Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards believed he had the Ogden City Rapist in his sights. He’d charged Cary Hartmann with felony crimes for a string of home-invasion sexual assaults that’d occurred across the city.
Reed Richards: We had one of the, the victims who had gone to a bar one night and heard, uh, over the loudspeaker somebody announcing and recognized the voice of the person that’d broken into her home. And so she then came to us and that was, that turned out to be Cary Hartmann.
Dave Cawley: Cary faced charges in four separate cases. Police suspected him in several more. But all were short on evidence.
Reed Richards: We didn’t have DNA back then. Now we might’ve approached it a little differently. If you could get DNA samples from each of the women and tie it to him that would be different. We didn’t have that.
Dave Cawley: Only one of the women had picked Cary’s picture out of a photo line-up.
Reed Richards: Uh, and that’s not really unusual because he came in in the dark, he, uh, didn’t let them see his face.
Dave Cawley: Another of the women, a person I’m calling Caroline, had told police she didn’t want to look at a picture line-up. She wanted the real thing. Reed didn’t have much time to make a line-up happen. The court had scheduled a preliminary hearing. Each of the four women were going to testify. Reed knew the judge might not advance the case if none of them could say with confidence Cary was the man who’d assaulted them.
Reed Richards: It was challenging, uh, and many of those women once they went to the police actually moved because they didn’t want whoever it was to know where they were at.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d managed to get out of jail ahead of that hearing, after his parents put up their own property as collateral for his bail. Reed was fighting that, too, trying to protect his witnesses.
Reed Richards: People here were really frightened about going outside.
Dave Cawley: The vast majority of rape and sexual assault cases are committed by someone known to the victim. The Ogden City Rapist cases were rare exceptions: police believed Cary Hartmann in some instances stalked his victims. The idea of a stranger sneaking into the homes of sleeping women should make you shudder. It’s terrifying but also very, very uncommon. Still, it’d happened in Ogden, repeatedly, through 1984, ’85, ’86 and ’87.
Reed Richards: Time and time again, same scenario.
Dave Cawley: So the threat felt very real. Police were telling women in Ogden not to go out alone after dark, especially if they were young, single and had children. And it’d been a little over a year since one rape victim, Joyce Yost, had reported her assault…
Joyce Yost (from April 4, 1985 police interview recording): He grabbed me by the throat and, uh, was forceful.
Dave Cawley: …then disappeared days before she was supposed to testify at trial. So for any of these Ogden rape victims, heading to court must’ve felt like a dangerous gamble. Reed arranged to hold a line-up for Caroline the day before she was to testify at Cary Hartmann’s preliminary hearing. He told me both the line-up and prelim were tough asks to make.
Reed Richards: Because you’re trying to find the person that’s, that’s willing to go through what’s going to be a nasty, nasty time.
Dave Cawley: But Caroline rose to the task. We met Caroline back in episode 3. She was the woman who’d fallen asleep watching an old World War II movie and woken to the sound of a strange man turning off the TV. Now, a year later, Caroline came into another darkened room, along with Reed, Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman and a man she didn’t know: Cary Hartmann’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan. I reached out to Kevin to ask about his recollections of this line-up but he didn’t respond.
Reed Richards: But the actual line-up was done after he had an attorney and I think they took part in deciding who was gonna be standing in the line-up and that’s how the brother got in there.
Dave Cawley: You heard that right. Cary Hartmann’s younger brother, Jack Hartmann, was in the line-up with him. Cary’s cousin, David Hartmann, stood in the line-up, too. And I’ve been told David was a dead ringer for Cary.
Reed Richards: And as I recall, the brother tried to look like the person had been when they broke in and, and Hartmann tried to change his appearance.
Dave Cawley: So when Caroline went to try and point out the man who’d assaulted her, three of the guys in that line-up looked an awful lot alike. Which was unusual. Line-ups were typically filled with an assortment of jail inmates. Caroline looked at the seven men, three of whom were related. She was on one side of a pane of mirrored glass. The men were on the other, along with a jailer who held a card printed with phrases the rapist had used. One by one, the men picked up a telephone receiver and read from the card. Number one…
Eric Openshaw (as line-up man 1): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.
Dave Cawley: Caroline listened on the other end of that phone line. Number two…
Ken Fall (as line-up man 2): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.
Dave Cawley: She’d told police the man who’d attacked her had a distinctive voice. Number three…
Ryan Meeks (as line-up man 3): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.
Dave Cawley: Detective Chris Zimmerman watched Caroline as she listened. Number four…
John Greene (as line-up man 4): You’ll wake the kids. I’ll blow their heads off.
Dave Cawley: The second she heard number four’s voice, Caroline began to shake. Zimmerman wrote on a notepad she appeared shocked and frightened. Cary Hartmann was number four. But he looked different than he had a year earlier. He’d shaved his mustache and trimmed his hair. The rest of the men in the line-up took their turns reading the card. Reed then asked Caroline if any of them stood out to her.
“Number Four really hit me strong,” she said, “but he don’t have a mustache. And his mustache was like number six’s.” Caroline peered through the glass. “These two [even] look like they could be brothers,” she said, “four and six.” She asked Reed if the two were related. He said he couldn’t tell her. She had four and six each read the card again.
“They even sound the same,” she said.
Caroline wasn’t sure which man to pick, they were just so alike. But according to a transcript of the line-up, she told Reed she leaned more toward number six, the one with a mustache. She didn’t know it, but she’d just picked Cary’s cousin, David Hartmann.
In his journal that night, Cary wrote he’d scored a win at the line-up. The invisible woman on the other side of the mirrored glass had not identified him.
John Greene (as Cary Hartman from May 27, 1987 journal entry): In other words, Dave Hartmann saved our buns.
Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 5: Nighthawk. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: One of the four women Cary Hartmann stood accused of sexually assaulting had tried to pick her attacker out of a line-up. She’d wavered between pointing out Cary or his look-alike cousin, David Hartmann. She’d told Weber County Attorney Reed Richards she couldn’t tell the two men apart.
Reed Richards: Right, got pretty close though. It was helpful.
Dave Cawley (to Reed Richards): Yeah, yeah.
Reed Richards: It was better than nothing.
Dave Cawley: The woman, who I’m calling Caroline, took the stand at Cary’s preliminary hearing the day after the line-up. She pointed to Cary when asked if her attacker was in the courtroom.
Reed Richards: Yeah, course they always do that. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: This was good enough for the judge.
Reed Richards: She was the only one that could pick him out of a line-up. And even that was kind of contested with the little foray with his brother and all of that.
Dave Cawley: The fact Caroline had pointed out someone different a day prior didn’t prevent him from binding Cary over in each of the four cases. That meant, in the judge’s eyes, enough evidence existed to proceed to the next step, arraignment, where Cary would enter his pleas. But first, there was the question of bail. Reed, the prosecutor, told the judge Cary’s 105-thousand dollar bail amount wasn’t good enough: the public would remain at risk so long as Cary was out of jail. The judge agreed and increased the bail.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 28, 1987 journal entry): Judge Browning set a new bail at $135,000.
Dave Cawley: That again comes from a journal Cary was keeping as all this was going down. I’ve made a couple references to it now and you’re probably wondering how I know what Cary wrote. So let me tell you how I got my hands on the journal. Ogden police had arrested Cary on suspicion of rape on May 8th. He’d bailed out of jail on the 9th, then been re-arrested on the 12th. Cary’d bailed out for the second time on the 16th.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 16, 1987 journal entry): May 16. Got out of Weber County Jail. … Dad and Mom picked me up.
Dave Cawley: It was after Cary bailed out the second time he started jotting notes in this journal.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1987 journal entry): May 18. At 6:35 I left for the college.
Dave Cawley: He chronicled where he went and what he did in the days leading up to his preliminary hearing. A lot of it is honestly pretty dull.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1987 journal entry): Arrived at the college at 6:50 A.M. Parked in rear of heat plant.
Dave Cawley: But there are bits that are more illuminating. Cary wrote about how he’d worked with his attorney to set up having his brother and cousin in the line-up.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 26, 1987 journal entry): Went with Kevin Sullivan to his office. … Question: Jack and Dave in the line-up? What time and where?
Dave Cawley: Those words are why I can tell you Cary’d engineered this bit of subterfuge. Cary also wrote about reuniting with a woman named Shauna Hall after he got out of jail.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 24, 1987 journal entry): Shauna brought me out to T.J.’s at 5:30 P.M. I watched a National Geographic T.V. show on channel 22 about crocodiles.
Dave Cawley: I mentioned Shauna in the last episode. Cary’d met her through one of his lingerie survey phone calls. To the best of my knowledge, they’d started dating around October of 1986, a year after Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Cary and Shauna’d discussed marriage just weeks later, even though Shauna was at that time married. Shauna’d separated from her husband in March ’87, working toward a goal of marrying Cary. His arrest in the Ogden City Rapist investigation two months later hadn’t dissuaded her. To the contrary: she even bought Cary a car while he was out on bail.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 26, 1987 journal entry): If the 1973 red V.W. doesn’t turn out to be sound, Shauna Hall reserves the right to full refund.
Dave Cawley: Shauna was in deep. Most of Cary’s writings I’ve referenced so far this season came from papers seized by police during the two searches of his apartment. But this journal covered a time after those searches, as Cary and his parents were in and out of court, arguing over bail.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 28, 1987 journal entry): God only knows I’ll probably never get out of jail. It would be a miracle!
Dave Cawley: As I mentioned a couple minutes ago, the judge’d upped the bail amount after the preliminary hearing.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 29, 1987 journal entry): May 29. We are trying to arrange bail. I am going to try to sell all of my furniture.
Dave Cawley: Cary’s furniture wasn’t worth $135,000 dollars. He landed back in jail. He was in from May 29th to July 9th. Cary’s girlfriend-slash-fiancé Shauna took care of his financial affairs during that time. And she took custody of his journal. Someone broke into Shauna’s house that summer. A South Ogden City police sergeant named Brad Birch went to investigate. Shauna reportedly told him she believed her estranged husband, Roger Hall, was responsible. You might remember from the last episode, Roger’d filed a civil lawsuit against Cary, accusing him of luring his wife, Shauna, into infidelity.
Shauna gave sergeant Brad Birch a pile of papers, reportedly saying she thought her estranged husband Roger had rifled through them, looking for evidence for his lawsuit. She wanted police to fingerprint the papers and arrest Roger for burglary. Sergeant Birch had taken the pile of papers back to South Ogden police headquarters. He looked through it. He saw business cards, phone bills and pay stubs. Some in Cary Hartmann’s name. This is what’s sometimes known in the sports world as an “unforced error.” Or, to use the modern slang, a “self-own.” A mistake inflicted by and upon one’s self. But it was a stroke of luck for police.
Sergeant Birch picked up his phone and called Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman.
Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): I went to South Ogden Police Department on July 15th, 1987 and read through the files.
Dave Cawley: These are Zimmerman’s words, from a warrant he wrote targeting Cary’s journal.
Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): There was a brown spiral-type paper notebook that was being used as a diary, listing dates on each page and events that happened on that day. The events included the writer of the diary being arrested, the times he spent in jail, speaking with his attorney Kevin Sullivan, and getting Jack Hartmann and Dave Hartmann to be in the line-up he had to be in.
Dave Cawley: Zimmerman read Cary’s comment about how his cousin David had “saved his buns” at the line-up.
Kevin LaRue (as Chris Zimmerman from August 3, 1987 search warrant): I feel this could be incriminating evidence on Cary Hartmann and I have probable cause to believe the diary was written by Cary Hartmann and it contains evidence of illegal conduct.
Dave Cawley: Incriminating, because why would Cary’ve gone to the trouble of having look-alikes in the line-up unless he was afraid the woman on the other side of the glass was going to identify him? A judge signed the warrant, allowing Zimmerman to take the journal. That’s how it ended up in the hands of Ogden police. I wanted to know what secrets it might hold about Sheree Warren. So I went looking for it, more than 30 years later.
Cracking Cary Hartmann’s diary for the first time in decades wasn’t the revelatory experience I’d hoped. But it’s interesting for what it doesn’t say: there’s not one mention in those pages of Sheree Warren, even though Cary was writing during the period police were searching around Causey Reservoir for the body reported by the anonymous caller.
Anonymous caller (from April 3, 1987 dispatch recording): I’m reporting a body that I found.
Dave Cawley: The journal reveals as police were hunting for Sheree, Cary was watching Star Search and Hollywood Insider and arranging to have his cousin impersonate him at the line-up.
Weber County Attorney Reed Richard had faced a choice during the summer of 1987: should he go full-throttle on all four of the sexual assault cases he’d filed against Cary Hartmann, simultaneously? Or should he take them on one at a time?
Reed Richards: Well, there are a couple of thoughts that come into play. The evidence certainly is, is part of it.
Dave Cawley: So let’s talk about evidence in cases of rape and sexual assault. Ogden police detective Shane Minor had interacted with some of women in the Ogden City Rapist cases.
Shane Minor: Y’know, to see, see that look on their face and to see the fear that they had, when you see that, you begin to understand better their lack of wanting to come forward with it.
Dave Cawley: In spite of that fear, each of the four women Cary’d been charged with assaulting had undergone physical exams following their attacks. Evidence gathered from those forensic exams, what’s sometimes called the “rape kit,” can include clothing, bedding, swabs of body cavities, hair combings, fingernail scrapings and bodily fluids.
Shane Minor: At that time you didn’t have, uh, DNA like you have today so there’s been a lot of advancements made in that.
Dave Cawley: DNA today enables forensic scientists to identify people by their unique individual gene signatures. But that tech wasn’t quite ready for the courtroom in 1987. Instead, forensic science in Cary Hartmann’s case focused on serology, the study of bodily fluids. Serology in rape cases involved looking for blood, saliva or semen on the body, clothing or bedding of a victim, then comparing that against samples taken from a suspect.
I know this is dry and science-y but trust me, it’s important. If a suspect and victim had different blood types, and fluids matching the suspect’s type were found on the victim, it could suggest — but not prove — the suspect’d had physical contact with the victim. Utah’s state crime lab tested the evidence gathered in the four cases for which Cary was charged. I have those reports. They show two of the women had type-A blood, the other two were type-O. Vaginal swabs from all four also revealed the presence of sperm.
Reed, the prosecutor, asked the court to compel Cary to provide a semen sample for comparison. Cary’s attorney, Kevin Sullivan, told Reed his client was willing to provide the semen sample. They were confident it would exonerate Cary because, as you might remember, Cary’d had a vasectomy. That meant his semen shouldn’t contain any sperm. So, the logic went, Cary couldn’t be the rapist because the lab had found sperm in all four rape kits. Kevin wanted Reed’s word he’d drop the charges if forensic analysis of Cary’s semen sample excluded him as the rapist. Reed agreed to drop the charges, if that’s what the evidence showed. And he put that promise in writing.
Sure enough, there were no sperm cells in Cary’s semen. But for Reed, that wasn’t enough to exclude Cary as the suspect. Here’s why: the crime lab had also determined Cary had type-B blood. And had found evidence of type-B blood in one of the rape kits: Caroline’s.
Reed Richards: So even without DNA we had a very unusual type of blood that was found inside of of the rape kit which I thought was pretty good evidence.
Dave Cawley: The lab didn’t specify if Cary’s blood was B-positive or B-negative. When I talked to Reed, he remembered it as B-negative, but I have some documents that suggest it’s could be B-positive. The important take-away here is both B-types are less common. The American Red Cross says only about one out of every 10 people have either B-positive or B-negative blood.
Reed Richards: So with, when you’ve got the identification and you’ve got, uh, and you’ve got the blood type and then you’ve got the confession or statements that he made to Zimmerman, uh, that was clearly the best case.
Dave Cawley: Reed decided to take Caroline’s case to trial. He put the other three cases he’d filed against Cary on hold. Cary’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan, didn’t like this at all. He told the judge the lack of sperm in Cary’s semen sample proved Cary hadn’t committed the rape. Kevin filed paperwork in court accusing Reed of acting in bad faith.
Kevin also tried to have Cary’s statements to detective Chris Zimmerman on the day of his arrest barred from evidence. He said Zimmerman hadn’t advised Cary of his Miranda rights as they were driving around to the homes of the various women. Miranda rights include the right to remain silent, the right to have an attorney present during questioning and so on.
The court held a hearing on this, days before the trial. The prosecution pointed out Cary’d gone through specific training on Miranda rights when he’d signed on to the Ogden Police reserves. The prosecution pointed out Cary’d gone through specific training on Miranda rights when he’d signed on to the Ogden Police reserves. In other words, Cary knew his rights well.
Cary’s friend Dave Moore, the guy who owned the sewing machine repair shop, was in the courtroom that day as well.
Dave Moore: One of his victims, according to one of the detectives, he got the name and address from my store. He happened to be in. She brought in a sewing machine and he uh, copied down her name, address and that was one of the break-ins.
Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): That had to have hurt to have heard that.
Dave Moore: Yeah. It was tough.
Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Reed Richards put Dave Moore on the stand and asked him to describe the conversation he’d had with Cary, after Cary’s arrest. We talked about that in episode 4.
Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): He put you in a tough position.
Dave Moore: He did. Extremely tough.
Dave Cawley: As a refresher, Dave’d called the jail and asked to speak with Cary. Cary’d allegedly come on the line and told Dave he’d done some bad things, felt ashamed about it and believed the Ogden detectives were just trying to help. Dave told me Reed seemed to sense his discomfort over testifying against his friend, Cary.
Dave Moore: He says “Dave, this is probably the toughest thing you’ve ever had to do, isn’t it?” And I said “yeah, definitely.” And then he basically excused me. But as I was walking by Cary and his attorney, Cary says “why Dave, why?” And his attorney says “he didn’t have a choice.”
Dave Cawley (to Dave Moore): I’m assuming you got subpoenaed for that.
Dave Moore: I did.
Dave Cawley: So you literally did not have a choice.
Dave Moore: To be honest with you, there were so many news trucks out front. I just got the heck out of there. I didn’t want anything to do with it.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann’s trial for the attack on Caroline began on September 15th, 1987. The prosecution and defense settled on a jury of five men and three women. Cary strode into the courthouse with his attorney the next morning. TV news cameras were there. So was Cary’s reporter friend, Larry Lewis.
Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): Prosecutors say their key evidence in the case against Hartmann are statements he made to police at the time of his arrest, information from police lab tests and a victim’s testimony.
Dave Cawley: If you’re wondering why Cary’s personal friend was reporting on his trial, so am I. More on that in a minute. Cary wore a tan suit, was clean-shaven, had lightened his hair and he donned a pair of oversized glasses with smoked lenses once seated at the defense table. This all had the effect of making him look significantly different than he had a year and a half earlier, when the attack on Caroline had taken place. The chameleon act didn’t faze Caroline.
Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): This morning in court, the victim identified Cary Hartmann as the rapist. County attorney Reed Richards told the jury that Hartmann’s own statements to police proves he’s guilty. He said Hartmann told investigators facts only the rapist could’ve known. And Richards said evidence found on the victim will link Hartmann to the rape.
Dave Cawley: The judge had rejected the defense’s request to toss out Cary’s incriminating comments to Ogden police. Sheree Warren’s mom, Mary Sorensen, sat in the courtroom as Caroline testified. She stared at Cary from across the room and noted any time he glanced her direction, he refused to make eye contact. Mary received a jolt when Caroline said the man who’d raped her had told her “I’ve killed before and can kill again.”
Larry Lewis (from September 16, 1987 KSL TV archive): But defense attorney Kevin Sullivan said this is a case of mistaken identity. He said the victim first identified another man as her attacker during a police line-up and says she changed her mind about who raped her after seeing a TV news report about Hartmann’s arrest. But the key evidence in the defense case is the medical exam of the victim after the rape. It showed the presence of sperm. The defense says since Hartmann had a vasectomy several years ago and is physically unable to produce sperm, there’s no evidence that Hartmann raped the victim in this case. The victim testified that she had sexual relations with another man a few days before she was raped, and because of that the prosecution argues that the medical report does not rule out Hartmann as the rapist.
Dave Cawley: That last bit deserves a bit more explanation. Caroline had met up with her estranged husband at a motel a few days before she was attacked. At the trial, her estranged husband testified they’d had sex. That meant he could’ve been the source of the sperm detected in the rape kit. But the estranged husband didn’t have B-type blood. Remember, the crime lab had found evidence of B-type blood in swabs taken from Caroline’s body. And the semen sample Cary Hartmann had provided showed he had B-type blood.
Detective Chris Zimmerman took the stand and described how Cary’d identified Caroline’s house as they’d driven around Ogden together. Cary’s attorney, Kevin Sullivan, challenged Zimmerman, suggesting this tactic had been a breach of police protocol. He insinuated Zimmerman had a history of violating procedure, noting the detective had once issued a phony parking ticket to President Ronald Reagan.
Kaye Lynn, the woman who’d rented the basement of her house to Cary, testified too. You heard Kaye Lynn’s words read by a voice actor in the last episode. She’s the woman who described hearing an argument between Cary and Sheree Warren, then a thump and all going quiet. She thought it’d happened the night Sheree disappeared. Kaye Lynn wasn’t asked to tell that story from the witness stand. Instead, she talked about the odd schedule Cary’d kept in the months afterward.
Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from June 26, 1987 witness statement): There were times when he would leave [at] odd hours. It would seem like he’d get a call or just up and leave after midnight. It would be one or two in the morning and he would return an hour or two later.
Dave Cawley: This comes from a formal statement Kaye Lynn provided to Ogden police, read by a voice actor. In it, Kaye Lynn called Cary “a nighthawk.”
Frances Cooke (as Kaye Lynn Terry from June 26, 1987 witness statement): He never seemed to sleep. He’d get up as I was going out jogging about 5:30 a.m. and be gone to work when I’d come in about 6 or 6:30. … I could never survive on the sleep he got.
Dave Cawley: Cary testified in his own defense. He talked about his interrogation by Ogden police detective John Stubbs the day of his arrest. He said Stubbs’d had an explicit photo Cary’d taken of an Ogden police officer’s wife. That photo had come out of the Supper Club album detective Jack Bell had found in Cary’s apartment while serving one of the search warrants.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): She was a woman I had an affair with.
Dave Cawley: …the Salt Lake Tribune quoted Cary as saying from the witness stand. Cary said detective Stubbs had threatened to share that embarrassing information with Cary’s family if he didn’t confess. Cary contended he’d held his ground, even in the face of that threat.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): I had never seen the victim. I don’t know her. At no time did I ever have sex with her.
Dave Cawley: As for his appearance at the line-up, Cary explained he’d shaved off his mustache after getting out of jail because he’d felt disgusted at how dirty the jail was and he wanted to be clean.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from September 17, 1987 Salt Lake Tribune article): My parents taught me that cleanliness is next to godliness.
Dave Cawley: None of this swayed the jury. They deliberated just over three hours before before returning a guilty verdict.
Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): After the verdict, Richards says it was Hartmann’s own statements that helped prosecutors win their conviction.
Reed Richards (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): That’s tough to say. Without the confession, you can narrow it down to a small group of people but probably not to one person. So I think you probably would not be able to make the case without the confession.
Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): The defense contended all along those statements were not a confession but that police were hearing what they wanted.
Kevin Sullivan (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): They were damaging but as you say, they weren’t actually confessions, they were more in the way of statements as our argument was, I think it was more of a misinterpretation of what was said.
Dave Cawley: Again, the reporter in this clip is Larry Lewis.
Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): The guilty verdict brought tears to family members and even some jurors in the courtroom. The victim agreed to shed her cloak of anonymity and talk with reporters about her feelings, she said as a way to help other rape victims.
“Caroline” (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): I think if I have the strength to finally be on camera, that maybe it’ll give other people strength through me.
Dave Cawley: This KSL TV story showed Caroline’s face, but it didn’t identify her by name. And that’s partly why I’m still using a pseudonym for her. Caroline had blazed a trail the other women might follow.
Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): How about the other victims? What would you tell them?
“Caroline” (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): I’ll be praying for you and I’ll be there to support you.
Larry Lewis (from September 22, 1987 KSL TV archive): She said now she can move her children back to the state and begin a new life.
Dave Cawley: You can’t see it, obviously since this is a podcast, but in that TV news clip, Larry Lewis stands holding a microphone in front of Caroline. I think to myself when I watch it “did she know the reporter she was talking to was a personal friend of the man a jury had just convicted of raping her?”
In the last episode, I took you to Larry Lewis’ doorstep.
Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): You and Cary were friends back at the time Sheree Warren disappeared. And you were involved in covering his rape trial—
Larry Lewis: Right.
Dave Cawley: —in 1987.
Larry Lewis: Right.
Dave Cawley: I wanted to talk to Larry, not only about how detective Jack Bell had questioned him in the Sheree Warren investigation, but also about the ethics and optics of his reporting on Cary’s rape case.
Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): I need to know if that was disclosed to KSL that you had a friendship with him at the time you were covering that that story.
Larry Lewis: I disclosed that I knew Cary or I was an acquaintance of Cary while I was covering that trial, yes.
Dave Cawley: Ok.
Dave Cawley: “An acquaintance.” I asked to whom, specifically, Larry’d disclosed. He said to KSL’s assignment desk editor.
Larry Lewis: At the end of that trial, my assignment editor, my supervisor, said I did a good job in, in being neutral in covering that case.
Dave Cawley: Ok, and, and we’ll ask him.
Larry Lewis: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: I did ask. I called Larry’s former assignment editor, who told me he didn’t remember having this conversation about Larry’s relationship with Cary Hartmann. I went up the management ladder: the former news director. That person also didn’t remember Larry Lewis disclosing to KSL he’d had a personal relationship with Cary Hartmann. A relationship Larry repeatedly minimized during our brief conversation.
Larry Lewis: When you say friendship, I think that’s, my friendship with him it was really more of an acquaintance. We played, we played handball and poker a couple of times and that’s as far as it went.
Dave Cawley: The Society of Professional Journalists publishes a Code of Ethics for reporters. It says journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and disclose unavoidable conflicts. In Larry Lewis’ case, there were two disclosures to consider: one to KSL, his employer, and the other to the public who might see his stories. I can say with certainty Larry didn’t disclose his connection to Cary Hartmann to the viewers. When I raised this point to Larry, he challenged me by asking if I believed his stories about the trial were fair. I told him as far as I could tell, the stories were factually accurate. But that didn’t absolve him of a possible perception of bias.
Larry Lewis: Uh, I guess you could view it that way. I mean, there are lots of reporters who cover issues that they know, because they have a personal involvement in that issue.
Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Mmhmm.
Larry Lewis: I mean, that’s what they call specialists.
Dave Cawley: There’s another line in that Code of Ethics that tells reporters to expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their own organizations. So when I learned Larry Lewis had a personal relationship with Cary Hartmann and didn’t disclose that fact to the public when reporting on Cary’s rape case, I felt a duty to address it.
Larry Lewis: Just be fair. I mean, you know, I know you, you think you might have, have something interesting with me. But I’m just a citizen. And as a reporter, I came forward to report what I knew. And uh, I, I know you want it to be more interesting than that. And it’s not. If you’re going to be fair, you need to know that.
Dave Cawley (to Larry Lewis): Well, being fair is why I’m here on your doorstep asking the questions.
Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards had won a significant victory, securing a conviction against Cary Hartmann in one of the four rape cases.
Reed Richards: Then the question was, number one, did the other victims want to go forward and for the most part, that was not what they wanted to do. They knew he was locked away and they didn’t want to go through the, harassment of having to go through the questioning and the public scrutiny and the newspaper articles and all the things that, that go with a rape prosecution. And the evidence in those cases was not as good. You didn’t have the ID and you didn’t have the blood.
Dave Cawley: Reed asked the court to delay the three other trials until after sentencing in Caroline’s case. The judge agreed and commissioned a pre-sentence report from an agency called Utah Adult Probation and Parole. A pre-sentence report is a summary of all available information about a criminal defendant a judge can use when deciding how harsh or lenient to be in imposing a sentence. A state investigator spent the next three weeks preparing the report. He reviewed the police records from Caroline’s case, interviewed the detectives and attorneys and drafted a synopsis.
In Utah, pre-sentence reports are confidential because they often contain a great deal of sensitive personal information about offenders, their families and victims. I’ve obtained a copy of Cary’s, but am being selective about what I share from it. The report showed the investigator interviewed Cary himself, who again denied any sexual contact with Caroline, consensual or otherwise.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I am still in shock. I have a lot of anxiety.
Dave Cawley: Cary provided this written statement for the pre-sentence report.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I have a lot of fears and apprehensions about being incarcerated for the charge that I have been convicted of.
Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d only failed the two lie detector tests he’d taken because of his anxieties.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I made statements to detective Zimmerman that I felt positively would prove my innocence. These statements were turned around and used against me. I am completely innocent of these crimes!
Dave Cawley: The investigator spoke with Caroline, who told him Cary had taken everything from her.
“There’s not a man, woman or child on Earth safe when he is out on the streets,” the report quoted Caroline as saying.
The investigator spoke to Cary’s mom and dad, Donna and Bill Hartmann. They said they’d been “completely unaware” of Cary’s history of making sexual phone calls. You and I know this was untrue. Heidi Posnien told us in episode 1 how Cary’d tried to lure her up the canyon for that so-called “date” in 1971. But deputies intervened. Heidi’s husband John had then confronted Cary’s dad, Bill Hartmann.
Heidi Posnien: They went to find his dad at the golf course. He was playing golf again.
Dave Cawley: Bill Hartmann, told the investigator he didn’t believe his son had committed any rapes. Bill planned to stand by Cary. So too did Cary’s girlfriend-slash-fiancé, Shauna Hall. She reportedly told the investigator she believed Caroline was lying and insisted Cary wasn’t a violent person. Cary, for his part, told the investigator he worried over what might happen between he and Shauna going forward.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from October 15, 1987 pre-sentence report): I am mentally and physically exhausted for worrying about my family, my son, my relationship with my fiancé and what will happen to these relationships.
Dave Cawley: The investigator spoke to both of Cary’s ex-wives. They painted a far different picture of how Cary acted in his relationships. They described detailed instances of physical and sexual abuse at Cary’s hands. I already shared some of that in episode one, so I won’t repeat the stories here. The investigator wrote it’s “evident that the defendant is very intelligent and cunning and because of this is probably more dangerous than if he were not so astute.” He recommended the judge impose a maximum sentence.
Cary arrived at the Weber County courthouse in Ogden for sentencing on November 2nd, 1987. He walked down the hallway in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, pausing to show a TV news camera a thick blue book he carried.
Cary Hartmann (from November 2, 1987 KSL TV archive): Utah Court Rules, Annotated. Did you get that?
Dave Cawley: The investigator presented his findings to the judge, who then handed down the sentence: two terms of 15-years-to-life and one term of five-to-life, all to run concurrently. It was the most the judge could give. The sentence carried what’s known as a minimum-mandatory, meaning Cary couldn’t get out until he’d served at least 15 years. The earliest he could hope to leave prison would be sometime around 2003.
Reed Richards: And so that was pretty much the assumption of everyone, that he’ll do 15 years.
Dave Cawley: Prosecutor Reed Richards had secured the strongest possible penalty. He tried to suppress a smile when speaking to reporters in this tape from after the sentencing hearing.
Reed Richards (from November 2, 1987 KSL TV archive): Because of the, the type of situation that this young lady was in, the vulnerability that she had, uh, the other things in his background that, uh, really couldn’t come out at trial and appropriately did not come out at trial, uh, but are appropriate at sentence, I think the sentence was, uh, was well-pondered-upon by the judge and appropriate.
Dave Cawley: But then, Reed still had to decide what to do with the other three cases, which were still waiting to go trial. The three women remained reluctant, not wanting to go through what Caroline had on the witness stand. Reed told them he couldn’t promise Cary would spend any more than 15 years in prison, because that decision would be up to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
Reed Richards: “And they can keep him as long as they want to keep him, but if, if you want to move ahead,” uh, “we’re very happy to do that.’ And I don’t remember any of ‘em being anxious to move ahead.”
Dave Cawley: Reed told the victims if they chose not to go to trial, police reports from their cases would still be sent to the parole board.
Reed Richards: Once you’ve got a conviction, uh, you can say “gee, the, the board of pardons will know what your report is,” uh, “it’s not a conviction because they have to realize that maybe you could’ve been mistaken, but at least they’re gonna know what you said,” uh, “and they’re gonna know the evidence in this case and the confessions that he made and so forth.”
Dave Cawley: The three women confirmed they didn’t want to testify. Reed promised to seek another solution.
Reed Richards: I think the decision to probably not go ahead on those others was a good decision, from the victim’s standpoint and from the case overall.
Dave Cawley: Reed proposed a plea deal to Cary’s defense attorney, Kevin Sullivan: he’d reduce the charges in one of the three remaining cases, and if Cary pleaded guilty to it, he’d drop the charges in the other two. Kevin said he’d take the offer to Cary. But they’d need some time to think it over. Meantime, Reed wondered what to do with the Sheree Warren case.
Reed Richards: Uh, it’s much better in a murder case to have a dead body than to just being saying “she disappeared and we think he killed her.” So the decision was made “let’s keep investigating it” and “he’s not going anywhere, let’s see if we can find some additional information, maybe we can find the body.”
Dave Cawley: There were new clues in the search for Sheree. Police had subpoenaed Cary’s timecards from Weber State College, to see what he’d been doing on the dates of the various rapes. The college had turned over records that also covered the time of Sheree’s disappearance. I’ve reviewed them myself. They show Cary’d taken the day after Sheree’s disappearance off, marking it as eight hours of vacation time. Which means Cary potentially had the opportunity to take Sheree’s car to Vegas the night of her disappearance and return to Utah the next morning without raising suspicion at work.
Reed Richards: I don’t know why a guy from here would take a car and dump it somewhere in Las Vegas. That’s kind of weird.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d taken another eight hours of vacation time the following Sunday, the day the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had reported seeing him on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir.
Reed Richards: There wasn’t really a motive there. Why would you kill your girlfriend?
Dave Cawley: The two ladies who’d lived upstairs from Cary, and who’d reported hearing a loud argument followed by a thump, had suggested a possible answer: Sheree might’ve learned of Cary’s activities with other women, confronted him, then died in a burst of reactionary violence. But Reed wasn’t going to charge Cary based on this unproven theory.
Reed Richards: Well yeah, you’d have to first get over the idea that she may not be dead. And that’s probably, if I were the defense attorney, an angle that I would push pretty hard. Uh, I’d talk about the trouble she was having at home, the dispute she’d had with her ex-husband, uh, she may have had other family problems and why not find a new boyfriend or just disappear and start a new life. So really if, if you charge a case like that and you can get through the preliminary hearing where you’ve got to show probable cause, then you’re ending up with a trial and if you go to trial and don’t get a conviction, you’re all done. You’ve got double-jeopardy that steps in and even if you get perfect proof later on, you’re dead. So there’s really an incentive to, to not do it until you think you’ve got enough to really convict. And that’s, that’s why it was not filed back then.
Dave Cawley: The stories of Kaye Lynn and Mary — the women who’d lived above Cary in October of ’85 — suggested Sheree might’ve made it Cary’s apartment on night she disappeared. Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor told me that this once again raised a question for police: who had jurisdiction? Because Cary lived in Ogden.
Shane Minor: So it would’ve made it an Ogden case.
Dave Cawley: Ogden police did go back and check Cary’s basement apartment for any sign of Sheree Warren’s blood, but they didn’t find anything.
Shane Minor: But this was information we got two years after-the-fact and he’d moved from that apartment.
Dave Cawley: Ogden police hadn’t kept any files or evidence on Sheree’s case up to that point, leaving the task to Roy police detective Jack Bell. But Shane and his fellow Ogden detectives Chris Zimmerman and John Stubbs found themselves sucked into the Sheree Warren case through their work on the Ogden City Rapist investigation.
Shane Minor: So there was a case number generated and reports were written under that.
Dave Cawley: The Ogden detectives had interviewed several of Cary’s friends, members of the so-called “Supper Club,” and filed reports about those interviews in their department’s records system. Copies of those reports did not make their way back to Jack Bell. The Sheree Warren investigation had effectively forked.
Shane Minor: And then there was another component to that was Salt Lake was having a lot of things happening down there so when she went missing out of Salt Lake I think that got grouped in to a bunch of unsolved stuff in the Salt Lake area at that period of time.
Dave Cawley: In the last couple episodes, we talked about how Salt Lake City police had tied three unsolved murders of young women to a single handgun. They’d formed a task force to hunt a suspected serial killer. Sheree’s name had ended up on the task force’s list of possible victims, since she’d last been seen in Salt Lake.
Shane Minor: And that was it. There was no other connections down there other than that.
Dave Cawley: But Ogden and Roy police had sent a couple pieces of evidence to Salt Lake, including one of the psychic letters I mentioned in a previous episode. As a result, bits and pieces of the Sheree Warren case were scattered across three police departments that weren’t always great about talking to one another.
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Did that cause any issues for you as you kinda set out to pull all of the information from the different places together?
Shane Minor: (Laughs) Yeah, kind of.
Dave Cawley: But Shane Minor told me the bigger issue for police investigating the Sheree Warren case at that point was they hadn’t been able to challenge Cary Hartmann about any of the new evidence that’d emerged since his arrest, because Cary’d lawyered up and invoked his right to remain silent.
Shane Minor: Yeah, I mean what did he, what did he have to say? We don’t know other than the, that story that he gave to Neumeyer—
Dave Cawley: Michael Neumeyer was Cary’s private investigator. You heard Cary’s statement to Neumeyer in episode 3.
Shane Minor: —which is a lot of what his thoughts are but it doesn’t tell you anything as far what’s going on with, with him and Sheree at the time she went missing.
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann arrived at the Utah State Prison in November of ’87 to begin serving his sentence.
Shane Minor: But then once he goes there, they classify him and they decide where he goes, and that’s where he’d ended up.
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Department of Corrections’ problem at that point.
Shane Minor: Yes.
Dave Cawley: Prison staff put Cary through their classification protocol. It assigned him medium-security status and listed him as “sigma,” a designation for inmates with calm, easygoing personalities. Cary immediately requested a transfer to a small jail in rural Sanpete County. He told prison staff his life would be at risk if they kept him at the main prison, because he was a former police officer. I’ve never been to prison, so I’m not sure if two years as a volunteer, unpaid, reserve officer is enough to get a person blacklisted by the bad guys. But the newspaper stories about Cary’s trial had identified him as a former cop.
The Utah Department of Corrections approved Cary’s request and moved him to the Sanpete County jail, in the interest of his own safety. This was a coup for Cary. In Sanpete County, he’d live around fewer serious felons, under less-strict supervision than at the state prison. His girlfriend-slash-fiancé, Shauna Hall, soon moved to the town of Manti, in Sanpete County, so she could visit Cary more regularly. They still intended to marry.
The Department of Corrections shipped Cary back to the Weber County Courthouse a few months into his stay for a plea hearing. Cary’d decided to take the deal prosecutor Reed Richards had offered. The judge asked if he had, in fact, committed the rape in question. Cary said “yes, sir.” He received a sentence of five years-to-life, but the clock would run at the same time as his other sentence, meaning no additional prison time. Still, Reed told the TV news cameras it felt like a good result.
Reed Richards (from February 4, 1988 KSL TV archive): And probably the overriding consideration was that we had three, uh, gals who didn’t really want to go in and, and tell the whole world the, the story of what’d happened to them. And we were able to avoid that and I think that’s maybe the greatest victory of obtaining a plea.
Dave Cawley: Ogden police were not similarly satisfied. They still had a pile of unsolved rape cases they believed, but couldn’t prove, Cary might’ve committed.
Shane Minor: But you’re working off that limited information and trying to make something out of it.
Dave Cawley: Detectives like Shane Minor wondered if, now that Cary was in custody for at least 15 years, he might be more willing to talk. They decided to pay Cary a visit.
Shane Minor: I’ve done that similar thing before. Sometimes it works out, most of the time it doesn’t.
Dave Cawley: Shane Minor and Chris Zimmerman made the three-hour drive from Ogden to Manti to visit Cary at the Sanpete County Jail.
Shane Minor: We’d went down there to talk to him, and—
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): He recognizes both of you guys?
Shane Minor: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Zimmerman told Cary he wanted to talk about the unsolved rapes. Cary declined. Ok. Zimmerman instead suggested they talk about the disappearance of Sheree Warren.
Shane Minor: It was no conversation. He just seen who it was and turned around and walked out and didn’t say nothing to us.
Dave Cawley: The Ogden Standard-Examiner published an article about this fruitless effort to interview Cary. A clipping of the article found its way to Sheree’s friend and former co-worker, Pam Volk.
Pam Volk: I don’t remember who it was, I think it might’ve been my mom sent me an article from the paper, ‘cause y’know this is before the internet, this before cell phones, all that kind of stuff.
Dave Cawley: You might remember Pam from episode 1. She’d dated Cary herself, before he’d started seeing Sheree. Pam later married a German man and they’d moved overseas in ’86. She hadn’t imagined Cary could’ve been a suspect in Sheree’s disappearance.
Pam Volk: Yeah, no. I learned that, in fact I learned that when we were in Germany.
Dave Cawley: Pam had stayed in touch with Cary by letter prior to his arrest. She’d asked for updates on the search for Sheree. Cary’s replies came to an abrupt stop after May of ’87.
Pam Volk: And I was like “holy [expletive], what have I done?” Y’know, what kind of a person was I to date somebody like that? Made me feel really bad. (Crying) Sorry. But I, I also felt really bad because that’s how Sheree and he got together and in the time since I have, after I realized what kind of a person he is, umm, I think that he might’ve been the one that did something to Sheree. I just, but I don’t know why. Y’know, I don’t know what would make him do that, y’know, because he’d never, I mean all these women that he raped, he’d never, y’know, killed anybody, y’know so, yeah. That was a rough time. (Crying)
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann’s fiancé, Shauna Hall, finalized her divorce from her husband early in 1988. I’m not sure exactly when or how, but Cary would later say he and Shauna were married at the Sanpete County Jail, where he was housed. Around that same time, Cary received a letter from his childhood best friend, Steve Bartlett. Here’s what it said:
Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): This may be the hardest letter I ever write. Of course I have been reading the newspaper and watching television so I know what you have been doing. [Expletive] Cary. Why? Why? Why?
Dave Cawley: I mentioned Bartlett in episode 3. He was the special investigator for the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office.
Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): I keep remembering all the great things we did together growing up. I knew we would always be friends and we could talk to each other, no matter what happened in life.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d claimed to have called Bartlett shortly after Sheree Warren disappeared and asked for his help in looking for her around Salt Lake City.
Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from February 12, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): As a Christian, I still want to know what happened to Sheree. So if you have the guts to tell me, I will locate her and put an end to her family’s agony. I can’t make promises, but I am interested in finding her and not causing you any more legal problems.
Dave Cawley: A magnanimous offer and show of friendship from Steve Bartlett. Here’s Cary’s reply:
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): Steve, you are my oldest friend. I forgive you, your insecurities toward me. I have never lied to you, never. I am going to tell you how it is, ok? All you hear or read is [expletive].
Dave Cawley: Cary went on to attack the evidence in the rape case. He said he’d never confessed, never been picked out of a line-up and couldn’t possibly have been responsible. The rape kit evidence had included sperm, which he didn’t produce because of his vasectomy.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): Next, I have no, zero, knowledge of Sheree’s whereabouts, then or now. End of story. I loved her, Steve.
Dave Cawley: Cary included a newspaper clipping with his letter. It described a home-invasion rape that’d occurred in Ogden weeks earlier, long after Cary was in custody. It wasn’t the only one. They’d kept happening.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from March 3, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): How about the 15 attacks in Ogden, in the same area, same M.O. while I was in the Weber County Jail? How about the five attacks about two weeks ago, same exact everything? They are still happening! Help me by finding the asshole out there and getting the truth out of him.
Dave Cawley: Cary wasn’t making this up. Former Ogden police detective Shane Minor told me Cary’s arrest had not put an end to the string of home invasion rapes plaguing the city. Which didn’t make sense.
Shane Minor: It started to become obvious we’re dealing with a couple of different people.
Dave Cawley: There were two Ogden City Rapists. This second serial rapist operated in a very similar manner, with some subtle differences.
Shane Minor: You started to see two different type of M.O.s developing. One maybe more verbally violent, the other was, was more violent. More physically violent if that makes sense to you.
Dave Cawley: This second serial rapist accelerated his attacks in early ’88, assaulting three different women in the space of a single week that March. Detectives had believed Cary’d stalked the women in his cases, most of whom lived near him. The second serial rapist seemed more random.
Shane Minor: He could park his car down at 10th and Wall and Ogden Avenue but he would hit the opposite end of town. And he would, he would be on foot all night long in the city.
Dave Cawley: Police responded to the home of yet another victim on the morning of Saturday, April 2nd. They spotted a man acting suspicious nearby. They confronted and arrested him: Blaine Nelson, the second Ogden City Rapist. Ogden police captain Marlin Balls described Blaine’s methods to the news media.
Marlin Balls (from April 2, 1988 KSL TV archive): He looked for homes that were open, uh, during the early morning hours. If, uh, a female was alone inside the house, uh, an opportunity presented itself, then he sexually assaulted her. If, uh, she was not alone, there was a man present in the home, why a lot of times just money was stolen.
Dave Cawley: Blaine and Cary’s styles were similar enough to cause confusion. They even looked a bit alike, though Blaine was younger and thinner than Cary.
Reed Richards: Which one was the copy-cat of which one, I don’t know.
Dave Cawley: Weber County Attorney Reed Richards filed charges against Blaine in connection with four separate rapes, far fewer than police believed he’d committed. Reed told me Blaine was…
Reed Richards: …very candid and very willing to talk about what he’d done. Uh, he talked about the fact that, uh, after he’d commit these, these rapes he’d actually hide close by because he wanted to watch all the action.
Dave Cawley: Blaine even admitted he’d followed the news coverage of Cary Hartmann’s arrest almost a year earlier and realized if he’d stopped attacking women then, no one would look for him.
Blaine returned to court two weeks later. Several of the women he’d attacked were there, too. One lunged at him as he walked down the hallway in handcuffs. Defense attorney John Caine told reporters that day Blaine had wanted to clean his soul, even for crimes Ogden police didn’t know about.
John Caine (from April 27, 1988 KSL TV archive): He told the officers not only about, uh, incidents here in Weber County, but also down in Iron County, Box Elder County, uh, states of Arizona and Wyoming. And he wanted to make a complete, clean breast of everything.
Dave Cawley: Blaine pleaded guilty to the charges prosecutor Reed Richards had filed against him.
Reed Richards (from April 27, 1988 KSL TV archive): He’s pled to 13 first-degree felonies. Uh, nine of those carry a minimum-mandatory prison term. Uh, you can’t really get much more than that out of a person. You can only do so much time in prison.
Dave Cawley: In exchange for the guilty pleas, Reed agreed not to file about 60 additional counts for other rapes he believed Blaine had committed.
Larry Lewis (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Blaine Nelson told state prosecutors, the judge and victims today he’s willing to die if it would undo the pain he’s inflicted.
Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): If God would take my life and erase from the minds of the victims what they went through, I would die.
Dave Cawley: KSL TV reporter Larry Lewis covered Blaine Nelson’s case, just as he had with the other Ogden City Rapist, his friend, Cary Hartmann.
Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): I feel good. I feel that I should do what they sentence me with for what I’ve done.
Dave Cawley: Blaine granted Larry a one-on-one interview following his sentencing.
Larry Lewis (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Nelson says his addiction to cocaine and pain pills drove him to burglarize homes looking for more drugs, and then rape the women who lived there. Nelson hopes by speaking out, he can help others from making the mistakes he made.
Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): Drugs do make you do things that you’re not aware of. They make your mind yield to temptations or Satan.
Dave Cawley: Blaine had committed so many rapes, investigators doubted even he could keep them all straight. It suddenly made sense why young, single women in Ogden had lived in such in fear during the mid-’80s. Blaine Nelson’s tearful confession on television couldn’t atone for the terror he’d dealt to an entire generation of women. Every creak or groan in an otherwise quiet house at night might really have been the work of the Ogden City Rapist.
But for Cary Hartmann, the admissions of Blaine Nelson were a godsend. He found in Blaine a perfect patsy, a scapegoat upon whom he could place all the blame for his crimes. Cary again wrote his old friend, the district attorney’s special investigator, Steve Bartlett, to insist he’d been framed.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): I did not do the crimes that I am here for, no way in hell! You have the option of believing the media and the police or me.
Dave Cawley: Bartlett chose not to believe Cary.
Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from April 17, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): Yes, there have been other attacks and rapes and the suspects have been similar to you. The fact remains that you have been convicted based on evidence introduced. But there is a ton more of evidence that the judge and jury never got to know about.
Dave Cawley: And, Bartlett brought up the matter of Sheree Warren. With everything that’d come out about Cary’s abusive, manipulative treatment of women — before, during, and after the time he’d dated Sheree — how could he not be responsible for her disappearance?
Aaron Mason (as Steve Bartlett from April 17, 1988 letter to Cary Hartmann): I also feel you are withholding what you really know about Sheree. Friends don’t lie to friends, remember?
Dave Cawley: But Cary held fast to his denial.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from May 18, 1988 letter to Steve Bartlett): This is the truth: I have absolutely no knowledge of Sheree’s whereabouts, nor do I have any knowledge of what happened to her. That is the truth.
Dave Cawley: I don’t know if Cary Hartmann ever truly loved Sheree Warren. They’d only dated for around six months. And Cary’d proposed marriage to his next girlfriend, Shauna Hall, within about a year of Sheree’s disappearance. But his jailhouse wedding to Shauna in early 1988 imploded almost immediately. Prison records show Shauna sent Cary a “dear John” letter after only a few months of their union. I can’t find a court record for a divorce, which means their marriage was probably annulled. There are only a few reasons under Utah law that could’ve happened. One would’ve been if Shauna’s prior marriage wasn’t fully ended by the time she swore vows to Cary.
In any case, in May of ’88, the Utah Department of Corrections moved Cary from the Sanpete County Jail to another facility, 150 miles away, in Iron County. This put an end to his visits with Shauna. Cary wasn’t the only Ogden City Rapist to land in the Iron County Correctional Facility that summer. Blaine Nelson headed there, too, after his sentencing in Ogden.
Blaine Nelson (from May 11, 1988 KSL TV archive): All this is off my chest now. I can, uh, basically try to go forward. I know, y’know, 30 years is the rest of my life.
Dave Cawley: Blaine was at that time facing additional charges in Iron County, where he’d admitted to attacking several women. A judge there sentenced him that August, adding 35 years to Blaine’s sentence. It meant Blaine would likely never live another day as a free man. Blaine and Cary crossed paths while they were both in the Iron County jail that summer.
Reed Richards: But of course once they’re down at prison together and talking, who knows what they come up with.
Dave Cawley: Former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards received a letter from Blaine soon afterward, in which Blaine claimed to’ve committed the two rapes for which Cary was serving time.
Reed Richards: Then you’ve got the question of “well which one of ‘em was it?”
Dave Cawley: Blaine wrote other letters, to other lawyers, asking them to get involved, to help clear Cary Hartmann. But Reed wasn’t buying it, in part because Blaine didn’t have B-type blood.
Reed Richards: So I don’t know how that happened to be there if it was him that did it.
Dave Cawley: Remember, Cary had B-type blood and the crime lab had found B-type blood in the forensic evidence from the case he’d gone to trial on, but not the others.
Reed Richards: Well and I don’t know that we still know which ones he did and which ones Nelson did.
Dave Cawley: Reed suspected Cary and Blaine had cut some kind of deal.
Reed Richards: And, and there was some thought, talk of a third person, too.
Dave Cawley: Yes, there was third serial rapist active in Ogden during this same period. His name was Jerry Casida.
Reed Richards: So you got three people and I don’t know that any of us know exactly which ones which did. Because once the reports are in the paper, they can give you quite a lot of detail just from what they’ve read in the paper, I suppose.
Dave Cawley: In the spring of ’89, Cary collected sworn affidavits from three people who each claimed to have at different times and in different places heard Blaine Nelson admitting to Cary’s crimes. Two of those witnesses were inmates. But the third was a clergy member for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who taught religion to inmates. That church leader even wrote a letter to the Utah Attorney General’s Office. He wrote “Blaine’s comments … have caused me to believe that there is some doubt as to Cary’s guilt or innocence.” If Cary Hartmann could convince enough people to share that same doubt, it might be enough to overturn his conviction.
Cary sat for an interview with a social worker in November of ’88, about a year into his sentence. He wanted in to a sex offender therapy program. I have a copy of the social worker’s notes. She wrote Cary was “above average” in intellectual functioning. The notes include direct quotations from Cary. He talked about his dad…
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): He’s a wonderful man and our relationship was excellent. He has great wisdom. He was not always the best listener. He didn’t really support me, he was too busy being right. He’s a dictator, emperor, king of the Hartmann family.
Dave Cawley: …and Cary talked his mom…
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): Mom only hears what she wants to hear. She is naive and unattached. She is warm-hearted and emotional, but she is extremely critical. She was insecure with dad because of his dominance.
Dave Cawley: Cary was the oldest of four kids in his family. He said he was closest to his baby sister Sheila, hadn’t talked to his brother Jack in at least a year, and had a strained relationship with his sister Jill.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): More than anything, I enjoy spending time with my two sons.
Dave Cawley: She asked Cary to list positive attributes about himself. He said he was “articulate” and “honest.” She then asked for some negatives. Cary said he could be moody, was bad at handling money and lacked a sense of self-worth. When it came to Cary’s sexual habits, Cary grew circumspect.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 3, 1988 therapist’s notes): I found out about and tried masturbation at age 14. I found out from some cousins. I first found out about sex at 15 from some kids at school.
Dave Cawley: He wouldn’t say what he thought about sex, what his parents thought about it, or what his friends thought about it. The social worker wrote Cary insisted on his innocence of any rape or sexual assault. He only wanted in the sex offender therapy program for help with his habit of making obscene phone calls. He refused to answer any of her questions about the specifics of the charges that’d put him in prison.
Cary was admitted to the therapy program. It required Cary to write an autobiography. He sometimes read portions of it aloud during group sessions. The social worker wrote Cary one time recited a “very detailed account of the disappearance of his girlfriend.” To my frustration, she didn’t write specifically what Cary said about it. But her notes also say Cary admitted to holding back some of the detail, because he didn’t trust his fellow inmates.
In a follow-up report a few months later, the social worker wrote Cary worked very hard to “control the anger that seems to be brewing inside.” That anger manifested when Cary talked about why he was in prison. He said he was innocent and called the jury that’d convicted him “incompetent.”
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 28, 1989 therapy report): Two old ladies on the jury slept through the trial.
Dave Cawley: And he made sexist remarks about the women he’d attacked.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from April 28, 1989 therapy report): The victims were there testifying and looking very virginal in dress an manner.
Dave Cawley: But he had a plan to win back his freedom. His conviction was on appeal to the Utah Supreme Court. Cary’s appeal didn’t argue factual innocence. It didn’t say he hadn’t raped Caroline. Instead, his lawyer argued Cary’d been over-charged and over-sentenced, because he’d only threatened to blow Caroline’s children’s heads off. He hadn’t actually put a gun to their heads.
The justices of the Utah Supreme Court were unmoved. They rejected Cary’s appeal in a unanimous decision issued in November of 1989. Cary seemed to take the setback in stride. A few days later, he wrote a letter to Roy police detective Jack Bell.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): Dear Jack, I’ll bet you are surprised to hear from me, so I’ll get to the point. How are you coming on Sheree’s disappearance? Have you once even thought about contacting “Unsolved Mysteries” about the case?
Dave Cawley: Unsolved Mysteries was a network TV series that aired during the ’80s and ‘90s. It was a blend of true-crime re-enactments and paranormal malarkey. Actor Robert Stack hosted.
Robert Stack (from Unsolved Mysteries): Join me. You may be able to help solve a mystery.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): I want to find her as badly as you do, so give it a try! I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance Jack, you know that.
Dave Cawley: Cary almost seemed to mock Jack in this letter, taunting him over the failed search for Sheree.
Jack Bell: That’s what the letter meant to me: more manipulation.
Dave Cawley: But Cary didn’t write just to needle Jack. He wanted his old high school classmate to know he was about to play the card he’d tucked up his sleeve. It had to do with an emerging science: DNA.
John Greene (as Cary Hartmann from November 19, 1989 letter to Jack Bell): I am not guilty of the charges I am here for. I think you realize that also and I am about to prove it.
