Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann sat in shackles before Don Blanchard, a member of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Are you ready to go ahead with this hearing today?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I am.
Dave Cawley: That is Cary’s actual voice.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do need to place you under oath. I realize the restraints make it so you’re unable to raise your right hand. I will still administer the oath and expect you to accept that. Do you affirm your testimony to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do.
Dave Cawley: It was March 28th, 2000, nearly 15 years since the disappearance of Cary’s girlfriend, Sheree Warren, and eight years since his first appearance before the parole board. Back then, Cary’d denied having committed the rape that’d sent him to prison.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Initially, there appeared to be feigned memory loss, problems in recalling events and what’d transpired that evolved into years of full denial that absolutely nothing had occurred, no sexual assaults whatsoever.
Dave Cawley: Now, with the prospect of parole on the horizon in just a couple of years, Cary was ready to take responsibility.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You think your victims enjoyed the sexual contact?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Absolutely not.
Dave Cawley: Don read an account of the crime into the record.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): When, when she awoke you were in the apartment, were turning off the TV, approached her, told her to be quiet, that you had a gun.
Dave Cawley: I won’t share the graphic details. The important part is this: Cary, at long last and under oath, said it was all true.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Is that a correct summary of what happened in that particular incident?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, it is.
Dave Cawley: Cary had by that point served twelve-and-a-half years on his 15-to-life sentence. He had to do at least 15, but if the parole board believed he was sincere, they could let him out after that.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Reports suggest that there was a number of other sexual assaults that were carried out by you of a similar nature. Is that accurate?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, I, I committed that rape and (pause) it’s disgusting and terrible but I didn’t commit any more.
Dave Cawley: Cary’s a bit tough to hear in this audio, but what he said was “I committed that rape and it’s disgusting and terrible but I didn’t commit any more.”
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Well, what about the other rape you pled guilty to?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): That was one that was, I was charged with four and that was drawn out of a hat, quite frankly, and if I pled to it they were going to drop the rest of them and I did this on the advice of my attorney. He said “Cary, I don’t think your mom and dad can live through any more trials” and they were ready to go to trial on the other three. And he said “it’s time to use your head instead of your heart.”
Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d only pleaded guilty to the second charge on the advice of his attorney, to spare his mom and dad the stress of another trial.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I said “I’ll follow your advice—”
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re asking this board to believe that you pled guilty to a, an additional first-degree felony, clearly aggravating your sentence in your jurisdiction, just because your attorney thought it was a good idea? Not because you committed any other offenses?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes, he told me I was going down for a long time. He told me I was going down for life. And he told me “five years with an additional rape won’t make a difference in your case.”
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): It does make a difference. And your honesty and credibility makes a difference, too.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I understand.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): And—
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I absolutely—
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): —it’s seriously suspect at this hearing today.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes.
Dave Cawley: Parole board member Don Blanchard wasn’t having any of Cary Hartmann’s denials. He wanted full accountability.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’ll ask you one more time: were there any other sexual assaults that you committed?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I pled to that one, sir, because I did.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were there any other sexual assaults that you committed?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, there were not.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Inside of relationships or outside of relationships?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, there were. In relationships I had, I used a forceful hand. I was, I was abusive.
Dave Cawley: It’s been awhile since we talked about Cary Hartmann’s two marriages and the physical abuse his ex-wives described enduring. Cary waving it off as just “a forceful hand” undersells it. But Don was at a disadvantage here. The pre-sentence report provided to the parole board after Cary’s rape conviction covered only that single case. Ogden police reports relating to the other rapes Cary was suspected of committing were supposed to be in the parole boards files, but weren’t.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I know there were some police reports available on those matters but they weren’t in our file.
Dave Cawley: I’m not sure if the Ogden police reports never made it to the parole board, or if the board had misplaced them over the years. Whatever the case, Don hadn’t read them. And that meant Don wasn’t able to challenge Cary on the specifics of those other assaults.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Tell me how you feel about the impact your behavior’s had on victims in your case.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’m disgusted by it. I am so sorry for the pain and the suffering and the humiliation I’ve caused my victims, their families and my families. This didn’t come to bear on me for a long time. I accept absolute, full responsibility for my actions.
Dave Cawley: Cary said his actions were “deplorable and disgusting,” that he felt sorry for the suffering he’d caused his victims and his own family. He said he’d been in ISAT for 10 years. ISAT was sex offender therapy. He’d not been in that program for 10 years. Not even close. As described in the last couple episodes, Cary’d been twice booted from therapy over his behavior.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’ve made mistakes, I’d admit them and I’ve grown from them and moved on. I was a taker.
Dave Cawley: Cary said he’d been a “taker” most of his life and had put on a ruse of being a good person while abusing people. Now, he said that was disgusting. But he said he’d made great strides.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I think I’ve made, made great strides lately and when I mean lately, I mean the last, the last years. I’ve done well in, in schooling and, and I think I’ve shown that I can learn and I think I’ve shown that I can move on.
Dave Cawley: Cary had presented the board with a stack of positive letters from relatives, friends and clergy. He said he had job offers and housing at the ready if he were to be released. He would return to Ogden, he said, and complete outpatient sex offender therapy there. He just needed a stamp of approval from the parole board.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Do you also acknowledge, Mr. Hartmann, that you’re a master manipulator?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do, sir.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You acknowledge that you’re trying to manipulate this board?
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Into believing me, yes sir. I do. I’m, I’m telling you from the heart and I guess that’s a form of manipulation. It’s good manipulation.
Dave Cawley: This is Cold, season 3, episode 7: Purgatory From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann had told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole he’d committed one rape, and only only. Board member Don Blanchard hadn’t believed him.
Don Blanchard (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): You absolutely are not here on one single, you are not being dealt with on one single sexual assault.
Cary Hartmann (from March 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Dave Cawley: But Don hadn’t known the full story. In episode five, we talked about how Reed Richards, the prosecutor in Cary’s case had told the three other women Cary’d been charged with assaulting their stories would be available to the parole board even if they didn’t go to trial.
Reed Richards: All of that case material and all the reports and so forth went down to the Board of Pardons.
Dave Cawley: But as I said a bit ago, the Ogden police reports relating to those other three cases weren’t in the parole board’s files. They’d probably just been misplaced in the eight years since Cary’s first parole board hearing in 1992. But what matters is, Don realized they were missing. He told Cary the board needed to find and review those reports before making a decision about whether Cary deserved to get out of prison.
Don tracked the missing reports down in the weeks that followed. He read about Cary’s lingerie survey phone calls and all the women who’d come forward after his arrest to report having been assaulted by Cary. Don realized he needed to talk to Cary again.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Hello.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Hi.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re mister Cary Hartmann?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I am.
Dave Cawley: Cary was serving his time at the Iron County Correctional Facility, a jail in a town called Cedar City, almost 300 miles south of Ogden. Most parole board hearings occurred at Utah’s two state prisons. But the board occasionally held hearings elsewhere, like at a jail called Purgatory a little ways farther south of Cedar City. So that’s where Cary once again went before Don Blanchard on July 28th, 2000.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, Mr. Hartmann, you understand why this hearing’s being reopened today?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, yes sir, I received a letter and the packet.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Ok.
Dave Cawley: For Cary to land back in front of Don just four months after their last meeting wasn’t normal.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I’m concerned about the totality of your behavior and how many victims there have been—
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —and whether or not review of those reports, you suggested not being able to recall a lot of things. In fact, in these reports back when the officers were dealing with you in the late ‘80s, you uh, suggested struggling with your memory and having difficulties recalling things and, and you would remember little pieces of information—
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —it’s clear from the acknowledgements you made in these reports … you would only go so far in those acknowledgements and recollections and descriptions.
Dave Cawley: The Ogden police reports spanned hundreds of pages. I know because I’ve read them. They paint a far broader picture of Cary’s suspected activities during the ‘80s than even I’ve described in this podcast. Don’d provided copies of those same reports to Cary.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’ve had a chance now to read through those. What did that do to your recollection and your memory about this period in your life?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): It brought it back in stark reality. It brought it back and I, I read over them and through them three or four times. … I was shocked at my behavior but reminiscent of a person that was out of control.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Do you acknowledge additional sexual assaults—
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I certainly do.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —besides the one rape that you admitted to at the last hearing?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Dave Cawley: A remarkable and sudden improvement in Cary’s memory.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): How many sexual assaults do you estimate you’ve, uh, committed?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): When I read through those, the, the four victims that I had, I recollected those and I read through them and read through them and read through them and there was much of that that I recognized. Umm, I’m not, umm, I own those. I’m responsible totally, absolutely, uh, and I accept responsibility for that.
Dave Cawley: Four victims. Cary had gone from admitting none, to one, to four. Exactly the number for which he’d been charged. No more. And he’d given up trying to blame those crimes on the other serial rapist, Blaine Nelson, who we heard from in the last episode. Don asked Cary about one of the other names contained in the police reports — not one of the four rape victims.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No, I don’t, that, that wasn’t one of them. That I recall.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): She was one that you, uh, made contact with through the lingerie surveys, subsequently she agreed to meet you for a drink. She didn’t describe a full, she didn’t describe a rape but she certainly described a sexual assault.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I do remember that, yes sir.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were you aggressive with her—
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, I was.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): —and did that unfold as she described it?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir, absolutely.
Dave Cawley: There were others. Like a woman named Jean. I’m not using her last name out of concern for her privacy.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): There’s, uh, one incident that dates back to ’84 where a divorcee … found your wallet out in the ditch bank outside of her house.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I did read that.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Were you, had you been stalking her and watching her?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No sir, I don’t have any recollection of that whatsoever. I lost my, my wallet once at the Deseret Gym and it was stolen once and I don’t have any idea how it appeared there.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): She, she described repeated incidents of having prowlers, hearing noises, seeing someone outside … Eventually she goes out to the ditch bank. She finds your wallet with your ID in it. She calls the police, gives them your name, tells them she has the wallet. Probably even told them that she suspected you were prowling. Remarkably, the police never come and pick up the wallet from her. Years later, all of these sexual assaults are coming out. She goes to the drawer where she’s discarded that wallet, gets it out and turns it over to the police.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I read that.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Was she going to be a victim?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): No, absolutely not. I, I just didn’t do that. I just wasn’t there. I just wasn’t involved in that, sir.
Dave Cawley: Don remained unconvinced Cary was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I believe your memory was just as clear on those sexual assaults when I was talking with you in March and you denied ‘em as it is today.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): And that you admit absolutely only what is documented by records and that there are probably other victims and other sexual assaults that you … recall very well, which are not documented in the records. Uh, it appears that your life probably for the decade of the ‘80s, was almost consumed by orientation, interest in sex and sexual activity and that was what drove your existence.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): You’re absolutely right. You are absolutely right, sir.
Dave Cawley: But Cary said he was a different man now, that he felt regret every single day for what he’d done. He said he was committed to working in therapy to overcome his insecurities. But even there, he found himself tangled, because sex offender therapy was no longer available where Cary was living. The Utah Department of Corrections only offered sex offender therapy at the state’s prison. It’d contracted with third-party providers to make therapy available at a few county jails, but contract at Iron County had expired. That meant if Cary wanted therapy, he’d need to move to one of those other jails or the prison. He’d told Don during their earlier meeting he couldn’t do that without putting his own life at risk.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I stayed in Iron County for protection.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): What kind of protection reasons do you have?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Being an ex-police officer, I stayed where I was that for those reasons.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Well, Mr. Hartmann, do you really think you really have those kinds of problems?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Uh, I have in the past. I have in the past.
Dave Cawley: Cary’s excuse of staying put for protection wasn’t going to fly if he ever hoped to get a shot at parole. Don said he’d have to complete therapy.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): All of your prior sex offender therapy and prior therapy up to now, if I understand correctly, it’s dealt with your admitting to one victim. Is that right?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Primarily, yes sir.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): In my mind, that whole process has to start all over again.
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Understand.
Dave Cawley: Cary’s hopes must have dimmed in that moment.
Don Blanchard (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): Anything else you wish to say before this hearing’s closed today?
Cary Hartmann (from July 28, 2000 parole board recording): I appreciate the board’s indulgence and I, I thank you.
Dave Cawley: In the weeks that followed, the parole board members voted to keep Cary incarcerated. They said he couldn’t get out until he disclosed all his victims. Listening back to these recordings from more than 20 years ago, I noticed something. In neither did anyone bring up the name Sheree Warren. A few episodes back, we met Ogden police detective Shane Minor. He’d played a part in the search for the serial rapists who’d terrorized women across Ogden in the mid-‘80s. That’s when he’d first met Cary Hartmann.
Shane Minor: We got a lot, quite a few calls once Cary Hartmann was arrested.
Dave Cawley: Some of those calls were tips from people who told Ogden police Cary might’ve killed his girlfriend, Sheree Warren. Shane had never met Sheree himself, but he’d taken up her cold case years later, in 1998.
Shane Minor: Kinda started a, a new investigation or started all over with it.
Dave Cawley: Shane’d spent the better part of two years trying to track down witnesses, especially people who’d known Sheree.
Shane Minor: I’d started putting down names and then I’d work on those when I had time, try to locate addresses.
Dave Cawley: Progress came slowly.
Shane Minor: A lot of the interviews would be in the evening.
Dave Cawley: And off the clock.
Shane Minor: No one’s gonna sign off on the overtime if it’s not an active case that you’re working, so. (laughs)
Dave Cawley: Still, Shane’d felt driven to do the work. The Sheree Warren case felt like a sliver under Shane’s skin. The irritation of the unresolved mystery irked him any time brushed against it. He wouldn’t feel right until the sliver came out, until he’d solved the case. So, Shane kept picking away at it.
Shane Minor: It was very time-consuming.
Dave Cawley: He believed someone must have the missing piece that could lead him to Sheree’s remains. But the passage of time complicated that.
Shane Minor: 14, 15 years go by and you just start to forget.
Dave Cawley: In 2000, Shane left Ogden PD to take a position as investigator for the Weber County Attorney’s Office. He remained a cop, but worked on behalf of prosecutors, making sure their cases were air-tight. And he took the Sheree Warren case with him. Shane’s notes mention a phone call he received that summer from Don Blanchard, the parole board member you’ve just been hearing. Don called Shane after talking to Cary, because Don wanted to know more about Cary’s “girlfriend.” Shane realized the board wasn’t seeing the complete picture. It didn’t know what he, Jack Bell and other detectives had learned about Cary Hartmann’s possible role in the disappearance of Sheree Warren.
Shane Minor: And looking at all the information we had, there was a lot of information that was never provided.
Dave Cawley: “Never provided” because Cary hadn’t been charged with a crime related to Sheree’s disappearance. In the eyes of the parole board, Cary’s crime was sexual assault, not murder. And even when it came to the sexual assault…
Shane Minor: …every chance he had, he denied doing anything. He was wrongly convicted, he’d never done anything and so that was his take on it and then later on he finally started to admit what he was convicted of but he didn’t admit to anything else, other than that information he knew he could’ve been charged with.
Dave Cawley: Shane suspected Cary Hartmann had killed Sheree Warren. But suspicion wasn’t enough. He needed to prove it. The simplest way would be to get Cary to confess.
Shane Minor: But he was already looking at life sentences on what he’d already done.
Dave Cawley: Cary had no incentive to admit to killing Sheree, if he’d done it, so Shane couldn’t count on a confession. The next best proof would be to find Sheree’s remains. Perhaps in a place Cary’d visited in the days after Sheree’s disappearance: the mountain behind Causey Reservoir.
Shane Minor: But that’s such a vast area that you describe.
Dave Cawley: Shane thought he had more time. Don told Shane it’d be a few years yet, but Cary would go before the board again. If he’d completed his therapy by then, he’d likely win parole. Don said if all else failed, Shane could ask the parole board to hold what’s known as an evidentiary hearing. That’s a formal meeting focused on evidence. Any evidence, not just about the rape cases. Shane could then tell the board members anything he’d learned that might tie Cary Hartmann to Sheree Warren’s disappearance.
Shane wanted to keep Cary incarcerated as long as possible, both to protect the public and to buy more time for his investigation. He believed Cary still harbored secrets about Sheree Warren, but he was running out of options on how to get answers.
For investigator Shane Minor, the prospect of Cary Hartmann winning parole added a ticking clock to his search for the remains of Sheree Warren.
Shane Minor: All the problems along the way of just sitting down and working on this and staying focused on this.
Dave Cawley: He knew if he didn’t push for answers about what’d happened to Sheree, no one would. Shane had talked to Roy police captain Jack Bell about his May, 1987 conversation with an elk hunting guide named Fred Johns.
Shane Minor: Ok so, who was Fred Johns?
Dave Cawley: I’ve mentioned Fred a few times before. He’s the guy who’d reported seeing Cary on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir the Sunday after Sheree disappeared.
Shane Minor: I knew Fred Johns from the Ogden area.
Dave Cawley: Fred had a reputation as a pool hustler and a gambler. Shane’d heard Fred was prickly about police. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he tracked Fred down in April of 2001.
Shane Minor: Fred was living up in Mountain Green and, and [I] went up and talked to him about the statement he’d made to Bell about seeing Hartmann in early October of 1985 just to lock that down for the report.
Dave Cawley: Fred died in 2019, so you’re not going to hear from him in this podcast. What I tell you next comes from Shane’s formal report and his own personal recollection of their conversation.
Shane Minor: He basically went through that same story that he went through with Bell.
Dave Cawley: That story went like this: on the Sunday following Sheree’s disappearance, Fred was on the ridge between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs. Think back to our percent sign: Causey in the upper left, Lost Creek in the lower right and a mountain between them. Midway between the two reservoirs on top of the mountain is where Fred Johns said he saw Cary Hartmann.
Shane Minor: And recalled seeing him that first week in October. I believe it was the first week of the, uh, elk hunt.
Dave Cawley: The land belonged to a family of sheepherders named the Wildes, and it was some of the best elk hunting ground in the western United States.
Shane Minor: Wilde’s was the people’s last name that owned the property that leased the hunting rights to Johns.
Dave Cawley: In other words, Fred Johns paid the Wildes for exclusive access to their property during the elk hunting season. Fred would then turn around market his services as a guide. If hunters wanted to bag an elk on the Wilde property, they had to first pay their dues to Fred. Or trespass and risk having an armed and irate Fred Johns chase them off the mountain. Fred jealously guarded the Wilde property during the hunt. He would spend those weeks in September and October living out of a shack on the mountaintop.
Shane Minor: He would charge people to come in, he ran like an outfitters up there and do these guided hunts up on that property.
Dave Cawley: Fred also parked an RV a few miles from his shack. On the opening weekend of the ’85 elk hunt, Fred was driving the dirt road between the shack and the RV when he noticed something: tracks in the dirt he hadn’t seen the night before.
Shane Minor: Then he ran across Hartmann and somebody that he thought was his brother up there.
Dave Cawley: Cary Hartmann with his pickup truck, a pair of three-wheel ATVs and another man, on the mountain just four days after Sheree Warren’s disappearance. Cary only had the one brother: Jack Hartmann. Jack’d stood in the police line-up with Cary before the rape trial, along with their look-alike cousin, David Hartmann. This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. Fred knew Cary.
Shane Minor: He knew Hartmann from high school I believe, and I think he even told me that they lived together for a short period of time, so he knew Cary Hartmann.
Dave Cawley: Way back in episode 1, I mentioned how Fred’d kicked Cary out of his house after Cary came on to Fred’s wife in the mid-‘70s. Fred didn’t deny that bit of bad blood when he talked to Shane Minor. But it didn’t seem like reason enough for Fred to fabricate this sighting of Cary on the mountain.
Shane Minor: Told me how he’d seen him in the afternoon.
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): That to me would seem pretty suspicious.
Shane Minor: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Fred told Shane he’d stopped, stepped out of his truck and asked Cary what he was doing there. Cary’d allegedly said he’d gone down off the ridge to the north, toward Causey Reservoir, looking for elk. Fred’d been skeptical of this because, as I said, he’d driven by that same spot earlier and had not seen Cary’s truck there. Fred told Shane precisely where the sighting had happened.
Shane Minor: How he referred to it was the Righthand Fork of the Guildersleeve Canyon.
Dave Cawley: The spot Fred described was at a clearing, where the dirt road passed by heads of two canyons: one to the north, the other to the south. Shane wanted to see it for himself but he couldn’t just drive up onto that property without permission. It was privately owned, deep in the mountains and protected by gates.
Shane Minor: After I talked with, uh, Fred I asked him if he would take me up and show me exactly where it was he seen ‘em and he agreed to do that. So it was some time later when the, uh, snow allowed.
Dave Cawley: The ridge Fred described sits at just over 8,000 feet above sea level. Winter drapes that mountain with deep snow every year. Some years, the snow might thaw by the end of April.
Shane Minor: But you’re usually going into the end of May or June before you can get up there and access a lot of that area.
Dave Cawley: That’s how it was in the spring of 2001. Shane wasn’t able to go up with Fred until the end of May.
Shane Minor: He took me up where he had access to the property right there by Lost Creek.
Dave Cawley: Remember, this was more than 20 years ago. Shane didn’t have a GPS unit to track the journey. He had to rely on a more primitive technology: the odometer.
Shane Minor: I kind of identified it off of mileage.
Dave Cawley: I’ve compared Shane’s mileage notes against maps and confirmed the precise spot of the Fred Johns sighting. The route Shane took to get there is probably not the same one Cary Hartmann would’ve used on that Sunday in October of ’85, if Fred Johns’ information was correct. There are several other ways to get up onto that ridge, including from Causey Estates. Cary had at least three friends who property in Causey Estates. And remember, in episode 4, Cary’s friend Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, told us he’d loaned Cary his key to the gate at Causey Estates that fall.
Shane Minor: And even that Lost Creek area, which I think Lost Creek there’s two or three different places that you could have access.
Dave Cawley: I know it’s difficult to picture this without seeing it on a map, but Causey and Lost Creek are on opposite sides of the mountain. Again, they’re the two circles in the percent sign. Cary could’ve potentially gained access from either side.
Shane Minor: Could’ve gotten around the gate and gotten onto that property, could’ve accessed it.
Dave Cawley: There’s a dirt road that crosses over the mountain, connecting the two reservoirs. And it’s on that road Fred Johns said he saw Cary. But between the two reservoirs…
Shane Minor: …you got thousands and thousands of acres up there.
Dave Cawley: It’s the kind of place where, if you had enough time and determination, you might hide a body and expect no one would ever find it. That’s why Shane needed to go to the precise spot where Fred Johns said he’d seen Cary Hartmann.
Shane Minor: He showed me the area where he was backed in at and where he’d talked to him.
Dave Cawley: The ridge at that spot is only a hundred or so feet wide, with canyons falling away on either side. Shane poked around, hoping to stumble upon something that might convince the parole board Cary Hartmann was guilty of more than just sexual assault.
Shane Minor: We’d heard that uh, parole was coming up and there was a lot of information I got thinking about it.
Dave Cawley: Like, the forensics of human decomposition. The tissues that make up a human body break down after death. The speed of that breakdown depends on the climate, whether the body’s buried and so on. Eventually a body will reduce to nothing but bones and those bones will come apart, a process called disarticulation. So Shane didn’t expect to find Sheree Warren’s complete body, or even her skeleton. He knew if Sheree’d been left on the mountain, after more than 15 years he’d be lucky to find even a few small scattered bone fragments. But then, maybe he didn’t need Sheree’s body itself. Something as simple as her earrings or necklace might suffice. And those wouldn’t decompose. Shane also knew Sheree’s purse had never been found.
And of course, there remained the question of the two coats. Cary Hartmann had repeatedly said Sheree had left his apartment on the morning of her disappearance wearing his black parka. Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, believed Sheree’d left her house that morning wearing a gray suede jacket. Police’d found the gray suede jacket in Cary’s apartment. So if Shane were to find Cary’s black parka on the mountain, it might suggest Cary’d wrapped Sheree’s body in that coat before dumping her there.
But luck didn’t shine on Shane that day. No bones, no necklace, no parka. He didn’t find anything. Shane Minor wasn’t the type to give up easily. He decided to call in the cadaver dog cavalry.
Shane Minor: Made arrangements with a, uh, Wally Hendricks, who was with Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office.
Dave Cawley: Wally Hendricks was at the time the top search dog cop in the state of Utah.
Shane Minor: He’d had some success on finding some, uh, bodies so I’d contacted him.
Dave Cawley: Wally mustered up seven dogs and handlers, all of whom drove to meet Shane early one Saturday morning in June of 2001. Their trucks rattled up the route Fred Johns had shown Shane. The back of Shane’s truck was packed with enough soda, chips and sandwiches to feed a Little League team. But instead of aluminum bats and leather baseball gloves, the coolers were flanked by shovels and mesh screens. Shane came prepared to sift for bone fragments if the dogs caught whiff of a gravesite.
Shane Minor: We hit that hillside with, with the dogs just to see if we could kick anything up but again that was, 15 years, 16 years after-the-fact.
Dave Cawley: Shane didn’t dare hope. He stood by and watched as the dogs worked down from the ridge.
Shane Minor: They kept going, so I think we went off the top and went down into that canyon and they went quite a ways down in the canyon and did a pretty diligent search. I felt bad because they’re volunteers and they’re doing this on their own just trying to help out. But uh, we put a good day’s worth of work up there with those dogs.
Dave Cawley: But once again, Shane came up empty. Sheree Warren wasn’t within a stone’s throw of the spot on that mountain ridge. I’ve had the opportunity to observe a few different cadaver dog searches in my time as a journalist. Nowadays, both dogs and their handlers wear GPS tracking devices when they search. This allows investigators to come back later and verify the precise locations checked, and see any gaps in the coverage. There are no GPS tracks like that for this cadaver dog search of the spot on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek. And that’s a problem now, 20-plus years later, as I try piece together exactly where the dogs went.
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): Would that have been down into Guildersleeve?
Shane Minor: I believe so.
Dave Cawley: If the dogs only searched to the south, into Guildersleeve, they might’ve missed the mark. The canyon to the north is called Pete Nelson Hollow. I’ve talked about it before. Pete Nelson Hollow’s where that lost hunter from the 1940s, Rudolph Bertagnole, wandered down through a snowstorm and ultimately died. Bertagnole’s bones had remained there 43 years before being found. Cary Hartmann could’ve traveled into Pete Nelson Hollow on his 3-wheeler. And if so, a cadaver dog search down the opposite direction into Guildersleeve, would’ve been pointless.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: I’m standing on the tarmac at the Morgan County Airport, south and east of Ogden on the back side of the Wasatch Mountains. It’s late September of 2021 and wildfires across the western U.S. have filled the air with smoke. A motor engages behind me…
(Sound of motor, cable winding onto drum and door lifting)
Dave Cawley: …lifting a hangar door to reveal a collection of single-engine airplanes. One of them, a little white-and-blue two-seater with a bubble canopy, belongs to my dad. I’ve been coming up to this airfield in the town of Mountain Green since I was a kid. My dad always seemed to know everyone here.
Richard Cawley: How are ya?
Lisa: You getting ready to go fly?
Richard Cawley: Yeah.
Lisa: Good. It’s beautiful up there. And the colors are gorgeous.
Dave Cawley: Through the haze, I can make out a blast of red and gold draped across eastern slopes of the Wasatch Mountains. Autumn leaves are at their prime. But we’re not out to admire the scenery today. We’re on a mission to take a look at the canyons behind Causey Reservoir.
Richard Cawley: Have you met my son Dave, Lisa?
Lisa: I don’t, probably when you were a lot smaller.
Dave Cawley (to Lisa): Yeah, yeah.
Lisa: (Laughs) So yeah, have a good time and—
Richard Cawley: We’ll do that.
Lisa: —I, you are doing awesome with your reporting stuff. Really, yeah.
Dave Cawley: We roll the plane out of the hangar and fire up the engine.
Richard Cawley: Clear prop!
(Sound of propeller engine starting)
Dave Cawley: The idea of inspecting the land around Causey from the air isn’t mine. I stole it from retired investigator Shane Minor.
Dave Cawley (to Shane Minor): You don’t like flying so much from what I understand.
Shane Minor: No, nope, nope. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: But Shane took to the air 18-and-a-half years on from Sheree Warren’s disappearance — and three years following the failed cadaver dog search — still hoping he might find some sign of her on the mountain behind Causey Reservoir. On the morning of May 24th, 2004 , Shane and a fellow investigator named Rob Carpenter, along with a state trooper named Stan Olsen, took off in the Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter.
Shane Minor: It was a very pleasant flight. The uh, the pilot did a wonderful job, was great guy but too small of planes for me. Or helicopters. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: They headed east, following the South Fork of the Ogden River. They crossed over top of the Meadows Campground, the place Cary Hartmann had tried to meet Heidi Posnien way back in 1971. Then, the chopper crossed over Causey Dam. It banked to the right.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Ok, this is the road we want to follow right here, right?
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes, I believe so.
Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, this is Causey Estates up here.
Dave Cawley: A video camera recorded the flight as the chopper followed the dirt road south from the dam into Skull Crack Canyon, over the gate that blocks the way into Causey Estates.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, you call it, this is Causey Estates up here, that’s what that’s called?
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes it’s uh, private land owners that have it.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Pretty.
Dave Cawley: The chopper climbed, following the slope of the mountain.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): This would’ve been the road I think he had access to, so I mean, there’s unlimited places where he could’ve dumped her along here.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Hard to think like a bandit, y’know. Would you’ve, would you’ve picked a characteristic turn or rock or tree or something to, as a landmark?
Dave Cawley: Shane snapped photos out the window as the helicopter crested the top of the mountain south of Causey. It turned east, crossing over Box Spring, the place where the taxidermist Brent Morgan had had his wedding in 1984, a year before Sheree Warren disappeared. The chopper followed a dirt road that snaked along the top of a ridge. It approached the place where Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had said he’d seen Cary Hartmann.
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): It’s gotta be, uh, right up along this road here, about a mile. Right around in here.
Dave Cawley: The place Fred said Cary’d taken his 3-wheelers the Sunday after Sheree Warren disappeared.
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Hey Rob, does this look about it, right over here off to the right?
Dave Cawley: Picking out a specific place from the air can prove really difficult.
Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): And where would we have have gotten the dogs out? That’s uh, that’s my question.
Dave Cawley: But after a moment of confusion, Shane recognized the spot.
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yeah, I think this is it right here off to the right.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): That little clearing there?
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Yes. He backed in by that piece of snow right there. That’s where he was seen at and then he took off and went back out the same way we came up and wasn’t seen again.
Dave Cawley: Investigator Rob Carpenter had also been there on the day of the cadaver dog search.
Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): When we came up here with those dogs, there was elk sign everywhere on this drainage right here.
Dave Cawley: They weren’t expecting to find Sheree Warren’s body on this flight, because scattered bones would be all that remained after so many years. Those would be too small to see. Instead, they were documenting the various routes someone could’ve used to reach the site on the ridge back in October of ’85.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Could you get in from that Croydon side without a key?
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): No, it’s gated off on that road that goes up to Lost Creek.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Oh, ok.
Dave Cawley: Nowadays, you can do a lot of this kind of work using high-resolution aerial imagery, available for free on the internet. But when it comes to investigations, there’s no replacement for putting your own eyes on a place.
Shane Minor: So we got it documented, it was a smooth day. It was just, I mean it was a great flight.
Dave Cawley: And hovering in a helicopter over a remote mountain forest…
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): There’s some elk down there.
Dave Cawley: …does bring some fringe benefits.
Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Boy those elk disappeared real quick.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Didn’t like the heli-chopter, huh?
Shane Minor: I think the pilot knew that I was a little nervous about it so he, he went out of his way to, make it comfortable.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Now Shane, be honest, you ok?
Rob Carpenter (from May 24, 2004 police recording): He’s fine.
Stan Olsen (from May 24, 2004 police recording): He’s taking pictures of the elk. (Laughs) Boy, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em. Look at ‘em all down there.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Oh yeah. Beautiful country up here. Wow.
Dave Cawley: Beautiful and practically impossible to search.
Shane Minor: Just because of the, the amount of land up there.
Dave Cawley: Thousands upon thousands of acres, incised with canyons and cliffs, choked with thick brush, known to only a select group of herders and hunters. Much of Utah’s mountain land is National Forest, open to the public. But this mountain between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs is private, mostly owned by two neighboring ranches: Deseret Land and Livestock and what was formally known as Basin Land and Livestock. Hunting those ranches today is a pay-to-play experience, limited to just a handful of weeks each year. Someone can’t just go exploring for a body up there on a whim.
When Shane had taken cadaver dogs on that mountain, they’d centered their search at the site pinpointed by their witness: the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns.
Shane Minor: I was putting a lot of faith in those dogs and if something had been dumped, hoping that it wouldn’t be too far down in and if we were in the right location and if we come up with a bone or something.
Shane Minor (from May 24, 2004 police recording): We hit this whole side of the hill here a couple hundred yards in both directions and worked down towards the bottom of this, y’know to what would be kinda logical to drag a body, uh, just hoping to hit a bone or something but never came up with nothing. After he was seen though, he could’ve drove back out and dumped her anyplace.
Kent Harrison (from May 24, 2004 police recording): Anyplace. Yeah, moved her or whatever.
Dave Cawley: A bit earlier I mentioned not knowing where exactly those cadaver dogs went. Shane’s description here of a couple hundred yards suggests they didn’t go far. But again, when Fred Johns first told detective Jack Bell about seeing Cary Hartmann at that spot the weekend after Sheree Warren disappeared, Fred said Cary’d had been loading up his three-wheelers.
Three-wheeled ATVs were all the rage during the ‘70s and ‘80s. They were especially popular among hunters, who could use them to pull their kills out of the woods. A mule deer and a human can weigh about the same. So, it stands to reason, if a 3-wheeler can pull a deer out of the brush, it might also be capable of moving a human into it.
Shane Minor: If you got off that dirt road and used some type of an SUV to get down in those canyons, be like worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, unless you knew exactly where that was.
Dave Cawley: Pete Nelson Hollow, the canyon that drops to the north from the spot on the ridge, runs three miles before reaching the Right Fork South Fork Ogden River behind Causey Reservoir. It’d be tough to get a 3-wheeler all the way down there. But taking a body even a quarter-mile or so off the dirt road would significantly decrease the chance of anyone stumbling across it.
Shane Minor: Unless you’re right on the, right on top of it, I think it’s gonna be real easy to miss.
Dave Cawley: Shane’s helicopter flight in 2004 had achieved what he’d set out to do. He’d photographed the points of interest on our percent sign: Causey Reservoir, the cabins of Causey Estates, the dirt road running the slash of the percent sign over the mountain top, and Lost Creek Reservoir on the far side.
(Sound of single-engine plane flying overhead)
I wanted to go one step further. That’s why I asked my dad to take me up in his plane, all these years later. I wanted to not only see the landscape for myself, but also ask if I were trying to hide a body in this corner of the world, where and how exactly would I do it?
I’ve flown over this landscape now three times: once in KSL’s helicopter, Chopper 5, and twice with my dad.
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Oh, there’s Causey Estates.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yep.
Dave Cawley: Flying over that mountain is about the only way to put eyes on the area without driving, hiking or horse-packing across miles of rugged, privately-owned mountainside.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): This road we’re crossing over—
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yep.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —would be the one that he would’ve used.
Dave Cawley: I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit studying maps and aerial images of the Causey area, trying to memorize the landmarks, working out possible routes for a 3-wheeler. Thinking about where someone might’ve dropped a body.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Ok, so that’s the spot right, we just flew right over top of where they said he was parked—
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): ‘Kay.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): —so he would’ve gone potentially down the canyon to the left. So if we, could we circle around here?
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Uh huh, right here.
Dave Cawley: The upper reaches of Pete Nelson Hollow are covered in stands of quaking aspen that explode like fireworks during the fall.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Ah, that’s remarkably pretty.
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Yeah, yeah.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): There are a couple of springs right up top here. And one of the things I noticed looking at the topographic map is there was a, at one point a little ATV road that went down to those springs.
Dave Cawley: There’s a path that cuts through the trees, leading into the upper reaches of Pete Nelson Hollow, about a quarter mile from where Fred Johns reported seeing Cary Hartmann.
Dave Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): I’m curious if you could get a, uh, three-wheeler down there. I’m thinking you definitely could.
Richard Cawley (from October 2, 2021 flight): Oh yeah, yeah.
Dave Cawley: I came away from these flights believing it’s plausible Cary Hartmann could’ve hidden Sheree Warren’s body on that mountain behind Causey Reservoir. And I believe Shane Minor’s cadaver dog search more than 20 years ago probably missed the mark by sticking too close to the road.
The evidence suggests Cary Hartmann could’ve used an ATV — a 3-wheeler — to move Sheree’s body to a concealed spot on that mountain, just far enough out the cadaver dogs couldn’t find it. But any good hypothesis deserves to be challenged by experiment. Which means before our season’s done, I’ll need a 3-wheeler and access to the mountain behind Causey.
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole scheduled Cary Hartmann for a rehearing on September 20th of 2005. It’d been five years since the back-to-back hearings you heard at the start of this episode, where Cary’d bombed his chance to take accountability. During those five years, investigator Shane Minor had expended a lot of effort but made little progress in his search for the remains of Sheree Warren.
Shane knew the information available to the board didn’t include the circumstantial evidence linking Cary to Sheree’s disappearance.
Shane Minor: It was just the individual rape cases and that was it.
Dave Cawley: Because again, Cary hadn’t been charged with a crime connected to Sheree’s disappearance, let alone convicted of one.
Shane Minor: And we have this information that would indicate he’s done a lot more than what he’s been charged with, and it’s stuff he’s never come clean with.
Dave Cawley: Cary had cleared the significant hurdle of serving 15 years on his 15-to-life sentence. He stood a good chance of at last winning parole. Reed Richards, the prosecutor who’d put Cary in prison, told me he’d anticipated Cary would only serve the minimum: 15 years.
Reed Richards: In fact that was the time where they had mandatory incarceration and mandatory length of stays. Uh, and so that was very unpopular with the prison, of course, that you had to mandate how long they stay. And so they generally would look at that minimum time and that’s when they cut people loose.
Dave Cawley: Cary had done enough time to qualify for release, unless the parole board decided it had good reason to keep him in. Under Utah law, the parole board wields broad authority. The board has the ability to consider more than just the crime that sent a person to prison when deciding how long that person should remain in custody. Shane believed the parole board had a blind spot in Cary Hartmann’s case.
Shane Minor: There’s just a lot of information that started to come out that I felt maybe the board should be aware of that.
Dave Cawley: With five days to go before Cary’s rehearing, Shane Minor sat at his computer and started to type.
“I have hesitated writing this letter,” he began, “because I know there is nothing you can do. But at the same time, I feel compelled to at least provide you with information concerning Cary Hartmann.”
Shane went on to summarize the story of Sheree’s disappearance. He explained his role in the Ogden City Rapist investigation back in the ‘80s. He described how publicity of Cary’s arrest in that case had led to a flood of tips, including some about Sheree. But, he wrote, Cary was by that time in custody, represented by counsel, and unavailable for questioning.
Shane Minor: He never answered any questions about his relationship with Sheree when asked about it. He only volunteered what he wanted Jack Bell to hear at the time she disappeared and that was it.
Dave Cawley: Shane wrote about how he and detective Chris Zimmerman had dropped in on Cary at the Sanpete County Jail following his conviction, in the hopes of asking him about Sheree.
Shane Minor: Zimmerman and I went down in ’88 after he’d gone to prison, uh, just to see if he’d talk to us about that and he wouldn’t talk to us. Got up and walked out of the room.
Dave Cawley: He explained how over the course of nearly 20 years, investigators had talked to multiple jailhouse informants who’d claimed to have heard Cary making incriminating statements. But none of it had ever led them to a body.
“The investigation is continuing at a slow pace,” he wrote. He stopped short of asking the board to take any specific action, but concluded by saying “I felt this is information that you … should be aware of.”
He signed his name at the bottom and sent the letter to Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Shane Minor’s letter found its way into the hands of a man named Kent Jones.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): My name is Kent Jones. I work as a hearing officer with the Board of Pardons.
Dave Cawley: Kent conducted Cary Hartmann’s 2005 rehearing at the Central Utah Correctional Facility, a state prison located in the town of Gunnison.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think this is the first time you’ve been in front of a hearing officer but it’s basically the same as if it was a board member.
Dave Cawley: They went through the formalities.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, I have your prison number as 18553, correct?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay. Cary, I’m going to be reviewing, kind of the life and times of Cary Hartmann in a few minutes and then I’d like you to respond to some of the questions that I have, to some of the statements that I’m going to read. So I need to place you under oath. If you would, raise your right hand and I’ll swear you in.
Dave Cawley: Kent summarized the crimes for which Cary’d been charged and asked if Cary admitted to them. Cary said he did. Kent gave Cary an opportunity to make a statement. Cary used the time to talk about how out of control he’d been in the years before his arrest. He said it’d started with financial problems and a sense of pride that’d kept him from asking his father for help.
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): The more I strived…
Dave Cawley: “The more I strived to put my finances together,” he said, “the deeper in the hole I got.”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): So I used pornography.
Dave Cawley: “I used pornography and masturbation to try and climb out of a hole… to make myself feel better…”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): It didn’t work.
Dave Cawley: “It didn’t work.” From there, he said he’d tried to regain control by seeking out “lonely and vulnerable women.”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I stalked ‘em…
Dave Cawley: “I stalked them…”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …I broke into their homes. I followed them…
Dave Cawley: “…I broke into their homes. I followed them…”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …and I sexually assaulted them.
Dave Cawley: “…and I sexually assaulted them.”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How did you meet these women?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Sometimes I saw them in a club…
Dave Cawley: “Sometimes I saw them in a dance club or a private club and followed them home.” Kent noted this candor was a significant change, since Cary had for so long insisted on his innocence.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, why have you waited nearly 20 years to talk about this? Are, are you getting tired of the time? Uh, is, are you just coming to grips with some things? Why did you put on the facade for so many years when your, when your mom and dad were struggling to protect you? Uh, even religious people would swear to their deaths that you were innocent. Uh, is it just kinda coming to a head now?”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I, I lived in such denial…
Dave Cawley: “I lived in such denial, I thought I couldn’t be a bad person and I couldn’t do this and I convinced people and I manipulated them and coerced them into believing.”
Cary said that’d changed once he’d decided to approach treatment with an “earnest heart” after his last parole hearing. He’d left Iron County, where he’d lived for more than a decade, and transferred to another jail in far-flung San Juan County. The move had allowed him to once again enter sex offender therapy. He still had eight months to go in the program, but he said he was on track to graduate.
His disciplinary record had improved. No more pornography. No more dirty audio tapes. He was working as head cook in the jail’s cafeteria. If granted release, he said, he would move back in with his parents, who were by then 80 years old, and get a plumbing job in Ogden. Kent expressed some hesitation with that plan.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I guess I’m concerned about the long history of sexual deviance, even prior to when you’re arrest, wasn’t there some indication you was doing some telephone, uh, obscene stuff years and years before that?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir, I was. I was involved in making…
Dave Cawley: “I was involved in making unsolicited phone calls at random. I called up women and made sexual comments and sexual innuendos over the phone.”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How did you come up with those names?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Uh, just at random in the phone book.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): In a phone book?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.
Dave Cawley: Kent pointed out other troubling details from Cary’s records.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): According to here you may have been doing a lot of wife swapping? On one of your honeymoons you brought a prostitute to the room to have her do a threesome? On another occasion, uh, when you was in San Diego area, you brought a young marine to have him have sex with your wife while you watched?
Dave Cawley: Cary didn’t deny the allegations made by his ex-wives, for the most part.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You like violence while having sex.
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I wasn’t a, I wasn’t a violent person but I was, I was a violent person.
Dave Cawley: “I wasn’t a violent person but I was, I was a violent person.”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I was abusive…
Dave Cawley: “I was abusive and I hit them and I’d slap them and I’d push them…”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): …but I wasn’t a violent person during sex.
Dave Cawley: “…but I wasn’t a violent person during sex.”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Well it’s kind of, kind of interesting that you’re saying you’re not violent and then you just tell me that you are hitting ‘em now that, that’s violent, isn’t it?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir. But I wasn’t a sexually violent person…
Dave Cawley: “I wasn’t a sexually violent person but I was abusive, yes sir, absolutely.” Cary’d admitted to entering women’s homes and forcing them into sex by threat of violence. He’d admitted to physically battering his wives. But if we’re to believe him here, he was a gentle lover. Kent didn’t let that slide.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): So, could you consider some of your ex-wives as being victims?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Absolutely.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.
Dave Cawley: Kent rattled off the names of Cary’s ex-wives and former girlfriends, asking one-by-one about the details of what he’d done to them.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you put a .357 to her head and try to have her have sex with, uh, your friend?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I remember having a gun in the drawer and bringing it out and waving it around. I don’t remember putting it to her head.
Dave Cawley: “I don’t remember putting it to her head…”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): If she said if that’s what happened, that’s what happened.
Dave Cawley: “…if she said that’s what happened, that’s what happened.” Cary at one point tried to dodge one of these questions by saying…
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think anyone that was involved…
Dave Cawley: “…I think anyone that was involved with me when I was in my sexual deviancy is a victim.” And although no one said it then, I’ll point out Sheree Warren was involved with Cary Hartmann during his “sexual deviancy.”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): How ‘bout a woman by the name of Jean? Have you ever heard her name before?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I haven’t.
Dave Cawley: That’s not true. Jean’s name had come up during Cary’s prior board hearing in 2000, the hearing you heard at the start of this episode.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think she’d reported that she saw a prowler outside her window. She went out and found your wallet by the window. Do you recall losing a wallet when you was doing some window peeking years ago?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I do, sir.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Do you know who you was watching?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): No sir, I do not.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I think her name was Jean.
Dave Cawley: It’s small detail in the grand scheme of this story, but in that earlier recording you heard Cary insist he’d lost his wallet at the gym, saying he had no idea how it’d ended up outside Jean’s house. So either he’d been lying then, or he was lying now.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): What I’m trying to do, Cary, is I think that there’s a lot of other victims there that you hadn’t previously disclosed. Did you see where I’m, I’m fishing, what I’m trying to do?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Absolutely.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Aren’t there others there? You’re, you’re an intelligent guy, I think you got 121 IQ. Uh, you’re not dumb. You’re brilliant guy. It just seems to me, Cary, you’re not really being honest with me.
Dave Cawley: Cary pushed back, saying he hadn’t before considered his ex-wives as victims but everything else he’d disclosed in therapy. He had no other victims to report. Kent had one other name to ask about.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I come up with another name when I’m researching this, and I can’t retry your case, I’m not a prosecutor, but I want full understanding of everything. So, I was in contact with a Weber County official because I wanted to figure out this one name: Sheree.
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Yes sir.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): And I guess I’m, I’m a little concerned about that. That was a girlfriend of yours in 1985. She disappeared and has never been seen since. They think you have somehow been involved with some foul play with her disappearance. At the time, they sought your help and you tried to look for her and it wasn’t until after your arrest, I think, in ’86 or ’87 that they started thinking that maybe you were connected with it. Many years later, they ask ya but you adamantly denied talking to, or didn’t want to talk to ‘em and you walked out of an interview. And I guess I’m concerned about that, Cary. I just wonder as to whether or not she’s dead somewhere and you had anything to do with her death or her disappearance and I would imagine that officials might be looking at this to reopen it as a cold case murder investigation to see if you’re somehow involved with it. Are you willing to talk some of the law enforcement officials about her disappearance?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Oh absolutely. I had nothing to do with it.
Dave Cawley: “I had nothing to do with it.”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you, did you have an argument with her—
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): No—
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): —on the night she disappeared?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): —absolutely not. She disappeared from Salt Lake City and I was in Ogden.
Dave Cawley: “She disappeared from Salt Lake City and I was in Ogden.”
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I was surrounded by people the whole time…
Dave Cawley: “I was surrounded by people the whole time, morning and night, until I reported it.” Interesting Cary said he reported Sheree missing because that’s not how it happened, at least according to detective Jack Bell’s notes. They say Sheree’s mom, Mary Sorensen, first reported her missing. Then, Jack Bell called Cary, not the other way around. It was a subtle shift in the story, but no one challenged Cary on it.
Cary told parole board hearing officer Kent Jones he just wanted a chance to be the good person he knew he could be, out in society. Kent promised the board would take it all into account.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You’ve done an enormous change from five years ago, disclosing a lot of different things that you’ve done. But I just don’t know that you’re completely honest yet. … And I would encourage you to talk to the Weber County people, if in fact they think that you are involved with her disappearance, it might be to your best to be just as honest as you possibly can with them because I get the information, uh, from this investigator that they’ve got a lot more on you than what you think. Ok?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Ok.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Good luck, Cary.
Dave Cawley: Investigator Shane Minor received a cassette tape in the mail days later.
Shane Minor: I talked with, uh, Kent Jones who was the, the hearing officer and he sent me a copy of the hearing.
Dave Cawley: Shane listened to the tape with great interest.
Shane Minor: In that hearing, Hartmann admitted to the cases he was charged with.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Did you, in fact, rape her?
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): I did, sir.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): ‘Kay.
Shane Minor: According to Hartmann, he was more than cooperative with, with law enforcement regarding Sheree Warren.
Cary Hartmann (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): My whereabouts are documented…
Dave Cawley: “My whereabouts are documented. I’m the person that reported her missing. I worked with detective Jack Bell for over a year and a half trying to look for her.”
Shane Minor: But then he would only refer to Jack Bell, his contact with Jack Bell. He forgot to mention the fact he wouldn’t talk to us about her.
Shane Minor: So Jones kind of put him on the spot and says “so you’re willing to talk with law enforcement about that?”
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): Cary, I would, I would encourage you to talk with any of the Weber County people, that uh, might come down and talk to you.
Shane Minor: And he said he would.
Dave Cawley: Cary’d had little other choice. Defying the board of pardons would likely mean serving a maximum sentence.
Kent Jones (from September 20, 2005 parole board recording): You’ve already got a life sentence on you and if you hope for any release in the future, whether it’s now or 20 years from now, my guess is it’s better that you attempt to disclose that now instead of trying to do what you’ve done in the past and lived under a cloud of deceit.
Dave Cawley: And so, 20 years after Sheree Warren’s disappearance, Cary Hartmann would finally face a formal interrogation about the night she disappeared, thanks to some pointed prodding from the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
Shane Minor: I think it was because of that is the only reason he agreed to talk with us.
Dave Cawley: Shane Minor, who’d helped finger Cary as one of the two Ogden City Rapists, had a date with a man he suspected of Sheree Warren’s murder.