Cold Season 3, bonus: The Causey Search – Full episode transcript

Dave Cawley: Each swing of the pick brought a loud clank of metal against stone. Sweat dripped from the faces of the detectives who took turns heaving shovelfuls of dirt into an orange bucket. Next to them, standing over a blue tarp, CSI workers sifted loose dirt through a mesh screen, pausing to peer at any odd roots or rocks. What they really hoped to find were fragments of bone. Roy City police and Weber County crime scene investigators, along with search and rescue staff, conducted an excavation of a possible clandestine grave near Causey Reservoir in mountains of northern Utah on August 23rd, 2023. They were looking for skeletal remains, possibly those of Sheree Warren.

Jason Romney (from Aug. 23, 2023 recording): How many years has it been, Dave?

Dave Cawley (from Aug. 23, 2023 recording): Since Sheree?

Jason Romney (from Aug. 23, 2023 recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley (from Aug. 23, 2023 recording): 38.

Jason Romney (from Aug. 23, 2023 recording): 38? Yeah, I would think after that time we might just be getting long bones, big bones.

Dave Cawley: Sheree Warren’s case, and these mountains that may hold secrets about her fate, have consumed my attention for quite some time. You’ve heard the result: the story of the search for Sheree is chronicled in COLD season 3. Through months and years of research, I honed in on this specific spot as a possible place to look for Sheree Warren’s remains. Circumstantial evidence suggests one of the two named suspects in Sheree’s disappearance could’ve known this place very well. There was also an outside chance this site could hold evidence related to the murder of Joyce Yost, the subject of COLD season 2.

These two cases, Sheree Warren’s and Joyce Yost’s, are likely unrelated, but they occurred in close proximity to one another, in space and time. Over the last nearly 40 years, they’ve bled into one another. We’ve now taken detailed looks at both in this podcast, and heard repeated references to Causey Reservoir.

Shane Minor: The Causey area’s about 20 miles east of Ogden, there’s a Causey Reservoir.

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

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you ever hunt in the Causey Reservoir area?

Rod Layton: Causey is a area up the canyon.

Jared Briggs (from December 15, 2006 Utah State Prison recording): And he scooped her body up and they drove to Causey.

Jack Bell: You got two reservoirs up there that are deep, Causey and Lost Creek.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): There’s some really steep trails going up to the righthand side off Causey.

Dave Cawley: That’s why Roy City police invited myself and several of my colleagues from KSL-TV, the Salt Lake City-based news station I work for, to watch as they excavated this site.

Dan Spindle (from August 23, 2023 KSL TV archive): Breaking news happening right now. Law enforcement agencies in Weber County are digging right now what appears to be at a burial site that might be connected to a four-decades-old murder case.

Dave Cawley: But if you’re not in Utah, or don’t watch the news here, you probably didn’t hear anything about this. So let me bring you up to speed. In this episode, we’ll review the evidence that points to the possibility of gravesite near Causey. We’ll go to the site of this dig, and I’ll share where the search for Sheree Warren stands, now that the dust has literally settled.

This is a bonus episode of COLD, season 3: The Causey Search. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley. 

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Dave Cawley: Let’s begin with a recap of the Joyce Yost and Sheree Warren cases. Both had their start in the area of Ogden, Utah back in 1985. Joyce’s case came first. That April, a man Joyce had never met followed her home from a club late one night. Doug Lovell confronted Joyce in the carport outside her apartment in the city of South Ogden. Lovell sexually assaulted Joyce, kidnapped her and held her captive.

Joyce, fearing for her life, promised not to tell anyone what Lovell’d done if he just let her go. He did. When Joyce made it safety at home in the early morning hours, she called her sister. This is Joyce’s voice, explaining what her sister said.

Joyce Yost (from April 4, 1985 police recording): She says “well you call the police.” And I said ‘I really don’t want to be put through the humiliation.” … She said, in fact the more she heard from me, the angrier she was getting and she says “well, you call the police right now,’ or she said, “if you don’t, I will.” So, I said “I will.”

Dave Cawley: Joyce soon met with detective Bill Holthaus. She told him her story. Holthaus believed Joyce, and he arrested Doug Lovell that same morning on suspicion of rape.

Bill Holthaus: He looked at me with an expression that got my attention. … But it just was like it froze the moment. And he said “this will not go to trial.”

Dave Cawley: Through a series of mistakes and mishaps, Lovell found himself out of jail while awaiting trial that summer. He tried to hire two hitmen, but both fell through. So, in August, 10 days before the scheduled start of the trial, Doug Lovell crept into Joyce Yost’s apartment through a window, startled her awake and slashed her with a knife. Lovell then took Joyce away in her own car and hid her body.

Weeks later, at the start of October, Sheree Warren walked out of her work at the headquarters office for the Utah State Employees Credit Union in Salt Lake City. She told a coworker she was going to meet her estranged husband at nearby car dealership. Afterward, Sheree planned to take her young son to her parents’ house in the city of Roy. She never made it.

Carole Mikita (from October 5, 1985 KSL TV archive): Right now police say they’re investigating the disappearance but have very little to go on.

Ben Glover (from October 5, 1985 KSL TV archive): What we’re asking for is just to locate where she may be. Or any evidence to show that it, or indicate that there is maybe some foul play involved so we can do a, a different type of investigation rather than missing persons.

Dave Cawley: Roy City police at first focused on Sheree’s estranged husband, Charles Warren, thinking he might’ve killed Sheree over their ongoing divorce. Charles told Roy police detective Jack Bell he’d canceled his planned meeting with Sheree at the dealership on the evening of her disappearance and instead went jogging, a weak alibi detective Bell was never able to corroborate.

Jack Bell: I wish he hadn’t looked so guilty to start with, but he did.

Dave Cawley: Charles Warren wasn’t the only suspect, though. Police also came to wonder if a former Ogden City police reserve officer named Cary Hartmann might’ve had something to do with Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Cary and Sheree had been dating.

Six weeks into the investigation, Sheree’s car unexpectedly surfaced behind a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jack Bell: That opened up a whole new can of worms. How did it get there? Which one of these two birds that I’m looking at have the opportunity to get it down there?

Dave Cawley: As Roy police were trying to answer that question, Doug Lovell revisited Joyce Yost’s body somewhere in the mountains, burying Joyce to prevent anyone from finding her. Then, snow fell, blanketing those same mountains. In December, Doug Lovell stood trial for raping Joyce Yost. She didn’t show up to testify. The jury convicted Lovell anyway and sent him to prison, but not for murder. Without a body, South Ogden police were unable to link Joyce’s disappearance to Lovell. Without a body, Roy police were unable to say what might’ve happened to Sheree Warren.

These two separate cases were still both under investigation when, in April of 1987, an anonymous man called Roy City and the Weber County Sheriff’s Office to report finding a woman’s body in the mountains near Causey Reservoir.

Sheli Tracy (from April 3, 1987 Weber County dispatch recording): —a body?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 Weber County 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.

Dave Cawley: Causey is way out in the hills, about 20 miles east of Ogden and its suburbs of South Ogden and Roy. But the land around Causey is rough and remote. Investigators needed more specific information if they ever hoped to find the body. The anonymous caller wasn’t willing to help.

Sheli Tracy (from April 3, 1987 Weber County dispatch recording): Can I get your name?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 Weber County dispatch recording): No, I’m not interested in leading search parties or anything like that.

Dave Cawley: Weeks later, a witness told police he’d bumped into Sheree Warren’s boyfriend, Cary Hartmann, on the mountain behind Causey four days after Sheree disappeared. And detectives learned several of Hartmann’s close personal friends owned property in Causey Estates, a cabin community near the reservoir.

Dave Moore: We had to have a key. There was a gate down right at Causey Reservoir.

Dave Cawley: One of those friends, Dave Moore, was Cary’s alibi for the night Sheree disappeared.

Dave Moore: At the time I didn’t, had no idea that he was using me as a alibi.

Dave Cawley: Another those friends, Brent Morgan, told police Cary had borrowed his key for the gate at Causey Estates shortly before Sheree vanished.

Brent Morgan: Back then there wasn’t a lot of people up there.

Dave Cawley: Police searched around Causey during the spring and summer of 1987, hoping to find the body the anonymous caller had mentioned. Those searches came up empty.

Brent Morgan: You take where he had my key, if he had access up there and could go up and down the roads, you can find the right place where you can 1-2-3 heave-ho and it’s gonna be in a spot where people aren’t gonna go.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann, I should note, ended up in prison but not because of anything to do with Sheree Warren. Ogden City police arrested him as a suspect in a series of home invasion sexual assaults around the same time as the anonymous call and the searches around Causey. A jury convicted Hartmann in one of those cases.

Years later, another clue emerged pointing toward Causey, this time in the Joyce Yost case. In 1991, Doug Lovell’s ex-wife Rhonda Buttars told police on the night Lovell killed Joyce Yost, he took her “up by Causey.”

Rhonda Buttars (from May 1, 1991 police recording): And he said he made her drive up the canyon and they went up by Causey. … And got her out of the car and walked up this hill and if wasn’t very far off the road. … And he said he buried her the best he could.

Dave Cawley: Rhonda Buttars’ confession helped prosecutors secure a capital murder charge against Doug Lovell. Buttars wore a wire into the Utah State Prison and captured audio of her ex-husband as he described burying Joyce Yost in the mountains, covering her with leaves.

Doug Lovell (from January 18, 1992 recording): The only thing I’m nervous about is that one time that caller called it. I remember seeing it on TV. … The way they projected this was “we think we know where the body of Joyce Yost’s remains are.”

Dave Cawley: Lovell cut a plea deal, hoping to avoid the death penalty by promising to take police to Joyce Yost’s grave. In the summer of 1993, he led police to a mountainside east of Ogden. It held no signs of human remains. It was also nowhere near Causey.

Former South Ogden detective Terry Carpenter told me he believes Lovell lied about where he buried Joyce Yost.

Terry Carpenter: She is someplace else and honestly to this day, I believe Sheree Warren’s with her. Otherwise, if we go up and dig and find Joyce and find Sheree, that negates all the agreements that we’ve had with him and not executing him. And he knows that. So he’s not going to take us to Joyce.

Dave Cawley: I’ve looked for evidence that might link Doug Lovell to Sheree Warren. I’ve not found any. Lovell himself denied having ever met Sheree Warren when this speculation first surfaced 30 years ago. But there are those who hold to this theory, even today.

In 2004, Weber County investigators flew over the mountain behind Causey in a state helicopter. They were operating on the assumption Cary Hartmann had killed Sheree Warren and left her body somewhere near Causey.

Shane Minor (from May 25, 2004 police recording): This would’ve been the road I think he had access to … there’s unlimited places where he could’ve dumped her along here.

Kent Harrison (from May 25, 2004 police recording): Hard to think like a bandit, y’know. Would you’ve, you’ve picked a characteristic turn or rock or tree or something to, as a landmark?

Dave Cawley: A year-and-a-half later, a detective named Shane Minor questioned Cary Hartmann about Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Minor asked Hartmann directly if he’d killed Sheree and taken her body to Causey.

Shane Minor (from October 20, 2005 police recording): Did you kill Sheree?

Cary Hartmann (from October 20, 2005 police recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Hartmann said he didn’t have any idea what’d happened to Sheree.

Shane Minor (from October 20, 2005 police recording): Do you know if she was placed in an area above Causey Estates?

Cary Hartmann (from October 20, 2005 police recording): No, I don’t have any idea.

Dave Cawley: A year after this, in 2006, a prison informant started talking to police about Joyce Yost. He said Doug Lovell had drawn him a map of the place where he’d left Yost’s body.

Jared Briggs (from December 15, 2006 Utah State Prison recording): This is the lake, there’s some gates up here and some property.

Dave Cawley: The informant claimed Lovell had taken Joyce Yost to Causey Reservoir.

Jared Briggs (from December 15, 2006 Utah State Prison recording): See these circles here? Uh, he’s telling me this is Huntsville here, the Huntsville area. Uh, and this is Causey.

Dave Cawley: Your head’s probably spinning by this point. It’s so much to keep track of, I know. Not all of these leads are credible. Sorting fact from fiction remains a major challenge in these two cases. But what I hope you’re seeing is a lot of circumstantial evidence points toward Causey Reservoir as an important landmark in the disappearances of Sheree Warren and Joyce Yost.

My job involves taking scattered fragments of a story, spreading them out and putting them in order. Sometimes the individual puzzle pieces don’t look like much on their own. It’s only when they’re assembled that a picture emerges. If done well, the story that comes out of this process should draw as close to truth as I can possibly get it.

Perfect truth is nearly impossible to find. Often, holes remain. Unanswered questions. Like, where is the body the anonymous caller reported finding near Causey, and why couldn’t anyone find it? I’ve struggled to come up with a satisfactory answer. I’ve studied a century’s worth of old maps, seeing the gradual development of trails and roads in the mountains around Causey. I’ve read newspaper archives about the generations of sheepherding families who owned those hills. I’ve hunted down aerial photographs of Causey from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60, ’70s, ‘80s to 1990s, even paying to have old film scanned at ultra-high resolution.

I’ve gone up into the air myself, by plane and helicopter, to study the thousands of acres of inaccessible private land behind Causey.

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): This big flat top—

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

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —when it narrows down on the eastern edge, we just want to stay to the right of the ridge—

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

Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —and then we’ll cross over.

Dave Cawley: Through all this, I became very interested in a stretch of old jeep road. In the 1980s, this trail linked Causey Estates, where Cary Hartmann was known to spend time, to the spot on the mountain top where a witness said he saw Hartmann four days after Sheree Warren disappeared. Much of the jeep trail falls within the radius that anonymous caller referenced to when he described finding a woman’s body.

Sheli Tracy (from April 3, 1987 Weber County dispatch recording): Is it in Weber County?

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 Weber County dispatch recording): It’s over there by, uh, Causey Dam.

Dave Cawley: As my focus narrowed onto this old trail, I came across something unusual in the aerial images and video I’d collected. The trail climbs a hill heading east out of Causey Estates. At the top of that hill I saw a pile of rocks, about six feet long and three feet wide: roughly the size and shape one might expect for a clandestine grave.

It wasn’t clear from the images I’d collected if the rock pile existed before the 1980s. Those older pictures just weren’t clear enough to tell. But I was able to determine the rock pile had sat undisturbed since at least the early ‘90s.

Dave Cawley (from May 29, 2023 recording): And as we come up on the anomalous rock pile—

Dave Cawley: I was able to visit the rock pile myself.

Dave Cawley (from May 29, 2023 recording): —you should see how it stands out from the surrounding environment.

Dave Cawley: I carried a camera with me, to document the site and the old jeep trail nearby.

Dave Cawley (from May 29, 2023 recording): And as you look around you can see there are rocks on this trail, but there are no other piles of rocks of similar shape and size. So that is unique.

Dave Cawley: This discovery presented a bit of a conundrum. The code of ethics that guides my work as a journalist says I need to act with independence. I don’t work for the police, and I don’t automatically share everything I know with them. But if this rock pile did mark a possible grave, it felt irresponsible to simply ignore it, or to publish that speculation without taking steps to find out for sure. I shared images of the rock pile with a handful of trusted colleagues and sources, who all agreed my eyes were not mistaken. It did look like it could be a grave.

Dave Cawley (from May 29, 2023 recording): Again, unnatural. Unnatural rock pile.

Dave Cawley: So, I provided this information to Roy City police detective John Frawley, the lead detective on the Sheree Warren case. He thanked me for it. Some time passed. Then, in August of 2023, I received word Roy police had news to share.

Mike Headrick (fro August 22, 2023 KSL TV archive): Good evening, breaking news out of Weber County where police plan to conduct a major search related to an Utah cold case dating back to the 1980s.

Deanie Wimmer (fro August 22, 2023 KSL TV archive): It’s a case we’ve covered extensively right here at KSL as part of the Cold podcast.

Mike Headrick (fro August 22, 2023 KSL TV archive): We plan to be on the mountain with police as they explore this site tomorrow. Stay with KSL TV throughout the day for any breaking developments.

Dave Cawley: I had an exclusive invite to come along as police went to Causey to dig below the rock pile, looking for possible human remains.

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Dave Cawley: Don’t make yourself the subject of your own story. This mantra is foundational for journalists. It’s drilled into our heads by professors and editors. But college didn’t prepare me for a career in which journalism would take me on the hunt for human remains. Finding this odd rock pile while looking for a clandestine grave around Causey made me a subject in my own story. My managers at KSL recognized this. They decided to assign a different reporter to cover the story of the dig. I would still be there to watch and provide comment and context, but reporter Dan Rascon would put the story on the air.

Shara Park (from August 23, 2023 KSL TV archive): News Specialist Dan Rascon giving us exclusive access to this site and the operation. So Dan, tell us where you are, what you’ve been seeing there. This is a big operation.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 KSL TV archive): Dan Rascon “Yeah, this is a major operation undergoing right now.

Dave Cawley: This wasn’t the only ethical consideration. KSL also took a few steps to safeguard our independence. We decided we would provide our own transportation to and from the site, which meant finding someone with four-wheelers available on short notice. We told police if we came along, we’d have the freedom to share anything we saw or heard with you. They agreed.

We met in the morning, as low clouds settled in the mountain valleys, catching sidelong rays of the rising summer sun. Our caravan of SUVs headed east from the small town of Huntsville, driving up Utah state highway 39, following the South Fork of the Ogden River to Causey. One by one, we drove across the dam to the gate for Causey Estates, drawing curious stares from fishermen and paddle boarders. Another mile or two on dirt and gravel brought us to the bottom of a steep hill.

We parked, doused ourselves in sunscreen, and loaded equipment onto ATVs: cameras, coolers, pop-up shades and shovels. There weren’t enough seats for everyone. Some of us donned backpacks and hiked the remaining mile to the rock pile, grunting up steep switchbacks. We reconvened up top, on a saddle overlooking Causey Estates. The CSI team set up a laser scanner, a 40-thousand dollar piece of equipment designed to make a 3-D model of the site. It sat on a tripod, rotating and beeping as we all waited.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): We were trying to buy newer ones that don’t take as long.

Dave Cawley: They launched a small drone to collect more imagery from above. If evidence of a murder came out of the ground, this would be crucial to show what the site looked like prior to its excavation. Another member of the team used a small handheld saw to cut back overgrown brush and branches around the rock pile. With the ground clear, the CSI team set down their tarp and raised an awning over the rocks. As they did so, my KSL colleague Dan Rascon went to work conducting interviews. He asked Roy police detective John Frawley what would happen next.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 recording): What are you gonna, this seems like a very methodical process. It’s not like you just bring out the shovels and start digging.

John Frawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): No, we want to be very respectful, also. There’s a proper way to do this. And so, the Weber County CSI team is very professional and they’re going to handle this.

Dave Cawley: I think what John was getting at here was if the search about to get underway turned up human remains, we all needed to remember what it might mean. My mind turned to all the people I’ve met over the last several years who would be watching live coverage of this search on TV.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): We know there are families of victims, missing women—Sheree Warren, Joyce Yost, another person who could potentially be up in this area—and they have for the last four decades wondered where are their loved ones. And they’re today watching and waiting to see what comes out of this. So that’s very difficult.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 recording): So, we could find a body today.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): We won’t know until Weber County CSI starts doing their work, but I don’t think you get this team up here unless they think it’s a reasonable possibility that they might recover human remains here.

Dave Cawley: At the same time, none of us wanted to presume an outcome that hadn’t yet happened.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 recording): And if you find anything?

John Frawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): If we find anything, we will slow down at that point and figure out what we have and what needs to happen then. … We would obviously follow where the evidence leads us. We wouldn’t want to make any pre-determinations. If we did find something, we want to keep an open mind and see where the evidence would lead us at that point.

Dave Cawley: A low roar began to rise from the south.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Is that the Chopper?

Dave Cawley: It grew louder, drawing near until a helicopter crested above the mountain and began to orbit overhead.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): There will probably be some Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes going on. Get to the choppa.

Dave Cawley: It belonged to KSL: Chopper 5. The very helicopter that’d helped find this odd rock pile in the first place. Over the sound of the thrumming helicopter blades, the investigators began removing rocks from the pile and tossing them to the side. Stone by stone, they worked to expose the bare ground beneath. They sent spiders scurrying and even disturbed a hornet’s nest.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): To the pilot we look like we found something. He doesn’t know that it’s wasps.

Steve Haney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yeah, everybody runs when it—(laughter)—he’s like “something’s going on, something’s going on.”

Mark Horton (from August 23, 2023 recording): Game on.

Steve Haney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Game on.

Dave Cawley: With the rocks removed, we could see the pile had covered a divot, or depression. The ground under the pile sat 8 to 10 inches lower than the surrounding soil. This, I’d learned, could be a clue because when a buried body decomposes, the ground above it may settle. I felt a sense of guarded optimism as the investigators began removing soil. They passed the loose earth off to be sifted. The idea here is dirt will fall through, while larger items like teeth, bone chips or cloth fragments will be caught by the screen. It’s not as easy at it might sound, because each bucket load of soil held hundreds of small pebbles too large to fall through. The CSI team had to visually inspect them.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): After this long, teeth look like these little rocks.

Dave Cawley: The closest analogy I can think of for this is it’s like looking for a single tiny piece of Lego in giant heap of bricks that are all a similar size and color. While this work was unfolding, the KSL team went live on the air to share it with the public in real time.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 KSL TV archive): Yeah, we’re high on a ridge right now just outside of Causey Reservoir. This, possibly a burial site for Sheree Warren. She disappeared back in October of 1985. We’re going to go ahead and bring in Dave Cawley here, of course with the Cold podcast. And Dave, tell us the significance of what is happening here right now.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 KSL TV archive): We’re seeing the detectives are using shovels and picks to pull soil off of this site, to see if there is anything of evidence related to Sheree’s case coming out of that. They’ve taken just a few inches off the top and it will be a really slow process over the next several hours.

Dave Cawley: I wasn’t surprised when no skeletal remains surfaced beneath the first few inches of dirt. It stood to reason if anything or anyone was buried here, it wouldn’t be right at the surface.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Steve, you just decide with Dave when you think you guys are at your limit.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): Not my call, so you guys make it.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): You’re not running the show?

Danny Hammon (from August 23, 2023 recording): Let’s go another four inches.

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): Let’s dig it. Let’s dig it. We’ve got enough to dig right now.

Dave Cawley: Load after load of soil went through the screen. Only once or twice did the searchers pause, like when an old .22-caliber shell casing, maybe a century old, caught up in the mesh.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): .22 number 2, Jess.

Danny Hammon (from August 23, 2023 recording): Another .22 that deep?

Jess Pontius (from August 23, 2023 recording): Really?

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Is it the same?

John Frawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): Another .22 shell?

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): I’m still going to say it could be falling off the higher shelf up here and rolling in.

Dave Cawley: Hour after hour passed. Scattered clouds crept across the sky, casting shadows that sat on the landscape like spots on a Dalmatian. The hole sank progressively deeper.

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): I’d be pretty mind-blown if they could dig this far.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yeah.

Steve Haney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yeah, no.

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): I mean, I guess if you’re motivated, though. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: The excited, nervous chatter that’d pervaded earlier in the day faded away. A specter of disappointment loomed.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): Y’know, in another 40 years, someone’s going to find this rock pile and a whole other team’s going to come up here and do this all over again.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): You’ll be the old retired person.

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): I know, right?

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): You’ll like, say your war stories.

Dave Cawley: By midafternoon, the hole reached a depth of between two and three feet. The detectives who were taking turns with the shovels noticed a change.

Danny Hammon (from August 23, 2023 recording): So that color of dirt has been consistent all the way across and we’re at least 3 to 4 inches into it.

Jason Romney (from August 23, 2023 recording): No disturbance in the layer?

Dave Cawley: They reached a layer of soil that’d not been disturbed before.

Steve Haney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yep. Let’s uh, let’s even that out to where—

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): That level there?

Steve Haney (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yeah.

Kyle Curtis (from August 23, 2023 recording): ‘Kay, I agree with that.

Dave Cawley: Proof no one had previously dug a hole that deep at the site.

Danny Hammon (from August 23, 2023 recording): I was so optimistic.

Dave Cawley: It might’ve looked like one, but detective Frawley said the rock pile didn’t mark a grave.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 recording): Your reaction to that? I mean, I guess you were hoping to find something, maybe?

John Frawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): You’re always hoping to find something but I think like we’ve discussed as investigators, we keep going. Y’know, if there’s a place to dig, we’re going to dig. If there’s a place to search, we’re going to search. And we’re just not going to stop. So we will follow every tip and every lead.

Dave Cawley: I’m not going to lie. This outcome left me feeling deflated. In the time between my discovery of the rock pile and its excavation, I told myself not to build up any expectations. It was far more likely someone’s dog was under those rocks than a murder victim. Even if human remains were buried there, they could’ve belonged to a sheepherder, a pioneer, a fur trapper or an indigenous person. I knew this. Still, I couldn’t ignore the possibility no matter how low the probability. Maybe this would be a break. I’m human, so yeah, I allowed a little hope. But there was nothing. No bones of any kind.

Sweeping my eyes across that mountain as the police packed up their gear and raked loose dirt back into the hole, seeing the brush and trees spanning to the horizon, I felt a sting of futility. If Sheree Warren or Joyce Yost are up here, can we ever really hope to find them? Maybe not.

This is the real nature of cold case work. It’s perpetual disappointment. And yet, I refuse to accept a fatalistic view. This search mattered, for many reasons. It took one more location off the list of possibilities. It prompted new discussion about what happened to Joyce Yost and Sheree Warren. And it sent a message to their killers: we will not stop.

Detective Frawley said it well: if there’s a place to search, they’re going to search. If there’s a place to dig, they’re going to dig.

Dan Rascon (from August 23, 2023 recording): And is that what you do, too, on the Cold podcast?

Dave Cawley (from August 23, 2023 recording): Yeah absolutely. So, for the Cold podcast, our job is to tell these stories, to tell Sheree Warren’s story. To let the public know about what’s happened in the past and what’s happening right now. But that doesn’t mean that this case ends when our podcast ends, or that we stop paying attention. So, I myself, KSL, the Cold podcast, we’re dedicated to continuing to follow Sheree’s case and if we come across any new information, we will be out on the next mountain, doing the next search.

Dave Cawley: In every setback, I see progress. In every hole excavated, we plant a seed of new opportunity. A fruitless search is not defeat, it’s a step on the path toward truth. This will not be the last search.

Cold season 3, bonus: The Convenient Alternative – Full episode transcript

Dave Cawley: Serial killer Ted Bundy spent years denying what he’d done. From his initial arrest in Utah…

Reporter (from November 21, 1975 KSL TV archive): You said you were surprised when you went to jail. For better or for worse?

Ted Bundy (from November 21, 1975 KSL TV archive): Hey listen, uh, we do have to go. Surprised? I don’t know. I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never been in a jail before, never been arrested before.

Dave Cawley: …to Ted Bundy’s murder convictions in Florida…

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. … And they’re willing to take the convenient alternative. And the convenient alternative is me.

Dave Cawley: …Ted Bundy maintained his innocence. But Bundy wasn’t innocent.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): The Ted Bundy story is in part a historical odyssey stretching thousands of miles from one corner of the country to the other. It’s part crime drama, spanning most of two decades.

Dave Cawley: In Cold season 3, we heard how Cary Hartmann, one of the two suspects in the disappearance of Sheree Warren, had been fascinated by Ted Bundy.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): But most of all, it’s a psychological mystery about a man who lived in two worlds: an everyday world of shining opportunity and a dark world of madness and violence.

Dave Cawley: Ted Bundy was a charismatic young law student with a promising future in politics when he moved from Washington state to Utah at the end of summer in 1974. At that same time, police in and around Seattle were looking into a string of disappearances and deaths.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): The press began talking about a lookalike killer who seemed to select women simply because they were young and pretty.

Dave Cawley: By his own later admission, Bundy killed at least 30 women during the 1970s. To this day, many remain unidentified and in some cases, were never located.

Bundy’s final murders, in Florida, landed him on death row in 1979. A flurry of legal appeals followed but by 1986 it appeared Bundy would be executed. As the scheduled date approached, investigators from across the country traveled to Florida in the hopes of interviewing him about their unsolved cases.

Richard Bingham (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): Here in Utah he’s a suspect in the murders of Melissa Smith and Laura Aime. Also the disappearance of Nancy Wilcox and Nancy Baird. Salt Lake County Sheriff Pete Hayward has been involved in the case from the beginning.

Pete Hayward (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s responsible for the Smith girl and the Aime girl that was found in American Fork Canyon. Uh, we have two other girls that we feel strongly that he’d have to be considered as a prime suspect in and that would be the Wilcox girl and a young lady that was taken out of a gas station up in, I believe it was Layton.

Dave Cawley: It’s that last young woman we’re going to focus on in this episode. Bundy was only willing to talk if it played to his advantage. He intended to barter information about his crimes as a last resort to stave off execution. But he didn’t have to do that in 1986 because the courts granted him a reprieve.

Pete Hayward (from June 27, 1986 KSL TV archive): Bundy at that time made the comment that it wouldn’t be in his best interest to talk to us at this time. But did not say that he wouldn’t talk to us at all.

Dave Cawley: That narrow escape from the electric chair only added to the Bundy mystique.

Mary King (from July 2, 1986 KSL TV archive): Florida State Prison.

John Hollenhorst (from July 2, 1986 KSL TV archive): Bundy’s notoriety has prompted many hundreds of phone calls to the prison in recent weeks, mostly from women.

Mary King (from July 2, 1986 KSL TV archive): They want to talk to him, or they want to know his address so they can write to him, or they want to congratulate on us on having nerve enough to try to burn him.

Dave Cawley: This building of a serial killer into a cultural icon was gross then and it remains so today. And I’m hesitant to play into that by talking about Ted Bundy in this podcast. But it’s important to understand just how pervasive Bundy was in the minds of police and the public during the late 1970s and through the 1980s for the story you’re about to hear.

Florida scheduled a new execution date for Ted Bundy, in January of 1989. This time, Bundy’s legal challenges were swept aside. And so, with no other option to forestall his appointment with the electric chair, Bundy started to talk. He spoke with investigators in the hopes of delaying his impending death.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Ok, I’ve turned the recorder on.

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): We’ll do what we can.

Dave Cawley: That’s how a detective named Dennis Couch from the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Utah ended up sitting down with Ted Bundy on January 22nd, 1989. This audio comes from that interview.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): That’s my first and foremost reason for being here, for those three girls that are missing and—

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): And some more.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): From Utah?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: The tape recording of this interview is sometimes difficult to understand. But during their 90 minutes together, Bundy told detective Couch he was responsible for five murders in Utah.

Joel Munson (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): Along with the Kent and Wilcox murders, Couch says Bundy gave useful information that should help investigators solve the murders of Melissa Smith and Laura Aime.

Dave Cawley: Police had already found two of the bodies: those of Melissa Smith and Laura Aime. Bundy tried to tell them where they might find two others: Debra Kent and Nancy Wilcox. But that left one victim unidentified.

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Sorry—

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): No, that’s ok.

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): —you’re catching me when you are—

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yeah, I’m just getting quite anxious myself, y’know.

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): I hear you, I hear you. We’re all up against some deadlines.

Dave Cawley: I don’t bring all this up simply to relive the past. I want you to hear what Ted Bundy said when detective Dennis Couch asked him about a specific unsolved case.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Further up was Nancy Baird who worked at a gas station. July 4th.

Dave Cawley: The disappearance of Nancy Perry Baird.

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 Nancy Baird of Layton. Bundy insisted he had no part in that killing.

Dave Cawley: Nancy Baird’s name might sound familiar. It came up in passing during our discussion of the Sheree Warren case in Cold season 3, but I couldn’t take too deep of a diversion into it then. So, we’re going to do that now.

Nancy Baird vanished from a gas station where she worked in East Layton, Utah on the evening of July 4th, 1975. In the years that followed, many people came to the conclusion Ted Bundy abducted and killed her.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Do you recall, umm, what type of place it was she was working at or where it was located? On which highway?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): No, I didn’t have anything to do with that.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Nancy Baird?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Even today, Nancy Baird’s name appears in online lists of suspected Ted Bundy victims. Many of Nancy’s own relatives even believe Bundy killed her. But Bundy said he wasn’t responsible.

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Well that, no. I don’t know anything about that disappearance.

Dave Cawley: Nancy Baird’s body has never been found. The detective who interviewed Bundy, Dennis Couch, is retired now. I’ve talked to him. He declined my request for a recorded interview. But he told me he hadn’t been personally familiar with the details of the Nancy Baird case back in 1989, when he’d questioned Bundy. Nancy Baird’s disappearance had happened in a different county and deputies there had just asked detective Couch to show Nancy Baird’s picture to Bundy and ask what he’d done to her. Bundy’d seemed not to recognize the photo, or the name Nancy Baird.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Can we go back to Nancy Baird? You, you indicated that—

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Now, Nancy Baird, who’s that?

Dave Cawley: Days after the interview, on January 24th, 1989, Florida executed Ted Bundy by electrocution.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): The prison was shrouded in darkness when smoke began to pour from the backup electrical generator used during executions. By then, demonstrators were arriving by the hundreds to watch the spectacle of a killer’s death.

Demonstrator (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): I would like to be right in there and see him fry.

Dave Cawley: Public attitudes about Ted Bundy were broadly negative, for obvious reasons. Yet many people who hated Bundy found themselves fascinated by the story. Bundy embodied a strange duality: an outward charisma protecting a depraved core. His execution was a major news event.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): The demonstrators invaded the media center. Some, wearing costumes, waving frying pans, sporting gruesome slogans. Songs about the despised serial killer added to the carnival atmosphere.

Crowd (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): (Singing) Now we’re all ecstatic Ted Bundy is dead.

John Hollenhorst (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): So the Bundy saga is over now, except those who will pick through it to figure out what it all means.

Dave Cawley: “What it all means.” It means a lot for the still-unsolved disappearance of Nancy Baird. In season 3 episode 6, I shared the story of a jailhouse informant who claimed Cary Hartmann had been seeing Nancy Baird around the time she disappeared. That informant was probably not credible, and I’ve not found any direct evidence linking Cary Hartmann to Nancy Baird.

But that story thread started me down a new line of investigation into Nancy Baird’s case. In the process, I obtained never-before-released case files. I spoke to relatives, witnesses and investigators. And I came to the conclusion Ted Bundy was probably telling the truth when he said he didn’t know anything about the death of Nancy Baird.

But Ted Bundy cast a long shadow and because of it, no one did any significant work on Nancy Baird’s case for decades.

This is a bonus episode of Cold, season 3: The Convenient Alternative. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

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Dave Cawley: The 4th of July fell on a Friday in 1975. It marked the start of a long, hot holiday weekend. Many Utahns hit the road, hoping to escape the heat by heading to the mountains. Denzle Williams, on the other hand, spent the day at home with his wife and kids. He lived in a town called Kaysville, midway between the cities of Salt Lake and Ogden.

A little after 5 p.m. on the afternoon of July 4th, Denzle drove from his house to a gas station a couple of miles up the road, in the neighboring town of East Layton.

David Williams: We had to get gas for a rototiller.

Dave Cawley: That’s the voice of Denzle’s son, David Williams. He was a few weeks shy of his 14th birthday when he accompanied his dad on this errand in 1975. They drove together to the gas station which sat alongside U.S. Highway 89.

David Williams: The Fina station, I remember, it was, y’know, green and white.

Dave Cawley: Denzle pulled his Dodge Dart to a stop next to one of the pumps. David stepped out onto the blacktop, followed by his little sister, nine-and-a-half-year-old Jana. David and Jana told me as kids, the Fina station was a favorite stop for…

Jana Williams Grow: Pop and—

David Williams: Chips.

Jana Williams Grow: —chips and candy.

David Williams: Candy.

Dave Cawley: Jana dashed into the store, while David retrieved a small gas can from the car’s trunk. He filled it, then handed the hose off to his dad. Denzle started filling the car. He planned to take his son David golfing the next morning and wanted to start their trip to the golf course with a full tank.

David Williams: I was excited because I was a teenager able to go play golf with my father at that time, because we didn’t get out and do that very often together.

Dave Cawley: Denzle gave David his credit card, and told him to go inside and pay for the gas. This was long before technology allowed for pay-at-the-pump. David followed his little sister Jana through the door into the Fina station’s convenience store.

Dave Williams: As, as you walk in there were, I recall, two men at the end of the counter talking to Nancy.

Dave Cawley: Nancy Perry Baird, the clerk, was 23 years old. She was petite, standing only five-foot-two, and had long, strawberry-blonde hair. She appeared younger than her age and she caught David’s eye.

Dave Williams: I believe she had a halter top on and shorts. I’m like “oh, she’s cute.”

Dave Cawley: David stood there for a moment, holding his dad’s credit card, looking at the two older guys who were talking to Nancy.

David Williams: I didn’t want to interrupt this conversation they were having. The one guy, he did have kind of longer hair. Umm, like a, a Levi jacket that was faded. I think they both had longer hair.

Dave Cawley: Jana, meanwhile, wandered down between the shelves of candy, toward a case of chilled drinks.

Jana Williams Grow: And I do remember walking through the store and I just remember seeing one man.

Dave Cawley: After a moment, Nancy took notice of David. She paused her conversation with the two men at the counter and took the credit card from David.

David Williams: And as I was doing the transaction they were just kind of there.

Dave Cawley: Nancy placed the card on a device known as an “imprinter.”

David Williams: She takes it, puts it on a little uh, yeah machine.

Dave Cawley: In the days before tap-to-pay or even magnetic stripes on credit cards, clerks used imprinters—or click-clacks as they were sometimes called—to make physical rubbings of the raised letters and numbers on each customer’s card.

David Williams: And then she writes down how much it was. And if you bought anything else, she would add that to it. And then you had to physically sign the paper. And she gave you a copy and then she kept a copy.

Dave Cawley: As Nancy imprinted the card for David, Jana approached her brother carrying a bottle of raspberry soda.

Jana Williams Grow: I was getting a drink. You wouldn’t pay for it.

David Williams: Nope.

Jana Williams Grow: So I had to pay for my own. And I remember she was a very nice clerk.

Dave Cawley: David headed back outside into the heat with the credit card receipt, while Jana handed Nancy Baird the chilled bottle of soda. The total came to 29 cents. Jana counted out her pennies and she only had 28. With a smile, Nancy told her young customer not to worry about the extra cent. She’d take care of it. Jana then followed her brother outside, not realizing she would be the last person known to ever see Nancy Baird.

Except, I can already see the emails and DMs I’m going to receive from people who Google Nancy Baird’s name, then message me to say I’m wrong on this fact. Jana Williams wasn’t the last person to see Nancy Baird, they’ll say. If you look up Nancy Baird on NAMUS, the U.S. government’s missing and unidentified persons database, you’ll read Nancy was last seen by a “patrol officer” 15 minutes before her disappearance. There’s no mention in the database of David or Jana Williams. So which account is correct? They both are, sort of.

East Layton was a town with a population of about a thousand people in 1975. The little bedroom community, speckled with cherry orchards, sat against the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. U.S. Highway 89 crossed through East Layton from north to south, linking it to larger cities nearby.

The highway was the only reason East Layton had any tax base to speak of. There were only three businesses in the town, two of them being gas stations on opposite sides of the highway at a cross street called Cherry Lane. One of those gas stations was the Fina where Nancy Baird worked.

Nancy spent the first part of her life in the nearby city of Ogden. The Perry family moved to East Layton in about 1964. Nancy attended high school in Layton City proper, graduating in the class of 1970.

Toward the end of her senior year, shortly after her 18th birthday, Nancy became pregnant. The father was a young man named Floyd Dee Baird, who was about six months older than Nancy.

Floyd and Nancy married in April of 1970. They welcomed their son that October. The young Baird family spent a few rough years together and ultimately divorced around the start of 1974. Floyd would later tell police he and Nancy remained on good terms after the split, finding they got along better as exes than they had as husband and wife. Nancy maintained custody of their son. She divided her time between caring for him and working to support herself and her child.

Going back through old newspaper archives, I found a help wanted ad for the Fina station from 1973. It advertised an hourly pay rate of $1.70. That’s about the same as a job offering $11.30 an hour in early 2023. Nancy probably made less than that, considering even today U.S. Census Bureau data shows adult women working full-time in Utah earn, on average, only 72% as much as their male counterparts.

And there’s evidence in the record to support the idea Nancy Baird was underemployed. Case files show she told an employment counselor in March of 1975 she felt unhappy and wanted a better opportunity for herself. But that opportunity hadn’t yet materialized when she headed to work at the Fina station on the afternoon of the 4th of July, 1975.

She’d spent that morning with her parents, siblings and son at the house in East Layton where she’d grown up. Just before 3 p.m., Nancy left her four-year-old boy with her parents and drove to the Fina station a mile down the road.

She was scheduled to stay at the Fina until midnight, running the register on what promised to be a busy holiday evening. With any luck, she might catch a glimpse of fireworks out over the valley after dark.

(Sound of distant fireworks)

Dave Cawley: Nancy’d been on shift a couple of hours when, just after 5 p.m., a familiar face came through the door. It belonged to a guy named Dave Anderson, East Layton’s lone full-time police officer. His primary responsibility was writing tickets to lead-footed motorists on the highway. He often parked his patrol car outside the Fina station, as it provided an inconspicuous place to monitor traffic.

According to a report officer Dave Anderson later wrote, he stopped into the Fina station around 5:10 p.m. on the 4th of July to buy a drink. He chatted briefly with Nancy, and said everything seemed “10-4.” That’s police dispatch code for “roger” or “understood.” In the context of this report, it appears Anderson meant “ok,” as in, he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

The report says officer Dave Anderson then received a radio call about a situation at the other gas station, just on the other side of the highway, kitty-corner from the Fina station. So, at about 5:20 p.m., Dave went to his car, drove across the four lanes of traffic, and confronted two men suspected of driving drunk. He reportedly pulled their licenses and radioed their information to dispatch.

This timeline provided by officer Dave Anderson in an official report put him at the Fina station during the same period of time David and Jana Williams, the two child witnesses, were there with their dad. But the Williamses never mentioned seeing a police officer.

David Williams: I’ve never read the report but what did surprise me when I, I heard is that there was an officer across the street and I don’t recall if they have a timestamp on that.

Dave Cawley: The two timelines conflict with one another. And when the story of Nancy Baird’s disappearance first made the news, it was officer Dave Anderson’s version that was publicly reported. But based on my review of the records, it seems likely officer Anderson left the Fina station before the Williams family arrived, because they did not see a police car there.

Jana Williams Grow: I remember thinking it was a, not very many, it was a quiet time.

David Williams: No, it was, there weren’t many vehicles there.

Dave Cawley: At about 5:30 p.m., while officer Dave Anderson was still across the highway dealing with the suspected drunk drivers, a woman named Bonnie Peck dropped by the Fina station. She was the manager, Nancy Baird’s boss. Bonnie went to the cash register to grab a few bucks, only to find an irritated man waiting there.

“Did you go for a beer or something,” he quipped.

Bonnie shot the man a quizzical look.

“Isn’t she here,” Bonnie asked, referring to Nancy.

Bonnie looked around and realized Nancy was not at the station.

Officer Dave Anderson reported he looked back across the highway at the Fina station at about 5:35 p.m. He saw a green van parked out front, with several “hippie types,” as he described them, milling around. Anderson said he drove back across the highway to the Fina station to “check it out.”

It’s not clear why he believed a van parked outside a gas station amounted to a situation that needed checking out. And officer Anderson’s report doesn’t say anything about these hippie guys and their van after that. Instead, he described stepping inside the convenience store to see a frazzled Bonnie Peck standing at the register.

“Have you seen Nancy,” Peck reportedly asked officer Anderson.

“Yeah,” Anderson said. He’d seen her about 15 or 20 minutes ago, when he’d bought a soda from her. She wasn’t around?

“No,” Bonnie said. But Nancy’s purse and keys were both still inside the Fina station, so it didn’t appear Nancy had left on her own. Officer Anderson peered outside and saw Nancy’s car. Another clue suggesting Nancy had not driven away by herself.

Officer Anderson picked up the telephone and dialed his chief, a man named Ray Adams. It rang with no answer. Anderson wrote in his report he then dialed the phone number of Floyd Dee Baird, Nancy’s ex-husband. Anderson didn’t explain how he knew who Nancy’s ex was, so this could be an indication he knew Nancy as more than just an acquaintance. In any case, Floyd Dee Baird didn’t answer, either.

Anderson keyed his radio, connecting with dispatch in the neighboring city of Layton. He asked an officer there to call the local hospitals, to see if Nancy Baird might’ve had a medical emergency. Then, with no better idea of what to do, officer Anderson stepped outside and started to search the area around station for any sign of Nancy.

The Fina station faced east, toward the highway and the Wasatch Mountains. To the north was Cherry Lane, a quiet street lined with single family homes. To the south…

David Williams: South was just an orchard.

Jana Williams Grow: Just vacant, yeah, it was an orchard.

Dave Cawley: A few small outbuildings sat on the edge of the orchard. Anderson poked around them, as well as a set of storage sheds tucked behind the Fina station. He didn’t report finding anything.

At around 7 p.m., an hour-and-a-half from when Nancy Baird was last seen, Nancy’s older half-sister Norma dropped by the Fina station to talk to Nancy. She instead ran into officer Anderson, who was still searching the grounds. Norma asked where Nancy’d gone. Officer Anderson didn’t have an answer.

Norma took officer Anderson up to her parents’ house. Anderson asked Nancy’s parents if anything had seemed amiss that day. They said no, Nancy’d been in good spirits. And they were still tending her four-year-old son. They didn’t think Nancy would’ve taken off without him.

Dave Anderson was out of his depth. He didn’t have the training or experience to know how to investigate a case like this. So he drove down to his police chief Ray Adams’ house and picked him up.

Ray Adams wasn’t much more of a cop than officer Dave Anderson. But Adams lived around around the corner from a Davis County Sheriff’s deputy named Bud Cox. Adams briefed Cox on the situation and asked what he and officer Dave Anderson ought to do about it. In a report, deputy Cox wrote he thought the situation warranted “serious investigation.”

“What if she doesn’t come back by morning,” chief Ray Adams reportedly asked.

Deputy Cox said in that case, they should perform an all-out search. Assume the worst and hold nothing back.

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Dave Cawley: Early on Saturday July 5th, 1975, the morning after Nancy Baird vanished, a group of deputies and detectives from the Davis County Sheriff’s Office received a page. One of them was a man named Kenny Payne.

Kenny Payne: All the sudden we got a notice that says that Lieutenant Egbert wants a meeting with these people at 9 o’clock in the morning down at the Sheriff’s Office.

Dave Cawley: Kenny arrived at the sheriff’s office to find a group of about 10 of his colleagues there. East Layton’s police chief Ray Adams and the town’s lone full-time officer, Dave Anderson, were there, too.

Dave Cawley (to Kenny Payne): What was your opinion at the time of the East Layton Police Department?

Kenny Payne: Well, umm, inexperienced would be one.

Dave Cawley: Many of the Davis County deputies did not hold their colleagues from East Layton in high regard, for reasons we’ll explore in more detail a bit later. It’s enough to know for now East Layton lacked the manpower and know-how to run a major missing persons investigation. And that’s why the Davis County Sheriff’s Office stepped in to help.

Officer Dave Anderson briefed the deputies about the circumstances of Nancy’s disappearance. He told them she’d left her car keys and purse behind, with 167 dollars in cash still in her wallet. That struck Kenny as odd.

Kenny Payne: Then her just disappearing, you say “well ok that’s,” y’know, “something’s happened.”

Dave Cawley: Officer Anderson said the night prior, he’d gone to Nancy’s house and retrieved an address book containing names and numbers of Nancy’s friends. He’d also obtained a photo album, which included pictures of Nancy and some of the men she’d dated since divorcing her ex-husband, Floyd Dee Baird.

Sheriff’s lieutenant Dean Egbert handed out assignments. One of the deputies would go up in a helicopter to visually scan for any sign of Nancy along the highway. Others would make contact with Nancy’s friends and romantic partners, past and present.

Two names had risen to the top of that list: Floyd Dee Baird, Nancy’s ex-husband, and Dennis Forsgren, a recent divorcé Nancy’d spent time with. Deputies soon learned both men had alibis. Floyd Baird had gone to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with a friend for the 4th of July holiday weekend. Dennis Forsgren was traveling as well, with his parents in Phoenix, Arizona. They’d both left the state at least a day before Nancy vanished.

Floyd Dee Baird and Dennis Forsgren are both deceased, so I can’t talk to them. But it’s clear from the case records they didn’t remain persons of interest very long. Their alibis were quickly verified.

The sheriff’s deputies did hone in on a third man though, whose alibi wasn’t quite as solid. His name was Monty Torres. So now, I’m going to tell you how deputies identified Torres as a person of interest.

Sheriff’s detective Kenny Payne received an assignment as well on that Saturday morning.

Kenny Payne: My assignment was to go up to Park City where Mr. Williams and his family were playing golf.

Dave Cawley: Earlier, we heard from the Williamses, David and Jana.

Kenny Payne: Apparently they were the last persons to see anybody in the store.

Dave Cawley: But how did investigators know this? The credit card receipts. East Layton police had retrieved receipts from the Fina station. They found the imprint of Denzle Williams’ card that Nancy’d made, using that imprinter device, mere minutes before she vanished. They’d called Denzle, only to learn he and his son David were not at home.

Kenny Payne: I asked the lieutenant, I said “ok, now what are they doing?” “They’re playing golf.”

(Sound of a golf swing)

Dave Cawley: Young David Williams was on the golf course with his dad when someone approached.

David Williams: The assistant or person up there came out and said “there is a detective who would like to talk to you about about, uh, a missing persons.” And we’re like “who?” And they indicated that it was this, this girl from the Fina gas station and we were the last people to see her.

Dave Cawley: Detective Kenny Payne joined the Williamses.

David Williams: Rode with us in the golf cart and interviewed my father and I. He would just talk to us after every shot.

Kenny Payne: 18 holes, y’know, and I didn’t want to give any golfing advice, ‘cause I don’t golf.

David Williams: We’d get in and he’d ask questions and that’s kind of what I remember.

Dave Cawley: It all seemed surreal to David Williams.

David Williams: And I was thinking “that’s got to be a mistake. I just saw her. I was just, I saw her, she was fine,” and I couldn’t believe, really, that she was gone.

Dave Cawley: I have a copy of a report Kenny Payne wrote about this interview. It says Denzle Williams described pulling up to the pump and seeing an older man entering the restroom at the Fina station.

David Williams: The restroom was a separate building.

Dave Cawley: The guy came out a couple of minutes later, while the Williams children were still inside paying for the gas and a soda. The restroom guy was tall, skinny, dark-haired and wore cowboy boots. He walked a bit funny, and might’ve been drunk. Denzle wasn’t sure where that older man ended up, but he didn’t recall seeing this cowboy enter the convenience store.

David Williams told Kenny Payne about the two men he’d seen inside the store. Kenny pressed for specifics about their appearances.

Kenny Payne: Y’know, we’d talk about eyes and then they’d get off and go hit the ball and then get back on. We’d talk about more eyes or more ears, hair.

Dave Cawley: David described them. The word “hippie” came up. I can’t believe I have to explain this, but for younger listeners, hippies were part of a counter-culture movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Think tie-dye, psychedelic rock, free love and anti-war sentiment.

The two men seen talking to Nancy Baird might not have been actual hippies. But they were bearded, with long hair and wore a lot of denim.

David Williams: Yeah, what they would say a hippie vibe that they—

Dave Cawley (to David Williams): Not uncommon.

David Williams: —right.

Jana Williams Grow: Right, right.

David Williams: Not uncommon in the ‘70s, right?

Dave Cawley: Kenny Payne learned Jana Williams had likely seen these two men as well. He asked Denzle if he could meet with the kids later that evening, so they could put together composite sketches of the men, to assist in identifying them. Denzle agreed.

Jana Williams Grow: I just remember he and my mom coming to me and saying “we have to go because you were the last one to see her.” Which really stuck in my mind, ‘cause that was a scary thing. I, I didn’t know how someone could take a pretty lady like that and she’d just gone missing.

Dave Cawley: Jana sat with her brother, parents and sheriff’s detective Kenny Payne on that Saturday night. Kenny brought a wood box with him. I brought a similar box when I went to interview Kenny.

Dave Cawley (to Kenny Payne): So Kenny, tell me what we’re looking at here.

Kenny Payne: This is an Identi-kit.

Dave Cawley: Identi-kits were invented in the 1960s. Police agencies could use them to create composite images of suspects, without needing to hire a sketch artist. Each Identi-kit composite started with an interview.

Kenny Payne: Did he have any particular facial features that really stood out?

Dave Cawley: Kenny posed this question to young Jana Williams.

Jana Williams Grow: I remember explaining his eyes. So I must have looked at his eyes and his eyebrows.

Dave Cawley: Each Identi-kit came with a booklet that served as an index for each part of the face. Kenny handed the booklet to Jana, while asking another question.

Kenny Payne: Can you look through some of these and find some eyes that look like what you remember? What they’d do is they’d say well “hey yeah, I really like this one.”

Dave Cawley: Each image in the booklet was coded by letter and number. E for eyes, L for lips, H for hair and so on. The investigator would take note of those codes, then dig into that wood box I mentioned a moment ago. It held a few hundred sheets of transparent plastic. Kenny calls them “foils.”

Kenny Payne: The foil is numbered down here at the bottom, if you look right here. See this is 01. Y’know, eyes.

Dave Cawley: By stacking and aligning the transparent foils, an investigator could build a two-dimensional face, feature-by-feature.

Kenny Payne: When you get all of this done, then you’ll be able to read a code across the bottom of it which is just a composite of all the, all the numbers that come across there and I umm, obviously wrote down the codes in my report.

Dave Cawley (to Kenny Payne): Mmhmm.

Kenny Payne: And I commend you for, y’know, tracing down an Identi-kit ‘cause that’s almost an impossibility anymore.

Dave Cawley: I failed to mention, when I first obtained the Nancy Baird case files, they included Kenny Payne’s report about building three Identi-kit composites based on the descriptions provided by the Williams family. His report had the codes, but not the images.

I soon learned I could recreate the images using those codes, if I could find an old Identi-kit. But that’s not easy, because they’re antiques and most were long ago destroyed. I spent months waiting for one to pop up on eBay. I can now tell you what those three composites Kenny Payne built back in 1975 looked like. There’s an old, craggy-faced fellow. He was the cowboy in the parking lot outside the Fina station.

Kenny Payne: But the ones who were talking, actually talking to Nancy were these two.

Dave Cawley: The composites of the other two “hippie type” men look very much alike. They used the same nose, lips, beard and age lines. Only their hair and eyes set them apart.

Kenny Payne: Y’know, I told the lieutenant, I said “they, they could very well be brothers.”

Dave Cawley: Davis County deputies compared the composites to the pictures in Nancy Baird’s photo albums. They noticed one of the two “hippie type” composites looked an awful lot like a man in one of Nancy Baird’s pictures. And that photo was marked with a name: Monty Torres.

I’ll stress here, Identi-kit composites were far from exact. They might get an investigator in the general neighborhood, but were far from photorealistic.

Kenny Payne: I wish they would’ve had better technology back in the, in the days. But they, we had what was best at the time.

Dave Cawley: I’m publishing these three Identi-kit composites from the Nancy Baird case at thecoldpodcast.com, so you can see them and judge for yourself.

Case files say deputies showed the photo of this man, Monty Torres, to their witness, Jana Williams. Jana “positively identified the picture of Monty Torres as one of the hippie type individuals.” Clearly, the Davis County detectives needed to talk to Monty Torres. They quickly learned Torres was at that time staying in Pocatello, Idaho, about two-and-a-half hours away. The deputies reached out to a detective in Bannock County, Idaho and asked him to find Torres and interview him. The detective did, and according to a report, the Idaho detective described Torres as acting “quite jittery.”

Monty Torres reportedly told the Idaho detective he had an alibi for the evening of July 4th. He said he’d been vacationing at Lava Hot Springs, a resort and waterpark just outside of Pocatello. Torres gave the detective a name of someone who could supposedly confirm his story. But by the time deputies in Utah brought that man in for questioning, they learned Torres had already called him and coached him on what to say.

Here’s what Davis County sheriff’s lieutenant Dean Egbert told the Deseret News about it, his words read by a voice actor.

Aaron Mason (as Dean Egbert from July 10, 1975 Deseret News article): We are not satisfied with this deal in Idaho, and we are considering asking the man to undergo a polygraph test next week.

Dave Cawley: That’s exactly what happened. Deputies hauled Monty Torres in for a polygraph examination about two weeks following Nancy Baird’s disappearance. I’ve searched for records that would reveal the specific questions asked, as well as Torres’ responses, but I’ve so far been unable to find them.

All I can tell you comes from old news reports, that say all of the persons of interest in Nancy Baird’s disappearance had alibis or passed polygraph examinations. In other words, investigators believed Monty Torres excluded himself as a suspect by passing a polygraph. It surprised me to see how much weight the investigators placed on this single polygraph exam. Polygraphs are not fool-proof.

Kenny Payne: Your biggest thing is if I get to interview you face-to-face and umm, y’know when I start talking to you, I’m usually talking to you when I’ve got a loaded question and I, I know what the answer is. I’s just going to see what your answer is.

Dave Cawley: I can’t judge how convincing Monty Torres’ responses were during the polygraph, because I don’t even know what investigators asked him. But Kenny did tell me he recalled some division among investigators afterward.

Kenny Payne: Some people they ruled him right out and other people said “no I, I don’t think so.” And so I, y’know I, I haven’t given up on that one either.” (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: The story of these two “hippie type” guys seen talking to Nancy Baird just before she disappeared matters more than you might realize. What I’m about to say has never been publicly revealed. It’s been secret of the Nancy Baird case file for nearly 50 years.

Nancy had a friend named Deloris Drake, who lived in the city of Ogden. A Davis County sheriff’s deputy interviewed Deloris early in the investigation. Deloris said on the night of July 2nd , less than 48 hours before Nancy Baird disappeared, she, Nancy and a friend of theirs named Peggy went out on the town. Davis County sheriff’s lieutenant Dean Egbert summarized Deloris’ account in a report. Here’s what he wrote:

Aaron Mason (as Dean Egbert from July 14, 1975 police report): Deloris mentioned Rigos and the Iron Horse.

Dave Cawley: Those were two bars in Ogden, where Nancy, Deloris and Peggy stopped that night. Peggy headed home around 10:30 p.m., but then Nancy and Deloris went back out…

Aaron Mason (as Dean Egbert from July 14, 1975 police report): …and had driven in the area of Washington Boulevard until approximately 2:30 and Nancy had taken Deloris home. At approximately 0300 on the morning of the 3rd, Nancy had returned to Deloris’ apartment and appeared to be quite shaken and frightened … that this fellow named “Tom” in a yellow van had followed her home and was molesting her.

Dave Cawley: The report doesn’t say if the word “molesting” was a direct quote from Deloris, or the lieutenant’s interpretation. In this context, the word carries some ambiguity. “Molest” means to pester or harass, but it can also mean to physically sexually assault. It’s not clear which meaning lieutenant Egbert intended. In any case, he continued:

Aaron Mason (as Dean Egbert from July 14, 1975 police report): Deloris reported that Tom had said that “you’re going to [expletive] or else” as she opened the door. Deloris ordered this Tom from the premises and during the commotion, Deloris’ father, who lives across the street, had come from his home and that this time Tom had left in the yellow van.

Dave Cawley: This fellow “Tom” wasn’t alone.

Aaron Mason (as Dean Egbert from July 14, 1975 police report): There was also another individual who was riding a motorcycle.

Dave Cawley: Two men, one driving a Volkswagen van. Remember, East Layton police officer Dave Anderson reported seeing a van parked outside the Fina station moments before discovering Nancy Baird had disappeared. Earlier, you heard from David and Jana Williams, who as children were the last people known to have seen Nancy Baird alive. David told me he remembered reading the newspaper reports recounting officer Anderson’s version of events.

David Williams: The officer looks over and sees that there’s people that are trying to buy gas or trying to pay for snacks.

Dave Cawley: When I interviewed David and his sister Jana, I pressed them, asking if they remembered seeing any other cars outside the Fina station.

Jana Williams Grow: I don’t remember a lot of vehicles there.

Dave Cawley: David appeared lost in thought for a moment, as if seeking back through the fog of distant memory.

David Williams: I think there, there may have, like, a van, brown in color. Umm, that kind of looked like a hippie van which is, kind of, that was parked on the, uh, north side.

Dave Cawley: My ears perked up when David said this. He hadn’t mentioned a van when interviewed by detective Kenny Payne on the golf course back in 1975. And I’d scoured the archives of several Utah newspapers from the time. The articles published back then did not include officer Anderson’s detail about seeing a van. That tidbit was a guarded piece of the investigation, not publicly revealed. So I don’t think it’s possible for David Williams’ memory to have been tainted by news reports.

This is significant, for two reasons. First, it bolsters East Layton police officer Dave Anderson’s story of having seen a van from across the highway. But more significantly, this van at the Fina station could be the same one a man used to chase Nancy Baird to the doorstep of her friend Deloris’ house, less than 48 hours before Nancy disappeared.

Deloris told a deputy she recognized this man, “Tom.” She gave investigators his last name, Stone, and said he lived nearby. A solid lead and yet, the investigators appear to have done nothing with it.

There’s no indication in the Nancy Baird case files I’ve obtained East Layton police ever followed up on this lead Davis County uncovered about Nancy being stalked and potentially sexually assaulted two nights before she disappeared. In fact, on July 28th, 1975, East Layton police chief Ray Adams told the Deseret News his department was “at a dead-end” in the search for Nancy Baird. The chief said they’d exhausted their leads and would have to brainstorm a new “route to travel” in the investigation.

That’s absurd. Less than a month had passed since Nancy’s disappearance and already East Layton police were ready to throw in the towel? What the public didn’t yet know was the tiny department with a staff of just four—a part-time chief, a full-time officer and two part-time reserve officers—was on the brink of meltdown.

Chief Adams needed an alternative explanation, other than his own department’s incompetence, to explain what’d happened to Nancy Baird. Only a couple of weeks later, a trooper 30 miles south on the outskirts of Salt Lake City would arrest a young law school student named Theodore Bundy.

John Hollenhorst (from July 24, 1979 KSL TV archive): For a long time, residents of Utah, Colorado and Washington have been following an incredible mystery story: a story of murder, imprisonment and escape. And all along there has been one fascinating question: could a handsome, articulate, intelligent law student—with a promising career in politics—could Theodore Bundy be a crazed sex killer, responsible for the brutal murders of perhaps dozens of young women all across the West?

Dave Cawley: Serial killer Ted Bundy’s downfall began in the state of Utah. In November of 1974, Bundy tried to abduct a woman named Carol DaRonch from a shopping mall in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. Carol fought back and managed to escape, still carrying the handcuffs Bundy tried to place on her.

Richard Bingham (from February 5, 1986 KSL TV archive): Bundy is also a suspect in the disappearance of Debi Kent from Viewmont High in Bountiful.

Dave Cawley: On the same evening as his failed attempt to abduct Carol DaRonch, Bundy drove north to the city of Bountiful, Utah. He kidnapped a teenage girl named Debra Kent, plucking her from the parking lot outside Viewmont High School. Police found a handcuff key on the asphalt there. It matched the cuffs from the Carol DaRonch case. But no one could find Debra Kent.

Ted Bundy wasn’t arrested until many months later, in August of 1975. He stood trial for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch in early 1976. Bundy wasn’t charged with the murder of Debra Kent because police hadn’t been able to find her body. I attended the same high school as Debra Kent, though many years later. I remember hearing whispered conversations among classmates even then, in the late ‘90s, full of rumor and exaggeration about Ted Bundy.

Tiffany Jean: And it’s become such a big story, that there’s even become kind of a mythology built up about the case.

Dave Cawley: That’s the voice of Tiffany Jean. She’s a government archivist, based in Texas. In 2019, Tiffany watched a Netflix documentary called “The Bundy Tapes.”

Tiffany Jean: And I’d heard the name before. I think everyone’s heard that name before. I didn’t really know much about the case.

Dave Cawley: Tiffany found herself fascinated, particularly by cases like Nancy Baird’s, where Ted Bundy was suspected but never proven as the killer.

Tiffany Jean: Because he confessed to at least 30 murders, but only 21 have been identified. And that’s always been a special interest of mine is seeing if I could shed any light on who those other women could be.

Dave Cawley: Earlier, you heard clips from an interview Ted Bundy gave days before his execution. He admitted in that recording to killing Debra Kent.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Was she in any way dismembered? Was she buried whole, or?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yeah. I mean, yes. You should find all of it.

Tiffany Jean: As far anyone can tell, all of his final confessions right before he was executed were truthful. And that’s because he had some self-interest. He was trying to keep himself alive by giving investigators true information to buy himself some more time. It was his bones-for-time strategy, is what it was called.

Dave Cawley: Bundy hoped police would search where he indicated, find Debra Kent’s remains, then pressure Florida into delaying his execution so they could look for other victims.

Tiffany Jean: He gave a pretty detailed description of where he buried her.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Did you go back down through Salt Lake again?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Oh did you?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yes.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): And you went farther south?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yup.

Dennis Couch (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Past Provo?

Ted Bundy (from January 22, 1989 police interview recording): Yup.

Dave Cawley: Florida never had any intention of delaying Bundy’s execution. Bones-for-time was a bust for Ted Bundy. Police did later search in the area he’d indicated.

Searcher (from May 6, 1989 KSL TV archive): Ok, let’s go.

Joel Munson (from May 6, 1989 KSL TV archive): Serial killer Ted Bundy said he buried the Bountiful youth somewhere in this area nearly 15 years ago. So with shovels in hand and metal detectors humming away, search and rescue crews went back to work. This is the sixth time they’ve combed the area.

Dave Cawley: It took several tries, but in the end they found a single human bone: a patella, or kneecap.

Allison Barlow (from July 29, 1989 KSL TV archive): They did find some unidentified human remains at the site where Bundy claimed he buried Debra Kent.

Dave Cawley: Years later, DNA analysis would confirm that patella belonged to Debra Kent. Ted Bundy had told the truth in his final days. And, as we’ve already heard, Bundy denied any knowledge of Nancy Baird during that interview.

Tiffany Jean: So when he denies Nancy Baird, that makes me think maybe he was actually telling the truth in this situation.

Dave Cawley: Over the last few years, Tiffany Jean has filed public records requests for case files in the states where Ted Bundy is known and suspected to’ve murdered women.

Tiffany Jean: And some of those turned into a fight. (Laughs) And I just, it was more on the principle than anything else, that they weren’t going to turn over these records that I really felt like they should.

Dave Cawley: In Utah, Tiffany repeatedly won the release of records, many of which had never before been shared publicly. She feels strongly, and I agree, it’s important these records be preserved and studied, with an emphasis on the unsolved cases. Records are a matter of putting facts ahead of mythology.

Tiffany Jean: I want to know what the real story of what happened. And when you’re reading only secondary sources, you don’t really get the whole picture. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted the whole picture.

Dave Cawley: Tiffany’s developed a repository of well-sourced, factual information about the crimes of Ted Bundy. She’s published portions of that on her website hiimted.blog.

Tiffany Jean: I just want the most complete archive of the case that exists, just kind of a, that’s kind of my goal at this point.

Dave Cawley: I reached out to Tiffany in 2022. I knew she’d requested the Nancy Baird case file from the Davis County Sheriff’s Office, and been refused, because it’s technically still an open case. I’d also requested the Baird case file and likewise been refused.

Tiffany Jean: I didn’t write a GRAMA appeal like you did, though.

Dave Cawley: GRAMA is Utah’s open records law. After my initial denial, I appealed by arguing Nancy Baird’s case was open, but not active. The public interest for transparency weighed in favor of releasing the records. That argument proved persuasive, and I became the first person outside of law enforcement to review the Nancy Baird case file in nearly 50 years.

Tiffany Jean: So you beat me. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: I shared what I’d obtained of the Nancy Baird case file with Tiffany. We both knew the public consensus has long been Ted Bundy was somehow responsible.

Tiffany Jean: Which is interesting, because in that case file that you shared with me, his name doesn’t appear at all.

Dave Cawley: This is true. But it’s worth noting all of the files in the records I obtained are dated July of 1975, weeks before Bundy’s first arrest.

Tiffany Jean: And that’s another thing that jumped out at me was how they really didn’t do enough work on this case, or maybe the record’s incomplete. But it doesn’t seem like they followed all the leads that were there at the time.

Dave Cawley: Former Davis County Sheriff’s detective Kenny Payne collected evidence from Nancy Baird’s apartment in the days following her disappearance.

Kenny Payne: Y’know, I remember going down to her house and umm, things that I was really interested in was trying to find something that would be identifiable to, to her.

Dave Cawley: Where East Layton police were tossing up their hands in defeat, Davis County detectives like Kenny Payne were thinking ahead to some day in the future when they might come across Nancy Baird’s remains.

Kenny Payne: And so what I wound up recovering was, uh, two hair brushes.

Dave Cawley: With strands of Nancy’s strawberry blond hair still tangled in the bristles.

Kenny Payne: They’re still in evidence down at the sheriff’s office.

Dave Cawley: Several weeks later, after Ted Bundy’s arrest, police in neighboring Salt Lake County worked with the FBI to scour Bundy’s car. The items they gathered also ended up in evidence boxes.

Con Psarras (from January 24, 1989 KSL TV archive): In the boxes, clues to two killings and a glimpse of a bigger picture: hundreds of hair samples vacuumed from the interior of Bundy’s little green Volkswagen. The hair of at least 100 different people. How many of them victims?

Dave Cawley: Davis County sent Nancy Baird’s hair to the FBI for comparison to the hairs collected from Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle. The lab did not come up with a match. None of the hairs from the car belonged to Nancy Baird.

Tiffany Jean: So that kind of made me think maybe it wasn’t Bundy maybe it was someone that she knew she was willing to go with.

Dave Cawley: Who might Nancy have trusted? Perhaps a familiar young man dressed in a police uniform.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: One of the people I’ve most wanted to talk to about the Nancy Baird case is former East Layton police officer Dave Anderson, the man who first reported Nancy missing.

Dave Anderson is one of the only people who could’ve successfully lured Nancy Baird out of the Fina station during the narrow window of five or ten minutes between when she was last seen by David and Jana Williams and when her manager showed up and discovered she was gone. The chief should’ve sidelined officer Anderson until he could be cleared as a person of interest. But that didn’t happen. And I can’t confront former officer Dave Anderson about this, because he’s dead. Regardless, let’s explore officer Anderson’s background so you can see why I view him in such a critical light.

David Ray Anderson was born in May of 1951, the third of three children in his family. He never knew his older sister, because she died after being accidentally backed over by her father. But Dave Anderson did grow up with a brother, Earl, who was two years his senior.

When Dave was 8, his father moved their family to the city of Layton, Utah. Dave attended Davis High School, graduating in the class of 1969. That’s a different school and one year ahead of Nancy Baird, so I’m not sure if they would’ve crossed paths at that point.

A year later, in April of 1970, Dave married a woman he’d gone to high school with named Marilyn. He attended basic training for the United States Marine Corps that summer and in the fall, he and Marilyn welcomed their first child.

Dave’s parents moved away from Layton a short time later. They bought an old farm house 100 miles away, in the rural town of Nephi, Utah. Dave followed them, dragging his reluctant bride and their baby out to the countryside. The Andersons had a second child while living in Nephi. But all was not well behind the scenes. Dave Anderson’s marriage was on the rocks. His wife hated living in the sticks. And his older brother was about to throw the whole family into turmoil.

In June of 1972, Dave’s older brother Earl and a few other guys burglarized a business. Earl and his companions stole cash, credit cards, liquor and a handgun. Earl landed in the Utah State Prison on a felony conviction. Newspaper archives show while in prison in August of 1973, Earl set another inmate on fire, leaving that man with serious burns over most of his body. Prosecutors charged Earl with attempted homicide, and moved him out of the state prison to a county jail, for his own protection. It wasn’t enough. Retribution came in January of 1974, when a group of jail inmates jumped Earl. They allegedly forced Earl to swallow tranquilizer pills, then smothered him until he was dead.

Dave Anderson was just 22 when he buried his brother. I don’t know exactly how this experience impacted him, but it’s notable Dave immediately turned his career aspirations toward becoming a cop. And this was just a year-and-a-half before Nancy Baird disappeared.

Dave’s wife, meanwhile, had reached her breaking point. She separated from Dave and moved back home to Layton. A short time later, she filed for divorce. Dave followed his estranged wife and kids to Layton, finding a place of his own nearby. He enrolled in a criminal justice program at Weber State College and, in October of 1974, landed a job as a police officer for the town of East Layton. That was just 10 months before Nancy Baird disappeared.

As I said before, the majority of Dave’s hours were spent patrolling U.S. Highway 89. And he spent a lot of that time parked at the Fina station where Nancy worked. Anderson was a young, inexperienced cop with a complicated home life when he spoke to Nancy at the Fina station minutes prior to her disappearance. We have only his word that their conversation was polite.

It’s jump to go from there to seeing officer Dave Anderson as a suspect. But what piques my interest is what happened next: Anderson abandoned his budding law enforcement career just a couple of months after Nancy Baird disappeared. I’m not sure why.

Requirements to become a certified police officer in Utah during the 1970s were a lot more lax than they are now. Under the law at the time, a prospective officer was supposed to complete 200 hours of training at the academy within 18 months of being hired by a police agency. So when East Layton hired Dave Anderson as its only full-time police officer in 1974, it started a countdown clock ticking. He had a year-and-a-half to get certified, or he was out of a job.

Landing a spot at the police academy wasn’t easy. Prospective officers needed to be sponsored. So guys like Dave Anderson would often get hired by a small town, attend the academy on the town’s behalf, then quit the small town job to take a better-paying position at a bigger city department. Anderson’d probably hoped East Layton would sponsor him to the academy. But that never happened. I can’t find any record of him getting a police job anywhere else. He just walked away.

Anderson becomes very difficult to track after that point. Court records show his ex-wife, Marilyn, filed a lawsuit against him in 1989, seeking thousands of dollars in unpaid child support. Dave’s name appears in both of his parents’ obituaries during the early ‘90s. Then, he’s a ghost. I know he ended up just over the state line in Mesquite, Nevada during the early 2000s. But there, records show “officer” David Ray Anderson died in August of 2010. There’s no record to suggest he was ever challenged on the story he’d told about the disappearance of Nancy Baird.

Dave Cawley: It’s a windy day in the spring of 2023. I’ve spent the last few hours in the car with my boss and collaborator, Sheryl Worsley, headed to a remote community along the Snake River.

Dave Cawley (to Sheryl Worsley): Sheryl, for the record why don’t you state where we are and what we’re doing.

Sheryl Worsley: Well, we are, I’m not sure where we are, Dave. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: Buhl, Idaho.

Sheryl Worsley: We are in Buhl, Idaho.

Dave Cawley: We’ve come, unannounced, in the hopes of talking to one of the other men who worked for the East Layton Police Department in 1975.

(Sound of seat belt click)

Sheryl Worsley: We’ll see. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: See what kind of reception we get.

Dave Cawley: His name is Thomas Jackson, Junior. As we walk toward his door, a tall white-haired man steps out.

Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): Hi, how you doing? Are you Tom?

Dave Cawley: Tom Jackson can see the microphone in my hand. He asks “uh oh, what did I do now” with a bit of a laugh.

Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): You did nothing.

Sheryl Worsley: You didn’t do anything. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: We’re doing a history project on the Nancy Baird case. From way back in—

Tom Jackson: Oh, Nancy Perry Baird?

Dave Cawley: You got it.

Tom Jackson: When I was a cop? Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Yeah.

Sheryl Worsley: Yeah.

Tom Jackson: Oh, that’d be great. Uh, you want to come in?

Dave Cawley: Is that ok?

Sheryl Worsley: Is that alright?

Dave Cawley: He ushers us inside and makes space on the couch.

Tom Jackson: I’m glad you’re here. Man, this is, just been exciting to know that her case is still open and is, I’m tickled.

Dave Cawley: Tom Jackson was about four years older than Nancy Baird. And he confirms, they knew each other as kids.

Tom Jackson: She was a pretty gal.

Dave Cawley: Tom’d lived just down the street from Nancy. In fact, he’d even married one of Nancy’s friends, a neighbor girl. They’d stayed in the neighborhood, living just off Cherry Lane, a little ways behind the Fina station where Nancy’d worked.

Tom worked a full-time job, but around the start of 1975 also accepted a part-time position as a reserve officer for the East Layton police department. His reserve role was a little different than Cary Hartmann’s, which we heard about in Cold season 3. East Layton was a lot smaller than Ogden City, so it asked much more of its reserves. As a result, Tom worked a more regular schedule, received a paycheck, and wrote a lot of tickets.

Tom told me on the day Nancy Baird disappeared, he’d been driving around in one of the town’s two police cars.

Tom Jackson: I didn’t even hear anything on the radio about it.

Dave Cawley: Which is a little strange, since officer Dave Anderson did describe radioing dispatch about Nancy in his report. In any case, Tom said he’d stopped by the Fina station that evening and found his chief, Ray Adams, and officer Dave Anderson there.

Tom Jackson: I pulled in, I was like “what’s going on?” And they said “Nancy’s gone.” I said “what the crap, what?”

Dave Cawley: Tom remembered going to Nancy’s house and helping retrieve her address book. According to a report, Tom and the chief then went and looked around a place called Fernwood Park, as the dark of night descended. Why Fernwood? Well, it was home to a sort of “lover’s lane,” a place in the hills where couples would park their cars and make out. The police found no sign of Nancy there.

Records show Tom Jackson didn’t have any involvement with the Nancy Baird case after that. He intentionally opted out.

Tom Jackson: At that time, I don’t think I was, I don’t know, I wasn’t a good cop, I would say. I wanted to, I wanted to let someone else handle it. I didn’t want to mess it up.

Dave Cawley: In spite of this, East Layton sent Tom Jackson to the Utah police academy in September of 1975. That’s only about two-and-a-half months after Nancy Baird disappeared. Why did Tom go to the academy, instead of officer Dave Anderson? I’m not sure. Tom didn’t remember.

I’ve talked to one of Tom’s academy classmates. He said Tom struggled a bit, but Tom did graduate the academy and was certified to work in law enforcement. He replaced Dave Anderson as East Layton’s full-time police officer. At some point in the middle of all this, Tom talked to the Davis County Sheriff’s Office about next-steps in the Nancy Baird investigation. East Layton had jurisdiction. It was their call.

Tom Jackson: The county asked me, says “you want to handle this?” And I says “no way! All we are is just little hick town cops here so if we’re gonna find her, you guys is the ones that’s gotta do it.”

Dave Cawley: Tom knew the county had already tracked down several of Nancy’s boyfriends, working off her address book.

Tom Jackson: They had the book and whatever name was in there, they went after ‘em.

Dave Cawley: But the boyfriend leads ran dry, right around the time Ted Bundy entered the picture.

Tom Jackson: Yeah, there was suspicion of him.

Dave Cawley: Tom’s mind didn’t settle on Bundy, though. He figured Nancy’s abductor could’ve been much closer.

Tom Jackson: This person must’ve been someone she knew and had some trust in him. That’s the other reason why I thought it was one of the cops, that one cop.

Dave Cawley: Former officer Dave Anderson. Tom remembered Dave Anderson spending a lot of time at the Fina station.

Tom Jackson: He spent too much time looking at women, too.

Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): Thinks he’s a lady’s man, maybe—

Tom Jackson: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: —a little bit?

Tom Jackson: He was a good-looking guy, so I’m sure he thought so.

Dave Cawley: This description of former officer Dave Anderson reminded me of Cary Hartmann and his brief time in the Ogden police reserve corps, which we talked about during Cold season 3. There are some people who are drawn to law enforcement jobs for all the wrong reasons. Dave Anderson, it seems, might’ve been one of them. This idea was overlooked though, probably because the East Layton police department was itself in crisis. Its chief, Ray Adams, shouldn’t have been chief. He’d wasn’t a cop. He’d secured his position through the good ol’ boy system. State law required he attend the academy, but he wasn’t willing to take a leave from his full-time job to do that.

So, in April of 1976, Ray Adams vacated the chief of police position. He instead became a justice of the peace for the town, a form of low-level judge, a job for which Adams was also not qualified. Officer Tom Jackson departed the East Layton police department not long after that. He decided to leave law enforcement entirely, and went into private security work. So within about a year of the disappearance of Nancy Baird, the entire East Layton police force turned over.

Tom Jackson: Real Mayberry thing. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: There is one other point I need to acknowledge here: former officer Tom Jackson has a criminal record. In 1986, 11 years after the disappearance of Nancy Baird, Davis County prosecutors filed a criminal charge against Tom. He stood accused of sexually abusing two young girls. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony, which made him eligible for a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. But the judge only placed Tom on probation.

Tom’s wife divorced him in the years that followed. He left Utah, remarried, and then, in 1995, police arrested Tom Jackson again, this time on charges of lewd conduct with a child under 16 years of age. He again pleaded guilty, but the Idaho judge showed none of the leniency the Utah judge had. Tom received a life sentence. But Tom’s no longer in prison, clearly. He won an appeal that reduced his sentence to 15 years. He served that time, a fact he and I discussed at the start of our interview.

Tom confided he felt a bit nervous going on tape. He hoped I wouldn’t make a monster of him. I promised to treat him fairly. And Tom acknowledged his past complicates how we might see him.

Tom Jackson: I wouldn’t doubt if I was a suspect and all that. And that’s ok with me.

Dave Cawley: Because, Tom says, he’s taken polygraph after polygraph as part of his probation.

Tom Jackson: And one of the questions in there is “you committed any other crimes that we don’t know about?” And when I said “no, not at all.” And it come up true, so.

Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): I mean, it’s—

Tom Jackson: Y’know, that pretty much cleared me right there.

Dave Cawley: —it’s a lot of years, right? You would think if you were a suspect, someone would’ve come and talked to you a long time ago—

Tom Jackson: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Cawley: —right?

Tom Jackson: That’s true.

Dave Cawley: After Tom Jackson left his job at the East Layton Police Department a year following Nancy Baird’s disappearance, the town hired a new officer, a guy named Dave Davis. Town leaders quickly promoted Davis to chief. Davis told The Salt Lake Tribune he was “working wonders” with the small budget provided to him in a 1977 newspaper story comically headlined “Yes, East Layton has a police department.”

Gary McFarland: They just did not have the funding to take and keep somebody.

Dave Cawley: Chief Davis also inherited the Nancy Baird case. He did nothing with it until, in 1979, four years on from Nancy’s disappearance, Davis hired a new patrol officer named Gary McFarland.

Gary McFarland: And it came down to where it was just me covering 12 hours and the other, the chief would cover the other 12 hours. And there was a promise from the city that if I did that, they would send me to the police academy.

Dave Cawley: Chief Davis gave Gary former East Layton police officer Dave Anderson’s report about the disappearance of Nancy Baird.

Gary McFarland: There just wasn’t a lot. We were, y’know, a very small community. There was very few things going on. Property disputes, loose cows, loose, loose horses. (Laughs) That kind of thing. It just, that was, that was a pretty big case.

Dave Cawley: At this same time, Ted Bundy was standing trial for murder in Florida.

John Hollenhorst (from July 24, 1979 KSL TV archive): As the verdict approached, reporters, editors and photographers prepared for the climax of the trial. The Bundy case has generated vast amounts of publicity all over Florida and in the western states of Utah, Colorado and Washington. In all those places, Bundy is suspected of murders. All involving young women.

Dave Cawley: Gary, and many others, believed Ted Bundy might’ve killed Nancy Baird. It wasn’t much of a leap: Bundy had been in Utah the summer Nancy disappeared.

Gary McFarland: She had the appearance of some, the females that he preferred. That’s all we had, is the method of operation fit.

Dave Cawley: But that suspicion didn’t give Gary any direction as to where to look for Nancy’s remains.

Gary McFarland: It was becoming a cold case, basically.

Dave Cawley: A little kerfuffle erupted in East Layton around this same time. The mayor fired police chief Davis, who responded by telling the news media it was an attack on the entire department.

Dave Davis (from March 24, 1980 KSL TV archive): They may be looking into an outside agency to contract to and dissolve the police department as a whole.

Dave Cawley: I suspect you probably don’t much care about this small town political squabble, but I promise you, it’s relevant to the Nancy Baird case because of what happened in the end.

Gaylen Young (from March 26, 1980 KSL TV archive): Nearly 400 angry residents were in attendance at the city council meeting because mayor Delin Yates was not going to keep police chief Dave Davis on the job.

East Layton resident (from March 26, 1980 KSL TV archive): We don’t want a contract with Davis County. We don’t want a contract with Layton City. We want the police force we have with the responsible, interested service that we get from them.

Dave Cawley: This protest proved ineffective. East Layton dissolved its police department. Officer Gary McFarland, fresh out of the academy, no longer had a job. But it didn’t stop there. The residents of East Layton voted to disincorporate at the end of 1980. Their town ceased to be and neighboring Layton City swallowed it whole. The records of the East Layton police department were lost to time. All except for the report of former police officer Dave Anderson about the disappearance of Nancy Baird. Gary McFarland still had it.

Gary McFarland: It ended up with me. No direction as to what to do with it. But it was in my custody.

Dave Cawley: But with East Layton gone, who would inherit jurisdiction over Nancy Baird’s case? Did it belong to Layton City, which absorbed East Layton? Or did the Davis County Sheriff’s Office bear responsibility, given the work deputies there had done assisting East Layton early on?

Gary McFarland: Davis County provided a lot of the crime scene investigations because small communities could not provide that service.

Dave Cawley: As we saw with the Sheree Warren case in Cold season 3, victims fall through the cracks when police agencies fail to communicate. And that’s what also appears to have happened with Nancy Baird. No one took the initiative. It wasn’t Gary McFarland’s case, but he felt duty-bound to safeguard the reports.

Gary McFarland: Because it was one of those cases that you knew someday would have a lead.

Dave Cawley: Gary ended up taking another police job at a different agency. Year after year, he waited for a phone call that might break the case.

Gary McFarland: Nobody ever came forward. Nobody was ever found. Not one tip, not nothing.

Dave Cawley: Gary McFarland retired in 2012. He turned the East Layton police report on Nancy Baird over to the Davis County Sheriff’s Office.

Gary McFarland: They’d come up with some other theories, besides the only one that I ever came up with.

Dave Cawley (to Gary McFarland): Bundy?

Gary McFarland: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Is that what you mean?

Gary McFarland: Yeah, ‘cause I’m stuck on it. It will, until I’m proven different.

Dave Cawley: Gary still believes Ted Bundy is the most likely suspect in Nancy Baird’s presumed murder. But he knows that’s not the only theory.

Gary McFarland: The theories were that it was possibly a law enforcement officer that worked in East Layton.

Dave Cawley: The story we’ve heard so far leaves me deeply skeptical about any conclusion regarding Nancy Baird’s death being the work of serial killer Ted Bundy. To my mind, there are too many other plausible scenarios. And, Tiffany Jean, the archivist, told me she’s unsure as well.

Tiffany Jean: I, I looked at the case a little bit. And I thought that it didn’t quite fit his M.O., with what I know about how he operated.

Dave Cawley: What was different? For one, the location. Ted Bundy was never known to abduct a woman from a gas station during daylight hours.

Tiffany Jean: And while Bundy was capable of doing that, he mostly operated at night. And he mostly avoided places where he could be seen or picked out.

Dave Cawley: In his early crimes in Washington state, Bundy sometimes approached women while claiming to be injured, needing help to put something in his car. Would Nancy Baird have taken that kind of bait?

Tiffany Jean: It seems unusual that she would have been willing to leave her post to do that when there was no one else at the station.

Dave Cawley: Bundy liked to lure women to his car—a light tan 1968 Volkswagen Beetle—then handcuffed them or knocked them unconscious. If he’d done something like that with Nancy Baird, it probably would’ve happened right in the parking lot outside the Fina station.

Tiffany Jean: And that seems like kind of a big risk for Bundy to have taken.

Dave Cawley: None of the witnesses from the Fina station reported seeing a Volkswagen Beetle like Bundy’s. And the descriptions provided by the Williams children didn’t match Ted Bundy, either.

Tiffany Jean: So, that’s another reason that seems unlikely that it would have been him.

Dave Cawley: Nancy Baird vanished from the Fina station within the space of just five or ten minutes.

Kenny Payne: Yeah I mean she’s just, she’s just gone.

Dave Cawley: No signs of a struggle, no indication she ran away.

Kenny Payne: I mean she’s got a, a child at home.

Dave Cawley: So retired sheriff’s detective Kenny Payne gets why even some of his former colleagues believe to this day Ted Bundy abducted and murdered Nancy Baird.

Kenny Payne: But then you have to try and figure out whether or not the first thought of “it’s gotta be Ted Bundy” well no, what can you find that tells me a story?

Dave Cawley: What Kenny’s saying is the elements necessary to build a narrative about Ted Bundy killing Nancy Baird just aren’t there.

Tiffany Jean also shared another, more compelling reason why she questions Ted Bundy’s supposed involvement. Bundy, she told me, might have an alibi for the day Nancy Baird disappeared. And Tiffany could be the first person to ever piece it together.

Ted Bundy first moved to Utah in September of 1974, having come from Washington state to attend law school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Tiffany Jean: He had a steady girlfriend who lived in Seattle who was originally from Ogden. And she was probably the reason why he came to Utah in the first place, because she had roots there. And eventually they planned on settling down there, if they ever got married. But y’know, he was not a good person. (Laughs) So in addition to everything else bad that he did, he also cheated on her quite a bit.

Dave Cawley: In June of 1975, just a few weeks before Nancy Baird disappeared, Ted Bundy met a young school teacher named Leslie Knudsen at a party in Salt Lake City. Bundy and Leslie started seeing one another.

Tiffany Jean: And they dated until August, she saw that he was arrested and didn’t want anything more to do with him.

Dave Cawley: Leslie spoke to investigators back in 1975, but she was never called as a witness in court and has kept a very low profile all the years since. Her story is not well known, even among Ted Bundy experts.

Tiffany Jean: But I was able to find her phone number, and an associate of mine called her. And this was back in 2019. And it took a little while for her to warm up and agree to, to speak at all. But she gave some, you know, some kind of overall arching details about her time that she spent with him. And she mentioned that he had visited her family, and she’d introduced him to her entire family at a family reunion on the 4th of July, 1975. And that struck me immediately because Nancy Baird disappeared on 4th of July, 1975. And if Leslie Knudson was accurate in her recall, then Ted probably could not have done that, if he was with her, and being introduced to her entire family at their July 4th family reunion. But it doesn’t seem like anyone else has ever put those together that he was with her on the day that this crime occurred.

Dave Cawley: I’ve listened to a recording of this interview with Leslie Knudson. There are legal and ethical considerations that prevent me from sharing the audio with you, but I can tell you what Leslie said: she and Bundy had “gone to the family ranch” on the 4th of July. Leslie didn’t say where the ranch was, and she’s not responded to multiple messages I’ve left for her. But I did some genealogy research and can tell you Leslie’s maternal grandfather was a prominent sheep rancher in an area of Utah called the Uinta Basin.

When Leslie’s mother died, the obituary described how she’d spent “many summers in the Fruitland, Utah area on the family ranch.” Fruitland is in the Uinta Basin. This is likely where Leslie Knudson took Ted Bundy on the day Nancy Baird disappeared.

Tiffany Jean: And so it’d be pretty difficult for him to have done both things on that day because it would have been quite a drive.

Dave Cawley: More than 100 miles. Quite the drive, indeed. But once investigators in the Nancy Baird case honed in on Ted Bundy as a suspect, all efforts involving other persons of interest came to a halt.

Tiffany Jean: I was amazed at how many people went through that gas station in that tiny frame of time, within like 15 minutes. And nobody saw her leave?

Dave Cawley: My look into the Nancy Perry Baird case came about because a jailhouse informant once told the FBI Cary Hartmann had known Nancy. I haven’t seen any sign that tip was ever shared, investigated or corroborated. What I’ve learned, is there are other, more likely leads still left unexplored. But after nearly 50 years, so many people important to solving this puzzle are gone. And former East Layton officer Tom Jackson told me his health is on the decline.

Tom Jackson: One of the first people I want to see, other than my parents when I get to the other side, is Nancy. ‘Cause she has bugged me for so long. What could I have done to have been there for her? ‘Cause she’s, she was not the type, to’ve just bugged out and said, y’know, “I’m tired of the world.”

Dave Cawley: “She was not the type…” This is a common refrain we hear in so many cases of missing women, and to be honest, it’s getting under my skin. Because who is the type? Sure, people do run away, but in this podcast we’ve repeatedly heard how more sinister circumstances often surround the disappearances of women. It happened with Sheree Warren. Her disappearance, 10 years after Nancy Baird’s, bore many similarities. Both were young mothers, just out of unhappy marriages. Both were last seen at work. Neither just walked away. But in both cases, speculation about about serial killers distracted investigators, drawing attention away from more probable suspects.

Tom Jackson: And boy, whoever did it, he’s another Bundy.

Dave Cawley: Against the backdrop of turnover and jurisdictional dysfunction we’ve explored, it’s easy to understand how Ted Bundy filled a vacuum. His entrance to the scene took pressure off East Layton police. Nancy Baird’s friends and relatives were placated by the belief Bundy did it, even though no proof ever emerged to support that. But there are too many unexplored avenues of investigation for me to accept that conclusion. Like the man who stalked, “molested” and threatened Nancy a couple of nights before she disappeared. Or the two “hippie type” guys chatting with her at the Fina station moments before she vanished. Or even an East Layton police officer with a troubled past.

Until these other leads are closed, how can anyone accept taking “the convenient alternative?”

Cold season 3, episode 10: Last Man Standing – Full episode transcript

Dave Cawley: The world had gone into lockdown. Covid-19 had exploded into a full-blown pandemic. Schools and businesses were shuttered. Streets in cities across the United States were eerily quiet.

It was the spring of 2020, but at least one business in Ogden, Utah remained open: Dave Moore’s sewing machine repair shop. Dave and his brother, who co-owned the business, were trying to keep up with a sudden surge in demand for their services.

Dave Moore: We were extremely busy during when Covid broke out because everyone was staying home making masks.

Dave Cawley: Dave’s shop was still located right where it’d been in October of 1985, on the night when Sheree Warren had disappeared. The bar on the other side of the parking lot, where Dave’d gone for a drink with his friend Cary Hartmann that night, was still there too. But it’d changed names and owners several times over the decades. There’s a small office tucked in the back of Dave’s shop. Dave was working in the office one day that spring of 2020 when he heard someone come through the door onto the sales floor.

Dave Moore: My brother was down on the floor and uh, Cary came in and my brother’s not real fond of Cary, said uh “let me see if he’ll see you.” So he came up and I just walked down real briefly, said “hi,” y’know, “what’re you doing?” And he basically gave me the story that he was living in a halfway house and somebody donated a bed and a small TV to him and that was basically the conversation.

Dave Cawley: A modest new beginning for Cary Hartmann. Cary had just returned to Ogden after spending 32 years in prison. Dave had struggled over those years to reconcile the charming Cary he’d once known with the secretive man Cary’d revealed himself to be.

Dave Moore: To be honest with you, I didn’t believe he did it until he was convicted.

Dave Cawley: They’d remained in contact for awhile, but fell out of touch during the ‘90s. Years later, Dave wrote a letter to Cary.

Dave Moore: Just to see how he was doing. Just to see what the situation was and I basically wanted to know what, “what’s wrong with you?” Y’know?

Dave Cawley: Cary had not responded. So when Cary dropped in unannounced on Dave at work in early 2020, Dave hadn’t felt too eager to renew their old friendship.

Dave Moore: Yeah. We’d both changed.

Dave Cawley: Cary and Dave had been together at the bar on the evening of Sheree Warren’s disappearance, almost 35 years earlier. Cary’d tried to use Dave as an alibi. So it’s interesting one of the first things Cary did after getting out of prison was check up on his old friend. Cary’d told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole before leaving prison he’d anticipated a tough transition.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I know there’s going to be rejection when I go out there in one form or another. Now, when I can’t handle that, that’s a risky situation for me. I know who I can call to say “whoa, my self-esteem is in the dirt.”

Dave Cawley: I wonder if Cary’s self-esteem took a hit when he realized he could no longer count Dave Moore as a friend. Another old friend of Cary’s, Brent Morgan the taxidermist, told me he also wants nothing to do with Cary. Which is saying something, because Brent and Cary grew up together.

Brent Morgan: If you go back to friends, I can remember him the farthest back because of the association of my parents and his parents.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d written letters to Brent’s mom for years after his conviction. And Cary’s own mother, Donna Hartmann, had kept in touch with the Morgans as well.

Brent Morgan: Donna was always after mom and myself to go and visit him and there was a couple of time I thought about it and I just didn’t want to.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): Hmm.

Brent Morgan: Didn’t want to.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s mom, Donna Hartmann, had attended her son’s parole board hearings. She’d heard him say under oath he’d lied to his family about being innocent.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I was in denial. I couldn’t face up to what I’d done. I was wracked with guilt and shame.

Dave Cawley: But Brent Morgan told me Cary’d privately held to a different story: he hadn’t raped anyone and was only admitting to the crimes because otherwise, the parole board would never let him out of prison. Donna Hartmann died in 2013.

Brent Morgan: His mother went to her grave believing that he was innocent.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s dad, Bill Hartmann, had defended his son from the start. He’d paid Cary’s bail, put up his own money to fund DNA testing and also attended his son’s parole board hearings. But Bill Hartmann didn’t live to see Cary regain his freedom, either. Bill died in January of 2020, just two months shy of Cary’s release from prison.

Sheree Warren’s friend and former coworker, Pam Volk, hadn’t realized Cary was free when she and I met a year-and-a-half later.

Pam Volk: Is he out?

Dave Cawley (to Pam Volk): He is

Pam Volk: Oh, I didn’t know he was out.

Dave Cawley: Yeah, yeah.

Pam Volk: That honestly makes me a little nervous. Hmm, ‘kay. Well, interesting. And he lives in Ogden?

Dave Cawley: Yeah, he does. I know, because I paid Cary Hartmann a visit myself.

This is Cold, season 3, episode 10: Last Man Standing From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Sheree Warren’s dad, Ed Sorensen, told Salt Lake City TV station KTVX in 2019 he hoped to someday learn what happened to Sheree.

Ed Sorensen (from October 16, 2019 KTVX TV archive): Sure I’d love to know what happened, but I don’t think we’ll ever find out.

Dave Cawley: Roy City police were at the time actively investigating Sheree’s disappearance. The cold case remained in the hands of detective John Frawley, who still has the case today. John told me meeting Sheree’s family had changed his perspective.

John Frawley: Kinda sobering feeling that this family they didn’t get any answers.

Dave Cawley: Those conversations were driving John and his fellow detectives to keep digging. They wanted to at last be able to tell Sheree’s dad, Ed Sorensen, they were bringing his daughter home.

John Frawley: I don’t know how to explain that other than we want answers just as much as anyone else. It’s important to us.

Dave Cawley: John had come to believe Cary Hartmann held those answers. And he’d wanted to ask Cary about it.

John Frawley: So, I went down to the prison twice and then I met with him at AP&P. So three times.

Dave Cawley: AP&P is short for Adult Probation and Parole. It’s a state agency in Utah responsible for supervising people after they’re released from prison. John told me these interactions with Cary hadn’t proved very fruitful.

John Frawley: You know, I’ve been in a room with some, with some interesting people during this career and he’s one of them. It’s just very different.

Dave Cawley: We’ve heard several people over the course of this season describe Cary has having two personalities. He could come across as debonair or devilish, depending on the moment. John didn’t tell me which Cary he encountered. Cary’s release hadn’t come without strings. He had to abide by conditions set by the parole board.

John Frawley: As part of his parole agreement he was mandated to submit to random polygraph.

Dave Cawley: A lie detector, about whatever police wanted to ask him about. Random polygraphs are a standard condition of parole in felony sex offense cases in Utah. The results aren’t typically admissible as evidence in court, but they can help investigators figure out if they’re on the right track. Cary Hartmann had never taken a lie detector test about his relationship with Sheree Warren. He might end up back in prison on a parole violation, if he refused to cooperate now. John Frawley had Cary in a corner.

John Frawley: Oh man, yeah. He does not, he’s not happy with me.

Dave Cawley: John called in an FBI agent with decades of experience as a polygraph examiner. The agent sat Cary down and asked him a series of questions about Sheree’s disappearance.

John Frawley: And he did fail that polygraph test.

Dave Cawley: Spectacularly, or so I’ve heard. Roy police have refused to give me any records related to the polygraph. The FBI won’t even acknowledge such a report exists, which would be comical if it wasn’t so frustrating. This put John in something of a tight spot. He’s told me the polygraph report is important, but he’s also not at liberty to discuss it in detail. He could only give me this three-word summary without getting into trouble.

John Frawley: It shows deception.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s performance at the polygraph went so poorly, it made John rethink his entire take on the Sheree Warren case. From that point forward, he no longer saw Chuck Warren as his prime suspect. I asked John if that was so, why hadn’t he just arrested Cary?

John Frawley: It doesn’t give me what I need because I have two persons of interest.

Dave Cawley: Chuck Warren’s unwillingness, or inability, to provide a clear story about where he’d been after Sheree disappeared meant John couldn’t completely count Chuck out.

John Frawley: Yep. The two persons of interest are still Charles Warren and Cary Hartmann.

Dave Cawley: Chuck Warren never showed much interest in what’d happened to his estranged wife Sheree in 1985. He’d just moved on with his life. In the last episode, we heard Roy police detective John Frawley’s 2015 interview with Chuck.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): You say you can’t remember too much but, y’know, you’re doing pretty good. You—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Well as you’re bringing it up, I can remember a few things.

Dave Cawley: John’d asked Chuck about Cary Hartmann.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Did you know about him at the time. I mean, did you know that she was dating him or?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Exhales) I can’t remember.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Can’t remember that?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Uh, I, yeah, I just can’t remember if she—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —uh, when he got arrested it seemed like, then I heard something about that she’d been dating him.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): That she’d been dating him, afterwards.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And I think that’s how I found out, but I don’t know.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): After—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): She’d never said anything to me about it.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And I’d never asked her—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Right.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —so, y’know, ‘cause I was dating a lot of girls at the time.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Right.

Dave Cawley: In case you didn’t catch that, Chuck said he’d been “dating a lot of girls” when Sheree’d disappeared. But we also know Chuck’d reunited with his first wife, Alice, during that same period.

By the time of John Frawley’s interview with Chuck 30 years later, Chuck was living with his third wife, a woman named Willow. She’d sat by Chuck’s side while John questioned him. Willow’d interjected at one point, saying she wasn’t surprised to hear Chuck’d acted unconcerned when Sheree didn’t show up looking for her son on the night of her disappearance.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He’s been a pretty easy-going guy, too. So when she didn’t actually come pick him up at that time he probably wasn’t too worried about it. She’d be there eventually.

Dave Cawley: The first time I heard this audio recording, I thought Chuck and Willow shared an odd dynamic. Chuck and Willow had lived together for about 10 years, but had only been married a year or so at the time of the interview. And they didn’t stay married long. Three years later, in 2018, Chuck filed for divorce. Court records show Willow tried to lay claim to a lot of Chuck’s property, including stuff he’d bought well before they’d married. Willow also refused to move out of Chuck’s house. He twice filed eviction lawsuits against her. She left under protest in early 2020, but didn’t stay gone. Willow soon convinced her ex-husband Chuck to let her back into his heart, his life and his house.

You might be wondering who you’re supposed to root for in all this. Neither Chuck nor Willow seem very sympathetic. But there’s a revelation I found in the court records that puts their squabble in a different context. Chuck filed a third eviction lawsuit against Willow in September of 2020. It says:

“Willow was supposed to help Chuck as he had been diagnosed with dementia. Willow has not been giving Chuck his medications.”

Looking back, the beginnings of Chuck’s mental decline seemed apparent five years earlier, during his interview with detective John Frawley.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Well, I have trouble remembering how to say different words.

Dave Cawley: In the last episode, I told you how Willow was 27 years younger than Chuck. They’d met and moved in together years before the onset of Chuck’s memory problems.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He never used to be like this. “How do I do this, how do I do that.” Then he’d get frustrated with it.

Dave Cawley: But Willow had only married Chuck in a spur-of-the-moment Las Vegas Elvis chapel wedding after Chuck’s memory started failing. Willow Hendricks went to court herself. She asked a judge to appoint her as Chuck Warren’s legal guardian. That hadn’t sat well with Chuck’s brother and two sons, one of whom was also Sheree’s son. Court records show they intervened, trying to block Willow from taking control of Chuck’s assets. On February 1st, 2021, a judge declared Chuck “incapacitated.” Under the legal definition, that meant Chuck could no longer provide for his own protection, health or safety. His ability to evaluate information, make decisions and provide for the necessities of life were impaired.

Chuck’s dementia meant whatever he might’ve known about Sheree’s disappearance was locked away where even he couldn’t get to it. And if evidence were to somehow emerge proving Chuck’d killed Sheree, no prosecutor would ever charge him. Chuck wouldn’t be able to aid in his own defense, or even understand what he was accused of doing.

I learned about Chuck’s condition early in my research for this season. I realized I wouldn’t ever have a chance to interview him. I couldn’t, in good conscience, knowing Chuck lacked the cognitive ability to understand the questions I would ask. And it’s a terrible lost opportunity. From February of 2021 onward, Chuck Warren was off-limits in the search for answers about Sheree’s disappearance.

A couple of months later, in April of 2021, an investigator for the Weber County Attorney’s Office brought Cary Hartmann to an office in downtown Ogden. The investigator, Steve Haney, introduced Cary to a criminal defense lawyer named Michael Bouwhuis. Michael was a public defender, who’d represented thousands of clients over the years. Haney’d called both Cary and Michael here as part of a plan he’d conceived. He hoped he might coax Cary into admitting to Sheree Warren’s murder, by making Cary an offer he couldn’t refuse.

What I tell you next has never before been revealed: Steve Haney, the investigator, handed Cary a letter from the county attorney. It offered Cary immunity from criminal charges, if he revealed the location of Sheree Warren’s remains. A promise: take us to Sheree and we won’t charge you with her murder. This is what’s known as “transactional immunity.” It’s sometimes used to obtain testimony from witnesses or accomplices — see season 2 of this very podcast for an example — but it’s almost never provided to the primary target in a major criminal investigation like this.

The wording of the immunity offer was broad. There were no hidden “gotchas.” It was a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for Cary Hartmann. The letter even said this promise of immunity did not depend on the successful recovery of Sheree’s remains. So long as Cary told the truth about what he’d done and made a good faith effort to show where he’d left her body, he wouldn’t face any consequences. The county attorney had already signed the letter. All it needed to become binding was Cary’s own signature.

Cary, I’m told, seemed suspicious and skeptical. He didn’t know Michael Bouwhuis, this lawyer the cop Haney said was supposed to represent him. Besides, Cary already had his own lawyer, a fact Haney hadn’t realized. Cary called his attorney on the phone. They talked, then informed investigator Steve Haney they needed time to discuss the offer. Cary then left, taking the immunity letter with him.

About a week later, Steve Haney received a follow-up phone call from Cary’s attorney. The lawyer reportedly said Cary was not going accept the immunity offer. But here’s the thing, as far as I know Cary still has the immunity letter. And he could at any time sign it, walk into the Weber County Attorney’s Office, admit to killing Sheree Warren and face no consequences. But maybe Cary doesn’t need to do that. After all, why would he need immunity for something he’s insisted he didn’t do? Maybe Cary just doesn’t like talking to cops. Perhaps he’d feel more comfortable speaking with a reporter. Let’s find out.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: The air feels stifling. I sit in the driver seat of a small Honda crossover, pulled into a parking stall at an apartment complex not far from the mouth of Ogden Canyon. It’s the same place where Cary Hartmann lived at the time of his arrest in 1987. It’s the apartment complex where police’d found a gray suede jacket, possibly belonging to Sheree Warren, when they’d searched Cary’s unit in the rape investigation.

For some reason, Cary Hartmann chose to move back here in 2020, after he left prison, following a short stint at a halfway house. I step out of the car…

(Sound of car door)

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Let’s go knock.

Dave Cawley: …and walk toward one of the three-story buildings. It’s the start of May, 2021 and Utah’s experiencing a spring swelter. Air conditioners whir as I pass by. I look at the numbers on the doors, counting up until I find the right one, stop and knock.

(Sound of door knock)

Dave Cawley: No answer. I look at the unit number again, comparing it to Cary’s public listing in the Utah sex offender registry. It’s the right place, I’m sure. But Cary doesn’t seem to be home. Or at least, he doesn’t answer the door. I expected this, and I’ve come prepared with a pen and notepad.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Ok, what is our date today?

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): It’s the fifth, Cinco de Mayo.

Dave Cawley: That’s the voice of my boss, Sheryl Worsley, who’s joining me on this outing.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Alright, let’s see. What do we want to say here? Uh, “Mr. Cary Hartmann”…

Dave Cawley: This isn’t the first letter I’ve written to Cary. I’d reached out to him once before, when he was still incarcerated. At that time, I was researching the murder of Joyce Yost for season 2 of this podcast. I’d come across the recording of William Babbel, aka Charlie the FBI informant. We heard from him back in episode 6.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police recording): I was in a therapy group with Cary Hartmann. And I know Cary Hartmann’s story very well.

Dave Cawley: William Babbel had told the FBI Cary Hartmann killed Sheree Warren. But Babbel later switched up his story and told a South Ogden police detective a different guy, Doug Lovell, killed Sheree.

William Babbel (from December 19, 1991 police recording): He mentioned somebody, that he was afraid he was going to get questioned in a rape-kidnap-murder of somebody named Sheree Warren.

Dave Cawley: I’d wanted to know what Cary made of Babbel’s contradictory claims. Was William Babbel a liar? But Cary never responded to my first letter. So this is why I’m standing at Cary’s door. I’m carrying a transcript of the William Babbel police interview with me as I knock at Cary’s apartment. When he doesn’t answer, I tuck the transcript behind his screen door, along with the following note.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Mr. Cary Hartmann, my name is Dave Cawley. I am a reporter with KSL. I previously wrote you while you were still incarcerated, hoping to set up an interview regarding a story I was working on about the Joyce Yost case. I never heard back but would still like an opportunity to speak with you. I will be publishing a story next week that includes a claim Doug Lovell had some involvement with the disappearance of another woman whom you knew, Sheree Warren. I’ve included a copy of a police interview with a prison informant named William Babbel. I’d love to hear your thoughts about what William had to say. I look forward to hearing from you, Dave Cawley.

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): There you go.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): So be it.

Dave Cawley: Then, Sheryl and I walk back to our car and crank up the A/C. I’m about to put the car in reverse when I glance at the rearview mirror and freeze.

“Act cool,” I say to Sheryl, “but take a look to our left.”

As she does, I reach down and switch off the ignition.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): So we’re sitting in the car outside Cary Hartmann’s apartment, having just left a note in his, uh, door, telling him that we wanted to speak with him and Sheryl, what happened?

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): And he pulls up, backs into a parking spot and we’re like “we think that’s him.”

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Yeah. I recognized the car driving past in the rearview, being a Chevy Avalanche, which was what was listed as one of his vehicles on the Utah sex offender registry and, and you watched him get out.

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Yep. It looks like it’s him. So we’re going to give him a second to get our note and we’ll try again.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Give him a door knock.

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Yep.

Dave Cawley: We decide five minutes seems fair: enough time to read letter and skim the transcript. We wait, watching the clock, then go knock on Cary Hartmann’s door a second time.

(Sound of door knock)

Dave Cawley: The door opens just a crack. I can see the lights are off inside. It’s dark, cave-like, as if blackout curtains cover all the windows. But enough light shines through the crack in the door to illuminate a face I recognize in the shadows.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Hey Cary—

Cary Hartmann (from May 5, 2021 recording): (Unintelligible)

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Dave Cawley from KSL. I left you a note, uh, but then I saw you pulling in as we were getting ready to leave. Umm, can I talk to you for just a second?

Cary Hartmann (from May 5, 2021 recording): No, I don’t have anything to say.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Ok.

Cary Hartmann (from May 5, 2021 recording): You want to talk to me, you have to talk to my attorney.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Oh, who’s your attorney? I’d be happy to reach out.

Cary Hartmann (from May 5, 2021 recording): (Pause) Johnathan Porter’s my attorney.

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Johnathan Porter? Ok, thank you, sir.

Sheryl Worsley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Thank you.

Cary Hartmann (from May 5, 2021 recording): (Unintelligible)

Dave Cawley (from May 5, 2021 recording): Got it.

Dave Cawley: And that’s the entirety of my communication with Cary Hartmann. It struck me as odd Cary’d referred me to his attorney. At the time, I wasn’t aware Weber County had offered Cary immunity just a couple of weeks earlier. I did reach out to Cary’s attorney, by the way, but I received no response. Cary Hartmann won’t talk to me.

I did talk to former Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman, the guy who’d made the rape case against Cary in 1987, around the same time I went to knock on Cary Hartmann’s door. Zimmerman told me he believes Cary’s paid his debt to society and deserves a chance to prove he’s a changed man. Zimmerman’s position surprised me. He’s not someone I expected would show Cary much sympathy. Zimmerman’s notes and reports include a lot of detail about what Cary reportedly did to his suspected victims back in the ‘80s. I haven’t shared all of what’s in them, mostly to avoid being salacious and to protect the innocent from additional trauma.

Zimmerman declined my request for an on-the-record interview, but I shared what he told me with former Roy police detective Jack Bell, the original investigator on Sheree Warren’s disappearance.

Jack Bell: What Zimmerman said about him doing his time is true. Because he has done more time for the rapes than he would for a manslaughter.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d spent 32 years in prison, more than double the 15-year minimum on his sentence. Over the course of this season, we’ve heard how the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole kept Cary in for a few reasons. They included Cary’s own refusal to accept responsibility for what he’d done.

Heather Nelson Cooke (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): There is tremendous repression and denial going on. So strongly … that therapy would be completely a waste of time until there’s a change of, of your perception.

Dave Cawley: The parole board had at times feared Cary might revert to his past behaviors. And there was the matter of Cary’s possible involvement in the disappearance of Sheree Warren. But in the end, the parole board decided to send Cary back out into society. Jack Bell told me he doesn’t believe Cary Hartmann’s squared his debts.

Jack Bell: No I don’t feel like he’s done his time.

Dave Cawley: I also asked former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards, the prosecutor who’d first put Cary away, if he believes Cary’s paid his debts.

Reed Richards: Well, that’s an interesting discussion and I don’t know that I have an opinion on it.

Dave Cawley: Reed said he’d felt surprised, not that the parole board let Cary out, but instead that it kept Cary in as long as it did.

Dave Cawley (to Reed Richards): Why so? Tell me—

Reed Richards: Well, because it was 15-to-life. So generally people were doing 15 years and getting out. But I can say that if he had been convicted the same time of homicide and the rape cases, he probably wouldn’t have spent any more time than he spent.

Dave Cawley: You could make an argument Cary’s already received punishment for a crime he’s not been charged with. Would that mean Cary no longer bears responsibility, if he killed Sheree Warren?

Reed Richards: And I guess the other question is what would a court do with it anyway? Y’know, if you were to convict him now, he’s probably what, 75 or so?

Dave Cawley: Cary is 74 years old, at the time I’m recording this.

Reed Richards: Yeah. So what are they gonna do with him?

Dave Cawley: If prosecutors today charged Cary Hartmann with Sheree Warren’s murder based on the evidence at hand, and if that case went to trial and you ended up on the jury, odds are you wouldn’t hear a word about lingerie survey phone calls, the Ogden City Rapist investigation or the lies Cary told to the parole board over the years. Courts operate under rules of evidence. Those rules spell out what kind of information prosecutors can use to try and prove their case. The stuff I just mentioned would likely not be allowed, because it doesn’t directly tie in to Sheree Warren’s disappearance. And even if it did, a judge might still not allow it because of the risk it could prejudice the jury against Cary. This explains why the Weber County Attorney’s Office offered Cary Hartmann immunity. They were willing to give up on ever charging Cary, if it meant they might recover Sheree’s remains, for her family.

Reed Richards: Like with any person who’s lost a loved one, to have the body and know where the grave is pretty important. So yeah, I think there’s value in doing that even if you don’t prosecute.

Dave Cawley: But as we heard, Cary rejected the immunity offer.

Reed Richards: I’m not sure where you go at this point, unless you find the body somewhere. Umm, and even if you find the body, that doesn’t necessarily tell you who killed her.

Dave Cawley: That would depend on where. We have two likely suspects: Chuck Warren or Cary Hartmann. Finding Sheree Warren’s remains somewhere in the desert partway between Ogden and Las Vegas wouldn’t directly tie her death to either of them. On the other hand, finding Sheree’s remains buried in the back yard of Chuck’s house would clearly point toward him. Finding her remains on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir would point to Cary.

Most of my attention has so far focused on Causey, because we have a confluence of evidence all pointing that direction: it’s near where Cary Hartmann lured Heidi Posnien at the start of our story. It’s where his friends owned land and liked to hunt. It’s where the elk hunting guide Fred Johns spotted Cary four days after Sheree disappeared. And it’s where an anonymous caller reported finding a woman’s body…

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.

Dave Cawley: …remains that to this day have not been located. Let’s imagine that changed. Pretend somebody found Sheree’s remains on the mountain behind Causey, where the elk hunting guide sighted Cary Hartmann. How would we then interpret everything we’ve learned so far this season?

I’m now going to walk you through a step-by-step of what Sheree Warren’s murder could’ve looked like, based on the evidence and witness testimony we’ve gathered. There are gaps, which I will bridge with some speculation. Keep in mind: I’m not saying this is what did happen, I’m saying it’s one possible explanation of what could’ve happened.

On the evening of October 2nd, 1985, Sheree Warren walked out of an office building in Salt Lake City. She told Richard Moss, the man she’d been training, she was headed to Wagstaff Toyota to pick up her estranged husband.

Richard Moss: It was about 6:25 that we finally balanced and left the office. We got to the parking lot, she went to the west. I went north.

Dave Cawley: But Sheree’s husband, Chuck Warren, wasn’t waiting for her at Wagstaff. He’d changed his plans at the last minute and decided not to take his Toyota Supra from his home in Ogden to the dealership in Salt Lake City.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I remember calling her to tell her I wasn’t coming.

Dave Cawley: Around that same time, Cary Hartmann dropped in at his friend Dave Moore’s shop in Ogden. Cary suggested they go grab a couple drinks at a bar across the way. Cary and Dave spent a couple hours at the bar, from about 6 to between 8 and 9 p.m. So Cary was at the bar when Sheree left her work 40 miles south in Salt Lake City.

Sheree would’ve headed toward Ogden, either straight from work or after realizing Chuck wasn’t waiting for her at Wagstaff Toyota. Given the drive time, Sheree would’ve arrived in the Ogden area around 7:30 p.m. at the earliest. Her daily routine was to meet Chuck at the Denny’s restaurant just off the I-15 freeway in Roy. But she’d been late getting out of work, so I don’t know if she would’ve gone there or not on this particular night. She didn’t have a cell phone, making it difficult to change plans on the fly. Chuck wasn’t at that Denny’s, in any case. He later told police he’d gone out for that “jog.”

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Uh, yeah. Yeah, I was out jogging. That’s what I was doing.

Dave Cawley: Maybe Sheree stopped at the Denny’s in Roy looking for Chuck. We know she didn’t go home because her mom, Mary Sorensen, said Sheree never showed up for dinner. Everything I’ve heard about Sheree suggests her top priority would’ve been picking up her son. So I believe she would’ve headed toward Chuck’s house. If you today ask your phone for directions from Roy to Chuck’s house in Ogden, it will route you up Ogden’s 7th Street. That’s where Cary Hartmann lived at the time.

Give a little more drive time to get from Roy to Ogden and we see Sheree could’ve driven past Cary’s basement apartment around 8 p.m. or a little after. That’s around the same time Cary’s friend Dave Moore told me they’d left the bar, meaning Cary could’ve already been home by the time Sheree hypothetically drove past his place. She could’ve seen his yellow truck parked in the driveway at the top of the stairs that lead down into the basement.

The two women who’d lived above Cary, the teachers Kaye Lynn and Mary, later told police they believed Sheree’d stopped there that night. They told detective John Frawley they’d overheard a loud argument.

John Frawley: And the argument was Sheree had found out Cary Hartmann was dating someone else. And then during this argument they heard a loud thud. And then Cary Hartmann cusses and then they don’t hear anything after that.

Dave Cawley: Cary had a history of using physical force against his romantic partners. He outweighed Sheree by at least 50 pounds. It’s possible a single blow could’ve knocked her unconscious or even killed her. I can imagine Cary then in a panic, wondering who else knew Sheree was at his place.

Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, told police Cary’d called her at around 8 p.m. Cary’d asked where Sheree was. She told Cary Sheree’d intended to meet Chuck at the car dealership, then come home for dinner. But Sheree hadn’t showed up yet. As far as we know, Mary didn’t say anything to Cary about Sheree having plans to stop off at Cary’s apartment that night. So Cary would’ve presumably known he was safe, at least for a little while.

After hanging up with Mary, Cary could’ve wrapped Sheree in his black parka before taking her up the stairs from the basement apartment and placing her in his truck. Where to then? He would’ve needed somewhere dark and remote. Maybe Lost Creek, where Cary’d spent time deer hunting with his brother and cop buddies in the past. Lost Creek was an hour-and-a-half drive away, most of it on the interstate. Too far, and too risky. How about Causey? The secluded confines of Causey Estates were only 45 minutes from Ogden. The route, along Utah state highway 39, wound through dark canyons. And Cary knew his way around Causey Estates. He’d spent time there with friends, like the taxidermist Brent Morgan.

Brent Morgan: And, uh, there’s a locked gate.

Dave Cawley: Brent just happened to have loaned Cary his key to the gate at Causey Estates a couple of weeks earlier.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): Once he’s past the gate to get into Causey Estates, he can go up top.

Brent Morgan: That’s correct.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Brent Morgan: That’s correct.

Dave Cawley: There’s no proof Cary visited Causey Estates on the night of Sheree’s disappearance. This is speculative and you should treat it with due skepticism. I don’t think it’s likely Cary would’ve spent too long at Causey Estates, if he’d gone there that night. It’s not likely he would’ve gone all the way up the mountain, because in this hypothetical scenario, Sheree’s car would’ve still been sitting on the street outside his place in Ogden. Every second it remained there, he would’ve been exposed. He would’ve needed a quick but safe drop site.

Brent Morgan: The thing you gotta understand about Cary is, he’s lazy, y’know, he’s not gonna do anything that’s too hard.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d spent the first part of that evening at the bar with his friend Dave Moore and Dave had owned a lot in Causey Estates at the time.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): Pretty quiet back in those days?

Dave Moore: It was. Real quiet.

Dave Cawley: Cary would’ve known Dave’s lot at Causey Estates was unoccupied that night, making it a safe place to temporarily stash Sheree. Cary could’ve driven from his apartment in Ogden to Dave Moore’s lot in Causey Estates and been back home before 11 p.m.

Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, told police she’d received a second call from Cary on the night of Sheree’s disappearance between 10 and 11. He’d again asked if Sheree’d made it home. Mary’d said no. In this hypothetical scenario, Cary could’ve made this second call to Mary Sorensen after returning from dropping Sheree’s body, using it to bolster his story: he hadn’t seen Sheree at all that night.

Next, Cary would’ve needed to get rid of Sheree’s car. He would’ve taken her keys and gone out to her Toyota Corolla.

Chuck Warren liked to go to Las Vegas. He’d honeymooned there, more than once. His brother told me Chuck’d gone to Vegas regularly. It seems plausible Sheree might’ve shared that detail with Cary. If so, it’s conceivable Cary might’ve chosen to take Sheree’s car to Vegas as part of an effort to frame Chuck. If Cary’d driven through the night he could’ve arrived in Las Vegas just before sunrise. A quick jog to the airport, a false name at the ticket counter and a breeze through the pre-9/11 security process could’ve put Cary on a plane and back in Salt Lake City by 9:30 a.m.

He would’ve then needed to get from Salt Lake to Ogden. A taxi cab’s one possibility, but I don’t think someone sneaking home from dumping murder evidence in another state would want to leave a random cab driver as a witness, if it could be avoided. A trusted friend or relative seems more likely to me, but to my knowledge no one’s ever come forward to say they picked Cary up at the airport. That’s one major hole in this hypothetical scenario.

Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, reported her daughter missing to Roy police around noon on October 3rd, the day after Sheree’s disappearance. Her report landed on the desk of detective Jack Bell. Jack’d first tried to get ahold of Chuck Warren but couldn’t find him. Jack’d then turned his attention to Cary, placing a call to Cary around 2:30 p.m. Cary would later claim he called Jack, not the other way around. Cary said he made that call from work, but his timecard told a different story. It said Cary’d taken that day off. In any case, Cary’d arrived at Roy police headquarters around 2:45. He’d told Jack he’d gone to the bar with his friend Dave Moore the prior evening. Cary’d said he hadn’t realized Sheree was missing until that morning, when he’d supposedly talked to her mom on the phone. This contradicted what Mary Sorensen described, about getting two phone calls from Cary the night prior.

In this first interaction between Cary Hartmann and Jack Bell, Cary didn’t say Sheree was supposed to be waiting for him at his basement apartment while Cary was at the bar. That implausible story came later.

The first newspaper report of Sheree’s disappearance published the next day — Friday — two days after Sheree was last seen leaving her work. Cary’s upstairs neighbors saw the article, and recalled the loud fight they’d heard. One of them, Mary, taped a sympathy note to Cary’s door. Cary responded by grilling Mary about whether she’d seen Sheree at the house at any point during the last couple days.

Kira Hoffelmeyer (as Mary Courney from May 13, 1987 statement): He had been so convincing about how he felt about losing her.

Dave Cawley: Those are Mary’s words from her written statement, read by a voice actor.

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.

Dave Cawley: The next day, on Saturday — three days after Sheree was last seen — Cary dropped by the home of his TV reporter friend, Larry Lewis. He asked Larry to go on a 3-wheeler ride looking for Sheree’s body. They’d taken the 3-wheelers into the foothills above the city. Larry would later say Cary’d said they didn’t need to look around Chuck Warren’s house because police had already done that, which wasn’t true.

Cary’d showed up at gatherings after Sheree disappeared, where her family prayed for her safe return. Detective Shane Minor had talked to people who said Cary’d claimed to be spending all his time searching for Sheree and handing out missing persons fliers.

Shane Minor: But then the question is, is he really, or is that just he wants people to believe?

Dave Cawley: He did pass some of the fliers around, to his friends and even his own brother, but remember, Cary’s upstairs neighbors ended up finding a full box of those fliers abandoned in his closet after he moved out, a year following Sheree’s disappearance.

Shane Minor: It seems like that would be pretty common. You would hear one side from Cary on what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with and everything they’re doing but then when you’d talk to the person he’s referring to, they’d describe it as quite a bit different, like none of that was taking place.

Dave Cawley: If Cary had left Sheree Warren’s body at Causey Estates on the night of her disappearance, he might’ve felt nervous in the days that followed, as he put on this ruse of searching for her. It was opening weekend of the annual elk hunt. Cary would’ve known many of the cabin owners of Causey Estates would be headed up the mountain. Cary might’ve decided to move Sheree deeper into the backcountry. It’s a theory his former friend, the taxidermist Brent Morgan, told me makes sense.

Brent Morgan: If he had access up there and could go up and down the roads, you can find the right place where you can 1-2-3 heave-ho and it’s gonna be in a spot where people aren’t gonna go.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): But it’s gotta be a place that he can—

Brent Morgan: Get to.

Dave Cawley: —hypothetically get a body to, right?

Brent Morgan: That’s exactly right. And there are places up there where roads go to those type of areas. But it’s a big area.

Dave Cawley: Cary at this time still possessed the key for the gate at Causey Estates he’d borrowed from Brent. Back in episode 4, Brent told us he’d tried to get his key back, but Cary’d dodged him for days, not wanting to return it. So Cary could’ve gone back to Causey Estates early on Sunday, October 6th — four days after Sheree disappeared — with his ugly yellow truck and another man. A man who resembled his younger brother, Jack. Because this is when the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns, would later say he saw Cary Hartmann trespassing on private property.

Cary could’ve retrieved Sheree’s body from Causey Estates and driven farther up onto the mountain behind Causey, to the middle of nowhere. Cary might’ve backed his truck into some trees off the side of the primitive dirt road. It would’ve provided cover as he transferred his his payload  from the back of his truck to one of his 3-wheelers. From there, Cary might’ve gone off into the brush until he found a protected, private place to once again abandon Sheree’s body, this time for good.

Back in episode 4, we met a former Weber County Sheriff’s detective named Rod Layton. He’d led the search for the anonymous caller who reported finding a body near Causey.

Rod Layton: I was the lieutenant over investigations division when I left.

Dave Cawley: Rod told me in his experience, most crimes, and most criminals, are not complicated.

Rod Layton: Don’t give these people more credit than they deserve for being smart or being motivated ‘cause they’re not.

Dave Cawley: Rod said this same logic applies to killers who try to cover their crime by concealing the victim’s body. They tend to act irrationally, out of fear.

Rod Layton: And they’re not smart and they’re lazy.

Dave Cawley: This assumption is common in law enforcement circles, and for good reason. It keeps investigators from wasting time on fantastical theories. Keep it simple.

Rod Layton: Do I think that this guy went up there, y’know, carried the body back a mile? No.

Dave Cawley: But the assumption might break down if your suspected killer is a person who knows this is how cops tend to think. A person with police training. A person who knows to take that one bit of extra effort. So I’m going to challenge Rod’s assumption here, because evidence suggests Cary Hartmann had the training, the means and the mindset to be an exception to the rule.

We’ve now explored a hypothetical scenario involving Cary killing Sheree, then later enlisting the help of an accomplice to move Sheree’s body to a place it wouldn’t be found on the mountain behind Causey.

Moving a body is not a trivial task. I wasn’t sure if the 3-wheeled ATVs Cary owned in 1985 would’ve been up to the job. If the answer is no, the whole hypothetical falls apart. If the answer is yes, it suggests Sheree’s remains could be on that mountain today, in a place where no one’s yet bothered to look.

I decided to buy a 3-wheeler and conduct an experiment. I wanted to know if it was feasible for someone to use a machine like the ones Cary Hartmann had owned to move a body off-road, into the backcountry behind Causey. But first, some context. Three-wheeled ATVs hit the market at the start of the ‘70s. By the ‘80s, they were exploding in popularity.

Announcer (from 1981 Honda TV advertisement): Eleven years ago, Honda invented the ATC 3-wheeler and ever since, folks have been inventing new ways to use it.

Dave Cawley: Many hunters today will quarter a deer and haul it out of the forest on a four-wheeler. But I didn’t know if that would’ve been so simple with a more primitive 3-wheeler. Vintage 3-wheelers are narrower, weigh less and are more maneuverable than four-wheelers. People took them everywhere, cutting new trails and ripping up vegetation.

Richard Bingham (from February 24, 1986 KSL TV archive): It’s mainly the small all-terrain-cycles or ATCs that are at the heart of the problem. Popular with kids and adults alike, they’re fun to ride and go almost anywhere. They’re also dangerous.

Dave Cawley: Most 3-wheelers didn’t have suspension, meaning they couldn’t carry much weight and were rough to ride. They also had a tendency to tip, causing injuries or death. That’s why manufacturers stopped making them in 1987. But you can still buy old ones second-hand, which is what I did.

Former South Ogden police detective Terry Carpenter, who I met while working on the Joyce Yost case in season 2 of this podcast, was able to secure permission for me to access the private land on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs: the slash in the percent sign. Terry and I met at Lost Creek one morning in July of 2022. I unrolled a large map of the area across the tailgate of Terry’s truck.

Dave Cawley (to Terry Carpenter): ’Kay. So we’re going to come up Killfoil all the way up to the corral, right?

Terry Carpenter: Right.

Dave Cawley: Then we’re going to hang a left.

Dave Cawley: Our target established, we headed up the mountain. Terry had the key to open the gate.

(Sound of chain rattling and metal gate hinges)

Dave Cawley: It was a long ride, nearly 15 miles one-way from Lost Creek. We came to the spot on the mountain where Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had told police he saw Cary Hartmann and another man — possibly Cary’s younger brother Jack — on the Sunday after Sheree Warren disappeared. Terry Carpenter and I stepped out into the clearing on the ridge.

(Sound of bird song)

Dave Cawley: Standing there in the summer sun, I tried to imagine what reason Cary might’ve had for coming to this isolated spot four days after his girlfriend vanished. He’d reportedly told Fred Johns, the hunting guide, he was looking for elk. But as we’ve heard from Cary’s own brother…

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): What did he hunt, to the best of your—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Deer.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —present recollection. Just deer?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Just deer.

Dave Cawley: So was Cary stalking elk or had he harbored more sinister intentions? To test whether an old 3-wheeler could’ve carried a human body from this roadside clearing deeper into the forest, I needed an object similar in size, shape and weight. I pulled three bags of rock salt out of Terry’s truck. Each one weighed 40 pounds. I spread a set of painter’s coveralls on the dirt, then poured the 120 pounds of rock salt into the coveralls through a zippered opening on the chest.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): (Grunts)

(Sound of salt pouring)

Dave Cawley: Sheree’s driver’s license listed her as five-foot-five and 115 pounds.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): So this is about as much as a human body would weigh: 120 pounds of rock salt. And it is not easy to move.

Dave Cawley: Terry and I lifted the simulated body onto the rack mounted on the back of my 3-wheeler.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): One, two, three.

Dave Cawley: I’m a reasonably fit guy but this task felt more difficult than I’d anticipated…

Dave Cawley (to Terry Carpenter): I’ll come around this side. You got it?

Dave Cawley: …not just because of the weight. The simulated body proved unwieldy.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): Ok. That is a two-person job. You are not doing that alone.

Dave Cawley: I’ve never moved an actual deceased human body, so I’m not sure how well this approximated reality. But a second set of hands made a huge difference. I’m not sure I could’ve managed on my own. With the simulated body in place, I fired up the 3-wheeler’s small engine and headed down the dirt road.

Having so much additional weight over the rear axle took pressure off the single front tire, which in turn made steering less effective. The engine felt sluggish. The rear tires rubbed on the plastic fenders. But the frame didn’t bottom out. And with enough extra throttle, the 3-wheeler did go.

I rode about a quarter mile to a place where I knew from my research an old Jeep trail forked off from the road. Maps from the ‘80s show the trail descending into a canyon called Pete Nelson Hollow. This was one of the places I believed it was plausible Cary Hartmann might’ve gone on that Sunday so many years ago. It appeared evident the Jeep trail hadn’t seen use in a long time. Trees had fallen across the path and the underbrush had reclaimed the old tire tracks. I decided not to try and ride down it myself, because of the risk of getting stuck. Instead, I scouted the old trail on foot.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): This would be a pretty tough path to get a 3-wheeler down. You could do it, but you’d need to be a pretty good rider. And with the extra weight from a body, it would not be a fun ride.

Dave Cawley: That might’ve been different in 1985, when the path wasn’t so overgrown. The old ATV trail ended at a set of springs, where water rose out of the ground and created a series of murky pools. These springs feed into Causey Reservoir. They were surrounded by thick fields of a poisonous plant called false hellebore. I crashed through it…

(Sound of footsteps through underbrush)

Dave Cawley: …finding it so dense I couldn’t see down past my own waist.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): You might walk by a human body in this kind of environment and be 10 feet away from it and not ever see it.

Dave Cawley: Emerging on the other side of the hellebore patch, I saw meadows of dandelions and clear views farther down into the canyon. If I’d been on the 3-wheeler, I could’ve easily kept riding.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): It’s hard to describe without being up here and seeing this landscape just how futile it feels if you were trying to find a human body up here.

Dave Cawley: Still, I found myself getting sucked into the moment. I wanted to abandon my experiment and instead wander, searching for Sheree. I knew the odds of finding anything were slim. But irrational hope sometimes leads the mind astray. What if, I wondered, I just happened across a chip of bone or fragment of cloth? Some remnant. But no. No delusions of grandeur. I hiked back to the 3-wheeler with a newfound knowledge of what I’d only suspected before: human remains could easily go undetected in these mountain meadows.

Dave Cawley (from July 1, 2021 recording): And it’s possible, I believe, somebody could have driven a 3-wheeler down from the ridge into this opening.

Dave Cawley: If Cary Hartmann killed Sheree Warren, my experiment suggests it’s plausible he could’ve used one of his 3-wheelers to move her body into the backcountry on this mountain, beyond where police might bother to look. But maybe there’s another explanation for what Cary was doing here, four days after Sheree Warren disappeared. It’s a question I would very much like to ask him. And Cary, if you’re listening, you have an open invitation to come give your answer.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: When I first met former Roy police detective Jack Bell, we didn’t start off talking about the Sheree Warren case. Instead, Jack opened our conversation by talking about another case I wasn’t familiar with from the mid-‘80s.

Jack Bell: (Laughs) It’s a, a strange story. We had a, we had a serial bank robber.

Dave Cawley: This robber had committed hold-ups at a few banks and a pharmacy. He was a smooth operator, who’d worn a suit and trench coat. He didn’t make the ignorant mistakes many novice criminals do.

Jack Bell: We knew, had a pretty good hunch that this bank robber was an ex-cop, or a cop, y’know? He knew too much about how we did business.

Dave Cawley: Detectives hadn’t had much to go on aside from a photo that didn’t show the man’s face and a brief audio recording of his voice. Jack’d began to look — and listen — suspiciously at his fellow officers. He honed in on one particular guy he often saw working out at the city’s gym. One day, Jack made a surreptitious tape recording of this suspect.

Jack Bell: Taped this guy and turned it over to the FBI and their voice comparisons and, yeah. “I think you’re on the right track, this is, sure sounds like it.”

Dave Cawley: Jack’d grown more and more certain he had his man. But he had no evidence to support that, just a theory.

Jack Bell: Lo and behold.

Dave Cawley: The guy from the gym was not the bank robber. Jack’d been wrong. Hard evidence, including a confession, ended up pointing to a different guy, a former Roy City police officer named Boyd Wilcox.

Jack Bell: And his voice was perfect.

Dave Cawley: I didn’t at first understand why Jack wanted me to know about the mistake he’d made in the search for this bank robber, since it was unrelated to the disappearance of Sheree Warren. It wasn’t until more than two hours later in our conversation Jack came back to it.

Jack Bell: It’s like I told you about that bank robber. I mean, I left that gym that day convinced I had the right guy.

Dave Cawley: Jack was trying to warn me: be careful about what you think you know. Don’t let your theories get too far in front of your facts. The hypothetical scenario we’ve discussed in this episode probably does that. It requires some assumptions that go beyond the available evidence.

Jack Bell: You’ve gotta be broad. You can’t narrow it down, unless there’s absolutely evidence that somebody is guilty and it’s right there.

Dave Cawley: But narrow it down is exactly what Jack’d done at the start of the Sheree Warren case. He’d focused so much attention on Sheree’s estranged husband, Chuck Warren, he hadn’t seen the subtle signs Cary Hartmann might instead be responsible. Jack and I have talked several more times since our first meeting. He’s admitted he loses sleep after each of our conversations.

Jack Bell: None of us like to fail. And I feel like I failed.

Dave Cawley: Jack hadn’t at first noticed how Cary’s story shifted a little with each retelling.

Jack Bell: All Cary’s stories about her waiting there for him with candles and wine.

Dave Cawley: Jack hadn’t caught the significance of Cary slipping in references to Sheree staying over at his place in the middle of the week, even though that contradicted what Sheree’s parents said about her routine.

Jack Bell: He wants everybody to know this is her normal procedure and how much this lady’s in love with him, supposedly.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d made repeated references to Sheree wearing his black parka on the morning of her disappearance, but Jack hadn’t picked up on the potential significance of that. I’ll admit, that one’s not super obvious. It hadn’t seemed suspicious until police later found a gray suede women’s jacket in Cary’s apartment. It’s the “tale of two coats” we’ve discussed multiple times this season. And it leaves Jack wondering what other clues might’ve slipped under his nose during those critical early days.

Jack Bell: What did I miss? What did I miss? What did I miss? How many times have I asked myself that question?

Dave Cawley: Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor shared a similar sentiment with me, when we spoke about the search for Sheree.

Shane Minor: You’d hate to miss it and there’s been cases where I’ve worked and I’ve missed things and then you go back and when you realize what you missed, it’s like “I won’t make that mistake again.”

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Do you think this case is solvable?

Shane Minor: I think it’s a long shot but, hate to say it’s not. I think there’s a chance.

Dave Cawley: What would solving it look like? Is it just getting the answer? Is it getting a conviction? Is it finding a body?

Shane Minor: Well, my opinion on that would be, I think it’s solvable but an effective prosecution I think would be extremely difficult at this point in time.

Dave Cawley: We might someday get a definitive answer to the question “what happened to Sheree Warren.” But the window of opportunity to hold anyone accountable is rapidly closing.

Consider what might happen if a prosecutor were to try and charge Cary Hartmann with murder today, based on the current evidence. They would first have to clear the hurdle of convincing a judge probable cause existed to believe Cary committed the crime. The circumstantial evidence we’ve uncovered in this podcast likely achieves that. But it’s not likely to meet the higher standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt required for a criminal conviction.

In the U.S. justice system, the accused are presumed innocent unless and until they’re proven guilty. It’s up to the prosecution to present that proof. It doesn’t have to be absolute proof, but it must be enough to convince a judge or jury no other reasonable explanation exists. Apply that standard to what we know of Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Could a serial killer have abducted Sheree off the streets of Salt Lake City? Unlikely, but not impossible. That’s doubt, but maybe not reasonable doubt. Could Chuck Warren have killed Sheree in anger over their stalled divorce? Maybe he set up their meeting at Wagstaff Toyota as part of a plot. That’s doubt, and it’s reasonable, given what we know about how Chuck attacked his first wife with a tire iron during their divorce.

Convincing a judge or jury beyond a reasonable doubt Chuck Warren or Cary Hartmann killed Sheree would require more than just good a theory. It would take hard proof. Investigator Shane Minor spent years trying to find that proof.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): I’m not going to ask you to say a name but do you feel like you know who is responsible in this case?

Shane Minor: I think so. I think there’s one person knows exactly what happened. And I don’t think that person’s gonna admit to it. Maybe on his dying death bed. But I doubt it.

Dave Cawley: I don’t think Shane was talking about Chuck Warren. Sheree’s ex-husband Charles “Chuck” Warren died on October 22nd, 2022, as a result of his dementia. Chuck’d lived most his life in Ogden, aside from a brief stint in Roseville, California during the ‘70s, working for the railroad. He had one brother, Richard, but they hadn’t been close for much of Chuck’s life. They only reconciled in Chuck’s later years. Richard told me Chuck’d been a car nut, whose favorite pastime had been taking long road trips all across the American West.

Chuck Warren’s death occurred very late in the reporting process for this podcast. It underscored to me Sheree Warren’s case runs a very real risk of soon becoming unsolvable. Earlier in this episode, you heard Sheree’s dad, Ed Sorensen, say he didn’t think he would ever know the truth of what happened to his daughter. Ed was right. He passed away in December of 2021.

John Frawley: People involved in the case are passing away. That’s, that’s happening.

Dave Cawley: That’s again the voice of Roy police detective John Frawley.

John Frawley: So yes, I, the clock is ticking, absolutely.

Dave Cawley: At the time I’m recording this, Cary Hartmann is still alive. He is the last man standing. And the evidence suggests Cary has never been fully forthcoming about his actions during the days surrounding Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Detective John Frawley told me he’s not giving up, but he needs our help.

John Frawley: If someone interacted with Sheree Warren, Cary Hartmann or Charles Warren on October 2nd, 1985 and maybe they haven’t spoken to law enforcement, I would love to speak to them. Our ultimate goal is, y’know, getting a case filed and prosecution.

Dave Cawley: My job as a journalist is a bit different than a detective’s, or a prosecutor’s or a judge’s. I’m not trying to make an arrest, to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, or to decide guilt or innocence under the law. My role is to uncover and report truth. So as we bring our story to a close, allow me to share the truth I’ve found while investigating Sheree Warren’s case.

As I speak to you now, I’m looking at a picture of Sheree from 1970 or so, when she was about 10 years old. Sheree is staring into the camera lens. I see youthful curiosity and determination in her eyes. Sheree’s life held so much potential. She grew up and was just finding her own path when someone stole that life from her.

I’ve had a few people say to me “boy, Sheree sure knew how to pick ‘em” or “she had poor taste in men,” as if her murder was somehow her own fault. We have to stop doing that. Stop putting the blame on women when they’re lied to, manipulated or abused by the people who are supposed to love them.

More than half of the women who die by homicide in the United States each year are killed by a man who’s either their current or past intimate partner. Sheree had both a current partner and a past partner who became plausible suspects in her death. So I can’t tell you who killed Sheree, but I can say she’s not responsible for the heartless actions of the two men in her life. Sheree’s estranged husband, Chuck Warren, should’ve shown a bare minimum of human concern about her welfare. But he didn’t. He acted as if her disappearance came as a favor.

Sheree’s short-term boyfriend, Cary Hartmann, role-played the part of a respectable man while steering the investigation away from himself and terrorizing an entire community of unsuspecting women. We can only imagine what he subjected Sheree to during their brief time together.

Abuse in relationships doesn’t always lead to murder, but there are stories like Sheree’s where everything escalates until there’s no coming back.

We have to do better than this. That is my truth.

Cold season 3, episode 9: A Picture in the Lobby – Full episode transcript

Dave Cawley: A human skull rolled down a brushy hill between a suburban neighborhood and a busy Utah highway. The cranium came to rest in a litter of decaying leaves, at the base of a barren scrub oak tree. It sat there for some time — hours, days, months — before a man walking his dog caught a glimpse of it.

DeAnn Servey (from February 5, 2015 KSL TV archive): The man who initially found it, uh, walks along this Frontage Road every day and noticed something in the bushes.

Dave Cawley: He wasn’t sure what it was at first, just that it appeared round and off-white: out of place amid the drab remains of last autumn’s long-fallen foliage. But it’d captured his curiosity. So, he went in for a closer look. Only then could he see the unmistakable shape of the hollow eye sockets, the six teeth still stubbornly lodged into the maxilla. This was once the head of a living human being. But judging by the brittle appearance of the bone, this person had been dead for quite some time. The man, recognizing the skull as the partial remains of a person, recoiled, then pulled out his phone and called 911.

Davis County sheriff’s deputies rushed to the site. They put up crime scene tape as the frigid dark of the February night descended. A sergeant fielded questions from curious reporters, her face lit by the hard lights of the TV cameras, her breath turning to fog in the chill.

DeAnn Servey (from February 5, 2015 KSL TV archive): You don’t know if an animal could’ve brought it from a different location. There’s so many factors that we’re going to try to piece together and find the origin of this skull.

Dave Cawley: In other words, they didn’t know much. In the days that followed, crime scene technicians scoured the hill for more bones. They uncovered a shallow grave at the top of that hill, just a few feet behind the backyards of several homes. The grave contained the skeletal remains of a young woman.

Guy Beynon (from February 6, 2015 KSL TV archive): It was a little disturbing to, to realize that there’s a, parts of a, remnants of a body there.

Dave Cawley: This discovery of a clandestine gravesite in early 2015 along U.S. Highway 89 between Salt Lake City and Ogden resulted in police agencies all across Utah questioning if the bones belonged to one of their missing people. Police in the city of Roy hoped the skull might belong to Sheree Warren. The grave sat midway between where Sheree had lived, and where she’d disappeared.

Jack Bell, the original investigator on the Sheree Warren case, had retired six years earlier, in 2009, as assistant chief for the Roy City Police Department. He’d never stopped wondering what’d happened to Sheree.

Jack Bell: The last time I talked to anybody out here about that case, they had a pretty good size cardboard box full of stuff.

Dave Cawley: That “stuff” included Jack’s handwritten notes. Jack told me he’d at one time tried to type those chicken scratches into a computer.

Jack Bell: ‘Cause I wasn’t very proud of the work and I know my handwritings terrible.  But, uh, I didn’t get very far, so…

Dave Cawley: …so the notes had gone back into the box and the box had gone onto a shelf, all but forgotten. It’d collected dust, until that skull rolled down a hill next to a busy highway between Salt Lake City and Ogden.

John Frawley: I was just in my office one day and my supervisor comes in with a box, one of those cardboard boxes and he said “hey they found, uh, remains in Davis County. So we’re reopening this cold case.” It was Sheree Warren and I didn’t, I honestly didn’t know much about the Sheree Warren case at all.

Dave Cawley: That’s the voice of detective John Frawley. He’d started with the Roy City police department in 2008, meaning his and Jack Bell’s paths crossed only briefly. John’d only been a cop about six years when he ended up with Jack Bell’s old box of Sheree Warren case files. He was still relatively new to investigations, but had a sharp, analytical mind.

The box contained Jack Bell’s notes, a copy of the statement Cary Hartmann had given to his private investigator, reports from Las Vegas police about the discovery of Sheree’s car and a few other tidbits. John told me he’d seen Sheree’s face hundreds of times, without ever realizing it.

John Frawley: Sheree Warren’s picture was actually in a display case in our lobby and, uh, I never made the connection.

Dave Cawley: John’d never stopped to study that old missing persons flier. It looked a lot like the one Cary Hartmann had carried into Jack Bell’s office almost 30 years earlier. The box also contained one of those old fliers Cary Hartmann had printed. John looked at it, seeing again the photocopied picture of a smiling Sheree Warren. He picked through rest of the cardboard box, pulling out Jack’s notes, struggling to decipher the former detective’s handwriting. John read the original missing person’s report. It described how Mary Sorensen had called police the day after Sheree failed to return home from work one October evening.

John Frawley: Mary really kept her finger on the pulse of the case, y’know, and was involved.

Dave Cawley: John decided Roy police needed to reconnect with Sheree’s relatives.

John Frawley: I met with some of Sheree Warren’s family members and just to collect some DNA so we had something to compare to.

Dave Cawley: In the process, he learned Sheree’s mom, Mary, had died about two years earlier.

John Frawley: Umm, I was, I was never able to meet her and talk with her.

Dave Cawley: But he did meet Sheree’s dad, Ed Sorensen, as well as her son.

John Frawley: In talking with, with her son, he asked about that. He said, y’know, “is her picture still out in the lobby?” And I was, I said “yes.” And y’know, it’s important to them.

Dave Cawley: These interactions drove home to John just how frustrating the years with no answers must’ve been to the people who cared most about Sheree. So, John went back to that banker’s box of old case notes and reports.

John Frawley: Yeah, literally. Taking it off the shelf, yeah.

Dave Cawley: The box didn’t have everything, only a fragment of the Sheree Warren case, covering the first year-and-a-half of the investigation. That’s because, as I’ve mentioned before, the case had been split between investigators from Roy, Ogden and Salt Lake City. So, John didn’t yet have a full picture of the case but he found himself fascinated by what he’d seen.

John Frawley: I was taking it home and reading it, y’know it was just, I was hooked on it.

Dave Cawley: Yeah, I know the feeling, John. Meanwhile, the Office of the Utah State Medical Examiner was trying to identify the bones found on that hillside. John sent the medical examiner one of the items he’d found in the box — Sheree’s dental records — for the sake of comparison.

John Frawley: Everything sort of fit. Meaning, the timeframe, it was a female, it was the same stature that Sheree Warren was.

Dave Cawley: Sheree’s case had been dormant nearly a decade when the discovery of these skeletal remains infused detective John Frawley with a desire to find answers for Sheree’s family.

John Frawley: And I felt like, I felt like there was more I could do on it. As an investigator, that’s what you’re driven to do, y’know, dig in.

Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 9: A Picture in the Lobby. From KSL Podcasts, I’ve Dave Cawley.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Roy police detective John Frawley had picked up the Sheree Warren cold case in February of 2015, after the discovery of unidentified skeletal remains in a clandestine grave.

John Frawley: I started reading through this information in this box, and that’s how the cold case started.

Dave Cawley: John couldn’t get Sheree’s case out of his head. He’d done some preliminary research and re-established contact with Sheree’s family, but he wanted to do more. So, he’d gone to talk to his boss.

Carl Merino: Carl Merino. C-A-R-L and Merino, M-E-R-I-N-O.

Dave Cawley: Carl Merino served as chief of police for Roy from March of 2015 to May of 2021. We’re going to spend a little time diving into Carl’s background now, to help you better understand his philosophy on cold cases. It’s important because it shows why he was willing to green light John Frawley’s continued work on the Sheree Warren case. And he’d bumped up against the Sheree Warren case — and one of the two suspects, Cary Hartmann — several times over the years.

Carl Merino: It’s been really interesting to think how that case and my career have interacted.

Dave Cawley: So let’s look at Carl Merino’s history with the Sheree Warren case. Carl started as a cop in 1983, when he took an unpaid, volunteer position as a reserve officer with the Ogden Police Department. He signed onto the reserve corps right after Ogden police brass kicked Cary Hartmann out of it. Carl told me he’d known Cary back then, from his day job.

Carl Merino: He would come in where I worked as an industrial supplies sales rep and so I knew him from there. We had talked a little bit, but not much. He was a really outgoing guy. Uh, came across always as very confident. You got the feeling that he thought he was better than everybody else. And kind of that feeling of he had a scam going everybody. You know how somebody’s always getting over, that was kind of the way he came across.

Dave Cawley: It wasn’t until a few years into Carl’s time as an Ogden reserve officer that he came to see Cary Hartmann in a different light.

Carl Merino: I was at work the one day and I got called by our coordinator who coordinated with the reserves and he said “I need you to come to the police station and bring your gun.” And that usually means you’ve done something wrong and y’know, they’re taking your gun away and y’know, not let you volunteer anymore. And I thought “I can’t think of anything I could’ve done that would’ve done that.” So I went home and got it and took it up to Ogden Police Department and he said “your gun was issued to Cary Hartmann when he was a reserve with Ogden. And he has intimated that he used a gun with several of his rapes and we’re thinking it was probably this gun so we’re taking it back to use as evidence in case we, we can actually prove something with that.”

Dave Cawley: He only knew from reading the newspaper Cary’d also been dating Sheree Warren when she’d disappeared.

Carl Merino: Y’know it’s easy to imagine that something happened between the two of them that got out of hand.

Dave Cawley: Two years later, Carl took a full-time, paid position as a police officer.

Carl Merino: August of ’89, I got hired with Roy PD.

Dave Cawley: By that point, the Sheree Warren case was already four years old and well on its way to going cold. Five more years went by before, in 1994, Carl switched departments. He became a detective for Salt Lake City.

Carl Merino: I was assigned to homicide. And while I was assigned there we started to, to work cold cases.

Dave Cawley: Carl had arrived in Salt Lake right at the end of that department’s search for a suspected serial killer, a search that’d soaked up a lot of money and manpower without much to show for it.

Carl Merino: Nothing was getting solved.

Dave Cawley: As we’ve already seen in past episodes.

Carl Merino: I was assigned to, to look into some of those cases from the mid-‘80s. And that’s the same time that Sheree Warren went missing from Salt Lake.

Dave Cawley: Carl saw how jurisdictional politics had made Sheree’s case a hot potato from the start.

Carl Merino: The last place she was known that people knew where she was was Salt Lake so the case should’ve been handled out of Salt Lake, uh, but they said “no, she’s a Roy citizen and so we’re not gonna work it.”

Dave Cawley: Roy police detective Jack Bell had worked Sheree’s case for a few years, before handing it off to the Ogden Police Department, where it promptly went cold. Ogden detective Shane Minor had picked Sheree’s case up again in 1998, honing in on Cary Hartmann as his lead suspect.

Carl Merino: And so they thought that there was a connection there since he was, y’know, a convicted rapist as well.

Dave Cawley: But Shane’s investigation had itself stalled in 2006, leaving Sheree’s case cold once again. All the information Shane’d gathered up to that point remained with him. His report didn’t find its way into the hands of Salt Lake detectives, like Carl Merino. Shane told me he’d taken part in a few cold case conferences over the years. He’d presented the Sheree Warren case, hoping to drum up some help.

Shane Minor: You put a bunch of guys together, a bunch of cops especially and everybody’s gonna have great ideas but then there’s the follow-through of “ok, who’s gonna do what?” And “make sure this gets done.”

Dave Cawley: It’d felt like doing a group project in school: a lot of people had great ideas, but no one seemed interested in doing the actual work. Years passed. Carl Merino was approaching retirement from his job in Salt Lake City when one day he saw yellow crime scene tape out of the corner of his eye while driving home from work.

Carl Merino: The body on the east side of the, of 89.

Dave Cawley: The spot where the dog walker had found that skull.

Carl Merino: I was still in Salt Lake they found her.

Dave Cawley: Carl followed the news of the discovery, wondering if the bones might belong to Sheree Warren.

Mike Headrick (from March 12, 2015 KSL TV archive): Deputies aren’t saying who they’ve questioned in this current case and they’re not disclosing the cause of death at this time.

Dave Cawley: Dental records allowed the medical examiner to identify the skeletal remains as those of a missing woman, who’d disappeared during the 1980s. But the medical examiner told detective John Frawley the bones did not belong to Sheree Warren.

John Frawley: The remains were later identified as Theresa Greaves.

Mike Anderson (from March 12, 2015 KSL TV archive): She was 23 years old when she disappeared back in 1983 and right now deputies here in Davis County are investigating this as a homicide case.

Dave Cawley: If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because the discovery of Theresa Greaves’ remains also came up in Cold season 2. We don’t have time to repeat Theresa’s story here, but I’ll note her case still remains unsolved.

Mike Headrick: Greaves had left her home in Woods Cross and told a roommate that she was taking a bus into Salt Lake City for a job interview.

Dave Cawley: Salt Lake detectives had at the time declined to work Theresa’s case, leaving it to investigators in the much smaller suburb of Woods Cross, where Theresa’d lived. Why did the Salt Lake detectives turn their back on Theresa in the 1980s? Perhaps a mixture of big-city cop elitism and a desire to keep their crime stats down. The majority of missing persons cases resolve quickly with the missing returning home. But those that don’t, like Theresa Greaves’ case, can linger for decades.

Carl Merino told me Salt Lake detectives did the same thing two years later, with Sheree Warren’s case. They pushed that investigation off onto the Roy police department. But Roy did not at the time have the resources to conduct a robust investigation 40 miles away.

Carl Merino: I wonder if they spent the time in Salt Lake to gather all the evidence down here that they could have.

Dave Cawley: Carl’d started out in Roy, then gone to work in Salt Lake City. He’d seen both sides of the coin over the course of his career. But that career took an interesting turn in March of 2015, just weeks after the discovery of those skeletal remains on a hillside next to the highway. Carl Merino returned to the Roy City Police Department.

Carl Merino: They had an opening for Chief of Police and I applied and, uh, they selected me.

Dave Cawley: And so that’s how Carl became detective John Frawley’s boss, just weeks after Frawley’d re-opened the Sheree Warren cold case.

John Frawley: I did have one supervisor say, y’know, after, after the remains were identified “well ok, well we’re, we’re done, we can kind of just move on.” But there was a separate supervisor said “y’know, you don’t have to put that back on the shelf, you can still work it.” And that’s what I wanted to do. I just felt like there was more to do on it.

Dave Cawley: Carl told me he believes cold cases matter. And as chief, he vowed to put money and manpower behind that belief.

Carl Merino: Detective Frawley came to me and said “are you ok if I work this Chief?” And I said “yeah, y’know, let’s get going.”

Dave Cawley: Detective John Frawley had both a personal desire and a mandate from his new boss to dig into the Sheree Warren case. He started by examining the facts: what did he know for sure about Sheree’s final day?

John Frawley: What did she plan on doing? She planned to meet Charles Warren at Wagstaff Toyota and give him a ride back to Ogden.

Dave Cawley: John knew from reading detective Jack Bell’s notes Chuck Warren had talked to Jack a couple of times.

John Frawley: He told detective Bell he never made it to Wagstaff’s. He became ill, he went for a jog. At the end of that jog he was too tired to go home and he called his previous wife, Alice, to come pick him up. Umm, to me that, that makes no sense at all.

Dave Cawley: It seemed like a shaky alibi. In John’s mind, Sheree’s ex-husband also had motive.

John Frawley: There’s a divorce. They’re in the process of a divorce. So there’s a house, a pension, a child. All these things are involved.

Dave Cawley: John could see a hypothetical scenario in which Chuck Warren killed Sheree in an act of domestic violence, seeking to put a quick end to their fight over alimony and child support. But did Chuck have opportunity?

John Frawley: The last person to see Sheree Warren was a co-worker whose name was Richard Moss.

Dave Cawley: We met Richard in episode 2. He was the credit union manager Sheree’d been training the day she disappeared.

Richard Moss: I never saw what car she got into or, her own car or another car or (laughs). I never saw her again.

Dave Cawley: John called Richard in June of 2015.

Richard Moss: And he wanted to know or refresh or see if, what I could remember.

Dave Cawley: It marked Richard’s third round of questioning over a span of nearly 30 years: first by Jack Bell, then by Shane Minor and now by John Frawley.

Richard Moss: Three conversations over the telephone.

Dave Cawley: Richard lived in Richfield, a rural community about 200 miles from Roy. He told me I was the first person in nearly 40 years to come interview him face-to-face about Sheree Warren.

John Frawley: Interestingly enough, I did speak to Richard Moss. He never did see Sheree get in her car.

Dave Cawley: Richard’s story remained consistent from the start, through his telephone conversation with detective John Frawley and my eventual meeting with him in 2021.

John Frawley: He was of the understanding that Sheree was gonna leave work and pick up her ex-husband give him a ride back home to Ogden.

Dave Cawley: Chuck Warren had said he’d called off that meeting. But that’s not what Sheree’d told Richard as they’d parted ways that evening in the garage behind the credit union office.

John Frawley: I need to get past this plan that she had to meet him.

Dave Cawley: John came across a report in the box of Roy police records. It talked about a tip that’d come in about four months after Sheree disappeared. A credit union employee had told police Chuck Warren’d made a cash advance on his credit card, in person, in Salt Lake City, on the day of Sheree’s disappearance. If that was true, it would mean Chuck’d lied about where he was that day.

John Frawley: Charles Warren was asked by detective Bell, if he would submit to a polygraph regarding his alibi.

Dave Cawley: And as we know, Chuck Warren’d refused that lie detector test. The tipster had told police she’d also heard Chuck’d made credit card transactions in Nevada, days before Sheree’s car surfaced in Las Vegas. I mentioned this tip in passing, way back in episode 2. But here, in 2015, detective John Frawley couldn’t find any indication his predecessor, Jack Bell, had ever verified it.

John Frawley: So, umm, that needs to be looked into.

Dave Cawley: John wrote a search warrant targeting Chuck Warren’s financial records. He wanted account statements, copies of checks or any details of transactions posted to Chuck’s account during September, October or November of 1985. A judge signed off on the warrant and John sent it to the credit union.

John Frawley: And a lot of that information was gone because of the timeframe.

Dave Cawley: The credit union no longer had Chuck Warren’s checks. But it did have his credit card statements. I haven’t seen them, so I can’t tell you everything they revealed. But I do know the statements showed Chuck’d made a purchase in Elko, Nevada on November 4th, 1985 followed by another at the Circus Circus hotel and casino in Reno, Nevada on November 8th, 1985. That’s a little over a month after Sheree disappeared, and a matter of days before staff at the Aladdin hotel and casino in Las Vegas found her car abandoned in their back lot.

John Frawley: I felt that it was a significant development.

Dave Cawley: Because, John suspected, Chuck might’ve made those transactions while riding the train back to Ogden, after dumping Sheree’s car in Las Vegas. But, there were some problems with this idea. Las Vegas sits at the far southern tip of Nevada. Elko and Reno are in the north. They’re both nearly as far from Las Vegas as Ogden, Utah is. And there are no railroads directly connecting Elko or Reno to Las Vegas. And consider the timing. John’d read the Las Vegas police reports about the car’s discovery.

John Frawley: They say it looks like it’s been there for some time based on dirt, debris.

Dave Cawley: Chuck’s transactions occurred on November 4th and 8th. Sheree’s car turned up on the 11th. So that’s a week, a most, not long enough for the car to’ve gathered a thick coat of dust. So, Chuck Warren’s credit card transactions in Nevada probably didn’t have anything to do with dumping Sheree’s car in Las Vegas. But John still found them suspicious. So did I, frankly, when I first found out about them. I wondered if Chuck’d gone on gambling jaunts just weeks after his wife disappeared. If so, I didn’t expect to get a straight answer about it. In fact, I thought I’d never hear Chuck Warren’s side of the story. Turns out, I was wrong.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Roy city police detective John Frawley drove into Ogden on June 23rd, 2015. He carried a small voice recorder in his pocket, and he started it rolling as he pulled up to the curb outside an orange brick house. John stepped out of his car and walked past the driveway, noticing an old Toyota Supra parked there. He headed to the front door.

(Sound of knocking on a door)

Dave Cawley: John had come alone to the house belonging to Chuck Warren. The same house Sheree Warren had herself called home for a few brief years back in the early ‘80s. But it was a different woman who greeted John at the door.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Hi, how are you?

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Good.

Dave Cawley: The microphone on John’s audio recorder sometimes rubbed against his clothing as he moved, making a lot of noise. So I’ll just tell you, the woman who answered the door identified herself as Willow, Chuck Warren’s wife. A cat slinked between Willow’s legs as she told John Chuck was in the other room.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He was just getting his shirt buttoned up, so.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Awesome.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Come on in, Chuck. (Cat meows) What? No, you’re not going outside. (Cat meows)

Dave Cawley: The house looked much the same as it had when Sheree’d lived there more than 30 years earlier: same carpet, same everything. Only now, Willow lived there as Chuck’s wife, instead of Sheree. Chuck had met Willow Hendricks at a restaurant in Ogden called “The Stagecoach” in the late 2000s. He was a regular customer, she was working there as a server. They had a significant age gap — 27 years — but hit it off and began dating. Willow’d soon moved in with Chuck. They were married in 2013, and soon after held a ceremony at an Elvis impersonator “chapel” — if you can call it that — in Las Vegas. So, Chuck and Willow’s wedding had come just a couple of years before detective John Frawley showed up on their doorstep in 2015. Chuck stepped into the room after a moment to meet the detective.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Is, is there somewhere we could talk for a couple minutes—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Sure.

Dave Cawley: This is the first time you’re hearing Chuck Warren’s actual voice in this podcast. None of his prior interactions with police in this case were recorded.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I’m here to talk to you. I’ve just, I was assigned a case a few months ago. Sheree Warren. What’d happened is, uh, some remains were found in Davis County. I don’t know if you saw that on the news or not.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I didn’t.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok … and anytime something like that happens a lot of old cases are kind of re-opened and so the case was assigned to me. I read through it and was wanting to know if I can just talk to you and help me answer some questions and clear some things up. I know that you’d talked to detective Bell, what, that was about 30, not quite 30 years ago but—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Damn near.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: John said “I know that you had talked to detective Bell not quite 30 years ago.” Chuck replied “damn near.”

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And so, yeah. Go ahead Charles.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I, (laughs), his notes would probably be the best source.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: In case you didn’t catch that, Chuck said detective Jack Bell’s notes from 30 years earlier would be the best source for his story. Chuck said he’d recently suffered a stroke. It’d impacted his memory.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Sometimes I can remember, uh, things of—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —but, what I said at that time, I, y’know, he’d have it all down, I would think—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —with how good he was at taking his notes. … I used to have a photographic memory where I could remember, I had a phone number—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Right.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Y’know—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Right.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I could remember it forever.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Or even numbers on cars.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Well I’m sorry, sorry to hear that. But I was wondering if, y’know actually reading through that, through that report I, I have, I, I, more questions, actually. I, and so that’s why I, y’know, it’s like “I’ll call Charles and—”

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): “—and maybe talk to him.”

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Well, ask me and I’ll see what—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah. Well, I’d like to, if we could, maybe just go back to, umm, start from, start from the day that, that Sheree disappeared.

Dave Cawley: They went through the child custody arrangement Chuck and Sheree had worked out during the summer of 1985, after they’d separated. Chuck said he’d worked graveyards at the railroad and Sheree’d worked days at the credit union. They’d met each morning to trade custody of their son.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): She would drop him off at Denny’s. We’d have coffee together and she’d go to work.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And then, the same in the afternoon.

Dave Cawley: Chuck told John he’d worked midnight to 8, and he’d gone to meet Sheree at the Denny’s shortly after that. But Jack Bell’s notes said something different.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): In his report, he says that, umm, you, you and Sheree met at the Denny’s at 7 a.m., around 7 a.m.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Couldn’t have been 7.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Couldn’t have been 7?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, I’d be, I worked ‘till 8.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I wouldn’t have left an hour early. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: There were other small inconsistencies between Jack’s notes and what Chuck Warren told detective John Frawley in this interview. Jack’s notes described Chuck taking his and Sheree’s son to breakfast, before dropping the boy off with Chuck’s parents for the day. But Chuck told John he didn’t remember doing that. He thought he’d given the boy to Alice, his first wife.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Then it, it actually says that you and Alice go to lunch.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Uh, that day?

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I don’t remember that, but—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —but we could’ve, I don’t know.

Dave Cawley: John asked what Chuck’d planned to do later that day, on the afternoon of Sheree’s disappearance.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): You had asked her to pick you up at Wagstaff Toyotas, or something like that?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah, yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok. Can you tell me more about that?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Exhales) Well, I don’t, I never made it down there—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —and I called and told her—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —that uh, y’know, I wasn’t going to make it—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And uh, (pause), but I just never made it down there.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): You never made it down there.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Can you, can you tell me, Charles, how, what changed, what changed your plans. Why didn’t you go to Wagstaff? Do you remember that?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Uh, I was looking at cars, I think and uh, I uh, or something was wrong with my car. I can’t remember. And, umm, I don’t know. [Expletive]. I don’t know.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: “I can’t remember, I don’t know.” Not a very satisfying answer. Chuck said he’d called Sheree at the credit union sometime around 4, which was consistent with what he’d told detective Jack Bell back in 1985. Chuck told detective John Frawley he couldn’t remember what he’d done after making the call to Sheree. John said according to Jack Bell’s notes, Chuck’d gone for a jog. Chuck said that was right. He’d jogged from his house into downtown Ogden, but the sun’d gone down so he’d stopped.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah, yeah. I was just going to say, do you always run in the dark? (Laughs)

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, no. No, it seemed like it got dark and that’s why I went to Denny’s.

Dave Cawley: A different Denny’s, not the Denny’s where he’d picked up his son from Sheree earlier that morning. Chuck said he’d ordered a cup of coffee and called his first wife, Alice, asking her to come pick him up.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Oh ok, that makes, that makes, so you go, you go for a jog and then you’re there at the Denny’s having some coffee and she picks you up.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah, I drank a lot of Denny’s coffee.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs) Do you still drink it?

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He does. Yes, he does.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Chuck Warren’s story left him with a roughly two-hour window on the afternoon of Sheree’s disappearance for which he had no real alibi. He’d told Jack Bell in 1985 he spent those two hours jogging. Just jogging.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And you actually give your whole jogging route to him.

Dave Cawley: That route took Chuck four miles from his house into the heart of downtown Ogden, then another mile-and-a-half back to that Denny’s restaurant. Chuck hadn’t provided any specific destination for his “jog” back in 1985 and he didn’t volunteer one now, either.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Well I appreciate you talking with me. Umm, like I said, this case, y’know, it’s open. It’s an open case but I, questions come up, y’know and—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I can’t help you with ‘em.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Oh you did, actually. You helped me quite a bit.

Dave Cawley: Detective John Frawley asked Chuck what he’d done that night, after his jog. Chuck said he’d spent the evening at home with his first wife, Alice.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I went to bed early.

Dave Cawley: “I went to bed early.” But wait, didn’t Chuck work graveyards? John asked about this inconsistency and Chuck became confused. He said he couldn’t remember whether he’d gone to work that night, or if he’d stayed home with Alice.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): That I can’t tell you.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): It’s a long time ago.

Dave Cawley: But Chuck remembered wondering where Sheree was, why she hadn’t come to pick up their son. He said he’d called Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): It was before 10 o’clock and after 9:30. That’s all I remember—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok, between 9:30 and 10 p.m. You’re—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —somewhere in there.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —you call Mary and—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —say “hey, where’s she at?”

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Dave Cawley: This was different from what Chuck had told detective Shane Minor in 1999. Back then, Chuck said Mary’d called him looking for Sheree, not the other way around. And there’s no record in the case files Mary ever mentioned talking to Chuck on the phone that night.

John moved on, to the day after Sheree disappeared. He said according to Jack Bell’s notes, Chuck’d gone to work that day, on the dayshift.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): And you worked for the railroad. What did you do for the railroad?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I was a clerk at that time.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): But this wasn’t like you getting on a train and traveling around—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, no.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —this was you working in an office.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Just right there on 28th.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell’d tried to call Chuck at the rail yard that day. Chuck hadn’t been there. A coworker had reportedly told Jack Chuck’d come in that morning, but left sick a bit before noon. Detective John Frawley asked Chuck if he had, in fact, left work sick that day.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): The only time I took off work is, uh, is uh, when I was going partying. If I was sick, I went to work, y’know?

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs) Yeah.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): So, I used my sick leave to go partying, not—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: Chuck didn’t explain what he meant by “partying.” John pressed: why hadn’t Chuck gone to police detective Jack Bell about his missing wife?

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I guess he’d tried to call you. Did he, did he leave messages for you to call him?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I wouldn’t have left work in the middle of the shift.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: But according to Jack’s notes, Chuck’d described leaving work and going into downtown Ogden the day after Sheree disappeared, to more or less the same place he’d gone while out “jogging” the afternoon prior. That seems a bit strange to me. I know from talking to police who worked Ogden in the ‘80s, the area where Chuck said he’d jogged to the evening of Sheree’s disappearance — then returned to the following day — happened to be a hot spot for prostitution.

I bring that up, because while researching Chuck Warren, I learned Salt Lake police cited him for sexual solicitation in April of 1993. That’s a fancy way of saying he got a ticket after being caught in a prostitution bust. The court record doesn’t provide much detail, beyond saying Chuck pleaded guilty and paid a $200 fine. All in all, a pretty petty crime. But embarrassing, the kind of thing a guy might want to keep hidden from a nosy detective.

Now think back to that tip I mentioned several minutes ago: a credit union worker’d told police she’d heard Chuck took a cash advance on the day Sheree disappeared. Why would Chuck have needed cash? This all leads me to wonder if Chuck might’ve met someone while out for that “jog.”

Detective John Frawley needed to pin down as much of Chuck’s timeline as possible, but Chuck said he couldn’t remember anything specific about that day after Sheree disappeared. His wife, Willow, interrupted to ask if any of his old coworkers might remember.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Who’s one of the railroaders that worked with you at that time that would remember when—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): They’re all dead, honey. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: No one could say for sure where Chuck Warren was or what he’d done the day after his wife disappeared.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Do you keep any, uh, timecard records from that time? Do you have any records like that?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No. (Laughs)

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I know, she said you kept everything, so. (Laughs)

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, no. Just phones.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I have lots of checkbooks.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: I wasn’t in the room, but I can just imagine detective John Frawley’s face when Chuck Warren’s wife, Willow, said she had Chuck’s old checkbooks. Those were just the kinds of records John wanted.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): How far back do your checkbooks go in the closet?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Uh, I don’t know. I think just the ‘80s.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs) That’s the time period honey. Want me to go look for a minute—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, no.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —see if there’s anything?

Dave Cawley: Checkbooks weren’t all Chuck had in his closet. He said he still had his very first cell phone.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): It’s your very first one and you still have it?

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs)

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He, he keeps everything.

Charles Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I saved all of ‘em except the ones that got stolen.

Dave Cawley: “He keeps everything,” Willow said. But Chuck couldn’t remember if he’d had that cell phone in 1985.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Oh, you had a lot of the first ones that came out so you might’ve but—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —I don’t know.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): What, so you did have a cell phone a long time ago?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I, I did a long time ago but I don’t know whether I had it that time.

Dave Cawley: John didn’t let this go.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Did you have a cell phone in ’85?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I don’t know for sure.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Possibly?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Seems like, I don’t know. I can’t remember what year I actually got it.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Would’ve been one of the first ones coming out, and—

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah, yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —I mean, I remember those big ones.

Dave Cawley: The Motorola DynaTAC was the first commercially-available cell phone. Today, most people just know it as “the brick.” It hit the market in 1983, two years before Sheree disappeared. Chuck said he’d for sure had a cell phone in ’88. But he wasn’t sure about ’85. John Frawley wondered what evidence a digital forensics lab might be able to scrape from a device that primitive, if Chuck Warren had owned one when Sheree disappeared.

I can tell you from my work on the Susan Powell case in Cold season 1, cell phone forensics are a critical tool in many modern investigations. But cell phones of the 1980s are dinosaurs compared to the smartphones of today. The Motorola DynaTAC didn’t have a camera, GPS or SIM card, let alone apps or a web browser. Still, you never know what you might find, unless you look.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Is it the one I still have down the hall?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Might be, yeah.

Dave Cawley: John didn’t tell Chuck he’d already obtained his old bank statements with a search warrant, but he tipped his hand just a bit to ask about something specific.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): You had a financial transaction in Elko, Nevada. In the, in the beginning of, of November.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Financial transaction in Elko?

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Elko, Nevada, yeah.

Dave Cawley: Chuck said he’d started commuting between Ogden and Roseville, California, just outside of Sacramento, at some point after Sheree disappeared. He’d driven I-80 across Nevada every two weeks. Elko sat on that interstate.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Whatever that was in Elko, I probably would’ve stopped there for gas. That was that waypoint, y’know? If you looked every two weeks you’d probably see a receipt there.

Dave Cawley: But he couldn’t say for sure. And Chuck’s own brother has told me this timeline doesn’t match up. He said Chuck was living and working in Roseville, California during the 1970s, not the ‘80s. So what were those transactions in Elko and Reno? I don’t have a good answer. Maybe Chuck’d gone “partying” one month after his estranged wife disappeared.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): When I heard you worked for the railroad, I thought you were like actually traveling from state to state on the railroad. But that’s not what you did?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): No, no, no.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: This seemed to further discredit the theory Chuck might’ve used his railroad access to hitch an untraceable ride home from Las Vegas after dumping Sheree’s car there. But Chuck hadn’t managed to allay many of detective John Frawley’s other suspicions. And he certainly hadn’t cleared himself as a suspect. To the contrary, his actions on the day of Sheree’s disappearance and the day after remained questionable.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Hey Charles, is it ok if I come by and talk to you or call you again if I have any questions?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Is that alright? I do appreciate your time and talking with me.

Dave Cawley: Chuck apologized for his faulty memory and again said he believed Jack Bell’s notes were the best source for his story. John tossed another question at Chuck, almost as an aside.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): How do you know Cary Hartmann?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I don’t.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Oh, ok. (Laughs)

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I’ve never seen him before—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Ok.

Dave Cawley: Chuck said detective Jack Bell had dropped by to talk to him once, after Cary’s arrest in the rape case. Jack’d reportedly told Chuck how Cary’d come in a week or so after Sheree disappeared. At that time, Cary’d described a coworker of his having a psychic dream.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): He had a dream that she’s up in the mountain?

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Yeah, yeah. That they’d find her up there. You ought to, if he didn’t put it in there, then—

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): ‘Kay.

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): —I don’t think I dreamed that up.

John Frawley (from June 23, 2015 police recording): (Laughs)

Chuck Warren (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I remember him telling me that, though. ‘Cause I remember that something about Cary, uh, him or his buddy had a vision of something.

Dave Cawley: Enough. Chuck was just regurgitating the same stories we’ve heard before: Cary’s coworker had a dream about Sheree’s death, an anonymous psychic sent KSL a letter about it. Only now, it’d gone a few steps through the rumor mill and was being fed back into the investigation. This how misinformation poisons investigations. Detective John Frawley wasn’t going for it.

John Frawley: Could be great information, could be very interesting but does it get us to our goal?

Dave Cawley: John did not intend to entertain psychics and seances.

John Frawley: We’re gonna stick to the evidence and what we can absolutely say we know and filter everything else out.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell, the original investigator on the Sheree Warren case, had tried to put the screws to his lead suspect — Chuck Warren — working the human angle.

Shane Minor, the former Ogden cop who’d taken up the Sheree Warren cold case in 1998, had focused on trying to find her remains on the mountain where the second suspect — Cary Hartmann — might’ve dumped her.

John Frawley brought a new approach. He wanted to prove the case by the record: show who had motive, means and opportunity.

John Frawley: Really, uh, dissect the involved parties’ stories.

Dave Cawley: And John suspected there was more to Chuck Warren’s story than Chuck was willing to admit.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Roy City police detective John Frawley had found several inconsistencies with Chuck Warren’s story about the disappearance of his ex-wife, Sheree Warren.  John wanted Chuck’s old timecards, to see if they might shed light on where Chuck was the day Sheree turned up missing.

John Frawley: That was, that was difficult.

Dave Cawley: The railroad Chuck’d worked for, Southern Pacific, had merged with Union Pacific in the mid-‘90s. By 2015, the old railroad’s daily employee records were long gone.

John Frawley: There’s things that we couldn’t get that were lost like uh, persons of interest, their, their timecards. Y’know, things like, y’know were they at work?

Dave Cawley: Chuck’s timecards might’ve revealed whether he’d gone to work at all the morning after Sheree vanished. Without them, John could only wonder.

John Frawley: You’re really behind.

Dave Cawley: If Chuck’d gone to work on the dayshift that morning, as he’d originally told police in 1985, he would’ve started around 8 a.m. In a past episode, we did our math homework, the story problem about how much time it would’ve taken to get Sheree’s car to Las Vegas on the night of her disappearance, then return home to Utah. Making to Ogden by 8 a.m. would’ve been nearly impossible. But we can’t say for sure if Chuck did or didn’t go to work that day without his timecard.

John Frawley: Her car is found at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on November 11th and, uh, it’s processed by Las Vegas police.

Dave Cawley: “Processed” means scouring the car for evidence. Today, forensic technicians would vacuum the car for hair or fibers, use chemical reagents to look for blood, check for fingerprints or maybe even use a cadaver dog to sniff for a whiff of human decomposition. Collecting DNA evidence wasn’t yet standard practice in 1985. The Las Vegas police records I’ve obtained only mentioned searching for fingerprints.

John Frawley: There is a print on the window and they collect that print.

Dave Cawley: The Las Vegas police records say it appeared the print came from a woman. But they’d never linked them to anyone specific. In fact, detective Jack Bell had never seen those prints.

John Frawley: Because like I said, my bosses didn’t want me to go down there.

Dave Cawley: Jack’d tried to find a copy of Sheree’s fingerprints to compare against way back then, but had come up empty.

Jack Bell: Y’know, I got a lot of faith in Las Vegas’ PD.

Dave Cawley: It’s baffling to me police didn’t show more interest in Sheree’s car at the time.

Jack Bell: There’s paperwork in one of the reports of what they found.

Dave Cawley: In an alternate universe, Jack would’ve written a search warrant for the car, then had a wrecker haul it back from Las Vegas. Sheree’s car would’ve ended up in evidence and crime scene technicians here would’ve torn it apart. Who knows what they might’ve found. Maybe they would’ve kept the car all these years, giving John Frawley an opportunity to examine it again today, with better techniques and technology. Instead, the car just sat in a Las Vegas impound lot.

John Frawley: And then the car is later given back to Charles Warren.

Dave Cawley: Records show Chuck picked the car up on Christmas Eve of 1985. Six months later, he’d traded it in to a dealer. John wanted to know where Sheree’s car had gone from there. He ran the car’s VIN number and was able to follow it for a few years before losing the trail.

John Frawley: We tried to track it down and it’s long gone.

Dave Cawley: Whatever secrets Sheree’s car might’ve held, they’re lost to us now.

John talked to Chuck and Sheree’s son, Adam, in October of 2015. Adam remembered his dad visiting casinos in Reno when he was a kid. Adam also specifically recalled going to Las Vegas one time with Chuck, when he was about seven years old.

John Frawley: And he told me that the Aladdin Casino was a place that his father frequented.

Dave Cawley: The trip Adam described would’ve happened in 1989, four years after Sheree disappeared.

John Frawley: And Adam actually remembered his father taking him there on a vacation to the Aladdin.

Dave Cawley: Why would Chuck Warren have taken his and Sheree’s son to the Aladdin, of all places?

John Frawley: So I found that significant.

Dave Cawley: John kept thinking about those old checkbooks squirreled away in Chuck Warren’s closet: decades of financial documents that might reveal where Chuck’d gone, and when, in the fall of 1985. He again went to talk to his chief, Carl Merino.

Carl Merino: We found out that there were a lot of mistakes made early in the investigation.

Dave Cawley: Carl told me, in his experience, cops often resist sharing information with the public, victims, witnesses and even with other officers. And there can be good reason for that. Giving out too much info can tip off suspects or taint an investigation.

Carl Merino: It’s a balancing act. You’ve got to know what you can release.

Dave Cawley: But Carl told me “police egos” sometimes cause investigators to be overprotective. That can lead to turf battles that stymie investigations.

Carl Merino: When you’re trying to solve crimes, it’s not a competition. Except between law enforcement and whoever committed the crime.

Dave Cawley: Carl believed jurisdictional squabbles were part of what’d gone wrong with the Sheree Warren case. There wasn’t a big, flashing neon sign saying “murder” with an arrow pointing to a body in Salt Lake, where Sheree’d last been seen. So, the Salt Lake City police department had declined to put much effort into what it viewed as a Roy City missing persons case.

Carl Merino: I think there should’ve been more pressure put on Salt Lake to, to help with it. I have no idea even what evidence might have been collected there.

Dave Cawley: There are no witness statements in any of the Sheree Warren case files from employees at Wagstaff Toyota, where Sheree’d planned to meet Chuck on the afternoon of her disappearance. Likewise with patrons of the bar where Cary Hartmann supposedly spent that evening. No one identified or questioned them. The dealership was in Salt Lake City. The bar was in Ogden. The Salt Lake and Ogden police departments could’ve helped the much smaller Roy police department by gathering those statements.

Carl Merino: There were opportunities for evidence gathering.

Dave Cawley: But both Salt Lake and Ogden had at first wiped their hands of the Sheree Warren case. It wasn’t their problem. Carl agreed with his detective, John Frawley: they needed to chase the evidence. And they now knew at least some of that potential evidence was sitting in Chuck Warren’s closet. With his chief’s blessing, John wrote up another search warrant. This time, he asked a judge for permission to go into Chuck’s home, the same house Sheree’d once lived in, and hunt for any financial records from 1985. John also wanted Chuck’s old cell phones.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): Those phones down there, the phones there, the old radios they used at the railroad, the two-way radios.

Dave Cawley: Chuck’s wife, Willow, had told John she and Chuck kept everything, including his old cell phones, amid all her clutter in the basement.

Willow Hendricks (from June 23, 2015 police recording): I thought that’s where we had the brick phones too but it’s not. I know I’ve seen ‘em down, probably in your other closet.

Dave Cawley: John served the warrant on December 14th, 2015. He and others from the Roy Police Department scoured Chuck’s house, taking five checkbooks, a pile of floppy disks, bank statements, mortgage papers and more. But they didn’t find any old cell phones. Where those had gone, I can’t say. I also don’t know what Roy police learned from looking through all of Chuck’s old financial papers. Chief Carl Merino told me that evidence has to remain private.

Carl Merino: You’re right. You do have to keep certain things back.

Dave Cawley: What I can tell you is the search warrant didn’t lead to an arrest. Nothing police found provided probable cause to book Chuck Warren into jail for his ex-wife’s presumed murder. Detective John Frawley was learning just how crushing the Sheree Warren case could be.

Carl Merino: And then detective Frawley got transferred to undercover narcotics.

Dave Cawley: Frawley’d had Sheree’s case for about a year. He’d done more than anyone else had in a decade. And he’d only just started getting some momentum, when he’d had to turn away.

John Frawley: Yeah. It is tough because your day-to-day caseload doesn’t stop.

Dave Cawley: John handed the box of Sheree Warren case files back to chief Carl Merino.

Carl Merino: The box would get passed and it just kept getting overlooked and so the case moved on to another detective, Ryan Reid. And he worked it some but he was, y’know, it was, again, he had all of his other duties and so it didn’t get worked a lot.

Dave Cawley: The Sheree Warren case lapsed into inactivity once again. For Carl Merino, it felt like going back on a promise.

Carl Merino: It’s not ideal, but for a smaller department, you can’t task somebody with just working an old case like that. You just don’t have the staffing to do that.

Dave Cawley: Former Ogden City detective Shane Minor had himself spent years driven to find answers about what’d happened to Sheree Warren. He’d picked up that torch in 1998. But his flame had sputtered in 2006, after a series of setbacks.

Shane Minor: Like I said a lot of stuff I did on this case was when I had time to work on it and—

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): And that time got more and more precious?

Shane Minor: Right.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d documented all his contacts, building a list of potential witnesses. He’d kept notes, newspaper clippings and all sorts of other records. And he’d compiled a 30-plus page summary of the case, making it ready for any future investigator who might one day take over.

Shane Minor: It’s who’s gonna pick up that case on the shelf and start looking into it, because of the time that’s involved and costs that could be involved, so.

Dave Cawley: By the time the remains of Teresa Greaves emerged on a hillside in 2015, Shane was deep in preparation for a capital murder trial.

Shane Minor: There’s a couple other cases I was involved with that was very demanding.

Dave Cawley: One of them was the case we covered in Cold season 2, the disappearance of Joyce Yost. At the start of 2015, Doug Lovell, the man who’d killed Joyce, was asking a Weber County jury to take him off death row. Shane had spent months working with prosecutors, helping them prepare for Lovell’s trial. The Joyce Yost case consumed Shane’s time and attention, so he didn’t take part in Roy City’s renewed Sheree Warren investigation in 2015, though he was aware of it.

Shane Minor: They did pick it up and assign a detective to start doing some stuff on it.

Dave Cawley: “Doing some stuff like” interviewing Chuck Warren.

Shane Minor: They were just kind of reiterating, re-doing the same stuff that had been done.

Dave Cawley: And getting nowhere. Then, Roy detective John Frawley moved into undercover narcotics. As I said, the investigation went dormant for two years. John returned from his undercover assignment with a renewed desire to close the Sheree Warren case.

John Frawley: What our goal and what we’re driven for is to get the family some answers, y’know?

Dave Cawley: So, in February of 2018, he invited Shane Minor to come brief the Roy City Police Department about his work on the case.

Shane Minor: Yeah, I took it over to them and I’m like “y’know, I’m done” and I felt uncomfortable about (sighs) just looking for that one piece.

Dave Cawley: John Frawley’d operated under the assumption Chuck Warren was his prime suspect, and for good reason. That’s the conclusion most people would draw by reading Jack Bell’s old case notes. The notes do mention Cary Hartmann, first as a witness and then later as a serial rapist, but Jack’s notes don’t give the impression Cary had any motive to murder Sheree. Shane Minor had learned a lot more about Cary during his years working the case. Shane told John about Cary’s ties to the Ogden Police Department.

John Frawley: He’s a reserve police officer, y’know, he understands police work more than your typical person.

Dave Cawley: Shane told John about the two women who’d lived above Cary at the time of Sheree’s disappearance, who’d reported Sheree coming to their house one night in early October, 1985.

John Frawley: They heard her voice, they knew her voice. They saw her car outside, they knew her car.

Dave Cawley: Shane told John about how Cary’d met up with his TV reporter friend Larry Lewis a few days later.

John Frawley: They were actually riding 3-wheelers up in the foothills.

Dave Cawley: And Shane said just one day after that, the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had seen Cary and another man on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir.

John Frawley: Fred Johns was positive that this was Cary Hartmann. He knew him.

Dave Cawley: Shane told John he’d confirmed Cary knew his way around that mountain.

John Frawley: It was private land but he had a key from a friend, he had access to that area.

Dave Cawley: The same general area where an anonymous caller had in 1987 told police he’d stumbled across a body…

Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 police recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.

John Frawley: He described this, this decomposing body, uh, with a purse next to it.

Dave Cawley: …human remains which had still not been found. Shane told John about how he’d served a pair of search warrants at Cary’s apartment, after Cary became the key suspect in the Ogden City Rapist investigation.

John Frawley: A gray leather suede jacket was found and placed into evidence at the Ogden Police Department.

Dave Cawley: Shane told John how, years later, he’d pulled that gray suede jacket out of evidence and showed it to Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen.

John Frawley: And Mary identified that jacket as to what she was wearing on October 2nd when she went to work.

Dave Cawley: Or at least, that’s what Mary thought Sheree might’ve worn that day. There’s some ambiguity on this point.

John Frawley: And that jacket was located in Cary Hartmann’s closet.

Dave Cawley: John was coming to understand the potential significance of the gray jacket. If it’s what Sheree left the house wearing on the morning of her disappearance, it couldn’t have ended up in Cary’s possession, unless Cary and Sheree had met at some point later that day.

Shane Minor passed the baton of the Sheree Warren case over to John Frawley. That meant Roy police assumed custody of the gray suede jacket. I told John I wanted to see it for myself, hoping I might be able to match it an old family photograph of Sheree. I could only do that if I knew what it was I was looking for.

It’s September of 2022 and I’m in the basement of Roy City police headquarters. I follow an evidence technician named Chelsea Scott through a locked door…

(Sound of key in door lock)

Dave Cawley: …into a small room. It stinks of marijuana. Metal shelving lines the walls. Chelsea points to a box on the top of the shelf in the back of the room. It says Office Depot on the lid.

Chelsea Scott: This contains the jacket.

Dave Cawley: The jacket police seized from Cary Hartmann’s apartment way back in 1987. Chelsea points to another, smaller box on the next shelf down.

Chelsea Scott: We have miscellaneous items here, we have fingerprints from the vehicle that was located, her vehicle that was located in Las Vegas.

Dave Cawley: And I can see a plastic case containing floppy disks off to the side, which I suspect came out of Chuck Warren’s house.

Chelsea Scott: I can bring this up. Anything you want me to bring up I’m happy to. Then you can get like, different shots.

Dave Cawley: Oh yeah, I’m carrying a still camera. And I’m accompanied by a TV videographer. Chelsea carries the boxes out of the evidence room and sets them on a conference table. Detective John Frawley’s there, and I invade his personal space while clipping a small microphone to his shirt collar.

Dave Cawley (to John Frawley): John excuse my uh—

John Frawley: No, go for it.

Dave Cawley: —familiarity here.

John Frawley: Uh, yeah. Not a problem.

Dave Cawley: John sits down in front of the Office Depot box, which is sealed by red plastic tape printed with the word “evidence” in black letters. John tears open the box…

(Sound of tape tearing and cardboard rustling)

Dave Cawley: …then pulls a brown paper bag out of it. I can see numbers written in red and black marker on the bag. I recognize them. They’re the Ogden police department’s case numbers for one of Cary Hartmann’s rapes and the Sheree Warren homicide. The words “coat” and “test fire bullets” are written on the bag as well, along with a barcode label from the Utah State Crime Lab. John pulls another item from the box.

John Frawley: So this was the hangar that the jacket was on.

Dave Cawley: Then, he opens the paper bag…

(Sound of paper bag opening)

Dave Cawley: …and removes the jacket. He sets it on the table, and I lean in for a closer look.

Dave Cawley (to John Frawley): That is not a men’s jacket.

John Frawley: No, it is not.

Dave Cawley: My first impression: the jacket’s smaller than I’d expected. It has a crop body and pinches in a bit toward the waist. There’s a tag on the inside that says 8. It’s on the smaller side of medium.

John Frawley: Yeah this, this is not gonna, in my opinion, not gonna fit a, even a medium-build man, let alone a larger-build man.

Dave Cawley: The jacket has a stand-up collar and ruffles that run vertically over each shoulder, a decidedly feminine touch. There are five buttonholes down the lapel, but only four buttons on the opposite side: the button that should be second-from-the-top is missing.

The suede leather fabric is colored a medium gray. It’s a neutral color that makes the jacket versatile. It would’ve coordinated well with a variety of outfits. But now, it’s crumpled, having spent decades wadded up in a bag. At some point, someone’s used a Sharpie to make markings on the inside of the jacket, toward the bottom of the front flap. John tells me he thinks it’s from when Ogden police sent the jacket to the crime lab 22 years ago.

John Frawley: And it was tested for any evidence of blood or hair or any sort of fibers that could be found on it.

Dave Cawley: We heard about that in episode 6. The crime lab hadn’t found anything.

John Frawley: Based on the technology of that time and, uh, that’s correct. It didn’t yield any results.

Dave Cawley: But I also know John recently re-submitted the jacket for another round of testing.

John Frawley: Yeah, I mean it’s 22 years, y’know?

Dave Cawley: He doesn’t tell me what, if anything, was different this time around. I’ve now gone back and looked at every photo I have of Sheree. There aren’t many, and the gray suede jacket’s not in any of them, but it does fit her style. It strikes me as perfectly plausible Sheree Warren might’ve worn that jacket to work on the morning of October 2nd, 1985.

John Frawley: But the whole hang up is that, Mary’s the only one that can say.

Dave Cawley: Again, Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, told police she thought it was the jacket her daughter left the house wearing on the day of her disappearance. If that’s true, the jacket is evidence that potentially puts Sheree and Cary Hartmann together after Sheree was last seen. Mary’s since died. Police asked Sheree’s dad, Ed, and sister Marcie about the jacket.

John Frawley: Nobody can say whether she was wearing that or not. So the only person that could is now deceased.

Dave Cawley: Maybe not the only person. There’s one other who might know if Sheree was wearing it on that day. His name is Cary Hartmann. Detective John Frawley needed to pose this question to Cary. But Cary hadn’t said a word to police about Sheree Warren since 2005. And Cary had no incentive to talk to Frawley now.

John’d found himself mired in the middle of the Sheree Warren mystery, like all of us are now. He’d walked past Sheree’s picture in the police department lobby hundreds of times without giving it a thought. That’d changed once he’d looked inside the box.

John Frawley: It’s not just a picture in the lobby. It makes it very real.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann had gone to prison at the end of 1987 on a sentence of 15-years-to-life. The prosecutor who’d put him there had expected Cary would only serve the minimum: 15 years. But as we’ve heard this season, Cary’s own unwillingness to take responsibility for what’d done resulted in a much longer stay.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): How long have you done in prison?

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): 32 years, sir.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): And how old are you?

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I’m 72.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Yeah, y’know you’ve thrown away a big chunk of your life. Just, I mean it’s just, it is sad.

Dave Cawley: This comes from a recording of Cary Hartmann’s hearing before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, on October 29th, 2019. If I had to describe Cary’s first trip before the board in 1992, I’d say “Cary, Cary, quite contrary.” You heard it yourself back in episode 6.

Cary Hartmann (from January 17, 1992 parole board recording): Cary Hartmann didn’t do it. There’s no way on this Earth.

Dave Cawley: But 27 years and a few more rejections from the Board had taught Cary how to speak to those who held his freedom in their hands, like parole board member Bradley Rich.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Why do you think you were in here as long as you have been?

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): My choices.

Dave Cawley: Cary had learned to swap contrary for contrite.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): It was a blessing to come to prison, sir.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Yeah.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I deserved what I got.

Dave Cawley: Bradley, the parole board member, asked Cary what’d been happening in his life prior to his arrest, all those years ago. What had led him to break into women’s homes, to threaten to kill their children and to sexually assault them?

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I operated on thinking distortions that, that were troublesome.

Dave Cawley: Troublesome thinking distortions. How wonderfully vague.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): When I can’t sort out these distorted thinking errors, which I have learned to do at this point. I’ve worked really hard throughout these many years to correct those distorted thinking errors.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Mmhmm.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I met my needs in unhealthy ways.

Dave Cawley: Like, he said, by impulse spending. Bradley said that answer didn’t quite hit the mark.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): You had, to my way of thinking, a very peculiar and dangerous response to stress. I mean, others might go out and get drunk or revert to the use of drugs or, y’know, binge spend or whatever it is. Y’know, go through a gallon of ice cream. Uh, you chose to violently rape under stress. And, and, and so I’m, I’m trying to make heads or tails of that.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Those were, those were parts of my life that were surrounded by pornography in those days.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Mmhmm.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I described that as my drug of choice. When I, when I felt lowly and had no self-esteem, when my life was falling apart, I turned to pornography and masturbation. That led to cruising for women and choosing women to make victims.

Dave Cawley: Low self-esteem led to pornography, which then led to rape.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I wish to be defined as who I am now and not who I was. I’m a different man now than I was 40 years ago.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d lived nearly half his life in custody.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): As much sympathy as I feel for your victims, at the same time you’ve made yourself a victim as well and you’ve paid a heavy price for it.

Dave Cawley: But had he paid in full? That was up to the parole board to decide. Bradley went over the latest memo from Cary’s sex offender therapist. It said if paroled, Cary stood about a one-in-10 chance of committing a new sex offense, a three-in-10 chance of carrying out a violent crime, and a five-in-10 chance of committing any crime. In other words, 50-50 Cary would do something that might land him back in prison.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): And that makes you a, still kind of a, of a risk.

Dave Cawley: But, on the other hand, Cary’d obtained a new, more favorable treatment memo just a few months earlier. He handed it over to Bradley.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Treatment summary, Justin Clark. Right there.

Dave Cawley: Sure enough, the updated report said Cary now presented a below-average risk to re-offend. The parole board had repeatedly teased Cary with a promise of release. But to earn it, he’d had to admit to rape. The board’d cajoled him into taking part in a police interview about Sheree Warren. And the board demanded Cary make several trips through sex offender therapy. Cary’d complied and now, the parole board seemed mollified.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): You’re going to get an opportunity to succeed or fail — my prediction — umm, in the not-too-distant-future.

Dave Cawley: No more fake-outs, no more demands: the parole board had nothing left to ask of Cary.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Then all we can do is, is, is wish you the best. You have done a big chunk of your life, 32 years, in here. And uh, you’re not a young man.

Dave Cawley: Can you see where this is heading?

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): I wish you well and like I say, with or without a further hearing I think you’re going to get an opportunity. And then we’ll see if you’ve acquired the skills you need to stay out of trouble.

Cary Hartmann (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Thank you so much.

Bradley Rich (from October 29, 2019 parole board recording): Alright.

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann left prison in March of 2020. His release escaped public notice, due to Covid-19 pandemic that was sweeping the globe. Cary quietly headed back to Ogden, to the same community he’d terrorized three decades before.

Cold season 3, episode 8: Fool Me Once – Full episode transcript

Dave Cawley: Investigator Shane Minor was on a road trip, driving from the city of Ogden toward a small town in south-eastern Utah to talk with Cary Hartmann about the suspected murder of Sheree Warren.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): He’s potentially a suspect and you’ve not been able to interview him.

Shane Minor: No, nope.

Dave Cawley: It was October 26th, 2005. Twenty years had passed since the evening when Sheree Warren disappeared.

Shane Minor: Sheree went missing in 1985.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d had the cold case since 1998. He’d learned a lot about Cary Hartmann in those years.

Shane Minor: But I didn’t really know nothing about Sheree Warren.

Dave Cawley: I ran into this same problem when I started looking into this case. It’s frustrating there are so few people willing to share their memories of Sheree.

Shane Minor: When I started looking into this, it was difficult just because of all the years that had gone past.

Dave Cawley: Some of the people I’ve reached out to have told me privately they won’t talk on the record because they’re afraid of Cary Hartmann. Shane Minor believed to crack the case, he’d have to find Sheree Warren’s remains. But experience told him Cary wasn’t likely to give up that location, if Cary’d in fact killed Sheree. Shane and another detective had tried to question Cary about Sheree once before, in 1988, after Cary’s rape conviction.

Shane Minor: He wouldn’t talk to us. Walked in the room, seen we were sitting there, turned around and walked out.

Dave Cawley: Denial was Cary Hartmann’s default. He’d lied to his parents, siblings, children, friends, therapists and others about his crimes. But he hadn’t fooled a jury. Cary’d continued the lies once incarcerated. He’d even proclaimed his innocence in a letter to the President of the United States. But over time, the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole had pushed Cary to accept responsibility. By 2005, Cary’d admitted to everything the board asked him about, except any involvement in the disappearance of Sheree Warren, 20 years earlier.

Shane Minor: That’s what he would admit to. He would never admit to anything else.

Dave Cawley: In the last episode, we heard how Shane’d sent a letter to the parole board, letting them know Cary remained a suspect in Sheree’s case. Cary’d been on the verge of winning a release from custody then. But an officer for the board had put him on the spot.

Shane Minor: Asked him some specific questions about Sheree Warren and how cooperative he was regarding that investigation.

Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Are you willing to talk to 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: Cary’d had little other choice than to agree to a police interview, if he wanted the parole board to grant him his freedom. So, that’s how Shane Minor ended up in the car, heading to the San Juan County Jail, where Cary was then being held. A Roy City police sergeant named Mike Elliot was riding shotgun.

Shane Minor: Because Roy still had their active missing person case.

Dave Cawley: The jail’s in a small town about an hour drive south of Arches National Park, as far from Ogden as one can get while still remaining within the borders of the state of Utah.

Shane Minor: So we went down and interviewed him, recorded it.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Ok, I’m Shane Minor. I’m with Mike Elliott and Cary Hartmann. We’re in Monticello at the San Juan County Jail.

Shane Minor: Had to go through Miranda, which he agreed to talk to us.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Right now I’m going to give you your rights, ‘cause you don’t have to talk to us unless you want to. So if you just listen to me for just a second. You have the right to remain silent.

Dave Cawley: The quality of this audio tape is really rough. So I’m going to repeat the most important bits where necessary. Before we dive in though, we should talk about Shane’s strategy.

Shane Minor: I was about 100% sure that he wasn’t gonna say anything as far as a admission goes.

Dave Cawley: Shane needed to put Cary Hartmann’s story of Sheree’s disappearance on the record. Otherwise, all Shane had were a few pages of Roy police detective Jack Bell’s handwritten notes and a transcript of Cary’s statement to his private investigator.

Shane Minor: My memory of Hartmann is, if you confront him, he’s gonna get closed up and not answer your question. He’s a smart person. He’s very cautious and careful with what he says to you and how he says it. So I laid it out for him, why were down there, what we wanted to talk to him about. Told him that I would ask him some questions.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I’m going to ask you some direct questions—

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Ok.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): —just because no one has asked you those questions.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he was willing to answer questions, to help any way he could, but first he wanted to make a statement.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I absolutely did not have anything to do with her disappearance.

Dave Cawley: “I absolutely did not have anything to do with her disappearance.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Ok.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I just want to state that right now up front.

Dave Cawley: “I just want to state that right now up front.” Shane started by asking Cary if he remembered when it was Sheree first came up missing.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): That’s October 2nd or 3rd, 1985.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Ok.

Shane Minor: And he thought it was October 2nd or 3rd of 1985.

Dave Cawley: Which is correct. Sheree disappeared the evening of the 2nd and Sheree’s mom reported her missing on the 3rd. Shane asked Cary what’d been going on that week.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): What had been going on that week?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I can’t remember anything significant.

Shane Minor: And he could tell you about that day, but then the next day or the day after, he can’t tell you anything.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I just can’t remember.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): He seems to remember what he wants to remember in the moment.

Shane Minor: Absolutely.

Dave Cawley: Yeah. Uh, he’s not the first person I’ve encountered in my work who acts that way. It’s a Josh Powell-esque move—

Shane Minor: Yeah.

Dave Cawley: —if I could say so. Right?

Shane Minor: (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 8: Fool Me Once From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Investigator Shane Minor sat with Cary Hartmann in Utah’s San Juan County Jail, 20 years on from the disappearance of Cary’s girlfriend, Sheree Warren.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): We got along fantastic, just fantastic. We were in love.

Shane Minor: He laid out the fact how him and Sheree was madly in love. He’d been going out with her.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Never had a harsh word or a cross word between us, not one.

Shane Minor: They never had harsh words.

Dave Cawley: Which isn’t true, based on the report of the two women who’d lived above Cary at the time Sheree disappeared. You heard their account in episode 4.

Shane Minor: Sheree had gone over to his apartment, it was the first part of October and she was upset and crying and saying “how can you do this to me?”

Dave Cawley: On the other hand, Cary said Sheree’d traded plenty of harsh words with her estranged husband, Chuck Warren, prior to her disappearance. Cary repeated the story about Chuck going to the credit union where Sheree worked and threatening her over child support.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did, did Sheree tell you anything about that or say anything about that? Or say anything to you about it?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Yes she did. Said it scared her.

Shane Minor: Hartmann kept referring to, uh, Sheree’s ex-husband and kind of like pointing the finger at him.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d previously asked Sheree’s former boss, coworkers and even Chuck Warren himself about this story of Chuck threatening Sheree at work. Chuck confirmed the argument had happened.

Shane Minor: He told me about an event where he went in, he was, he was upset.

Dave Cawley: That encounter remained a major reason why police couldn’t rule Chuck out as a suspect. It spoke to a possible motive for murder: Chuck’s anger over Sheree’s push for increased alimony and child support.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): So she was dragging him through court, or back into court again, and he was really upset.

Dave Cawley: Cary told Shane he heard Chuck’d brought a handgun into the credit union branch.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): He had a gun tucked in his waistband.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): And who’s telling you this?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Credit union manager.

Dave Cawley: If you couldn’t make that out, Cary said he’d heard about the gun from Sheree’s boss, the credit union manager.

Shane Minor: But when I to talked the people at the credit union, they didn’t describe anything that unordinary.

Dave Cawley: I talked to Sheree’s former boss myself and she told me she doesn’t remember seeing a gun.

Shane Minor: Nobody corroborated that. Nobody verified that. That’s coming from Hartmann but nobody else.

Dave Cawley: So, did Chuck Warren confront his estranged wife Sheree with a gun, or was that an exaggeration planted by Cary Hartmann? Cary said Chuck Warren was a “violent kind of person.” Shane seized on that opportunity and asked what Cary thought might’ve happened to Sheree.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): What you think happened to her?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I’ve asked myself that every day for the last 20 years.

Dave Cawley: “I’ve asked myself that every day for the last 20 years.”

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t have a clue.

Dave Cawley: “I don’t have a clue.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Have any ideas?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t have an idea, no, not one.

Dave Cawley: “I don’t have an idea.”

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Not one.

Dave Cawley: “Not one.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Who do you think is responsible?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t have an idea in the whole world. I don’t have a clue.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d had plenty of time to think about it — 20 years — but said he had no thought about who might’ve killed Sheree. Shane honed in on the days leading up to Sheree’s disappearance. He asked Cary if he and Sheree’d had any arguments of their own that week.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): But no fights, no arguments—

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Never—

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): —nothing like that?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): —never had one.

Dave Cawley: “Never had one.” This again contradicted the two women who’d lived above Cary at the time, who’d reported hearing a loud argument between Cary and Sheree. They believed the argument had happened on or around the night she disappeared, but they weren’t certain of the exact date.

Shane Minor: At some point in time they heard a loud pop or thud and then everything went quiet.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d ever-so-subtly provided Cary an opening, an opportunity to say that argument had happened on a different night. Had Cary taken that opportunity, he could’ve undercut testimony that placed Sheree at his apartment the night of her disappearance. But he didn’t. Shane asked about Sheree’s schedule. Cary said she’d spent most nights with him.

Shane Minor: Spent a lot of time together, spent four to five times a week together, that she would stay at his house.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Weekends or during the week?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Both.

Shane Minor: She had spent the night with him the night before and left from his house to go to Salt Lake.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): She stayed with me and then commuted back and forth to check on her young son all the time, like every day, before work and after work and stuff like that, but she slept over at my house a great deal of the time.

Dave Cawley: “She slept over at my house a great deal of the time.”

Shane Minor: Which is inconsistent with what her ex-husband had said, which is inconsistent with what the Sorensen’s not only told to me, but what they originally reported.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): And her son Adam would stay at her parent’s house?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Yes.

Shane Minor: But he was adamant that she was at his house the night before and the night before that, probably.

Dave Cawley: Cary said Sheree’d left straight for work from his place on the morning of her disappearance, departing around 5:30 a.m. That was a full two-and-a-half hours before she was supposed to be to work. This differed from what Cary’d told detective Jack Bell the day after Sheree disappeared. Back then, he’d said Sheree left his place at 7.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): We got up, she got dressed, put her work clothes on and we kissed goodbye and says “I’m goin to work, see ya” and I says “bye, bye.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): And did she drive straight to work?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Uh, I don’t know. I believe she did. I think she went right straight to Salt Lake from my place.

Dave Cawley: Cary said “I think she went right straight to Salt Lake from my place.” No mention of meeting her estranged husband Chuck Warren, or exchanging custody of her son. Once again, this was different from what Cary’d said in the past.

Shane Minor: And I think that was a slip-up.

Dave Cawley: Because it contradicted what both Sheree’s parents and Chuck Warren had told Shane.

Shane Minor: According to Hartmann, she spent the night with him the night before, but according to the Sorensens, she was at their house and left from their house and dropped off Adam to his father at the Denny’s and went to work.

Dave Cawley: This discrepancy gets to the heart of our tale-of-two-coats conundrum. Cary had been telling police since the early days of the investigation Sheree left his apartment that morning, wearing his black parka. But police had later found a gray, suede women’s jacket in Cary’s apartment. Sheree’s mom thought Sheree had left her house the morning of her disappearance in that gray suede jacket. Two conflicting accounts about two different coats.

If Sheree’s remains were ever found with Cary’s black parka, Cary would have to explain how she ended up in his coat. This could be why Cary insisted Sheree left his apartment that morning — not her parents’ house — and went straight to Salt Lake City. He needed to establish he’d seen Sheree off that morning in his black parka, because otherwise Sheree turning up with it would place Cary and Sheree together on the night of her disappearance. But this is one of those clues that only comes into focus when looking back, with hindsight.

Shane Minor: And it was just one of them things that just kind of got overlooked.

Dave Cawley: Overlooked in 1985, but not here in 2005. Shane was making careful notes. Cary said he’d gone to work himself, then returned home around 4 that afternoon to shower. He said he’d then headed to his second job at the NICE Corporation call center. But his phone rang as he was walking out the door. It was Sheree.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): She says, uh, “what you doing?” And I says “well, I’m just headed to work, out to NICE.” “Oh, ok.” I says “how are you?” “Fine.” “How was your day?” “Good, I’m training this guy.” She says “what are you going to do after work?” And she meant after NICE. And I says, “well,” I says I was going to stop down to Sebastians and have a drink with Dave.

Shane Minor: He talked about, uh, going to Sebastians to meet a friend.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): She said “are you’re going to stay down there drinkin’ all night?” I said “oh, no, no. I’m going to have a drink with Dave and I’m coming home.”

Shane Minor: Talked about how she would come to, was gonna come to his house after work and wait for him to leave a bar and come home.

Dave Cawley: To recap, Cary said Sheree’d called him around 4:30 on the afternoon of her disappearance and told him she’d meet him at his place in Ogden later that night.

Shane Minor: Instead of go to her parent’s house like she normally would do, so it just didn’t make sense, that portion of what he’s saying, it just really didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Dave Cawley: It didn’t make sense, because the women who’d lived above Cary never mentioned Sheree having a key to their house. To the contrary, they’d said Sheree would sometimes wait at the back door for Cary if he wasn’t home when she’d dropped by. Cary told Shane he’d then gone to work at his second job, before heading to the bar a bit after 9 p.m. to meet his friend, Dave Moore.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): He knew I get off at 9 so he was waiting at Sebastians when I got there.

Dave Cawley: “He was waiting at Sebastians when I got there.”

Dave Moore: It was a bar restaurant. But it was pretty nice.

Dave Cawley: We’ve already heard from Dave Moore in this podcast. He’s the friend of Cary’s who’d served in the police reserve with him.

Dave Moore: We went through the, uh, course together.

Dave Cawley: Dave previously told us Cary’d stopped by his sewing machine repair shop just before 6 and they’d gone to the bar then. Dave said they’d had a few drinks, then he’d headed home.

Dave Moore: I’m guessing 8ish.

Dave Cawley: I’ll remind you, we’ve gone through this timeline discrepancy a couple of times already, starting in episode 2. Cary’s very first version of the story, provided the day after Sheree’s disappearance, had originally aligned with what Dave described. But Cary’d revised his story in the days and weeks that followed, shifting the time of his meeting with Dave at the bar until later in the evening. Dave’s told us he and Cary’d left the bar an hour before Cary was telling Shane he’d first arrived, at 9.

Dave Moore: No, 9 o’clock, that’s definitely wrong.

Dave Cawley: The shift in Cary’s story revolved around his second job. In the revised version, Cary said he’d gone to work at the NICE Corporation call center from about 6 to 9, before meeting Dave at the bar.

Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): He worked at Weber State during the day and then, uh, he had the second job at the call center, at uh, NICE Corp, right?

Dave Moore: And I didn’t know that, either.

Dave Cawley: Ok.

Dave Moore: To be honest, well, if I did I don’t remember that.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s timecard from the NICE Corporation could settle this question, but I don’t believe investigators ever obtained it. And the company had long since gone belly-up. So, this boils down to who do you believe: Cary Hartmann or Dave Moore? There’s a three-hour difference in their stories. Which made this bit of what Cary had to say of great interest to Shane Minor.

Shane Minor: And that’s because I think that’s that three or four hour window we’re looking at.

Dave Cawley: The window of time just after Sheree Warren left her work in Salt Lake City and disappeared. Let’s set aside Dave Moore’s account for the moment and remain focused on the version of events Cary was providing. Cary said he’d told Dave he couldn’t stay at the bar long, because Sheree would already be waiting for him at home.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): He says “ok,” he says “well, why don’t you call and have her come down here?”

Dave Cawley: In this scenario, Sheree is just sitting alone in Cary’s basement apartment, twiddling her thumbs. Cary said Dave’d suggested he call Sheree and instead invite her to join them at the bar.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): It rang four or five times.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d dialed his home number, it rang several times with no answer, so he went back and told Dave “something’s wrong.” Cary said it was Dave’s idea for him to then call Sheree’s mom.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I called Mrs. Sorensen in Roy and I says “is Sheree there?” She said “no, I thought she was with you.”

Dave Cawley: By Cary’s timeline, his first call to Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, would’ve happened after 10 p.m. But this contradicted what Mary’d herself told police. She’d said Cary’d first called her around 8:00. So again…

Shane Minor: …his timing’s kind of off on that a little bit, didn’t make sense.

Dave Cawley: Shane asked what Cary’d done the next day. Cary said he’d gone to work. But he couldn’t remember having any specific conversations with anyone.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): No, I can’t remember one person.

Shane Minor: He talked about how he called Roy PD. He called the parents once.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d made the call to Roy police around noon, within earshot of his boss and a coworker. But Cary’s timecard showed he’d taken that day off work. And neither the boss nor the coworker had mentioned overhearing that phone call when they were each interviewed by police after Cary’s arrest in 1987. And what’s more, detective Jack Bell’s notes from the day after Sheree disappeared say he called Cary, not the other way around. More inconsistencies.

Shane Minor: I wanted to confront him about those, but my concern at that time was he’s just gonna shut up. He’s not gonna say anything.

Dave Cawley: Shane hoped he might someday get a chance to interrogate Cary a second time, perhaps once he’d secured an arrest warrant.

Shane Minor: So I was hoping to be able to go back and say “well, you’re wrong this, you’re wrong about this.”

Dave Cawley: Again, this was a matter of strategy. Shane was a spider spinning a web. He didn’t intend to use venom until the time was right. Shane asked what Cary’d done the weekend after Sheree disappeared. Cary said he’d picked up his sons from his ex-wife that Saturday.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you remember anything else about that weekend?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t, no.

Dave Cawley: No mention of going on a 3-wheeler ride with his TV reporter buddy Larry Lewis, or of going up on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir with another man — possibly Cary’s younger brother Jack Hartmann — as the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had reported.

Shane Minor: So some things he could remember. But then when you start talking about specifics, it’s kind of like missing information.

Dave Cawley: These aren’t just small gaps. Cary said he couldn’t remember anything significant happening between Sheree’s disappearance and his arrest a year-and-a-half later.

Shane Minor: Then it would divert to “well that next year-and-a-half was just a blur.”

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Next year and half is a blur.

Dave Cawley: No mention of Sheree’s car turning up in Las Vegas, or the psychic letters. Nothing about talking to the two women who’d lived above him, Kaye Lynn and Mary. Roy police sergeant Mike Elliot hadn’t said much so far in this interview, but he mused aloud about whether Cary would’ve discussed Sheree’s disappearance with his upstairs housemates.

Mike Elliot (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Maybe they saw her come that night and then left. That might be something you might ask ‘em.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I didn’t even consider it.

Dave Cawley: I’ll remind you, police had found the note Mary’d described taping to Cary’s door. It proved he had, in fact, talked to his landlady and the upstairs renter after Sheree disappeared. Now, he told Shane Minor he hadn’t. Or at least, couldn’t remember it. It seemed all Cary could remember was one time, Sheree’d made him fried chicken for a picnic at Lost Creek Reservoir.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I said “let’s go buy some chicken.” And she said “no, let’s make it.”

Dave Cawley: Cary said “the chicken was so good…”

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): The chicken was so good.

Dave Cawley: …as if he could still taste it. At least that memory seemed vivid. Shane decided to cut to the chase. He had a series of questions to ask.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): And like I said, it’s just a simple yes or no.

Shane Minor: Then when it got down to questions it was…

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you know who is responsible for Sheree’s disappearance or death?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Tough to hear, but Cary said “no.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did you have anything to do with Sheree’s disappearance?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): No.

Shane Minor: “Did you do anything to her?” Everything was “no.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did you kill Sheree?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): No.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you know where she is now?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I do not.

Shane Minor: Had no responsibility, nothing to do with her disappearing, has no idea what happened to her, had no idea where she’s at.

Dave Cawley: Shane finished off the questions by asking about two specific locations: Lost Creek…

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you know if Sheree was placed in the area of Lost Creek?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t have any clue.

Dave Cawley: …and Causey.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you know if she was placed in an area above Causey Estates?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): No, I don’t have any idea.

Dave Cawley: Cary trailed off there, but he said “no, I don’t have any idea.” Shane told Cary the reason he’d asked those questions is because he’d talked to witnesses who put Cary and Sheree together on the night of her disappearance, after she left the credit union office in Salt Lake City.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): That’s absolutely incredibly false. Ain’t no way on this planet. That is a lie.

Shane Minor: Denied her coming over to his house.

Dave Cawley: Cary’s exact words were “ain’t no way on this planet, that’s a lie.” He insisted the bar’d been packed full of people who’d all seen him there that night. But Shane knew no one had ever come forward to verify that. And after 20 years, no one ever could.

Shane Minor: Time has really compounded figuring some things out.

Dave Cawley: On the other hand, Shane told Cary multiple inmates who’d served time with him had come forward over the years to say Cary killed Sheree Warren.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): That’s bull[expletive]. That’s a, that’s an inmate with a grudge of some sort.

Dave Cawley: Cary said “that’s bull[expletive]. That’s an inmate with a grudge.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Do you know who that would have been?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I don’t have a clue.

Dave Cawley: Cary didn’t “have a clue” who might’ve held a grudge against him. He didn’t mention Nathaniel Bell, the inmate who’d punched him unconscious during a game of handball and who Cary’d then testified against in court. He didn’t name William Babbel or David Westmoreland, who’d both snitched on him, even if less-than-credibly.

If Cary’d said Babbel or Westmoreland hated him for some reason, it might’ve served to discredit what they’d told police and the FBI. But Cary didn’t mention them. Cary said any prisoner who claimed he’d made incriminating comments about Sheree Warren was a liar.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I just wanted to be absolutely clear on that fact. No way on this Earth did I tell anyone that I was involved with because I’m not.

Dave Cawley: Shane pivoted, asking Cary if he’d been a hunter when Sheree disappeared.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did you do any hunting that year?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Uh, I, I think I did.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d gone out every deer season, which in Utah started the third week of October. But Shane wanted to know about an earlier date, during elk season: the Sunday after Sheree disappeared.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Were you in the area of Causey Estates, up above Causey Estates, the weekend after—

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Never, absolutely not.

Shane Minor: He denied basically that.

Dave Cawley: Cary insisted he’d never gone into Causey Estates, except with his friend Dave Moore.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I never ever, ever, ever in my life went to Causey when I didn’t go through the gate that Dave didn’t open it, never.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he, Dave Moore and another of their friends — a former Ogden cop named Bill Thorsted — used to rip around Causey Estates on their three-wheelers during the winter. Dave Moore and Bill Thorsted both owned lots in Causey Estates. Cary’d visited both of them. Shane knew another of Cary’s old friends, the taxidermist Brent Morgan, also had a cabin up in Causey Estates.

C. Brent Morgan: In the early years, the advantage was, it was very isolated.

Dave Cawley: Brent’s the guy who had his wedding on that mountain a year before Sheree disappeared.

Dave Cawley (to Brent Morgan): So you’re holding that event up there. Umm, one of your guests is, is Cary Hartmann.

C. Brent Morgan: That is correct.

Dave Cawley: Which means Cary’s assertion he’d only ever gone in to Causey Estates when Dave Moore let him through the gate was not true. Brent told me Cary’d been into Causey Estates multiple times without Dave Moore.

Brent Morgan: Well, when we were doing our cabin, guess who did the plumbing work? Cary did. Now, he wasn’t up on top like when I got married but he had, he knew the gate system, he knew how to get to my place, he could drive the roads. If he left my cabin and he wanted to go to the top of Skull Crack, he could drive up there.

Dave Cawley: We don’t have to just take Brent at his word on this. I have a copy of a daily journal Cary kept during 1984, the year before Sheree disappeared. It contains notes in Cary’s own handwriting about Brent owing him money for the work he did on Brent’s cabin. It’s documentary evidence what Cary told Shane about never going into Causey Estates without his friend Dave Moore was not true.

Shane Minor: He said he really didn’t have access to it, but we’d been told he had a key to it.

Dave Cawley: You might remember from earlier episodes, Brent the taxidermist loaned Cary a key to the gate at Causey Estates during the fall of ’85.

C. Brent Morgan: That is correct.

Dave Cawley: Shane asked Cary about this.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did you ever have a key to Causey?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Oh, no, never.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Did you borrow a key from anybody?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Never.

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): So you’ve got him staunchly denying what your witness is telling you. And those are two things that can’t be reconciled.

Shane Minor: Right.

Dave Cawley: The inconsistencies were stacking up.

Shane Minor: Asked him if he’d ever been up on top hunting, he said he hadn’t.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d never hunted the Causey side of the mountain, only the Lost Creek side.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I hunted at Lost Creek. I never hunted at Causey, ever.

Dave Cawley: I’ve described Causey, Lost Creek and the mountain between them as looking like a percent sign: Causey is the circle in the upper left, Lost Creek’s the circle in the lower right, the mountain is the diagonal slash between them. There’s a dirt road that goes south from Causey, up the mountain to the bottom of the slash. That’s where the cabins of Causey Estates are. The road then turns, going up and to the right, along the mountain top — following the slash — before dropping down to Lost Creek.

It’s on that road where the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns, reported seeing Cary four days after Sheree disappeared. Shane knew Cary had the borrowed key for the Causey side. He wanted to know if Cary’d also had access from the Lost Creek side. I read aloud from a transcript of Shane’s interview with Cary when we sat down to talk, repeating what Cary’d said about hunting at Lost Creek after Sheree disappeared.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I hunted with my brother…

Dave Cawley (reading from transcript): “I hunted with my brother, we all put our truck and campsite right there in the cul-de-sac. People all over the place.” And then you said “which cul-de-sac?”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Which cul-de-sac? I’m not very familiar.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): By the boat ramp.

Dave Cawley (reading from transcript): “By the boat ramp. There’s only one, you get on the road, there’s only one that’s paved. That’s the only one I know of.” “Where is it? By the boat ramp at Lost Creek?” “Yeah.”

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): …at Lost Creek?

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): Yeah.

Dave Cawley: Cary saying he’d hunted around Lost Creek with his younger brother Jack Hartmann after Sheree disappeared also seemed to line up with what Shane’d heard from the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns. Fred had reported seeing another man with Cary on the mountain behind Causey. Fred told police he thought the second man was Jack Hartmann.

Shane asked Cary if he’d be willing to take a new type of lie detector test called a voice stress analyzer. Cary seemed cautious, and asked…

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): How accurate is it?

Dave Cawley: “…how accurate is it?” Shane said he wasn’t sure. He just wanted to use it to eliminate Cary as a suspect. At this, Cary balked. He said he didn’t understand how Sheree disappearing from Salt Lake while he was 40 miles away in Ogden didn’t already do that.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): You’ve got to see my position.

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I understand your position.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I mean, I’m dubious as hell about—

Shane Minor (from October 26, 2005 police recording): I understand.

Cary Hartmann (from October 26, 2005 police recording): —this or whatever, thinking “oh man, what do I have to do?”

Dave Cawley: Cary said “I’m dubious as hell about this … thinking ‘oh man, what do I have to do?’” He decided no, he wasn’t going to take a lie detector test. So, Shane wrapped up the interview. He packed away his notes and tape recorder. He hadn’t expected a confession and he hadn’t got one.

Shane Minor: But at the same time he’s giving you some information he doesn’t realize he’s giving to you.

Dave Cawley: For example, Shane’d confirmed Cary’d hunted the mountains around Lost Creek Reservoir with his brother Jack after Sheree disappeared. And Jack Hartmann had never been questioned about the disappearance of Sheree Warren. So that’s where Shane Minor headed next.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Weber County investigator Shane Minor had finally, after 20 years, questioned Cary Hartmann about the disappearance of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: And I was just trying to get as much information as we could from him.

Dave Cawley: Cary’d denied any involvement. But he’d also made several statements contradicting what other witnesses had said over the years. Most importantly, he’d denied having gone up the mountain behind Causey Reservoir the weekend after Sheree vanished.

Shane Minor: I don’t think I asked him about a conversation he had with Fred Johns up on top.

Dave Cawley: Shane’s memory is right. He hadn’t revealed to Cary the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had seen Cary and another man parked on a mountain ridge behind Causey, just four days after Sheree vanished.

Shane Minor: I think he would’ve clammed up.

Dave Cawley: Fred’d said he thought the other man was Cary’s brother, Jack Hartmann.

Shane Minor: We didn’t have contact with the brother during that period of time of the rape cases.

Dave Cawley: Roy police detective Jack Bell had once tried to interview Jack Hartmann, in May of 1987.

Jack Bell: I never really got to talk to Jack on the record in the office.

Dave Cawley: Jack Bell’s notes say Jack Hartmann had cancelled their appointment after talking to Cary’s defense attorney. When Shane Minor’d taken over the Sheree Warren case a decade later, he’d learned Cary’s family had never been questioned.

Shane Minor: So that information was that his brother and all of his family was told not to talk to us by his attorney. So having that in mind, you think “well, they’re gonna, they’re gonna resist talking to you so let’s avoid that.”

Dave Cawley: Shane met with a seasoned criminal prosecutor named Bill Daines. They brainstormed a plan.

Shane Minor: It was probably his suggestion, “well we’ll just do this. We’ll compel him. Put him under oath and, uh compel him by subpoena.”

Dave Cawley: Under Utah law, prosecutors can ask a judge for subpoena power. If the judge approves, the prosecutor can force witnesses to testify under oath at a secret hearing.

Shane Minor: And then offer transactional immunity, some type of agreement if that comes into play.

Dave Cawley: Investigators could’ve tried this tactic early on, after Cary’s arrest in the rape case in 1987. I’m not sure why they didn’t. It was a major missed opportunity.

Shane Minor: Looking back, we’re going off of the information that we have.

Dave Cawley: What I’m going to tell you next has never before been publicly revealed, because of the secret nature of these types of subpoenas. Shane Minor personally served Cary Hartmann’s brother, Jack Hartmann, with an investigative subpoena in January of 2006. Shane told me Jack’d seemed surprised.

Shane Minor: I, I think his attitude is like “what’s this all about? Just ask me.”

Dave Cawley: The subpoena ordered Jack Hartmann to appear for questioning at the Weber County offices. Jack did as ordered, and met prosecutor Bill Daines.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): The individual who is presently in the courtroom and who was just sworn in, his name is Jack Hartmann. Is that correct, sir?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: The existence of this audio recording has been a secret for more than 15 years.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): This is a secret proceeding and so you are asked not to divulge the contents of this proceeding to anyone other than a lawyer that you might want to talk to. Do you understand that?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes, I do.

Dave Cawley: Bill told Jack anything he said might be used against him. But…

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): We do not, uh, view you as a target.

Dave Cawley: A target of what? A murder investigation.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): And what I will tell you is, uh, although I’m assuming you’ve already guessed this, is that this involves the disappearance on October 2nd, 1985 of a young woman by the name of Sheree Warren, uh and the fact that she has never subsequently been found.

Dave Cawley: Bill explained police had gathered a great deal of information over the past 20 years. Most of it had never been made public. That information pointed to a suspect: Jack’s older brother, Cary.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did Cary ever talk to you about his relationship with Sheree Warren?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He did not?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Bill worked through the questions he’d drafted with investigator Shane Minor, while Shane and Roy police captain Jack Bell sat in the back of the room, listening. 

Shane Minor: We asked him questions about his relationship with his brother and I think he was quite open with us. I think he was honest with us about it.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): You are his younger brother.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Correct.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): How much younger than Cary are you?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Eight years.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright. And were you close growing up?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Pause) No.

Dave Cawley: In our first episode, I told you how Cary and his second wife had gone to Oceanside, California with another woman, Jack Hartmann’s fiancé, in the summer of 1980. Cary’s ex-wife later told police Cary’d tried to rape Jack’s fiancé after they’d arrived. Bill asked Jack about that story.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He had attempted to rape your wife?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He attempted or did and I’m not sure. My wife held information from me.

Dave Cawley: Jack said he’d only learned what’d happened on that day in California seven years later, in 1987, after Cary’s arrest. Another instance of people not coming forward for fear of Cary.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): You’ve had problems with your brother Cary at least as of 1987.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Oh, yes.

Dave Cawley: But why had Jack Hartmann not shared that information about his brother with police at the time?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you remember as Kevin Sullivan, as your brother’s attorney, ever advised you not to talk to the police?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He, he might’ve—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He might have told you don’t talk to the police about anything?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —maybe he thought I would say something, I don’t know.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Maybe I, I don’t know. Maybe I’d speak honestly and he didn’t want to hear it. (Laughs)

Dave Cawley: So, Jack and Cary’s relationship had been on the rocks since at least ’87. What about before that, when Sheree Warren had disappeared?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you have good relationship with your brother at that time?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): You did not?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Why was it at that time that you weren’t seeing him very often?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Well it was even prior to that. Him and I just, he changed. He got, he was, he was like two people. He would, he would disrupt family gatherings terribly and at one time I caught him, y’know, making obscene gestures towards my girlfriend at the time which became my wife. That really irritated me. He just, is, he, it was either do what I ask you or do it when I ask you or you’re a—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Ok.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —SOB. And I didn’t like the lie, I just, we would argue at get-togethers where everything’s supposed to be great. He would, it’d turn into a fight. I got sick of it. 

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): So that was years before. So our relationship never was great.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Especially at this time. We were seeing each other (pause) very seldom, at best.

Dave Cawley: Seldom, but not never. Bill showed Jack one of the missing persons fliers Cary’d had printed in October of ’85, shortly after Sheree disappeared. The same style flyer that still hung in a display case in the lobby of Roy City police headquarters.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I remember these. My brother had us helping him pass ‘em out. I remember that, uh, story.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): You’re saying that Cary told you nothing about this disappearance at the time?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No, I’m sure he didn’t. I can’t remember him ever coming and saying “look, so-and-so’s gone, I don’t know.” He, he did say that, I remember, because then he started this poster that, flier thing, so—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): And that’s number two. What I’ve marked number two is the poster you’re referring to.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yeah, yeah.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He, he was responsible for creating these, in so far as you know?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He, yeah, as far as I know.

Dave Cawley: Bill pivoted.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you know if your brother liked to go to Las Vegas?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): That’s a good question. I don’t know. Like I told you, our relationship was very sketchy, at best, so a lot of his life I didn’t know about. I don’t know that, for sure. I know he never went to Wendover that I know of and that’s a gambling place which is similar, that I know of—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —so I don’t know—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you ever go to Las Vegas with Cary?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Bill described Sheree’s car, the maroon, 1984 Toyota Corolla that’d turned up behind the Aladdin casino in Vegas several weeks after Sheree disappeared.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you ever hear Cary speculate as to how Sheree’s car might’ve ended up in the city of Las Vegas?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did he ever tell you that he had driven that car to Las Vegas or anything of that nature?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you ever in the days after Sheree Warren disappeared, pick your brother up at the Salt Lake airport?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No, sir.

Dave Cawley: Bill also showed Jack a photo of Cary’s old truck, a Chevy pickup from the 1970s with a shell over the bed.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Oh, I remember that truck. The yellow one.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): The yellow one.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Ok, yeah. Ugly, terrible yellow. Yep.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Laughs)

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Now I remember.

Dave Cawley: Bill didn’t say it, but this was the truck Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had described seeing with Cary on the mountain behind Causey.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): This truck that I’ve shown you in number 3, you’ve agreed is an ugly yellow truck that Cary—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Laughs)

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —in case I didn’t record over there.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Uh, did you ever ride in this truck anywhere?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I’m sure I did.

Dave Cawley: Bill was laying foundation.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you hunt?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Dave Cawley: As he worked toward a point.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Were you hunting in 1985?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I’m sure I was, I don’t miss a year.

Dave Cawley: Seeking to put Cary on that mountain days after Sheree Warren disappeared.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you know if Cary had access to Causey Estates?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I don’t. I don’t.

Dave Cawley: Jack said he’d hunted the mountains around Causey himself a time or two, but never with Cary. He said Cary’s friend Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, had once let him into Causey Estates for a day.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Scratched the heck out of my truck. I remember that.

Dave Cawley: But Jack said he’d done this on his own. Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had told police he’d seen Cary and Jack Hartmann together on the mountain behind Causey Estates on the opening weekend of the annual elk hunt.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did Cary hunt back in 1985?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Probably.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): What did he hunt, to the best of your—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Deer.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —present recollection. Just deer?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Just deer.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright. You’re not the first person who told us that. You don’t remember Cary hunting elk?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Dave Cawley: Fred Johns had shown investigator Shane Minor the exact spot where he’d remembered seeing Cary and Jack on the mountain. As I mentioned in the last episode, the land belonged to a sheepherding family named the Wildes. Fred Johns paid the Wildes for the right to take his clients in pursuit of elk on their land, and Fred did not like trespassers.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Now, do you know of property above Causey Estates known as Wilde’s property? And I believe that’s a family name?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I’ve, I’ve heard of it—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Have you ever been there?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Are you certain?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Not that I know of. I know that it, uh, I’ve always heard that it’s good hunting in there but I’ve never gone in there.

Dave Cawley: Bill talked Jack through the various ways one could reach the Wilde property. The two most important for us are through Causey Estates or by way of Lost Creek Reservoir. Again, picture that percent sign: two circles, separated by a slash. Two reservoirs, separated by a mountain, but connected by a rough dirt road running along the mountaintop.

The Wilde property where Fred Johns had seen Cary and another man sat right in the middle of the slash in the percent sign, midway between the two reservoirs. Gates blocked the road at both sides. Cary’d borrowed a key for the Causey side, but what about the Lost Creek side?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Right at the back of Lost Creek I think everybody who hunts elk knows is the road into Deseret Land and Livestock.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): The Lost Creek area was an area you were very familiar with?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): And as far as you know, Cary was very familiar with it?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Pause) Somewhat, not like me.

Dave Cawley: Their conversation of the geography went into a lot more detail than we need to hear. But Jack had no confusion over where it was the elk hunting guide Fred Johns claimed to have seen Cary and Jack on the mountain.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you, within a few days after Sheree Warren disappeared ever go elk hunting or deer hunting with your brother Cary?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Pause) I can’t remember. I, I, I gotta say no.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did Cary ever take you into the mountains within that period of time, for any other reason that you can now think of?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Dave Cawley: So what’d Cary been doing up there, if Fred Johns was to be believed?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you know a person named Fred Johns?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yes.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): How do you know him?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Through my brother.

Dave Cawley: Jack said he’d first met Fred in the mid-‘70s. This was probably around the time Cary’d briefly lived with Fred while Cary was between his two marriages. Jack remembered having gone into the mountains with Cary and Fred a time or two back then. But that’d been years before Sheree Warren disappeared.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Would, in 1985, Fred Johns have known what you look like?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I’m sure. I, I’m pretty sure.

Dave Cawley: Bill turned to the critical question.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): He indicates that on that day, you and Cary were on his leased land backed into those trees in this truck. Is that true?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): This is in ’85?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): This would’ve been four days after Sheree’s disappearance.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): (Pause) I can’t remember but I guess it’s possible.

Dave Cawley: It wasn’t a “no,” but it wasn’t a “yes,” either.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you remember coming across Fred Johns one day asking you what you were doing on his land?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I don’t remember that.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Could you have been up there on that date?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I’ll say I could have because I can’t remember for sure.

Dave Cawley: Investigator Shane Minor was still watching from the back of the room, his detective’s senses alert, listening for any lie.

Shane Minor: I think he gave some pretty honest answers. He couldn’t recall, he’d been up there but he couldn’t remember what date it was.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Could you have been approached by Fred Johns and asked “what are you doing here?”

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I guess but I can’t remember that to be perfectly honest.

Dave Cawley: Bill, the prosecutor, didn’t leave any room for ambiguity.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did you ever help Cary put anything in a canyon up on that ridge?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Shane Minor: But when we asked him specifics about dropping anything or, or that first week, he’s like “no, I, I wasn’t, wasn’t me.”

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Did he ever tell you of any problems he was having with Sheree Warren?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Do you by any means whatsoever have any idea where Sheree is?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Has anybody told you where she might be?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Has Cary ever mentioned this to you?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): At all?

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): No, sir.

Shane Minor: I think I was hoping that he would give us that one little piece that we didn’t have. And when we got done, there was just nothing.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d figured Cary Hartmann wasn’t going to confess, if he’d killed Sheree Warren. But Shane’d hoped Cary’s accomplice — if he’d had one — might feel the sting of guilty conscience. Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had told Shane Cary’s little brother, Jack Hartmann, could’ve been that accomplice. Shane’d pinned all his remaining hopes of finding Sheree Warren on reaching a breakthrough with Jack. Jack Hartmann was the last, best lead Shane had.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright. I have, don’t, I don’t have any further questions at this time, Mr. Hartmann. You’re free to go.

Dave Cawley: Shane interjected in an act of near desperation, trying to keep the conversation going, asking if Jack had any questions he’d like to ask them.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): I do have one.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Alright.

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Why now? I’m just curious. Has my brother, y’know, ‘cause all I did was read about this in the paper and was like “holy moly”—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Well—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —so then I’m wondering why 18 years later, or, has he said something, y’know?

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Well, and here again—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): We’re just curious.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —what I’m telling you is that some of the information we have may not have been 18 years old. That’s why I—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): True. Ok. That’s true.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —informed you straight out in the beginning—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Ok.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —we may have information over the years but, umm, when you’re saying “why now,” that’s, that’s why—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Yeah, that’s just—

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —we have evidence here, obviously. I just asked you a series of questions—

Jack Hartmann (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): Right. I understand.

Bill Daines (from January 27, 2006 subpoena recording): —that, that we have information about.

Dave Cawley: They stopped the recording, but Jack stayed a little while to talk off the record with Bill Daines and Shane Minor. Their conversation only reinforced Shane’s gut feeling, his belief Jack’d told them the truth: he hadn’t helped his brother Cary conceal the suspected murder of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: I didn’t get that drift that he was involved with him and didn’t really want anything to do with him.

Dave Cawley: But Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had said he’d seen a second man with Cary Hartmann on the mountain behind Causey.

Shane Minor: And he thought it was his brother.

Dave Cawley: So if that second man wasn’t Jack Hartmann, who was it?

Shane Minor: Bill and I talked about it after, we all felt the same way about him and, just like it wasn’t him. I don’t think he was with him. Had to’ve been someone else.

Dave Cawley: Someone else who resembled Cary and Jack Hartmann.

Shane Minor: I know Cary had a cousin that, Hartmann had a cousin that looked a lot like him that was used in the line-ups from the rape cases.

Dave Cawley: When Cary’d stood in that police line-up in May of 1987, he’d brought his brother Jack and cousin David with him. Back in episode 5, we heard how the woman I called Caroline had tried to pick Cary out of the line-up. But Cary and his cousin David had looked so similar, Caroline couldn’t tell them apart. So I wonder: could the second man on the mountain with Cary have been David Hartmann?

Would the resemblance of Cary’s cousin have been enough to confuse Fred Johns? It’s a question I’ll never be able to answer because Fred Johns is dead, and so is David Hartmann. David died in 2004. He was never interviewed by investigators. His life after Cary’s arrest was marred by alcoholism. Court records show David was repeatedly convicted for driving under the influence.

He’d been married twice and I’ve talked to his second ex-wife, who only met him years after Cary went to prison. She told me David wasn’t an outdoorsman and, to her knowledge, never visited Causey Reservoir. She could only remember David mentioning Cary one time, in reference to having helped him at the police line-up. David Hartmann’s obituary said his love for his family was “surpassed by nothing on this Earth.”

Jack Hartmann hadn’t provided answers that brought investigator Shane Minor any closer to finding the remains of Sheree Warren.

Shane Minor: And so it was just like, getting the wind kicked out of you. It’s like, you’re just, now what? Where do you go from here?

Dave Cawley: Shane’d spent more than six years grinding out a case, building a better record, hoping along the way to find Sheree Warren’s remains. He’d done the work when no one else would, not because he had some deep emotional connection with Sheree, but because his sense of justice demanded it. He’d dragged cadaver dogs up the mountain, squeezed his broad frame into a small helicopter and hovered over the spot where he believed Cary Hartmann might’ve dumped Sheree’s body. But in the end, all that effort left him right back where he’d started. He felt like he’d missed something, one critical piece.

Shane Minor: Trying to get somebody to remember something or someone we hadn’t talked to, maybe point us in a direction.

Dave Cawley: Now, Shane was rudderless. He had loose ends, not leads. He hadn’t been able to find Shauna, the woman Cary’d dated and married after Sheree disappeared. Maybe she harbored information. I’ll note, I’ve reached out to Shauna myself, but she didn’t respond to my message.

Shane wondered about William Babbel, aka Charlie, the FBI informant. He’s the snitch we heard about in episode 6, who’d been in Cary’s sex offender therapy group and who claimed Cary’d been infatuated with Ted Bundy.

Shane Minor: Thought about trying to get back and go with Babbel but he had died.

Dave Cawley: Shane’d hit one too many dead ends. He’d sacrificed so many of his own nights, on his own time, chasing answers. He just couldn’t do it anymore.

Shane Minor: I didn’t want to give up on it, but at the same time it’s like there’s got to be that one thing that somebody knows something, maybe they just don’t know what they know.

Dave Cawley: Vultures smelled Shane’s desperation. A group of self-described clairvoyants swooped in, offering to “work” the Sheree Warren case on his behalf. Having no better options, Shane was willing to entertain it. The clairvoyants held viewing sessions, then sent Shane emails full of vague, nonsensical notes. Stuff like “water or the smell of wet earth. I can hear crickets. I feel that night is important.”

Yeah, try planning a search off that and let me know how it goes.

The clairvoyants even enlisted the help of a California woman named Aann Golemac, who’d made a name for herself as a ghost hunter on cable TV shows in the early 2000s.

Narrator (from October 16, 2003 Weird Travels, Investigations of the Unexplained): To put it frankly, Ann claims she sees dead people.

Ann Golemac (from October 16, 2003 Weird Travels, Investigations of the Unexplained): I may see them very clearly and I will then ask them what they need or if they have a story to tell or if they need help.

Dave Cawley: Golemac performed her own psychic reading and, in notes I’ve obtained, claimed to have herself talked to Sheree’s spirit. Golemac said she saw a 14-year-old girl with a connection to New Jersey. “I am being shown a doll as I talk to Sheree.” Golemac wrote. This is all bogus and the fact it even ended up in investigator Shane Minor’s case file shows just how desperate he’d become.

Shane Minor: Well, you keep thinking that you’re gonna find something that you missed and it’s gonna point to something and, uh—

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a cold case.

Shane Minor: No. Yeah, yep. And if the person that done it’s not talking and was careful not to say too much, then it just make it that much more harder.

Dave Cawley: Meanwhile, other cases landed on Shane’s desk. One of those involved a new lead in the search for another missing woman: Joyce Yost. You can hear about Shane’s work on that case in season 2 of this podcast. In another case, Shane ended up searching for the body of a teenage girl who’d disappeared from the home of a couple who’d hired her as a babysitter.

Mike Anderson (from October 19, 2011 KSL TV archive): At first, police believed that 16-year-old Alex Rasmussen could’ve been a runaway. Rasmussen, never came home after she left to babysit for Eric and Dea Millerberg September 11th.

Dave Cawley: The girl, Alexis Rasmussen, was missing five weeks before a prison informant broke the case open. The informant provided police with the name of a witness who’d helped the killer bury Alexis off to the side of Interstate 84.

Sandra Yi (from January 31, 2012 KSL TV archive): Prosecutors say Eric Millerberg gave the drugs to Alexis Rasmussen. When she died, he and his wife Dea moved the teen’s body to Morgan County, where investigators would find it five weeks later.

Dave Cawley: The Alexis Rasmussen case demanded years of Shane’s attention, dragging him away from the search for Sheree Warren.

Sandra Yi (from January 31, 2012 KSL TV archive): The discovery changed the course of the investigation, which began as a missing persons case.

Dave Cawley: The parallels between Sheree Warren’s disappearance and the murder of Alexis Rasmussen struck me: both were first reported as missing persons. Both involved jailhouse informants who claimed the victims were buried off the side of the interstate. Both scenarios included a suspect possibly soliciting help to hide the victim’s body in the mountains.

In one case, Shane had been able to help secure an arrest, conviction and the return of the victim’s body. In the other, well…

Shane Minor: Y’know, it just kind of takes a, another back seat.

Dave Cawley: Newer crimes always seem to take priority over old ones.

Shane Minor: Got to be very demanding in time, so—

Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Mmm.

Shane Minor: —I just didn’t get back to it.

Dave Cawley: No one stepped forward to pick up where he’d left off. The search for Sheree Warren once again went cold.

[Ad break]

Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann once again went before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole in September of 2010.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Alright. Mr. Hartmann, I’m going to take testimony today so I’d like you to raise your right hand so I can swear you in.

Dave Cawley: That’s the voice of parole board hearing officer Duane Kaneko. We’ve already heard four of Cary Hartmann’s prior hearings before the parole board in this podcast. But notice in this one how much better Cary had grown at telling the board what it wanted to hear.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Tell me why the board should let you out.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I’ve changed my thinking and I’ve changed my life.

Dave Cawley: It’d been five years since Cary’s interview with Shane Minor, 25 years since Sheree Warren disappeared.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): At this point, I guess my question is, tell me how many victims you’ve had.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I have four charged and five uncharged.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): So nine total.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Dave Cawley: Cary claimed five sexual assaults for which he’d never faced criminal charges.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Three of those were my ex-wives, sir.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Ok.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): That I was married to. That was sexual abuse. I was married three times. Two of them, not very long. They were very short. And then one of them I was married for five years and it wasn’t an ongoing basis, it happened on occasion.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Mmhmm.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): One was a date, was an attempted rape.

Dave Cawley: Ogden police had in 1987 collected multiple reports from women who said Cary’d assaulted them. Those never resulted in criminal charges, but there were more than one and the conduct they described went beyond “attempted.”

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): And the fifth was a 10-year-old girl when I was 14 years old. I sexually abused her.

Dave Cawley: Let that sink in. Cary admitted he’d sexually abused a 10-year-old child when he was himself just 14. This obliterated the idea Heidi Posnien, who Cary’d tried to lure up to a remote mountain campground when he was 22, was his first victim. It undercut the idea his experience in Vietnam, or later financial troubles were the root of his behavior.

In episode 5, we heard how Cary told a therapist when he first entered sex offender treatment he’d learned about sex at age 15 from some kids at school. This admission contradicted that.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): And there’s been no one else.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): No sir.

Dave Cawley: No mention of Sheree Warren. Over the course of this season, you’ve heard Cary Hartmann go from making outright denials, to partial admissions, to this supposedly full confession of his crimes.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Because I wasn’t clearheaded. Because I was deviant in my thinking. I sought out pornography and masturbation. And deviancy was what I delved in and I, I didn’t think clearly and I wasn’t using clear thinking at the time.

Dave Cawley: I’ve come to think of this as Cary’s progression of accountability. He only ever admitted to what he had to, denying everything else. As a result, he’d made many contradictory claims while under oath over the years. He’d proven himself untrustworthy, leaving one to wonder if this version of his story represented the entire truth.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I didn’t have empathy for people at that time. I didn’t consider people’s feelings. I was selfish and self-centered. I wanted instant sexual gratification.

Dave Cawley: Cary touched on a significant idea with this statement.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Are these things that you’d fantasized about previously?

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Yes sir.

Dave Cawley: There’s a growing body of academic research surrounding the psychology of rape and sexual assault. Much of it seeks to answer the question: what drives some men to commit rape?

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): And then, you figured because of that it was ok.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Yes sir, that’s correct.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): And it didn’t matter what they thought.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): No sir, it didn’t at the time.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d just wanted “instant sexual gratification.” But that’s an probably oversimplification, because rape isn’t just rooted in the rapist’s physical desires.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I’ve learned to control my emotions and my impulses.

Dave Cawley: The origins often touch on the rapist’s own narcissism, lack of empathy, hostility toward women or desire to dominate another human being.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I’ve learned to, to counter the things that drive me, which are objectifying women and my red flags and triggers.

Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d unraveled all his issues, this deep-seated psychological stuff, in therapy, over the space of a few short years. He was all better now.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I can go out and be a happy person. Deviant-free and not a harm to anyone.

Dave Cawley: The parole board hearing officer, Duane Kaneko, didn’t ask Cary about Sheree Warren. He could have, if he’d wanted. But the parole board’s job wasn’t solving crimes. Without an investigator pushing the board to ask, as Shane Minor had done five years earlier, it had little reason to intervene.

Cary’d minded his manners in the time since. He’d done everything the board had asked of him. As a result, he was on track for a release from custody. Kaneko said he just wanted a little more assurance Cary wasn’t a threat to re-offend before taking that major step. But, Kaneko said if Cary kept playing by the rules, release could be just a year or two away.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): What do you think will be the biggest thing that you’ll have to contend with?

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Staying in contact with my support group, always being open and honest, being truthful in every single thing that I do.

Dave Cawley: But he looked forward to seeing how the world had changed in the more than two decades since his arrest, conviction and incarceration.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I imagine technology’s changed just a little bit.

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Just a little.

Dave Cawley: One can imagine what might’ve happened if Cary’d had access to a smartphone back in the days of his lingerie survey phone calls.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I no longer have any desire whatsoever to be involved in anything like that.

Dave Cawley: The parole board had to decide: had Cary Hartmann really changed?

Duane Kaneko (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): Tell me what you think is going through the minds of your victims.

Cary Hartmann (from September 21, 2010 parole board recording): I believe they were scared to death. I believe that they feared for their lives. I believe that they probably will feel fear in many, many areas of life, of their lives for the rest of their life.

Dave Cawley: A fear that might well grow if the board decided to set Cary free.

Cold season 3, episode 7: Purgatory – Full episode transcript

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 28th, 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.

[Ad break]

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 28th, 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 24th, 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 20th 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.

Cold season 3, episode 6: Lying Liars – Full episode transcript

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 4th, 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.

[Ad break]

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 2nd 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 4th. 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 2nd.

Dave Cawley: October 2nd: 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.

Cold season 3, episode 5: Nighthawk – Full episode transcript

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 8th. He’d bailed out of jail on the 9th, then been re-arrested on the 12th. Cary’d bailed out for the second time on the 16th.

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 29th to July 9th. 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 15th, 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 15th, 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 2nd, 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 10th 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 2nd. 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.

Cold season 3, episode 4: The Supper Club – Full episode transcript

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 3rd, 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 8th 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 7th 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 7th 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 7th 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 11th, 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 12th 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 7th 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 7th 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 9th, 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 7th 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 14th, 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 16th, 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 20th. 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 27th. 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.

Cold season 3, episode 3: Cherish the Love – Full episode transcript

(Sound of tape recorder starting)

John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 25, 1985 statement): It’s now November 25th, 1985 at 8 p.m. This is the case of Sheree Warren, she disappeared from Salt Lake City October 2nd, 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 7th, 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 23rd, 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.

[Ad break]

(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 20th, 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.