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.