Dave Cawley: Sheree Warren had made some major changes in her life. In the spring of 1985 — at 25 years old — she’d filed for divorce from her husband, Charles Warren. Sheree had also quit her job and accepted a new, full-time gig with the Utah State Employees Credit Union.
Pam Volk: And now she was going to learn about a new credit union and get the opportunity to be in a management position. So she was really excited to be doing that.
Dave Cawley: That’s Sheree’s friend and former coworker, Pam Volk. We met her in the last episode.
Pam Volk: I think we just, I don’t know I guess we were just kind of kindred spirits.
Dave Cawley: Pam and Sheree had met while working at a different credit union a couple of years before. They’d both been married then, but by ’85, were back in the dating game. Sheree’d discovered she had no shortage of suitors.
Pam Volk: Yeah for sure, I mean y’know, young single guys come into the credit union all the time and, y’know, they would strike up a conversation with her and she’s very personable.
Dave Cawley: And pretty.
Pam Volk: She was taller than me, so probably about five-seven, very slim, dark hair, that she wore kind of curled back.
Dave Cawley: Sheree’s driver’s license listed her as 5-foot-5 and 115 pounds, with hazel eyes. I have a picture of Sheree from the summer of ’85. She sits against a black backdrop, wearing a bright red, scoop-neck blouse adorned with frills.
Pam Volk: She had very big eyes a beautiful smile.
Dave Cawley: In the picture, Sheree’s open-mouth smile reveals a chipped front tooth, one of those little imperfections that gives a person character.
Pam Volk: But she was, she was very attractive.
Dave Cawley: Sheree didn’t have a ton of free time for dating, between work and parenting. She had a three-year-old son, Adam, and caring for him was her top priority.
Pam Volk: That’s why when she disappeared it was like there’s, y’know, like they say about every mom, she wouldn’t leave her child. And she wouldn’t have. She wouldn’t have left Adam.
Dave Cawley: So, Pam and Sheree weren’t able to socialize quite as much together during that summer of ’85.
Pam Volk: We would sometimes go out out for drinks. We’d go shopping, we’d go to movies, umm, stuff like that when she didn’t have Adam, when Chuck had Adam.
Dave Cawley: Sheree and her estranged husband Charles Warren, or Chuck, were sharing custody. Pam told me Sheree hadn’t been one to trash talk her soon-to-be ex-husband, or anyone else, for that matter.
Pam Volk: And y’know, working with the public there’s a lot of mean things you can say about people. But I don’t remember her ever saying anything really mean about anybody. She was, overall she was just a really nice, kind, good person.
Dave Cawley: That’s not to say Sheree was a pushover. Her family and friends have told me she rarely backed down from a fight.
Pam Volk: She wasn’t a saint, but she was, she was awesome.
Dave Cawley: Sheree’s divorce had stalled by September of ’85. She and Chuck were at odds over child support. Sheree’s attorney was insisting Chuck pay more. Chuck worked as a clerk for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Ogden, Utah, on the graveyard shift. He often took their son, Adam during the day. Sheree would then pick Adam up after she finished her job in the afternoon and keep him overnight.
In the morning, Sheree would meet Chuck at a Denny’s restaurant near the I-15 freeway in Roy. He’d just be getting off his overnight shift. They’d chat over coffee, then Chuck would take their son for the day while Sheree went to work. And that’s how it went on the morning of of Wednesday, October 2nd, 1985. Sheree pulled her car into the parking lot of that Denny’s a bit before 8.
Sheree and Chuck swapped custody. She said goodbye to her son, but before she could leave, Chuck asked her for a favor: he’d arranged to drop off his car for maintenance at a Toyota dealership 40 miles south in Salt Lake City, just a few blocks from the credit union office where Sheree was temporarily stationed for work. He asked if she’d be so kind as to pick him up at the dealership later that afternoon and give him a ride back home to Ogden. Sheree agreed. She and Chuck then parted ways. And Chuck Warren never saw his wife again. Or so he said.
This is Cold, season 3, episode 2: Go Ask Alice From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley
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Dave Cawley: Sheree Warren arrived at the headquarters of the Utah Employees Credit Union in Salt Lake City on the morning of Wednesday, October 2nd, 1985. The office sat on the fringe of Salt Lake’s downtown business district, in a three-story building with attached two-level parking garage. Sheree pulled her maroon Toyota Corolla into a stall on the garage’s lower level and walked inside. It was her third day at the central office and her second day training a man named Richard Moss.
Richard Moss: This was her first experience training. She did know her stuff.
Dave Cawley: Richard lived in Richfield, a remote, rural town a few hours drive from Salt Lake in south-central Utah. He’d just hired on to run the credit union’s new branch there.
Richard Moss: We didn’t have computers back then. We had a mimeograph machine, y’know, a photo copy machine with mimeographs. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: Sheree’s task was to bring Richard up to speed on the credit union’s state-of-the-art central computer system.
Richard Moss: And I’m not a very computer-literate person. Seems like you just get it down and then they get in and change it.
Dave Cawley: Richard had taken a roundabout path to the job of credit union manager. He’d spent a few years working for a bank in Salt Lake straight of college, in the mid-‘60s, but soon found himself lured back home to Richfield by his father. Richard’s dad was a cattleman who ran a large livestock auction. And he’d convinced his son to open a meatpacking plant.
Richard Moss: I came back here with the idea that I would build up the business. It was mostly custom processing.
Dave Cawley: But Richard soon realized meatpacking wasn’t his passion. By the early ‘80s, Richard found his way back to banking, taking a job with a private finance firm.
Richard Moss: When I went to work for Mortensen Finance, they didn’t have any computers.
Dave Cawley: The job didn’t provide health insurance or a pension. Richard had a wife and family to consider, so when opportunity knocked again, he answered.
Richard Moss: In 1985, the credit union put a wanted ad in the paper. They wanted to open an office and so I interviewed for the manager’s job and they hired me.
Dave Cawley: Richard needed a crash course on computer banking. So the credit union put him a training program with their new specialist, Sheree Warren, starting on Tuesday, October 1st.
Richard Moss: She came from the Ogden branch. Was gonna spend, uh, two or three weeks there in Salt Lake training me as I recall.
Dave Cawley: Sheree was quite a bit younger than Richard, but had nearly as much experience in the banking industry. She started the training by having Richard enter numbers into a computer, over and over again.
Richard Moss: They gave us a stack of uh, deposits, checks. And we were entering those into the computer for each of the members’ accounts.
Dave Cawley: They didn’t chat much at first, because this work demanded concentration. But as time went on, Sheree began to open up to Richard.
Richard Moss: During those two days, she told me some things.
Dave Cawley: Sheree shared about her home life. She told Richard she had a three-year-old son, was divorcing her husband, and was temporarily living at home with her parents who often watched her little boy during the day. On their second day together — Wednesday, October 2nd — she’d stepped away at one point to call her mom, Mary Sorensen. Sheree later told Richard she was relieved because her mom told her a check she’d been waiting for had arrived in the mail. It was a refund for a deposit she’d made on an apartment, before deciding not to move in.
Richard invited Sheree to lunch with him at a restaurant called The Training Table that day. Over burgers and fries, she opened up even more about her personal life. Sheree told Richard her husband Chuck Warren liked to buy and sell cars as a side hustle. She said he’d gone through about 15 cars in just the handful of years they’d been married, leaving her frustrated over the financial mess.
Richard Moss: And her husband, 35 years old about, acts like a 19-year-old, gone through a lot of automobiles in the five years of marriage and I don’t even know what he did.
Dave Cawley: Even worse, Sheree related a story about how a few weeks earlier, Chuck had allegedly come into the Ogden branch where she was then working and made threatening comments over some sort of dispute related to their un-finalized divorce. Sheree told Richard she’d started seeing someone else while separated from Chuck that summer. This other guy worked for Weber State College and had two boys of his own.
Richard Moss: When she said she was seeing another guy, that startled me a little. Surprised me, I guess. Uh—
Dave Cawley (to Richard Moss): Why, why so?
Richard Moss: Uh well, because from my conversations, from my being with her, that just seemed like a little strange for her.
Dave Cawley: Richard’s surprise might have something to do with religion. He and Sheree were both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons. Marriage is a big deal for Latter-day Saints and there’s a lot of social pressure surrounding it, especially on women regarding traditional gender roles. Fully unpacking this dynamic would take far more time than we have. It’s enough to know Sheree’s candor showed she wasn’t afraid to be her true self, even if it ruffled Richard’s feathers.
Richard Moss: Everything I did with her was very professional. And the conversations were very free-going, I guess.
Dave Cawley: Mostly though, they just focused on business. They plowed through piles of deposit slips, typed in account numbers and double-checked the computer’s math.
Richard Moss: Work closed at 5:45 and you balanced and cleared up or, cleared up and, and then left by 6.
Dave Cawley: They ran into a problem on that Wednesday afternoon though. They couldn’t balance out because they had a check worth about $400 with no home. Sheree went down to the collections department to sort it out. The delay meant she and Richard didn’t wrap up until later than expected, around 6:25 p.m. The rest of the credit union staff had cleared out by the time Richard and Sheree walked out to the parking garage.
Richard Moss: She said that uh, she was going to meet her ex-husband at Wagstaff Toyota and give him a ride back to Ogden.
Dave Cawley: Richard’s car was off to the right, around the north end of the building. Sheree’s was to the left.
Richard Moss: I went that way and she went that way and never heard from again.
Dave Cawley: Wagstaff Toyota sat just three blocks from the credit union office. Richard, as it turned out, decided to stop by the dealership himself that evening.
Richard Moss: I have a brother-in-law who was a sales manager at Wagstaff Toyota. And uh, when, when I got off work I didn’t have anything to do and I went to Wagstaff Toyota to visit with Randy. And whether she ever got there, I, I don’t know.
Dave Cawley: Richard told me he returned to work the next morning, expecting to continue his training with Sheree.
Richard Moss: And uh, she didn’t show up.
Dave Cawley: Sheree Warren had disappeared.
(Sound of door opening)
Dave Cawley: It’s a sunny morning in April of 2022 and I’m walking into the Roy City police department offices to meet with a former detective.
Dave Cawley (to receptionist): Hey, sorry. Snuck up on me there.
Receptionist: Oh, you’re ok.
Dave Cawley: Uh, I’m Dave Cawley from KSL. I was supposed to meet with Jack Bell here at 11.
Receptionist: Ok.
Dave Cawley: Jack Bell hasn’t worked for the Roy police department since 2009, when he retired as assistant chief, but he’s still known here.
Jack Bell: Is this the guy looking for me?
Receptionist: Yeah.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Uh huh. Scary, isn’t it?
Receptionist: Let me—
Jack Bell: (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: How you doing?
Jack Bell: Good, Dave. How are you?
Dave Cawley: Good. So uh, where can we sit? What do you think?
Dave Cawley: We find a quiet spot in what’s normally the jury room at the Roy City municipal court and settle in for what I’m sure will be an interesting conversation. I have a lot of questions for Jack about his work on the Sheree Warren case.
Jack Bell: This is a case that’s haunted me ever since and probably forever.
Dave Cawley: But before we get there, let’s spend a little more time getting to know Jack Bell. Jack’d started his career at the Weber County Sheriff’s Office in 1971.
Jack Bell: I was put in narcotics, very first. Knew nothing about law enforcement.
Dave Cawley: He took an undercover assignment, where he posed as a bartender at a place called the Hermitage Inn.
Jack Bell: And it was great because I hired on at $375 a month but working at the Herm, he paid me and I got to keep my tips.
Dave Cawley: The assignment involved buying marijuana and LSD from dealers, then passing their identities off to prosecutors for criminal charges. But Jack also had to be convincing by, y’know, tending the bar. So he came to recognize the regulars at “the Herm.”
Jack Bell: That’s where I seen Cary.
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann.
Jack Bell: I never was friends with Cary, but we knew each other.
Dave Cawley: Jack and Cary had lived in the same neighborhood growing up. They’d been in the same grade at Bonneville High School, up until Jack’s junior year when his family had moved. I’ve dug up their old yearbook photos and I showed Cary’s to Jack.
Jack Bell: That looks very familiar. Of course everybody had that same hairdo when we was in—
Dave Cawley: Cary’s hair is short and brushed back in the picture, except for a floof that’s swept forward across his forehead. Man-bangs.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): (Laughs) Let’s see how yours looked.
Jack Bell: Oh, mine was a little different. That’s (laughs) ah.
Dave Cawley: Jack appears slim in his yearbook photo, with an angular jaw and piercing eyes.
Jack Bell: Yeah, I think that was sophomore picture.
Dave Cawley: You get the idea. Jack Bell and Cary Hartmann were once classmates.
Jack Bell: But I hadn’t seen or talked to him since I left Bonneville.
Dave Cawley: Jack excelled at the sheriff’s office, making sergeant within a few years. One night just before Christmas in ’78, Jack was giving a friend a ride home in his patrol car when he received a radio call. Two guys in a stolen pickup had opened fire on police officers in the city of Roy. Jack joined the chase, finding the stolen truck at the end of a dark country road in the county. The two men — who turned out to be career criminals recently released from the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas — began shooting at Jack and his passenger with high-powered rifles.
One of the bullets ricocheted, striking Jack’s friend in the chest. Jack returned fire with his sidearm, emptying the handgun, aiming toward the distant muzzle flashes. He thought he might’ve hit one of the gunmen in the leg before being forced to retreat. Jack’s friend ended up being ok, thankfully. Investigators later counted 37 bullet holes in Jack’s patrol car. The guy Jack’d shot that night ended up on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list, subject to a nationwide manhunt. Jack Bell had been in a gun battle with one of America’s most dangerous criminals and survived to tell the tale.
Jack Bell: It was a, not a good job for a family man, let’s put it that way.
Dave Cawley: Jack tried to make a change. He took a job as a trucker, but it didn’t stick. So, in 1984 he hired on as a detective for the Roy City Police Department. He’d been there just over a year when, around noon on Thursday October 3rd, 1985, a report landed on his desk. A woman named Mary Sorensen had called Roy police dispatch to report her daughter Sheree Warren missing. Mary had actually called the police department the night before but a dispatcher then had told her she couldn’t file a report for someone who’d only been gone a few hours.
Jack Bell: Somebody had to be missing for 24 hours before they’d actually take the report.
Dave Cawley: It was actually worse than that. The dispatcher had told Sheree’s mom she couldn’t report her daughter missing until 48 hours had passed. But Mary Sorensen hadn’t accept that answer. She’d refused to wait getting back on the phone the next morning — on Thursday the 3rd — explaining to a dispatcher why she thought the situation demanded immediate action.
Mary died in 2013. I wasn’t able to interview her for this podcast. So what comes next is pieced together from police reports and detective’s notes. Mary told Jack she’d last seen her daughter the prior morning, as Sheree was leaving their house in Roy with her son, headed for the Denny’s restaurant where she was supposed to hand the boy off to his father, Chuck Warren. Sheree had been wearing a red-and-white striped blouse, black slacks, and black high heels.
Mary knew Sheree had made it to work, because they’d talked on the phone a couple of times during the day. Sheree had called once around 11, asking if a check had come in the mail and they had talked again around 2. During one of those calls, Sheree’d told her mom her estranged husband Chuck had asked her to meet him at the dealership in Salt Lake when she got off work. Chuck’d said he’d bring their son, Adam. They could swap custody there, at the dealership. Sheree told her mom she’d agreed to do Chuck the favor, giving him a ride home to Ogden. It meant she and her son might be a little late getting home for dinner. But Sheree and Adam didn’t show up for dinner at all that night. Mary Sorensen didn’t know where either of them were.
That mystery had only deepened when, at around 8 p.m., Mary’d received a call from Sheree’s boyfriend, Cary Hartmann, wondering where she was. Mary said Cary’d told her Sheree had intended to meet up with him that night. This contradicted what Sheree had herself told her mom just hours earlier. And it’d seemed unusual to Mary, because Sheree didn’t often go out in the middle of the week. Cary had reportedly called Mary again later, around 10 or so, asking again if Sheree had made it home. Mary had told him no. And that’s when she’d first called Roy police to try and report her daughter missing.
Mary told police that following morning — Thursday, October 3rd — she’d received a call from the credit union. They were trying to figure out why Sheree hadn’t shown up for work as scheduled. Detective Jack Bell looked over the information Mary’d provided. His mind immediately jumped to the old cliché.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Y’know, it’s always the, the husband, right? It’s always the—
Jack Bell: That’s looked at first.
Dave Cawley: Jack called the Southern Pacific rail yard in Ogden where Sheree’s estranged husband, Chuck Warren, worked. The staff there informed him Chuck had come in that morning but left early, at around 11:30.
Jack Bell: He had taken some time off.
Dave Cawley: Jack dialed Chuck’s home phone number. No one answered. So, he went to his car and drove to Chuck’s house, a two-story, orange brick home on Ogden’s east side, tucked against the foot of the Wasatch Mountains.
Jack Bell: Pretty nice place. And I’m sure he made pretty good money at the railroad. That was one of the better jobs at the time.
Dave Cawley: No one answered Jack’s knock at the door. He returned to his office, called Chuck’s number again and left a message on the machine instructing Chuck to call him as soon as possible. Jack then moved to the next name on his list: Cary Hartmann. He called Cary and asked him to come down to Roy police headquarters for a chat. Cary arrived around 2:45 p.m.
Jack Bell: Cary Hartmann come into my office to report her missing. And I said, basically, “I think we’re the wrong agency. You live in Ogden City was, she was living with you.” And he says “well, stayed with me sometimes but she was, uh, basically living with her mom in Roy.”
Dave Cawley: Cary seemed to encourage Jack to take the lead, even though Jack wasn’t sure he had jurisdiction. Cary leaned on the fact they were old acquaintances from high school.
Jack Bell: He started to tell me a few of the details about that she was in Salt Lake and training.
Dave Cawley: Jack’s notes from this conversation say Cary described his actions on the day Sheree disappeared like this: Sheree had left his apartment — not her parents’ house — around 7 a.m., telling him she wouldn’t be home until late.
Jack Bell: According to Cary, she said she was going to pick Chuck up right after work.
Dave Cawley: Then, Cary said Sheree had intended to take her son to her parents’ place.
Jack Bell: She was gonna come to his house up on 7th street later that night. It’s actually a basement apartment.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d supposedly told Sheree he planned to stop off at a bar with a friend after he got off work at Weber State College that afternoon. Jack’s notes say Cary’d expected to meet up with Sheree after that.
Jack Bell: He was gonna meet Dave Moore at Sebastians for a drink or two and then come home and she was gonna be there.
Dave Cawley: We met Dave Moore in the last episode. He was Cary’s friend who owned the sewing machine repair shop, and who served in the Ogden police reserve with Cary. But here’s where our story gets messy, because I’m going to give you with three conflicting timelines about Cary Hartmann’s actions the night Sheree Warren disappeared: one from Cary, another from his friend Dave Moore and the third from Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen.
Cary told Jack Bell he’d gone to the bar after getting off work at Weber State College. He typically finished up there around 4 or 5 o’clock. Cary said Sheree had called and told him she wouldn’t be home until late, because she was going to pick up her husband from Wagstaff Toyota, then take her son to her parents’ place in Roy. Jack’s note say Cary’d expected to meet up with Sheree after that.
Jack Bell: His story was she never showed up.
Dave Cawley: But there’s an inconsistency here, because Cary worked two jobs. Most days, he went home from the college and showered before heading to his part-time job at a call center called NICE Corporation around 6. So did Cary go for a drink with his friend Dave Moore after getting home from Weber State, or did he go to his second job at the NICE Corporation, then go to the bar? It’s a three-hour difference. So, I asked Dave Moore to tell me what he remembered about that night.
Dave Moore: My store was about, oh just basically through the parking lot of Sebastian’s bar. And he came to the store, I closed at 6, he got there probably about 5, 5:30 and it was a week night so we went over and had a couple of beers. And I don’t recall the exact time that we left but uh, it was during the week, I was married and had small kids and my wife wouldn’t have put up with being out late.
Dave Cawley: By Dave’s recollection, Cary did not go to his second job the night Sheree disappeared. Dave also told me he didn’t remember hearing anything from Cary that night about Sheree.
Dave Moore: Had no idea that he was using me as a, uh, alibi.
Dave Cawley: Detective Jack Bell’s notes say Cary claimed he hadn’t realized Sheree was missing until the next morning, when he called Sheree’s mom and found out Sheree hadn’t made it home from work.
Jack Bell: And that’s when supposedly Cary got concerned.
Dave Cawley: But as we already heard, Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorenson, had said Cary’d called her twice on the night of Sheree’s disappearance — not the morning after — asking if she’d seen Sheree. Cary would later claim he’d gone to his second job before going to the bar, pushing his alibi later into the evening. But that’s contradicted by Dave Moore.
If you’re a little lost here, so was Jack Bell. He had Sheree’s mom telling him one thing and Cary Hartmann another. He missed these little inconsistencies in the moment.
Jack Bell: I missed quite a bit to start with because Cary wanted me to miss that and go after Chuck.
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Dave Cawley: Jack Bell wrote he was “finally” able to get ahold of Sheree Warren’s estranged husband Chuck Warren by phone at 5:10 p.m. on Thursday, October 3rd, nearly 24 hours after Sheree’d last been seen leaving the credit union office. Chuck had at least one bit of good news: his and Sheree’s son, Adam, was still safely in his custody. But Chuck didn’t know why Sheree hadn’t come to get him. This didn’t make sense to Jack.
Jack Bell: None at all, because as fond as she was of her son.
Dave Cawley: Chuck showed little concern or urgency. He agreed to come and speak with Jack, but not right away. He promised to drop by Roy PD headquarters the next day, on Friday the 4th. Chuck didn’t show up at Jack’s office until 3:30 p.m. They sat down and Jack asked Chuck to walk him through what’d happened two days prior, the day of Sheree’s disappearance. According to Jack’s notes, Chuck said he’d met Sheree at 7 a.m. that morning at the Denny’s restaurant in Roy to hand off their son. At that time, he’d asked if she would do him a favor later that afternoon.
Jack Bell: He had a Supra, Toyota Supra. Was supposedly gonna take the car down to Wagstaff’s Toyota, have it serviced and some work done on it. And Sheree was going to pick him up when she got off work. And pick up her son.
Dave Cawley: Chuck reportedly told Jack he’d then taken his son for breakfast, before dropping the boy off to be babysat. Then, Chuck had gone to see his ex-wife, Alice — the woman he’d been married to before Sheree — at her work.
Jack Bell: I know I was surprised to find out that he was back with his ex so soon after him and Sheree had split up.
Dave Cawley: Chuck said he and Alice had gone back to his house after lunch. At some point, Chuck had changed his mind about needing to bring the Supra down to the dealership in Salt Lake.
Jack Bell: According to Chuck, he called and canceled that appointment. And he supposedly called the office in Salt Lake where Sheree was taking her management training that he wasn’t coming.
Dave Cawley: Jack’s notes say Chuck claimed to have made this call to Sheree at 4:30 p.m. Jack would later confirm with the credit union’s switchboard operator Sheree had received a call around that time. Chuck had then told the detective he’d decided to go for a jog. He described running from his house in the northeastern corner of Ogden four miles to the heart of the city’s downtown, before turning around and walking another mile-and-a-half back toward home. He’d decided that was enough of this impromptu exercise, so he’d called his ex-wife-slash-girlfriend Alice and asked her to come pick him up. She did, at around 6:45, then the two of them spent the rest of the night together.
In the morning, he’d gone to work but left early and spent the day in downtown Ogden. He’d only realized Jack wanted to speak with him when he’d arrived home at 5 p.m. to find the detective’s message on his answering machine. Jack couldn’t seem to evoke much sympathy from Chuck for Sheree’s wellbeing.
Jack Bell: I was trying but he’s an introvert, basically. And I wasn’t getting very far with him.
Dave Cawley: Jack figured a spouse, even an estranged one, might express more concern for the plight of his child’s mother.
Jack Bell: He seemed just concerned about child support, how much he would have to pay.
Dave Cawley: Chuck handed off his and Sheree’s son to Sheree’s parents, either on Thursday night after talking to Jack, or by Friday morning at the latest.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): And they ended up with Adam for a little bit it seems like.
Jack Bell: Yes, they did. They had Adam at that time.
Dave Cawley: None of it seemed to add up for Jack, so he asked if Chuck would take a polygraph. Polygraphs, or lie detector tests, weren’t usually admissible as evidence in Utah’s criminal courts, even during the ‘80s. But they were a useful tool for investigators to apply pressure to suspects. According to Jack’s notes, Chuck said he’d think it over. That was not the answer Jack wanted to hear.
Jack Bell: He never cooperated hardly at all.
Dave Cawley: This stood in stark contrast to Cary Hartmann, who’d seemed almost too eager to help. Cary’d talked to Jack as if they were working the case together, as if Cary were himself just one of the cops. And as we’ll soon see, Cary was even willing to entertain more supernatural sources of information. But Jack had more reliable avenues to pursue while Chuck Warren mulled over the prospect of a polygraph. He made contact with the manager of the credit union branch where Sheree had worked prior to taking the new training gig in Salt Lake City. She told Jack of a confrontation that’d taken place at the branch a few weeks prior, when Chuck had come in and had a loud argument with Sheree over child support.
Jack talked to Pam Volk, Sheree’s friend and former coworker, who’d heard more or less the same story.
Pam Volk: I don’t know if I heard it from her, or if I heard it just kind of talk, he told her “if I can’t have you, nobody’s going to.” And that was shortly before she disappeared. And I mean, I’m not pointing the finger at him but it was, umm, it was like “oh ok, yeah, that’s not good.”
Dave Cawley: As I mentioned earlier, Sheree had even told a version of this story to Richard Moss, the man she’d spent two days training. Richard told me Sheree’s disappearance had thrown his training into disarray.
Richard Moss: (Sighs) Y’know, I think maybe for an hour or so we’re wondering “well, she should be here.” And that’s the way it went that day. They brought somebody else in and I spent some time with, things changed a little.
Dave Cawley: Richard was unaware of what was happening in Roy. He didn’t realize a missing persons investigation had kicked off until he received a phone call from Jack Bell.
Richard Moss: I got a call from a detective at some point and never met, you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to, y’know, eyeball to eyeball.
Dave Cawley: This caught me off guard when Richard said it to me. I’d driven a few hours to meet with him at his home in Richfield, apparently the first person in this nearly 40-year-old case to have done so. It’s a bit baffling to me no one bothered to interview Richard in person back in ’85, while he was living out of a Salt Lake City hotel room for his training. In any case, Richard told me he’d told detective Jack Bell on the phone about how he’d parted from Sheree in the parking lot behind the credit union office, after she’d told him she was headed to Wagstaff Toyota to pick up her estranged husband.
Richard Moss: And never gave it an, a thought ’til the next day when she doesn’t show up.
Dave Cawley: Jack told me Richard was a person of interest at this point, because his story and Chuck’s story didn’t line up. Remember, Chuck had claimed to have called Sheree at work around 4:30 to tell her he no longer needed a ride. But Richard said two hours later, Sheree had told him she was headed to the dealership.
Jack Bell: I don’t know whether Richard was hitting on her or whatever but as they rode down the elevator that night he asked her if she wanted to go to dinner. And she told Richard at that time that she had to go to Wagstaff Toyota, pick up her ex-husband.
Dave Cawley: Jack didn’t document this supposed dinner invitation in his notes. There’s no indication in the record Richard made a pass at Sheree. But it’s just odd Sheree would’ve told Richard she intended to pick up her estranged husband Chuck at the dealership if he’d managed to get through to her and cancel that rendezvous. It’s possible Sheree might’ve perceived a hypothetical invitation from Richard as something romantically-motivated. If so, she might’ve dodged by using the excuse of needing to pick up Chuck at the dealership.
Jack Bell: Right, exactly.
Dave Cawley: Jack tried to sort out whether Sheree ever made it to Wagstaff Toyota by speaking with staff at the dealership.
Jack Bell: There’s one guy thought she’d came down but wasn’t sure. But they knew that Chuck had called and canceled.
Dave Cawley: Jack had a mystery on his hands.
Jack Bell: The people at Wagstaff couldn’t tell me whether she came over or not.
Dave Cawley: Copies of Ogden’s daily newspaper, The Standard-Examiner, started hitting doorsteps as Jack Bell was concluding his interview with Chuck Warren. The afternoon edition on Friday, October 4th, 1985 carried the first public report of Sheree Warren’s disappearance. The story quoted Jack as saying Sheree’s friends and family thought of her as level-headed, not someone who would run off without notice. The story noted Sheree’s car, a maroon 1984 Toyota Corolla, also remained unaccounted for. KSL-TV in Salt Lake picked up the story the following day.
Carole Mikita (from October 5, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Right now police say they’re investigating the disappearance but have very little to go on.
Ben Glover (from October 5, 1985 KSL-TV archive): What we’re asking for is just to locate where she may be. Or any evidence to show that it, or indicate that there is maybe some foul play involved so we can do a, a different type of investigation rather than missing persons.
Dave Cawley: The Standard-Examiner ran a follow-up story on Tuesday, October 8th. It quoted Cary Hartmann, who told the reporter he thought highly of Jack Bell but feared the worst.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 8, 1985 Standard-Examiner article): This is way beyond a missing person investigation. She is the most reliable and level-headed 25-year-old woman I’ve ever known.
Dave Cawley: That’s not Cary’s voice, but they are his words, read by a voice actor. Tips started to dribble in as a result of the news coverage. Cary wrote a note two days later, on October 10th, that read:
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 10, 1985 personal notes): At 11:22, Jack Bell called and told me an anonymous female called and told him Chuck had taken a second mortgage. He paid off her car and got the title.
Dave Cawley: KSL-TV aired its first follow-up story a day later, on Friday, October 11th.
Shelley Thomas (from October 11, 1985 KSL-TV archive): 25-year-old Sheree Warren of Roy disappeared nine days ago and today her family took the search into their own hands, offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to her return.
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann paid a visit to Roy City police detective Jack Bell at his office at about four o’clock that same day. He brought a stack of fliers and told Jack he’d been handing them out around town.
Jack Bell: They were on yellow paper and it was a very good picture of Sheree.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d called in a favor to get the fliers printed for free. His former brother-in-law happened to run a printing shop.
Jack Bell: He had a whole box and he left some of ‘em here that we posted around.
Dave Cawley: Jack posted one of the fliers in a display case in the lobby of the Roy police headquarters. But the fliers weren’t the only thing Cary wanted to share with his old high school classmate, Jack Bell.
Jack Bell: He was telling me all about Chuck Warren and the divorce that they were going, uh, Sheree and Chuck were going through. And Cary said “the only thing that they are fighting over is child support and how much child custody was” over their little boy.
Dave Cawley: Jack made notes about this conversation.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): When he came in that time with those fliers, in your notes I read—
Jack Bell: Could you read my notes?
Dave Cawley: I could. Can you believe that?
Jack Bell: No, nobody else can. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: Jack’s not joking, his handwriting is terrible. But not illegible. Most of the time. His notes say Cary described having heard tell of an argument between Sheree and Chuck a few weeks prior to her disappearance. It’d happened at the credit union branch where Sheree’d then been working. Chuck had come in and blown up, Cary said, over an attempt by Sheree’s attorney to increase the amount of child support Chuck had to pay. Jack had heard this story already, as have you. But for Jack, hearing it again from Cary seemed to lend him credibility.
Jack Bell: Cary was feeding me full of information about Chuck. And a lot of it seemed legitimate. The more I looked into it and I could see where could be getting that information from Sheree.
Dave Cawley: Cary reportedly said Chuck Warren had brothers who lived in Salt Lake, one of whom just happened to work for Wagstaff Toyota. There was something else. Cary reportedly told Jack one of his co-workers at Weber State College had had a dream about Sheree. In it, two men had driven Sheree into the mountains, broken her neck and tossed her off some cliffs. The coworker, according to Cary, had seen red rocks in the dream and believed the spot was near Big Rock Candy Mountain in south-central Utah. Which, as it happens, is not all that far from where Richard Moss lived in Richfield. Jack’s notes included one more potentially relevant detail. They read Cary “later told me that he was sure Sheree was wearing his black parka the day she disappeared.”
Jack Bell: If I wrote it down, he said that, y’know? If I wrote it down, then he said that.
Dave Cawley: Here’s why this matters. Sheree’s mom Mary Sorensen and Cary Hartmann had given conflicting accounts about where Sheree had spent the night prior to the day she disappeared. If Mary’s version was accurate, Cary would’ve had no way of knowing what Sheree was wearing that day. Unless Sheree had somehow ended up at Cary’s apartment after leaving work that evening.
Keith McCord (from October 11, 1985 KSL-TV archive): 25-year-old Sheree Warren was last seen in Salt Lake leaving the employees credit union where she works. Roy police have questioned 35 people since Warren’s disappearance nearly two weeks ago but no new evidence yet. Warren’s family is offering a five-thousand dollar reward into information on her whereabouts.
Dave Cawley: When Sheree Warren disappeared in October of 1985, police in Ogden, Utah were in the opening stages of an investigation into a string of home invasion rapes. Those’d started in ’84 and were happening across the city. Detectives were beginning to believe the attacks were the work of one man, who some were calling The Ogden City Rapist.
Jack Bell: We were all looking at the rape case a little bit ‘cause everybody knew a victim or two.
Dave Cawley: No one could say who the Ogden rapist was, and Jack Bell didn’t see any direct connection to his missing persons case.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): But you’ve got to look at that though, right?
Jack Bell: Right.
Dave Cawley: It’s on the table.
Jack Bell: Right. It’s on the table and…
Dave Cawley: …and at the same time, police in the suburb of South Ogden, just a bit to the east of where Sheree Warren lived in Roy, were hunting for another missing woman named Joyce Yost.
Jack Bell: What I listened to of your podcast on Joyce, was very professional.
Dave Cawley: The Joyce Yost case is covered in detail in season 2 of this podcast, but what you need to know here is Joyce’d been raped by a strange man and had then disappeared days before she was to testify at that man’s trial. Police believed she’d been murdered, but hadn’t found her body. And her suspected killer was out of jail, in the Ogden community, when Sheree Warren disappeared two months later. Jack Bell was aware of the Joyce Yost case, but wasn’t involved in the search.
Jack Bell: —other than at the start because she worked at our Elks.
Dave Cawley: Jack was keeping an open mind to all these possibilities surrounding Sheree Warren’s disappearance, but leads kept pushing him toward Chuck Warren. Case in point, he received a call from one tipster who said Chuck had once been violent with his first wife.
Jack Bell: Who, as the world turns, he was living with, Alice.
Dave Cawley: I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Chuck Warren had reunited with his first wife Alice after his second wife Sheree had filed for divorce.
Jack Bell: The more I got into Chuck, found out that when him and Alice had split, he’d beat her up pretty bad.
Dave Cawley: The story, as related to Jack, was that while Chuck and Alice were going through their divorce, Chuck had called Alice and said his car had broken down up the canyon. Alice had supposedly gone to help him, but when she’d arrived Chuck had struck her in the head with a tire iron. Alice didn’t report the alleged assault to police. Criminal charges were never filed against Chuck Warren. But Alice later told a detective investigating the Sheree Warren case she’d ended up in the hospital with a head wound that’d required stitches. In a formal report, Jack wrote the tire iron attack was “verified as having happened.”
Jack needed to take another crack at Charles Warren. He called Chuck on Monday, October 14th and asked him to come back to Roy PD headquarters for a second interview. Chuck agreed. They again went through Chuck’s whereabouts the day of Sheree’s disappearance. Chuck told the same story as before: he’d canceled his plans to take the Supra to Wagstaff Toyota, had called Sheree to let her know he wasn’t going to Salt Lake and had then gone out for a jog. During their first interview, Jack had asked Chuck if he would take a polygraph. Chuck had seemed open to the idea. So, Jack asked again. This time, Chuck said no.
Jack Bell: I was surprised when he said he would take a polygraph. I wasn’t surprised when he backed out.
Dave Cawley: Jack had suspicion, not evidence. He believed Chuck might’ve killed Sheree. But it wasn’t enough to make an arrest. Chuck must have realized though he was the top suspect.
Jack Bell: ‘Cause I really got into Chuck.
Dave Cawley: The interview grew heated. Chuck, in so many words, said he was done talking to Jack. The next time he came around, it would have to be with a warrant. Jack responded that’s ok. He’d just go ask Alice instead. And that was it. The interview was over. Chuck Warren once again walked out of Roy police headquarters a free man.
Jack Bell: I didn’t have much to do with Chuck after that.
Dave Cawley: Jack immediately called Alice at the office where she worked in downtown Ogden. She agreed to talk with him on her lunch break. Jack didn’t wait. He went to his car and drove straight to meet her. Alice seemed open, at least at first. Jack’s notes say her account of the day Sheree Warren disappeared lined up with Chuck’s. She gave him an alibi.
Jack Bell: Alice says that night, that she disappeared, he was home with her all night.
Dave Cawley: But was Alice being honest? Jack intended to find out.
Jack Bell: Alice originally agreed to take a polygraph.
Dave Cawley: He scheduled an appointment with the polygraph examiner for two days later. In the meantime, Jack paid a visit to Sheree’s parents. He asked if she might’ve had reason to run, to leave without notice, to start a new life.
Jack Bell: They had no idea why she would disappear, why she would take off.
Dave Cawley: Ed and Mary Sorensen told Jack Sheree’s divorce had gone ok, with the exception of child support. The court had instructed Chuck to pay her $250 a month, but he’d only being sending $185. Jack’s notes say the Sorensens “did not really feel that Chuck would have done her any harm, but felt that anything was possible.”
Jack Bell: They weren’t very happy with Chuck, either. Y’know, they were, they weren’t defending Chuck, by any means.
Dave Cawley: The notes say Sheree’s parents described their soon-to-be-former son-in-law as a materialistic person and a man with a temper.
Jack Bell: Money was a big issue to Chuck. The Toyota Supra was Toyota’s fanciest car at the time, a sports car, so, those kind of things meant a lot to Chuck, I could tell.
Dave Cawley: Jack asked Sheree’s parents about her relationship with Cary Hartmann. His notes say Ed and Mary Sorensen didn’t know Cary well but thought of him as “friendly.” The talk of child support and Chuck Warren’s financial situation piqued Jack’s curiosity. He called Sheree’s credit union, to see if any transactions or withdrawals had been made since she’d disappeared. None had. Jack asked to be notified if that changed. Then, he received some bad news.
Jack Bell: I remember, I was so upset with myself when I got the radio call to come to the office and they told me to call Alice and she was not gonna take the polygraph.
Dave Cawley: Alice, the only person who could provide Chuck Warren an alibi for the night Sheree disappeared, was clamming up. But Jack didn’t intend to give up so easily. He drove to Alice’s work and made her boss drag her into his office. Jack’s notes say Alice confirmed she would not take the polygraph. He wrote “I then asked her why and she advised me that she and Chuck had talked it over and since neither one of them were guilty of anything nor had they any knowledge of what has happened to Sheree, they felt like they did not need to take any kind of test, nor did they want to discuss this case with me any further.”
Jack Bell: Whether he threatened her not to take it or what, I have no idea. I have no idea.
Dave Cawley: Alice never did talk to Jack Bell, but she did talk to me. Alice recently told me Chuck’d hired a lawyer after Sheree disappeared, and the lawyer’s the one who told them not to take the polygraphs. Alice and Chuck haven’t been together for decades. But Alice still maintains Chuck was at home, with her, the night of Sheree’s disappearance. Alice’s word is Chuck Warren’s only alibi.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Utah’s general season deer hunt in 1985 opened on Saturday, October 19th.
Mark Scott (from October 18, 1985 KSL-TV archive): They’ve been lined up all day today at Ron’s Sporting Goods, picking up their last-minute hunting needs and of course, that all-important license. Why do you come here?
Man-on-the-street hunter (from October 18, 1985 KSL-TV archive): I like the country.
Dave Cawley: A couple of days later, on Monday the 21st, Cary Hartmann received a phone call from one of his friends. He made a note about it, and I have a copy. Here’s what the note says:
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 21, 1985 personal notes): Larry Lewis called at 5:30 p.m. … said a body had been found in central Utah today. I called Roy PD. Turned out to be not much info.
Dave Cawley: Larry Lewis worked as a TV news reporter for KSL in Salt Lake City. And full disclosure, I also work for KSL, but I started there years after Larry left the company. Larry had apparently called Cary on that October day in ’85 to tell him about a story assigned to another reporter that would be airing on KSL-TV later that same evening. Some deer hunters had come across human remains.
Robert Walz (from October 21, 1985 KSL-TV archive): The bones were found near Indianola, in southern Utah County where hunters noticed the partially buried skull.
Dave Cawley: The skull had a small hole, about as wide as a pinky finger, behind where the person’s right ear would’ve been. Investigators believed it might’ve been made by a bullet.
Robert Walz (from October 21, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Now are you suspecting foul play, or?
Gary Reed (from October 21, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Yeah, we will go on that assumption based on the location of the, of the hole in the skull. Umm, we’ll go on that assumption.
Dave Cawley: The hole suggested a possible murder. But if that was the case, who was the victim?
Gary Reed (from October 21, 1985 KSL-TV archive): All we have right now is speculation on our part as to age of the, of the bones and uh, like I say, there’s nothing we can really tell until we have some more from the medical examiner’s office.
Dave Cawley: The medical examiner’s office determined the bones were female, but believed they were hundreds of years old. They couldn’t say what’d made the hole. Investigators figured the remains were from an indigenous person’s burial site. Clearly not Sheree Warren. But those bones are still significant to the Sheree Warren case, because of what they revealed about Cary Hartmann: Cary was friends with KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis. And detective Jack Bell hadn’t known that at the time.
Jack Bell: It was before I knew.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): —so I’m like, for me, if I was friends with somebody who had their significant other disappear, two thoughts: one, I’ve got great access so I can do a story better than somebody else—
Jack Bell: Right.
Dave Cawley: —two, I have a conflict of interest—
Jack Bell: Right.
Dave Cawley: —so I should disclose that and—
Jack Bell: Right.
Dave Cawley: —let my bosses decide if I cover the story or not.
Jack Bell: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: I don’t know if that ever happened.
Jack Bell: Probably not.
Dave Cawley: We’ll dig into the ethical implications of Cary’s friendship with TV reporter Larry Lewis in future episodes. For now, I’ll just say the story of the hunters uncovering these bones, and Cary learning about it from his reporter friend, shows how good Cary was at extracting information from people. He did it to Jack Bell, too. Cary’d relied on the fact they’d gone to school together to get inside access to Jack’s investigation. He’d learned who Jack was talking to and what those people had said. Jack hadn’t realized at the time he was getting worked.
Jack Bell: Policemen aren’t perfect. We have to hire ‘em from the human race, y’know? (Laughs) And as hard as we try to do our job right and be as close to perfect as we can, we all screw up.
Dave Cawley: KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis didn’t personally cover the Sheree Warren case until a major break occurred six weeks into the investigation.
Shelley Thomas (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Las Vegas police have turned up a possible clue in the mysterious disappearance of a 25-year-old Roy woman. A car belonging to Sheree Warren was found Monday in the parking lot of a hotel casino. Police are processing the vehicle now for possible leads in the case and our northern Utah correspondent Larry Lewis reports.
Larry Lewis (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): When Sheree Warren disappeared October 2nd her friends and family believed then foul play was involved. They said Sheree wasn’t the type to run away, that she had everything to live for.
Dave Cawley: This next bit will sound familiar if you’ve listened to season 2 of this podcast. On Monday, November 11th, 1985, security staff at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip contacted Las Vegas Metro Police to report a suspicious vehicle. They’d found a maroon, 1984 Toyota Corolla with Utah plates parked in a lot behind the casino, apparently abandoned. The car hadn’t moved in days. A Las Vegas detective ran the car’s license plate number against a national crime database and got a hit. It said the car belonged to a missing woman named Sheree Warren. Anyone who came across it should contact Roy police detective Jack Bell. A Las Vegas dispatcher called Jack that same afternoon to alert him of the discovery.
Jack Bell: It was kind of a shocker. Was it at Circus Circus parking lot?
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Aladdin.
Jack Bell: Aladdin. Yeah, that was a surprise. That opened, opened up a whole new can of worms. How did it get there? Which one of these two birds that I’m looking at have the opportunity to get it down there? Or did she drive it down herself and something happened to her? Which didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.
Dave Cawley: Las Vegas Metro impounded the car and hauled it to a secure lot.
Jack Bell: I wanted to go down. My bosses — the assistant chief and the chief — wouldn’t let me go. I don’t know what I would’ve done but I wanted to go down and at least get some pictures.
Dave Cawley: The next morning, a Las Vegas Metro detective called Jack, so they could share information. He told Jack the car had been there for quite some time. Its wheels had sunken into the asphalt. Spiders had spun webs in the precious shade it provided from the desert sun.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): So are you, when you see that are you thinking that car went there probably right after she disappeared?
Jack Bell: Yes, I’m thinking it went down there the next day.
Dave Cawley: Las Vegas Metro couldn’t search the car without a warrant or permission from the registered owner, Charles Warren. Jack hadn’t talked to Chuck in a month. Their last meeting had not gone well. But to his surprise, Chuck signed his name to a consent form authorizing a search of Sheree’s car without any protest. Jack faxed the completed form to Las Vegas Metro Police, who began a detailed search of the car.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Do you remember what they found in that car?
Jack Bell: Not much, not much.
Dave Cawley: In the glovebox, the Las Vegas officers located Sheree’s check books, some receipts and bills, as well as two prescription slips: one in her name and one in the name of Cary Hartmann. In the trunk, they found a stroller, a woman’s shirt and a brown suit jacket, sheets for a water bed, fast food wrappers and some of Sheree’s office papers. There were no signs of blood, no indications of violence. The car’s passenger window had been rolled down when it was parked. Wind had at some point blown a thick coat of dust into the interior. It covered every surface, making it impossible to lift any finger prints from the dash or doors.
Jack Bell: Somebody knew what they were doing when they left it there.
Dave Cawley: They did find one partial set of prints, on the outside of the driver window. Las Vegas Metro assumed the prints were Sheree’s, but didn’t have anything to compare them to. Neither did Jack, for that matter. So he made a phone call to the FBI.
Jack Bell: And I think I just turned it over to the FBI’s office up here.
Dave Cawley: A special agent agreed to check the FBI’s identification files, to see if they had a copy of Sheree Warren’s fingerprints on record. They didn’t, meaning no one could say if the prints found on the car’s windows were Sheree’s or someone else’s. Word of the car’s discovery made it to the media. A TV station in Las Vegas filmed police going through the car. Meantime, KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis went to interview detective Jack Bell.
Larry Lewis (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Investigators on the case have had no solid piece of information to go on. Today, that changed.
Jack Bell (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): It means that, uh, either she drove the car there herself or somebody stole the car from her, uh, abducted her and took the car there.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Interesting who the reporter was on that story, huh?
Jack Bell: Yeah, it was.
Dave Cawley: Jack did not at that time know Larry was a personal friend of Cary Hartmann’s.
Jack Bell: No. He didn’t let on, y’know, he didn’t let on.
Jack Bell (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): There was some indication in the asphalt that the car left imprints. So, uh, that would lead you to believe the car had probably been parked there when the weather was hotter.
Larry Lewis (from November 13, 1985 KSL-TV archive): Bell says the car’s discovery now broadens the investigation to include transients passing through Salt Lake. He says any evidence found in the car will be run through a crime lab with the hope of learning who drove it to Las Vegas. Larry Lewis, Eyewitness News.
Dave Cawley: This speculation about a transient possibly driving the car across state lines is what Jack had needed to convince the FBI to get involved.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): ‘Cause now you’ve got an interstate—
Jack Bell: Yeah, now it’s partially their jurisdiction.
Dave Cawley: But Jack suspected he’d already talked to the person who’d driven the car to Vegas, and it wasn’t a transient.
Jack Bell: Made me look a little bit again at Richard Moss because he lived halfway there.
Dave Cawley: Richard Moss, the last person known to’ve seen Sheree Warren alive. I asked Richard what he thought happened to Sheree after they parted ways outside the credit union office.
Richard Moss: Whether something bad happened, I do not know whether that occurred. But it was unusual from my experience in talking to her that day.
Dave Cawley (to Richard Moss): Do you remember what went through your mind when you heard the car was in Vegas?
Richard Moss: Surprised me, surprised me.
Dave Cawley: Why?
Richard Moss: Uh (laughs) why would that be in Vegas? I don’t know.
Dave Cawley: Sheree had never mentioned anything to you about being a gambler, I take it.
Richard Moss: Mmnmm.
Dave Cawley: And that’s a long way from Wagstaff Toyota.
Richard Moss: (Laughs) Mmhmm.
Dave Cawley: Detective Jack Bell briefly harbored suspicions about Richard Moss.
Jack Bell: But nothing come of that. Pretty upstanding citizen.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): So, you look at Richard, you don’t see anything there that jumps out at you.
Jack Bell: No, no.
Dave Cawley: Jack’s mind kept returning to Chuck Warren. In the weeks following the car’s discovery, Roy police would receive a tip from a credit union employee who claimed Chuck had taken out a cash advance in Salt Lake City the day Sheree was last seen. The tipster also said there’d been multiple charges on Chuck’s credit card in Nevada days before the car turned up behind the casino.
Jack Bell: Y’know, he coulda drove the car down and working for the railroad he had a train pass and could’ve rode the train back. But uh, there was no way to prove that. That’s one thing I was gonna ask Alice.
Dave Cawley: Chuck worked for the Southern Pacific, which didn’t operate a line between Ogden and Las Vegas. That route belonged to the competition: Union Pacific. In 1985, Amtrak offered once-daily passenger service between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City over Union Pacific’s rails. I’ve reviewed an Amtrak timetable from ’85 and it shows the outbound train departed Vegas at 9:05 p.m. and arrived in Salt Lake at 6:55 a.m. If someone had left Salt Lake in Sheree’s car immediately after she’d left work at 6:30 on the evening of October 2nd and driven straight to Vegas, they wouldn’t have arrived until after that night’s Salt Lake-bound train had departed.
But it would’ve been simple, no big deal, for the person who took Sheree’s car to Vegas to fly back to Utah. The Aladdin was one of the closest casinos on the strip to McCarren Field, known today as Harry Reid International Airport. The lot where Aladdin staff found Sheree’s car sat just two-and-a-half miles from the airport terminal.
Western Airlines operated a major hub out of Salt Lake City. I found an old Western timetable for September and October of ’85 on eBay. It showed four daily departures between Vegas and Salt Lake, the earliest at 7:15 a.m. In other words, someone could’ve caught the first flight out of Vegas to Salt Lake on the morning of Thursday, October 3rd and arrived in Utah around 9:30 a.m., hours before Sheree’s mom Mary Sorensen first made contact with Jack Bell to report her daughter missing. In the pre-9/11 world, a person could simply walk into the airport terminal the day of the flight, buy a ticket and go to the gate. The TSA didn’t exist. There were no kiosks where federal agents checked your ID. Airlines kept their own passenger lists, but there were no centralized databases.
Of course, Chuck Warren wasn’t the only person who might’ve taken Sheree’s car to Vegas. Only days after the car’s discovery, Jack received a tip from one of Sheree’s friends. She said Sheree’d been dating a man who belonged to an S&M sex cult. She didn’t know his name, but said Sheree was afraid of him. A day later, an Ogden police sergeant stopped by to see Jack. The sergeant said he’d heard Sheree’s boyfriend, Cary Hartmann, had engaged in group sex in the past. Jack began to wonder: just how much had Sheree known about her boyfriend? The Ogden police sergeant also told Jack he was aware Cary Hartmann had a history of domestic violence. Jack confirmed this by talking to one of Cary’s ex-wives.
Jack had two plausible suspects in Sheree’s disappearance, both with past allegations of violence against a romantic partner. Jack still leaned toward Chuck Warren, but a seed of doubt about Cary Hartmann was taking root in the back of his mind.
Dave Cawley (to Jack Bell): Another thing you wrote on this is “from the very first day of Sheree’s disappearance, Cary spoke of Sheree past tense—”
Jack Bell: Past tense.
Dave Cawley: Jack didn’t yet know about Cary’s sordid past, starting with his attempt to lure Heidi Posnien up the canyon near Causey Reservoir, 14 years earlier. And Heidi, who we heard from at the start of our story, didn’t yet realize the young man who’d harassed and threatened her on the phone had only escalated in the time since.
Heidi Posnien: Well, he probably then wasn’t as involved yet, y’know? He probably was just at the beginning of some of his little tricks. That’s probably why he was so easy to catch. And that’s probably why I gave him a second chance, because, y’know I would’ve never thought he was gonna be the Ogden Rapist.
