Category: Season 3

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Sheree Warren (née Sorensen) was the second of four children in her family. She was preceded by an older brother and followed by a pair of younger sisters. Her parents, Edwin and Mary Sorensen, raised their children in the community of Roy, a suburb of the city of Ogden, Utah.

Ed Sorensen spent 20 years serving in the U.S. Air Force before becoming a civilian contractor at nearby Hill Air Force Base. Mary Sorensen also worked in a family-owned drapery business. As a young woman, Sheree inherited a strong work ethic from her parents.

Sheree performed well as a student. She routinely appeared on the honor rolls at Roy Junior High and Roy High School. She was sharp with numbers and gregarious. Her high school yearbooks suggested she did not take part in many extra-curricular activities.

Sheree graduated from Roy High School in 1978. A few years later, she married a man named Charles Warren.

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Sheree Warren’s husband, Charles Warren

Charles “Chuck” Warren was 11 years older than Sheree. He grew up in Ogden, Utah. Chuck had taken a job working for the Southern Pacific railroad during the 1970s, while Sheree was still in school.

Chuck and Sheree married on February 27, 1981. Sheree then moved into her new husband’s home, an orange brick house on Ogden’s Hudson Street nestled against the foot of the Wasatch Mountains.

The transition to married life proved difficult for Sheree. She was strong-willed and independent, which sometimes led to conflict with her new husband. Chuck had been married once before. He had a son from his first marriage, meaning Sheree at times found herself in the middle of family matters from Chuck’s former life.

Sheree’s discontent grew. She separated from Chuck roughly six months into their marriage, telling at least one friend at that time she was considering divorce. However, while separated from Chuck, Sheree learned she was pregnant.

Chuck and Sheree Warren reconciled. In May of 1982, they welcomed a child, a son whom they named Adam.

The introduction of a child into the strained marriage did not improve matters. Finances remained a point of contention. Chuck was a self-described car nut, who bought and sold vehicles as a hobby. This side hustle soaked up a significant portion of Chuck’s income which frustrated Sheree, who worked in order to provide for their son.

Sheree held a job as a loan officer at a Federal Employees Credit Union branch in Ogden. That’s where she met and befriended a fellow loan officer named Pam.

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Sheree and Pam

“We had a lot in common,” Pam Volk said during an interview for COLD. “I guess we were just kind of kindred spirits.”

Sheree and Pam were similar in age. They began to spend time together outside of work, either shopping or going to movies on evenings when Sheree was able to leave her son home with Chuck. Pam said Sheree confided her marriage wasn’t good.

“I don’t remember specifics, I just know that she wasn’t very happy,” Pam said.

While working together at the credit union, Pam and Sheree met a man who came to service the building’s heating and air condition system. His name was Cary Hartmann.

“He would just kind of stop me and say ‘hi,’” Pam said. “We became friends.”

Hartmann had recently left a role as a reserve officer for the Ogden Police Department, a fact he boasted about. Pam said she’d found Cary to be personable and talkative. Cary pursued a romantic relationship with Pam, but it fizzled after just a few months.

“I don’t remember why we quit seeing each other,” Pam said. “It just really wasn’t right.”

Sheree, meantime, made a major change in her life. At the start of 1985, Sheree quit her job at Federal Employees Credit Union and accepted a new position at Utah State Employees Credit Union. She celebrated the new opportunity by going on a two-week-long vacation with Pam in Hawaii. As they spent time lounging on the beach, Sheree talked about her hopes for the future.

“She was going to a manager training program,” Pam said.

The new job held a promise of upward mobility and self-sufficiency for Sheree. She intended to support herself because she was preparing to divorce her husband, Chuck Warren.

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A summer fling with Cary Hartmann

Court records show Sheree filed for divorce from Charles Warren on May 16, 1985. Chuck would later say he and Sheree each began dating other people while the divorce proceedings were ongoing. They reportedly reached an agreement not to discuss who they were each seeing during the summer of 1985.

Sheree moved around a bit during those months, renting a couple of different apartments. She performed well at her new job and, according to friends and family, spent the majority of her free time caring for her son. Her friend and former co-worker Pam Volk recalled seeing less of Sheree during that time, due to Sheree’s busy schedule.

“I’d go up and we’d hang out at her apartment and talk,” Pam said.

Pam learned Sheree had started seeing Cary Hartmann, the HVAC technician Pam had previously dated. But Pam said Sheree’s relationship with Hartmann hadn’t progressed very far.

“It wasn’t a serious thing,” Pam said. “It was more just of a fling, I guess.”

Sheree struggled to make ends meet living on her own. She was forced to move back in with her parents at their home in Roy by the end of the summer.

Sheree shared custody of her son with Chuck while the divorce proceedings were underway. Chuck worked the graveyard shift at the rail yard, while Sheree worked banker’s hours at the credit union. They would often exchange custody of their son each morning and afternoon.

“She loved him so much,” Pam said. “It was really hard for her to leave her little boy.”

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Richard Moss, the last person to see Sheree Warren

In September of 1985, the Utah State Employees Credit Union offered Sheree a promotion. It tasked her with training branch managers on how to use the credit union’s computer system.

The new position came with increased pay but also required Sheree to commute from her parents’ house in Roy to the credit union’s headquarters office in Salt Lake City, roughly 30 miles away.

Sheree’s first trainee was a man named Richard Moss, who had just hired on with the credit union to run a new branch in the rural community of Richfield, Utah. Richard and Sheree met on Tuesday, October 2, 1985.

“She did know her stuff,” Richard Moss said during an interview for COLD. “[Sheree] was going to spend two or three weeks there in Salt Lake training me and then she would come down to Richfield so we could open the branch.”

During their second day together, Richard and Sheree went to lunch at a restaurant called The Training Table. Over burgers, Sheree opened up to Richard about her personal life.

“She told me that she was divorced or separated but she was seeing another guy,” Richard said.

Sheree reportedly told Richard she and the other guy, Cary Hartmann, spent time together on the weekends. They’d recently gone on a picnic outing to one of Cary’s favorite spots, a mountain reservoir called Lost Creek.

Sheree also reportedly told Richard about an encounter that’d happened a few weeks prior, when her estranged husband Chuck Warren had come into the credit union branch in Ogden while she was working there. Chuck and Sheree’s divorce had stalled after Sheree’s attorney made a push for greater child support payments from Chuck. This had made Chuck upset.

“She told me her ex-husband came into the Ogden office at one time and threatened to kill her,” Richard said.

The threat seemed to carry weight. Chuck Warren had a nickname at the rail yard where he worked: “Tire Iron Chuck.” It rose from an attack Chuck had allegedly carried out against his first wife, Alice, when she’d divorced him years earlier. Alice later told investigators Chuck had called her and said his car had broken down. When she’d arrived to assist him, Chuck had struck Alice in the head with a tire iron.

Sheree Warren told Richard Moss she’d made plans to meet Chuck Warren after work at Wagstaff’s House of Toyota, a car dealership a few blocks west of the credit union office. Chuck intended to drop his Toyota Supra off for servicing there and had asked Sheree to give him a ride home to Ogden.

“Work closed at 5:45 and you balanced and cleared up and then left by 6,” Richard said.

Richard and Sheree encountered a problem though on the afternoon of October 2, 1985. The numbers weren’t adding up, so Sheree spent some time in the credit union’s collections office sorting out the issue. Richard recalled that delay meant he and Sheree late leaving the building.

“It was about 6:25 that we finally balanced and left,” Richard said. “As we were going downstairs, Sheree said she was going to pick up her ex-husband at Wagstaff Toyota.”

They reached the parking terrace behind the credit union office. Richard said Sheree headed toward the west, where her car was parked. Richard turned right and walked north toward his own car.

That was the last time anyone is known to have seen Sheree Warren.

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Hear how Chuck Warren responded when confronted by police in Cold season 3, episode 2: Go Ask Alice

Episode credits
Research, writing and hosting: Dave Cawley
Audio production: Ben Kuebrich
Audio mixing: Ben Kuebrich
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Additional scoring: Allison Leyton-Brown
KSL executive producer: Sheryl Worsley
Workhouse Media executive producers: Paul Anderson, Nick Panella, Andrew Greenwood
Amazon Music and Wondery team: Morgan Jones, Candace Manriquez Wrenn, Clare Chambers, Lizzie Bassett, Kale Bittner, Alison Ver Meulen
KSL companion story: https://ksltv.com/510406/cold-podcast-uncovers-new-clues-about-discovery-of-missing-utah-womans-car-in-las-vegas/
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-3-transcript/go-ask-alice-full-transcript/

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Season 3 of COLD tells the story of the disappearance of Sheree Warren.

Sheree was last seen leaving her work in Salt Lake City, Utah on the evening of October 2, 1985. But to explain the mystery that still shrouds the unsolved cold case of Sheree’s disappearance, COLD season 3 begins even farther in time. It begins with a phone call made to a different woman during the spring of 1971.

“It was probably around midnight, and some voice on the phone said that he wanted to talk to me,” Heidi Posnien recalled during an interview for COLD.

The caller told Heidi he was a sales representative for a lingerie company. He wanted to ask her a few questions. Heidi found it odd that a solicitor would call at such a late hour. She felt skeptical about the strange man’s motives. That feeling only intensified when the caller asked “are you as good in bed as everyone says?”

“I said ‘who are you, what’s going on, what do you want?’ And he hung up,” Heidi said.

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The lingerie survey obscene caller strikes again

It was not the last time Heidi would hear from the obscene caller. The man dialed her number again two weeks later.

“He called me in the daytime,” Heidi said. “He said ‘now I want to meet you. This has to be somewhere where there aren’t any people, like maybe in the mountains.’”

The caller told Heidi he knew she had two kids, and that her husband, John Posnien, drove a Ford Mustang.

“He says, ‘And don’t have this phone traced because then it’s not going to be healthy for you, for your kids,’” Heidi said. “He would say if I do put a trace on or try to call anybody to tell anybody, then it wouldn’t be healthy for my husband because he’d do something to the Mustang.”

Heidi felt a mix of fear and anger over the caller’s threat. She discussed the situation with her husband, John. The Posniens decided to contact one of their neighbors, Halvor Bailey, who worked as a deputy for the Weber County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Bailey suggested the Posniens set a trap: the next time the caller dialed Heidi’s number, Bailey wanted Heidi to answer and agree to a meeting.

The obscene caller phoned Heidi a third time at the start of June 1971.

“He says, ‘Hi, are we still going to go out on the date and meet each other,’” Heidi said. “I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

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An unwanted “date” with the obscene caller

Heidi arranged to meet the unidentified caller on the morning of Friday, June 4, 1971. He told her to go to a small U.S. Forest Service campground called Meadows, off to the side of Utah State Route 39.

John and Heidi Posnien relayed the plan to Deputy Bailey, who arranged to have a pair of undercover deputies standing by at Meadows. The deputies, dressed as fishermen, parked a trailer beside a short bridge over the South Fork Ogden River. They intended to leap out and capture the caller when he arrived at the campground.

Heidi arrived early on the morning scheduled for her “date” with the obscene lingerie survey caller. She parked her Jeep next to the deputies’ trailer at Meadows. The undercover deputies told Heidi to let the man pass her when he arrived, then pull her Jeep out behind him to block the bridge and prevent the man from leaving the campground.

Meantime, John Posnien, the sheriff, and Deputy Bailey were waiting at a different campground called Magpie a couple of miles to the west. At about 10:30 a.m., John Posnien spotted a half-ton pickup truck cruising east up the highway toward the Meadows campground.

“It said Hartmann Plumbing and when they drove past Magpie, John says he immediately knew who it was then,” Heidi said.

Hartmann Plumbing and Heating belonged to a man named Bill Hartmann. Bill’s oldest child, 22-year-old Cary Hartmann, was at the wheel of the truck.

Heidi Posnien had no idea who Cary Hartmann was when he arrived in that truck at the Meadows Campground.

“I didn’t recognize him,” Heidi said. “I didn’t remember seeing him before.”

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Heidi’s meeting at the Meadows Campground

Heidi recalled the man rolling his window down and saying a few brief words, telling her she looked “sexy.”

“He kept looking at that trailer and was getting a little nervous and he said, ‘I’m going to just pull up [into the campground]. Why don’t you follow me up there,’” Heidi said.

The truck rattled away and Heidi put her Jeep in gear. But instead of following the caller, Cary Hartmann, Heidi instead pulled her Jeep in front of the bridge, parked it, and dashed for the safety of the trailer where the two undercover officers were waiting.

“[Cary] turned around, he came back and he couldn’t go anywhere because the Jeep blocked the road,” Heidi said.

The undercover officers confronted Hartmann. They frisked him as Heidi watched out the window of the trailer, her hands shaking.

“He had a pocket knife,” Heidi said. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to defend myself … and I probably would’ve been able to but when he had a knife, then it wouldn’t have been too good.”

Heidi remained in the protection of the camper trailer as the deputies loaded Hartmann into their truck and drove him down the canyon. She later learned, after talking to her husband John Posnien, what happened when Hartmann stood before the sheriff at the Magpie Campground.

“John asked the sheriff, he says, ‘boy, I’d sure like to smack [Hartmann] in the mouth.’ And [the sheriff] says ‘well, we’ll look the other way.’ And John punched him,” Heidi said.

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Cary Hartmann’s telephone harassment

Cary Hartmann ended up in the Weber County Jail on suspicion of making threatening phone calls, a misdemeanor offense. Heidi did not believe the charge fully reflected the dangerousness of the circumstance she’d faced.

“Because he really hadn’t done anything, other than meet me,” Heidi said.

While in jail, Hartmann provided a handwritten account of what he’d done. A copy of that document, obtained exclusively by COLD, showed Hartmann admitted to the offense.

“I called the lady and said would you meet me at a time and place, if not some harm would come to your husband’s car and possibly him,” Hartmann wrote.

John Posnien went to find Cary Hartmann’s father, Bill Hartmann, while Cary remained incarcerated. Posnien knew the elder Hartmann was a golfer, as they’d previously crossed paths at the Ogden Golf and Country Club.

“John went [to the golf course] and said, ‘Hey, we need to talk to you about your son,’” Heidi said. “[Bill Hartmann] said, ‘What the hell did he do now?’”

John Posnien explained the circumstances of Cary Hartmann’s arrest, and the fact Bill Hartmann’s work truck had been impounded by the Weber County Sheriff’s Office. John Posnien reportedly told Bill Hartmann he would not pursue criminal charges, so long as Cary Hartmann received some help.

Utah court records show Cary Hartmann received a sentence of six months probation on a conviction for misdemeanor telephone harassment. Hartmann successfully completed that sentence in December of 1971.

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Cary Hartmann the reserve officer

Nearly a decade later, in July of 1980, Cary Hartmann enlisted in the reserve corps of the Ogden City Police Department. On his application paperwork, Hartmann wrote he wanted to “right a few wrongs” from his youth and “help all the people that suffer from the bad guys.”

Hartmann acknowledged on his application that he’d previously been arrested, charged and convicted of a crime. He did not describe the details of the offense, writing only “summer 10 yrs ago – probation.”

Heidi Posnien was unaware the obscene caller who’d used threats to lure her to a remote mountain campground had applied to become a police officer. She’d put the unsettling experience out of her mind.

“I never heard any more,” Heidi said. “You don’t dwell on it, because it makes you sick and makes you unhappy.”

The Ogden Police Department accepted Cary Hartmann into the ranks of its reserve corps. It provided him with training, a uniform, a badge and a gun.

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Hear how Cary Hartmann met missing woman Sheree Warren in COLD season 3, episode 1: Everything Escalates

Episode credits
Research, writing and hosting: Dave Cawley
Audio production: Ben Kuebrich
Audio mastering: Ben Kuebrich
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Additional scoring: Allison Leyton-Brown
KSL executive producer: Sheryl Worsley
Workhouse Media executive producers: Paul Anderson, Nick Panella, Andrew Greenwood
Amazon Music and Wondery team: Morgan Jones, Candace Manriquez Wrenn, Clare Chambers, Lizzie Bassett, Kale Bittner, Alison Ver Meulen
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-3-transcript/everything-escalates-full-transcript/