Author: Dave Cawley

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann sat in shackles before Don Blanchard, a member of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Are you ready to go ahead with this hearing today?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I am.

Dave Cawley: That is Cary’s actual voice.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do need to place you under oath. I realize the restraints make it so you’re unable to raise your right hand. I will still administer the oath and expect you to accept that. Do you affirm your testimony to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do.

Dave Cawley: It was March 28^th, 2000, nearly 15 years since the disappearance of Cary’s girlfriend, Sheree Warren, and eight years since his first appearance before the parole board. Back then, Cary’d denied having committed the rape that’d sent him to prison.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Initially, there appeared to be feigned memory loss, problems in recalling events and what’d transpired that evolved into years of full denial that absolutely nothing had occurred, no sexual assaults whatsoever.

Dave Cawley: Now, with the prospect of parole on the horizon in just a couple of years, Cary was ready to take responsibility.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You think your victims enjoyed the sexual contact?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Absolutely not.

Dave Cawley: Don read an account of the crime into the record.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): When, when she awoke you were in the apartment, were turning off the TV, approached her, told her to be quiet, that you had a gun.

Dave Cawley: I won’t share the graphic details. The important part is this: Cary, at long last and under oath, said it was all true.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Is that a correct summary of what happened in that particular incident?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, it is.

Dave Cawley: Cary had by that point served twelve-and-a-half years on his 15-to-life sentence. He had to do at least 15, but if the parole board believed he was sincere, they could let him out after that.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Reports suggest that there was a number of other sexual assaults that were carried out by you of a similar nature. Is that accurate?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, I, I committed that rape and (pause) it’s disgusting and terrible but I didn’t commit any more.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s a bit tough to hear in this audio, but what he said was “I committed that rape and it’s disgusting and terrible but I didn’t commit any more.”

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Well, what about the other rape you pled guilty to?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): That was one that was, I was charged with four and that was drawn out of a hat, quite frankly, and if I pled to it they were going to drop the rest of them and I did this on the advice of my attorney. He said “Cary, I don’t think your mom and dad can live through any more trials” and they were ready to go to trial on the other three. And he said “it’s time to use your head instead of your heart.”

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d only pleaded guilty to the second charge on the advice of his attorney, to spare his mom and dad the stress of another trial.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I said “I’ll follow your advice—”

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re asking this board to believe that you pled guilty to a, an additional first-degree felony, clearly aggravating your sentence in your jurisdiction, just because your attorney thought it was a good idea? Not because you committed any other offenses?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes, he told me I was going down for a long time. He told me I was going down for life. And he told me “five years with an additional rape won’t make a difference in your case.”

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): It does make a difference. And your honesty and credibility makes a difference, too.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I understand.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): And—

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I absolutely—

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): —it’s seriously suspect at this hearing today.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: Parole board member Don Blanchard wasn’t having any of Cary Hartmann’s denials. He wanted full accountability.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’ll ask you one more time: were there any other sexual assaults that you committed?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I pled to that one, sir, because I did.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were there any other sexual assaults that you committed?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, there were not.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Inside of relationships or outside of relationships?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, there were. In relationships I had, I used a forceful hand. I was, I was abusive.

Dave Cawley: It’s been awhile since we talked about Cary Hartmann’s two marriages and the physical abuse his ex-wives described enduring. Cary waving it off as just “a forceful hand” undersells it. But Don was at a disadvantage here. The pre-sentence report provided to the parole board after Cary’s rape conviction covered only that single case. Ogden police reports relating to the other rapes Cary was suspected of committing were supposed to be in the parole boards files, but weren’t.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I know there were some police reports available on those matters but they weren’t in our file.

Dave Cawley: I’m not sure if the Ogden police reports never made it to the parole board, or if the board had misplaced them over the years. Whatever the case, Don hadn’t read them. And that meant Don wasn’t able to challenge Cary on the specifics of those other assaults.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Tell me how you feel about the impact your behavior’s had on victims in your case.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’m disgusted by it. I am so sorry for the pain and the suffering and the humiliation I’ve caused my victims, their families and my families. This didn’t come to bear on me for a long time. I accept absolute, full responsibility for my actions.

Dave Cawley: Cary said his actions were “deplorable and disgusting,” that he felt sorry for the suffering he’d caused his victims and his own family. He said he’d been in ISAT for 10 years. ISAT was sex offender therapy. He’d not been in that program for 10 years. Not even close. As described in the last couple episodes, Cary’d been twice booted from therapy over his behavior.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’ve made mistakes, I’d admit them and I’ve grown from them and moved on. I was a taker.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d been a “taker” most of his life and had put on a ruse of being a good person while abusing people. Now, he said that was disgusting. But he said he’d made great strides.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I think I’ve made, made great strides lately and when I mean lately, I mean the last, the last years. I’ve done well in, in schooling and, and I think I’ve shown that I can learn and I think I’ve shown that I can move on.

Dave Cawley: Cary had presented the board with a stack of positive letters from relatives, friends and clergy. He said he had job offers and housing at the ready if he were to be released. He would return to Ogden, he said, and complete outpatient sex offender therapy there. He just needed a stamp of approval from the parole board.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Do you also acknowledge, Mr. Hartmann, that you’re a master manipulator?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do, sir.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You acknowledge that you’re trying to manipulate this board?

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Into believing me, yes sir. I do. I’m, I’m telling you from the heart and I guess that’s a form of manipulation. It’s good manipulation.

Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 7: Purgatory From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

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Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann had told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole he’d committed one rape, and only only. Board member Don Blanchard hadn’t believed him.

Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You absolutely are not here on one single, you are not being dealt with on one single sexual assault.

Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Dave Cawley: But Don hadn’t known the full story. In episode five, we talked about how Reed Richards, the prosecutor in Cary’s case had told the three other women Cary’d been charged with assaulting their stories would be available to the parole board even if they didn’t go to trial.

Reed Richards: All of that case material and all the reports and so forth went down to the Board of Pardons.

Dave Cawley: But as I said a bit ago, the Ogden police reports relating to those other three cases weren’t in the parole board’s files. They’d probably just been misplaced in the eight years since Cary’s first parole board hearing in 1992. But what matters is, Don realized they were missing. He told Cary the board needed to find and review those reports before making a decision about whether Cary deserved to get out of prison.

Don tracked the missing reports down in the weeks that followed. He read about Cary’s lingerie survey phone calls and all the women who’d come forward after his arrest to report having been assaulted by Cary. Don realized he needed to talk to Cary again.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Hello.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Hi.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re mister Cary Hartmann?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I am.

Dave Cawley: Cary was serving his time at the Iron County Correctional Facility, a jail in a town called Cedar City, almost 300 miles south of Ogden. Most parole board hearings occurred at Utah’s two state prisons. But the board occasionally held hearings elsewhere, like at a jail called Purgatory a little ways farther south of Cedar City. So that’s where Cary once again went before Don Blanchard on July 28^th, 2000.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, Mr. Hartmann, you understand why this hearing’s being reopened today?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, yes sir, I received a letter and the packet.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: For Cary to land back in front of Don just four months after their last meeting wasn’t normal.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’m concerned about the totality of your behavior and how many victims there have been—

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —and whether or not review of those reports, you suggested not being able to recall a lot of things. In fact, in these reports back when the officers were dealing with you in the late ‘80s, you uh, suggested struggling with your memory and having difficulties recalling things and, and you would remember little pieces of information—

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —it’s clear from the acknowledgements you made in these reports … you would only go so far in those acknowledgements and recollections and descriptions.

Dave Cawley: The Ogden police reports spanned hundreds of pages. I know because I’ve read them. They paint a far broader picture of Cary’s suspected activities during the ‘80s than even I’ve described in this podcast. Don’d provided copies of those same reports to Cary.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’ve had a chance now to read through those. What did that do to your recollection and your memory about this period in your life?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): It brought it back in stark reality. It brought it back and I, I read over them and through them three or four times. … I was shocked at my behavior but reminiscent of a person that was out of control.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Do you acknowledge additional sexual assaults—

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I certainly do.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —besides the one rape that you admitted to at the last hearing?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Dave Cawley: A remarkable and sudden improvement in Cary’s memory.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): How many sexual assaults do you estimate you’ve, uh, committed?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): When I read through those, the, the four victims that I had, I recollected those and I read through them and read through them and read through them and there was much of that that I recognized. Umm, I’m not, umm, I own those. I’m responsible totally, absolutely, uh, and I accept responsibility for that.

Dave Cawley: Four victims. Cary had gone from admitting none, to one, to four. Exactly the number for which he’d been charged. No more. And he’d given up trying to blame those crimes on the other serial rapist, Blaine Nelson, who we heard from in the last episode. Don asked Cary about one of the other names contained in the police reports — not one of the four rape victims.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No, I don’t, that, that wasn’t one of them. That I recall.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): She was one that you, uh, made contact with through the lingerie surveys, subsequently she agreed to meet you for a drink. She didn’t describe a full, she didn’t describe a rape but she certainly described a sexual assault.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do remember that, yes sir.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were you aggressive with her—

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I was.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —and did that unfold as she described it?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, absolutely.

Dave Cawley: There were others. Like a woman named Jean. I’m not using her last name out of concern for her privacy.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): There’s, uh, one incident that dates back to ’84 where a divorcee … found your wallet out in the ditch bank outside of her house.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I did read that.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were you, had you been stalking her and watching her?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, I don’t have any recollection of that whatsoever. I lost my, my wallet once at the Deseret Gym and it was stolen once and I don’t have any idea how it appeared there.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): She, she described repeated incidents of having prowlers, hearing noises, seeing someone outside … Eventually she goes out to the ditch bank. She finds your wallet with your ID in it. She calls the police, gives them your name, tells them she has the wallet. Probably even told them that she suspected you were prowling. Remarkably, the police never come and pick up the wallet from her. Years later, all of these sexual assaults are coming out. She goes to the drawer where she’s discarded that wallet, gets it out and turns it over to the police.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I read that.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Was she going to be a victim?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No, absolutely not. I, I just didn’t do that. I just wasn’t there. I just wasn’t involved in that, sir.

Dave Cawley: Don remained unconvinced Cary was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I believe your memory was just as clear on those sexual assaults when I was talking with you in March and you denied ‘em as it is today.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): And that you admit absolutely only what is documented by records and that there are probably other victims and other sexual assaults that you … recall very well, which are not documented in the records. Uh, it appears that your life probably for the decade of the ‘80s, was almost consumed by orientation, interest in sex and sexual activity and that was what drove your existence.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re absolutely right. You are absolutely right, sir.

Dave Cawley: But Cary said he was a different man now, that he felt regret every single day for what he’d done. He said he was committed to working in therapy to overcome his insecurities. But even there, he found himself tangled, because sex offender therapy was no longer available where Cary was living. The Utah Department of Corrections only offered sex offender therapy at the state’s prison. It’d contracted with third-party providers to make therapy available at a few county jails, but contract at Iron County had expired. That meant if Cary wanted therapy, he’d need to move to one of those other jails or the prison. He’d told Don during their earlier meeting he couldn’t do that without putting his own life at risk.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I stayed in Iron County for protection.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): What kind of protection reasons do you have?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Being an ex-police officer, I stayed where I was that for those reasons.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Well, Mr. Hartmann, do you really think you really have those kinds of problems?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, I have in the past. I have in the past.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s excuse of staying put for protection wasn’t going to fly if he ever hoped to get a shot at parole. Don said he’d have to complete therapy.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): All of your prior sex offender therapy and prior therapy up to now, if I understand correctly, it’s dealt with your admitting to one victim. Is that right?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Primarily, yes sir.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): In my mind, that whole process has to start all over again.

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Understand.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s hopes must have dimmed in that moment.

Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Anything else you wish to say before this hearing’s closed today?

Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I appreciate the board’s indulgence and I, I thank you.

Dave Cawley: In the weeks that followed, the parole board members voted to keep Cary incarcerated. They said he couldn’t get out until he disclosed all his victims. Listening back to these recordings from more than 20 years ago, I noticed something. In neither did anyone bring up the name Sheree Warren. A few episodes back, we met Ogden police detective Shane Minor. He’d played a part in the search for the serial rapists who’d terrorized women across Ogden in the mid-‘80s. That’s when he’d first met Cary Hartmann.

Shane Minor: We got a lot, quite a few calls once Cary Hartmann was arrested.

Dave Cawley: Some of those calls were tips from people who told Ogden police Cary might’ve killed his girlfriend, Sheree Warren. Shane had never met Sheree himself, but he’d taken up her cold case years later, in 1998.

Shane Minor: Kinda started a, a new investigation or started all over with it.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d spent the better part of two years trying to track down witnesses, especially people who’d known Sheree.

Shane Minor: I’d started putting down names and then I’d work on those when I had time, try to locate addresses.

Dave Cawley: Progress came slowly.

Shane Minor: A lot of the interviews would be in the evening.

Dave Cawley: And off the clock.

Shane Minor: No one’s gonna sign off on the overtime if it’s not an active case that you’re working, so. (laughs)

Dave Cawley: Still, Shane’d felt driven to do the work. The Sheree Warren case felt like a sliver under Shane’s skin. The irritation of the unresolved mystery irked him any time brushed against it. He wouldn’t feel right until the sliver came out, until he’d solved the case. So, Shane kept picking away at it.

Shane Minor: It was very time-consuming.

Dave Cawley: He believed someone must have the missing piece that could lead him to Sheree’s remains. But the passage of time complicated that.

Shane Minor: 14, 15 years go by and you just start to forget.

Dave Cawley: In 2000, Shane left Ogden PD to take a position as investigator for the Weber County Attorney’s Office. He remained a cop, but worked on behalf of prosecutors, making sure their cases were air-tight. And he took the Sheree Warren case with him. Shane’s notes mention a phone call he received that summer from Don Blanchard, the parole board member you’ve just been hearing. Don called Shane after talking to Cary, because Don wanted to know more about Cary’s “girlfriend.” Shane realized the board wasn’t seeing the complete picture. It didn’t know what he, Jack Bell and other detectives had learned about Cary Hartmann’s possible role in the disappearance of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: And looking at all the information we had, there was a lot of information that was never provided.

Dave Cawley: “Never provided” because Cary hadn’t been charged with a crime related to Sheree’s disappearance. In the eyes of the parole board, Cary’s crime was sexual assault, not murder. And even when it came to the sexual assault…

Shane Minor: …every chance he had, he denied doing anything. He was wrongly convicted, he’d never done anything and so that was his take on it and then later on he finally started to admit what he was convicted of but he didn’t admit to anything else, other than that information he knew he could’ve been charged with.

Dave Cawley: Shane suspected Cary Hartmann had killed Sheree Warren. But suspicion wasn’t enough. He needed to prove it. The simplest way would be to get Cary to confess.

Shane Minor: But he was already looking at life sentences on what he’d already done.

Dave Cawley: Cary had no incentive to admit to killing Sheree, if he’d done it, so Shane couldn’t count on a confession. The next best proof would be to find Sheree’s remains. Perhaps in a place Cary’d visited in the days after Sheree’s disappearance: the mountain behind Causey Reservoir.

Shane Minor: But that’s such a vast area that you describe.

Dave Cawley: Shane thought he had more time. Don told Shane it’d be a few years yet, but Cary would go before the board again. If he’d completed his therapy by then, he’d likely win parole. Don said if all else failed, Shane could ask the parole board to hold what’s known as an evidentiary hearing. That’s a formal meeting focused on evidence. Any evidence, not just about the rape cases. Shane could then tell the board members anything he’d learned that might tie Cary Hartmann to Sheree Warren’s disappearance.

Shane wanted to keep Cary incarcerated as long as possible, both to protect the public and to buy more time for his investigation. He believed Cary still harbored secrets about Sheree Warren, but he was running out of options on how to get answers.

For investigator Shane Minor, the prospect of Cary Hartmann winning parole added a ticking clock to his search for the remains of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: All the problems along the way of just sitting down and working on this and staying focused on this.

Dave Cawley: He knew if he didn’t push for answers about what’d happened to Sheree, no one would. Shane had talked to Roy police captain Jack Bell about his May, 1987 conversation with an elk hunting guide named Fred Johns.

Shane Minor: Ok so, who was Fred Johns?

Dave Cawley: I’ve mentioned Fred a few times before. He’s the guy who’d reported seeing Cary on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir the Sunday after Sheree disappeared.

Shane Minor: I knew Fred Johns from the Ogden area.

Dave Cawley: Fred had a reputation as a pool hustler and a gambler. Shane’d heard Fred was prickly about police. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he tracked Fred down in April of 2001.

Shane Minor: Fred was living up in Mountain Green and, and [I] went up and talked to him about the statement he’d made to Bell about seeing Hartmann in early October of 1985 just to lock that down for the report.

Dave Cawley: Fred died in 2019, so you’re not going to hear from him in this podcast. What I tell you next comes from Shane’s formal report and his own personal recollection of their conversation.

Shane Minor: He basically went through that same story that he went through with Bell.

Dave Cawley: That story went like this: on the Sunday following Sheree’s disappearance, Fred was on the ridge between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs. Think back to our percent sign: Causey in the upper left, Lost Creek in the lower right and a mountain between them. Midway between the two reservoirs on top of the mountain is where Fred Johns said he saw Cary Hartmann.

Shane Minor: And recalled seeing him that first week in October. I believe it was the first week of the, uh, elk hunt.

Dave Cawley: The land belonged to a family of sheepherders named the Wildes, and it was some of the best elk hunting ground in the western United States.

Shane Minor: Wilde’s was the people’s last name that owned the property that leased the hunting rights to Johns.

Dave Cawley: In other words, Fred Johns paid the Wildes for exclusive access to their property during the elk hunting season. Fred would then turn around market his services as a guide. If hunters wanted to bag an elk on the Wilde property, they had to first pay their dues to Fred. Or trespass and risk having an armed and irate Fred Johns chase them off the mountain. Fred jealously guarded the Wilde property during the hunt. He would spend those weeks in September and October living out of a shack on the mountaintop.

Shane Minor: He would charge people to come in, he ran like an outfitters up there and do these guided hunts up on that property.

Dave Cawley: Fred also parked an RV a few miles from his shack. On the opening weekend of the ’85 elk hunt, Fred was driving the dirt road between the shack and the RV when he noticed something: tracks in the dirt he hadn’t seen the night before.

Shane Minor: Then he ran across Hartmann and somebody that he thought was his brother up there.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann with his pickup truck, a pair of three-wheel ATVs and another man, on the mountain just four days after Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Cary only had the one brother: Jack Hartmann. Jack’d stood in the police line-up with Cary before the rape trial, along with their look-alike cousin, David Hartmann. This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. Fred knew Cary.

Shane Minor: He knew Hartmann from high school I believe, and I think he even told me that they lived together for a short period of time, so he knew Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: Way back in episode 1, I mentioned how Fred’d kicked Cary out of his house after Cary came on to Fred’s wife in the mid-‘70s. Fred didn’t deny that bit of bad blood when he talked to Shane Minor. But it didn’t seem like reason enough for Fred to fabricate this sighting of Cary on the mountain.

Shane Minor: Told me how he’d seen him in the afternoon.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): That to me would seem pretty suspicious.

Shane Minor: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Fred told Shane he’d stopped, stepped out of his truck and asked Cary what he was doing there. Cary’d allegedly said he’d gone down off the ridge to the north, toward Causey Reservoir, looking for elk. Fred’d been skeptical of this because, as I said, he’d driven by that same spot earlier and had not seen Cary’s truck there. Fred told Shane precisely where the sighting had happened.

Shane Minor: How he referred to it was the Righthand Fork of the Guildersleeve Canyon.

Dave Cawley: The spot Fred described was at a clearing, where the dirt road passed by heads of two canyons: one to the north, the other to the south. Shane wanted to see it for himself but he couldn’t just drive up onto that property without permission. It was privately owned, deep in the mountains and protected by gates.

Shane Minor: After I talked with, uh, Fred I asked him if he would take me up and show me exactly where it was he seen ‘em and he agreed to do that. So it was some time later when the, uh, snow allowed.

Dave Cawley: The ridge Fred described sits at just over 8,000 feet above sea level. Winter drapes that mountain with deep snow every year. Some years, the snow might thaw by the end of April.

Shane Minor: But you’re usually going into the end of May or June before you can get up there and access a lot of that area.

Dave Cawley: That’s how it was in the spring of 2001. Shane wasn’t able to go up with Fred until the end of May.

Shane Minor: He took me up where he had access to the property right there by Lost Creek.

Dave Cawley: Remember, this was more than 20 years ago. Shane didn’t have a GPS unit to track the journey. He had to rely on a more primitive technology: the odometer.

Shane Minor: I kind of identified it off of mileage.

Dave Cawley: I’ve compared Shane’s mileage notes against maps and confirmed the precise spot of the Fred Johns sighting. The route Shane took to get there is probably not the same one Cary Hartmann would’ve used on that Sunday in October of ’85, if Fred Johns’ information was correct. There are several other ways to get up onto that ridge, including from Causey Estates. Cary had at least three friends who property in Causey Estates. And remember, in episode 4, Cary’s friend Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, told us he’d loaned Cary his key to the gate at Causey Estates that fall.

Shane Minor: And even that Lost Creek area, which I think Lost Creek there’s two or three different places that you could have access.

Dave Cawley: I know it’s difficult to picture this without seeing it on a map, but Causey and Lost Creek are on opposite sides of the mountain. Again, they’re the two circles in the percent sign. Cary could’ve potentially gained access from either side.

Shane Minor: Could’ve gotten around the gate and gotten onto that property, could’ve accessed it.

Dave Cawley: There’s a dirt road that crosses over the mountain, connecting the two reservoirs. And it’s on that road Fred Johns said he saw Cary. But between the two reservoirs…

Shane Minor: …you got thousands and thousands of acres up there.

Dave Cawley: It’s the kind of place where, if you had enough time and determination, you might hide a body and expect no one would ever find it. That’s why Shane needed to go to the precise spot where Fred Johns said he’d seen Cary Hartmann.

Shane Minor: He showed me the area where he was backed in at and where he’d talked to him.

Dave Cawley: The ridge at that spot is only a hundred or so feet wide, with canyons falling away on either side. Shane poked around, hoping to stumble upon something that might convince the parole board Cary Hartmann was guilty of more than just sexual assault.

Shane Minor: We’d heard that uh, parole was coming up and there was a lot of information I got thinking about it.

Dave Cawley: Like, the forensics of human decomposition. The tissues that make up a human body break down after death. The speed of that breakdown depends on the climate, whether the body’s buried and so on. Eventually a body will reduce to nothing but bones and those bones will come apart, a process called disarticulation. So Shane didn’t expect to find Sheree Warren’s complete body, or even her skeleton. He knew if Sheree’d been left on the mountain, after more than 15 years he’d be lucky to find even a few small scattered bone fragments. But then, maybe he didn’t need Sheree’s body itself. Something as simple as her earrings or necklace might suffice. And those wouldn’t decompose. Shane also knew Sheree’s purse had never been found.

And of course, there remained the question of the two coats. Cary Hartmann had repeatedly said Sheree had left his apartment on the morning of her disappearance wearing his black parka. Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, believed Sheree’d  left her house that morning wearing a gray suede jacket. Police’d found the gray suede jacket in Cary’s apartment. So if Shane were to find Cary’s black parka on the mountain, it might suggest Cary’d wrapped Sheree’s body in that coat before dumping her there.

But luck didn’t shine on Shane that day. No bones, no necklace, no parka. He didn’t find anything. Shane Minor wasn’t the type to give up easily. He decided to call in the cadaver dog cavalry.

Shane Minor: Made arrangements with a, uh, Wally Hendricks, who was with Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office.

Dave Cawley: Wally Hendricks was at the time the top search dog cop in the state of Utah.

Shane Minor: He’d had some success on finding some, uh, bodies so I’d contacted him.

Dave Cawley: Wally mustered up seven dogs and handlers, all of whom drove to meet Shane early one Saturday morning in June of 2001. Their trucks rattled up the route Fred Johns had shown Shane. The back of Shane’s truck was packed with enough soda, chips and sandwiches to feed a Little League team. But instead of aluminum bats and leather baseball gloves, the coolers were flanked by shovels and mesh screens. Shane came prepared to sift for bone fragments if the dogs caught whiff of a gravesite.

Shane Minor: We hit that hillside with, with the dogs just to see if we could kick anything up but again that was, 15 years, 16 years after-the-fact.

Dave Cawley: Shane didn’t dare hope. He stood by and watched as the dogs worked down from the ridge.

Shane Minor: They kept going, so I think we went off the top and went down into that canyon and they went quite a ways down in the canyon and did a pretty diligent search. I felt bad because they’re volunteers and they’re doing this on their own just trying to help out. But uh, we put a good day’s worth of work up there with those dogs.

Dave Cawley: But once again, Shane came up empty. Sheree Warren wasn’t within a stone’s throw of the spot on that mountain ridge. I’ve had the opportunity to observe a few different cadaver dog searches in my time as a journalist. Nowadays, both dogs and their handlers wear GPS tracking devices when they search. This allows investigators to come back later and verify the precise locations checked, and see any gaps in the coverage. There are no GPS tracks like that for this cadaver dog search of the spot on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek. And that’s a problem now, 20-plus years later, as I try piece together exactly where the dogs went.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Would that have been down into Guildersleeve?

Shane Minor: I believe so.

Dave Cawley: If the dogs only searched to the south, into Guildersleeve, they might’ve missed the mark. The canyon to the north is called Pete Nelson Hollow. I’ve talked about it before. Pete Nelson Hollow’s where that lost hunter from the 1940s, Rudolph Bertagnole, wandered down through a snowstorm and ultimately died. Bertagnole’s bones had remained there 43 years before being found. Cary Hartmann could’ve traveled into Pete Nelson Hollow on his 3-wheeler. And if so, a cadaver dog search down the opposite direction into Guildersleeve, would’ve been pointless.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: I’m standing on the tarmac at the Morgan County Airport, south and east of Ogden on the back side of the Wasatch Mountains. It’s late September of 2021 and wildfires across the western U.S. have filled the air with smoke. A motor engages behind me…

(Sound of motor, cable winding onto drum and door lifting)

Dave Cawley: …lifting a hangar door to reveal a collection of single-engine airplanes. One of them, a little white-and-blue two-seater with a bubble canopy, belongs to my dad. I’ve been coming up to this airfield in the town of Mountain Green since I was a kid. My dad always seemed to know everyone here.

Richard Cawley: How are ya?

Lisa: You getting ready to go fly?

Richard Cawley: Yeah.

Lisa: Good. It’s beautiful up there. And the colors are gorgeous.

Dave Cawley: Through the haze, I can make out a blast of red and gold draped across eastern slopes of the Wasatch Mountains. Autumn leaves are at their prime. But we’re not out to admire the scenery today. We’re on a mission to take a look at the canyons behind Causey Reservoir.

Richard Cawley: Have you met my son Dave, Lisa?

Lisa: I don’t, probably when you were a lot smaller.

Dave Cawley (to Lisa): Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: (Laughs) So yeah, have a good time and—

Richard Cawley: We’ll do that.

Lisa: —I, you are doing awesome with your reporting stuff. Really, yeah.

Dave Cawley: We roll the plane out of the hangar and fire up the engine.

Richard Cawley: Clear prop!

(Sound of propeller engine starting)

Dave Cawley: The idea of inspecting the land around Causey from the air isn’t mine. I stole it from retired investigator Shane Minor.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): You don’t like flying so much from what I understand.

Shane Minor: No, nope, nope. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: But Shane took to the air 18-and-a-half years on from Sheree Warren’s disappearance — and three years following the failed cadaver dog search — still hoping he might find some sign of her on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir. On the morning of May 24^th, 2004 , Shane and a fellow investigator named Rob Carpenter, along with a state trooper named Stan Olsen, took off in the Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter.

Shane Minor: It was a very pleasant flight. The uh, the pilot did a wonderful job, was great guy but too small of planes for me. Or helicopters. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: They headed east, following the South Fork of the Ogden River. They crossed over top of the Meadows Campground, the place Cary Hartmann had tried to meet Heidi Posnien way back in 1971. Then, the chopper crossed over Causey Dam. It banked to the right.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Ok, this is the road we want to follow right here, right?

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes, I believe so.

Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, this is Causey Estates up here.

Dave Cawley: A video camera recorded the flight as the chopper followed the dirt road south from the dam into Skull Crack Canyon, over the gate that blocks the way into Causey Estates.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, you call it, this is Causey Estates up here, that’s what that’s called?

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes it’s uh, private land owners that have it.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Pretty.

Dave Cawley: The chopper climbed, following the slope of the mountain.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): This would’ve been the road I think he had access to, so I mean, there’s unlimited places where he could’ve dumped her along here.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Hard to think like a bandit, y’know. Would you’ve, would you’ve picked a characteristic turn or rock or tree or something to, as a landmark?

Dave Cawley: Shane snapped photos out the window as the helicopter crested the top of the mountain south of Causey. It turned east, crossing over Box Spring, the place where the taxidermist Brent Morgan had had his wedding in 1984, a year before Sheree Warren disappeared. The chopper followed a dirt road that snaked along the top of a ridge. It approached the place where Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had said he’d seen Cary Hartmann.

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): It’s gotta be, uh, right up along this road here, about a mile. Right around in here.

Dave Cawley: The place Fred said Cary’d taken his 3-wheelers the Sunday after Sheree Warren disappeared.

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Hey Rob, does this look about it, right over here off to the right?

Dave Cawley: Picking out a specific place from the air can prove really difficult.

Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): And where would we have have gotten the dogs out? That’s uh, that’s my question.

Dave Cawley: But after a moment of confusion, Shane recognized the spot.

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, I think this is it right here off to the right.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): That little clearing there?

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes. He backed in by that piece of snow right there. That’s where he was seen at and then he took off and went back out the same way we came up and wasn’t seen again.

Dave Cawley: Investigator Rob Carpenter had also been there on the day of the cadaver dog search.

Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): When we came up here with those dogs, there was elk sign everywhere on this drainage right here.

Dave Cawley: They weren’t expecting to find Sheree Warren’s body on this flight, because scattered bones would be all that remained after so many years. Those would be too small to see. Instead, they were documenting the various routes someone could’ve used to reach the site on the ridge back in October of ’85.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Could you get in from that Croydon side without a key?

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): No, it’s gated off on that road that goes up to Lost Creek.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Oh, ok.

Dave Cawley: Nowadays, you can do a lot of this kind of work using high-resolution aerial imagery, available for free on the internet. But when it comes to investigations, there’s no replacement for putting your own eyes on a place.

Shane Minor: So we got it documented, it was a smooth day. It was just, I mean it was a great flight.

Dave Cawley: And hovering in a helicopter over a remote mountain forest…

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): There’s some elk down there.

Dave Cawley: …does bring some fringe benefits.

Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Boy those elk disappeared real quick.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Didn’t like the heli-chopter, huh?

Shane Minor: I think the pilot knew that I was a little nervous about it so he, he went out of his way to, make it comfortable.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Now Shane, be honest, you ok?

Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): He’s fine.

Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): He’s taking pictures of the elk. (Laughs) Boy, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em. Look at ‘em all down there.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Oh yeah. Beautiful country up here. Wow.

Dave Cawley: Beautiful and practically impossible to search.

Shane Minor: Just because of the, the amount of land up there.

Dave Cawley: Thousands upon thousands of acres, incised with canyons and cliffs, choked with thick brush, known to only a select group of herders and hunters. Much of Utah’s mountain land is National Forest, open to the public. But this mountain between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs is private, mostly owned by two neighboring ranches: Deseret Land and Livestock and what was formally known as Basin Land and Livestock. Hunting those ranches today is a pay-to-play experience, limited to just a handful of weeks each year. Someone can’t just go exploring for a body up there on a whim.

When Shane had taken cadaver dogs on that mountain, they’d centered their search at the site pinpointed by their witness: the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns.

Shane Minor: I was putting a lot of faith in those dogs and if something had been dumped, hoping that it wouldn’t be too far down in and if we were in the right location and if we come up with a bone or something.

Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): We hit this whole side of the hill here a couple hundred yards in both directions and worked down towards the bottom of this, y’know to what would be kinda logical to drag a body, uh, just hoping to hit a bone or something but never came up with nothing. After he was seen though, he could’ve drove back out and dumped her anyplace.

Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Anyplace. Yeah, moved her or whatever.

Dave Cawley: A bit earlier I mentioned not knowing where exactly those cadaver dogs went. Shane’s description here of a couple hundred yards suggests they didn’t go far. But again, when Fred Johns first told detective Jack Bell about seeing Cary Hartmann at that spot the weekend after Sheree Warren disappeared, Fred said Cary’d had been loading up his three-wheelers.

Three-wheeled ATVs were all the rage during the ‘70s and ‘80s. They were especially popular among hunters, who could use them to pull their kills out of the woods. A mule deer and a human can weigh about the same. So, it stands to reason, if a 3-wheeler can pull a deer out of the brush, it might also be capable of moving a human into it.

Shane Minor: If you got off that dirt road and used some type of an SUV to get down in those canyons, be like worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, unless you knew exactly where that was.

Dave Cawley: Pete Nelson Hollow, the canyon that drops to the north from the spot on the ridge, runs three miles before reaching the Right Fork South Fork Ogden River behind Causey Reservoir. It’d be tough to get a 3-wheeler all the way down there. But taking a body even a quarter-mile or so off the dirt road would significantly decrease the chance of anyone stumbling across it.

Shane Minor: Unless you’re right on the, right on top of it, I think it’s gonna be real easy to miss.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s helicopter flight in 2004 had achieved what he’d set out to do. He’d photographed the points of interest on our percent sign: Causey Reservoir, the cabins of Causey Estates, the dirt road running the slash of the percent sign over the mountain top, and Lost Creek Reservoir on the far side.

(Sound of single-engine plane flying overhead)

I wanted to go one step further. That’s why I asked my dad to take me up in his plane, all these years later. I wanted to not only see the landscape for myself, but also ask if I were trying to hide a body in this corner of the world, where and how exactly would I do it?

I’ve flown over this landscape now three times: once in KSL’s helicopter, Chopper 5, and twice with my dad.

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Oh, there’s Causey Estates.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yep.

Dave Cawley: Flying over that mountain is about the only way to put eyes on the area without driving, hiking or horse-packing across miles of rugged, privately-owned mountainside.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): This road we’re crossing over—

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yep.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —would be the one that he would’ve used.

Dave Cawley: I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit studying maps and aerial images of the Causey area, trying to memorize the landmarks, working out possible routes for a 3-wheeler. Thinking about where someone might’ve dropped a body.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Ok, so that’s the spot right, we just flew right over top of where they said he was parked—

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —so he would’ve gone potentially down the canyon to the left. So if we, could we circle around here?

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Uh huh, right here.

Dave Cawley: The upper reaches of Pete Nelson Hollow are covered in stands of quaking aspen that explode like fireworks during the fall.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Ah, that’s remarkably pretty.

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yeah, yeah.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): There are a couple of springs right up top here. And one of the things I noticed looking at the topographic map is there was a, at one point a little ATV road that went down to those springs.

Dave Cawley: There’s a path that cuts through the trees, leading into the upper reaches of Pete Nelson Hollow, about a quarter mile from where Fred Johns reported seeing Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): I’m curious if you could get a, uh, three-wheeler down there. I’m thinking you definitely could.

Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Oh yeah, yeah.

Dave Cawley: I came away from these flights believing it’s plausible Cary Hartmann could’ve hidden Sheree Warren’s body on that mountain behind Causey Reservoir. And I believe Shane Minor’s cadaver dog search more than 20 years ago probably missed the mark by sticking too close to the road.

The evidence suggests Cary Hartmann could’ve used an ATV — a 3-wheeler — to move Sheree’s body to a concealed spot on that mountain, just far enough out the cadaver dogs couldn’t find it. But any good hypothesis deserves to be challenged by experiment. Which means before our season’s done, I’ll need a 3-wheeler and access to the mountain behind Causey.

The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole scheduled Cary Hartmann for a rehearing on September 20^th of 2005. It’d been five years since the back-to-back hearings you heard at the start of this episode, where Cary’d bombed his chance to take accountability. During those five years, investigator Shane Minor had expended a lot of effort but made little progress in his search for the remains of Sheree Warren.

Shane knew the information available to the board didn’t include the circumstantial evidence linking Cary to Sheree’s disappearance.

Shane Minor: It was just the individual rape cases and that was it.

Dave Cawley: Because again, Cary hadn’t been charged with a crime connected to Sheree’s disappearance, let alone convicted of one.

Shane Minor: And we have this information that would indicate he’s done a lot more than what he’s been charged with, and it’s stuff he’s never come clean with.

Dave Cawley: Cary had cleared the significant hurdle of serving 15 years on his 15-to-life sentence. He stood a good chance of at last winning parole. Reed Richards, the prosecutor who’d put Cary in prison, told me he’d anticipated Cary would only serve the minimum: 15 years.

Reed Richards: In fact that was the time where they had mandatory incarceration and mandatory length of stays. Uh, and so that was very unpopular with the prison, of course, that you had to mandate how long they stay. And so they generally would look at that minimum time and that’s when they cut people loose.

Dave Cawley: Cary had done enough time to qualify for release, unless the parole board decided it had good reason to keep him in. Under Utah law, the parole board wields broad authority. The board has the ability to consider more than just the crime that sent a person to prison when deciding how long that person should remain in custody. Shane believed the parole board had a blind spot in Cary Hartmann’s case.

Shane Minor: There’s just a lot of information that started to come out that I felt maybe the board should be aware of that.

Dave Cawley: With five days to go before Cary’s rehearing, Shane Minor sat at his computer and started to type.

“I have hesitated writing this letter,” he began, “because I know there is nothing you can do. But at the same time, I feel compelled to at least provide you with information concerning Cary Hartmann.”

Shane went on to summarize the story of Sheree’s disappearance. He explained his role in the Ogden City Rapist investigation back in the ‘80s. He described how publicity of Cary’s arrest in that case had led to a flood of tips, including some about Sheree. But, he wrote, Cary was by that time in custody, represented by counsel, and unavailable for questioning.

Shane Minor: He never answered any questions about his relationship with Sheree when asked about it. He only volunteered what he wanted Jack Bell to hear at the time she disappeared and that was it.

Dave Cawley: Shane wrote about how he and detective Chris Zimmerman had dropped in on Cary at the Sanpete County Jail following his conviction, in the hopes of asking him about Sheree.

Shane Minor: Zimmerman and I went down in ’88 after he’d gone to prison, uh, just to see if he’d talk to us about that and he wouldn’t talk to us. Got up and walked out of the room.

Dave Cawley: He explained how over the course of nearly 20 years, investigators had talked to multiple jailhouse informants who’d claimed to have heard Cary making incriminating statements. But none of it had ever led them to a body.

“The investigation is continuing at a slow pace,” he wrote. He stopped short of asking the board to take any specific action, but concluded by saying “I felt this is information that you … should be aware of.”

He signed his name at the bottom and sent the letter to Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Shane Minor’s letter found its way into the hands of a man named Kent Jones.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): My name is Kent Jones. I work as a hearing officer with the Board of Pardons.

Dave Cawley: Kent conducted Cary Hartmann’s 2005 rehearing at the Central Utah Correctional Facility, a state prison located in the town of Gunnison.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think this is the first time you’ve been in front of a hearing officer but it’s basically the same as if it was a board member.

Dave Cawley: They went through the formalities.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, I have your prison number as 18553, correct?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay. Cary, I’m going to be reviewing, kind of the life and times of Cary Hartmann in a few minutes and then I’d like you to respond to some of the questions that I have, to some of the statements that I’m going to read. So I need to place you under oath. If you would, raise your right hand and I’ll swear you in.

Dave Cawley: Kent summarized the crimes for which Cary’d been charged and asked if Cary admitted to them. Cary said he did. Kent gave Cary an opportunity to make a statement. Cary used the time to talk about how out of control he’d been in the years before his arrest. He said it’d started with financial problems and a sense of pride that’d kept him from asking his father for help.

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): The more I strived…

Dave Cawley: “The more I strived to put my finances together,” he said, “the deeper in the hole I got.”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): So I used pornography.

Dave Cawley: “I used pornography and masturbation to try and climb out of a hole… to make myself feel better…”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): It didn’t work.

Dave Cawley: “It didn’t work.” From there, he said he’d tried to regain control by seeking out “lonely and vulnerable women.”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I stalked ‘em…

Dave Cawley: “I stalked them…”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …I broke into their homes. I followed them…

Dave Cawley: “…I broke into their homes. I followed them…”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …and I sexually assaulted them.

Dave Cawley: “…and I sexually assaulted them.”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How did you meet these women?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Sometimes I saw them in a club…

Dave Cawley: “Sometimes I saw them in a dance club or a private club and followed them home.” Kent noted this candor was a significant change, since Cary had for so long insisted on his innocence.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, why have you waited nearly 20 years to talk about this? Are, are you getting tired of the time? Uh, is, are you just coming to grips with some things? Why did you put on the facade for so many years when your, when your mom and dad were struggling to protect you? Uh, even religious people would swear to their deaths that you were innocent. Uh, is it just kinda coming to a head now?”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I, I lived in such denial…

Dave Cawley: “I lived in such denial, I thought I couldn’t be a bad person and I couldn’t do this and I convinced people and I manipulated them and coerced them into believing.”

Cary said that’d changed once he’d decided to approach treatment with an “earnest heart” after his last parole hearing. He’d left Iron County, where he’d lived for more than a decade, and transferred to another jail in far-flung San Juan County. The move had allowed him to once again enter sex offender therapy. He still had eight months to go in the program, but he said he was on track to graduate.

His disciplinary record had improved. No more pornography. No more dirty audio tapes. He was working as head cook in the jail’s cafeteria. If granted release, he said, he would move back in with his parents, who were by then 80 years old, and get a plumbing job in Ogden. Kent expressed some hesitation with that plan.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I guess I’m concerned about the long history of sexual deviance, even prior to when you’re arrest, wasn’t there some indication you was doing some telephone, uh, obscene stuff years and years before that?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir, I was. I was involved in making…

Dave Cawley: “I was involved in making unsolicited phone calls at random. I called up women and made sexual comments and sexual innuendos over the phone.”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How did you come up with those names?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Uh, just at random in the phone book.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): In a phone book?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: Kent pointed out other troubling details from Cary’s records.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): According to here you may have been doing a lot of wife swapping? On one of your honeymoons you brought a prostitute to the room to have her do a threesome? On another occasion, uh, when you was in San Diego area, you brought a young marine to have him have sex with your wife while you watched?

Dave Cawley: Cary didn’t deny the allegations made by his ex-wives, for the most part.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You like violence while having sex.

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I wasn’t a, I wasn’t a violent person but I was, I was a violent person.

Dave Cawley: “I wasn’t a violent person but I was, I was a violent person.”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I was abusive…

Dave Cawley: “I was abusive and I hit them and I’d slap them and I’d push them…”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …but I wasn’t a violent person during sex.

Dave Cawley: “…but I wasn’t a violent person during sex.”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Well it’s kind of, kind of interesting that you’re saying you’re not violent and then you just tell me that you are hitting ‘em now that, that’s violent, isn’t it?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir. But I wasn’t a sexually violent person…

Dave Cawley: “I wasn’t a sexually violent person but I was abusive, yes sir, absolutely.” Cary’d admitted to entering women’s homes and forcing them into sex by threat of violence. He’d admitted to physically battering his wives. But if we’re to believe him here, he was a gentle lover. Kent didn’t let that slide.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): So, could you consider some of your ex-wives as being victims?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Absolutely.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: Kent rattled off the names of Cary’s ex-wives and former girlfriends, asking one-by-one about the details of what he’d done to them.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you put a .357 to her head and try to have her have sex with, uh, your friend?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I remember having a gun in the drawer and bringing it out and waving it around. I don’t remember putting it to her head.

Dave Cawley: “I don’t remember putting it to her head…”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): If she said if that’s what happened, that’s what happened.

Dave Cawley: “…if she said that’s what happened, that’s what happened.” Cary at one point tried to dodge one of these questions by saying…

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think anyone that was involved…

Dave Cawley: “…I think anyone that was involved with me when I was in my sexual deviancy is a victim.” And although no one said it then, I’ll point out Sheree Warren was involved with Cary Hartmann during his “sexual deviancy.”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How ‘bout a woman by the name of Jean? Have you ever heard her name before?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I haven’t.

Dave Cawley: That’s not true. Jean’s name had come up during Cary’s prior board hearing in 2000, the hearing you heard at the start of this episode.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think she’d reported that she saw a prowler outside her window. She went out and found your wallet by the window. Do you recall losing a wallet when you was doing some window peeking years ago?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I do, sir.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Do you know who you was watching?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): No sir, I do not.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think her name was Jean.

Dave Cawley: It’s small detail in the grand scheme of this story, but in that earlier recording you heard Cary insist he’d lost his wallet at the gym, saying he had no idea how it’d ended up outside Jean’s house. So either he’d been lying then, or he was lying now.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): What I’m trying to do, Cary, is I think that there’s a lot of other victims there that you hadn’t previously disclosed. Did you see where I’m, I’m fishing, what I’m trying to do?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Absolutely.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Aren’t there others there? You’re, you’re an intelligent guy, I think you got 121 IQ. Uh, you’re not dumb. You’re brilliant guy. It just seems to me, Cary, you’re not really being honest with me.

Dave Cawley: Cary pushed back, saying he hadn’t before considered his ex-wives as victims but everything else he’d disclosed in therapy. He had no other victims to report. Kent had one other name to ask about.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I come up with another name when I’m researching this, and I can’t retry your case, I’m not a prosecutor, but I want full understanding of everything. So, I was in contact with a Weber County official because I wanted to figure out this one name: Sheree.

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): And I guess I’m, I’m a little concerned about that. That was a girlfriend of yours in 1985. She disappeared and has never been seen since. They think you have somehow been involved with some foul play with her disappearance. At the time, they sought your help and you tried to look for her and it wasn’t until after your arrest, I think, in ’86 or ’87 that they started thinking that maybe you were connected with it. Many years later, they ask ya but you adamantly denied talking to, or didn’t want to talk to ‘em and you walked out of an interview. And I guess I’m concerned about that, Cary. I just wonder as to whether or not she’s dead somewhere and you had anything to do with her death or her disappearance and I would imagine that officials might be looking at this to reopen it as a cold case murder investigation to see if you’re somehow involved with it. Are you willing to talk some of the law enforcement officials about her disappearance?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Oh absolutely. I had nothing to do with it.

Dave Cawley: “I had nothing to do with it.”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you, did you have an argument with her—

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): No—

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): —on the night she disappeared?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): —absolutely not. She disappeared from Salt Lake City and I was in Ogden.

Dave Cawley: “She disappeared from Salt Lake City and I was in Ogden.”

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I was surrounded by people the whole time…

Dave Cawley: “I was surrounded by people the whole time, morning and night, until I reported it.” Interesting Cary said he reported Sheree missing because that’s not how it happened, at least according to detective Jack Bell’s notes. They say Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, first reported her missing. Then, Jack Bell called Cary, not the other way around. It was a subtle shift in the story, but no one challenged Cary on it.

Cary told parole board hearing officer Kent Jones he just wanted a chance to be the good person he knew he could be, out in society. Kent promised the board would take it all into account.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You’ve done an enormous change from five years ago, disclosing a lot of different things that you’ve done. But I just don’t know that you’re completely honest yet. … And I would encourage you to talk to the Weber County people, if in fact they think that you are involved with her disappearance, it might be to your best to be just as honest as you possibly can with them because I get the information, uh, from this investigator that they’ve got a lot more on you than what you think. Ok?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Ok.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Good luck, Cary.

Dave Cawley: Investigator Shane Minor received a cassette tape in the mail days later.

Shane Minor: I talked with, uh, Kent Jones who was the, the hearing officer and he sent me a copy of the hearing.

Dave Cawley: Shane listened to the tape with great interest.

Shane Minor: In that hearing, Hartmann admitted to the cases he was charged with.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you, in fact, rape her?

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I did, sir.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.

Shane Minor: According to Hartmann, he was more than cooperative with, with law enforcement regarding Sheree Warren.

Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): My whereabouts are documented…

Dave Cawley: “My whereabouts are documented. I’m the person that reported her missing. I worked with detective Jack Bell for over a year and a half trying to look for her.”

Shane Minor: But then he would only refer to Jack Bell, his contact with Jack Bell. He forgot to mention the fact he wouldn’t talk to us about her.

Shane Minor: So Jones kind of put him on the spot and says “so you’re willing to talk with law enforcement about that?”

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, I would, I would encourage you to talk with any of the Weber County people, that uh, might come down and talk to you.

Shane Minor: And he said he would.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d had little other choice. Defying the board of pardons would likely mean serving a maximum sentence.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You’ve already got a life sentence on you and if you hope for any release in the future, whether it’s now or 20 years from now, my guess is it’s better that you attempt to disclose that now instead of trying to do what you’ve done in the past and lived under a cloud of deceit.

Dave Cawley: And so, 20 years after Sheree Warren’s disappearance, Cary Hartmann would finally face a formal interrogation about the night she disappeared, thanks to some pointed prodding from the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

Shane Minor: I think it was because of that is the only reason he agreed to talk with us.

Dave Cawley: Shane Minor, who’d helped finger Cary as one of the two Ogden City Rapists, had a date with a man he suspected of Sheree Warren’s murder.

Dave Cawley: The TV network ABC premiered a new crime drama in February of 1989.

Announcer (from B.L. Stryker DVD): Tonight, Burt Reynolds stars as B.L. Stryker.

Dave Cawley: I’d never heard of B.L. Stryker until I came across a reference to it in the Sheree Warren case files. So, I did what any curious journalist would do: I ordered a DVD set off eBay.

Dave Cawley: It’s Friday night and I’ve got a cold beverage in one hand, got a bag of chips in the other. Let’s put this DVD on.

Dave Cawley (from home theater): The title character, B.L. Stryker, is a former New Orleans police detective. He retires to his hometown of Palm Beach, Florida. Then, against his better judgement, finds himself pressed into service as a private investigator.

Burt Reynolds (as B.L. Stryker from The Dancer’s Touch): Whatever problems Palm Beach has, Palm Beach can work ‘em out.

Dave Cawley: The plot of the first episode revolves around a serial rapist who sneaks into the homes of young socialites. The police turn to Stryker for help.

Michael O. Smith (as Chief McGee from The Dancer’s Touch): This is the fourth girl who’s been attacked in the last six weeks.

Dave Cawley: I’m a little surprised having now seen it, that this episode aired on prime-time TV. There are a couple scenes that show the assaults. They’re framed to avoid anything explicit, but something just feels off to me about watching a dramatization of a sexual assault as a form of family entertainment.

Not everyone shares my sensitivity. Case in point: a few days after this show aired, an FBI agent in Salt Lake City received a phone call from an inmate at the Iron County Correctional Facility in southern Utah. He told the agent he was locked up with a guy named Cary Hartmann, who was serving time for rape. He said Cary’d watched B.L. Stryker, specifically the scenes depicting the sexual assaults, and “after viewing the show, Hartmann acted in a different manner.”

That comes from a report the FBI agent wrote. It’s never before been made public. He didn’t go into detail about what “different” meant, but I can just imagine how someone like Cary Hartmann would’ve reacted to seeing a depiction of a crime not unlike his own on TV.

The agent kept his new snitch’s identity secret, assigning him the catchy nickname “SU 1815-C.” I’ll just call him “Charlie.” Charlie the informant and the FBI agent talked several more times in the days that followed. Charlie said he’d heard Cary Hartmann talking about the disappearance of Sheree Warren. Former Roy City police detective Jack Bell had briefed the FBI on the Sheree Warren case.

Jack Bell: Of course Sheree was on their list of missing people, national list.

Dave Cawley: And what Charlie described tracked pretty close to the theory Jack Bell had himself come up with during his years working the Sheree Warren case.

Jack Bell: I always thought after Cary become the number one suspect, and I quit looking at Chuck, that Sheree had found out something about Cary, whether it was the fact that he was raping these women or had other girlfriends, or the Supper Club, or something that she confronted him about and he whopped her with something.

Dave Cawley: Here’s what Charlie said he’d heard from Cary: Sheree’d gone to Cary’s apartment on the night of her disappearance. They’d argued over Cary’s plan to go out drinking. Cary’d slipped Sheree a pill to incapacitate her, then later strangled Sheree and buried her body near a boulder and a pine tree. Cary’d driven Sheree’s car to Las Vegas that night and flown home under a false name. It sounded plausible to the special agent. The FBI had, after all, helped investigate the car’s discovery in Vegas a little over three years earlier…

Jack Bell: They had the FBI process it.

Dave Cawley: …before police in Las Vegas turned the car over to Sheree’s estranged husband, Chuck Warren.

Jack Bell: Chuck went down and got it. They released it to him.

Dave Cawley: Charlie told the FBI Cary’d kept a diary with details about all the rapes he’d committed prior to his arrest. He said Cary’d been tipped off Ogden police were looking at him as a suspect and had trashed the diary to prevent detectives from finding it. This caught my attention when I first read it in the FBI files. I’d been told the detectives who’d investigated Cary had gone to great lengths to keep him from realizing he was on their radar. But I heard a different story when I sat down to talk with Cary’s old friend Dave Moore.

Dave Moore: Fact, I remember when he first become a suspect, Chris had called my uncle Don and myself down to his office.

Dave Cawley: Dave’s uncle Don Moore was a sergeant in the Ogden Police Department. And by “Chris,” he means Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman. Dave said Chris…

Dave Moore: …explained what was going on. He says “I just wanted to lay it out front with you.”

Dave Cawley: So it’s plausible Cary might’ve had prior warning of his arrest. I wanted to ask Zimmerman about this, but he declined my request for an interview.

The most interesting bit of information Charlie the informant fed the FBI involved Cary Hartmann and Ted Bundy. Charlie said Cary had a strange infatuation with Bundy. He said Cary dogeared books about the serial killer and insisted on calling him by his proper name “Theodore,” instead of Ted.  The state of Florida had executed Bundy just a few weeks earlier. Days ahead of the execution, Bundy’d granted an interview to a detective from the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office named Dennis Couch.

Dennis Couch (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): He was a defeated person. He was extremely fatigued and he indicated that, uh, he was appalled by the senselessness of it all.

Dave Cawley: Bundy’d confessed to several unsolved Utah murders.

Joel Munson (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): But Couch did not get the answer he was hoping for regarding another Utah murder, that of 21-year-old Nancy Baird of Layton. Bundy insisted he had no part in that killing.

Dave Cawley: Nancy Perry Baird had disappeared from a gas station where she worked, a little south of Ogden, on the evening of July 4^th, 1975 — just over 10 years before Sheree Warren vanished. Nancy resembled Sheree in many way: a young mother, divorced but dating, working to get by while leaning on her parents for support. Police investigated Nancy’s ex-husband and her boyfriend, but both had alibis. Nancy Baird’s case remains unsolved, even today. Her body has never been found.

I plan to discuss Nancy Baird’s disappearance in more detail in a bonus episode at the end of this season. The reason I’m sharing a bit of it with you now is because the FBI files say Charlie the informant “learned … Cary Hartmann was an acquaintance of Nancy Baird’s.” And Charlie said Cary “questioned why ‘Theodore’ was accused of involvement in [Nancy] Baird’s disappearance.”

He implied Cary Hartmann might’ve killed both Nancy Baird and Sheree Warren. But could Charlie be trusted?

This is Cold, season 3, episode 6: Lying Liars. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

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Dave Cawley: A few minutes ago, I described watching the first episode of an old TV show called B.L. Stryker. A jailhouse snitch had told the FBI Cary Hartmann had watched it, too. The show rankled me a bit when I watched it, because of how it ignored the experiences of the fictional victims. The main character, Stryker, made just one mention to a young woman about seeing a therapist after her assault.

Kristy Swanson (as Lynn Ellingsworth from The Dancer’s Touch): You mean a shrink?

Burt Reynolds (as B.L. Stryker from The Dancer’s Touch): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: The episode didn’t delve into the psychological trauma real-life victims face.

?? (from November 26, 1984 KSL TV archive): We want them to be able to resume their lives, uh, and feel comfortable with that and to do that, they have to regain some control back over their lives after they’ve been assaulted.

Dave Cawley: During the ‘80s, survivors of rape and sexual assault who chose to report in Utah were often paired with a counselor, to help them navigate the criminal justice process.

Jack Ford (From November 26, 1984 KSL TV archive): Debbie Hennig is a victim who says she wanted to testify. She wanted to get the guy who raped her. But she says it would’ve been nearly impossible without the help of the victim witness counselors.

Debbie Henning (from November 26, 1984 KSL TV archive): They really made me feel a lot better. Because even though you know you didn’t invite it, you still feel guilty occasionally, saying “did I do something wrong? Did I invite this? Should I have done something differently?” But they make you realize that you’re just a victim of circumstance. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Jack Ford (From November 26, 1984 KSL TV archive): The man who attacked Debbie, Nathaniel Bell, was convicted of five separate sexual assaults on women.

Dave Cawley: And, by coincidence, Nathaniel Bell later ended up in the same sex offender therapy group as Cary Hartmann at the Iron County Correctional Facility. Nathaniel and Cary didn’t get along.

One day in April of 1989, they were playing a game of handball with two other inmates in the jail’s gym. Handball involves slapping a small rubber ball, bouncing it off the floor and walls of an enclosed court. It’d been one of Cary’s favorite pastimes, before his arrest and conviction. It’s not a contact sport, but this match included more than a little bumping and jostling. At one point, Nathaniel told Cary “you get in my way again, come hell or high water, I’m running over your [expletive] ass.”

Nathaniel then served the ball and Cary lunged for the return. Cary would later insist he’d only brushed against Bell, accidentally, but Bell would describe Cary punching him in the gut. A cheap shot. Especially because just a few years earlier, Nathaniel had been stabbed in the same spot.

Nathaniel pivoted and whipped his own fist against Cary’s jaw. Cary’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. He crumpled, his skull striking the solid floor with a thud. Blood began to bubble from his mouth and nose. A separate pool of blood spread from beneath his head. Guards rushed in to find Cary unconscious. They called an ambulance. Cary ended up being ok, though it took stitches to close the nasty split on the back of his scalp.

Clearly, Cary wasn’t making many friends on the inside. He wanted out. And he had an idea how to make that happen. The jury that’d convicted Cary Hartmann in the first of the four rape cases prosecutors had filed against him based its decision, in part, on a science called serology. Serology, the study of bodily fluids, could narrow a field of suspects based on their blood or saliva, but not pinpoint an individual.

Pilar Shortsleeve (from July 14, 1992 KSL TV archive): We do not give absolutes. We give probabilities. Serology has always been in that area.

Dave Cawley: But by the end of the ‘80s, an emerging field of study promised to revolutionize forensic science.

Pilar Shortsleeve (from July 14, 1992 KSL TV archive): With DNA, our probabilities are a lot higher.

Dave Cawley: It’s difficult to overstate how profound an impact DNA has had on the criminal justice system in the last 30 years. DNA evidence can today link suspects to crime scenes when no other evidence can, or, it exclude them. Some people who’ve served decades in prison have had their convictions overturned on the strength of DNA evidence.

But in 1989, that revolution was still just over the horizon. Cary Hartmann could see it coming. He filed a civil lawsuit at the end of that year against the director of Utah’s state crime lab. He demanded an opportunity to have DNA analysis performed on the evidence gathered from the body of his victim.

Steve Eager (from August 30, 1992 KSL TV archive): DNA fingerprinting can match a suspect to blood, semen, even a hair follicle left behind.

Dave Cawley: DNA’s admissibility as evidence hadn’t yet been established in Utah law. Cary wanted to break new ground.

Steve Eager (from August 30, 1992 KSL TV archive): Legal and science experts say it’s only a matter of time before DNA evidence is used by both prosecutors and suspects.

Dave Cawley: Cary insisted a lab would not find his DNA in the evidence swabs. Former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards told me he felt confident the conviction he’d secured against Cary would withstand any challenge.

Reed Richards: I had no problem with any DNA samples. Problem is, I doubt that they save that stuff.

Dave Cawley: Reed told me it’s common practice for police departments and crime labs to discard evidence, once trials and appeals are complete. Cary’s case was complete, so Reed didn’t think the crime lab would’ve saved the swabs needed for any DNA analysis.

Reed Richards: But maybe they did.

Dave Cawley: The judge didn’t decide Cary’s DNA lawsuit right away. So let me tell you about what happened in the meantime. Cary received a package in the mail from a woman named Teresa. I’ve mentioned her before. Cary’d cold called Teresa a few days before his arrest in the rape investigation, giving her the old lingerie survey. She’d remained on the line, then agreed to meet Cary for drinks.

Teresa, it turns out, had stayed in touch with Cary after his conviction. The package Teresa sent Cary contained a cassette tape, sealed in plastic. It was the album “Riptide,” by Robert Palmer, which included the radio hit “Addicted to Love.” Staff at the Iron County jail were suspicious. They tore off the shrink wrap, cracked the case and put the cassette in a tape player. They immediately realized someone had recorded over Riptide. In its place on side A was a recording of a woman reading sexually explicit stories. Side B contained something more, performative. I’ll leave it at that.

The Utah Department of Corrections prohibited inmates from possessing sexual materials. Getting caught with incoming contraband put Cary in violation of a contract he’d signed upon entering sex offender therapy. A therapist told Cary if he wanted to remain in the program, he’d have to consent to taking a plethysmograph.

Pamela Davis (from February 18, 1999 KSL TV archive): In Utah, all adult sex offenders take a test that may show if they are likely to re-offend.

Dave Cawley: Think of it like a polygraph, with some extra hardware.

Pamela Davis (from February 18, 1999 KSL TV archive): The tester in another room plays a video tape showing pictures of men and women of different ages. A computer is supposed to measure the subject’s arousal to what he’s seeing on the video tape and hearing on an audio tape.

Dave Cawley: A sort of sexual lie detector, used to find out what kind of stimuli a test subject responds to most strongly by measuring biometrics, including blood flow to the genitals.

Peter Byrne (from February 18, 1999 KSL TV archive): These are hooked to the fingers and then this is a respiration belt that goes around the chest. The third one his hooked directly to the penis.

Dave Cawley: This plethysmograph device might sound familiar if you’ve listened to season one of this podcast. A judge once ordered Josh Powell to undergo a plethysmograph examination. Josh instead killed himself and his two young sons.

Cary Hartmann wanted no part of this. Prison records show he ripped up a plethysmograph consent form. He told his therapist he hadn’t raped anyone and wouldn’t take the test. As a result, the therapist kicked him out of the program.

Completing sex offender therapy would be a hurdle Cary Hartmann would have to clear if he ever hoped for a chance of parole. But at that point in 1990, Cary had a better idea how to win his freedom. That winter, a judge agreed to Cary’s request for DNA analysis in the rape case. The judge told the director of Utah’s state crime lab to ship the evidence to an outside lab in California. Cary’d convinced his own father to pay for the testing. That plan soon hit a snag. The crime lab director went to pull the evidence, only to discover it’d disappeared. Cary couldn’t believe it. He suggested to a reporter from the Ogden Standard-Examiner he’d been framed.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 15, 1991 Ogden Standard-Examiner article): What possible reason can they have for losing the evidence?

Dave Cawley: The setback left Cary with just one last hope for deliverance: Blaine Nelson, the second Ogden City Rapist.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): I did what I did and I’m dealing with those problems.

Dave Cawley: We talked about Blaine in the last episode. Ogden police had arrested Blaine in the spring of 1988, just months after Cary’s conviction. In October of ’91, Blaine told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole his problems had started with a drug habit. He said he’d burglarized homes to get money for drugs. That escalated to rape, he said, when he began encountering single women at some of the homes.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Drugs didn’t make me do that, but they made the choice become a lot easier.

Dave Cawley: Blaine calmly said he’d sexually assaulted 74 women prior to his arrest. A stunning, horrifying number.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Through what I was doing I learnt that a woman would do more for her children than she would for herself. And I used that to my advantage.

Dave Cawley: Blaine’d developed strategies to find new victims, mostly by looking at the yards of the homes he burglarized.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): If the yard looked messy, a lot of toys around, that gave me the indication that there was not a male present.

Dave Cawley: His final victim also spoke to the parole board.

Victim (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): I wish to see him rot in jail. (Cries) He lied under oath at his hearing. I know this for a fact.

Dave Cawley: I’m not going to identify this woman by name. But I’m sharing what she said because she believed Blaine wasn’t to be trusted. She didn’t think drugs motivated the man who’d taken such pleasure in terrorizing and humiliating her.

Victim (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): I had pain killers in my purse from a broken hip. He did not touch those.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Looking back on it, I still knew that I had a choice even though I was on drugs.

Dave Cawley: So that’s Blaine Nelson. The reason why Cary Hartmann thought Blaine was his ticket out of prison, is Blaine said he’d committed Cary’s crimes.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): I confessed to Ogden City Police of all my crimes, even crimes that other inmates in this institution is being held for at this, at this time.

Dave Cawley: Blaine said he’d first made the connection on the day of his sentencing.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): When I was in Ogden City … I confessed to everything and I also did some interviews with, with uh, the TVs.

Dave Cawley: I’ll remind you, one of the reporters who’d interviewed Blaine that day was Cary Hartmann’s friend, Larry Lewis. I don’t know which reporter planted the seed, but Blaine told the parole board one of them suggested he might’ve committed Cary’s crimes.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): And I told ‘em at that time that if that is the case, I will do everything I need to do to, to make that correction.

Dave Cawley: The plot had thickened a couple months later, when Blaine went to court in Iron County for sentencing on additional crimes he’d committed there. Blaine’d bumped into Cary at the Iron County Correctional Facility.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): He approached me and introduced his self and said there was a possibility that I was responsible for things that he had done.

Dave Cawley: Blaine said he’d started writing letters to all the lawyers, letting them know he wanted to confess to Cary’s crimes.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): The response is, from the authorities in Weber County, that I am a liar, that I’m crazy. I will admit to anything.

Dave Cawley: But Blaine insisted his motives were pure. Cary Hartmann had his own date with parole board coming up. They couldn’t let him out, not yet anyway, because Cary had to serve at least 15 years. But the hearing would be Cary’s first chance to tell his side of the story to the people who might some day decide if he deserved a chance to rejoin society. He wanted to make an impression, so he reached out to someone he hoped might speak on his behalf: the President of the United States of America, George H. W. Bush.

George H. W. Bush (from January 20, 1989 inaugural address): There are times when the future seems thick as a fog, you sit and wait … but this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through, into a room called tomorrow.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from December 9, 1991 letter to President Bush): Dear President Bush, I am incarcerated in the Utah State Prison System in Cedar City, Utah. I have proclaimed my innocence from day one!

Dave Cawley: Cary sent this letter to the President in December of ’91. He explained the emerging science of DNA analysis would’ve exonerated him, if not for the ineptitude of the crime lab.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from December 9, 1991 letter to President Bush): Why would I go to all of the trouble of having this testing done just to have the results come back saying that he is guiltier? That just doesn’t make sense.

Dave Cawley: Cary told the President it was no mistake the crime lab “lost” the evidence. He smelled conspiracy.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from December 9, 1991 letter to President Bush): I am not a fruit cake, I’ve had all kinds of tests to establish my sanity and I am as sane and level-headed as you are, with an I.Q. of 135.

Dave Cawley: Cary said his rights had been abused from the start. Police had the wrong man. The real rapist, Cary said, was Blaine Nelson.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from December 9, 1991 letter to President Bush): He has been directly linked to over 74 sexual assaults. The Ogden City Police cleared up 600 burglaries when they caught him.

Dave Cawley: Those numbers — 74 assaults and 600 burglaries — had only just come out at Blaine’s parole board hearing two months earlier. The local newspapers had published them. And clearly, Cary was paying close attention. Cary concluded his letter with a plea for help, begging the President to personally contact the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on his behalf.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from December 9, 1991 letter to President Bush): Thank you for your most valuable time and attention. God bless you always. Respectfully, Cary W. Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: The President didn’t come to Cary’s aide. Maybe because he had his hands full with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the final end of the Cold War.

George H. W. Bush (from December 19, 1991 press briefing): And we are not fixing to get in the middle of that.

Dave Cawley: It’s no surprise really that Air Force One didn’t make a stop in Utah on the day of Cary’s first hearing before the parole board in January of ’92.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): I have sought DNA testing for four years.

Dave Cawley: This is Cary’s own voice, from a recording of that hearing.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this would prove my innocence.

Dave Cawley: Cary repeated almost word-for-word what he’d said in his letter to the President.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): I’m not a fruitcake. I’m not a crackpot. I’m level-headed. I’m sane.

Dave Cawley: Parole board member Heather Nelson Cooke heard Cary out.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): You make a very passionate and a very persuasive plea that you are innocent.

Dave Cawley: But she told Cary she’d studied his case with great interest and was aware of more than just the facts of the crimes that’d put him in prison. She’d reviewed the pre-sentence report we talked about in the last episode, which included many other eye-popping comments about Cary’s sexual proclivities.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): Some wife-sharing parties, some third-party, uh, orgies. A lot of pornography. Incidents where you have exposed yourself.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): What!?!

Dave Cawley: None of this should’ve been a shock to Cary, as he’d had opportunity to review the same materials. But it’s worth considering his parents were in the room and they hadn’t been privy to the pre-sentence report.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): Never, never have I used force in any way, shape or form toward any female in any form of sexual act in 20 or 30 or 40 years. Never. Never. It’s not in my make-up. It’s not me.

Dave Cawley: Heather, the parole board member, countered that Cary’s M.O. was using “psychological coercion” like threatening to kill the children of the women he’d assaulted. Cary denied that, too. He said that’s how Blaine Nelson operated.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): He was the man that was caught, convicted and confessed to at least two of the crimes that I was charged with.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): And a follow-up investigation was done apparently and the conclusions of that was that he hadn’t.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d collected sworn affidavits from three people who’d each said they overheard Blaine taking credit for Cary’s crimes, at different times and in different places. Now, Cary spread those statements on the table, displaying them for the parole board.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): One, two, three affidavits that Blaine Nelson stated that he committed the crimes I’m in here for. There they are.

Dave Cawley: The affidavits didn’t have the impact Cary might’ve hoped. Blaine Nelson’s admissions weren’t a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): He’s not the only one in the prison that’s taking responsibility for other people’s crimes. You’re aware of that. I mean it, it happens.

Dave Cawley: Heather, the parole board member, told Cary it didn’t really matter, anyhow. The parole board didn’t have the power to re-try his case. She couldn’t let him out, even if she believed him. Which, it seems, she didn’t.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): And as I look at, umm, 20 years of unusual, aggressive, deviant sexual activity, I do see you as a risk.

Dave Cawley: She told Cary he wasn’t going anywhere for at least another 10 years.

At the start of this episode, we heard about a jailhouse snitch I’m calling Charlie. He’d told the FBI Cary Hartmann killed Sheree Warren and was infatuated with serial killer Ted Bundy. But I didn’t tell you about another intriguing claim Charlie made. Charlie said Cary’d offered the second Ogden serial rapist, Blaine Nelson, $50,000 to take the blame for Cary’s crimes.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Because I have so much time anyway I have nothing to lose.

Dave Cawley: That again is the voice of Blaine Nelson, the second Ogden City Rapist, from his 1991 parole board hearing. Blaine said police had believed the claim he’d colluded with Cary.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Detective Zimmerman from Ogden City come to the Oquirrhs and seen me.

Dave Cawley: The Oquirrhs were a medium-security housing unit at the Utah State Prison.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): And that’s when he said that I was nuts, and uh, would admit to anything and was being paid off.

Dave Cawley: But Blaine said it wasn’t true.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): I uh, signed a waiver in Iron County not to be moved in the same living quarters with Hartmann for the possibility that if this did go to court that they would say we traded stories or, or made things. So I avoided that. And that’s the last I’ve heard on the Hartmann case.

Dave Cawley: Blaine hadn’t heard anything more about Cary Hartmann, because neither police, the courts nor the parole board had believed him. Cary’s M.O. had been a little different than Blaine’s, and other evidence linked Cary to his victims. I should note, Blaine’d also tried to take credit for a crime attributed to a third serial rapist, a guy named Jerry Casida.

Blaine Nelson (from October 4, 1991 parole board recording): Also contacted one of his lawyers. Nothing was done.

Dave Cawley: Like Cary, Jerry Casida’d latched on to Blaine’s admission, using it as grounds for an appeal of his sentence. A judge held hearing, to try to get to the bottom of this mess. Blaine testified. He gave a first-hand account of the rape attributed to Jerry Casida. But Blaine’s version contradicted the victim’s own account. The judge determined Blaine wasn’t credible. That was 30 years ago.

Blaine is still in prison. I decided to write him, to ask if he still stood by his claim he’d committed the crimes attributed to Cary Hartmann. Blaine wrote back, saying yes, he did stand by it. I wrote Blaine again, asking if the story told by Charlie the FBI informant was true. Had Cary offered Blaine $50,000 to take the fall, as Charlie’d claimed. Blaine said Cary “never offered me at any time any money.”

“I am very ashamed at my past,” Blaine wrote, “and have tried to do the right thing. Truth is truth.”

That may be but after all these decades, it seems someone — either Blaine Nelson or Charlie the informant — lied.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: We’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple episodes talking about the Ogden City Rapist case and Cary Hartmann’s role at center of it.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): Any type of physical aggression toward anyone, even, especially a female—

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): Uh huh.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): —is so abhorrent, it’s so terrible.

Dave Cawley: It’s drawn us away a bit from our focus: the disappearance of Sheree Warren. It’s necessary though, because understanding how Cary Hartmann treated other women at the time he was dating Sheree provides a lens that puts a sharper focus on his relationship with Sheree. Cary objectified women, both strangers and romantic partners alike. We don’t know what all Sheree endured during her time with Cary. But it’s now fair to ask how Sheree might’ve reacted if she’d uncovered any of his dark secrets.

Sheree’s friend Pam Volk, who’d worked with her at the credit union, told me she’d married and moved away soon after Sheree disappeared.

Pam Volk: And I felt bad because we had moved to Germany ‘cause there wasn’t, I mean there wasn’t really anything to do anyway, but being so far away it kind of felt, umm, I don’t know. It just, just made me feel a little bit guilty, I guess.

Dave Cawley: Pam and her husband returned stateside a few years later. They were surprised to find no one seemed to talk about Sheree anymore.

Pam Volk: It didn’t get a lot of attention, no. Not like, not like missing cases do now.

Dave Cawley: Sheree’s disappearance had left her estranged husband, Chuck Warren, in legal limbo because their divorce remained unresolved. Chuck convinced a judge to finalize the divorce in May of ’91. The judge granted Chuck full custody of his and Sheree’s son. Sheree’s family held a memorial for her a year-and-a-half later, in October of ’92. I’d love to play you a news clip from that event, but KSL, the station I work for, didn’t go to the memorial.

Pam Volk: Uh it’s, it’s frustrating, y’know, and I feel so bad for her parents.

Dave Cawley: I can’t tell you why KSL didn’t cover the story. It’s possible all the station’s staff were all on more pressing assignments that day. I’ve worked as a newscast producer. Sometimes it’s a judgement call about what gets covered with limited staff and resources.

Reporter Larry Lewis, who covered stories in and around Ogden for KSL, was on shift that day. But he aired a story about a California dad who’d skipped out on paying child support.

Larry Lewis (from October 10, 1992 KSL TV archive): Then this week someone tipped the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office that he was in Utah and getting ready to fly out of state.

Dave Cawley: Larry, I don’t need to remind you, was a personal friend of Cary Hartmann’s.

Other news media did attend the service. There’s a clip from TV station ABC4 that shows Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, walking to Sheree’s new headstone with Sheree’s son, Adam.

Mary Sorensen (from October 10, 1992 KTVX TV archive): I tell him that God’s watching over him, our Heavenly Father’s watching over his mother.

Dave Cawley: Adam was just 10 years old in the clip, dressed in a little gray suit. He told me recently he’d hated being paraded in front of the TV cameras. That’s part of why you’re not hearing from him in this podcast. Mary Sorenson told The Salt Lake Tribune that day she intended to have her daughter declared legally deceased.

Cary’s oldest friend, Steve Bartlett, saw that story in the paper. You might recall Bartlett from the last episode. He was the special investigator for the Salt Lake County District Attorney who’d exchanged letters with Cary after his conviction, urging him to reveal the location of Sheree Warren’s remains. Cary’d told his old friend he didn’t know anything about it. The plight of Sheree’s parents moved Bartlett. He decided to make one final effort to reach Cary. He wrote another letter to his childhood pal.

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from October 13, 1992 letter to Cary Hartmann): Please, please, please, if you know where Sheree is — and I really think that you do — please somehow let [somebody] know so that the family can end their grief.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s response dripped with indignant disdain.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 17, 1992 letter to Steve Bartlett): I feel sorry for you, Steve … friends are very special and should not be taken so lightly. … Let me tell you about Sheree. She was the most important lady in my life at that time, or at any other time for that matter. … I tried to find her with every bit of strength that I had at that time … I did everything that was in my power, and if that is not good enough for you and the rest of the people out there that still think I had something to do with her disappearance, then that is too bad.

Dave Cawley: A year later, in October of 1993, Sheree’s brother went to court and asked a judge to declare his sister legally deceased. The judge approved the request. In the eyes of the law, Sheree Warren was dead. That unlocked a life insurance policy Sheree’d had. You might expect I’m going to say her ex-husband, Chuck Warren, staked a claim on that money. But that’s not what happened. Chuck arranged to have the money go to his and Sheree’s son, Adam, and no one else.

That move hadn’t absolved Chuck Warren of suspicion. He remained a suspect at that point in ’93. So did Cary Hartmann. And there were even some who still thought a serial killer might’ve plucked Sheree off the streets of Salt Lake City. It was an idea Cary’s own private investigator had promoted. But former Ogden police detective Shane Minor didn’t see much evidence to back up that theory.

Shane Minor: Just that she was seen in the parking lot of the credit union when she left that day.

Dave Cawley: As you might remember, the Salt Lake City Police Department had lumped Sheree in on a list of other missing and murdered women. Salt Lake detectives had linked the deaths of three other young women to the same gun. They suspected a serial killer was on the loose and they’d formed a task force in 1986 in the hopes of catching him.

Shane Minor: I knew they were busy, they were doing a lot and this case was, they, they grouped this case in with it.

Dave Cawley: But Shane told me the Salt Lake detectives hadn’t invested much attention on Sheree Warren’s disappearance specifically.

Shane Minor: Because you’d get hit with “well, isn’t this a missing person out of Roy?” And they’re like “well.”

Dave Cawley: Shane said a lot of cops across the country were all in on the idea of using technology to hunt serial killers during the ‘80s.

Shane Minor: And that’s when all these serial murders like Ted Bundy and a lot of others was being kind of found out and they had tracked their whereabouts and all the different locations they had been.

Dave Cawley: The FBI had launched VICAP in the summer of ’85, just a few months before Sheree Warren disappeared. VICAP’s a database and analysis team dedicated to catching serial criminals, by spotting trends in their behaviors.

Shane Minor: And so now that’s kind of coming into play.

Dave Cawley: The FBI published a VICAP alert in the February, 1988 edition of the bureau’s monthly magazine. It included nine case summaries about missing and murdered women in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. One of them described the disappearance of Sheree Warren. Only two months later, the Salt Lake task force publicly announced a suspect: Idaho spree killer Paul Ezra Rhoades.

Larry Lewis (from April 29, 1988 KSL TV archive): Rhodes is on death row in Idaho for the murders of two convenience store clerks and a school teacher last year. All three female victims were shot with the same .38-caliber handgun.

Dave Cawley: The three Salt Lake victims had likewise all been shot with a .38.

Larry Lewis (from April 29, 1988 KSL TV archive): Rhoades denied he had anything to do with the Utah killings. But investigators say he revealed some interesting facts.

Dave Cawley: The connections were circumstantial, at best.

Jim Bell (from April 29, 1988 KSL TV archive): When Mr. Rhoades was arrested, those .38/.357 handgun murders of female clerks in convenience stores that are similar to our type murders, uh, came to a drastic stop.

Dave Cawley: That’s correlation, not causation, a very weak form of circumstantial evidence. Rhoades was never charged in connection with the Utah murders, and Idaho executed him in 2011. In any case, the Salt Lake task force had it wrong. Rhoades wasn’t their killer. The Salt Lake detectives had started with a conclusion, then worked backwards trying to find evidence that could support it. When that didn’t work, the task force floundered. It disbanded in 1991, leaving the three cases it’d tied to the same gun unsolved. No evidence has emerged in the years since to suggest Sheree Warren’s disappearance is in any way linked to those other Salt Lake task force cases, as Cary Hartmann’s private investigator had suggested.

Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor had once briefed the Salt Lake detectives about Cary Hartmann, when it’d seemed Cary might’ve been a suspect for the Salt Lake task force. But by the early ‘90s that speculation had died out and Shane’d moved on to other assignments.

Shane Minor: My focus had kind of drifted away from Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d at last accepted his life in custody. He spent a lot of time writing letters to his old friends in Ogden, like the taxidermist, Brent Morgan.

C. Brent Morgan: Everything that he talked about in there was “poor me” or this that and the other. But I sent him a letter back and I basically said “until you come to realize or rationalize what you’ve done, I don’t want to have any more correspondence with you.”

Dave Cawley: Cary also stayed in touch with Dave Moore, who owned the sewing machine repair shop.

Dave Moore: He made a collect phone call to the store every Christmas Eve for about three years.

Dave Cawley: And Cary made calls to his TV reporter friend, Larry Lewis.

Larry Lewis: Yeah, and I, I poured cold water on his communications with me. It just wasn’t right. I didn’t feel comfortable knowing that he’d been convicted of that and, uh, y’know, I pretty much ended, y’know, our relationship.

Dave Cawley: Larry’s case of cold feet about Cary Hartmann didn’t come on right away. I have prison records that show Cary continued making calls to Larry for years.

Larry Lewis: He wanted to continue reaching out. I didn’t feel comfortable, y’know, continuing, y’know, the association. I think I sent him a hand, uh, some hand balls—

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Ok.

Larry Lewis: —to wherever he was. And that was the end of it.

Dave Cawley: Cary still hoped to get out of prison, but the only pathway remaining ran through the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. The board alone held the power to keep Cary in for life, or to let him out once he’d served his minimum of 15 years. The deciding factor would be Cary’s own behavior in the meantime. The board did not reward defiance.

Cary would have to complete sex offender therapy before the board would ever consider letting him out. He’d been booted from treatment once before for refusing to play along, but now realized he’d have to try again. Here though, Cary ran into a problem: he couldn’t get back into therapy unless he admitted to his crime. This is something Cary had insisted he would never do when he’d gone before the parole board the first time in 1992.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): I can’t tell the judge that I didn’t do it, tell my family and look them in the eye that I didn’t do it, and my sons repeatedly that I didn’t do it — even though I don’t see them — and all of the sudden turn right around and say “oh yep, I did it. I was just kidding before.”

Dave Cawley: Cary had no choice but to eat crow. Prison records show he requested permission to call all of his immediate family, as well as several friends and attorneys, in May of 1995. I wasn’t on those calls, obviously, but based on the timeline I can surmise he told his friends and family he was going to admit to the rape that’d sent him to prison. But only that one.

He then re-applied to sex offender therapy, admitting his guilt, and was accepted back into the program. But Cary’s second round in treatment proved short-lived. He got booted again less than two years later, after jail staff found pornography in his cell.

A clerk at Utah’s 2^nd District Court in Ogden received a letter at the start of January, 1998. It’d come from a snitch, a prison inmate named David Westmoreland. He said Cary Hartmann had told him about the murders of two women. If the stories were true, Westmoreland wrote, he knew where to find the bodies. The letter found its way to Jack Bell, who by that point had made captain at the Roy City Police Department. Jack told me he’d handed off the Sheree Warren case after first promoting to sergeant a decade earlier.

Jack Bell: I took most of this evidence to OPD.

Dave Cawley: The tip reignited Jack’s dormant desire to find Sheree. He went to talk to Westmoreland himself. Let me give you some background on David Westmoreland. He murdered his own cousin in 1981. Westmoreland had first met Cary Hartmann a few years later, in ’88, when they were housed in cells next door to one another. They’d bumped into each other again at the Iron County Correctional Facility around 1995.

Jack Bell: Yes. And he said Cary told him a story of killing her.

Dave Cawley: Jack’s notes say Westmoreland claimed Cary killed two women. One of them was Cary’s girlfriend. They’d being arguing over sex, Westmoreland said, so Cary’d hit her with his flashlight. He’d then allegedly driven her up a canyon, sexually assaulted her, and killed her by smacking her in the head with the jack from his truck.

Jack Bell: I think he said it was by accident and then taken her up to this rest area.

Dave Cawley: Westmoreland said Cary buried the body at a rest area along eastbound Interstate 80, midway between Ogden and Evanston, Wyoming, in a place called Echo Canyon.

Jack Bell: It was possible because of the location and uh, accessibility.

Dave Cawley: Westmoreland described the burial site as up a concrete footpath from the rest area’s vending machine, near a patch of trees surrounded by blue flowers.

Jack Bell: We went up there.

Dave Cawley: Jack brought dogs with him.

Jack Bell: We didn’t find nothin’. But we didn’t do a lot of digging, either.

Dave Cawley: Because they had no clue where to even start. They didn’t see disturbed ground and the dogs gave no indication. Still, the exercise brought back memories for Jack, of the psychic letter he’d received after Sheree Warren disappeared. A letter Jack believed had really originated with Cary. It’d described a truck stop in the mountains and a burial spot near red rock cliffs.

Jack Bell: But, if you’re standing there out of your car at that rest area and you look straight across the highways, at the red rock across there, it’s exactly what was drawn on this letter.

Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): On the psychic letter from ’85?

Jack Bell: Uh huh, exactly. So boom.

Dave Cawley: The walls of Echo Canyon are made up of orange stone. So as Jack Bell stood at the rest area in the canyon and looked across the Interstate at those orange cliffs, the details from the psychic letter bubbled up in his brain. They seemed to line up with what David Westmoreland had told him.

Jack Bell: That’s what I got out of what Cary supposedly told Westmoreland, where she was at was up there.

Dave Cawley: The psychic letter had mentioned two guys stopping for snacks at a truck stop.

Jack Bell: The truck stop, to me, was at Echo Junction, the old Echo Cafe.

Dave Cawley: Echo Junction is a small town at the foot of the canyon. It’s all but abandoned today, but was once a bustling place where people headed to the mountains might stop for a drink. But Jack Bell’s search at the Echo Canyon rest area was bust. No body. No Sheree. But the prospect of at last locating the remains of Sheree Warren proved a powerful siren song for police. Jack Bell figured the time had come to give the cold case a fresh look. So, he organized a reunion. Ogden police detective Shane Minor received an invitation.

Shane Minor: I got a call from Chris Zimmerman, who was the Roy police chief at the time and went out and met with him and Captain Bell about the Sheree Warren case and how things had kind of dropped off after the rape investigations, stuff like that.

Dave Cawley: Shane was at that time working with the FBI on a violent fugitive apprehension team. He’d developed relationships with agents and officers across Utah. It made him the obvious choice to take over the search for Sheree.

Shane Minor: Seems like everybody’s resources were somewhat limited so, I think that was another way of potentially bringing in some resources to try to look at this.

Dave Cawley: Jack and Shane both knew the stakes.

Jack Bell: At one time, Bill Daines from the county attorney’s office told Shane and I and somebody else if we could find a body he would give us a complaint.

Dave Cawley: In other words, a murder charge against Cary Hartmann, if they could find Sheree’s remains. Jack gave Shane his notes and walked him through the case.

Shane Minor: He relayed that information to me, as far as the people he had talked to. Pulled what reports they had.

Dave Cawley: Jack’d given his formal reports and evidence to Ogden police back in 1987. Ogden had taken over the case, because the two women who’d lived above Cary Hartmann had reported seeing and hearing Sheree at their house in Ogden the night she disappeared. Shane remembered Ogden police had opened their own case file at that time.

Shane Minor: So I went back and tried to find those reports and that become problematic because I couldn’t find the reports. They had changed reporting systems.

Dave Cawley: The missing paperwork included reports about interviews with several members of Cary Hartmann’s so-called Supper Club. Detective John Stubbs, for example, had been in the room when Jack had questioned KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis. Stubbs had written a report and filed it under Ogden’s Sheree Warren case number. So where was that report?

Shane Minor: I never could find that case report or the interviews that was done off of that.

Dave Cawley: Shane told me he thinks the missing records were just lost in the shuffle, misplaced as the Ogden Police Department moved to a new headquarters building in the early ‘90s. Or the papers might’ve been taken home by one of the investigators and never returned.

Shane Minor: Plus, there was a lot of technology change during that period of time, too. From handwritten notes to computer-generated, uh, information.

Dave Cawley: I submitted my own public records request to the Ogden Police Department for anything filed under their Sheree Warren case number. The department searched it records archive and told me they couldn’t find anything. Nothing on an unsolved cold case homicide. There’s another possible explanation for what might’ve happened to the missing records. Cary Hartmann did have friends in the Ogden Police Department.

Jack Bell: The fact that he’d been a reserve in there, that’s where he’d made contact with these guys and…

Dave Cawley: …and some stood to be embarrassed if their association with Cary became public knowledge.

Jack Bell: Yes, exactly. They wanted to stay right away from the Cary Hartmann investigation.

Dave Cawley: So I do wonder if someone, sometime, might’ve intentionally made those reports disappear. However it happened, the records are gone. The missing police reports meant Shane Minor didn’t have significant pieces of the puzzle in his head when he set out to investigate the story of the snitch, David Westmoreland.

Shane Minor: When you’re talking to inmates, you never know what their true motive is. So, it’s kind of difficult to really take it as being factual information. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Shane pulled prison records. They verified Westmoreland had lived next to Cary Hartmann at the Iron County Correctional Facility.

Shane Minor: He knew Hartmann and he did have some conversation with him because there was some facts that he knew about. But then I also learned, uh, with my experience, these guys are really clever at making things up and can build a story around whatever’s told to them.

Dave Cawley: Shane decided to re-interview Westmoreland himself.

Shane Minor: But a lot of his facts didn’t really match up with what we had.

Dave Cawley: Westmoreland once again described the rest area in Echo Canyon, the vending machine and the concrete path.

Shane Minor: And I was unfamiliar with what he was talking about so I drove up there after we interviewed him. I found the rest stop that I think he was talking about.

Dave Cawley: Shane walked up the steep path to the overview where a few months earlier Jack Bell had stood looking across the interstate at the orange cliffs.

Shane Minor: It was a, a truck stop area. Trucks parked up in there.

Dave Cawley: Not a very safe or secluded place to dump a body. Shane’s doubt began to grow.

Shane Minor: You would have to drag a body up a cement pathway and just uncharacteristic for a dump site if you’re gonna be dumping a body.

Dave Cawley: Shane arranged to have a different dog team come and re-run the search at the rest area. But the result didn’t change: no sign of Sheree. The snitch David Westmoreland had drawn maps of the spot for Shane. I have copies of them, and went to the rest area myself. I walked up that path, then stepped off into the dry grass.

Dave Cawley (at Echo Canyon rest area): Let’s see if I can step over this fence without getting any barbed wire. There we go.

Dave Cawley: I found what looked like the spot Westmoreland had described, tucked behind scrub oak and thistle. It did not seem like a place someone could bury a body and have the grave go unnoticed for more than 30 years.

Earlier, I told you about some FBI files and a jailhouse informant I called “Charlie” who’d fed a special agent information about Cary Hartmann in 1989. Detective Shane Minor came across those same FBI reports as he worked the Sheree Warren investigation a decade later.

Shane Minor: But I didn’t know who that person was and that took quite a bit of time to find out who he was too.

Dave Cawley: We’re going to take a slight detour for the next few minutes, as I reveal the true identity of “Charlie,” the FBI informant: the snitch who said Cary Hartmann watched that TV show, B.L. Stryker. The informant to said Cary Hartmann was obsessed with Ted Bundy. The guy who said Cary killed Sheree Warren. His real name is William Babbel.

Terry Carpenter (from December 19, 1991 police interview): I’m at the Utah State Prison with one William Babel. Is that?

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): Babbel.

Terry Carpenter (from December 19, 1991 police interview): Babbel.

Dave Cawley: This audio comes from a 1991 police interview recording. William Babbel, aka Charlie the informant, told a detective he’d been in Cary Hartmann’s sex offender therapy group at Iron County in ‘88. He’d heard Cary reading his autobiography in the group sessions.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): And I know Cary Hartmann’s story very well.

Dave Cawley: And that’s probably where William Babbel gathered the information he’d fed to the FBI.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): And I was there, uh, when Mr. Hartmann explained that he’d been with a psychic and he knew where Sheree Warren was buried, what she was wearing when she disappeared, how she died. Y’know, the whole spiel about this girl’s disappearance. Y’know, her car was found in Vegas, somebody drove down and took it down there and flew home. How did Cary Hartmann know all that [expletive] unless Cary Hartmann did it?

Dave Cawley: William Babbel had told the FBI Cary Hartmann admitted to killing Sheree. Three years later, he told a detective he’d only thought that was the case at the time.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): ‘Cause Hartmann was living with her when she disappeared.

Terry Carpenter (from December 19, 1991 police interview): Mmhmm. Yep, that’s true.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): But I don’t think Hartmann did it.

Dave Cawley: Babbel said he now instead believed the person who killed Sheree Warren was a guy named Doug Lovell. That name should sound familiar if you’ve listened to season 2 of this podcast. Doug Lovell abducted and raped Joyce Yost, then returned months later and killed Joyce to prevent her from testifying in court about what he’d done.

Terry Carpenter (from December 19, 1991 police interview): What about Sheree Warren?

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): I think he knows about it. And he says, ‘Well, they’ll never, they’ll never stick me with that because Cary Hartmann is the one that’s gonna end up eating that one.

Dave Cawley: I know this can get confusing, but what we’re dealing with here is a snitch who at first said Cary Hartmann had killed Sheree Warren, but then later changed his story to say Doug Lovell killed Sheree. He had no evidence to back up either claim. Which means we should treat everything William Babbel said with extreme skepticism.

Terry Carpenter (from December 19, 1991 police interview): Lovell ever give you a reason to tie him and Hartmann together?

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police interview): No.

Dave Cawley: I’ve talked to a lot of people about both the Sheree Warren and Joyce Yost cases. I’ve examined both case files. There are some parallels and crossover points, but I’ve yet to find any hard evidence that would link Sheree Warren to Doug Lovell.

Pam Volk: I don’t know that she’d ever met Doug.

Dave Cawley: Sheree’s friend and former coworker Pam Volk told me she finds the Lovell-killed-Sheree theory hard to swallow.

Pam Volk: It just breaks my heart that nothing has been able to be found out. I mean, I understand if there’s not evidence, there’s not evidence, y’know. And with no body it’s, it’s kind of hard.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: I first met former Ogden police detective Shane Minor at a restaurant in downtown Ogden called the Union Grill. He’d agreed to talk to me about the Sheree Warren case over lunch, but he made no promises about ever going on the record. We took a seat. Shane picked a spot where he could put his back against the wall and keep an eye on the door, not a surprise for a guy who spent decades investigating violent crimes in the city.

Shane keeps a low profile, which sounds funny considering he’s both tall and broad-shouldered. He told me he’d always avoided reporters during his police career, but we spent more than three hours that day discussing the Sheree Warren case. I later asked Shane if he’d agree to an interview.

Shane Minor: Uh, I don’t like talking in front of a mic. In all the years that, uh, I worked, I think I rarely talked in front of a mic, so.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Or to a reporter even at all.

Shane Minor: If at all, yeah.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s not a glory-seeker. But he has a deep sense of duty. That’d come into play when he’d first taken up the Sheree Warren case, more than a decade after Sheree disappeared.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Would you have called that investigation a cold case at that point, in ’98?

Shane Minor: Yes.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s not what I’d call exuberant, at least not when the recorder’s rolling. But I can tell you he feels a deep sense of responsibility to Sheree, a woman he never even met.

Shane Minor: You almost have the feeling like “well if there’s something you can contribute to it one way or the other, then you have to do that.”

Dave Cawley: And this is the only reason why, in the end, Shane agreed to let me interview him.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): It is helpful, uh, even if maybe a bit painful for you.

Shane Minor: Yeah, probably. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: When Shane took over the Sheree Warren case in 1998, he found the file was in shambles. Pieces were spread across multiple departments or missing altogether. Only a handful of potential witnesses had provided detailed statements over the years. Shane knew no prosecutor would ever file charges based on a case that disorganized. So, Shane headed into 1999 with a new objective: re-investigate the Sheree Warren case from scratch, narrowing it down to a single suspect. But who was that? Shane still had two plausible primary suspects: Sheree’s former husband, Chuck Warren, and her now-incarcerated boyfriend, Cary Hartmann. He needed a better understanding of both those relationships.

Shane Minor: There was none of that information, really, in the report other than she was in the process of a divorce and was living with her mom and dad in Roy.

Dave Cawley: He set about filling in the gaps.

Shane Minor: Just trying to track down people that might’ve known her and get their spin on what was going on at that period of time when she was last seen and missing.

Dave Cawley: Shane began with Sheree’s parents. Ed and Mary Sorenson told Shane the story of the last time they’d seen their daughter. Mary described what Sheree’d been wearing that October morning: black pants, a red blouse and a gray suede jacket.

Shane Minor: Mrs. Sorensen thought that was what she would wear and mentioned that she was still missing a gray purse.

Dave Cawley: But hold on a second, because Jack Bell’s notes about his first conversation with Mary Sorenson the day after Sheree disappeared didn’t mention a jacket. Here, almost 15 years later, Mary described Sheree wearing the same type of jacket Shane had himself found in Cary Hartmann’s apartment, when serving the search warrants in the Ogden City Rapist investigation.

This was problematic, because it suggested Mary might’ve added that detail to her story after learning about the jacket from police. A possible feedback loop. More on that in a bit. Shane asked Sheree’s parents what they remembered about Cary Hartmann.

Shane Minor: And they kind of laid out a lot different picture of the relationship between Hartmann and, and Sheree.

Dave Cawley: They said Sheree’s relationship with Cary hadn’t been serious. They’d only been going out a few months. That contradicted what Cary had told several other people.

Shane Minor: Hartmann’s story is they’d been going out for a long period of time and we’re so madly in love with each other, yet nobody else says that.

Dave Cawley: Sheree’s parents’ account also didn’t jibe with how Cary’d described his and Sheree’s relationship in his statement to the private investigator, Michael Neumeyer. 

Shane Minor: He’d offered to help Hartmann look for Sheree.

Dave Cawley: You heard that statement in episode 3.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Mike, I’ve put together everything that I can think of up to date.

Shane Minor: It was a typewritten notebook and apparently it’s from a recording.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I was told by ladies that work at the credit union with Sheree, they said that Chuck was very volatile. He was there, pleasant to talk to but yet he would explode upon getting irritated, mad.

Shane Minor: You read through there and it’s just like Hartmann’s telling a story.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): That little lady meant everything in the entire world to me. Drinking all night with the boys just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be and when I said two drinks and I was coming home, that’s what I meant. She said “that’s wonderful.” She said “I’ll be waiting for you at home.”

Shane Minor: Shane tracked down Michael Neumeyer, and talked to him, too. Neumeyer verified he’d made the transcription of Cary’s statement and even signed a copy to attest to its accuracy.

Shane Minor: I had a conversation with him about getting the original recording and he said he would try to get one for me but he never did and I never, never seen that or heard the original recording.

Dave Cawley: Neumeyer said he’d worked on Cary’s behalf, right up until Cary’s arrest in the rape case. At that moment, Neumeyer came to believe Cary’d lied to him.

Shane tracked down Sheree’s former coworkers. Her old boss told Shane she remembered hosting a party at her house back in the fall of ’85, just a few weeks before Sheree disappeared. Sheree had come and brought Cary with her. At some point during the evening, Sheree‘d slipped away from Cary and confided to her boss she was thinking of breaking up with him. Shane went to talk to Sheree’s friend, Pam Volk.

Pam Volk: Umm, it was a little intimidating. But he just asked me a series of questions, I think, about Chuck and about Cary and about Sheree.

Dave Cawley: Pam told Shane she remembered Sheree calling Cary “kinky,” saying that bothered her and that their relationship wasn’t serious.

Shane Minor: But to listen to Hartmann, she’s with him all the time. She’s got a lot of other things going on in her life besides him.

Dave Cawley: Like her new promotion at the credit union. Shane called Richard Moss, the credit union manager Sheree’d been training the day she disappeared.

Shane Minor: I think he made some handwritten notes that he sent to me.

Dave Cawley: Richard, as it turned out, had written down his recollections of the last time he’d seen Sheree. He’d kept those notes for years.

Shane Minor: So you look at the credibility of that versus somebody that goes years later and then they’re trying to, to remember. Some people can remember, have really good memory recall and other people don’t have such good, so, I believe it was very credible on his part.

Dave Cawley: I, too, have a copy of Richard’s notes. I pulled them out after interviewing him.

Dave Cawley (to Richard Moss): Could I, could I impose upon you to, kind of read this aloud for me—

Richard Moss: Mmhmm.

Dave Cawley: —and I’ll record it?

Richard Moss: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: I wanted to see if what Richard told me matched what he’d written all those years ago.

Richard Moss (reading notes): She wore no rings on fingers. Wore black slacks with black high heels. She had on a red and white striped blouse. Button-down front, over the shoulder sleeve.

Dave Cawley: Richard’s notes don’t mention any outerwear. As we’ve previously discussed, this case might hinge on a tale of two coats: Sheree’s gray suede jacket or Cary’s black parka. Knowing which Sheree was wearing when she left for work on the morning of her disappearance could help prove whether Cary told the truth about not seeing Sheree that night, because the gray jacket later turned up in Cary’s apartment. Unfortunately, Richard can’t resolve that question for us.

Richard Moss (reading notes): She told me her ex-husband came into the Ogden office at one time and threatened to kill her.

Dave Cawley: As far as I know, Richard had no reason to exaggerate this account of what Sheree had told him about her argument with Chuck Warren over alimony. Chuck, remember, had refused to cooperate with detective Jack Bell from the very early days of the investigation. Shane had a different experience.

Shane Minor: He seemed quite open to me.

Dave Cawley: Shane asked Chuck about that blow-up at the credit union branch.

Shane Minor: He told me about it. Said it was stupid on his part, but it wasn’t any type of physical fight. He was just upset.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s notes say Chuck hadn’t intended to scare Sheree, but he’d said something along the lines of “there are all sorts of ways to get even.

Shane Minor: It just didn’t seem like he was holding anything back or hiding anything.

Dave Cawley: Chuck told Shane he’d only realized later in life what he’d lost by not working to salvage his marriage to Sheree.

Shane Minor: One of the things he said about Sheree was probably the best thing ever happened to him and he was really stupid for doing what he did.

Dave Cawley: Chuck wasn’t able to remember what’d prevented him from taking his Supra down to the dealership in Salt Lake on the afternoon of Sheree’s disappearance. But Shane told me everything else Chuck said was consistent with what he’d learned from other sources.

Shane Minor: Again this conversation was in 1999 and it’s pretty similar I think to the conversations he had with, uh, Bell back in ’85 and what the Sorensens had told me. There wasn’t nothing he said that would set me off that, that I would say “oh yeah, you’re a suspect in this.”

Dave Cawley: Which left Shane focused on just one person: Cary Hartmann. He decided to go talk to Kaye Lynn and Mary, the two women who’d lived above Cary at the time Sheree disappeared. They once again described how their former neighbor, the nighthawk, had kept odd hours and two-timed all his girlfriends.

Shane Minor: Yeah, I mean a lot of what they talked about was just consistent with what we knew about Hartmann’s habits.

Dave Cawley: They repeated the story of the loud argument they’d heard between Cary and Sheree at the house. Shane needed to pin down exactly when that’d happened.

Shane Minor: Their statement referred to a couple of days before her disappearance came out in the paper.

Dave Cawley: He headed to the county library, to look through old periodicals.

Shane Minor: The first one I could find was a little clip on October 4^th. And then there was a follow-up one the next day or two after that. So a couple of days before that is right around October 2^nd.

Dave Cawley: October 2^nd: the night Sheree Warren disappeared. But “right around” wasn’t close enough if Shane intended to convince a prosecutor, let alone a jury, Sheree’d made it to Cary Hartmann’s apartment on the night she disappeared. The best, and perhaps only, evidence that might place Sheree Warren with Cary Hartmann on the night of her disappearance was a jacket.

Shane Minor: There was a gray suede jacket.

Dave Cawley: The jacket Shane’d found in Cary’s apartment while serving a search warrant there in May of 1987. Sheree Warren’s mom, Mary Sorensen, hadn’t mentioned a gray jacket when she’d first reported her daughter missing in 1985. Roy police detective Jack Bell wrote in his notes police showed Mary Sorensen a picture of the jacket after they found it in ’87. Jack wrote Mary said the gray jacket “belongs to Sheree and is the jacket she had on the last time she’d seen Sheree.”

Shane Minor: And that jacket was put into the OPD evidence.

Dave Cawley: A decade passed. Then, in September of 1999, detective Shane Minor invited Sheree’s parents and her sister, Marcie, to come to Ogden police headquarters.

Shane Minor: And I had that jacket pulled out of evidence and they looked at the jacket and Mrs. Sorensen identified that jacket as something that she would wear the day that she went missing. It went with what she was wearing and identified that as Sheree’s jacket.

Dave Cawley: Notice how Shane says “something she would wear.” There’s a little ambiguity there, but I think that’s coming more from Shane Minor than Mary Sorensen. Shane’s doubt makes sense when you consider the passage of time. It’d been 12 years since police had showed Mary a photo of the gray jacket. Ogden police should’ve written a report about the gray suede jacket when they first seized it out of Cary Hartmann’s apartment. They should’ve invited Mary to come look at it in person back then. But I haven’t been able to find any report like that.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Any insight as to why that identification didn’t happen in ’87?

Shane Minor: I don’t know. I, I can’t tell you. If I could’ve found the reports that were generated in ’87, there might be an answer in that. But what I could find, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: Another clue lost in the missing Ogden police records. Shane had one more idea: maybe the jacket harbored an invisible secret. A drop of blood, or a strand of hair. Something that might prove the jacket belonged to Sheree and that she’d met with violence while wearing it. Where Cary Hartmann had insisted DNA evidence would exonerate him, Shane Minor hoped it might do the opposite. If he could find Sheree’s DNA on that jacket, it would prove it was hers. If he could find Cary’s blood on the jacket, it might be enough to convince prosecutors to file a murder charge against him.

Ogden police submitted the jacket to Utah’s state crime lab. A criminalist applied a chemical reagent to the fabric, then stood back and watched for any sign of a reaction. Nothing happened. There was no blood on the jacket.

We started this episode talking about that old TV show, B.L. Stryker. In the first episode, Stryker is drawn into a case involving a serial rapist who escalates to murder.

Burt Reynolds (as B.L. Stryker from The Dancer’s Touch): So there’s no prints, right? No fibers from the jacket. You ain’t got nothing.

Dave Cawley: But I didn’t tell you how it ended. It concludes with Stryker confronting the serial rapist-slash-murderer. Spoiler alert: the bad guy turns out to be a disgruntled journalist. He reveals he’s killed Stryker’s love interest, which results in Stryker and the journalist duking it out, man-to-man.

(Fight noises)

Dave Cawley: In the midst of the melee, Striker pulls a gun and shoots the killer to death. It’s all neat and tidy. We know who the killer is. We understand his ham-fisted motivation. We’ve seen justice served. A wistful sax begins to wail as we see Stryker on the beach sometime later, jogging off into the sunset. Roll credits.

TV and movies have conditioned us to expect these kinds of endings. But real life rarely delivers them. Investigations, especially no-body cold case homicides, are exercises in frustration and disappointment. We’ve now reached a low point in the story of the search for Sheree Warren. You might feel there’s no chance of ever getting to the truth. But I’ve not given up, and I hope you won’t, either. Sheree needs us to persevere. And at least a degree of accountability is coming.

Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards believed he had the Ogden City Rapist in his sights. He’d charged Cary Hartmann with felony crimes for a string of home-invasion sexual assaults that’d occurred across the city.

Reed Richards: We had one of the, the victims who had gone to a bar one night and heard, uh, over the loudspeaker somebody announcing and recognized the voice of the person that’d broken into her home. And so she then came to us and that was, that turned out to be Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: Cary faced charges in four separate cases. Police suspected him in several more. But all were short on evidence.

Reed Richards: We didn’t have DNA back then. Now we might’ve approached it a little differently. If you could get DNA samples from each of the women and tie it to him that would be different. We didn’t have that.

Dave Cawley: Only one of the women had picked Cary’s picture out of a photo line-up.

Reed Richards: Uh, and that’s not really unusual because he came in in the dark, he, uh, didn’t let them see his face.

Dave Cawley: Another of the women, a person I’m calling Caroline, had told police she didn’t want to look at a picture line-up. She wanted the real thing. Reed didn’t have much time to make a line-up happen. The court had scheduled a preliminary hearing. Each of the four women were going to testify. Reed knew the judge might not advance the case if none of them could say with confidence Cary was the man who’d assaulted them.

Reed Richards: It was challenging, uh, and many of those women once they went to the police actually moved because they didn’t want whoever it was to know where they were at.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d managed to get out of jail ahead of that hearing, after his parents put up their own property as collateral for his bail. Reed was fighting that, too, trying to protect his witnesses.

Reed Richards: People here were really frightened about going outside.

Dave Cawley: The vast majority of rape and sexual assault cases are committed by someone known to the victim. The Ogden City Rapist cases were rare exceptions: police believed Cary Hartmann in some instances stalked his victims. The idea of a stranger sneaking into the homes of sleeping women should make you shudder. It’s terrifying but also very, very uncommon. Still, it’d happened in Ogden, repeatedly, through 1984, ’85, ’86 and ’87.

Reed Richards: Time and time again, same scenario.

Dave Cawley: So the threat felt very real. Police were telling women in Ogden not to go out alone after dark, especially if they were young, single and had children. And it’d been a little over a year since one rape victim, Joyce Yost, had reported her assault…

Joyce Yost (from April 4, 1985 police interview recording): He grabbed me by the throat and, uh, was forceful.

Dave Cawley: …then disappeared days before she was supposed to testify at trial. So for any of these Ogden rape victims, heading to court must’ve felt like a dangerous gamble. Reed arranged to hold a line-up for Caroline the day before she was to testify at Cary Hartmann’s preliminary hearing. He told me both the line-up and prelim were tough asks to make.

Reed Richards: Because you’re trying to find the person that’s, that’s willing to go through what’s going to be a nasty, nasty time.

Dave Cawley: But Caroline rose to the task. We met Caroline back in episode 3. She was the woman who’d fallen asleep watching an old World War II movie and woken to the sound of a strange man turning off the TV. Now, a year later, Caroline came into another darkened room, along with Reed, Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman and a man she didn’t know: Cary Hartmann’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan. I reached out to Kevin to ask about his recollections of this line-up but he didn’t respond.

Reed Richards: But the actual line-up was done after he had an attorney and I think they took part in deciding who was gonna be standing in the line-up and that’s how the brother got in there.

Dave Cawley: You heard that right. Cary Hartmann’s younger brother, Jack Hartmann, was in the line-up with him. Cary’s cousin, David Hartmann, stood in the line-up, too. And I’ve been told David was a dead ringer for Cary.

Reed Richards: And as I recall, the brother tried to look like the person had been when they broke in and, and Hartmann tried to change his appearance.

Dave Cawley: So when Caroline went to try and point out the man who’d assaulted her, three of the guys in that line-up looked an awful lot alike. Which was unusual. Line-ups were typically filled with an assortment of jail inmates. Caroline looked at the seven men, three of whom were related. She was on one side of a pane of mirrored glass. The men were on the other, along with a jailer who held a card printed with phrases the rapist had used. One by one, the men picked up a telephone receiver and read from the card. Number one…

Eric Openshaw (as line-up man 1): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.

Dave Cawley: Caroline listened on the other end of that phone line. Number two…

Ken Fall (as line-up man 2): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.

Dave Cawley: She’d told police the man who’d attacked her had a distinctive voice. Number three…

Ryan Meeks (as line-up man 3): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.

Dave Cawley: Detective Chris Zimmerman watched Caroline as she listened. Number four…

John Greene (as line-up man 4): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.

Dave Cawley: The second she heard number four’s voice, Caroline began to shake. Zimmerman wrote on a notepad she appeared shocked and frightened. Cary Hartmann was number four. But he looked different than he had a year earlier. He’d shaved his mustache and trimmed his hair. The rest of the men in the line-up took their turns reading the card. Reed then asked Caroline if any of them stood out to her.

“Number Four really hit me strong,” she said, “but he don’t have a mustache. And his mustache was like number six’s.” Caroline peered through the glass. “These two [even] look like they could be brothers,” she said, “four and six.” She asked Reed if the two were related. He said he couldn’t tell her. She had four and six each read the card again.

“They even sound the same,” she said.

Caroline wasn’t sure which man to pick, they were just so alike. But according to a transcript of the line-up, she told Reed she leaned more toward number six, the one with a mustache. She didn’t know it, but she’d just picked Cary’s cousin, David Hartmann.

In his journal that night, Cary wrote he’d scored a win at the line-up. The invisible woman on the other side of the mirrored glass had not identified him.

John Greene (as Cary Hartman from May 27, 1987 journal entry): In other words, Dave Hartmann saved our buns.

Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 5: Nighthawk. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: One of the four women Cary Hartmann stood accused of sexually assaulting had tried to pick her attacker out of a line-up. She’d wavered between pointing out Cary or his look-alike cousin, David Hartmann. She’d told Weber County Attorney Reed Richards she couldn’t tell the two men apart. 

Reed Richards: Right, got pretty close though. It was helpful.

Dave Cawley (to Reed Richards): Yeah, yeah.

Reed Richards: It was better than nothing.

Dave Cawley: The woman, who I’m calling Caroline, took the stand at Cary’s preliminary hearing the day after the line-up. She pointed to Cary when asked if her attacker was in the courtroom.

Reed Richards: Yeah, course they always do that. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: This was good enough for the judge.

Reed Richards: She was the only one that could pick him out of a line-up. And even that was kind of contested with the little foray with his brother and all of that.

Dave Cawley: The fact Caroline had pointed out someone different a day prior didn’t prevent him from binding Cary over in each of the four cases. That meant, in the judge’s eyes, enough evidence existed to proceed to the next step, arraignment, where Cary would enter his pleas. But first, there was the question of bail. Reed, the prosecutor, told the judge Cary’s 105-thousand dollar bail amount wasn’t good enough: the public would remain at risk so long as Cary was out of jail. The judge agreed and increased the bail.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 28, 1987 journal entry): Judge Browning set a new bail at $135,000.

Dave Cawley: That again comes from a journal Cary was keeping as all this was going down. I’ve made a couple references to it now and you’re probably wondering how I know what Cary wrote. So let me tell you how I got my hands on the journal. Ogden police had arrested Cary on suspicion of rape on May 8^th. He’d bailed out of jail on the 9^th, then been re-arrested on the 12^th. Cary’d bailed out for the second time on the 16^th.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 16, 1987 journal entry): May 16. Got out of Weber County Jail. … Dad and Mom picked me up.

Dave Cawley: It was after Cary bailed out the second time he started jotting notes in this journal.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1987 journal entry): May 18. At 6:35 I left for the college.

Dave Cawley: He chronicled where he went and what he did in the days leading up to his preliminary hearing. A lot of it is honestly pretty dull.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1987 journal entry): Arrived at the college at 6:50 A.M. Parked in rear of heat plant.

Dave Cawley: But there are bits that are more illuminating. Cary wrote about how he’d worked with his attorney to set up having his brother and cousin in the line-up.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 26, 1987 journal entry): Went with Kevin Sullivan to his office. … Question: Jack and Dave in the line-up? What time and where?

Dave Cawley: Those words are why I can tell you Cary’d engineered this bit of subterfuge. Cary also wrote about reuniting with a woman named Shauna Hall after he got out of jail.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 24, 1987 journal entry): Shauna brought me out to T.J.’s at 5:30 P.M. I watched a National Geographic T.V. show on channel 22 about crocodiles.

Dave Cawley: I mentioned Shauna in the last episode. Cary’d met her through one of his lingerie survey phone calls. To the best of my knowledge, they’d started dating around October of 1986, a year after Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Cary and Shauna’d discussed marriage just weeks later, even though Shauna was at that time married. Shauna’d separated from her husband in March ’87, working toward a goal of marrying Cary. His arrest in the Ogden City Rapist investigation two months later hadn’t dissuaded her. To the contrary: she even bought Cary a car while he was out on bail.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 26, 1987 journal entry): If the 1973 red V.W. doesn’t turn out to be sound, Shauna Hall reserves the right to full refund.

Dave Cawley: Shauna was in deep. Most of Cary’s writings I’ve referenced so far this season came from papers seized by police during the two searches of his apartment. But this journal covered a time after those searches, as Cary and his parents were in and out of court, arguing over bail.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 28, 1987 journal entry): God only knows I’ll probably never get out of jail. It would be a miracle!

Dave Cawley: As I mentioned a couple minutes ago, the judge’d upped the bail amount after the preliminary hearing.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 29, 1987 journal entry): May 29. We are trying to arrange bail. I am going to try to sell all of my furniture.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s furniture wasn’t worth $135,000 dollars. He landed back in jail. He was in from May 29^th to July 9^th. Cary’s girlfriend-slash-fiancé Shauna took care of his financial affairs during that time. And she took custody of his journal. Someone broke into Shauna’s house that summer. A South Ogden City police sergeant named Brad Birch went to investigate. Shauna reportedly told him she believed her estranged husband, Roger Hall, was responsible. You might remember from the last episode, Roger’d filed a civil lawsuit against Cary, accusing him of luring his wife, Shauna, into infidelity.

Shauna gave sergeant Brad Birch a pile of papers, reportedly saying she thought her estranged husband Roger had rifled through them, looking for evidence for his lawsuit. She wanted police to fingerprint the papers and arrest Roger for burglary. Sergeant Birch had taken the pile of papers back to South Ogden police headquarters. He looked through it. He saw business cards, phone bills and pay stubs. Some in Cary Hartmann’s name. This is what’s sometimes known in the sports world as an “unforced error.” Or, to use the modern slang, a “self-own.” A mistake inflicted by and upon one’s self. But it was a stroke of luck for police.

Sergeant Birch picked up his phone and called Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): I went to South Ogden Police Department on July 15^th, 1987 and read through the files.

Dave Cawley: These are Zimmerman’s words, from a warrant he wrote targeting Cary’s journal.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): There was a brown spiral-type paper notebook that was being used as a diary, listing dates on each page and events that happened on that day. The events included the writer of the diary being arrested, the times he spent in jail, speaking with his attorney Kevin Sullivan, and getting Jack Hartmann and Dave Hartmann to be in the line-up he had to be in.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman read Cary’s comment about how his cousin David had “saved his buns” at the line-up.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): I feel this could be incriminating evidence on Cary Hartmann and I have probable cause to believe the diary was written by Cary Hartmann and it contains evidence of illegal conduct.

Dave Cawley: Incriminating, because why would Cary’ve gone to the trouble of having look-alikes in the line-up unless he was afraid the woman on the other side of the glass was going to identify him? A judge signed the warrant, allowing Zimmerman to take the journal. That’s how it ended up in the hands of Ogden police. I wanted to know what secrets it might hold about Sheree Warren. So I went looking for it, more than 30 years later.

Cracking Cary Hartmann’s diary for the first time in decades wasn’t the revelatory experience I’d hoped. But it’s interesting for what it doesn’t say: there’s not one mention in those pages of Sheree Warren, even though Cary was writing during the period police were searching around Causey Reservoir for the body reported by the anonymous caller.

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.

Dave Cawley: The journal reveals as police were hunting for Sheree, Cary was watching Star Search and Hollywood Insider and arranging to have his cousin impersonate him at the line-up.

Weber County Attorney Reed Richard had faced a choice during the summer of 1987: should he go full-throttle on all four of the sexual assault cases he’d filed against Cary Hartmann, simultaneously? Or should he take them on one at a time?

Reed Richards: Well, there are a couple of thoughts that come into play. The evidence certainly is, is part of it.

Dave Cawley: So let’s talk about evidence in cases of rape and sexual assault. Ogden police detective Shane Minor had interacted with some of women in the Ogden City Rapist cases.

Shane Minor: Y’know, to see, see that look on their face and to see the fear that they had, when you see that, you begin to understand better their lack of wanting to come forward with it.

Dave Cawley: In spite of that fear, each of the four women Cary’d been charged with assaulting had undergone physical exams following their attacks. Evidence gathered from those forensic exams, what’s sometimes called the “rape kit,” can include clothing, bedding, swabs of body cavities, hair combings, fingernail scrapings and bodily fluids.

Shane Minor: At that time you didn’t have, uh, DNA like you have today so there’s been a lot of advancements made in that.

Dave Cawley: DNA today enables forensic scientists to identify people by their unique individual gene signatures. But that tech wasn’t quite ready for the courtroom in 1987. Instead, forensic science in Cary Hartmann’s case focused on serology, the study of bodily fluids. Serology in rape cases involved looking for blood, saliva or semen on the body, clothing or bedding of a victim, then comparing that against samples taken from a suspect.

I know this is dry and science-y but trust me, it’s important. If a suspect and victim had different blood types, and fluids matching the suspect’s type were found on the victim, it could suggest — but not prove — the suspect’d had physical contact with the victim. Utah’s state crime lab tested the evidence gathered in the four cases for which Cary was charged. I have those reports. They show two of the women had type-A blood, the other two were type-O. Vaginal swabs from all four also revealed the presence of sperm.

Reed, the prosecutor, asked the court to compel Cary to provide a semen sample for comparison. Cary’s attorney, Kevin Sullivan, told Reed his client was willing to provide the semen sample. They were confident it would exonerate Cary because, as you might remember, Cary’d had a vasectomy. That meant his semen shouldn’t contain any sperm. So, the logic went, Cary couldn’t be the rapist because the lab had found sperm in all four rape kits. Kevin wanted Reed’s word he’d drop the charges if forensic analysis of Cary’s semen sample excluded him as the rapist. Reed agreed to drop the charges, if that’s what the evidence showed. And he put that promise in writing.

Sure enough, there were no sperm cells in Cary’s semen. But for Reed, that wasn’t enough to exclude Cary as the suspect. Here’s why: the crime lab had also determined Cary had type-B blood. And had found evidence of type-B blood in one of the rape kits: Caroline’s.

Reed Richards: So even without DNA we had a very unusual type of blood that was found inside of of the rape kit which I thought was pretty good evidence.

Dave Cawley: The lab didn’t specify if Cary’s blood was B-positive or B-negative. When I talked to Reed, he remembered it as B-negative, but I have some documents that suggest it’s could be B-positive. The important take-away here is both B-types are less common. The American Red Cross says only about one out of every 10 people have either B-positive or B-negative blood.

Reed Richards: So with, when you’ve got the identification and you’ve got, uh, and you’ve got the blood type and then you’ve got the confession or statements that he made to Zimmerman, uh, that was clearly the best case.

Dave Cawley: Reed decided to take Caroline’s case to trial. He put the other three cases he’d filed against Cary on hold. Cary’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan, didn’t like this at all. He told the judge the lack of sperm in Cary’s semen sample proved Cary hadn’t committed the rape. Kevin filed paperwork in court accusing Reed of acting in bad faith.

Kevin also tried to have Cary’s statements to detective Chris Zimmerman on the day of his arrest barred from evidence. He said Zimmerman hadn’t advised Cary of his Miranda rights as they were driving around to the homes of the various women. Miranda rights include the right to remain silent, the right to have an attorney present during questioning and so on.

The court held a hearing on this, days before the trial. The prosecution pointed out Cary’d gone through specific training on Miranda rights when he’d signed on to the Ogden Police reserves. The prosecution pointed out Cary’d gone through specific training on Miranda rights when he’d signed on to the Ogden Police reserves. In other words, Cary knew his rights well.

Cary’s friend Dave Moore, the guy who owned the sewing machine repair shop, was in the courtroom that day as well.

Dave Moore: One of his victims, according to one of the detectives, he got the name and address from my store. He happened to be in. She brought in a sewing machine and he uh, copied down her name, address and that was one of the break-ins.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): That had to have hurt to have heard that.

Dave Moore: Yeah. It was tough.

Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Reed Richards put Dave Moore on the stand and asked him to describe the conversation he’d had with Cary, after Cary’s arrest. We talked about that in episode 4.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): He put you in a tough position.

Dave Moore: He did. Extremely tough.

Dave Cawley: As a refresher, Dave’d called the jail and asked to speak with Cary. Cary’d allegedly come on the line and told Dave he’d done some bad things, felt ashamed about it and believed the Ogden detectives were just trying to help. Dave told me Reed seemed to sense his discomfort over testifying against his friend, Cary.

Dave Moore: He says “Dave, this is probably the toughest thing you’ve ever had to do, isn’t it?” And I said “yeah, definitely.” And then he basically excused me. But as I was walking by Cary and his attorney, Cary says “why Dave, why?” And his attorney says “he didn’t have a choice.”

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): I’m assuming you got subpoenaed for that.

Dave Moore: I did.

Dave Cawley: So you literally did not have a choice.

Dave Moore: To be honest with you, there were so many news trucks out front. I just got the heck out of there. I didn’t want anything to do with it.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann’s trial for the attack on Caroline began on September 15^th, 1987. The prosecution and defense settled on a jury of five men and three women. Cary strode into the courthouse with his attorney the next morning. TV news cameras were there. So was Cary’s reporter friend, Larry Lewis.

Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): Prosecutors say their key evidence in the case against Hartmann are statements he made to police at the time of his arrest, information from police lab tests and a victim’s testimony.

Dave Cawley: If you’re wondering why Cary’s personal friend was reporting on his trial, so am I. More on that in a minute. Cary wore a tan suit, was clean-shaven, had lightened his hair and he donned a pair of oversized glasses with smoked lenses once seated at the defense table. This all had the effect of making him look significantly different than he had a year and a half earlier, when the attack on Caroline had taken place. The chameleon act didn’t faze Caroline.

Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): This morning in court, the victim identified Cary Hartmann as the rapist. County attorney Reed Richards told the jury that Hartmann’s own statements to police proves he’s guilty. He said Hartmann told investigators facts only the rapist could’ve known. And Richards said evidence found on the victim will link Hartmann to the rape.

Dave Cawley: The judge had rejected the defense’s request to toss out Cary’s incriminating comments to Ogden police. Sheree Warren’s mom, Mary Sorensen, sat in the courtroom as Caroline testified. She stared at Cary from across the room and noted any time he glanced her direction, he refused to make eye contact. Mary received a jolt when Caroline said the man who’d raped her had told her “I’ve killed before and can kill again.”

Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): But defense attorney Kevin Sullivan said this is a case of mistaken identity. He said the victim first identified another man as her attacker during a police line-up and says she changed her mind about who raped her after seeing a TV news report about Hartmann’s arrest. But the key evidence in the defense case is the medical exam of the victim after the rape. It showed the presence of sperm. The defense says since Hartmann had a vasectomy several years ago and is physically unable to produce sperm, there’s no evidence that Hartmann raped the victim in this case. The victim testified that she had sexual relations with another man a few days before she was raped, and because of that the prosecution argues that the medical report does not rule out Hartmann as the rapist.

Dave Cawley: That last bit deserves a bit more explanation. Caroline had met up with her estranged husband at a motel a few days before she was attacked. At the trial, her estranged husband testified they’d had sex. That meant he could’ve been the source of the sperm detected in the rape kit. But the estranged husband didn’t have B-type blood. Remember, the crime lab had found evidence of B-type blood in swabs taken from Caroline’s body. And the semen sample Cary Hartmann had provided showed he had B-type blood.

Detective Chris Zimmerman took the stand and described how Cary’d identified Caroline’s house as they’d driven around Ogden together. Cary’s attorney, Kevin Sullivan, challenged Zimmerman, suggesting this tactic had been a breach of police protocol. He insinuated Zimmerman had a history of violating procedure, noting the detective had once issued a phony parking ticket to President Ronald Reagan.

Kaye Lynn, the woman who’d rented the basement of her house to Cary, testified too. You heard Kaye Lynn’s words read by a voice actor in the last episode. She’s the woman who described hearing an argument between Cary and Sheree Warren, then a thump and all going quiet. She thought it’d happened the night Sheree disappeared. Kaye Lynn wasn’t asked to tell that story from the witness stand. Instead, she talked about the odd schedule Cary’d kept in the months afterward.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from June 26, 1987 witness statement): There were times when he would leave [at] odd hours. It would seem like he’d get a call or just up and leave after midnight. It would be one or two in the morning and he would return an hour or two later.

Dave Cawley: This comes from a formal statement Kaye Lynn provided to Ogden police, read by a voice actor. In it, Kaye Lynn called Cary “a nighthawk.”

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from June 26, 1987 witness statement): He never seemed to sleep. He’d get up as I was going out jogging about 5:30 a.m. and be gone to work when I’d come in about 6 or 6:30. … I could never survive on the sleep he got.

Dave Cawley: Cary testified in his own defense. He talked about his interrogation by Ogden police detective John Stubbs the day of his arrest. He said Stubbs’d had an explicit photo Cary’d taken of an Ogden police officer’s wife. That photo had come out of the Supper Club album detective Jack Bell had found in Cary’s apartment while serving one of the search warrants.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): She was a woman I had an affair with.

Dave Cawley: …the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Cary as saying from the witness stand. Cary said detective Stubbs had threatened to share that embarrassing information with Cary’s family if he didn’t confess. Cary contended he’d held his ground, even in the face of that threat.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): I had never seen the victim. I don’t know her. At no time did I ever have sex with her.

Dave Cawley: As for his appearance at the line-up, Cary explained he’d shaved off his mustache after getting out of jail because he’d felt disgusted at how dirty the jail was and he wanted to be clean.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): My parents taught me that cleanliness is next to godliness.

Dave Cawley: None of this swayed the jury. They deliberated just over three hours before before returning a guilty verdict.

Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): After the verdict, Richards says it was Hartmann’s own statements that helped prosecutors win their conviction.

Reed Richards (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): That’s tough to say. Without the confession, you can narrow it down to a small group of people but probably not to one person. So I think you probably would not be able to make the case without the confession.

Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): The defense contended all along those statements were not a confession but that police were hearing what they wanted.

Kevin Sullivan (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): They were damaging but as you say, they weren’t actually confessions, they were more in the way of statements as our argument was, I think it was more of a misinterpretation of what was said.

Dave Cawley: Again, the reporter in this clip is Larry Lewis.

Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): The guilty verdict brought tears to family members and even some jurors in the courtroom. The victim agreed to shed her cloak of anonymity and talk with reporters about her feelings, she said as a way to help other rape victims.

“Caroline” (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): I think if I have the strength to finally be on camera, that maybe it’ll give other people strength through me.

Dave Cawley: This KSL TV story showed Caroline’s face, but it didn’t identify her by name. And that’s partly why I’m still using a pseudonym for her. Caroline had blazed a trail the other women might follow.

Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): How about the other victims? What would you tell them?

“Caroline” (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): I’ll be praying for you and I’ll be there to support you.

Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): She said now she can move her children back to the state and begin a new life.

Dave Cawley: You can’t see it, obviously since this is a podcast, but in that TV news clip, Larry Lewis stands holding a microphone in front of Caroline. I think to myself when I watch it “did she know the reporter she was talking to was a personal friend of the man a jury had just convicted of raping her?” 

In the last episode, I took you to Larry Lewis’ doorstep.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): You and Cary were friends back at the time Sheree Warren disappeared. And you were involved in covering his rape trial—

Larry Lewis: Right.

Dave Cawley: —in 1987.

Larry Lewis: Right.

Dave Cawley: I wanted to talk to Larry, not only about how detective Jack Bell had questioned him in the Sheree Warren investigation, but also about the ethics and optics of his reporting on Cary’s rape case.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): I need to know if that was disclosed to KSL that you had a friendship with him at the time you were covering that that story.

Larry Lewis: I disclosed that I knew Cary or I was an acquaintance of Cary while I was covering that trial, yes.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Cawley: “An acquaintance.” I asked to whom, specifically, Larry’d disclosed. He said to KSL’s assignment desk editor.

Larry Lewis: At the end of that trial, my assignment editor, my supervisor, said I did a good job in, in being neutral in covering that case.

Dave Cawley: Ok, and, and we’ll ask him.

Larry Lewis: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: I did ask. I called Larry’s former assignment editor, who told me he didn’t remember having this conversation about Larry’s relationship with Cary Hartmann. I went up the management ladder: the former news director. That person also didn’t remember Larry Lewis disclosing to KSL he’d had a personal relationship with Cary Hartmann. A relationship Larry repeatedly minimized during our brief conversation.

Larry Lewis: When you say friendship, I think that’s, my friendship with him it was really more of an acquaintance. We played, we played handball and poker a couple of times and that’s as far as it went.

Dave Cawley: The Society of Professional Journalists publishes a Code of Ethics for reporters. It says journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and disclose unavoidable conflicts. In Larry Lewis’ case, there were two disclosures to consider: one to KSL, his employer, and the other to the public who might see his stories. I can say with certainty Larry didn’t disclose his connection to Cary Hartmann to the viewers. When I raised this point to Larry, he challenged me by asking if I believed his stories about the trial were fair. I told him as far as I could tell, the stories were factually accurate. But that didn’t absolve him of a possible perception of bias.

Larry Lewis: Uh, I guess you could view it that way. I mean, there are lots of reporters who cover issues that they know, because they have a personal involvement in that issue.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Mmhmm.

Larry Lewis: I mean, that’s what they call specialists.

Dave Cawley: There’s another line in that Code of Ethics that tells reporters to expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their own organizations. So when I learned Larry Lewis had a personal relationship with Cary Hartmann and didn’t disclose that fact to the public when reporting on Cary’s rape case, I felt a duty to address it.

Larry Lewis: Just be fair. I mean, you know, I know you, you think you might have, have something interesting with me. But I’m just a citizen. And as a reporter, I came forward to report what I knew. And uh, I, I know you want it to be more interesting than that. And it’s not. If you’re going to be fair, you need to know that.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Well, being fair is why I’m here on your doorstep asking the questions.

Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards had won a significant victory, securing a conviction against Cary Hartmann in one of the four rape cases.

Reed Richards: Then the question was, number one, did the other victims want to go forward and for the most part, that was not what they wanted to do. They knew he was locked away and they didn’t want to go through the, harassment of having to go through the questioning and the public scrutiny and the newspaper articles and all the things that, that go with a rape prosecution. And the evidence in those cases was not as good. You didn’t have the ID and you didn’t have the blood.

Dave Cawley: Reed asked the court to delay the three other trials until after sentencing in Caroline’s case. The judge agreed and commissioned a pre-sentence report from an agency called Utah Adult Probation and Parole. A pre-sentence report is a summary of all available information about a criminal defendant a judge can use when deciding how harsh or lenient to be in imposing a sentence. A state investigator spent the next three weeks preparing the report. He reviewed the police records from Caroline’s case, interviewed the detectives and attorneys and drafted a synopsis.

In Utah, pre-sentence reports are confidential because they often contain a great deal of sensitive personal information about offenders, their families and victims. I’ve obtained a copy of Cary’s, but am being selective about what I share from it. The report showed the investigator interviewed Cary himself, who again denied any sexual contact with Caroline, consensual or otherwise.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I am still in shock. I have a lot of anxiety.

Dave Cawley: Cary provided this written statement for the pre-sentence report.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I have a lot of fears and apprehensions about being incarcerated for the charge that I have been convicted of.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d only failed the two lie detector tests he’d taken because of his anxieties.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I made statements to detective Zimmerman that I felt positively would prove my innocence. These statements were turned around and used against me. I am completely innocent of these crimes!

Dave Cawley: The investigator spoke with Caroline, who told him Cary had taken everything from her.

“There’s not a man, woman or child on Earth safe when he is out on the streets,” the report quoted Caroline as saying.

The investigator spoke to Cary’s mom and dad, Donna and Bill Hartmann. They said they’d been “completely unaware” of Cary’s history of making sexual phone calls. You and I know this was untrue. Heidi Posnien told us in episode 1 how Cary’d tried to lure her up the canyon for that so-called “date” in 1971. But deputies intervened. Heidi’s husband John had then confronted Cary’s dad, Bill Hartmann.

Heidi Posnien: They went to find his dad at the golf course. He was playing golf again.

Dave Cawley: Bill Hartmann, told the investigator he didn’t believe his son had committed any rapes. Bill planned to stand by Cary. So too did Cary’s girlfriend-slash-fiancé, Shauna Hall. She reportedly told the investigator she believed Caroline was lying and insisted Cary wasn’t a violent person. Cary, for his part, told the investigator he worried over what might happen between he and Shauna going forward.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I am mentally and physically exhausted for worrying about my family, my son, my relationship with my fiancé and what will happen to these relationships.

Dave Cawley: The investigator spoke to both of Cary’s ex-wives. They painted a far different picture of how Cary acted in his relationships. They described detailed instances of physical and sexual abuse at Cary’s hands. I already shared some of that in episode one, so I won’t repeat the stories here. The investigator wrote it’s “evident that the defendant is very intelligent and cunning and because of this is probably more dangerous than if he were not so astute.” He recommended the judge impose a maximum sentence.

Cary arrived at the Weber County courthouse in Ogden for sentencing on November 2^nd, 1987. He walked down the hallway in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, pausing to show a TV news camera a thick blue book he carried.

Cary Hartmann (from November 2, 1987 KSL TV archive): Utah Court Rules, Annotated. Did you get that?

Dave Cawley: The investigator presented his findings to the judge, who then handed down the sentence: two terms of 15-years-to-life and one term of five-to-life, all to run concurrently. It was the most the judge could give. The sentence carried what’s known as a minimum-mandatory, meaning Cary couldn’t get out until he’d served at least 15 years. The earliest he could hope to leave prison would be sometime around 2003.

Reed Richards: And so that was pretty much the assumption of everyone, that he’ll do 15 years.

Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Reed Richards had secured the strongest possible penalty. He tried to suppress a smile when speaking to reporters in this tape from after the sentencing hearing.

Reed Richards (from November 2, 1987 KSL TV archive): Because of the, the type of situation that this young lady was in, the vulnerability that she had, uh, the other things in his background that, uh, really couldn’t come out at trial and appropriately did not come out at trial, uh, but are appropriate at sentence, I think the sentence was, uh, was well-pondered-upon by the judge and appropriate.

Dave Cawley: But then, Reed still had to decide what to do with the other three cases, which were still waiting to go trial. The three women remained reluctant, not wanting to go through what Caroline had on the witness stand. Reed told them he couldn’t promise Cary would spend any more than 15 years in prison, because that decision would be up to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

Reed Richards: “And they can keep him as long as they want to keep him, but if, if you want to move ahead,” uh, “we’re very happy to do that.’ And I don’t remember any of ‘em being anxious to move ahead.”

Dave Cawley: Reed told the victims if they chose not to go to trial, police reports from their cases would still be sent to the parole board.

Reed Richards: Once you’ve got a conviction, uh, you can say “gee, the, the board of pardons will know what your report is,” uh, “it’s not a conviction because they have to realize that maybe you could’ve been mistaken, but at least they’re gonna know what you said,” uh, “and they’re gonna know the evidence in this case and the confessions that he made and so forth.”

Dave Cawley: The three women confirmed they didn’t want to testify. Reed promised to seek another solution.

Reed Richards: I think the decision to probably not go ahead on those others was a good decision, from the victim’s standpoint and from the case overall.

Dave Cawley: Reed proposed a plea deal to Cary’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan: he’d reduce the charges in one of the three remaining cases, and if Cary pleaded guilty to it, he’d drop the charges in the other two. Kevin said he’d take the offer to Cary. But they’d need some time to think it over. Meantime, Reed wondered what to do with the Sheree Warren case.

Reed Richards: Uh, it’s much better in a murder case to have a dead body than to just being saying “she disappeared and we think he killed her.” So the decision was made “let’s keep investigating it” and “he’s not going anywhere, let’s see if we can find some additional information, maybe we can find the body.”

Dave Cawley: There were new clues in the search for Sheree. Police had subpoenaed Cary’s timecards from Weber State College, to see what he’d been doing on the dates of the various rapes. The college had turned over records that also covered the time of Sheree’s disappearance. I’ve reviewed them myself. They show Cary’d taken the day after Sheree’s disappearance off, marking it as eight hours of vacation time. Which means Cary potentially had the opportunity to take Sheree’s car to Vegas the night of her disappearance and return to Utah the next morning without raising suspicion at work.

Reed Richards: I don’t know why a guy from here would take a car and dump it somewhere in Las Vegas. That’s kind of weird.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d taken another eight hours of vacation time the following Sunday, the day the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had reported seeing him on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir.

Reed Richards: There wasn’t really a motive there. Why would you kill your girlfriend?

Dave Cawley: The two ladies who’d lived upstairs from Cary, and who’d reported hearing a loud argument followed by a thump, had suggested a possible answer: Sheree might’ve learned of Cary’s activities with other women, confronted him, then died in a burst of reactionary violence. But Reed wasn’t going to charge Cary based on this unproven theory.

Reed Richards: Well yeah, you’d have to first get over the idea that she may not be dead. And that’s probably, if I were the defense attorney, an angle that I would push pretty hard. Uh, I’d talk about the trouble she was having at home, the dispute she’d had with her ex-husband, uh, she may have had other family problems and why not find a new boyfriend or just disappear and start a new life. So really if, if you charge a case like that and you can get through the preliminary hearing where you’ve got to show probable cause, then you’re ending up with a trial and if you go to trial and don’t get a conviction, you’re all done. You’ve got double-jeopardy that steps in and even if you get perfect proof later on, you’re dead. So there’s really an incentive to, to not do it until you think you’ve got enough to really convict. And that’s, that’s why it was not filed back then.

Dave Cawley: The stories of Kaye Lynn and Mary — the women who’d lived above Cary in October of ’85 — suggested Sheree might’ve made it Cary’s apartment on night she disappeared. Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor told me that this once again raised a question for police: who had jurisdiction? Because Cary lived in Ogden.

Shane Minor: So it would’ve made it an Ogden case.

Dave Cawley: Ogden police did go back and check Cary’s basement apartment for any sign of Sheree Warren’s blood, but they didn’t find anything.

Shane Minor: But this was information we got two years after-the-fact and he’d moved from that apartment.

Dave Cawley: Ogden police hadn’t kept any files or evidence on Sheree’s case up to that point, leaving the task to Roy police detective Jack Bell. But Shane and his fellow Ogden detectives Chris Zimmerman and John Stubbs found themselves sucked into the Sheree Warren case through their work on the Ogden City Rapist investigation.

Shane Minor: So there was a case number generated and reports were written under that.

Dave Cawley: The Ogden detectives had interviewed several of Cary’s friends, members of the so-called “Supper Club,” and filed reports about those interviews in their department’s records system. Copies of those reports did not make their way back to Jack Bell. The Sheree Warren investigation had effectively forked.

Shane Minor: And then there was another component to that was Salt Lake was having a lot of things happening down there so when she went missing out of Salt Lake I think that got grouped in to a bunch of unsolved stuff in the Salt Lake area at that period of time.

Dave Cawley: In the last couple episodes, we talked about how Salt Lake City police had tied three unsolved murders of young women to a single handgun. They’d formed a task force to hunt a suspected serial killer. Sheree’s name had ended up on the task force’s list of possible victims, since she’d last been seen in Salt Lake.

Shane Minor: And that was it. There was no other connections down there other than that.

Dave Cawley: But Ogden and Roy police had sent a couple pieces of evidence to Salt Lake, including one of the psychic letters I mentioned in a previous episode. As a result, bits and pieces of the Sheree Warren case were scattered across three police departments that weren’t always great about talking to one another.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Did that cause any issues for you as you kinda set out to pull all of the information from the different places together?

Shane Minor: (Laughs) Yeah, kind of.

Dave Cawley: But Shane Minor told me the bigger issue for police investigating the Sheree Warren case at that point was they hadn’t been able to challenge Cary Hartmann about any of the new evidence that’d emerged since his arrest, because Cary’d lawyered up and invoked his right to remain silent.

Shane Minor: Yeah, I mean what did he, what did he have to say? We don’t know other than the, that story that he gave to Neumeyer—

Dave Cawley: Michael Neumeyer was Cary’s private investigator. You heard Cary’s statement to Neumeyer in episode 3.

Shane Minor: —which is a lot of what his thoughts are but it doesn’t tell you anything as far what’s going on with, with him and Sheree at the time she went missing.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann arrived at the Utah State Prison in November of ’87 to begin serving his sentence.

Shane Minor: But then once he goes there, they classify him and they decide where he goes, and that’s where he’d ended up.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Department of Corrections’ problem at that point.

Shane Minor: Yes.

Dave Cawley: Prison staff put Cary through their classification protocol. It assigned him medium-security status and listed him as “sigma,” a designation for inmates with calm, easygoing personalities. Cary immediately requested a transfer to a small jail in rural Sanpete County. He told prison staff his life would be at risk if they kept him at the main prison, because he was a former police officer. I’ve never been to prison, so I’m not sure if two years as a volunteer, unpaid, reserve officer is enough to get a person blacklisted by the bad guys. But the newspaper stories about Cary’s trial had identified him as a former cop.

The Utah Department of Corrections approved Cary’s request and moved him to the Sanpete County jail, in the interest of his own safety. This was a coup for Cary. In Sanpete County, he’d live around fewer serious felons, under less-strict supervision than at the state prison. His girlfriend-slash-fiancé, Shauna Hall, soon moved to the town of Manti, in Sanpete County, so she could visit Cary more regularly. They still intended to marry.

The Department of Corrections shipped Cary back to the Weber County Courthouse a few months into his stay for a plea hearing. Cary’d decided to take the deal prosecutor Reed Richards had offered. The judge asked if he had, in fact, committed the rape in question. Cary said “yes, sir.” He received a sentence of five years-to-life, but the clock would run at the same time as his other sentence, meaning no additional prison time. Still, Reed told the TV news cameras it felt like a good result.

Reed Richards (from February 4, 1988 KSL TV archive): And probably the overriding consideration was that we had three, uh, gals who didn’t really want to go in and, and tell the whole world the, the story of what’d happened to them. And we were able to avoid that and I think that’s maybe the greatest victory of obtaining a plea.

Dave Cawley: Ogden police were not similarly satisfied. They still had a pile of unsolved rape cases they believed, but couldn’t prove, Cary might’ve committed.

Shane Minor: But you’re working off that limited information and trying to make something out of it.

Dave Cawley: Detectives like Shane Minor wondered if, now that Cary was in custody for at least 15 years, he might be more willing to talk. They decided to pay Cary a visit.

Shane Minor: I’ve done that similar thing before. Sometimes it works out, most of the time it doesn’t.

Dave Cawley: Shane Minor and Chris Zimmerman made the three-hour drive from Ogden to Manti to visit Cary at the Sanpete County Jail.

Shane Minor: We’d went down there to talk to him, and—

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): He recognizes both of you guys?

Shane Minor: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman told Cary he wanted to talk about the unsolved rapes. Cary declined. Ok. Zimmerman instead suggested they talk about the disappearance of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: It was no conversation. He just seen who it was and turned around and walked out and didn’t say nothing to us.

Dave Cawley: The Ogden Standard-Examiner published an article about this fruitless effort to interview Cary. A clipping of the article found its way to Sheree’s friend and former co-worker, Pam Volk.

Pam Volk: I don’t remember who it was, I think it might’ve been my mom sent me an article from the paper, ‘cause y’know this is before the internet, this before cell phones, all that kind of stuff.

Dave Cawley: You might remember Pam from episode 1. She’d dated Cary herself, before he’d started seeing Sheree. Pam later married a German man and they’d moved overseas in ’86. She hadn’t imagined Cary could’ve been a suspect in Sheree’s disappearance.

Pam Volk: Yeah, no. I learned that, in fact I learned that when we were in Germany.

Dave Cawley: Pam had stayed in touch with Cary by letter prior to his arrest. She’d asked for updates on the search for Sheree. Cary’s replies came to an abrupt stop after May of ’87.

Pam Volk: And I was like “holy [expletive], what have I done?” Y’know, what kind of a person was I to date somebody like that? Made me feel really bad. (Crying) Sorry. But I, I also felt really bad because that’s how Sheree and he got together and in the time since I have, after I realized what kind of a person he is, umm, I think that he might’ve been the one that did something to Sheree. I just, but I don’t know why. Y’know, I don’t know what would make him do that, y’know, because he’d never, I mean all these women that he raped, he’d never, y’know, killed anybody, y’know so, yeah. That was a rough time. (Crying)

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann’s fiancé, Shauna Hall, finalized her divorce from her husband early in 1988. I’m not sure exactly when or how, but Cary would later say he and Shauna were married at the Sanpete County Jail, where he was housed. Around that same time, Cary received a letter from his childhood best friend, Steve Bartlett. Here’s what it said:

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): This may be the hardest letter I ever write. Of course I have been reading the newspaper and watching television so I know what you have been doing. [Expletive] Cary. Why? Why? Why?

Dave Cawley: I mentioned Bartlett in episode 3. He was the special investigator for the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office.

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): I keep remembering all the great things we did together growing up. I knew we would always be friends and we could talk to each other, no matter what happened in life.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d claimed to have called Bartlett shortly after Sheree Warren disappeared and asked for his help in looking for her around Salt Lake City.

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): As a Christian, I still want to know what happened to Sheree. So if you have the guts to tell me, I will locate her and put an end to her family’s agony. I can’t make promises, but I am interested in finding her and not causing you any more legal problems.

Dave Cawley: A magnanimous offer and show of friendship from Steve Bartlett. Here’s Cary’s reply:

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): Steve, you are my oldest friend. I forgive you, your insecurities toward me. I have never lied to you, never. I am going to tell you how it is, ok? All you hear or read is [expletive].

Dave Cawley: Cary went on to attack the evidence in the rape case. He said he’d never confessed, never been picked out of a line-up and couldn’t possibly have been responsible. The rape kit evidence had included sperm, which he didn’t produce because of his vasectomy.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): Next, I have no, zero, knowledge of Sheree’s whereabouts, then or now. End of story. I loved her, Steve.

Dave Cawley: Cary included a newspaper clipping with his letter. It described a home-invasion rape that’d occurred in Ogden weeks earlier, long after Cary was in custody. It wasn’t the only one. They’d kept happening.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): How about the 15 attacks in Ogden, in the same area, same M.O. while I was in the Weber County Jail? How about the five attacks about two weeks ago, same exact everything? They are still happening! Help me by finding the asshole out there and getting the truth out of him.

Dave Cawley: Cary wasn’t making this up.  Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor told me Cary’s arrest had not put an end to the string of home invasion rapes plaguing the city. Which didn’t make sense.

Shane Minor: It started to become obvious we’re dealing with a couple of different people.

Dave Cawley: There were two Ogden City Rapists. This second serial rapist operated in a very similar manner, with some subtle differences.

Shane Minor: You started to see two different type of M.O.s developing. One maybe more verbally violent, the other was, was more violent. More physically violent if that makes sense to you.

Dave Cawley: This second serial rapist accelerated his attacks in early ’88, assaulting three different women in the space of a single week that March. Detectives had believed Cary’d stalked the women in his cases, most of whom lived near him. The second serial rapist seemed more random.

Shane Minor: He could park his car down at 10^th and Wall and Ogden Avenue but he would hit the opposite end of town. And he would, he would be on foot all night long in the city.

Dave Cawley: Police responded to the home of yet another victim on the morning of Saturday, April 2^nd. They spotted a man acting suspicious nearby. They confronted and arrested him: Blaine Nelson, the second Ogden City Rapist. Ogden police captain Marlin Balls described Blaine’s methods to the news media.

Marlin Balls (from April 2, 1988 KSL TV archive): He looked for homes that were open, uh, during the early morning hours. If, uh, a female was alone inside the house, uh, an opportunity presented itself, then he sexually assaulted her. If, uh, she was not alone, there was a man present in the home, why a lot of times just money was stolen.

Dave Cawley: Blaine and Cary’s styles were similar enough to cause confusion. They even looked a bit alike, though Blaine was younger and thinner than Cary.

Reed Richards: Which one was the copy-cat of which one, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards filed charges against Blaine in connection with four separate rapes, far fewer than police believed he’d committed. Reed told me Blaine was…

Reed Richards: …very candid and very willing to talk about what he’d done. Uh, he talked about the fact that, uh, after he’d commit these, these rapes he’d actually hide close by because he wanted to watch all the action.

Dave Cawley: Blaine even admitted he’d followed the news coverage of Cary Hartmann’s arrest almost a year earlier and realized if he’d stopped attacking women then, no one would look for him.

Blaine returned to court two weeks later. Several of the women he’d attacked were there, too. One lunged at him as he walked down the hallway in handcuffs. Defense attorney John Caine told reporters that day Blaine had wanted to clean his soul, even for crimes Ogden police didn’t know about.

John Caine (from April 27, 1988 KSL TV archive): He told the officers not only about, uh, incidents here in Weber County, but also down in Iron County, Box Elder County, uh, states of Arizona and Wyoming. And he wanted to make a complete, clean breast of everything.

Dave Cawley: Blaine pleaded guilty to the charges prosecutor Reed Richards had filed against him.

Reed Richards (from April 27, 1988 KSL TV archive): He’s pled to 13 first-degree felonies. Uh, nine of those carry a minimum-mandatory prison term. Uh, you can’t really get much more than that out of a person. You can only do so much time in prison.

Dave Cawley: In exchange for the guilty pleas, Reed agreed not to file about 60 additional counts for other rapes he believed Blaine had committed.

Larry Lewis (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Blaine Nelson told state prosecutors, the judge and victims today he’s willing to die if it would undo the pain he’s inflicted.

Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): If God would take my life and erase from the minds of the victims what they went through, I would die.

Dave Cawley: KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis covered Blaine Nelson’s case, just as he had with the other Ogden City Rapist, his friend, Cary Hartmann.

Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): I feel good. I feel that I should do what they sentence me with for what I’ve done.

Dave Cawley: Blaine granted Larry a one-on-one interview following his sentencing.

Larry Lewis (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Nelson says his addiction to cocaine and pain pills drove him to burglarize homes looking for more drugs, and then rape the women who lived there. Nelson hopes by speaking out, he can help others from making the mistakes he made.

Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Drugs do make you do things that you’re not aware of. They make your mind yield to temptations or Satan.

Dave Cawley: Blaine had committed so many rapes, investigators doubted even he could keep them all straight. It suddenly made sense why young, single women in Ogden had lived in such in fear during the mid-’80s. Blaine Nelson’s tearful confession on television couldn’t atone for the terror he’d dealt to an entire generation of women. Every creak or groan in an otherwise quiet house at night might really have been the work of the Ogden City Rapist.

But for Cary Hartmann, the admissions of Blaine Nelson were a godsend. He found in Blaine a perfect patsy, a scapegoat upon whom he could place all the blame for his crimes. Cary again wrote his old friend, the district attorney’s special investigator, Steve Bartlett, to insist he’d been framed.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): I did not do the crimes that I am here for, no way in hell! You have the option of believing the media and the police or me.

Dave Cawley: Bartlett chose not to believe Cary.

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from April 17, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): Yes, there have been other attacks and rapes and the suspects have been similar to you. The fact remains that you have been convicted based on evidence introduced. But there is a ton more of evidence that the judge and jury never got to know about.

Dave Cawley: And, Bartlett brought up the matter of Sheree Warren. With everything that’d come out about Cary’s abusive, manipulative treatment of women — before, during, and after the time he’d dated Sheree — how could he not be responsible for her disappearance?

Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from April 17, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): I also feel you are withholding what you really know about Sheree. Friends don’t lie to friends, remember?

Dave Cawley: But Cary held fast to his denial.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): This is the truth: I have absolutely no knowledge of Sheree’s whereabouts, nor do I have any knowledge of what happened to her. That is the truth.

Dave Cawley: I don’t know if Cary Hartmann ever truly loved Sheree Warren. They’d only dated for around six months. And Cary’d proposed marriage to his next girlfriend, Shauna Hall, within about a year of Sheree’s disappearance. But his jailhouse wedding to Shauna in early 1988 imploded almost immediately. Prison records show Shauna sent Cary a “dear John” letter after only a few months of their union. I can’t find a court record for a divorce, which means their marriage was probably annulled. There are only a few reasons under Utah law that could’ve happened. One would’ve been if Shauna’s prior marriage wasn’t fully ended by the time she swore vows to Cary.

In any case, in May of ’88, the Utah Department of Corrections moved Cary from the Sanpete County Jail to another facility, 150 miles away, in Iron County. This put an end to his visits with Shauna. Cary wasn’t the only Ogden City Rapist to land in the Iron County Correctional Facility that summer. Blaine Nelson headed there, too, after his sentencing in Ogden.

Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): All this is off my chest now. I can, uh, basically try to go forward. I know, y’know, 30 years is the rest of my life.

Dave Cawley: Blaine was at that time facing additional charges in Iron County, where he’d admitted to attacking several women. A judge there sentenced him that August, adding 35 years to Blaine’s sentence. It meant Blaine would likely never live another day as a free man. Blaine and Cary crossed paths while they were both in the Iron County jail that summer.

Reed Richards: But of course once they’re down at prison together and talking, who knows what they come up with.

Dave Cawley: Former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards received a letter from Blaine soon afterward, in which Blaine claimed to’ve committed the two rapes for which Cary was serving time.

Reed Richards: Then you’ve got the question of “well which one of ‘em was it?”

Dave Cawley: Blaine wrote other letters, to other lawyers, asking them to get involved, to help clear Cary Hartmann. But Reed wasn’t buying it, in part because Blaine didn’t have B-type blood.

Reed Richards: So I don’t know how that happened to be there if it was him that did it.

Dave Cawley: Remember, Cary had B-type blood and the crime lab had found B-type blood in the forensic evidence from the case he’d gone to trial on, but not the others.

Reed Richards: Well and I don’t know that we still know which ones he did and which ones Nelson did.

Dave Cawley: Reed suspected Cary and Blaine had cut some kind of deal.

Reed Richards: And, and there was some thought, talk of a third person, too.

Dave Cawley: Yes, there was third serial rapist active in Ogden during this same period. His name was Jerry Casida.

Reed Richards: So you got three people and I don’t know that any of us know exactly which ones which did. Because once the reports are in the paper, they can give you quite a lot of detail just from what they’ve read in the paper, I suppose.

Dave Cawley: In the spring of ’89, Cary collected sworn affidavits from three people who each claimed to have at different times and in different places heard Blaine Nelson admitting to Cary’s crimes. Two of those witnesses were inmates. But the third was a clergy member for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who taught religion to inmates. That church leader even wrote a letter to the Utah Attorney General’s Office. He wrote “Blaine’s comments … have caused me to believe that there is some doubt as to Cary’s guilt or innocence.” If Cary Hartmann could convince enough people to share that same doubt, it might be enough to overturn his conviction.

Cary sat for an interview with a social worker in November of ’88, about a year into his sentence. He wanted in to a sex offender therapy program. I have a copy of the social worker’s notes. She wrote Cary was “above average” in intellectual functioning. The notes include direct quotations from Cary. He talked about his dad…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): He’s a wonderful man and our relationship was excellent. He has great wisdom. He was not always the best listener. He didn’t really support me, he was too busy being right. He’s a dictator, emperor, king of the Hartmann family.

Dave Cawley: …and Cary talked his mom…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): Mom only hears what she wants to hear. She is naive and unattached. She is warm-hearted and emotional, but she is extremely critical. She was insecure with dad because of his dominance.

Dave Cawley: Cary was the oldest of four kids in his family. He said he was closest to his baby sister Sheila, hadn’t talked to his brother Jack in at least a year, and had a strained relationship with his sister Jill.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): More than anything, I enjoy spending time with my two sons.

Dave Cawley: She asked Cary to list positive attributes about himself. He said he was “articulate” and “honest.” She then asked for some negatives. Cary said he could be moody, was bad at handling money and lacked a sense of self-worth. When it came to Cary’s sexual habits, Cary grew circumspect.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): I found out about and tried masturbation at age 14. I found out from some cousins. I first found out about sex at 15 from some kids at school.

Dave Cawley: He wouldn’t say what he thought about sex, what his parents thought about it, or what his friends thought about it. The social worker wrote Cary insisted on his innocence of any rape or sexual assault. He only wanted in the sex offender therapy program for help with his habit of making obscene phone calls. He refused to answer any of her questions about the specifics of the charges that’d put him in prison.

Cary was admitted to the therapy program. It required Cary to write an autobiography. He sometimes read portions of it aloud during group sessions. The social worker wrote Cary one time recited a “very detailed account of the disappearance of his girlfriend.” To my frustration, she didn’t write specifically what Cary said about it. But her notes also say Cary admitted to holding back some of the detail, because he didn’t trust his fellow inmates.

In a follow-up report a few months later, the social worker wrote Cary worked very hard to “control the anger that seems to be brewing inside.” That anger manifested when Cary talked about why he was in prison. He said he was innocent and called the jury that’d convicted him “incompetent.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 28, 1989 therapy report): Two old ladies on the jury slept through the trial.

Dave Cawley: And he made sexist remarks about the women he’d attacked.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 28, 1989 therapy report): The victims were there testifying and looking very virginal in dress an manner.

Dave Cawley: But he had a plan to win back his freedom. His conviction was on appeal to the Utah Supreme Court. Cary’s appeal didn’t argue factual innocence. It didn’t say he hadn’t raped Caroline. Instead, his lawyer argued Cary’d been over-charged and over-sentenced, because he’d only threatened to blow Caroline’s children’s heads off. He hadn’t actually put a gun to their heads.

The justices of the Utah Supreme Court were unmoved. They rejected Cary’s appeal in a unanimous decision issued in November of 1989. Cary seemed to take the setback in stride. A few days later, he wrote a letter to Roy police detective Jack Bell.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): Dear Jack, I’ll bet you are surprised to hear from me, so I’ll get to the point. How are you coming on Sheree’s disappearance? Have you once even thought about contacting “Unsolved Mysteries” about the case?

Dave Cawley: Unsolved Mysteries was a network TV series that aired during the ’80s and ‘90s. It was a blend of true-crime re-enactments and paranormal malarkey. Actor Robert Stack hosted.

Robert Stack (from Unsolved Mysteries): Join me. You may be able to help solve a mystery.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): I want to find her as badly as you do, so give it a try! I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance Jack, you know that.

Dave Cawley: Cary almost seemed to mock Jack in this letter, taunting him over the failed search for Sheree.

Jack Bell: That’s what the letter meant to me: more manipulation.

Dave Cawley: But Cary didn’t write just to needle Jack. He wanted his old high school classmate to know he was about to play the card he’d tucked up his sleeve. It had to do with an emerging science: DNA.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): I am not guilty of the charges I am here for. I think you realize that also and I am about to prove it.

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I called about Crime Stoppers, the number?

Sheli Mann (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): About Crime Stoppers?

Dave Cawley: Weber County Sheriff’s dispatcher Sheli Mann took a call just after noon on April 3^rd, 1987.

Sheli Mann: I remember getting a call from an anonymous caller.

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.

Sheli Mann (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): A body?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): Yeah, a body that I, that I, that I just happened across way up, y’know it’s way out, y’know it’s not in the communities or anything. It’s way out in the hills.

Sheli Mann: He was pretty vague.

Sheli Mann (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): Is it in Weber County?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): It’s over there by, uh, Causey Dam.

Sheli Mann: He couldn’t really describe it because it was in a remote area and you would have to have a special map to find it.

Sheli Mann (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): Can I get your name?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): No. … I’m not interested in leading search parties or anything like that.

Sheli Mann (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): You won’t give me your name?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I, I’m just reporting it y’know so we could, no, of course not. I didn’t do, have anything to do with it, y’know?

Sheli Mann: He didn’t want to give me his name and number. So I asked him if he could just hold on for just a minute and I put him on hold and I was trying to find somebody but there was nobody in the building. By the time I got back to him, he’d hung up.

Dave Cawley: Sheli was 23, a couple of years into what would become a lifelong career as a dispatcher.

Sheli Mann: And I remember so many calls over the years that still stick with me. I feel like I have PTSD from a lot of calls.

Dave Cawley: This call wasn’t on that list. At least, not until Sheli heard it for the first time in more than 30 years in season 2 of this podcast.

Sheli Mann: It’s a little bit odd hearing my own voice after that many years. A little bit strange.

Dave Cawley: She hadn’t realized searchers never found the body.

Sheli Mann: And this one now will hang on to me forever. Wishing I could’ve done more.

Dave Cawley: The anonymous caller made two calls to police that day. The first went to Roy City police who were at that time investigating the disappearance of Sheree Warren. Maybe the anonymous caller knew Roy police were looking for Sheree. Maybe he lived in Roy. Or, maybe it was just coincidence. The man didn’t mention Sheree by name and the dispatcher, realizing the body was outside Roy City boundaries — not Roy police’s jurisdiction — told the man to instead call the Weber County Sheriff’s Office. That’s how he’d ended up talking to Sheli.

Sheli Mann: That was a long time ago.

Dave Cawley: Weber County mobilized its search and rescue team to look for the body in the days that followed, but they weren’t able to go far into the mountains around Causey because winter snow still covered the high country. Their search came up empty. In the last season of Cold, we explored how this anonymous phone call influenced the search for another missing Weber County woman: Joyce Yost. But in this episode, we’re going to hear why evidence I’ve since uncovered strongly suggests the body more likely belonged to Sheree Warren.

This is Cold, season 3, episode 4: The Supper Club. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

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Dave Cawley: One day after the anonymous caller reported finding a body in the mountains east of Ogden, an Ogden woman received an odd phone call of her own.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 4, 1987 police report): Hi! I’m calling to conduct a survey in an attempt to find some answers about the woman of the eighties: is she taller, shorter, thinner, heavier, etcetera.

Dave Cawley: This is a recreation, based on what the woman told police the caller said.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 4, 1987 police report): We feel it is important to ask her and get her feelings and opinions about the lifestyle she is living in the ‘80s.

Dave Cawley: The caller rattled off questions about family and fashion before turning to lingerie, anatomy and sexual preferences. Another woman received a similar call the next day, and another a week later. Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman saw those calls going out from Cary Hartmann’s phone, thanks to the pen register he’d placed on Cary’s line. The pen register wasn’t a wiretap. It didn’t record the audio of those calls. But it did log every number dialed.

Zimmerman declined an interview for this podcast, but I’ve obtained his reports and personal notes from this case. Here’s what he wrote about it:

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 5, 1987 search warrant affidavit): Within a day of the numbers being recorded on the tape, I have called several of the numbers that were called. All ladies contacted state they did receive a magazine survey at the time listed on the tape, and all say the questions are the same wording dealing with female clothing, the female body and sex.

Dave Cawley: At the start of May, a woman named Teresa received one of the survey calls. She remained on the line through Cary’s questions, even the explicit ones. They agreed to meet for drinks at Sebastians, the same bar Cary had visited the night Sheree Warren disappeared. Zimmerman believed Cary had gone through the phone book, picking female names and calling them at random. He took his findings to Weber County Attorney Reed Richards.

Reed Richards: There were phone records that showed that he had made literally thousands of those types of calls, uh, which was pretty bizarre.

Dave Cawley: “Literally thousands” of lingerie survey phone calls. We’ll never know the total number, but police wrote in an average month during 1986, Cary’d made between 500 and 600 lingerie survey calls. Keep up that pace for a year you’d be looking at more than 6,000 phone calls.

Reed Richards: Talking to women about all sorts of goofy topics.

Dave Cawley: Goofy to Reed, terrifying to many of the women. One of those women spoke to detective Chris Zimmerman. She told him she’d recognized the survey caller’s voice. He was Cary Hartmann. They’d dated several years before and she’d heard him making lingerie survey calls back then. She’d been around Cary one time in ’86 and had fished in his coat pocket while he wasn’t looking. He’d carried a small black book full of names and phone numbers, along with notes about how various women had responded to the survey questions.

Reed Richards: It tends to indicate probably a guy that’s perverted. And that’s, I think, what he was.

Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Reed Richards was well aware of the rash of home invasion rapes that’d rocked Ogden City for more than two years. Detective Chris Zimmerman told Reed he could tie Cary Hartmann to at least a handful of those rapes.

Reed Richards: They were fairly unique. Uh, they all involved young women, usually 19 to 25. Uh, they were all women that were not with their husband, either separated or never been married. They all had young children. He would threaten to hurt or kill the child if the woman made any noise and he claimed to have access to police records and that if he, they went to the police he said he’d know and he’d come back and kill the child.”

The time had come to pull Cary in for questioning.

Reed Richards: So we had to strategize the best way to try to deal with that.

Dave Cawley: Cary still had friends within the ranks of the Ogden Police Department from his time in the reserves.

Reed Richards: We decided we’d find somebody that, that kind of knew him from his association with the police and that was a good interrogator and a fairly congenial guy and so we landed on, uh, Chris Zimmerman.

Dave Cawley: Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman, the guy who’d issued a phony parking ticket to President Ronald Reagan. Zimmerman called Roy police detective Jack Bell, who was leading the investigation into Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Zimmerman briefed Jack on the new evidence that suggested Cary Hartmann had been making hundreds of lingerie survey phone calls.

Jack Bell: Exactly, and been going on for quite a while.

Dave Cawley: And Zimmerman believed Cary could be the Ogden City Rapist. Jack told Zimmerman he’d started to suspect Cary’d killed Sheree Warren.

Jack Bell: I was still looking at Chuck, but…

Dave Cawley: …but Jack hadn’t found any direct evidence linking Sheree’s estranged husband Chuck Warren to her disappearance. So Jack…

Jack Bell: …shifted gears from Chuck to Cary.

Dave Cawley: Detectives Jack Bell and Chris Zimmerman agreed to work together. They came up with a plan. Zimmerman would call Cary in to Ogden Police headquarters for an interview. While he was there, Jack and other detectives would serve a search warrant at Cary’s apartment. They would use the lingerie survey phone calls as grounds for the warrant. But while in the apartment, the detectives would keep an eye out for anything that might tie Cary to the rapes or the suspected murder of Sheree Warren.

In an odd twist, Cary called Ogden police himself the night before the detectives were to execute this plan. He phoned OPD to report his own case of telephone harassment. According to a police report, Cary said he’d received a rash of eerie phone calls. Cary was then dating a woman named Shauna. An anonymous source would later tell police Cary and Shauna had met through one of his lingerie survey calls. Shauna had started seeing Cary, despite still being married to a man named Roger Hall.

Court records show Shauna filed for divorce from Roger in January of ’87 and it’d not gone smoothly. Roger filed a half-million dollar civil lawsuit against Cary, accusing him of seducing Shauna into infidelity. The bad blood between Roger and Cary simmered for months. Cary believed Roger and his girlfriend’s brother-in-law — a guy named Melvin Feller — had both been calling his home phone and hanging up in an effort to annoy and intimidate him. He told an Ogden police officer he might just go take care of Roger himself, physically, if the police wouldn’t do anything. The officer urged Cary not to do anything rash.

Cary had gone to work the next morning and at noon stopped by a burger joint for lunch with two coworkers. Melvin Feller just happened to be there. Cary pulled out a pen and paper and started jotting notes, presumably to provide to police.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 5, 1987 personal notes): I was writing down his plate number when he said something smart-assed. I walked over to him and said “don’t mess with me.”

Dave Cawley: These are Cary’s notes, read by a voice actor.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 5, 1987 personal notes): He said “Shauna and you will never have anything.”

Dave Cawley: Cary had allegedly replied “see you dead.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 5, 1987 personal notes): I walked away. He provoked me again by saying something crude. … He called me a pervert and adulterer.

Dave Cawley: Melvin told police he’d called Cary a child molester. He reportedly said Cary had responded “I don’t molest children, I only molest women.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 5, 1987 personal notes): I again said “Melvin, leave me alone.”

Dave Cawley: Detectives’ notes say Melvin said Cary told him “you don’t know how easy it is to kill somebody.” Melvin left the restaurant. As he drove away, he shouted back “see ya, Cary Fartmann.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 5, 1987 personal notes): The man is a nut. Very childlike.

Dave Cawley: Later that evening, Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman dropped by Cary’s apartment. He asked Cary to come down to police headquarters to talk out the whole situation with Roger Hall and Melvin Feller, the two guys Cary believed had bombarded him with harassing telephone calls. But when Cary arrived at Ogden police headquarters, Zimmerman instead confronted him about the lingerie survey calls. Here’s what Zimmerman wrote in his report:

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): He admitted to making these calls, stating it was a problem he had and it was a sexual problem and he had been making the calls for over seven years.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman brought up one of the rapes. He told Cary about the woman, who I’m calling Danielle, who’d remembered meeting him at the sewing machine repair shop, who’d later recognized his voice while at the bar where he worked, the Galleon.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked if he did do the sexual assault and he denied it. Hartmann stated he had no idea where he was at the time, but he had never raped anyone; he could not stand the word rape and he would never think of raping anyone.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman asked if Cary would take a polygraph. He said he would. So the detective drove Cary to a nearby testing facility. A polygraph examiner hooked him up to the machine and asked if he’d ever raped anyone, if he’d entered Danielle’s home. Cary answered no. The examiner said Cary’s physical reactions indicated deception.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked if he would like to take another test and he stated yes. Hartmann was allowed to leave and I advised him I would set up another test.

Dave Cawley: A short time later, Zimmerman received a phone call. Cary had arrived home to find his apartment trashed. While he’d been away, Jack Bell and a pair of Ogden detectives had served their search warrant. They’d taken Cary’s little black book, a day planner and a Playboy calendar. He was furious.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I explained they had to search the entire house and they were careful but it causes messes sometimes. Hartmann stated, “I feel like I’ve just been raped,” and he hung up the phone.

Dave Cawley: Cary returned to Ogden police headquarters on the morning of Friday, May 8^th for his second polygraph. Zimmerman had arranged to have an outside agency conduct the second test. He drove Cary to neighboring Davis County, where a sheriff’s deputy was standing by. They did three runs through. The results again showed deception, and much more strongly this time. That’s probably because the deputy tossed in a new question: had Cary had asked Danielle if she was 16 years old while having sex with her?

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): This was something only the victim, the police department and the suspect would have access to. It was never released to the media.

Dave Cawley: Cary denied ever having asked anyone their age during sex. He said he didn’t know Danielle and had never had any sexual contact with her. In a report, the deputy said in his opinion, Cary was “being deceptive in his answers.” With the polygraph done, detective Zimmerman faced a crossroads. He didn’t have enough for an arrest, so he could cut Cary loose, or try to turn up the heat. But to do that, he’d help. Because Zimmerman and Cary knew one another from Cary’s time in the police reserve, it made sense for Zimmerman to play “good cop.” So he introduced Cary to “bad cop,” a detective Cary didn’t know named John Stubbs.

Jack Bell: (Laughs) Uh, John Stubbs. A good detective. No two ways about it.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell told me Stubbs was an old-school cop: abrasive and intimidating. Stubbs died in 2017, so I wasn’t able to interview him.

Jack Bell: Guy could read, read people really well.

Dave Cawley: Stubbs grilled Cary for four hours. I wish I could play you audio of that, but it doesn’t exist. Ogden police just didn’t record their interviews back in the ‘80s. The best we’ve got is a report detective Stubbs wrote a couple weeks later. It says Stubbs asked Cary why he’d failed the polygraph. Cary reportedly said he didn’t know. Stubbs said “you failed because you lied during the test.” Stubbs wrote: “Hartmann, losing his temper now, said ‘ok, it made me remember some things about…’ At this point his eyes got rather large and he seemed to suddenly realize what he was saying and stopped himself mid-sentence. I said ‘it made you remember some things that you don’t really want to remember, didn’t it?’ Hartmann would not respond to that at all.”

Chris Zimmerman observed the interrogation through a pane of mirrored glass.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): Hartmann stated he didn’t have to rape girls. He stated that he has gone to houses and girls will let him in and then he would talk them into sex but he never had to force anyone.

Dave Cawley: It wasn’t quite an admission. Zimmerman wasn’t sure what to do. Once Stubbs had finished, Zimmerman took Cary to his car and started driving back toward Ogden police headquarters.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): About two minutes after I started driving, Hartmann said to me that he wanted me to know he didn’t rape anyone. I asked why he was remembering the part about the 16-year-old and he stated he wasn’t sure, he was trying to answer, and he wanted to tell me. At this time it appeared Hartmann wanted to confess, but couldn’t do it. I advised Hartmann that I felt he couldn’t confess because in his mind, Cary Hartmann didn’t do it, that another personality in Hartmann was making him do this. I then asked if that was possible and he said yes.

Dave Cawley: It seems a little strange for Zimmerman to’ve suggested this split personality idea out of the blue, but remember, he was playing good cop. By suggesting another personality had done the deed, Zimmerman was giving Cary an opportunity to say what’d happened without taking responsibility. They hadn’t quite made it back to Ogden police headquarters when Zimmerman suggested they drive by Danielle’s house, to see if it might jog Cary’s memory.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I stopped at the stop sign at 2450 Custer, Hartmann stated “this is it, this is real familiar.” … He said “this is scary, Chris!”

Dave Cawley: They pulled up to the curb.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked him to tell me how he got in and he said it was a window. … He stated he pulled off a screen and the window was unlocked so he went in. He stated he went in and laid on the bed beside the girl.

Dave Cawley: I won’t repeat the specific details of the assault, but Zimmerman wrote everything Cary said was “fairly accurate” compared to what Danielle had described.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): Hartmann stated that he really felt the girl enjoyed this so he didn’t feel he was forcing it. When I advised him that [she] probably didn’t fight because she was so scared, he said “oh great,” as if he was sad and disappointed.”

Dave Cawley: Cary reportedly admitted he’d first seen Danielle at his friend Dave Moore’s sewing machine repair shop.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked how he got her address and he stated he was good with numbers and he remembered everything.

Dave Cawley: They went to OPD headquarters. Zimmerman sat Cary down and they went through it again.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I then advised Cary that there were several other sexual assaults in the area around his house on 7^th Street … and I felt he did them. Cary immediately asked if he had hurt anyone. … He stated he couldn’t remember details, he wanted to but couldn’t.

Dave Cawley: Cary reportedly said he sometimes woke up exhausted in the morning, because he’d go out walking or driving at three or four a.m. Zimmerman knew many of the rapes had occurred around 4 a.m.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked how many times he had woke up in the morning and knew he had done something wrong to another girl … and he stated “a half dozen times or more, Chris.”

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman wrote “I questioned him on threatening the children, he wouldn’t deny it, he just stated he would never hurt a child, that he loves his children.”

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): He stated he was always nice and gentle and he used to have a problem with beating his first wives but he was over that.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman decided to take Cary out for another drive. He cruised by several of the victims’ homes. I don’t have time to go through them all, but will highlight this one:

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): I asked if he remembered any other girls and he said there was a pretty blonde he always saw at Kwik Mart. … I pointed to Kar Kwik at 7^th and Washington and asked if that is where he saw the blonde. He said yes and stated she lived right up the street.

Dave Cawley: This woman, who I’m calling Caroline, lived near Cary’s old apartment on Ogden’s 7^th Street. Zimmerman pulled the car around the block from the convenience store.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): As I turned, he pointed to the red brick duplex on the corner and told me she lived there. He then pointed to the correct door of the duplex when I asked which door. … He then stated “the curtains were open and I could see her.”

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman remembered having seen footprints in a flower bed in front of that same window the morning after the rape.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): We felt at the time the suspect had looked through the window. … He said he went in through the front door because it was unlocked and he turned off the TV because of the light. He stated he kneeled beside the couch and started to kiss her and it frightened her so he told her “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Dave Cawley: Again, I won’t repeat the details of the sexual assault itself. It’s only important to know Cary’s description mostly aligned with what Caroline had told police. She thought her attacker had come through the back door, not the front.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 10, 1987 police report): Hartmann stated that the girl really didn’t resist, that she really liked it.

Dave Cawley: They returned to OPD headquarters around 5:30 p.m. Zimmerman left Cary with his boss, Captain Marlin Balls, for a few minutes. Balls wrote in a report, Cary seemed concerned his friends would think he was a “real sleaze ball.” He acted grateful Zimmerman hadn’t treated him like a “dirt bag.” Cary’s friends included a lot of guys within the OPD ranks. He was actually planning on joining Balls, Zimmerman and others on a hunting trip to Idaho in a matter of days. Balls assured him it would just be a matter of time before this was all over.

Zimmerman returned and told Cary they were taking one more drive. This time, it was to the Weber County Jail. He booked Cary on suspicion of two counts each of aggravated sexual assault and burglary, for the attacks on Danielle and Caroline. The following morning, a judge set Cary’s bail at $30,000. Cary’s girlfriend, Shauna Hall, and his parents got a bail bondsman to put up the cash. He was out of jail in less than 24 hours.

Cary arrived home at his apartment Saturday evening to find a message on his machine. It was from Teresa, the woman he’d placed a lingerie survey call to a week earlier and then met for drinks. Teresa would later tell a detective she went to Cary’s apartment around 10:30 that night and found him “depressed.” He didn’t mention having been arrested, saying only “everything finally came to a head.”

Ogden police detective Shane Minor, one of the investigators on the Ogden City Rapist case, hosted a briefing for detectives of the Salt Lake City Police Department’s missing and murdered women task force on the morning of Monday, May 11^th, 1987. Shane and his colleagues had kept their information about Cary Hartmann off the books for months.

Shane Minor: That information we were working off of was kept pretty close. There was two or three of us that knew about it.

Dave Cawley: Now, Shane opened up. He gave the Salt Lake detectives each a sheet with Cary’s mugshot and a description of his truck, that not-so-pretty yellow Chevy pickup. The sheet said Cary owned a .357 magnum revolver and was known to walk the streets at night. It said he should be considered “unstable” and “unpredictable.”

Salt Lake police had three unsolved murders of young women they’d tied by ballistics to a single gun: a .38. A .357 can fire .38 rounds. But the Salt Lake detectives didn’t believe Cary was their serial killer.

Shane Minor: They just kind of discounted it because it was a little different than the other cases they were actively working.

Dave Cawley: Still, Shane asked the Salt Lake detectives to keep their eyes open. He told them the victims in the Ogden City Rapist cases feared Cary might try to find them.

Reed Richards: They didn’t want him coming after ‘em. So they, they all moved. Some of ‘em moved as soon as they came to police. But a whole lot more of ‘em moved once he was picked up and charged.

Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards filed a series of formal charges against Cary that week, in connection with four of the rape cases. Cary remained a suspect in many more, but Reed focused on only those with the strongest evidence, with victims who seemed willing to endure the awful task of testifying.

Reed Richards: Y’know, there’s no two ways to look at it. If you have to go through a preliminary hearing that is open to the public and openly reported on — these aren’t kids and so they can report names and what they say, the whole works — uh, and then you’ve got to wait a few months, many months probably and then go through the trial and do the same thing, that’s why the last numbers I saw were maybe 70 percent of women don’t even want to report.

Dave Cawley: The most recent numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics are from 2020. They say 77 percent of rape or sexual assault victims don’t report the crimes to police.

Reed Richards: Because they don’t want to go through that. And of those that do report, a lot of ‘em back out midway through the process because they think “gee, this is just not worth it.”

Dave Cawley: The charges included aggravated sexual assault, a crime more serious than rape under Utah law because it included the use of force or threat of harm. Reed wanted Cary off the streets. Adding two new cases allowed him to secure an arrest warrant. Ogden police went and found Cary on Tuesday, May 12^th and tossed him back in jail. The additional charges also significantly upped Cary’s bail, to $105,000.

Reed Richards: Which in—whatever it was—’87 or ’88 was a ton of money. It still is.

Dave Cawley: Reed feared if Cary managed to get out again ahead of trial, it might spook the women he’d attacked into recanting. At the time, Utah didn’t have a law that would’ve allow Cary to be held without bail. Reed hoped 100 grand would be enough. The criminal charges caught the attention of reporters.

Shane Minor: It made a big splash in the news media and especially in the Ogden Standard.

Dave Cawley: The newspaper published a story about Cary’s arrest that week.

Shane Minor: Then we received a lot of, lot of different calls referring to him.

Dave Cawley: Detective Shane Minor heard from women who described having had contact with Cary in the past.

Shane Minor: And what they would describe would be a date-rape type of situation. Or where they had gone out with him for a period of time, had stopped and then he would show back up and take advantage of them.

Dave Cawley: Shane talked to Jan, the divorcée who’d loaned Cary money for his truck back in the fall of ’84. I described Jan’s brief relationship with Cary in episode 1. She told Shane the story of how Cary’d dragged her into a closet on the Weber State College campus after she’d broken up with him.

Shane Minor: Just how he treated them was, was horrible.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s notes say Jan told him she’d not reported being raped back then, because she’d feared no one would believe her.

Shane Minor: They had gone out with him and he could take advantage of ‘em and didn’t worry about any repercussions because they had been dating and so who’s going to believe them and at the same time he’s basically abusing them.

Dave Cawley: Some of the women described this kind of activity taking place at Cary’s apartment. Word of that got back to Roy police detective Jack Bell, the lead investigator on the Sheree Warren case.

Jack Bell: I wouldn’t call it a shock. I might’ve been a little surprised, but I wouldn’t call it a shock. It was enough to make us go back and talk to the ladies again.

Dave Cawley: By “ladies,” he means two women who’d lived above Cary at the time of Sheree Warren’s disappearance.

Jack Bell: And we got a completely different story from ‘em this time. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Cary had rented the basement of a house on Ogden’s 7^th street from May of ’84 through November of ’86. The house belonged to a woman who taught at Ogden High School named Kaye Lynn. She lived upstairs along with another renter, a fellow teacher named Mary.

Jack Bell: Two school teachers.

Dave Cawley: Jack told me he’d interviewed Kaye Lynn and Mary once before, over the phone, prior to Cary’s arrest.

Jack Bell: They couldn’t tell us too much the first time I talked to ‘em.

Dave Cawley: But he talked to them again the day after Cary’s return to jail.

Jack Bell: The second time, they claimed that the night Sheree disappeared, she was actually there. And they recall hearing a loud thump and then all went quiet.

Dave Cawley: Jack had Kaye Lynn and Mary each provide typewritten statements about what they remembered. I have copies of those, and I’ve also spoken with both women. Their statements from ’87 are more detailed than their memories now, so for this podcast, we’re going to focus on what they wrote. We’ll start with Kaye Lynn, her exact words read by a voice actor.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Cary Hartmann came to interview for my rental apartment in the basement of my house and was, in the most part, an excellent renter.

Dave Cawley: Here’s Mary, again, through a voice actor.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): He did not pay his rent on time, which caused a problem with relations with the landlord.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): The one thing I hate about my house is how easy it is to hear the back door close, or people going up and down the stairs … It inevitably would wake us.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): Cary always had a girlfriend or two around. … You could hear them downstairs. Laughing or watching TV.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): The really objectionable part of Cary … was his constant sexual activity — obnoxious to me because he’d invariably … come home drunk and loud with a girlfriend and entertain them for a few hours sometimes, or overnight, or whatever.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): The noise was embarrassingly noticeable. So loud were the screams that once I thought they came from a lady next door or something.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Occasionally one “close” girlfriend would come unannounced and catch him with another and there would be a fight, if he’d answer the door.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): At one time he had two steadies. One girl was a blonde … I never talked to her but she stayed overnight a few times. The other girl was Sheree Warren.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): She was a bit younger than the rest, but seemed very level-headed, higher class than he usually brought here, very embarrassed if I ever met her in the driveway as she was leaving.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): The first time I met her was in the summer of 1985. It was a weekend morning. I had slept in and a knock came to the front door. She asked me if Cary was home and I said, “if he doesn’t answer, he’s not.”

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Usually she parked by the telephone pole in front of the house. … So we got used to her car and who she was.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): The last time I saw Sheree Warren was an October night in 1985.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Cary was home that evening — unusual. I don’t remember anything in particular that night until I had gone to bed my usual 10:30 or so.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): A car pulled up. … I sat up and pulled the curtain open to see who it was. I saw Sheree’s car. It was parked out in the front of the house. … She knocked and knocked again. He got up and walked upstairs. She was crying when she said she needed to talk to him.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): As they went downstairs an argument ensued. … This was a king-sized one.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): I could hear them through a vent in the hallways as clear as if it were in the next room. I got off the couch and said to Kaye Lynn … that she had caught him with another woman and to come hear them.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): I could hear them just fine from bed. … I’d never heard Sheree upset before, but she was saying things like “how could you be with someone else,” “you lied to me.”

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): She said … people at work had told her that they had seen him with another woman. She asked Cary how he could do that after all she had done for him with his money problems and all.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Cary was really yelling back at her. He said “hey babe, I don’t owe you anything.”

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): I could hear her crying and I left the vent and said to Kaye Lynn “did you hear that? He’s putting it all back on her.” I went back to the vent and that’s when I heard what I thought was him hitting the wall really hard with his fist, then he said “[expletive].”

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): I don’t recall any more sobbing, but the fight stopped.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): I went back to the couch and just sat there.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): I have no recollection of her leaving that night. I don’t remember hearing anyone go up the stairs.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): The next morning I went out to go to work as usual, but I can’t say if the car was there or not.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): Mary and I commented about the fight that next morning, but really forgot about it until the newspaper came out with the news that Sheree was missing two or three days after the fight.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): I saw an article in the paper which stated Sheree was missing and it mentioned Cary Hartmann had reported her missing. He hadn’t mentioned a thing to us. … I wrote a short note and stuck it on his door saying how sorry we were that this had happened and if we could help, let us know.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): He responded as soon as he came home and said that Sheree had plans to drive to Salt Lake and meet her ex-husband to work out something about the settlement or whatever and that he’d been busy doing something that evening and naturally didn’t expect her back. Then when she didn’t show up he had gotten really worried because the ex had been bad to her.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): He told us at that time that he was sure it was her ex-husband. He took the following days off for aiding the police in the search for Sheree, he told me.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): He asked us to take some fliers and put them up at work. Very soon thereafter he said something about deer or elk hunting, and that he and his friends were going to go. [Larry] Lewis for KSL northern area news was his most common buddy that he did things with that we saw.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): He looked really terrible the following week. He was quiet and withdrawn … He did not have any more girlfriends after Sheree.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): I had a very suspicious feeling about Cary when we heard Sheree had disappeared. In fact, Mary and I had talked about not being surprised if they found he had done it.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): He got a job at the Galleon and so he took very late hours. But some nights he would come in at 2, 3 or 4 a.m. and get up and go to work at 6:30. I wondered how he did it. … He decided to move out in the fall of 1986. He was going to move into a condo. We figured he met a rich girlfriend and was moving in with her because he couldn’t make a $190 payment here.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): We were doing the yard and house fall cleaning and came upon a box in my storage room that Cary had left. It was a full box of the fliers that Cary had printed with Sheree’s picture and the reward that was offered for information. None were missing … the box was packed tight.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): There were hundreds of them. We talked about if we should call the police. But he had been so convincing about how he felt about losing her.

Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from May 13, 1987 statement): He had told us that he’d spent hours and hours posting these all over the area. That box had never been opened.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Two women who’d lived above Cary Hartmann in October of ’85 had told detective Jack Bell they’d heard a loud argument between Cary and Sheree Warren, followed by a thump. But were they sure it’d happened the same night Sheree disappeared? Jack told me yes.

Jack Bell: They said Sheree was there that night.

Dave Cawley: But his notes from the time are a bit more nuanced. They say one of the women, Mary, remembered this fight between Cary and Sheree taking place two days before the first newspaper report on Sheree’s disappearance. The other woman, Kaye Lynn, said two or three days. And that little bit of ambiguity was a problem.

Jack Bell: I think if those girls that he rented the house from would’ve come forward originally with that story, we might’ve got to the bottom of it quicker.

Dave Cawley: So why didn’t they? There are two potential answers. The first and most obvious: they didn’t feel safe speaking up until…

Jack Bell: …Cary Hartmann had been arrested as the rapist.

Dave Cawley: This makes perfect sense. The second possible reason boiled down to an issue of ego. Mary would years later tell an investigator she’d reported the fight between Cary and Sheree to a Roy police officer — but not Jack Bell — soon after it’d happened.

Jack Bell: That surprises me.

Dave Cawley: I know the name of the officer. Jack told me he and that officer never got along. And it’s possible this kept Mary’s tip from making it to Jack in the first few days after Sheree Warren disappeared. If not for that conflict of ego, the entire direction of Jack’s investigation might’ve changed.

Jack Bell: Especially if it would’ve come early. But damn.

Dave Cawley: As it was, the information arrived a year-and-a-half late, after Cary had lawyered up and was no longer available to Jack for questioning.

Jack Bell: Had no more contact with him.

Dave Cawley: On the same day Jack had talked to Cary’s former neighbors, he’d also heard from one of Cary’s old friends.

Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): How ‘bout Fred Johns?

Jack Bell: (Laughs) Fred Johns. Yeah, Fred was a little flaky. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: I’ve mentioned Fred before.

Jack Bell: And he knew Cary.

Dave Cawley: Fred’s the guy Cary’d briefly lived with during the mid ‘70s, between his two marriages. But as mentioned in episode 1, Fred had kicked Cary out of his house after Cary put the moves on Fred’s wife. Fred was leasing hunting rights on a chunk of mountain property between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs when Sheree Warren disappeared a decade later. I’ve previously made a metaphor to help you picture the geography around this area. It looks like a percent sign: two small circles separated by a diagonal slash. Causey’s the circle in the in the upper left, Lost Creek’s the circle in the lower right and the mountain between them is the diagonal slash.

There’s a dirt road that runs along that mountain, linking the two reservoirs, following the slash. The property where Fred Johns held hunting rights sat on that dirt road, at the top of the mountain. He had a cabin up there, near a canyon called Guildersleeve.

Jack Bell: Fred’s camp was at the head of Guilder, but off a little ways, wasn’t down right on the ridge.

Dave Cawley: Fred died in 2019 so I wasn’t able to interview him. But he did talk to Jack Bell after learning of Cary’s arrest.

Jack Bell: Let’s put it this way. Fred was fairly cooperative.

Dave Cawley: Jack’s memory of this conversation was a bit faded, so I’m going to draw from notes he made at the time.

Jack Bell: It’s a good thing I made some notes. They’re better than I thought I made.

Dave Cawley: (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: They say Fred described having seen Cary on the boundary of Fred’s leased property the Sunday after Sheree disappeared. Fred said he’d been driving that dirt road on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek when he’d seen Cary’s truck. That ugly yellow Chevy.

Jack Bell: He knew Cary so he knew who he was when he seen him up there.

Dave Cawley: It was the opening weekend of Utah’s elk hunt and Fred was patrolling for trespassers. He’d found Cary and another man — Fred thought it was Cary’s younger brother, Jack Hartmann — loading a pair of three-wheelers into the back of Cary’s pickup.

Fred told detective Jack Bell he’d asked Cary what he was up to. Cary had supposedly told Fred he was breaking camp after hunting for elk down toward Causey. This hadn’t made much sense to Fred, for two reasons. First, he’d never known Cary to hunt elk, only deer and birds. Second, Fred had driven past that same spot the night prior and hadn’t seen Cary’s truck there. Fred had also not seen any rifles during this encounter with Cary, raising questions about what he’d actually been doing on the mountain.

Ogden police detective Shane Minor went back to Cary’s apartment a couple of days after Cary’s return to jail. The courts had given him another search warrant.

Shane Minor: We felt like we had enough to go back in.

Dave Cawley: Shane wrote the affidavit, but didn’t remember the details when we sat down to talk. I read the warrant back to him, nearly 35 years after he’d first written it.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): So that’s essentially the grounds for that second warrant.

Shane Minor: Yes. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: And you’re like “that’s all right.”

Shane Minor: That, yeah that brings back a little bit of the memory. I haven’t seen that stuff, uh wow, since then. But that, that sounds correct.

Dave Cawley: Safe to say essentially, you kind of have puzzle pieces that have been scattered on the table for a long time and now they’re starting to click together a little bit.

Shane Minor: Yes.

Dave Cawley: Shane was looking for a few things he’d seen in Cary’s apartment while serving the first search warrant a week earlier, including Cary’s .357 magnum revolver.

Shane Minor: Collected a few items, but uh, nothing, earth-shattering. I remember there was a gun, a holster.

Dave Cawley: Roy City police detective Jack Bell once again joined the Ogden cops in Cary’s apartment. He found a photo album full of pictures of Cary and his friends, a group some referred to as “The Supper Club.”

Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): So what was the Supper Club?

Jack Bell: (Laughs) It’s where he’d have several of his friends over for quote dinner and wine and a couple girls, one or two girls and it was what we called in the old days a “bunch punch.” (Laughs) Gang bang, whatever you want to call it. But there was a lot of people — I shouldn’t say a lot, but — a couple handfuls, of guys involved.

Dave Cawley: As I understand it from talking not only to Jack, but also some of the people who attended these get-togethers, the Supper Club was just a group of friends who gathered every once in awhile for dinner and drinks. The members each hosted on a rotating basis. This probably started sometime in ’86, after Cary Hartmann moved out of the basement apartment on 7^th Street. The gatherings fell apart after Cary arrest. Some of the people I’ve talked to told me they didn’t recall anything sexual going on at those dinners. So Jack may not be accurate in describing the Supper Club as a purely sexual thing. But Jack had reason to believe from what he saw in Cary’s apartment at least some of Cary’s friends had taken part in sexual encounters together. They potentially included business owners and even a few men and women with close ties to the law enforcement community.

Jack Bell: One of ‘em’s wife did work for Ogden City, too.

Dave Cawley: I know some of the names, but I don’t know the extent to which they were involved. I did run them by Jack.

Jack Bell: You’ve definitely done your homework, which is good.

Dave Cawley: Standing there in Cary’s apartment, it started to dawn on Jack why so many of Cary’s friends had remained silent when Sheree Warren’d disappeared.

Jack Bell: It’s because these friends of his, most all of ‘em married and community ties, businesses and policemen and all that kind of stuff, have got too much to lose if it all comes out, what their connection is.

Dave Cawley: Jack raided Cary’s file cabinet. He found a folder of newspaper clippings about Sheree’s disappearance, along with other papers in Cary’s handwriting. Jack came across the paper Mary, one of the two ladies who’d lived above Cary at his old place, had described leaving on his door. It read:

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from undated note): Cary, Kaye Lynn and I would like to tell you how sorry we are that your friend is missing. We all value friends so much and we feel so sorry that this is happening to you, our friend. If you need anything, please let us know. Good luck and let’s hope for the best.

Dave Cawley: This boosted Mary’s credibility, confirming at least part of what she’d told Jack a day earlier.

Jack Bell: Now, why didn’t they tell us that the first time? I, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: Again, it’s likely Mary hadn’t felt safe coming forward until after Cary was in custody. Jack thumbed through other papers. He saw pages and pages of Cary’s notes about his sessions with a palm reader. Cary’d dated one set October 9^th, 1985, exactly one week after Sheree’s disappearance.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 9, 1985 journal entry): Gamble with blue eyed girl. Big change. Two women. Love affair.

Dave Cawley: The most interesting bits of this to me were a few pages that appeared to be a question-and-answer exchange between Cary and the unnamed fortune teller.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 9, 1985 journal entry): Will we find her soon? Not soon. Will we find her with her car? Yes. … Is she hurt? Not hurt, she is in good health.

Dave Cawley: Why is this interesting to me? Cary might’ve asked these questions in earnest, hoping his fortune teller would help him figure out what’d happened to Sheree. If so, these notes could be evidence of his innocence. Or, Cary could’ve just been acting the part of the heartbroken boyfriend in front of the fortune teller in an effort to bolster his alibi.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 9, 1985 journal entry): Did Chuck do it? Yes. … Will I get her back alive? Yes, yes.

Dave Cawley: Shane worked through the apartment’s bedrooms. He was after Cary’s clothes, to see if any outfits matched those described by the rape victims, or if Cary’s boots fit the prints seen outside any of those women’s houses. He took three red flannel shirts, four pair of shoes, a pair of black denim pants and a down field jacket.

Shane Minor: Like I said, nothing really stood out but that kind of stuff was taken and seized out of his apartment.

Dave Cawley: One garment did stand out. It hung in the closet of the apartment’s second bedroom, the room Cary’s two sons slept in when over for visitation on the weekends. It was a women’s jacket, gray and made of suede leather. Jack Bell wondered: could it belong to Sheree?

Jack Bell: When we did the search warrant, we found her coat in his closet.

Dave Cawley: Finding a person’s outerwear in their romantic partner’s closet isn’t smoking-gun evidence of a murder. But, it did raise the question of how did the jacket get there?

Jack Bell: Because Sheree had never been in that apartment.

Dave Cawley: Remember, Cary’d moved about a year after Sheree disappeared. If she’d left this gray suede jacket at his place on 7^th Street, why wouldn’t Cary have given to her family after she disappeared? Why would he’ve instead packed it up and taken it to his new apartment, then tucked it the closet where detective Shane Minor found it while serving the search warrant?

Shane Minor: If it’s the jacket that she was wearing the day she went to work and last seen, then that tells us that that jacket ended up in Hartmann’s apartment.

Dave Cawley: Ok, so what? If Sheree’d been wearing that gray jacket as she left for work from her parents house on the morning of her disappearance, its presence in Cary’s apartment would suggest she’d met up with Cary after leaving the credit union office. It would mean Cary’d lied about not having seen Sheree that night. I told you last episode, this case boils down to a tale of two coats: Cary’s black parka or Sheree’s gray suede jacket. Cary’d gone out of his way to tell police and his private investigator Sheree’d been wearing his big black parka that morning, not this small women’s suede jacket detective Shane Minor found in Cary’s closet.

Shane Minor: So could that jacket have been left at a different time or was it the jacket she was wearing that morning?

Dave Cawley: We’ll come back to this question in a later episode. The gray suede jacket wasn’t evidence in the rape cases. It fell outside the scope of the warrant, so the detectives couldn’t just take it. Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman would return to get it later, with another warrant. Meantime, detective Jack Bell went to talk to someone whose name he’d seen in Cary’s papers, someone he knew: Brent Morgan.

Jack Bell: He’s my taxidermist. I got a big elk hanging on the wall that he did for me. But at the time I didn’t know Brent knew Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: You’ve heard from Brent Morgan already in this podcast.

Brent Morgan: He had two dispositions, or two people. Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

Dave Cawley: Brent’s the taxidermist who’d had his wedding on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir a year before Sheree Warren disappeared. Remember, Cary’d borrowed money from his girlfriend at the time to buy his ugly yellow truck, saying he needed the pickup to get to Brent’s wedding.

Brent Morgan: Back then there wasn’t a lot of people up there.

Dave Cawley: At the end of the ‘70s, a piece of the mountain directly south of Causey Reservoir opened up for development. Brent’d been one of the first to buy a lot in the new cabin subdivision called Causey Estates.

Brent Morgan: What they did when Causey Estates was developed … if you wanted to hunt, you had to buy a permit. So, being lot 89, I was able to secure five permits a year.

Dave Cawley: Brent told me Cary had come to him in September of ’85, before the start of the elk hunt, with a request: he wanted to borrow Brent’s key to the gate at Causey Estates.

Brent Morgan: He wouldn’t have been hunting because he couldn’t have got a permit without me giving it to him. I would’ve had to secure it for him and that did not happen.

Dave Cawley: But Brent had agreed to loan Cary his key.

Brent Morgan: Which I didn’t have a problem with at that time because, well there were other places I could go scouting that I didn’t need to be there.

Dave Cawley: Brent had thought Cary would use the key for a day, then return it. That hadn’t happened. By early October, Brent and his hunting party were ready to get on the mountain. But he couldn’t get his key back from Cary.

Brent Morgan: He either doesn’t answer or has an excuse. Y’know I, I had to get pretty rude with him because I said “look, you’re infringing on what I do.”

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): You only have but one key.

Brent Morgan: That’s correct.

Dave Cawley: And so I mean, you were basically locked out of your own cabin.

Brent Morgan: That’s correct.

Dave Cawley: Yeah. That would make, I would be a little frustrated.

Brent Morgan: (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Umm, do you remember when you got it back?

Brent Morgan: I don’t. I mean, I, I can’t tell you exactly when. All I know is, it wasn’t when I wanted it.

Dave Cawley: It wasn’t until Brent got to chatting with a neighbor a year or so later that he started to wonder what Cary’s purpose for holding onto the key might’ve been.

Brent Morgan: And then pretty soon Jack Bell knocks on my door and I’d known Jack almost as long as I’d known Cary. And he says “Brent  … I don’t want you talking to anybody else. I’m in the, I’m on this investigation. So any information from this point forward, I would like you to give it to me.”

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): Mmm. What went through your mind when he said that?

Brent Morgan: I’m going “oh poop.” (Laughs) With a little more stringency. But here again, the questions he asked me and the things that, y’know, it started making sense.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell had also owned a lot in Causey Estates. He told me Brent’s story of loaning Cary a key explained how Cary might’ve gained access to the spot where the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had described encountering him the Sunday after Sheree disappeared.

Brent Morgan: Yeah, that he give him the key to go up and go hunting, which we weren’t supposed to do. So I found that a little strange and Brent’s usually one that goes by the book.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell publicly named Cary Hartmann as a suspect in the disappearance of Sheree Warren in a story published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner the afternoon of Wednesday, May 14^th, 1987. Sheree’s estranged husband Chuck Warren hadn’t been ruled out, but a picture had also started coming into focus surrounding Cary’s possible role in Sheree’s suspected murder.

Jack Bell: There’s theories, but they’re just, y’know, they’re just theories.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s parents had retained a defense attorney, who told the newspaper he wouldn’t be surprised if prosecutors also charged Cary with murder. But prosecutor Reed Richards wasn’t prepared to go that far.

Reed Richards: When you have a case where there’s no body, the argument that the other side’s always gonna make, the defense is always gonna make is “you don’t know that she’s dead. Maybe she found a boyfriend that, uh, she decided she wanted to start a new life and took off and that’s why her car’s found in Vegas. They took it there and jumped on a plane and went to who-knows-where.”

Dave Cawley: Cary’s parents managed to once again get him out of jail on Saturday, May 16^th, by putting up their own property as collateral. That same day, Jack Bell and his partner, along with Ogden police detectives Shane Minor and John Stubbs, took a drive through Causey Estates. They headed up top on a twisting dirt road, passing through thick stands of aspen and pine.

Shane Minor: It’s just really remote. There’s, there’s a few dirt roads. But other than the dirt roads back then, uh, you almost need a, you’d need a horse to get into some of those areas. Or back then, a lot of people were starting to get these, uh, three-wheelers. If you had one of those you could access some of it or a horse.

Dave Cawley: Cary didn’t have a horse. But he did own a pair of three-wheelers. So did his friend and fellow former reserve officer, Dave Moore.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): Did you ever have three-wheelers?

Dave Moore: I did. I had two.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell and Chris Zimmerman went to talk to Dave at his sewing machine repair shop. Dave knew Zimmerman, having rode with him while in the reserves.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): Did you know Jack Bell, by chance?

Dave Moore: I did.

Dave Cawley: How did you know Jack?

Dave Moore: Well, I had a place up at Causey Estates and he did also.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Moore: So he was, uh, he was an avid hunter and so I’d see him up there quite a bit.

Dave Cawley: Dave told the detectives he’d received a phone call the day after Cary’s first arrest from Cary’s girlfriend, Shauna. That’s when he’d learned Cary was in jail. Dave’d called the jail and asked to speak with Cary. He’d come on the line and reportedly said he’d done some things he felt ashamed of and would probably lose every friend he had. He’d asked Dave to give Zimmerman and Ogden police captain Marlin Balls a big hug on his behalf, saying he knew they were just trying to help.

Dave Moore: Cary was supposed to go bear hunting with, uh, Marlin Balls, Chris Zimmerman, Don Moore and I think there was about two or three other Ogden City police officers that were gonna go. And uh, after he was arrested he told me to tell Marlin and Chris that he was sorry and needed help and he messed up.

Dave Cawley: Jack asked Dave what he remembered about the night Sheree disappeared.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): What went through your mind when you found out Cary was a suspect in that investigation?

Dave Moore: I was completely shocked. I didn’t even believe it. Just, every time that I’d seen him with her, they got along really good. So I, it was a shock.

Dave Cawley: Dave said Cary’d stopped into the sewing machine repair shop around 5:30 that evening. Dave had closed up, then headed over to the bar, Sebastian’s, with Cary for a couple drinks at 6. Dave couldn’t provide Cary an alibi for any time after about 9, when he’d left the bar and headed home. He believed Cary had left at that same time, on his way to meet up with Sheree.

In the last episode, you heard Cary’s statement to the private investigator which included a different timeline. Cary’d claimed he and Dave had met at the bar starting at 9. I showed Cary’s statement to Dave.

(Sound of papers shuffling)

Dave Moore: Interesting. But it definitely wasn’t 9 o’clock.

Dave Cawley: I asked him what he made of the discrepancy.

Dave Moore: It would’ve been earlier.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): —it would’ve been earlier.

Dave Moore: Mmhmm. Much earlier.

Dave Cawley: Because you wouldn’t have been at the shop at 9 o’clock.

Dave Moore: No, no. I’m not there 10 after 6 (laughs) ever.

Dave Cawley: (Laughs) Man after my own heart.

Dave Moore: (Laughs) Yeah, no. Definitely not.

Dave Cawley: In other words, Cary Hartmann had no alibi for the time his former neighbors said they’d heard a fight between Cary and Sheree, a thump, then all going quiet.

Cary Hartmann returned to court on Wednesday, May 20^th. Weber County Attorney Reed Richards argued the bond put up by Cary’s parents wasn’t enough, because their property wasn’t worth what they’d claimed. The judge kicked the can, delaying his decision for a week. Cary would remain free until then. Cary wrote in his journal that day:

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 20, 1985 journal entry): The judge put the hearing off till the 27^th. Reporters were there. Video cameras, the works — awful.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell, meanwhile, was looking for Cary’s younger brother, Jack Hartmann. He’d arranged to interview Jack, hoping to ask him whether he’d been on the mountain behind Causey with Cary the Sunday after Sheree disappeared. But the interview didn’t happen.

Jack Bell: Nope. Don’t think I ever got to talk to Jack.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell wrote in his notes Jack Hartmann’s wife had called him to say they wouldn’t talk, on the advice of Cary’s defense attorney. We’re going to hear Jack Hartmann’s side of this story in a future episode. At the same time, Ogden police were talking to the Weber County Sheriff’s Office about the anonymous caller who’d reported finding a body near Causey Reservoir. Ogden detectives were operating on the theory Cary Hartmann had used his borrowed key for the gate at Causey Estates to drive Sheree up that mountain and dump her lifeless body. They suspected the anonymous caller might’ve stumbled across Sheree almost a year-and-a-half later. But prosecutor Reed Richards couldn’t charge Cary with murder based on speculation.

Reed Richards: We could’ve potentially filed charges then, but it was, it was probably 50-50 as to whether we’d even get a bind-over with the evidence we had, it was maybe enough for probable cause but certainly not enough for, uh, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Dave Cawley: He urged the detectives to find the body reported by the anonymous caller.

Reed Richards: And the problem is we didn’t have details on who it was that called so there was no way to go back and, and find the body that they’d found. Which is a little bit odd, too.

Dave Cawley: The sheriff’s office issued a press release, inviting reporters from the newspapers, TV and radio stations to come get a copy of the tape.

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I called about Crime Stoppers…

Dave Cawley: The investigators hoped doing so would nudge the caller into phoning in again.

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.

Dave Cawley: KSL 5 TV reporter Larry Lewis went to Roy City police headquarters the next day.

Jack Bell: Yeah, well he come up to interview me.

Dave Cawley: This again is former Roy police detective Jack Bell, the lead investigator on the Sheree Warren case.

Jack Bell: We’d talked and, uh, he came up to interview me.

Dave Cawley: Larry remembers this differently. I’ll get to his side of this story in a moment. For now, just know it’d been a week since Jack had publicly named Cary Hartmann a suspect in the Sheree Warren case. But Larry hadn’t yet reported on that development. So it’s plausible Larry could’ve gone to meet Jack on the basis of doing a story about his friend Cary, the just-released anonymous call tape, or both. But Jack had other ideas. He and Ogden City police detective John Stubbs greeted Larry when he arrived.

Jack Bell: Larry’s name was one of the names of the people involved in this Supper Club. And I really wanted to talk to him about that.

Dave Cawley: The Supper Club was that group of Cary Hartmann’s friends who got together at one another’s homes for dinner and wine. Jack Bell believed some Supper Club members engaged in sexual activity together. It’s not clear to me today how widespread that was, or how many in the group knew about it. Jack needed to determine the nature of all Cary’s friendships. He intended to ask Larry some very direct questions.

Jack Bell: I told him that he ought to have his helper step out and he said “well why?” And I, as I recall, I said “because I got to read you your rights, Larry and talk to you about Cary Hartmann.”

Dave Cawley: Jack’s notes say Larry described having taken Cary’s three-wheelers into the foothills east of Ogden on the Saturday after Sheree disappeared, one day before Fred Johns claimed to have seen Cary and another man with a pair of three-wheelers on the mountain behind Causey.

Jack Bell: Yeah, Larry brought that up. Damn, I’m glad I took some notes.

Dave Cawley: The notes say Larry claimed Cary had told him they didn’t need to look for Sheree near Chuck Warren’s house, because police had already searched there. Jack wrote that wasn’t true and Cary had known it.

Jack Bell: Yeah, that’s accurate. I’m glad I wrote it down.

Dave Cawley: I felt a sense of shock reading those notes the first time, because I’ve met Larry Lewis. I called Larry in January of 2021, while working on season 2 of this podcast. The story of the anonymous caller had also come up in connection with the disappearance of Joyce Yost. I knew Larry had covered the Joyce Yost case, even using a clip of the anonymous call in this 1993 story about the search for Joyce’s remains.

Larry Lewis (from July 21, 1993 KSL TV archive): A mystery man called dispatchers six years ago saying he found a woman’s body while hiking in the woods. This is the man’s voice.

Anonymous caller (from July 21, 1993 KSL TV archive): What it, what it was, I’m reporting a body that I found.

Dave Cawley: But I’d had no idea at the time of Larry’s friendship with Cary Hartmann. On the phone, Larry’d told me he didn’t remember the Joyce Yost case. I explained the circumstances of the anonymous call and mentioned how he’d played the tape in another story, dating back to December of ’88.

Larry Lewis (from December 13, 1988 KSL TV archive): Investigators believe the body could be that of either Sheree Warren or Joyce Yost, two Weber County women who mysteriously disappeared in 1985 and are presumed murdered.

Dave Cawley: I even emailed Larry videos of these stories, to jog his memory. He replied, saying he didn’t remember the anonymous caller story at all. So imagine my surprise when detective Jack Bell told me he’d turned the tables on Larry back in ’87, when the anonymous call tape first went public.

Jack Bell: He didn’t do a story that day and he didn’t want to do a story. But I can’t imagine how shocked he was.

Dave Cawley: Larry Lewis didn’t ever air a story about Cary Hartmann being named a suspect in Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Which meant KSL, the company I now work for, failed to bring that story to the public. And Larry didn’t report on the anonymous call tape until more than a year-and-a-half after it first went public. I wanted to know why, so I went and knocked on Larry’s door.

(Sound of doorbell chime)

Dave Cawley (to Linda Lewis): Hi. Is Larry around?

Linda Lewis: Yeah, Larry.

Dave Cawley: I carried a microphone, backed up by a TV camera.

Larry Lewis: Uh oh.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Uh oh.

Larry Lewis: Now what’d we do?

Dave Cawley: Well.

Larry Lewis: (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Um, so, I don’t know if you know who I am. I’m Dave Cawley.

Larry Lewis: Yeah—

Dave Cawley: We talked about—

Larry Lewis: —yeah, sure on the phone.

Dave Cawley: —a year ago.

Larry Lewis: Sure, yeah.

Dave Cawley: Since that time I’ve been working on Sheree Warren and Cary Hartman.

Larry Lewis: Ok.

Dave Cawley: So, I need to have a conversation with you about Cary Hartman.

Larry Lewis: Oh. Cary Hartman huh?

Dave Cawley: Cary, yeah.

Larry Lewis: That name sounds familiar. It’s been a long time.

Dave Cawley: I told Larry I knew he and Cary were friends. Larry instead used the word “acquaintances.”

Larry Lewis: So are, is this being recorded?

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): It is.

Larry Lewis: Ok, oh, oh. I need to know what you’re after. I mean, what do you, what’s nature of what you’re asking?

Dave Cawley: I related to Larry the story Jack Bell had told me about their interview in May of ’87. Larry’s recollection was quite different from Jack’s. He said he hadn’t been working on a story that day and didn’t recall being read his Miranda rights.

Larry Lewis: Right. I, as I recall, I called detective Bell and said “I know Cary, I need, can I talk to you” or at least “do you want to talk to me about him?”

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Cawley: I should note, before confronting Larry I did talk to the videographer he most often worked with during the ‘80s. The videographer told me he didn’t remember being there for this, but it’s something he definitely would’ve remembered. I asked Larry about what I’d read in Jack’s notes: that Larry’d gone on a three-wheeler ride with Cary the Saturday after Sheree Warren disappeared.

Larry Lewis: I might’ve. I mean, I did do that. (Sound of Larry’s fingers tapping on door) We did do a, he had two three-wheelers and he came by where I lived and we took a, a ride.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell’s notes say Larry’d explained that three-wheeler ride was for the purpose of looking for Sheree’s body. Even though police at that time had no reason to believe she was dead. But Larry omitted that detail in his conversation with me.

Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): And then the, the get-together group, the Supper Club group. You guys didn’t talk about that?

Larry Lewis: I, I don’t, no. I don’t. We didn’t have a, I didn’t call it as a Supper Club. Uh, there were a few people that played poker together and that was ‘bout it. Played poker a couple times.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Larry Lewis: And that was it. Yeah we, yeah.

Dave Cawley: Ok. I, I have, uh, Jack Bell on record telling me that there was a group of Cary’s friends, uh, that he believed you were a part of that got together socially and involved some other activities with, with some young women.

Larry Lewis: Right. No. That wasn’t me.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Larry Lewis: Poker was, was it. I knew of what you’re talking about. That those other guys did some things. I mean they had, had supper and, and y’know, umm, fraternized but it was without me.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Cawley: “Fraternized.” So was Larry Lewis just an acquaintance who played poker with Cary Hartmann a few times, or as, Jack Bell said, was he a good friend of Cary’s?

Jack Bell: He didn’t deny being part of the Supper Club, he said “I hope this never comes out.”

Dave Cawley: Jack and Larry’s accounts don’t line up. I’m not sure which is more accurate. You’ll have to decide for yourself which you find more credible. For me, learning a KSL TV reporter had a friendship with Cary and was in a position to potentially steer news coverage of the Sheree Warren case left me with some serious questions. Like, did Larry ever disclose his friendship with Cary to KSL? Or did he tell anyone he’d been questioned by police in connection with a story he’d covered? Jack Bell didn’t have the answers.

Jack Bell: Was the last time I seen Larry Lewis. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: But we’ll hear what Larry has to say about this in the next episode.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: The anonymous call tape remains one of the most frustrating pieces of the Sheree Warren — and Joyce Yost — cases. Jack and a team of nearly 20 searchers went up to Causey several weeks after the call. They scoured an unnamed canyon to the east of Causey Estates just over the hill from where Cary’s friend Dave Moore owned property.

Jack Bell: I’ve personally thought that she was probably dumped in that area, up there on that mountain somewhere.

Dave Cawley: But they didn’t find Sheree. In the years that followed, the anonymous call recording ended up in the hands of a Weber County Sheriff’s detective named Rod Layton.

Rod Layton: We believed it. I mean, he found a body.

Dave Cawley: But there’s just too much ground to cover.

Rod Layton: I thought “y’know, I’ve got to find the caller.”

Dave Cawley: The Utah Department of Public Safety produced a TV spot, complete with re-enactment of the discovery. It first aired in December of ’89, more than four years after Sheree Warren disappeared. Two-and-a-half years after the anonymous call.

Terry Pepper (from December, 1989 Crime Solvers TV segment): The caller stated that he had parked in the Causey Dam area up Ogden Canyon and had hiked 2 to 3 miles back into the mountains. While there, he discovered the decomposed remains of a body.

Rod Layton: Then we started to work. (Laughs) That’s when the work started. ‘Cause we received hundreds and hundreds of calls. “I know who this is. This is their voice.”

Dave Cawley: Rod spent years running down these leads. None panned out. The caller never revealed himself. The dispatcher who’d taken the call, Sheli Mann, told me she’s haunted by it.

Sheli Mann: How come nobody knows that voice? I don’t understand. I think it’s so unfair for somebody to call with information and just leave you hanging. They know there’s somebody out there but they’re not willing to help you find that person.

Dave Cawley: Maybe there are reasons for that. Jack Bell told me if Cary Hartmann killed Sheree Warren, the anonymous caller might’ve been someone who’d helped hide her body.

Jack Bell: You have to have a reason for calling and you have to have a reason for wanting to be anonymous.

Dave Cawley: Former prosecutor Reed Richards implied the same.

Reed Richards: Y’know, if somebody’s willing to make the call, why wouldn’t they follow up and help you find the body? That makes you wonder a little bit.

Dave Cawley: Especially because Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide who reported seeing Cary on the mountain behind Causey the Sunday after Sheree disappeared, said another man had been there with Cary. To understand why finding a body in the mountains around Causey is so difficult, we need to go back — way back — to October of 1943.

Announcer (from 1943 United News archive): American observers watch the shelling of Nazi positions in Acerno, a town in the path of the American advance in southern Italy.

Dave Cawley: Newspaper pages were full of stories about the Red Army routing Nazi forces from Crimea, of American marines battling their way through the Solomon Islands.

Announcer (from 1943 United News archive): Wave after wave reaches the beach.

Dave Cawley: But the war wasn’t the only thing happening in the world. Buried in the local pages of Utah’s dailies were a series of stories about a killer snowstorm that’d swept across the West during the opening days of the annual deer hunt. It’d started with frigid rain, which turned to wet, heavy snow in the high country. Newspaper stories described a search for a hunter named Rudolph Bertagnole who’d disappeared into the storm in the mountains behind Causey.

Bertagnole had gone to join three friends at a hunting camp near the top of Guildersleeve Canyon. At some point, he’d fallen ill and decided to head home. Bertagnole walked away from camp, into the forest, toward his truck. The storm lashed the mountain that night. The rest of the hunting party retreated the next morning, but were surprised to find Bertagnole’s truck, along with his rifle and gear, still parked on the mountain. Sheriff’s deputies and volunteers spent more than a week on foot and horseback, plunging through snow drifts. They came up empty. Bertagnole had vanished into the aspen and pines, into the cliffs and canyons.

43 years passed before, in April of ’86, a cougar hunter following his dogs through the canyon behind Causey entered a small rock alcove. He found human bones sheltered there.

Bruce Hartman (from May 16, 1986 KSL TV archive): Two femurs, what appears to be, uh, part of the pelvis.

Dave Cawley: Rod Layton was there for the recovery of those remains.

Rod Layton: We hiked in. It was about three miles. The body was, y’know, of course just bones. We found driver’s license. We found boots.

Larry Lewis (from May 16, 1986 KSL TV archive): The wallet they found with calendars and a Utah driver’s license positively identified the remains as Bertagnole’s.

Dave Cawley: Do you recognize that reporter’s voice? That’s Cary Hartmann’s friend Larry Lewis. He interviewed Bertagnole’s widow.

Mary Stirk (from May 16, 1986 KSL TV archive): This is wonderful. This is, uh, a relief.

Dave Cawley: KSL’s helicopter, Chopper 5, flew her up the canyon.

Rod Layton: I was actually at the site and I see the KSL helicopter coming back in and they literally get 10 feet away from the, the thing. They were right in the middle of the canyon and they just hovered right there and she could look in and said “there it is.”

Larry Lewis (from May 16, 1986 KSL TV archive): It’s believed Bertagnole hiked two to three days in the snow-covered mountains here and when he simply couldn’t go any further, he looked for the closest shelter. This shallow cave that provided him protection ultimately became the lost hunter’s grave.

Dave Cawley: Bertagnole’s name also came up in my conversation with Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, who knows that mountain as well as anyone.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): Were you surprised that there could’ve been, uh, a hunter’s body there for 40-plus years unfound?

Brent Morgan: Heck yeah, the only reason they found him is it was a lion hunter. If the lion hunter hadn’t been following the dogs, they wouldn’t have found him then.

Dave Cawley: Bertagnole had become disoriented.

Brent Morgan: Got messed up and went the wrong direction. Ended up down on the bottom of Righthand Fork.

Dave Cawley: The Righthand Fork is one of the streams that feeds into Causey Reservoir. It flows through an area Brent and his hunting buddies call “the narrows.”

Brent Morgan: Anybody that saw our camp, they’d say “who are those idiots?” Because if you walked out of our tent and you’d go 10 to 15 feet, it could drop 1,000 feet straight down. They don’t call it the narrows for nothing. It’s ‘cause it is cliffs.

Dave Cawley: Few people ever travel that morass of cliffs, plunge pools and thickets.

Brent Morgan: The people that are at the narrows, they’re at the top looking down. They’re not interested in dropping down where it gets ugly.

Dave Cawley: I’ve hiked the narrows a couple of times myself.

Dave Cawley (from the narrows): My hiking pace has been really slow because I’ve had to stay up on these cliffs above the water course because of how narrow it is in most places.

Dave Cawley: The faint trail disappears, as the canyon walls close in, leaving you to walk through knee-to-waist deep pools of water. Willow branches scrape at you from all sides.

Dave Cawley (from the narrows): My legs and feet are just stinging right now. Even though I had neoprene socks on and wool underneath, it is cold. My feet are numb, I was stumbly so not a great situation.

Dave Cawley: No one’s carrying a body back through that canyon. The anonymous caller had to’ve been referencing a spot up higher, on the slopes above the narrows, perhaps closer to the ridge where the elk hunting guide Fred Johns spotted Cary Hartmann four days after Sheree Warren disappeared. I asked Brent Morgan about getting up onto the mountain above the narrows. He told me it’s private property and he no longer has access.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): Do you miss being able to get up into that part of the—

Brent Morgan: (Laughs) Is a 40 pound robin fat?

Dave Cawley: (Laughs) Sometimes I have to ask questions I know the answer to.

Brent Morgan: Ok. But that’s exact, yeah. There’s, when you spend as much time up there as I have with the friends that I cherish and the moments that we had up there, yeah. It’s something that’s hard to give up. And it’s not by choice, it’s by access.

Dave Cawley: Think back to that metaphor: the percent sign that resembles the layout of Causey, Lost Creek and the mountain between them. The mountain — represented by the slash in the percent sign — is privately owned. Cabin owners at Causey Estates, like Brent Morgan, they’re not able to access that land like they did during the ‘80s. Those who hunt that ground now are mostly led by guides who stick close to the road. So if the body reported by the anonymous caller is hidden on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek, the chance of someone happening across it now seems infinitesimal.

Brent Morgan: But here again, you get back to the key, if everything was on the up-and-up, he would’ve just given me the key.

Dave Cawley: Mmm.

Brent Morgan: I mean, that is cut-and-dried right there. There had to be a reason why.

(Sound of tape recorder starting)

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): It’s now November 25^th, 1985 at 8 p.m. This is the case of Sheree Warren, she disappeared from Salt Lake City October 2^nd, 1985 approximately 6:30 p.m., from the Utah Employees Credit Union.

Dave Cawley: Nearly two months had passed since the disappearance of Sheree Warren. Her boyfriend, Cary Hartmann, sat down with a tape recorder.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): This is all the information I can possibly remember. If I don’t get it all today I’ll put it together piece-by-piece, there’s so much that’s happened for almost 8 weeks now. Kinda hard to remember every bit of it.

Dave Cawley: Cary recorded the tape for a guy named Michael Neumeyer, a private investigator. I’ve not been able to find the original but Neumeyer made a transcript of it. So you’re hearing Cary’s words, read by a voice actor.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Mike, to be quite frank with you, I don’t see anything short of a miracle, other than turning up possibly the remains if that’s the case, or her walking in the door.

Dave Cawley: Again, Cary recorded this for a P.I., not Roy police detective Jack Bell.

Jack Bell: Not sure why Cary did that.

Dave Cawley: Jack never received the tape. Like me, he’s only ever seen the 16-page, spiral bound transcript.

Jack Bell: Cary brought it in and it was in a, book form. It was all typed up. One of those that you can bind yourself. Neumeyer’s a terrible speller.

Dave Cawley: Michael Neumeyer had a lot in common with Cary Hartmann. Neymeyer’d served in the Navy and, after getting out, had taken a job with the Ogden Police Department.

Jack Bell: But he didn’t last too long and he come out here to Roy and he didn’t last too long here, either. So he started his own, I’m private detective business or whatever.

Dave Cawley: Cary had met Neumeyer at the NICE Corporation call center where they were both moonlighting in the fall of ’85. They became fast friends and the topic of Sheree came up in conversation. Neumeyer told Cary he’d worked a homicide case in the past. He volunteered to look into Sheree’s disappearance. Cary made handwritten notes about this conversation, and I have copies. They say “Newmire, private dick sort of, wants to help, all details needed, has some good leads, wants to remain underground for now.” So that’s why Cary recorded the tape, to tell his version of the story to Michael Neumeyer.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Mike, I’ve put together everything that I can think of up to date. … It’s just my opinion and I’m just giving you what you asked for as much information as I could.

Dave Cawley: Cary offered few solid details about his relationship with Sheree. He didn’t say how they’d met or talk about any of her interests or aspirations. He described himself simply as her “lover.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I took her into my folks home and down to my sister’s place in Salt Lake. Pretty soon she was a member of the family. Before anyone knew it, she was carrying the conversation and doing the dishes. A very exceptional young woman.

Dave Cawley: A man falling in love with a woman after she cleans his dishes. Where have I heard that before? A moment ago I mentioned Cary’s notes about Sheree’s disappearance. There’s another page where he wrote down the titles of two songs. The first was “Cherish” by Kool & the Gang. Its chorus repeats the lines: “cherish the love we have. We should cherish the life we live.”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Now, this is the kind of lady that would come home after work. She’d be lying here on the couch in my bathrobe with some candles around the room, the music on and a drink waiting. She was a very affectionate, giving, generous, wonderful lady.

Jack Bell: Y’know, at the time he was madly in love, supposedly, and she’d wait for him to get home from work and have candles lit and wine poured and all this hoopla, bull[expletive], but (laughs) if she had some problems there with Cary, I hadn’t found anybody that she had shared ‘em with, y’know?

Dave Cawley: The second song, “Come Back and Stay” by Paul Young, includes the lyrics: “since you’ve been gone, opened my eyes and I realize what we had together. Will you ever return?”

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I know at the time that I was going with Sheree, there was no one else in her life. She was very satisfied and extremely happy. I say that because of our relationship, was exceptional.

Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 3: Cherish the Love. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann’s statement to private investigator Michael Neumeyer included a new version of his account of the night Sheree Warren disappeared.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I was at my home which is at 690 7^th, Ogden, Utah. The phone rang, it was 4:30 PM.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d stopped by his apartment after finishing work at Weber State College for the day, before heading to his second job.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): It was Sheree. The conversation went something like this: she said ‘what are you going to do after work?’ I work part time out at NICE Corporation. I said “well I’m going to meet Dave Moore.”

Dave Cawley: Cary and Dave were friends. They’d served together in the Ogden Police reserve corp. Cary called Dave his “best friend.” He said he’d told Sheree he and Dave planned to rendezvous at a bar called Sebastians, next to the sewing machine repair shop Dave owned, at around 9 p.m. They’d have two drinks, then call it quits.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She was kind of joking, “oh, I guess that will be about 4 in the morning.” I said no. I said “I’m going to have two drinks and I’s coming right home.” At this point and time, that little lady meant everything in the entire world to me. Drinking all night with the boys just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be and when I said two drinks and I was coming home, that’s what I meant. She said “that’s wonderful.” She said “I’ll be waiting for you at home.” And that’s the last word I ever heard from her.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d run a little late getting to Sebastians that night, arriving just after 9. He said Dave More was already there, waiting for him.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): We talked, had a couple of drinks. I decided at that time it would be a lot nicer to have Sheree down there. I called her at my home, no answer. … When the phone rang and she didn’t answer, I knew at that moment something was wrong. I called Sheree’s mother’s house. This was approximately 10, 10:30ish. She said “she’s not here, isn’t she with you?” That confirmed that I knew at that moment something was wrong and drastically wrong. That’s how well I know the lady.

Dave Cawley: Dave Moore told us in the last episode he remembered going to the bar with Cary at 6, not 9. So again, Cary’s story here is out of sync. And it’s not just off from what Dave said, it doesn’t line up with what Cary’d himself told detective Jack Bell the day after Sheree disappeared. Back then, he’d said he found out Sheree was missing the next morning, from Sheree’s mom. But Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, told police she’d received two calls from Cary the night of. So here in this statement, Cary shifted his story to bring it into alignment with Mary’s.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I keep calling. I called all night. I came home approximately 10:30, 11, called her mom, called girlfriends. Nothing.

Dave Cawley: Sheree’d told her mom on the day of her disappearance she’d planned to pick up her son from her estranged husband Chuck after work. She’d then intended to bring her son home and have dinner at her parents’ house. But in this version of Cary’s story, he said Sheree had instead planned to meet up with him, leaving her son with Chuck that night, through the following day.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): What they do is Chuck has privileges as far as his son goes on Wednesdays and Thursdays, works out real well for her, picks him up on Wednesday and delivers him Thursday night.

Dave Cawley: Sheree was supposed to be at work early the next morning 40 miles south of home, in Salt Lake City.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Even if our relationship wasn’t good — and it was absolutely excellent — she had a brand new job, a big promotion. She would not leave her son and just take off.

Dave Cawley: Ditching her son to stay out late on a weeknight with Cary, potentially blowing her new promotion, would’ve been out of character for Sheree.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): This is not the type of lady that would not show up. If she was going to be a minute late, she would call. If she was going to be a half-minute late, she would call.

Dave Cawley: Cary said after calling Sheree’s mom, he’d dialed Roy City police dispatch to report her missing.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Dispatch then gave the report to, I believe, Jack Bell who now has the case. Obviously, because of the circumstances, there was no incriminating evidence of foul play to date.

Jack Bell: I didn’t put my finger on it right away, but later on, I felt like he hand-picked me to report it to because, ‘cause he knew me.

Dave Cawley: Jack now believes, in retrospect, Cary’d pushed him toward possible persons of interest.

Jack Bell: He uh, pushed away from himself whichever which way.

Dave Cawley: They included a credit union patron…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): There is a man who came into the credit union and asked Sheree for a date. She went and had a drink with him at Sebatians. He’s a real weirdo. He bugged her a lot. Called her, wouldn’t leave her alone.

Dave Cawley: …as well as a guy Sheree had briefly dated after separating from her husband, before dating Cary.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I know this guy was involved in some drugs. To what extent, I don’t know. I know it was strong enough and often enough that it turned Sheree off and she told him to hit the road.

Dave Cawley: But Cary took a more pointed approach in talking about the last man known to have seen Sheree alive.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I think we need to look at this Richard Moss.

Dave Cawley: You heard from Richard Moss in the last episode. He was the branch manager Sheree had been training on the credit union’s computer system.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Well, Mr. Richard Moss of Richfield was working with Sheree those two day periods. She worked close enough with this guy, she went to lunch with him … They did go in Mr. Richard Moss’ car the first day. Now, this is a point that I must bring up. When asked, Richard Moss said “well, Sheree was driving a maroon 1984 Toyota.” … Point being, no one in that entire credit union knew what type of car she was driving … None of us knew but yet this Richard Moss knew all of a sudden. How did he know that when they went to lunch in Mr. Moss’ car? Kinda strange.

Dave Cawley: Cary was well aware his old high school acquaintance Jack Bell had already interviewed Richard Moss over the phone.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Richard Moss told detective Jack Bell, other people, Sheree told him “see you tomorrow, I’m going to Wagstaff, pick up my husband, he needs to get his car repaired and give him a ride home.” Now, why would she say that if Chuck got through to her with a phone call and canceled the appointment?

Dave Cawley: Why indeed?

Jack Bell: Unless she was just trying to brush him off — which is possible, I don’t know.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): This is one of the strange things that old Chuck has pulled.

Jack Bell: But Cary did everything he could do to promote Chuck Warren as being the guilty party in her disappearance.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Even if the guy didn’t do it, I pray to God he didn’t do it.

Dave Cawley: Jack had seen Chuck Warren as his prime suspect since the beginning, thanks in part to information provided by Cary. Cary used innuendo…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): They were having some problems … with agreeing on a child support … court decided, I believe, that it would be $252. That’s based on Chuck’s earnings per year. Of course, he makes pretty good money.

Dave Cawley: …and Cary used hearsay…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Seems a bit strange Chuck would drive an ’84, $13,000 Supra to Wagstaff Toyota on the whim of getting it repaired and no one ever seeing either of them. Seems very strange.

Dave Cawley: …so Cary could paint a picture using a palette of circumstantial colors.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Oh, and by the way, as of this moment that ’84 Supra is on a lot … for sale. Chuck’s pleading, the poor boy, the poor situation, ‘I can’t afford this, I can’t afford that.’ I know for a fact the man just took out a 22 or 23-thousand dollar second mortgage on his home. He did pay off that Supra.

Dave Cawley: Cary said a dispute over child support had stalled Sheree’s divorce.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): For some reason, Chuck come up with a figure of $181 and was paying that fairly regularly to Sheree at the point she disappeared. He did owe her $500. … She had him served again to try and straighten out this money matter. The man is very, very, very money-hungry. He’s a money person. That’s all he thinks about, supposedly.

Dave Cawley: By Cary’s account, money served as motive for Chuck Warren to kill Sheree.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): According to Sheree — and I believe her, if she said the sun wasn’t going to come up, I take bets … Chuck came into the credit union maybe a week or maybe two weeks before she disappeared. The credit union had members as well as staff. He told her, in so many words — I believe they were very pointed words — “I’m going to kill you. I will get even for you for this.”

Dave Cawley: We’ve heard this story a couple of times now, from Cary, from Sheree’s friend Pam Volk and from the last person known to have seen Sheree alive, Richard Moss. But this retelling of Cary’s version included a new detail.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): He flashed a gun, at least at Sheree. I blame this on her: she didn’t report it, to the police. Any of this. I tried to get her to. She wouldn’t do it. She wanted to keep things status quo.

Dave Cawley: Again, Cary’d told this story to detective Jack Bell about a week after Sheree disappeared. But there’s no mention of a gun in Jack’s notes of that conversation.

Jack Bell: Now, that wasn’t told to me.

Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Ok.

Jack Bell: That about Chuck comin’ in with a gun in his waistband. That was told to Mike Neumeyer. And, pshh, there’s another character.

Dave Cawley: Jack’s notes show Sheree’s boss confirmed Chuck and Sheree had been in some sort of confrontation at the credit union branch in Ogden a week or so before Sheree disappeared. So Cary’s story contained at least a kernel of truth. But I’ve talked to Sheree’s former boss myself. She didn’t remember seeing or hearing about a gun.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I was told by … ladies that work at the credit union with Sheree … they said that Chuck was very volatile. He was there, pleasant to talk to but yet he would explode upon getting irritated, mad. Strange personality. Done a lot of strange things.

Dave Cawley: Chuck Warren flashing a gun in a crowded credit union would’ve been more than strange. Any teller who saw it would’ve likely hit the hold-up alarm. But maybe Sheree’s the only person who saw it, and maybe Cary’s the only person with whom she shared that detail. Or maybe, Cary decided to embellish the story to push more suspicion onto Chuck Warren.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): My own opinion, I think Chuck knows something about it. Involved, to what degree? I can’t say. I think he knows something about it, definitely.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s statement was a master class in the not-so-subtle art of casting aspersions.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Chuck took off work, supposedly depressed and ill, the day after Sheree was missing. Supposedly went home, put all his vehicles in his garage, walked to the Ogden City Mall. … That computes to be a 60-block round-trip. That’s one heck of a walk. … This man is not a physical specimen. He’s not a jogger. He’s not an athlete. He’s not an average skier. Runner he’s not. This is completely out of character for him, this man.

Dave Cawley: The only positive thing Cary had to say about Chuck involved his signing the paperwork that allowed police to search Sheree’s car after it’d turned up in Las Vegas.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): The only thing Chuck has done to date as to lend a hand whatsoever, he did sign a consent search. We were hoping we’d find something incriminating in the car. That was not the case.

Dave Cawley: Cary summarized what Las Vegas Metro Police had found in the car. He mentioned the fingerprints they’d lifted from driver door window.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): They haven’t confirmed whatsoever whose prints they are. … Hopefully, Las Vegas will send prints up to us. We’ll be able to make a match up of those.

Dave Cawley: Cary used words like “us” and “we,” as if he was himself a police detective working the case. He’d clearly learned about the details of the car from detective Jack Bell. But Jack was beginning to regret how open he’d been in sharing information with Cary.

Jack Bell: To me it was more Cary’s manipulations. More of the same thing about hand-picking me to take the original report from him, because we knew each other in high school, basically.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d at first thought Sheree’s car might surface in the mountains east of Ogden.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): We were kinda of the opinion, Jack Bell and myself, that the car was dumped in the Causey, Pineview, Lost Creek — somewhere deep, something you can get a car into quickly.

Jack Bell: You got two reservoirs up there that are deep: Causey and Lost Creek on the other side.

Dave Cawley: The name “Causey” might sound familiar. It came up a couple of times in episode one. Causey Reservoir sits near the campground where Cary Hartmann tried to lure Heidi Posnien at the start of our story. And Causey’s near where Cary’s friend Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, had his wedding a year before Sheree disappeared. So Cary knew the Causey area well. But where is Causey in relation to Lost Creek Reservoir? Picture a percent sign, like on a keyboard: a small circle in the upper left, a diagonal slash and another circle in the bottom right. The top left circle would be Causey. The bottom right circle, Lost Creek. The slash between them is a mountain. In his statement to private investigator Michael Neumeyer, Cary Hartmann said he’d checked both Causey and Lost Creek for Sheree Warren’s car.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): There wasn’t a sign of any vehicle going down. You know, dragging rocks. They would have to do some skidding. Nothing.

Dave Cawley: Cary knew the area well. He’d deer hunted the hills around Lost Creek for years. He’d even taken Sheree to Lost Creek earlier that summer.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Sheree and I, my two boys, went fishing. Had a picnic up at Lost Creek Reservoir up near Croyden by the cement plant just past Devil’s Slide. Absolute fantastic, wonderful day. Couldn’t have been better. Sheree did everything. She put together the lunch. Fried chicken. She bought the beer, pop. She put it all together. She had her dad running around town getting ice for it. She wouldn’t let me do a thing. This is the kind of generous lady she was.

Dave Cawley: Not “lady she is,” but “lady she was.” Cary referred to Sheree in the past tense throughout this statement, even though she’d only been gone about a month-and-a-half. Police still believed she might yet be alive. Cary said he’d again searched for Sheree’s car at Lost Creek himself while up there for the deer hunt.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I took my three-wheeler and I scoured that thing. There wasn’t a part of that reservoir that I could get to that a car could get to that I didn’t check and double-check. Obviously not in there. … I’ve felt all along the car was not in the state. The reason being, we had 200,000 deer hunters. We had at least that many pheasant hunters there and no one saw a thing. Well, it turned out the car was in Vegas.

Dave Cawley: Cary had a theory about how Sheree’s car made it to Vegas.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I’m of the opinion that the lady has gotten in real trouble and she’s not with us any more. She has been dumped. She’s in Vegas and someone made Vegas their getaway and used their car to do it. … It had been there a long time, Mike. Jack Bell’s opinion, it had been there possibly right off the bat. It went right from Salt Lake to Vegas. Why someone didn’t spot it, I’ll never be able to answer.

Dave Cawley: In the last episode, we heard how Cary had told detective Jack Bell of a coworker of his who’d had a dream about Sheree. Cary repeated the story here, to private investigator Michael Neumeyer.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): You can take this for what you want, Mike. This man is extremely credible. This gentleman told me that three or four times in his life he’s woke up in the middle of the night with a startling, sinking feeling. A dream. Something comes to him in the middle of the night. … He told me — and he was writing this down when he was telling me — “Cary, I see Sheree in the company of a big man. Approximately six-two or three, 220 pounds. Blond, wide-set eyes, around Big Rock Candy Mountain down here around Beaver, Utah.”

Dave Cawley: Beaver is a small town that sits on Interstate 15, almost exactly halfway between Salt Lake City, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada. Big Rock Candy Mountain is about 50 miles away from Beaver, near Richfield, where Richard Moss lived. Again, Richard was the tall, broad credit union manager Sheree’d been training the day she disappeared. Cary’s retelling of his coworker’s dream continued.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): He even described another person being there as being tall, thin, real dark hair, wearing a black jacket. Sheree is tall, fairly thin.

Dave Cawley: Sheree stood five-foot-five and that’s not tall. But pay attention to this bit about the jacket.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She has dark hair and she has my black jacket on. He even described this man as stopping at a convenience store, buying a doughnut or two. Buying some gas.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d previously told detective Jack Bell Sheree’d left for work the morning of her disappearance wearing his black parka. And, he used this coworker’s dream to reinforce that idea. Why? This entire case could boil down to a tale of two coats, because there are conflicting accounts of what coat or jacket Sheree had on when she left for work the morning of her disappearance. We’ll get into this in more depth later in our story, but keep in mind: knowing what Sheree was wearing could help prove who killed her.

Cary’s coworker wasn’t the only person having psychic experiences involving Sheree Warren. Detective Jack Bell had also received an anonymous letter just days before Cary made his recording for the private investigator. The letter writer had claimed to have special abilities.

Jack Bell: I got some information from a psychic, supposedly, with drawings on it.

Dave Cawley: KSL, the news station I work for, had received a similar letter around the same time.

Jack Bell: Yeah, I knew there was one that went to KSL.

Dave Cawley: Jack should know, because KSL gave its letter to him back ’85. Cary Hartmann knew that, too. He described the psychic letter to KSL in his statement to the private investigator.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Jack Bell has in his possession a four-page letter of a lady that recounts her dreams … same thing in essence.

Dave Cawley: The “same thing” as Cary’s coworker’s dream.

Jack Bell: Said she was in the mountains by red rocks.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She saw partying music, a laughing entertainment. She saw Sheree coerced out to a truck. Sheree, realizing what had happened, tried to get away. Struggled. Her neck was either snapped or strangled. Very gruesome.

Jack Bell: Described the pickup with two guys in it…

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She said this gentleman drove a light-colored Ford four-by-four half-ton. Two tires mounted in rear bed on either side.

Jack Bell: …and a, uh, truck stop in the mountains.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She saw this man stopping at a convenience store also. He knew the owner of the convenience store, or at least the person working there. Bought a can of Coors. Steel-rimmed mirrored glasses.

Jack Bell: There was a female body in the back of the truck. They got rid of it somewhere in the red rock area.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): This is really hard for me though. This lady saw a mutilated body tucked underneath an evergreen tree with some fall foliage over it. Cannot be seen from the road, by a boulder five to four-foot in diameter. Sheree’s body before it was mutilated was molested … in this lady’s letter. … the worst possible of all things that could happen.

Jack Bell: That was basically what I remember of that.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): It’s funny that two people completely separate of each other would describe this guy as blond, 220 pounds.

Dave Cawley: “Funny” is not the word I would use.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I have been in contact with some astrologers who have told me this, as of this morning. The lady told me … she determined Sheree’s body is 22 miles southeast of the last place she was seen, which would put it about Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Dave Cawley: This was Cary’s third separate reference to some form of psychic in this statement.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): She sees two men. Slightly built, friendly type, not the rough-talking truck stop cowboy type. Business type, business papers. … She said in her professional opinion the lady is not alive.

Dave Cawley: I don’t put any weight on these dreams or psychic stories as evidence. But I do find it interesting Cary described a big guy who was a bit cowboy and a bit businessman rolled into one. Richard Moss, the credit union manager Sheree was training on the day she disappeared, is tall and broad. And because Richard was the last person known to’ve seen Sheree alive, he was an obvious person of interest for police. We heard in the last episode Richard’s dad owned a livestock auction, but Richard had himself pursued a career in banking. He was a little bit country, a little bit “business type.” Jack Bell started to wonder if Cary was using the dreams and psychics to try and derail his investigation.

Jack Bell: I had started looking at Cary pretty serious. ‘Cause I was getting all this other stupid crap that, y’know, I knew wasn’t coming from Chuck, like the psychics and these pictures.

Dave Cawley: Cary had provided his private investigator with three separate psychic stories. All involved two male suspects, trauma to the neck or throat of a female victim and a disposal location in the mountains, possibly near red rock cliffs. The spot Sheree was last seen, as far as anyone knew, was at the credit union office in Salt Lake City. It was just a few blocks from the Toyota dealership where she’d planned to meet her estranged husband, Chuck Warren, at the end of her work day.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I’ll briefly touch on the Wagstaff Toyota situation. I’ve been down there three times myself with flyers that I’ve printed up. Not one salesman that I’ve talked to … remembers Sheree at all that night.

Dave Cawley: Cary said one of the first calls he’d made after learning Sheree was missing had been to a close friend of his.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): His name is Steven K. Bartlett, special investigator for the district attorney’s office.

Dave Cawley: When Cary says “the district attorney’s office,” he means the Salt Lake County District Attorney. Ogden and Roy are in Weber County, not Salt Lake County. Roy police detective Jack Bell was leading the search for Sheree, and Cary’d leveraged his high school acquaintance with Jack to get inside information about the case. But Sheree’d disappeared from Salt Lake City, which gave Salt Lake police a role in the search. And Cary was blind to what Salt Lake police were doing. That, presumably, is why he reached out to another of his childhood chums: Steve Bartlett.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): I called Steve and said “Steve, we’ve got a problem.” I said “let’s get to work on it immediately.” I told him the severity of the case. Because of our relationship, Steve knew right off the bat something was wrong.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d fed Steve Bartlett with the story of Sheree’s disappearance, emphasizing she’d left work that night headed to meet her estranged husband at Wagstaff Toyota in Salt Lake City. Cary’d urged his old friend to investigate.

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): Steven … went down there and approached these people on the night shift, asked them the same question. They had not seen Chuck Warren or Sheree Warren anywhere on the premises or the car or any appointment any time that evening.

Dave Cawley: By contacting Steve Bartlett, Cary’d ensured he would be among the first to hear if Salt Lake police turned up any leads. Just another example of Cary using his friendships to know who investigators were talking to, what those people were saying and where officers were looking for Sheree Warren. He’d manipulated Steve Bartlett, just as he had detective Jack Bell.

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Dave Cawley: Dreams can sometimes seem so vivid, we mistake them for reality. They linger as we wake. In those moments between sleep and waking, the content of our subconscious can seem all too real. That’s how a woman I’ll call Danielle felt as she came awake around 5 a.m. on the morning of March 23^rd, 1986. Danielle’s not her real name. I’m using the pseudonym to protect her privacy.

In the dream, Danielle felt something rough running over her cheek. Her arms seemed heavy, as if weighted down by cinderblocks. She opened her eyes, unfocused without contact lenses, to the familiar but darkened space of her bedroom. The dream should’ve ended in that moment, but it didn’t. Because Danielle had not been dreaming. A dark figure leaned over her, pinning her arms to her sides. A stubbled face pressed against hers, kissing her.

“Danielle,” the figure said, “Danielle.”

It had a man’s voice, carried on breath that reeked of alcohol and stale cola.

“Are you 16, Danielle” he asked. She didn’t answer. “Are you 16,” he repeated.

“No, I’m 30,” she said, confused and terrified.

She squinted, trying to make out his face.

“Don’t look at me, I’ll kill you,” he said.

She began to cry.

“Don’t make any noise,” he said.

“I’m a mother, please don’t hurt me,” she said

Her young son was not at home, thankfully. He’d fallen asleep at his babysitter’s and Danielle hadn’t wanted to wake him when she’d returned home that evening after a night out with a friend.

“Are you scared, honey,” the man asked. Danielle thought she detected a note of excitement in his voice at the idea of her terror.

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s normal for me to be scared.”

I’m not going to describe what happened next. It’s enough to know Danielle had feared for her life. She’d believed the man might injure or kill her if she’d resisted. Just hurry up and get this over with, she’d thought. The entire encounter lasted just minutes. She remained frozen in fear on her bed as the man left. She heard him walk through her kitchen, where he stopped just long enough to steal her purse. Danielle waited until all went quiet. She then grabbed her robe and ran from her home, pounding on a neighbor’s door in tears. The neighbor called Ogden City police.

This rape was the ninth in a string of similar, unsolved sexual assaults in Ogden dating back over two years. In each case, a man had entered a woman’s home uninvited, usually while she slept. This man had broken into Danielle’s home by prying out a window screen.

Shane Minor: Seems like they would check windows and doors.

Dave Cawley: Shane Minor was at that time a detective for the Ogden City Police Department.

Shane Minor: If a window wasn’t locked, pull the screen off, open the window, pry the window open.

Dave Cawley: Shane told me me the rash of rapes in Ogden had overwhelmed the lone detective assigned to handle sex crimes in the city.

Shane Minor: So then it started going out to others in the detective division was working those cases as well.

Dave Cawley: That’s how Shane Minor was drawn into the search for a man some were calling the Ogden City Rapist.

Shane Minor: They were quite active at night and out-and-about in the city.

Dave Cawley: The string of 10 or so attacks had not gone unnoticed by the press.

Shane Minor: They would occur throughout the whole city of Ogden. It wasn’t a specific area.

Dave Cawley: The Ogden Standard-Examiner, an afternoon newspaper serving the city and its suburbs, began reporting on the cases. Readers, women especially, were urged to lock their doors at night, to not go out after dark alone.

Shane Minor: These would happen between 11:30, midnight and 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.

Dave Cawley: The idea of a serial rapist stalking the darkened streets put the entire community on edge. People were calling Ogden police with tips almost daily.

Shane Minor: Where somebody would be spotted outside of a house. Wasn’t necessary a burglary or break-in.

Dave Cawley: But catching the rapist in the act had so far proved impossible.

Shane Minor: I remember a period of time to where you’d get the, the case in the morning for follow-up and it got to be we were getting hit regularly enough, uh, we would work double shifts and go out at the city at night and stake the city out to see if they’re going to hit again.

Dave Cawley: One of the Ogden City Rapist attacks had occurred just weeks after Sheree Warren disappeared, in October of ’85. A couple more happened six months later, in March of ’86. Two more attacks came in May, followed by another in June.

In one of those cases, a man entered the home of a woman whom I’ll call Caroline. Again, that’s not her real name. Caroline had fallen asleep on her couch, watching an old war movie on TV. She’d started awake around 3:30 a.m. to the sound of a click and the TV going dark. She’d sat up. The shadowed figure of a man stood next to the TV. He’d darted across the room and grabbed her by the arms before she could get off the couch.

“I know you have two boys and what room they’re in,” the man had said. “Don’t piss around, I do have a gun.”

For a moment, Caroline thought she was being pranked. She called the man by the name Ben, telling him it wasn’t funny and to stop screwing around. He said his name wasn’t Ben. He’d been watching her and knew she was alone. He asked how old she was. Caroline reacted in a jolt of panic, trying to twist herself free.

“You’ll wake the kids,” he said. “I’ll blow their heads off.”

And so she stopped fighting. I’m not going to detail the further facts of this assault, either, but they were largely similar in style and sequence to what the other woman I mentioned, Danielle, had experienced. When it was over, the man instructed Caroline not to tell anyone what he’d done. He said he knew her and her husband — Caroline had been separated for a few years — and would return to kill them if she reported having been raped. She did it anyway, calling police from a neighbor’s home after the man exited. She told an officer the rapist had worn a thick coat, like a ski parka or military fatigue jacket. She hadn’t heard a car as he’d left. That morning, detectives found a boot print in a flower bed outside Caroline’s front window.

Shane Minor: And so then we started checking out a lot of those areas where we had report of sexual assaults or break-in type of rapes and seeing the same shoe print. So, that kind of gave us one lead.

Dave Cawley: Detectives believed the man had seen Caroline asleep on her couch while window-peeping. He appeared to have entered her house through an unlocked back door. Caroline went through a medical exam that morning, what’s often called a rape kit, but a few days later she skipped a follow-up appointment with police. A detective called to ask why. According to a report, Caroline said she no longer wanted to pursue the case.

Shane Minor: My experience was you can’t push ‘em into it and you’ve got to give them room.

Dave Cawley: Shane Minor told me he encountered this kind of reluctance from victims of rape and sexual assault often in his career.

Shane Minor: Yeah, and it’s just like you’re revictimizing them by having them go through it again, or as many times as they have to keep going through it, especially when it goes to court. I think a lot of people pick up on that, they see that, they just don’t want to go there.

Dave Cawley: The Ogden detectives did their best to build trust with the various women. They believed each might have important information that could help unmask the rapist’s identity. But they could only get that information by asking tough questions.

Shane Minor: They’ve been traumatized, so how do they know what’s important? They, they can give you the real basics but sometimes you need more than that to, uh, get to the facts of what happened.

Dave Cawley: The detectives had to be direct, but also empathetic. The women had to show great courage. The rapist’s threats carried weight, because the newspaper had recently told the story of a South Ogden woman named Joyce Yost who’d been sexually assaulted, reported it to police and then disappeared.

As the Ogden City Rapist investigation was ramping up in 1986, police elsewhere in Utah were beginning the hunt for a suspected serial killer.

OJ Peck (from July 2, 1986 KSL TV archive): There are a lot of missing girls, both inside and outside of Utah where it appears there might be foul play suspected.

Dave Cawley: A string of unsolved and, on the surface, unconnected murders of young women had plagued the northern part of the state during the mid-‘80s, evoking memories of serial killer Ted Bundy.

Richard Bingham (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): Bundy still owes Utah 10 years for kidnapping.

Dave Cawley: Bundy was by this time in ’86 firmly in custody, fighting to forestall his scheduled execution in the state of Florida.

John Hollenhorst (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): Bundy has repeatedly claimed his innocence. And his trip to the electric chair, if it comes at all, may be years away.

Dave Cawley: So Bundy couldn’t be responsible for these murders, which all took place after his incarceration. One of the most egregious had taken place on the streets of Salt Lake City, where in May of ’85 someone killed a 15-year-old girl named Christine Gallegos.

Tom Walsh (from June 26, 1986 KSL TV archive): Leah Gallegos does not get emotional when she tells of what happened to her daughter here.

Leah Gallegos (from June 26, 1986 KSL TV archive): That she was beaten, badly, stabbed until the knife broke and they couldn’t stab her anymore and then shot twice in the head.

Dave Cawley: Coroners recovered the bullets. They were .38-caliber rounds, the type used in many police revolvers. Just shy of a year later, a 20-year-old woman starting a new job as a 7-Eleven clerk died a similar death. It happened in the suburb of Layton, Utah, partway between Salt Lake and Ogden.

Larry Lewis (from April 25, 1986 KSL TV archive): Carla Maxwell’s body was discovered by a regular customer looking for his morning cup of coffee around 3:45. He found the victim behind the sales counter shot five times in the head and chest. … Layton’s police chief says the physical evidence is slim and won’t speculate over a motive. He does say the murder weapon was probably a .38-caliber revolver.

Dave Cawley: The killer didn’t steal anything from the store. The only item missing was Carla’s purse, which police believed the killer had taken as a trophy.

Larry Lewis (from April 25, 1986 KSL TV archive): Two communities are feeling the impact of this killing: Layton and Ogden, where Maxwell lived and went to school.

Dave Cawley: A few weeks later, people living in a residential neighborhood of Salt Lake City heard a burst of gunfire late at night. They came outside to find a woman named Lisa Strong dead on the sidewalk.

Norman Sharples (from May 12, 1986 KSL TV archive): And as we uh, came down, we looked across the road and we seen the body of the lady across the road, uh, over there. So as soon as we went and saw and it’s, uh, saw that she was, uh, dead, then we came back in the house and dialed 911 to call the police.

Dave Cawley: Strong was a 25-year-old artist and model who’d grown up in Ogden. She’d been walking home from work a bit after midnight when a man had accosted her. She’d tried to run, but the attacker had shot and killed her, for no apparent reason. Police recovered one of the slugs. It was a .38. So the crime lab had bullets from all three killings. Ballistic analysis showed a single gun had fired them all.

Tom Walsh (from June 26, 1986 KSL TV archive): Salt Lake police now say the Gallegos killing is tied to two others: the murders of Carla Maxwell of Layton and Lisa Strong in Salt Lake City.

Dave Cawley: Salt Lake police wondered if a Ted Bundy-style killer had once again found fertile hunting ground in their community. They formed a task force in June of ’86, in the hopes of capturing the killer. Christine Gallegos’ mom told TV station KSL she felt frustrated.

Tom Walsh (from June 26, 1986 KSL TV archive): Leah Gallegos says it’s unfortunate it took the murders of two more women before a task force was formed.

Leah Gallegos (from June 26, 1986 KSL TV archive): Well, they haven’t forgot her. I wouldn’t allow that. ‘Cause that guy needs to be stopped. He really needs to be stopped. How many more, y’know, two Ted Bundys?

Dave Cawley: But Salt Lake police captain O.J. Peck didn’t just limit his team to the three killings they had linked by ballistics. He sent out a letter to police agencies in states all across the West, saying they were “keenly interested” in any unsolved homicides involving female victims. They were looking for a Smith & Wesson or Ruger .38 or .357-caliber handgun, because a .357 can also fire .38-caliber rounds.  Captain Peck told the press they would examine any unsolved disappearances of women across the region.

OJ Peck (from July 2, 1986 KSL TV archive): And we’re looking at those at great length.

Dave Cawley: The task force put together a list of names. They included some that should sound familiar to listeners of this podcast, like Joyce Yost, Teresa Greaves and Sheree Warren. Two of the Salt Lake murders had taken place less than two miles from the credit union office where Sheree had last been seen. Which raised the question: could Sheree have died at the hands of a serial killer? The task force intended to find out.

Salt Lake City police invited Roy City detective Jack Bell, the lead investigator on the Sheree Warren case, to contribute to their task force. But Salt Lake would run the show. Jack had no problem sitting on the sidelines. He didn’t think a serial killer had murdered Sheree. By that point in the summer of ’86, Jack’s focus had shifted from Sheree’s husband Chuck Warren, to her boyfriend, Cary Hartmann.

Jack Bell: Cary seemed to do everything he could to make Chuck look guilty of Sheree’s disappearance. And, I must admit, he did a pretty good job for awhile.

Dave Cawley: Cary had been in Jack’s ear since the day after Sheree’s disappearance, repeating any rumor that seemed to cast Chuck Warren in a negative light. Jack told me some of it had borne out, like the claim Chuck had nearly killed his first wife Alice when they’d split. Chuck had allegedly beat Alice with a tire iron.

Jack Bell: I wish he hadn’t looked so guilty to start with, but he did.

Dave Cawley: Gradually though, Jack had come to believe Cary was manipulating him, leaning on the fact they’d known each other in high school. A bit earlier, Jack mentioned having received a letter from an anonymous psychic. It’d described a woman being killed near a truck stop in the mountains. The writer had described red rock cliffs.

Jack Bell: My personal thought, thinking was all of these psychic stuff and all of these pictures were coming from Cary. At that time I thought he, for some reason, would like her to be found and not pinpointed to him, whether it was for her parents or who it was for.

Dave Cawley: Jack told me he’d given the psychic letter to Ogden police for forensic analysis, but never got it back.

Jack Bell: Whether it went to the FBI, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: Hmm.

Jack Bell: I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: And again, news station KSL had also received a similar psychic letter. KSL had turned its letter over to Jack, who in turn gave it to the Salt Lake City task force, along with a sample of Cary Hartmann’s handwriting for comparison.

Jack Bell: Now, have you been able to find that?

Dave Cawley: I tried to chase down both of these letters, by pestering sources and by filing a series of public records requests. Ogden City couldn’t find anything related to Jack Bell’s psychic letter. Salt Lake City police, on the other hand, did find a copy of the KSL psychic letter. It’d been missing from the Sheree Warren case file for 35 years.

The letter includes hand-drawn sketches. The first is of a woman, from the shoulders up. Next to her are the words “reddish hair,” “beautiful young mother,” and “maroon import,” an apparent reference to Sheree’s car. Another page includes a drawing of a pine tree, with the words “threw body over ledge, body rolled well under a large evergreen … Body is not able to be seen.”

I’m no handwriting expert, but I’ve seen a fair amount of Cary Hartmann’s writings. He tended to use block capitals or lower-case cursive. The psychic letter uses neither. Cary dots his Is with circles. The psychic letter writer doesn’t. So if the information in the psychic letter originated with Cary, it’s likely someone else did the actual writing.

My personal thanks to Salt Lake City records officer Candee Allred for digging deep and finding the missing letter. I can’t stress enough how important records are when looking into a case this old, because memories fade with time.

Jack Bell: It’s been so long ago, Dave and—

Dave Cawley: (Laughs)

Jack Bell: —you’re helping stir this old brain up a little bit, so.

Dave Cawley: So let me tell you about another paper record in the Sheree Warren case. It’s a report private investigator Michael Neumeyer wrote up and gave to detective Jack Bell. Neumeyer listed Chuck Warren as his top suspect, along with one of Chuck’s coworkers and a repo man who’d worked for the same credit union as Sheree. Neumeyer did not include Cary Hartmann as a suspect. In Neumeyer’s eyes, Cary was simply Sheree’s boyfriend.

Jack Bell: Yeah, that sounds like Neumeyer.

Dave Cawley: But here’s what’s most interesting to me: Neumeyer wrote Sheree was last seen wearing a black, John Weitz Casual Craft jacket, size 42. He went into detail, describing it as waist-length, with nylon lining, a zip collar and snap-down front. That’s a men’s coat, not the type of business attire Sheree would’ve worn to the office. It would’ve absolutely swamped her: a 42-inch chest on a woman who stood just five-foot-five and weighed 115 pounds would’ve looked ridiculous.

Richard Moss, the last person known to’ve seen Sheree alive, never mentioned Sheree wearing a black men’s coat. Even if he had, I doubt he would’ve known the exact make and size. No, that detail could’ve only come from Cary Hartmann. Private investigator Michael Neumeyer was describing Cary’s coat. Yet another indication Cary wanted, even needed people to think Sheree disappeared while wearing his black parka.

Former detective Jack Bell told me Michael Neumeyer’s report skewed in Cary’s favor, which isn’t surprising, considering where Neumeyer got most of his information.

Jack Bell: Cary hired him and Cary give him a pretty lengthy statement.

Dave Cawley: If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’ll just tell you: Jack didn’t have much respect for Michael Neumeyer. Probably because of what his report concluded. Hang with me here, because this is going to get complicated.

Neumeyer had seen a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, which quoted the mother of Salt Lake City shooting victim Christine Gallegos. She said she’d learned her daughter had told a convenience store clerk the night of her death she was going undercover to investigate the murder of a friend named Phillip Kerby. Kerby had vanished in October of ’84. His body surfaced days before Christine Gallegos’ death, uncovered by the most unlikely of means.

Lynn Packer (from May 5, 1985 KSL TV archive): A pig this morning escaped from its pen at an LDS stake farm east of Oakley. The caretaker found her rooting in a pile of rocks. Summit County sheriffs deputies were called to the scene. They found a body under the rocks. Detective Robert Barry suspects murder. He said it’s not likely someone would crawl under three feet of rock and die.

Dave Cawley: Detectives quickly pieced together what’d happened. They identified the remains as Kerby’s and arrested the caretaker’s brother, Jon Monson, on suspicion of murder.

Lynn Packer (from May 5, 1985 KSL TV archive): Sgt. Robert Barry says the dead man and the suspect were formerly coworkers at a Salt Lake auto dealership parts department.

Robert Barry (from May 5, 1985 KSL TV archive): We believe that the uh, the two individuals were involved in some type of a theft ring in Salt Lake.

Dave Cawley: Kerby and Monson had worked for Wagstaff Toyota, the same dealership where Sheree was supposed to meet her estranged husband on the afternoon of her disappearance.

Lynn Packer (from May 6, 1985 KSL TV archive): Officials suspect the two were using the church farm as a hiding place for stolen property.

Dave Cawley: The pair had been billing auto parts to the dealership, selling them on the side and pocketing the profit. But Kerby had developed cold feet and wanted out. Monson would later admit to killing Kerby to keep him from squealing. Again, Christine Gallegos’ death had come just 10 days after the discovery of Phillip Kerby’s remains. Her mom, Leah Gallegos, came to believe her daughter might’ve uncovered more about the Wagstaff Toyota theft ring and gotten herself killed in the process.

Cary Hartmann’s private investigator, Michael Neumeyer, adopted this theory as own, replacing Sheree Warren for Christine Gallegos. Maybe, Neumeyer suggested, Sheree had stumbled into a criminal conspiracy she wasn’t supposed to know about. I asked Jack Bell if the theory’d registered with him at the time.

Jack Bell: No, it didn’t register. Neumeyer didn’t register with me. I mean, he registered with me but he’s a flake.

Dave Cawley: Michael Neumeyer is no longer alive. I’m unable confirm whether he was, or was not, “a flake.” But his report did little to assist in the search for Sheree.

Jack Bell: It was basically Cary trying to cover his tracks a little bit. And uh, he picked a good one to, to go to.

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(Sound of machines, pipes and creaking door)

Dave Cawley: There’s a place on the campus of Weber State University, on the east side of Ogden, where if you have the right set of keys you can unlock a door that takes you into the gray underbelly of a building called the Swenson Gymnasium. You duck your head under pipes that run along the ceiling. You walk back to a space where the guts of the gym’s swimming pool hide. The pumps, drains, and pipes hiss and grumble, doing endless work rarely witnessed by anyone. It’s an unconventional place to record sound for a podcast, but I’ve brought you down here to meet a woman named Jaimie Schmalz.

Jaimie Schmalz: I should probably tell you how I realized who Cary Hartmann was.

Dave Cawley: Jaimie had spent her early 20s working as a hostess and cocktail waitress at a hotel bar in Ogden called the Electric Alley. It was one of Cary Hartmann’s haunts.

Jaimie Schmalz: I was standing there one night and he walked up to me and I don’t remember what he said, but I remember looking at him, and then him, I think he asked me my name and I kept looking at him and I was like “I know this guy from somewhere. He looks really familiar.” And so finally it dawned on me, I was like, you know my mom. ‘Cause my mom was a hairdresser. So come to find out, she cut his hair.

Dave Cawley: Jaimie told me Cary’d tried to flirt with her.

Jaimie Schmalz: But I didn’t really pay attention to that stuff. I mean, I was there to do my job, y’know?

Dave Cawley: Some time later, she mentioned having run into Cary to her mom.

Jaimie Schmalz: I remember her saying something like “just be careful with him.” And I was like “ok.” But I didn’t really think much of it. And he seemed like an ok guy.

Dave Cawley: A few years went by. Jaimie quit her job at the Electric Alley and went to school, enrolling at Weber State College.

Jaimie Schmalz: And one day I’m walking to my class and there appears Cary Hartmann. And he walks up to me and he starts talking to me and I don’t remember, ‘cause it’s been 30-plus years, but he says “hey, did you know that there’s a, a window in the swimming pool at the aquatics center?” And I was like “what do you mean?” And he was like “well there’s a window. You can see people swimming.”

Dave Cawley: This was true. It’s not there anymore, but the gym’s swimming pool did once have a viewing window below the water level. I’m not sure what it was for. Whatever the reason, access to the window was buried in the bowels of the building. Not just anyone could get down there. I’ve mentioned this before, but now it’s relevant to repeat: Cary worked for the college, running the steam boilers and maintaining the pipes that snaked through tunnels all beneath campus. He had the keys. Cary asked Jaimie to come with him to see the swimming pool window.

Jaimie Schmalz: And I was like “ok.”

Dave Cawley: They headed over to the gym. Cary opened that locked door and ushered Jaimie inside.

Jaimie Schmalz: And so we go in there and it’s underground in this basement and we had to walk clear in the very back. It was just him and I and we walk all the way in the very back and then there’s this window. And he’s like “see, anybody could watch you at any time and they could see what you’re doing in the swimming pool.” And I was like “ok.” I, I didn’t really, like (laughs) I don’t know if I was supposed to have a certain reaction but I just thought it was kind of strange and I think I might have said “that’s kind of creepy.”

Dave Cawley: Jaimie couldn’t tell me why she’d agreed to go with Cary, alone, to this secluded spot. She thought maybe he’d said something about being a cop. She couldn’t remember. Jaimie admits she’d been naive then and hadn’t questioned Cary’s motives, the way she does now.

Jaimie Schmalz: What was the purpose of taking me down there and showing me the window. Like what, like, did he get off on that somehow?

Dave Cawley: Jaimie told me Cary didn’t try anything that day under the pool. She thinks she knows why.

Jaimie Schmalz: If he tried to do anything, once I got away, I know him.

Dave Cawley: “Once I got away.” That presumes a lot. If Jaimie’d screamed, no one would’ve heard her over the noise. But clearly, that’s not what happened. She walked back out into the sunlight, perfectly safe. Looking back now, she’s not sure how.

Jaimie Schmalz: He got something out of it, me agreeing to go there.

Dave Cawley: While researching what Jaimie told me, I came across an article from May of ’86 in the archives of Weber State’s student newspaper, The Signpost. It said campus police had received reports from several women who’d come out of the shower at the gym and found a man sitting in the women’s locker room, watching them. It went on to say, “police believe this is the same man who watches swimmers in the Swenson Gym pool from a window below water level. Police Chief Lee Cassity said the man is thought to masturbate while watching the swimmers.” I couldn’t find any follow-up stories about this swimming pool voyeur, so I don’t know if he was ever identified or arrested.

Jaimie Schmalz: And then I’m at home one night and I get this phone call. And this man says “hi, I’m doing a survey on lady’s lingerie and women’s apparel. Can you help me out here?” And in my mind, I know I had had that phone call before and I hung up. And so I thought “ugh, I hung up on him before. Ok, I’ll do it this time.” So he just starts asking me questions and he said “ok, so we’re going to talk about lady’s underwear. Do you like briefs, thong or bikinis? What do you wear?” And so I was like “well, it depends on what I’m wearing.” And he was like “well, what do you sleep in?” I tell him and he’s like “ok.” And he start asking me other questions like what kind of nylons did I like? And I don’t remember the other questions until he said “well, so why don’t you tell me what your breasts are like. Are they firm, not so firm or saggy?” And I was like “ugh, that’s a little personal, don’t you think?” … And he just had this comeback, like, (fingers snap) on it, quick, quick … And so it seemed legit so I answered him and then he said “well, what about your areola? Is it the size of a, like, a dime, the size or a nickel or the size of a quarter?” And I said “what the hell does that have to do with lady’s lingerie?” And he was just like “well, we like to find out what women like and dut-dut-dut.” And then, like I said, I got really quiet, ‘cause I thought “is he masturbating?” Like, but I never heard anything. So a little bit later in the conversation, I all the sudden, I realize (pause) this sounds like Cary Hartmann. … And I think I may have even said to him, “your voice sounds familiar.” But I don’t remember what he said.

Dave Cawley: Jaimie’d had enough. She hung up on the man.

Jaimie Schmalz: After I hung up the phone, I felt like I just got goosebumps. I was really uncomfortable, I was scared.

Dave Cawley: But also, angry. She picked up her phone book, looked up Cary Hartmann’s name and dialed his number. His line was busy. Jaimie had forgotten this detail when we spoke, but I refreshed her memory by showing her a report written by an Ogden police detective named Chris Zimmerman.

Jaimie Schmalz: I did that! Now that he says that, I did that. I can’t believe I forgot that. That’s right. Oh my God. (Laughs) It’s like ‘you’re not gonna get me, [expletive]. (Laughs) Sorry, but, like you know what I mean?

Dave Cawley: We’ve met Zimmerman before. He was the Ogden detective who’d issued a prank parking ticket to President Ronald Reagan’s limousine. Jaimie told me she’d first met Zimmerman after a man had groped her on campus, sometime before this whole encounter with Cary Hartmann. Zimmerman had walked her through filing a report in that case.

Jaimie Schmalz: Because Chris had given me his card and he was a detective for Ogden City, I felt comfortable enough so I called him and I was like “I hope you don’t think I’m weird,” I said, “but I swear to God I just got an obscene phone call from Cary Hartmann.” And he was like “really?” And I said “yeah,” like, “I’m, I’m positive.”

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman was among the detectives working the Ogden City Rapist investigation. The rapist had struck again just days before. In that case, a woman had described waking around 3 a.m. to the sound of noise in her living room. She’d gone to investigate and found a strange man there. He’d come in through a window. She’d tried to fight, to push him out of the house.

“Make it easy for me,” he’d said. “I have a gun. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll hurt you and your baby.”

She’d stopped fighting, but warned the man her husband might come home soon. He’d told her that was a lie. He knew she was divorced or separated.

“I’ve been watching you for quite awhile,” he’d said. “I know where you shop. I know where you work. I know who your parents are.”

He’d forced her back into her bedroom. She’d noted an odor: he smelled greasy, as if he’d been working around a machine or engine of some kind. She’d asked the man who he was. He’d replied he was a cop, would know if she called the police and would come back to kill her and her baby if she did. He gave her advice on how to better secure her windows and doors, told her not to worry because she wouldn’t get pregnant, then as he was leaving, offered to send her money in the mail. Zimmerman, the detective, had gone on the news the next day and described this modus operandi.

Chris Zimmerman (from June 16, 1986 KSL TV archive): The only thing that we can come up with on that is there is a possibility that he follows the women, uh, around town, gets to know ‘em, gets to know information about them and then hits ‘em.

Dave Cawley: Jaimie Schmalz had seen detective Zimmerman on TV talking about the rape cases. She told him on the phone she felt afraid, because she fit the profile of the rape victims: single, in her 20s, with a child.

Jaimie Schmalz: And so he’s like “ok, well are you safe?” Like, “lock your door,” y’know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dave Cawley: She asked if there was a connection between the rapist and Cary Hartmann’s lingerie survey phone call. Could the call be a prelude to an attack?

Jaimie Schmalz: He knew he was calling me. There’s no doubt in my mind.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman assured her there was no connection. That he knew of. That was about to change.

The Ogden City Rapist attacked yet another woman on October 20^th, 1986. The assault had many of the same hallmarks: the man entered the woman’s home as she slept, told her he was a police officer, claimed to have but didn’t show a gun, and threatened to kill the woman and her children if she didn’t cooperate. Ogden police detective Shane Minor and his colleagues had been trying for months to find a common thread.

Shane Minor: There was a couple different lists we had going of dates, uh, location, date, time of occurrence and the location. Started to compile those and then looking at the M.O. on how the person got in, kind of different things that happened once they were inside and trying to get some gist of if we’re dealing with the same person or if we’re dealing with more than one person.

Dave Cawley: Their lists included these commonalities: the victims were all single or separated with small children, the attacker used a “minimum amount of force,” he sometimes smelled of grease, often stole purses and would occasionally mention police department connections. The detectives also saw similarities in the specifics of the sex acts.

Shane Minor: The telephone calls came up. There was a rash of those. We didn’t know if those were the same, if that person played into the break-in rapes that had been going on.

Dave Cawley: That changed when detective Chris Zimmerman received a tip at the end of October. He wrote a report about it, but kept the woman anonymous. Even today, I don’t know her identity. The woman told Zimmerman she believed Cary Hartmann could be the Ogden City Rapist. She had personal knowledge that Cary had for years made obscene lingerie survey phone calls. She also said Cary lived just up the street from where one of the rapes had occurred. Zimmerman started digging. He knew Cary had been in the Ogden police reserve.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): In speaking with officers about Hartmann, they stated he liked to show his badge and tell people he was a cop.

Dave Cawley: That comes from a report Zimmerman later filed in the case. Zimmerman declined my request for an interview, so you’re hearing his words read by a voice actor.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): Due to the fact that Hartmann was a friend to some officers, this was kept as quiet as possible and it was decided no supplementary reports would be written until absolutely needed. All records were kept by me in note form.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman learned of Cary’s 1971 arrest for making harassing telephone calls to Heidi Posnien.

Heidi Posnien: He says ‘hi’… I can’t remember exactly.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): Hartmann started the call with a lingerie survey.

Dave Cawley: He read of how Cary’d tried to lure Heidi up the canyon, to campground near Causey Reservoir…

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): …using a threat of bodily harm to her husband.

Heidi Posnien: He would say if I try to call anybody then it wouldn’t be healthy for my husband because he’d do something to the Mustang.

Dave Cawley: Heidi had shown Cary mercy after his arrest in the canyon. She’d just wanted him to get some help. But that hadn’t happened.

Heidi Posnien: He was probably just a sick puppy.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman was aware of Cary’s connection to Sheree Warren, so he called Roy City police detective Jack Bell. They began to look at the whole arc of Cary’s behavior and saw a clear escalation from that encounter with Heidi in 1971 to where they then stood, 15 years later.

Jack Bell: Everything escalates.

Dave Cawley: Yeah.

Jack Bell: You’re right.

Dave Cawley: They talked about how the rapist had sometimes claimed to be a cop.

Jack Bell: Some reserves got a little badge-happy and thought they were real policemen.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman wrote Cary had been booted from the reserve after flashing his badge to get out of a ticket.

Jack Bell: That would definitely get you bounced out.

Dave Cawley: This differed from the official account, that Cary had resigned because he’d taken a job out of state. It seems likely that’d been a convenient excuse, a way of getting Cary out of the reserve without unnecessary embarrassment.

Zimmerman spent several days contacting each of the rape victims again, asking if any had received lingerie survey phone calls before the attacks. Several had. One told him not only had she received the call, she’d also been at the Weber State gym — where she taught gymnastics — hours before being attacked at her home. Zimmerman found other links between Cary and some of the women. One recognized Cary’s photo because he was friends with her husband. Another was a family friend to the Hartmanns. Yet another lived in the same apartment complex as one of Cary’s former girlfriends.

Shane Minor: Zimm had connected Hartmann to four victims.

Dave Cawley: Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor told me that represented only about a quarter of the rapes on the detectives’ lists. They needed stronger evidence, so Zimmerman took his findings to the Weber County Attorney. He asked the state court for permission to put what’s known as a pen register on Cary’s phone. It would record the number of every outgoing call. The pen register became active toward the end of November, 1986. Over the next five weeks, it logged more than 1,900 outgoing calls from Cary’s phone.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): These were placed on a computer printout. Approximately 200 of the calls were to friends or acquaintances.

Dave Cawley: These are Zimmerman’s words from a report, read by a voice actor.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): The others were picked at random, going through the phone book and picking last names with girls’ first names or first name listed as initials only. … I did contact several of the people called and they had received the lingerie survey.

Dave Cawley: Zimmerman noticed one number appeared multiple times. He called it and a woman answered. He explained who he was and asked if she’d received a lingerie survey call. She said no, but she knew who made them. Zimmerman had inadvertently called Cary’s second wife, Becky. I shared a bit of her story with you in episode 1. Zimmerman’s notes say Becky recalled Cary making obscene phone calls to random women while they were married. She mentioned Cary’d had a vasectomy. This caught Zimmerman’s attention, because it potentially explained why the rapist had told one of the women not to worry about getting pregnant. Becky said Cary’d been infatuated with guns and owned both .357 and .38-caliber revolvers, guns capable of firing the rounds used in the three unsolved murders under investigation by the Salt Lake City task force. And Becky’s new husband told Zimmerman Cary was infatuated with Ted Bundy.

Ted Bundy (from July 24, 1979 KSL TV archive): It started out in Utah and it seemed like one case seemed to, one set of circumstances seemed to bootstrap another.

Dave Cawley: That’s Bundy’s voice in a phone call to a reporter in 1979, denying he’d ever killed anyone. Becky’s husband told detective Zimmerman Cary had even made his sons sit and watch a TV special about Bundy. I can’t say for sure, but based on the timeframe, it’s possible that show was a made-for-TV movie called “The Deliberate Stranger.”

Janice Waibel (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): Ted Bundy is being played by St. Elsewhere star Mark Harmon.

Mark Harmon (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): There’s a whole lot of psychiatrists in this country who are still trying to find out what makes him tick, too. It’s a complex, person, y’know?

Dave Cawley: Ogden police began to suspect the Ogden City Rapist might also have studied the work of Ted Bundy.

Ted Bundy (from July 24, 1979 KSL TV archive): Police officers, they want to solve crimes and sometimes I don’t think really, they really try to think things through. … They’re willing to take the convenient alternative. And the convenient alternative is me.

Dave Cawley: Earlier in this episode, I told you about a woman I’m calling Danielle. She was among the many women whom the Ogden City Rapist had attacked. Ogden police had closed her case without an arrest, due to a lack of leads. But detective Chris Zimmerman re-established contact with Danielle again in November of ’86, about half a year following her assault. She told him she’d put it out of her mind and tried to move on with her life. Zimmerman told Danielle he needed her help. He showed her a spread of six pictures of men’s faces. Cary Hartmann’s picture sat among them. Danielle couldn’t pinpoint her attacker from those photos. It’d been too dark. She hadn’t been able to see well without her contacts. And he’d told her not to look at him. She just couldn’t be certain what he looked like

“I’ve seen one of them before,” she’d said, “but it’s nothing.”

Zimmerman asked her to explain. Any little thing could help.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): She stated that she was a barber and she had gone to Bob’s Sewing Machine a few weeks prior to her attack to have her scissors sharpened.

Dave Cawley: This again comes from a report detective Chris Zimmerman wrote.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): In the store, there was a white male working there and another white male standing there talking to him. The person who was standing there … was the person in the picture she had picked. This was Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: Bob’s Sewing Machine was the shop where Cary’s friend and fellow former Ogden police reserve officer Dave Moore worked.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): There was discussion about whether she was single or married, where she cut hair and other personal information. [She] gave her name and address to them for the scissors receipt. Hartmann was standing right there when she gave the address and name.

Dave Cawley: The man who’d broken into Danielle’s home had awoken her by whispering her name into her ear.

Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from May 21, 1987 report): She couldn’t identify the suspect by picture, but she was sure if she heard his voice again she would know him because his voice was very distinctive.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann had started a new job in the summer of ’86, a few months after the attack on Danielle. He still worked for Weber State College during the day but now tended bar at night at a place called The Galleon. Danielle and a friend went The Galleon one night in March of ’87, just shy of a year on from the night of her rape. As they sat and socialized, sipping their drinks, a man came on the intercom. It was the bartender. A jolt shot through Danielle. She recognized the voice. It was the same as the man who’d raped her: Cary Hartmann.