out there.”

“They’re looking for anyone suspicious, but no one seems to stand out. Then on March 19th, the same day of Nolan’s funeral and in the very same small town, the Falls Police Department received a report of a woman missing by her husband.”

“The husband says his wife, 34-year-old special education teacher Andrea Townsend, wasn’t feeling well that morning and decided not to teach. She told her husband she was going to school to drop off a lesson plan and never came home.”

“When we put the picture of her through the news media, calls started coming in. She had been at a grocery store here in Idaho Falls, and she was observed by herself. And I hesitated to call it a criminal case at that point, but we sure couldn’t ignore it either.”

“Started the search for her. Police have a hunch this is related to the earlier murders.”

“We could not ignore that she could have been kidnapped. That in itself is somewhat frightening because, guess what? The killer may have changed his MO. Andrea does not work in a convenience store. She’s a school teacher. Trying to throw us off by his behavior—that is what’s frightening.”

“But this time they’re not starting with a body. Andrea might still have a chance.”

“Everybody knew something was up, and everybody knew there was a guy out there, but it was the third one that really made it into the—the sensation that it was.”

“The dread became palpable then. Every minute was a critical moment. When somebody is abducted, the more time that goes by, the less likely it is that that person would be released unharmed.”

“In less than 24 hours, police find the van abandoned in Idaho Falls.”

“So now we know this is a criminal matter because the victim is not in the van.”

“When the vehicle was found, there was a major focus on it and on what they could find. There was long hair—long brown hair. Andrea has short hair. That is not her hair.”

“They found her checkbook where she had written checks and that she had gone through a couple of banks to get cash.”

“The checks add up to two grand. It appears Andrea’s abductor forced her to write and cash them at drive-thrus.”

“They search for anything that might help lead to Andrea.”

“There was a scrape marks on the bumper. The undercarriage had been bruised by rocks. There was grass, or the cheatgrass, that was underneath part of the frame.”

“One of our deputies, who’s just amazing to me, saw the cheatgrass and goes: ‘Well, that cheatgrass is in the desert.’ Well, we’ve got hundreds of miles of desert here in Idaho Falls, but not like this cheatgrass. It’s usually on the west side of town. We send out deputies to the west side of Idaho Falls, Highway 20, but there’s thousands of miles of cheatgrass.”

“One of our deputies sees that there’s a fence along the road, just like somebody just drove off—off of the road, went through the fence.”

“While we are searching 10 ft apart, they found a stack of, uh, papers from Andrea—papers that she corrected—on her, from her students, just sitting there. At this point, then we knew that Andrea was somewhere in this area.”

“We know Andrea is there. They hope they can save her from becoming murder victim number three.”

“It’s an eerie feeling. We need to find her right now.”

“After the slayings of Stacy Larson and Nolan Haden, authorities in southeastern Idaho scrambled to find abducted teacher Andrea Townsend.”

“It’s cold. And the sheriff said: ‘Let’s stretch out and we’re going to walk this field.'”

“Hey, one of the officers finds Andrea dead. She’s been sexually assaulted and shot nine times. It’s a story terrifyingly similar to Stacy Larson’s brutal end.”

“Like Stacy, it looks like Andrea tried to escape, but the killer fired from behind.”

“He’s emptied his gun, so had to stop and reloaded.”

“And that was the final shot.”

“As with Stacy, the killer left an accidental calling card. It links him to the crime beyond any doubt.”

“She had a—a head hair, 16.5-inch long head hair, shot into her heart. So the hair from the—from the shooter was embedded in her heart.”

“He did not take expensive jewelry. Once again, this wasn’t about robbery. The killer is merciless and consistent.”

“The slug is .38 caliber— .38 slug in Stacy’s, .38 slug at Nolan’s, and .38 slug in Andrea’s. We have the same suspect.”

“Officers canvas the area and find a witness with a crucial clue.”

“The farmhand who worked half a mile away from where Andrea was located heard six or seven shots and observed this van driving eastbound on this road and saw that it was his cousin Paul.”

“Investigators learn Paul Ezra Rhoades has a long criminal history involving drugs, robbery, and is a suspect in a bizarre, vulgar act committed on a lingerie shop mannequin during a store break-in.”

“Police believe he performed a sex act on it, then shot it with a .38.”

“In terms of profiling behavior, here we have a mannequin that’s sexually abused. And that was the—that I think that was the eerie part. Now he’s going to actual human beings. This guy was obviously pretty twisted, out of normal parameters of behavior, don’t you think?”

“Detectives race to Rhoades’ home. He’s not there. His mother says she thinks he stole her car.”

“The thought is he’s going to kill again and again until we stop him.”

“So now we light up the media with his face, with a picture of him, all of his roads—nationwide. And a massive manhunt is—is locating him.”

“The media blitz works when a trucker thinks he spots the fugitive.”

“He reports a huge man with long hair stumbling out of a car in Nevada.”

“Rhoades may have fled from the snow, but not from justice.”

“The driver of the truck, he says he dropped something as he was getting out of the car. I saw him drop something. I contacted the Nevada authorities and said: ‘Grab that car for me. Hang on to everything, all the evidence inside of it. Treat it like a murder scene, and let me know, and we’ll be down there.'”

“Nevada police respond.”

“The door on the driver’s side was still standing open, and laying there was a .38 revolver.”

“That’s our gun that killed all three. He was our guy. And here’s the—one, here’s the one thing that we can show killed all three victims. Well, that’s a major break.”

“Nevada police continue broadcasting Rhoades’ picture on March 25th, 1987. They get the call.”

“There’s three or four casinos there, and they—one of them called the charge bar and said: ‘Hey, he’s here.’ So it was like a mad rush.”

“Two uniform officers and a state trooper went in there, got him, and brought him out.”

“He never even bothered to change his clothes. There’s blood on him—blood on the boots, blood on the his pants, blood on his shirt, human blood.”

“His long hair matches the strands found with Andrea’s and Stacy’s bodies.”

“He’s carrying two packs of cigarettes and five lighters, the same brands as those stolen from Nolan Hatton’s store.”

“There’s a wristwatch in—in the pocket, looked like a girl’s watch, and it was Stacy’s.”

“The watch was a trophy. He kept that from that victim because he was going to remember her from that watch. Uh that’s—that’s what they do. That’s what, uh, these kind of killers do.”

“Once he’s booked, police note there are scratches all over his stomach.”

“It was the ugliest—that thing that—that anyone had ever seen. And that was scratch marks on Paul Rhoades’ stomach—6’4″, 300 lbs, and he had scratch marks on his—on his—uh, going up to down.”

“And then a bizarre confession.”

“Then when we got to the—the police station and I told him about the murders, and I—and I—and I told him the ones we were at, I named them all—I named all three victims.”

“And he said: ‘I did it.'”

“And then he put his head down and [went to] sleep like a true sociopath with no conscience or remorse about the three horrific slayings.”

“Multiple charges against Rhoades include rape, first-degree kidnapping, and first-degree murder.”

“We have a bullet that was fired through the gun that was in his possession. We have a—a head hair that matches him. We have a footprint that matches—in fact, matches the shoes he was wearing when he was arrested. We had the girls who saw the pickup; they could identify the pickup truck.”

“But a guilty verdict is never a guarantee.”

“Homicide cases are always tough because your best witness is dead. And not very many people kill people who—who commit premeditated murder do it in front of the public. And so you have to put a case together based on circumstantial evidence.”

“Nearly every time.”

“As the news spreads, the Idaho Falls and Blackfoot communities realize he’s a local fixture.”

“There was a lot of: ‘Oh, I’ve seen that guy.’ Because he was pretty hard to miss. Being as big as he was and as menacing-looking as he was, he was definitely not the type to blend into a crowd.”

“I saw him in the convenience store when I had been there visiting with her, but I didn’t think anything of it. For me, it just seemed unreal that you would have been in the same place as someone that could have done something like that.”

“Paul Ezra Rhoades pleads guilty to killing Nolan Hatton and stands separate trials for the slayings of Stacy Larson and Andrea Townsend.”

“In Bonneville County, he was found guilty of first-degree murder. He was found guilty of first-degree kidnapping. In Bingham County, he was found guilty of the very same things.”

“That’s a satisfying feeling. It’s—it’s—feeling well. To this point, we’ve done all right.”

“He shows his viciousness one last time.”

“Well, when Paul Ezra Rhoades was found guilty in the courtroom as he’s sitting on the other side of the room, within 15 ft of him, uh, he—in his violent act, as I figured he would do from across the room, he threw a chair at me and Tom Moss. Of course, we caught it. But that’s how angry he got, just like that.”

“We can see what he did to those victims. So as far as—are we—am I happy that he’s—he got what he deserved? Yes, by all means. He’s the most sadistic killer I’ve ever seen in Idaho.”

“He’s sentenced to life for the murder of Nolan Hatton and death for the murders of Stacy Larson and Andrea Townsend.”

“Paul Rhoades qualified for the death sentence under the law. He did what it took to get executed. That means he was a very dangerous person.”

“The—the crimes he committed were especially heinous and atrocious. That he—uh, uh was someone that can’t be free in society. In fact, the reason for the death sentence is they don’t want him to have them in prison alive because of their propensity and their—their—their viciousness.”

“But the question still remains: Why did he target those innocent victims?”

“I think what’s always going to be a mystery about Rhoades is why did he do it. This wasn’t a crime of passion. This was more a crime of just, um, compulsion. Some switch went on in his brain and said: ‘I got to go out and kill somebody and I’m not going to be right until I do.'”

“On November 18th, 2011, Paul Ezra Rhoades is executed by lethal injection.”

“Well, the victims were all innocent people just trying to be happy, living their lives. And not only did he affect the—the people that he killed, but the—the families and all the relatives of those people changed their lives forever.”

“When winter comes calling in northern Idaho, it brings with it something wicked.”

“What could be going on? What happened to my sister?”

“It was planned. It was calculated. It’s about as cold as we’ve ever seen. It was horrifying that maybe nobody would be brought to justice for this. A killer may strike again. We are all targets at this point. Who’s next?”

“The landscape around Moscow, Idaho holds dark secrets in its hills.”

“Winters are harsh. The storm systems that come in—that’ll dump a foot or two of snow—and they can get icy and cold. A cold snap here is more in the single digits.”

“All that snow can shroud danger. People in Moscow do not believe there can be killers in a community such as this.”

“Everybody thinks it’s so safe here that they cannot fathom that somebody in Moscow could kill someone.”

“Yet, 21-year-old Tanya Hart loves her little home in this small town. She started working as a rehab technician with developmentally disabled adults. It was her calling. It was what she was destined to do.”

“Tanya was the best caregiver. Had so much patience with her clients. You’d go there and see the people that, as soon as they seen Tanya, their eyes would brighten.”

“After work on December 11th, 2001, she swings by a friend’s Hanukkah party.”

“She was exhausted from a day of work, but she was energized for the party.”

“Our friend at the time being Jewish, we were excited that we get to celebrate a different culture, basically. Um, different food. All of our closest friends were going to be there.”

“It seemed like she knew almost everybody. She was just a fun-loving person.”

“Tanya’s fatigue gets the best of her, though, so she doesn’t stay long.”

“Around 10:00 p.m., she arrives home to an empty house. Her fiance, Scott, is working late at a pizzeria.”

“So she got home that night, let out the dogs, got ready for bed. Uh, she typically always read before she went to sleep. Probably relaxed her and helped her go to sleep.”

“She has no idea someone has been watching.”

“That evening, the silent Arctic air shatters.”

“We’re a rural area and people shoot guns a lot around here for hunting, for target practice. Uh, but when you hear gunshots just right outside your door, that’s going to alarm people, and it certainly alarmed Tanya’s neighbors.”

“One neighbor rushes to see what’s the matter and finds Tanya by her open back door.”

“Tanya! Tanya!”

“The neighbor felt for a pulse, saw blood coming from her, and just did not know what to do. And that’s when the neighbor called law enforcement right away.”

“Latah County Sheriff’s deputies hurried to the scene.”

“Of course, they immediately paid attention to Tanya in the hopes that she was alive, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.”

“Tanya was shot once in the eye and then once in the chest. Her wounds were immediately fatal. A vibrant young woman killed days before Christmas.”

“They noticed there were some shell casings in the snow right outside the door. The brass casings were for a 9 mm handgun.”

“Investigators did recover a slug that had gone all the way through Tanya’s body, and they recovered that from the structure of the home.”

“Deputies continue processing inside. The police found no forced entry and no broken windows. There was nothing stolen from Tanya’s home.”

“Everything on the shelves appeared to be in place. Uh, there’s no clothing scattered around. Her bedroom looked as if she had just been there, was getting ready for bed.”

“Investigators isolate what they think are the killer’s snowy tracks.”

“The shooter was gone by then. Uh, his footprints were in the snow leading up to the east over a hill. The police followed the footprints over the hill to the road to where they ended because it was pavement.”

“Eventually, they petered out. The officers weren’t able to track them much further after they hit the road. Uh, but the shooter simply disappeared. And at that time, there was a theory that there could have been a second person there, such as a getaway driver.”

“Since the footprints end at the road, deputies comb the roadside, hoping the killer left some other clue while fleeing.”

“You’re dealing with snow, so you’re looking at some evidence could disappear on you quite rapidly with the changing conditions. So there’s some urgency there.”

“They also begin canvassing neighbors to see if anyone saw anything.”

“They were trying to find any little piece of information that they could that could somehow be connected to this—this killing.”

“You get to a homicide scene, it’s an emotional scene. So first thing as an investigator is you got to get through that emotion and decide what’s facts out of this.”

“It was such a fast and efficient strike. Neighbors saw nothing.”

“Only minutes into the case, detectives are already behind the eight-ball.”

“The investigators were still trying to sort through: ‘Okay, what do we have here? Is there an immediate risk to the rest of the community? Where do we go next?'”

“One difficult step: breaking the news to Tanya’s loved ones, including her fiance, Scott Underwood.”

“He was called. The police did not tell Scott what was wrong. They just told him he needed to come home.”

“Stop here, sir.”

“I live here.”

“What’s your name?”

“Scott Underwood.”

“Tanya’s fiance did pull up.”

“What’s going on at the scene?”

“He had been at work and left work and showed up. ‘Tanya’s dead.'”

“When Scott got the news that Tanya had been killed, he—he did become emotional. He—he did start crying. The investigators related that his behavior wasn’t what they would have expected from someone, uh, whose fiance had just been shot and killed.”

“The fiance ended up leaving the scene. Uh, he wouldn’t have been allowed into it anyway. Uh, because the investigation was still ongoing.”

“Moscow is a small town, so word was getting around pretty quickly. People finding out that something bad had happened to Tanya.”

“My ex-wife’s boyfriend called me, and he had said that Tanya had been shot. I—I felt like I left my body. It didn’t make sense at all. I felt like I was frozen in time.”

“I was asleep in bed. I heard my phone ringing.”

“Heather.”

“I listened and I could hear my father on the answering machine: ‘I just got a phone call. Tanya’s been shot.'”

“So I explained to my dad, ‘That’s not true, Tanya is at a Hanukkah party. I will call the house where Tanya is at.'”

“So I called.”

“Tanya wasn’t at the Hanukkah party. So my husband and I, we got in the car and we drove into Moscow.”

“A million thoughts racing through my head of what could be going on, what happened to my sister.”

“And deputy came and said that Tanya had been taken away from us. And it still hadn’t clicked at that moment of what he meant by that. And then my father looked at me and said that, ‘You’re not getting it. That she’s gone.'”

“Police can’t tell the family much.”

“Investigators would have been careful not to release very much detailed information at all, because they had no reason to know who was or wasn’t involved.”

“The killer might be someone close to Tanya and her fiance Scott. Perhaps someone who knew she’d be home alone that night.”

“Tanya Hart’s killer was cold-blooded. It was planned. It was calculated. And he essentially assassinated her. It’s about as cold as we’ve ever seen.”

“During the 2001 winter holiday season in Moscow, Idaho, 21-year-old rehab technician Tanya Hart has been murdered in her own home, leaving loved ones grieving.”

“You can just feel it from your throat all the way down to your feet. The most disgusting feeling that you’ve ever felt in your life and you’re numb. I wanted answers.”

“Based on the forensics of it, it appeared that Tanya had opened the door. As soon as she opened the door, the shooter shot.”

“She had no time to react. She was shot in the eye first, and then as she was falling down, she was shot a second time in the chest.”

“The killer never entered the residence and came there with one purpose, which was to kill. The person that is responsible for Tanya’s death is a complete monster.”

“A monster still out there, armed and anonymous.”

“The thought that there might be a random shooter at large was very disconcerting. Having a young woman, uh, murdered at her home point-blank, um, was a shock to people.”

“People were talking about it quite a bit. You know, in a matter of seconds she’s dead, and somebody has disappeared. Disappeared into the hills.”

“Left behind: ejected shell casings.”

“The casings that were found on scene, the strike on it—on the primer—was consistent with that of a High Point Model C 9 mm.”

“Also, footprints in the snow by the house.”

“The fact that it was winter, that we had, uh, snow on the ground, actually ended up helping the investigation. Uh, if it had been summer and dry, we wouldn’t have had the tracks necessary to follow. So it would have been even more of a mystery.”

“Latah County Sheriff’s detectives need casts. Plaster would destroy the fragile print. So Tech sprays several layers of beeswax into the impression.”

“It does not change the integrity of the print itself or the color of it. It just maintains it.”

“When the wax hardens, they pour in the plaster.”

“The investigators were able to get some pretty clear impressions of the shoes with good detail as to the sole pattern and the length and size of the shoes.”

“The police took measurements of the shoe print and determined it was approximately a size 9. The shoe tread pattern was sent to the FBI for analysis. They were able to identify them as being a type of skateboarding shoe.”

“Those shoes bring detectives one step closer to placing a suspect at the scene if they find a suspect.”

“The neighborhood canvas pays off.”

“There were witnesses who saw somebody on the highway shortly before the shooting was reported. That was a little unusual because it was winter, it was cold outside, and you don’t normally see a lot of pedestrians hiking up the the shoulder of the highway. He was heading toward Tanya and Scott’s house.”

“The description was somewhat vague. They described the individual as medium build, wearing a heavier clothing—possibly a—a flannel jacket with—with a hoodie. The witnesses didn’t have a good look at somebody’s face that they could say, ‘Yeah, that’s the face.’ It could be a lot of people.”

“Not even enough detail for a composite sketch. And although snowy footprints lead from Tanya’s house to the road, no one saw the man walking away after the shooting, suggesting there may have been a getaway driver.”

“Deputies continue combing the highway and surrounding areas.”

“The investigators found over the hill, uh, but further north, uh, a briefcase laying out in the middle of the field which was very unusual.”

“Could this be somehow connected to the crime itself? Could have the killer dropped it? We didn’t know. So the police felt it was important to gather that briefcase up in the event that it did lead us to something.”

“Law enforcement contacted me and they asked if I was familiar with the briefcase or if that was something of property of Tanya’s.”

“The empty case doesn’t belong to Tanya or her fiance.”

“It was suspicious and so it was another avenue of inquiry to see who may have been involved, whether they, uh, had any contact with Tanya, had any relationship with Tanya.”

“Detectives check into the party where Tanya was last seen.”

“The investigator told me that he was going to be looking outside of the Hanukkah party house, looking for footprints, see if they match up with footprints that they had located at the crime scene.”

“They find nothing, and friends didn’t see anyone follow her out.”

“The killer could have been waiting for Tanya to get home. Could have been watching her right there in the neighborhood.”

“Was it an insider—someone who’d know when she’d be back from the party?”

“I thought that she had to have known who it was. It was late at night. She heard a knock on her door. She wouldn’t answer her door for anyone. She had to have known. Maybe she recognized the killer’s voice.”

“Detectives ask her family for more information on Tanya and the people in her life.”

“You know, to find out: did the victim have any enemies? Is there anybody they didn’t like, or had—had they recently made anybody mad?”

“Tanya was always very artistic. She could draw, she could paint, she loved her tattoos. She always did everything different and wanted to be unique to herself. She made her own clothes. She designed her tattoos. She picked things that represented her.”

“The free spirit was ready to settle down when she met Scott Underwood.”

“I designed for you.”

“Within 6 months of their relationship, an engagement ring got presented to her. She showed the family and everything. They were going to be lifelong partners together.”

“You’re welcome. I got something for you.”

“She was saving to move to the artsy city of Portland, Oregon after the wedding. She wanted to get an education and be a nurse in Portland.”

“But that future never happened.”

“The investigators were looking at every avenue they could, uh, imagine to see: Did somebody have a reason to harm Tanya? Everybody assumes that the boyfriend or the husband, the people closest to the murder victim, are the first suspects.”

“Violent crimes against other people are committed by people they know. And it does seem…”

“Tanya and Scott’s romance had its rough patches.”

“You know, I started hearing the rumors that everything wasn’t all peaches and cream in their relationship. He had tried to break up with her. He had wrote her a letter saying that he was ending their relationship. He said that moving to Portland was her dream—it wasn’t his. She had to choose: Portland or him. She chose him. And she had made it clear that she did not want to end their relationship.”

“In the end, they worked it out and, as part of their fresh start, moved into a new place together.”

“Things seemed to be better. Tanya was really happy where she lived. She was located a little bit out of town, so she liked that—she felt that it was a home. It was actually their home.”

“But then again, Scott had acted rather strangely the night of Tanya’s murder.”

“I remember her boyfriend coming to the house standing on the front porch, and the first thing I asked him was: ‘Were you involved with Tanya’s murder?’ And he said, ‘No.'”

“All right, guys. We got to hurry up. We got five more orders.”

“Investigators find nothing that implicates Scott as the killer.”

“Scott was able to provide us with an alibi that he was working that night at a store, and we were able to confirm that with work schedule and with talking with other employees at the store. And the snowy tracks—Scott’s shoe size was compared to the print—shoe print that was found on scene—and it was determined that it was not a match. And so we were pretty comfortable in concluding that he was not the shooter.”

“And that leaves no suspect at all. Time is going by and I’m wondering where the investigation is going. Are they going to find Tanya’s killer or killers? The killer may strike again. Is there somebody else out there who’s—whose life is in danger as well?”

“Just before Christmas 2001, in the icy hills of Moscow, Idaho, the senseless murder of Tanya Hart rattles the community and unnerves her loved ones.”

“I remember just my knees shaking so bad that I just went down on my hands and knees to the floor and just laid on the floor.”

“Basically, nothing mattered after Tanya was murdered. Didn’t matter if the sun came up, the sun went down, if I went to work or not. None of it mattered.”

“Latah County Sheriff’s investigators believe Tanya’s fiance, Scott, was not the shooter.”

“He honestly seemed like a typical grieving boyfriend/fiance. He seemed very upset. He seemed, you know, confused and a little shattered naturally about what had happened. And—and initially after we all found out, everybody did rally together. We wanted to support each other.”

“Loved ones start to wonder—maybe those bullets weren’t meant for Tanya.”

“I thought that it was intended for—for her fiance, Scott—that Tanya was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was supposed to be at a Hanukkah party.”

“Scott Underwood?”

“Yes. Initially, we were brainstorming any possible scenario—whether this was a case of mistaken identity, whether there was some sort of personal grudge, um, revenge motive for something that we didn’t know about.”

“I mean, I’ll be honest with you.”

“Police learned he allegedly used to sell marijuana, but nothing major.”

“We looked at possibly maybe he had ripped somebody off or cheated somebody on a drug deal.”

“Though Scott may have been the intended target, he was not able to provide us with any information that led us to any suspects or persons of interest.”

“The investigation stalls. The killer was still out there.”

“We pled to the community for information. If anybody had any kind of information, please come forward.”

“When they should be celebrating Hanukkah and preparing for Christmas, family and friends gather for the funeral.”

“I am seeing teachers coming, seeing counselors coming, seeing people from the community that I’ve never met before, coming in to Tanya’s funeral service. It was packed with people. People couldn’t even fit in the room. They were standing out in the hallways just to be there to celebrate Tanya’s life. You know, a lot of people were getting up and saying very kind words about Tanya and how important she was to all of us and how much she impacted our lives with her bright, cheerful, wonderful attitude and personality, and just the uniqueness of Tanya.”

“What an irony to never know how many friends your daughter actually has until you see him at your daughter’s funeral.”

“There are a few clues: the timing of the murder shortly after Tanya came home and her opening the door so late at night, which point to an insider, and the 9 mm shell casings, skateboard shoe prints in the snow, a vague description of a man seen on a road near the house, and an empty briefcase found near that road.”

“Oddly, a man named Dennis Vaughn suddenly comes forward to tell detectives he’d driven in the area that night, but was not involved with the shooting.”

“Dennis was known to us. He was known as a petty criminal. He was in and out of jail quite often. We thought it was unusual that Dennis came into the police department several days later to report this to us. It almost seems like he’s covering his tracks.”

“Under questioning, he admits he’s the one who dumped the briefcase, which he stole from someone else in the neighborhood.”

“Dennis had told the police on the day Tanya was murdered he had stolen the briefcase from a residence, and the night Tanya was killed is when he threw the briefcase out in the field and had took the contents. And he admits a connection to the victim. He knew Tanya, also knew her fiance. Uh, again, we have a small community here, and it didn’t surprise me that they knew each other.”

“The real question is: did that relationship have some relevance to why Tanya was killed and how that happened? And he says he’s got a lead.”

“He reported to the investigators that he had seen a vehicle in the area that he had not seen before, and he thought he needed to bring it to their attention.”

“He claims he drove on the highway near Tanya’s house before the time of the shooting and spotted a dark-colored pickup that seemed suspicious.”

“Dennis did fit the general description of this subject, seen walking down the road the night Tanya was killed.”

“But Dennis Vaughn says at 10:00 p.m., the time of the shooting, he was miles away from Tanya’s neighborhood.”

“Dennis, look, take it easy. You’ve been at this game for hours.”

“There were people, friends and family members, uh, who corroborated uh what he said his activities had been that evening.”

“Dennis’s shoe size were compared to those shoe prints found in the snow, and they did not match. Detectives have no choice but to let him go for now. But as the investigation continues, his name keeps popping up in disturbing ways.”

“There was a former, I believe, girlfriend who said that at one point they were having a big disagreement. They were separated. He came to her home, threatened her, made a bunch of threatening statements. It was just after Tanya’s slaying. He said he killed a woman before and can do it again.”

“In the heat of the moment, yes, people can make statements that can be construed as confessions, but without evidence or anything to cooperate those statements, they’re just statements.”

“Detectives have more questions for Vaughn, and know where to find him.”

“He had gotten picked up for a warrant or a new charge, and he was in—in county jail. And there he’s been even more talkative.”

“What we heard was that this person, when he was incarcerated on other charges, was making bragging-type statements about having hurt people in the past, having killed people in the past. He had told another inmate that he had murdered Tanya.”

“He also said he didn’t act alone.”

“As investigators take a closer look at Dennis Vaughn, they do a double-take when they learn he has a twin named Peter, who also lives in town.”

“Obviously, twin brother. They look similar. Generally, they would have matched what the people saw um of the person walking up the side of the road.”

“Is it possible the siblings were partners in crime, with Peter the trigger man and Dennis driving getaway?”

“This other person that was supposedly involved in my daughter’s murder—in the beginning, I might have thought for a minute or two that this other person might have been a driver.”

“It’s the best theory so far.”

“But in this case, nothing is as it seems, and the surprises are just beginning.”

“Moscow, Idaho detectives working the Tanya Hart murder zero in on Dennis Vaughn, now in jail on an unrelated charge.”

“At the time, police thought he was a good suspect because he was in and out of jail. He was had a criminal record, and he had apparently confessed twice in jail to the murder of Tanya Hart.”

“Like everything else in this case, getting to the truth isn’t easy.”

“When specifically questioned under oath, he said: ‘No, I—I was not involved in Tanya’s death.’ And, ‘Yeah, I made stupid statements, but I was locked up. I was trying to be a big man. I was trying to let people know not to mess with me while I was incarcerated.'”

“We had him take two separate polygraph tests and he passed both of them. This led police to believe that Dennis was no longer a suspect in this case.”

“That doesn’t let his twin brother Peter off the hook. He also fits the general description of the suspected shooter. Maybe Dennis has been covering for him all along.”

“He gave an explanation of his activities and who he’d been with. Obviously there was the concern that maybe he was not telling the truth. Maybe the people who were corroborating his story, uh, were covering for him. Uh, but in the end, the conclusion of the investigators once all the other evidence came together, uh, was that he was not involved in the shooting itself.”

“It’s been weeks since the slaying. Still no arrest.”

“People were concerned because the murderer hadn’t been caught. The more time that goes by, you—you worry that there’s nothing new that’s going to come to light, that you aren’t going to get what you need to try to break it open.”

“Too much time’s gone past. People are going to forget. People aren’t going to cooperate. I’m having the feelings that—that we’re never going to get answers.”

“It’s completely helpless feeling. You—you have no control.”

“It devastated the entire family.”

“I was going to do whatever I had to do to make sure that justice was brought for Tanya.”

“Tanya Hart’s family was, uh, trying to keep her name out there and keep the investigation alive. They offered a reward, um, for information leading to the killer.”

“I would go around put posters saying ‘Wanted: information on the murder of Tanya Hart.'”

“The effort keeps people talking.”

“Rumors fly. People did come up with their own theories as to what happened, speculating about it, fueling part of that speculation.”

“One big question: Who knew when Tanya would come home from that fateful party and be there alone? The answer—her fiance, Scott.”

“One thing’s for certain: Scott has moved on fast.”

“I’m getting phone calls from my grandmother saying: ‘I just saw Scott going around town with another female, and this is Tanya’s best friend.'”

“You would think most people when they lose a best friend by violent murder like that, their emotions would be subdued.”

“Those guys were talkative and giggly. You could tell they were a couple.”

“Scott is involved with Tanya’s best friend in the public now. It’s open. Everybody is aware of it. It’s not hidden. And I’m waiting for the answers of what happened to Tanya.”

“Friends started kind of talking about, ‘Well, this seems odd, you know, the fiance already has a new girlfriend and you know, Tanya’s funeral just occurred.’ And there’s rumor that the new girlfriend was around earlier than before Tanya passed. And so just a lot of devastating information. You just—sometimes you just don’t know people like you think you do.”

“Heather recalls a conversation she’s kept secret until now.”

“The plan was for Tanya and—and Scott to move to Portland, Oregon. It was that summer of 2001. Believe it was in July or August of that—that summer that year. Um, we had a—people at her work had a party for her, going-away party for her and Scott. And I get taken aside by a friend, um, who tells me that she is in love with Scott, and the two of them had kissed.”

“I asked her: ‘Why would you even consider having a relationship with him, considering he—he’s in a relationship with your best friend, my sister? Why would you do this?’ And you need to tell Tanya.”

“But the so-called friend stays mum. And now Scott is acting distant.”

“He didn’t appear to be concerned with—with Tanya’s death at all anymore. And there was no relationship, um, between him and I anymore. No, no friendship, um, limited communication.”

“The cops have nothing on him, but suspicion takes hold.”

“And I feel that her fiance wanted her out of the picture and not be bothered with the consequences of ending a relationship.”

“But why kill her instead of just breaking up?”

“There’s no insurance money or other obvious motive. Plus, Scott was working that night.”

“It was horrifying that there was a chance that maybe nobody would be brought to justice for this.”

“Detectives have had good leads before, only to see them crack like ice. Then the case takes an unexpected turn when Carl Varga, a Moscow man in custody on an unrelated charge, offers some surprising information that changes everything.”

“Idaho police talked to a man named Carl Varga, who has been arrested on a driving infraction.”

“He tells them he sold a 9 mm handgun to a friend just before Tanya Hart’s murder.”

“This piqued the police’s interest because we knew Tanya Hart had been killed with a 9 mm handgun. The type of gun was not public knowledge at that time.”

“The friend’s name: David Meister.”

“This person disclosed to us that it was a High Point Model C 9 mm. This was very crucial to our investigation. The casings that were found on scene had been fired from a High Point Model C 9 mm.”

“David Meister had no criminal history that we could find, but he does have a connection to Tanya. He works with her fiance at the pizza shop, and he knows her.”

“Detectives don’t want to question Meister directly and tip him off that he’s a suspect. They first quietly speak to acquaintances and co-workers.”

“David Meister was into skateboards and tattoos. Uh, that’s the image that he had. That’s what people knew him as. Uh, he was very talented artist. He was real interested in becoming a tattoo artist. Although the subject matter of a lot of that was pretty dark and disturbing.”

“One witness says Meister recently drew a design that seems an ominous mirror of what happened to Tanya.”

“Right eye.”

“Tanya Hart was shot in the right eye. Personally, I have a hard time getting into the mind of an artist who would draw something like that. As we started looking into that further, it made us wonder kind of what was going on deep in his mind. It made us very concerned about who David Meister really was.”

“Some say he has deranged ambitions.”

“David used to tell other people that he wanted to travel around the country killing people, being a serial killer.”

“Cutting you off on the beers.”

“I think I hit—making remarks that he would kill anybody for some money. Any of those you had.”

“David Meister was at a friend’s house watching a crime story on TV with his friend’s father where they were watching TV, and David explained to his friend’s father that he had killed the woman.”

“Once I did that, once—”

“You did what?”

“I did that, killed a woman.”

“Yeah, if you did that, you’d be doing time.”

“Detectives bring Meister in for questioning. They note he wears size nine shoes—the same as the skateboard shoes that left the prints in the snow.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“David was an avid skateboarder. We were able to find people who knew David who said, ‘Yeah, David had shoes like those. We’ve seen them. We’ve seen his shoes like that. He had several shoes like that.'”

“He’s not wearing the shoes now, but it doesn’t matter.”

“To their surprise, he confesses with a twist. He confessed to being hired by Tanya’s fiance to kill her.”

“He told investigators how his coworker Scott had come to him and said: ‘I—I—I want you to kill my girlfriend. I will pay you $1,000 to do this.’ He said Scott had actually offered a bonus if he did it before Christmas.”

“Killing, in and of itself, is senseless. But for a pittance of money, um, for no reason, uh, it wasn’t like revenge. It wasn’t like self-defense. It wasn’t the heat of passion or a sudden quarrel. It was just cold-blooded killer for hire.”

“According to Meister, the fiance wanted Tanya out of his life for good. And Meister was up for the task. He did not express any remorse during their confession.”

“He had made a statement that he felt like he was—he was just helping a friend out. No remorse, just cold.”

“On August 30th, 2002, prosecutors charged David Meister with first-degree murder. Later that same night, detectives arrest the fiance for allegedly ordering the hit. All they have against him is Meister’s confession, which doesn’t last.”

“David Meister, within 24 hours, recanted his confession. We were all of a sudden in a position where we no longer had sufficient evidence to support a prosecution of the fiance.”

“Investigators have no choice. They drop all charges against the fiance.”

“Before Meister’s trial, a former roommate hands police a manual for a 9 mm gun. The only prints—known prints—on that were that of David Meister.”

“The fiance to this day is at large in the community because we simply do not have the evidence to support a prosecution, and David Meister is the one who holds the key to that.”

“At trial, prosecutors argue that on the night of the murder, David Meister left the pizza shop and walked to Tanya’s house knowing she was alone.”

“He knocked on the door.”

“Who is it?”

“Tanya had opened the door and he shot her once in the—in the eye and once in the chest and fled over the hill, uh, and made his way on foot back into Moscow. There was no getaway driver after all. It’s just that no one saw him walking home.”

“Tanya used to give her—her love and physical touching emotion and support every day and communication, same way she did with her boyfriend and her best friend, and—and look what become of it. They—they turned completely evil and killed her.”

“David Meister is found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. He receives two life sentences with no chance of parole.”

“David is a true sociopath. He has no feelings for anyone but himself. There is no evidence linking the fiance to the crime. He is cleared of all wrongdoing.”

“The family will never forget their vivacious, compassionate Tanya.”

“I always feel Tanya’s always there trying to protect me, just like she’s always trying to protect her fellow human being. And there’s certain times where I feel like I just can’t make it through the day, and then she visits me in my dreams, and it’s almost like Tanya’s checking in with me: ‘It’s going to be okay.'”