Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / Danielle Houchins – Cold Case Solved

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Danielle Houchins – Cold Case Solved · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

0:07
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, fifteen year old Danielle Houchins left
0:11
Speaker 1: her Montana home for a quick solo trip to a
0:14
Speaker 1: local fishing spot, but she never came back. What began
0:19
Speaker 1: as a missing person search quickly unraveled into a decade's
0:23
Speaker 1: long mystery, one that haunted her family and the community. Then,
0:28
Speaker 1: nearly twenty eight years later, thanks to breakthroughs in new
0:32
Speaker 1: forensic science and one sister's unshakable resolve, the truth behind
0:37
Speaker 1: Danny's tragic death was finally uncovered. This is the story
0:42
Speaker 1: of a cold case turned solved. This is the story
0:46
Speaker 1: of Danielle Houchin's.
0:49
Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
0:53
Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcasting.
0:56
Speaker 1: The following body intended more Maure audience listener.
1:24
Speaker 2: Happy Friday, Happy Friday, welcome back. We uh we got
1:30
Speaker 2: all festive up in our tiny home this week.
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Speaker 1: We did. We got wreaths on the door, we got
1:35
Speaker 1: some Christmas decorations up, and even are many tiny Christmas trees.
1:39
Speaker 2: We went even smaller than usual. We did probably like
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Speaker 2: half the size of what we usually do. Yeah, so
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Speaker 2: it's teeny tiny.
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Speaker 1: We went from like a foot and a half to
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Speaker 1: like a foot. It's really teeny tiny, but we had
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Speaker 1: some from an eggnong with it when we were decorating
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Speaker 1: and everything.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good, Yeah, it was. It's been a
1:56
Speaker 2: good week. I hope that you guys have all had
1:58
Speaker 2: a good week too.
1:58
Speaker 1: I hope so. And remember like, don't don't let consumerism
2:03
Speaker 1: overtake your Christmas. That's not what it's about, right, It's
2:06
Speaker 1: about just enjoying the time and being with those people
2:09
Speaker 1: around you, even if that's hey, your dogs, get dogs.
2:13
Speaker 1: That's what we got sitting next to us, and we're
2:15
Speaker 1: going to be enjoying that time with our dogs come
2:16
Speaker 1: Christmas morning, and of course there's going to be the
2:19
Speaker 1: festivities like Christmas Morning.
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Speaker 2: The moss. It was also Spotify rap this week. It
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Speaker 2: was so that was That's always. I don't know, I
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Speaker 2: love that week. It's so cool having so many people
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Speaker 2: share just I don't know that they're in the one
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Speaker 2: percent or the ten percent or whatever. I love seeing it.
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Speaker 1: And this year is I think the first year we
2:41
Speaker 1: are unable to actually share everyone who shared their Spotify raps.
2:46
Speaker 1: There's just so many of you that are tagging us,
2:48
Speaker 1: messaging us like showcasing the Spotify raps. We got so
2:51
Speaker 1: far behind, we just we can't share them all. But
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Speaker 1: in the coming weeks we are going to be trying
2:56
Speaker 1: to make sure that we sort through and go and
2:58
Speaker 1: check out everyone who has message just and everything. So
3:00
Speaker 1: shout out to you, thank you and sorry if we
3:03
Speaker 1: were unable to share yours, but we seriously appreciate you
3:06
Speaker 1: just the same.
3:07
Speaker 2: M hm. Yeah, it was a huge year of growth
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Speaker 2: for us, which I didn't even realize, I guess to
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Speaker 2: that point. So it was really cool. It was would
3:17
Speaker 2: you say it was.
3:17
Speaker 1: Humbling, humbling, sobering. Yeah, yeah, it was nice. Yeah, made
3:22
Speaker 1: my little grinch heart swell three sizes.
3:25
Speaker 2: Oh my god, a little grinch, my.
3:27
Speaker 1: Little grinch heart.
3:29
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
3:31
Speaker 1: Well, do you want to get on with today's case
3:32
Speaker 1: or do you have anything else you want to want
3:34
Speaker 1: to discuss first?
3:35
Speaker 2: No, I think I'm excited for this case because I
3:39
Speaker 2: love it when you know it like, it's awesome when
3:42
Speaker 2: it gets solved right away, but that's not always the case.
3:46
Speaker 2: But if it eventually gets solved, that's also good.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one was nearly thirty years but they eventually
3:52
Speaker 1: they figured it out, and I'm so glad this is
3:56
Speaker 1: a smaller, smaller case, not super well known, so I'm
3:59
Speaker 1: happy to stories like that as well, especially when it
4:02
Speaker 1: comes to those victims and families who who deserve to
4:05
Speaker 1: be heard. So this is one of those stories. I
4:07
Speaker 1: have done a couple more. You know, Perpetrator highlighted stories recently,
4:12
Speaker 1: so it's nice to get back to telling those stories
4:14
Speaker 1: that need to be need to be out there more. Yes, Okay,
4:18
Speaker 1: let's get going. It was Saturday, September twenty first, nineteen
4:22
Speaker 1: ninety six. Fifteen year old Danielle or Danny Houchins asked
4:27
Speaker 1: her mom for permission to drive out to a nearby
4:29
Speaker 1: Cameron Bridge fishing access site. Now it's a popular spot
4:33
Speaker 1: along the Gallatin River just a few miles from her home.
4:37
Speaker 1: Danny was a sophomore. She was an honor student who
4:41
Speaker 1: had a big dream of becoming a biological engineer one
4:44
Speaker 1: day now. She was also very outdoorsy adventurous. She was
4:47
Speaker 1: a teen who loved hiking, rock climbing, river rafting, skiing,
4:51
Speaker 1: and listening to grunge music. She even had a playful streak,
4:55
Speaker 1: known for pulling some pranks on friends and family. In
4:59
Speaker 1: many ways, Dan he was a typical nineteen nineties teenager
5:03
Speaker 1: with her whole life still ahead of her. But on
5:05
Speaker 1: this day, Danny reportedly wanted to blow off some steam
5:09
Speaker 1: after a little argument at home, and a little solo
5:12
Speaker 1: trip to the river was how she chose to try
5:14
Speaker 1: and cool down. Her mother, Cheryl agreed and even lent
5:17
Speaker 1: Danny her watch so she could keep track of time
5:20
Speaker 1: and be back by mid afternoon. The family was expecting
5:23
Speaker 1: company around two PM, and Danny had promised to return
5:26
Speaker 1: by then. Now. She left home at around eleven am
5:29
Speaker 1: that morning, driving her pickup truck towards that Cameron Bridge.
5:33
Speaker 1: She was dressed in blue denim jeans and a gray
5:35
Speaker 1: sweatshirt and wore a knee brace on her left knee.
5:38
Speaker 1: Now that brace was due to a minor injury she'd
5:40
Speaker 1: gotten horsing around on a street dance with a few
5:43
Speaker 1: friends weeks earlier, but it didn't slower down much and
5:45
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything like extremely serious. At fifteen, Danny was
5:50
Speaker 1: an active and athletic girl who spent a lot of
5:53
Speaker 1: time outdoors, so a quick trip to a little scenic
5:55
Speaker 1: fishing spot by a bridge wasn't out of the ordinary
5:58
Speaker 1: for her or anything. She strapped on the gold elastic
6:02
Speaker 1: band watch that her mom lent her and cheerfully promised
6:04
Speaker 1: to be back in a couple hours, and with that
6:07
Speaker 1: she headed off in her truck, leaving the small town
6:09
Speaker 1: of Belgrade, Montana, in Gatlin County for the short drive
6:13
Speaker 1: to Cameron Bridge. It was just another Saturday adventure. As
6:17
Speaker 1: the clock ticked away and ticked past two pm. With
6:21
Speaker 1: guests arriving at the houch and home, Danny was nowhere
6:24
Speaker 1: to be seen. At first, her family wasn't exactly panic though.
6:28
Speaker 1: Danny was in fact of a very responsible teen and
6:30
Speaker 1: it wasn't like her to be terribly late, so perhaps
6:33
Speaker 1: she just lost track of time or whatever, and she'd be,
6:35
Speaker 1: you know, coming through the front door at any moment.
6:38
Speaker 1: But by three pm, worry began to set in, so
6:42
Speaker 1: her mother, Cheryl, decided to go to Cameron Bridge herself
6:45
Speaker 1: to check in on Danny. She brought along one of
6:47
Speaker 1: the family friends and together they drove the route that
6:50
Speaker 1: Danny would have taken, hoping to you know, maybe pass
6:52
Speaker 1: her on the way there or find her. When they arrived,
6:55
Speaker 1: still relaxing the river, not realizing what time it was,
6:59
Speaker 1: when hold into the dirt parking area at the Cameron Bridge,
7:03
Speaker 1: Cheryl immediately spotted Danny's truck. It was parked where visitors
7:07
Speaker 1: often leave their vehicles, but something was off. When they
7:10
Speaker 1: approached the truck, the doors were unlocked and Danny was
7:14
Speaker 1: nowhere in sight. Cheryl also saw Danny's belongings inside a
7:18
Speaker 1: stack of her CDs and even her father's laptop. The
7:21
Speaker 1: fact that the truck was left unlocked with these valuables
7:24
Speaker 1: inside it was very unlike her, and a prickling sense
7:27
Speaker 1: of dread began to form in Cheryl's stomach. Now it
7:31
Speaker 1: was nearby. As the search began. That on a little
7:35
Speaker 1: trail leading from the parking area towards the river, Cheryl
7:37
Speaker 1: and her friend made an alarming discovery. They found Danny's
7:41
Speaker 1: water bottle and her keys laying on the ground. Now
7:46
Speaker 1: Cheryl knew that her daughter wouldn't just abandon her keys
7:49
Speaker 1: in water like that and wander off the trail. Something
7:51
Speaker 1: seemed to clearly be wrong. They continued searching the area,
7:55
Speaker 1: calling out Danny's name, hoping for a response. For an
7:59
Speaker 1: exp of what's going on now. The Cameron Bridge site
8:03
Speaker 1: spans a mix of open fields brush patches of wood
8:07
Speaker 1: near the river, and there's footpaths, boat launches, and river
8:10
Speaker 1: banks all over, plenty of ground to cover, and as
8:13
Speaker 1: minutes ticked by with no trace of Danny, their search
8:15
Speaker 1: became increasingly frantic. For two hours, they scoured the vicinity
8:22
Speaker 1: with growing desperation as they went, and by five PM,
8:26
Speaker 1: with daylight starting to wane and an ominous feeling that
8:29
Speaker 1: you know, they might not be able to find her
8:31
Speaker 1: on their own, Cheryl made the decision to call the
8:34
Speaker 1: authorities for help. Once she contacted the Gatland County Sheriff's office,
8:39
Speaker 1: search efforts ramped up quickly. Sheriff deputies arrived at the
8:43
Speaker 1: Cameron Bridge site, and soon Gatland County Search and Rescue
8:46
Speaker 1: teams and local volunteers joined the hunt. The community mobilized fast.
8:52
Speaker 1: This was a small Montana town and a missing local
8:55
Speaker 1: teenager prompted immediate concern. Volunteers who knew the train came
8:59
Speaker 1: to help, and sheriff personnel coordinated the whole search in
9:03
Speaker 1: the wooded area, the marshy area, around the river, all
9:06
Speaker 1: of it. They're doing their best to try and find
9:08
Speaker 1: this missing teenager. As the following afternoon turned to evening,
9:13
Speaker 1: searchers spread out along the river's edge, through stands of
9:17
Speaker 1: trees and into the tall grasses of the marshland. But
9:20
Speaker 1: as the sun dipped low, the conditions grew challenging. The
9:25
Speaker 1: bridges area also includes swampy overgrown sections. It's all along
9:29
Speaker 1: the river's edge, and losing daylight might be dangerous to
9:32
Speaker 1: continue trudging through that difficult terrain, and after hours of
9:35
Speaker 1: fruitless searching, the organized effort was reluctantly called off for
9:39
Speaker 1: the night once darkness fell, with plans to resume at
9:42
Speaker 1: first light.
9:43
Speaker 2: It does seem like it's a pretty tough area to search, Hey,
9:46
Speaker 2: it is.
9:47
Speaker 1: Once you get you know, along river's edge, you get
9:50
Speaker 1: you know, cut banks, you get drop offs, you get water,
9:52
Speaker 1: you get swampy areas, you get trees, it's all of this.
9:57
Speaker 1: So if you don't have light, don't have footing, someone
10:00
Speaker 1: could even fall in the river. And yeah, I don't
10:02
Speaker 1: know how fast this river is flowing or how deep
10:04
Speaker 1: or anything, but potentially it could mean you know, another
10:06
Speaker 1: person being taken.
10:07
Speaker 2: Off another search outretch.
10:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, So regardless, it's just a massive safety concern. So
10:16
Speaker 1: first light is when they decided to officially conduct the
10:18
Speaker 1: search once again. However, Danny's loved ones were not about
10:23
Speaker 1: to give up. Even as searchers left for the night,
10:25
Speaker 1: a few determined individuals kept looking. Amongst them were two
10:30
Speaker 1: brothers who lived nearby and knew the landscape well. One
10:34
Speaker 1: of the brothers had a son who was good friends
10:36
Speaker 1: with Danny's sister, Stephanie, which made the situation even more
10:39
Speaker 1: personal for that family. At the urging of that sun,
10:43
Speaker 1: the brothers decided to continue the search on their own
10:47
Speaker 1: that night. So armed with flashlights and an intimate knowledge
10:51
Speaker 1: of that local train, the brothers navigated the shadows and
10:54
Speaker 1: muck along the river. It was around nine thirty PM,
10:58
Speaker 1: roughly forty five minutes after they began their private search,
11:02
Speaker 1: when one of the brothers made a heartbreaking discovery. They're
11:06
Speaker 1: only about two hundred feet from where Danny's truck was parked.
11:10
Speaker 1: They spotted a figure in a very swampy, marshy patch
11:13
Speaker 1: of ground near the river's edge. The flashlight illuminated the
11:17
Speaker 1: devastating site. There was Danny Houchin's lifeless body lying face
11:23
Speaker 1: down in a shallow pool of water.
11:26
Speaker 2: The last thing you'd want to find.
11:27
Speaker 1: Real ly, the worst fear was basically concerned, Yeah confirmed
11:31
Speaker 1: in that moment. Everyone hoped to find her safe, of course, right,
11:34
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe injuries are lost, even scared for sure,
11:37
Speaker 1: but like at the very least alive.
11:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
11:40
Speaker 1: And instead, you know, you have this vibrant fifteen year
11:44
Speaker 1: old who's.
11:44
Speaker 2: Now just found lifeless.
11:47
Speaker 1: She's gone, yeah, but in this case specifically, she's half
11:50
Speaker 1: submerged and barely a foot or two of swampy water.
11:53
Speaker 1: There's mud, there's rocks and weeds all over, and she's
11:55
Speaker 1: just face down. The scene was eerie, something straight out
12:00
Speaker 1: of a nightmare. And now Danny was still fully clothed
12:04
Speaker 1: in the same jeans and sweatshirt that she'd worn that day,
12:06
Speaker 1: but something was very wrong with how she was positioned.
12:09
Speaker 1: It looked as if she might have been dragged into
12:11
Speaker 1: this spot. One of her shoes, which was reportedly a sandal,
12:15
Speaker 1: was missing from her foot, but it was later found
12:16
Speaker 1: not far away, as it had fallen off from a
12:19
Speaker 1: potential struggle. The watch that Danny had borrowed from her
12:22
Speaker 1: mother will. It had been pulled up part way off
12:25
Speaker 1: of her hand, as though someone might have been yanking
12:28
Speaker 1: on her arm, and the watch could have possibly slidden
12:30
Speaker 1: off part way. The brothers who found her ran right
12:34
Speaker 1: away to get help, and one of them on his
12:38
Speaker 1: way out while he coincidentally encountered Danny's father, who was
12:42
Speaker 1: also out searching that evening too, Rex Houchins, he was,
12:47
Speaker 1: you know, out there for a last last search attempt
12:51
Speaker 1: of his own, and in an agonizing exchange from one
12:54
Speaker 1: father to another, the man delivered the news no parents
12:58
Speaker 1: should ever hear was found and she was clearly dead.
13:04
Speaker 1: Detectives secured the scene in the darkness and began collecting
13:07
Speaker 1: whatever evidence they could find around Danny's body. Investigators recovered
13:11
Speaker 1: at least four strands of hair from Danny's body, hairs
13:15
Speaker 1: that did not appear to belong to her.
13:18
Speaker 2: Now.
13:18
Speaker 1: These foreign hairs were collected as evidence, preserved in hopes
13:21
Speaker 1: that they might one day help identify who had been
13:24
Speaker 1: at the scene that night with Danny. Now, there's also
13:27
Speaker 1: other critical evidence that was gathered as well. There was
13:30
Speaker 1: indication that Danny had in fact been sexually assaulted, and
13:33
Speaker 1: the exact position and state of her clothing suggested a
13:37
Speaker 1: violent struggle. For instance, Danny's bra was found pushed up
13:40
Speaker 1: from under her shirt and her underwear was a little
13:44
Speaker 1: bit disturbed as well. It was obvious something terrible had
13:48
Speaker 1: been done to her. The entire Houchin family was devastated
13:52
Speaker 1: to learn these things. A memorial service for Danny was
13:55
Speaker 1: held only a few days later, on September twenty fifth,
13:58
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, drawing over four hundred mourners who came
14:02
Speaker 1: to pay their respects to a young life cut way
14:05
Speaker 1: too short. Everyone assumed this was obviously a murder, a
14:10
Speaker 1: heinous sexual assault and killing of a teenage girl in
14:13
Speaker 1: what should have been a safe outdoor haven. However, shockingly,
14:19
Speaker 1: the early official handling of this case did not reflect
14:22
Speaker 1: the urgency and focused you would expect in a homicide investigation.
14:27
Speaker 1: In fact, within days of the body being discovered, Gatlin
14:30
Speaker 1: County authorities seemed to portray that they were not entirely
14:33
Speaker 1: sure what had even happened to Danny, even entertaining the
14:36
Speaker 1: possibility that this might be an accident instead. Now, an
14:41
Speaker 1: autopsy was performed on September twenty third, nineteen ninety six,
14:45
Speaker 1: by the Montana State Crime Lab. The medical examiner's findings, well,
14:48
Speaker 1: they were quite perplexing, and to Danny's family they were
14:52
Speaker 1: infuriating because, on one hand, the autopsy revealed clear signs
14:56
Speaker 1: of assault. Because there was muddy material quote on quote
15:00
Speaker 1: found in Danny's stomach as well as in her airway,
15:04
Speaker 1: suggesting she had inhaled an even swallowed mud and water
15:08
Speaker 1: while she was still alive. Now, this is not something
15:11
Speaker 1: that happens in a simple accidental slip and fall drowning scenario.
15:16
Speaker 1: It indicated that her face had been forced down into
15:19
Speaker 1: the marsh repeatedly or for a prolonged amount of time.
15:22
Speaker 1: And in addition, the autopsy had also noted a recent
15:26
Speaker 1: vaginal laceration, which was evidence of sexual trauma. All of
15:32
Speaker 1: these details screamed homicide to anyone who looked at them,
15:37
Speaker 1: and yet the officials well. Their conclusion from state medical
15:42
Speaker 1: examiner Gary Dale, was that danny Her cause of death
15:46
Speaker 1: was drowning, with the manner of the death being unlisted
15:48
Speaker 1: as undetermined. In other words, the forensic report did not
15:53
Speaker 1: label it a homicide nor definitively an accident. As well,
15:57
Speaker 1: it left the case open to interpretation despite the tailtale
16:01
Speaker 1: signs clearly a violence.
16:04
Speaker 2: What the hell I feel like that's someone not wanting
16:08
Speaker 2: to go the extra not even an extra mile, really
16:11
Speaker 2: like put any effort into figuring out what the hell happened?
16:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. There's a lot around this case with scrutiny
16:19
Speaker 1: towards the investigation team and officials in regards to how
16:23
Speaker 1: they handled it, because it seems like they didn't even try.
16:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't make any sense though, Why wouldn't you,
16:29
Speaker 2: Like this is a fifteen year old girl, You think
16:31
Speaker 2: that would give you all the gusto to try to
16:33
Speaker 2: get this solved.
16:34
Speaker 1: No, kidding, well, and not only that, but it's like
16:36
Speaker 1: there's there's clear signs that there's something else happening here. Yeah, okay,
16:40
Speaker 1: sure you might have say, might say she tripped and
16:42
Speaker 1: fell and face first into water, whatever, Right, but why
16:46
Speaker 1: are her keys and water bottle left on the trail?
16:49
Speaker 1: Would she trip and fall and then like go several
16:51
Speaker 1: meters off into this bush into the swampy area, like
16:54
Speaker 1: stumbling like all this way? That doesn't make any sense now.
16:58
Speaker 1: The very next day after the autotopsy, Gatlin County Sheriff
17:01
Speaker 1: Bill Slaughter spoke to the press and downplayed the likelihood
17:04
Speaker 1: of murder, citing the fact that Danny's body supposedly didn't
17:08
Speaker 1: have any obvious cuts or bruises, saying, quote, I think
17:12
Speaker 1: we've got to be prepared for the fact that this
17:14
Speaker 1: may have been an accidental drowning. Now he even speculated
17:18
Speaker 1: that perhaps Danny, who had the knee brace on, might
17:21
Speaker 1: have slipped, been unable to get up, and drowned in
17:24
Speaker 1: only a few inches of water. Just as your face shows,
17:29
Speaker 1: you're a little bit shocked. Danny's family. While they were
17:32
Speaker 1: shocked to at any suggestion that her death was accidental,
17:36
Speaker 1: the evidence of a sexual assault alone should have put
17:39
Speaker 1: the accident theory to rest. But to make things worse,
17:42
Speaker 1: Danny's parents were initially told by investigators that their daughter
17:46
Speaker 1: quote died a virgin, which was a blatant lie given
17:50
Speaker 1: the autopsy findings of vaginal injuries.
17:53
Speaker 2: What the heck? So okay, I can't imagine how frustrating
17:57
Speaker 2: or heartbreaking this is. They know something is wrong here, yeah,
18:01
Speaker 2: and no one is taking it seriously exactly.
18:04
Speaker 1: And it's not only the family who knows, because like
18:07
Speaker 1: they're close to the case, it's their daughter. The entire
18:09
Speaker 1: community is just like.
18:10
Speaker 2: What, yeah, okay, how can that person even stand up
18:15
Speaker 2: there and just say this sort of thing without feeling
18:17
Speaker 2: like a complete idiot.
18:18
Speaker 1: It almost seems like some officials, like in nineteen ninety six,
18:22
Speaker 1: were actively withholding information, or at the very least misleading
18:26
Speaker 1: the family. Maybe I don't know, Maybe they're trying to
18:28
Speaker 1: avoid like having fear strike into the community. I don't know.
18:33
Speaker 1: They maybe they didn't want to admit that a murderer
18:35
Speaker 1: was loose. I don't know. But regardless, it was either
18:38
Speaker 1: complete lack of due diligence showing nothing but ignorance, or
18:42
Speaker 1: severely in moral ways to investigate. It's one of the two.
18:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what they're doing doesn't seem quite right,
18:48
Speaker 2: because people do. I mean, I get they have to
18:51
Speaker 2: withhold some information and stuff, but if it's like a
18:54
Speaker 2: murder versus not, that's something people probably should know.
19:00
Speaker 1: Now, the family knew this was complete nonsense. The whole
19:03
Speaker 1: idea of an accidental death simply because she wore knee
19:06
Speaker 1: brace well, it's absurd, and as Danny's sister Stephanie would
19:10
Speaker 1: say years later, quote anyone who saw the details could
19:14
Speaker 1: confidently say this was a homicide. It's always been a homicide. Now.
19:21
Speaker 1: Frustration with the investigation only grew as time passed. No
19:24
Speaker 1: suspect was immediately identified in nineteen ninety six, and given
19:28
Speaker 1: the initial undetermined ruling, it seemed the case lacked the
19:32
Speaker 1: urgency of any sort of murder hunt, Sheriff Slaughter and
19:36
Speaker 1: his administration, according to later critiques, just didn't pursue with vigor.
19:41
Speaker 1: One of the first deputies on scene, Keith Farquhar, recalled
19:45
Speaker 1: feeling that his department's leadership was too quick to dismiss
19:48
Speaker 1: the death as an accident or hint at the possibility
19:51
Speaker 1: of suicide, and that it never felt like they were
19:54
Speaker 1: treating it as a full on homicide investigation.
19:57
Speaker 2: Quote.
19:58
Speaker 1: His attitude from every thing I saw was we just
20:02
Speaker 1: want this over with end quote.
20:05
Speaker 2: M that Okay, I just feel like there's something else
20:07
Speaker 2: going on here, because I feel like a young girl
20:11
Speaker 2: getting hurt is enough motivation to do almost anything if
20:16
Speaker 2: you're in that position of power. So I just feel like,
20:20
Speaker 2: what are they hiding or what's going on here? It
20:22
Speaker 2: seems like there's just more to this.
20:24
Speaker 1: But there's so many people in the world who just,
20:26
Speaker 1: you know, they just do the bare minimum to get
20:28
Speaker 1: away with their job, right.
20:29
Speaker 2: I guess. But when when it's like a this is
20:32
Speaker 2: like a life death kind of thing, you think you
20:34
Speaker 2: wouldn't be doing the.
20:35
Speaker 1: Bare minimum, but people still do.
20:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get complacent or whatever. I guess right.
20:40
Speaker 1: Complacent's a good word, and I think that's what's happening
20:42
Speaker 1: here now. This whole sentiment was also echoed by other
20:46
Speaker 1: deputies and detectives too. It wasn't just him. Cindy Botek,
20:50
Speaker 1: a Gatlin County Sheriff's detective who joined the force just
20:53
Speaker 1: days before Danny's death, later said, quote, it never appeared
20:58
Speaker 1: to be a priority. Now, that's basically for the original
21:01
Speaker 1: investigators to chase down leads on a murder case sort
21:03
Speaker 1: of thing, right. But despite these internal doubts, though official officially,
21:08
Speaker 1: the case well, it just sat stale and with no
21:10
Speaker 1: arrests and no public naming of even a person of interest,
21:14
Speaker 1: Danny's murder simply became a cold case. But that didn't
21:19
Speaker 1: mean it was forgotten, not entirely anyways. Over the years,
21:23
Speaker 1: some investigators, like Detective Bodick would circle back to the case.
21:28
Speaker 2: Now.
21:28
Speaker 1: Bodeck herself ended up picking up the file around two
21:32
Speaker 1: thousand and six when she joined the detective unit and
21:34
Speaker 1: tried to find new leads, And when she did, she
21:38
Speaker 1: found that she was stonewalled by some of the very
21:40
Speaker 1: officers who had worked the original investigation, the implication being
21:45
Speaker 1: that they didn't appreciate scrutiny on what might have been
21:48
Speaker 1: something that was mishandled, so they didn't want to be
21:50
Speaker 1: proven wrong or anything like that.
21:52
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, EGO should not be brought into this.
21:55
Speaker 1: Shouldn't be But that's exactly what she was finding. So
21:58
Speaker 1: it was very much so an op pill battle. But
22:00
Speaker 1: she made an attempt regardless though now. She eventually retired
22:04
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen without seeing Danny's case solved, and all
22:08
Speaker 1: through that time, through the late nineties and even through
22:11
Speaker 1: two thousands, the Houchin family well, they lived a very
22:14
Speaker 1: painful limbo existence. They knew Danny had been murdered, but
22:18
Speaker 1: they had no justice and worse, no answers. Yet years
22:23
Speaker 1: turned into decades. Sheriff Bill Slaughter retired in the year
22:27
Speaker 1: two thousand. Subsequent sheriffs inherited the cold case, but as
22:30
Speaker 1: I already kind of eluded, they made little headway, and
22:34
Speaker 1: the question of who killed Danny Houchins lingered quietly in
22:36
Speaker 1: the background. All the while. Stephanie Houchin's especially was deeply
22:42
Speaker 1: scarred by the loss of her sister and the lack
22:44
Speaker 1: of closure. She was only twelve years old when Danny died,
22:48
Speaker 1: and Stephanie grew up under the shadow of this trauma,
22:51
Speaker 1: involving nightmares, waking up sobbing in the middle of the night,
22:55
Speaker 1: those sort of things. Like most everyone else, she always
22:59
Speaker 1: knew it couldn't have been an accident. She knew it
23:02
Speaker 1: had to have been a murder, and by late twenty tens,
23:05
Speaker 1: over twenty years had passed since Danny's death, but Stephanie
23:09
Speaker 1: had not given up hope that her sister's killer could
23:11
Speaker 1: be found. In fact, a revolutionary development in another case
23:16
Speaker 1: would soon inspire her to urge a new approach to
23:20
Speaker 1: Danny's Colt case. It was April of twenty eighteen when
23:26
Speaker 1: true crime history was made with California authorities announcing the
23:30
Speaker 1: arrest of the infamous Golden State Killer after decades of
23:35
Speaker 1: eluding justice. And it was all thanks to a cutting
23:38
Speaker 1: edge technique known as forensic genetic genealogy.
23:43
Speaker 2: Now.
23:43
Speaker 1: This case was solved by matching crime scene DNA to
23:47
Speaker 1: distant relatives in genealogy databases places such as ancestry dot com,
23:53
Speaker 1: and it made headlines worldwide when they caught this guy.
23:58
Speaker 1: One person who was paying close attention to those headlines
24:01
Speaker 1: was Stephanie, and she wondered, if such a technique could
24:05
Speaker 1: catch a serial killer you know from the seventies or eighties,
24:08
Speaker 1: why couldn't it be applied to identify a person who
24:11
Speaker 1: murdered her sister in nineteen ninety six. So Stephanie began
24:16
Speaker 1: contacting the Gatlin County Sheriff's office repeatedly in twenty eighteen
24:20
Speaker 1: and twenty nineteen, urging them to consider using DNA genealogy
24:24
Speaker 1: for Danny's cold case. At first, she just got mild
24:28
Speaker 1: in lukewarm responses, but Stephanie did not let up. She
24:32
Speaker 1: knew there was DNA evidence from the crime scene, the
24:34
Speaker 1: strands of hair being found and possibly preserved all those years,
24:39
Speaker 1: so she was determined to see it tested with the
24:42
Speaker 1: latest methods. Her persistence coincided with some changes in the
24:47
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office, too, and that would ultimately prove to be crucial.
24:52
Speaker 1: It was twenty nineteen when a new sheriff, Captain Max Boxmeyer,
24:56
Speaker 1: took an interest in the Houchin's case. He quietly began
25:01
Speaker 1: reinvestigating the final that year. He even reached out to
25:04
Speaker 1: the Houchin's family in early twenty twenty to discuss the
25:07
Speaker 1: sensitive prospect of you know reopening the case, knowing it
25:10
Speaker 1: would mean stirring up some old pain, but the family, well,
25:13
Speaker 1: they quickly agreed they could deal with those old wounds
25:16
Speaker 1: being reopened if it meant finding the truth. However, lingering
25:21
Speaker 1: distrust in authorities left them with some hesitation, but nonetheless
25:26
Speaker 1: they were still willing to work with any officers who
25:29
Speaker 1: were genuinely committed to solving Danny's case. So now a
25:34
Speaker 1: significant turning point came. In twenty twenty one, Dan Springer,
25:39
Speaker 1: who had actually been a young deputy in the department
25:42
Speaker 1: at the time of Danny's murder, was elected as the
25:45
Speaker 1: new Gatlin County Sheriff. Springer had never forgotten the case
25:50
Speaker 1: that occurred just five days after he was sworn in
25:54
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety six, and upon becoming sheriff, Springer
25:58
Speaker 1: vowed to bring fresh eyes to this cold case, and
26:01
Speaker 1: he assembled a small team dedicated to going wherever, and
26:05
Speaker 1: I mean wherever the evidence led, no matter how much
26:08
Speaker 1: time has passed. One of Sheriff Springer's first moves was
26:13
Speaker 1: to bring in outside expertise, and by early twenty twenty three,
26:16
Speaker 1: he connected with Thomas Elfmont, a retired LAPD homicide captain,
26:21
Speaker 1: who had relocated to Montana. Now, Alfmont had decades of
26:25
Speaker 1: investigative experience and now ran a global security firm, and
26:29
Speaker 1: he was willing to lend his skills to help crack
26:31
Speaker 1: this mystery death of Danny Springer. Swore Elfmont in as
26:36
Speaker 1: a special deputy, granting him full authority to investigate this
26:39
Speaker 1: case with a fresh perspective, and together they also enlisted
26:43
Speaker 1: Sergeant Court Dupwig from Newport Beach, California, who was an
26:47
Speaker 1: expert in solving cold homicide cases with DNA technology. This
26:53
Speaker 1: new investigative team re examined everything they combed through the
26:58
Speaker 1: old case files, evidence on toops of reports, all of
27:01
Speaker 1: it uncovering in the process some shocking oversights from previous
27:06
Speaker 1: investigators and authorities. For instance, in mid twenty twenty three,
27:10
Speaker 1: while reviewing physical evidence, they discovered something that had been
27:14
Speaker 1: missed or not reported publicly for decades, which was the
27:18
Speaker 1: fact that traces of seamen were found on Danny's underwear.
27:23
Speaker 2: Are you shitting me? Yeah, but they said that she
27:27
Speaker 2: was just.
27:27
Speaker 1: A virgin and that it wasn't an assault. Yet there
27:31
Speaker 1: was sulli, Yet there was vaginal lacerations found in the autopsy,
27:35
Speaker 1: and traces of semen found on her underwear. How can
27:38
Speaker 1: that be possible?
27:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is just not okay at all.
27:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's critical evidence.
27:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is not doing your job at Like, oh okay,
27:47
Speaker 2: I'm just flabbergasted here.
27:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. And yet these people were in power and they
27:51
Speaker 1: knew they didn't do a good job because when people
27:53
Speaker 1: started questioning them later, when other sheriffs or investigators started
27:57
Speaker 1: looking at the case again, they're just like, yeah, like,
27:59
Speaker 1: fuck off, don't question us.
28:01
Speaker 2: Oh that doesn't make any sense to me. I feel like,
28:05
Speaker 2: I mean, it does happen occasionally, but gosh, if you're
28:08
Speaker 2: in that kind of position, you need to take your
28:11
Speaker 2: job seriously.
28:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's life or death for other people. And even
28:15
Speaker 1: at the very minimum, if you're not including life or death,
28:17
Speaker 1: it could mean, you know what, closure for an entire
28:20
Speaker 1: family answering a question. If you don't do your job
28:23
Speaker 1: and you just say, oh, it's an accident, now you
28:25
Speaker 1: have this whole family and the community knowing you're lying
28:28
Speaker 1: and living on fear this entire time.
28:32
Speaker 2: Well, my biggest fear is that this family knew who
28:35
Speaker 2: did it or something right, and like had a relationship
28:38
Speaker 2: with this person and it continued or something, right, So
28:41
Speaker 2: that's what I'm just sitting back like, oh gosh, I
28:43
Speaker 2: hope that's not the case.
28:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, this critical piece of evidence, as I said,
28:48
Speaker 1: the sample of semen that was found, it had somehow
28:52
Speaker 1: either been overlooked or not fully tested. Back in nineteen
28:54
Speaker 1: ninety six, it was a job dropping find a definitive
28:58
Speaker 1: confirmation of sexual assault by men predator. So in August
29:01
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three, armed with this new analysis, Sheriff
29:05
Speaker 1: Springer officially changed Danny's manner of death from undetermined to
29:09
Speaker 1: homicide once and for all.
29:12
Speaker 2: Hoof, that's a big deal.
29:14
Speaker 1: It's a big deal. Meanwhile, efforts were already underway to
29:18
Speaker 1: use the preserved DNA evidence for genealogical testing. Investigators sent
29:24
Speaker 1: the four unknown hairs found on Danny's body to a
29:27
Speaker 1: specialized lab in California known for handling degraded DNA. Now,
29:32
Speaker 1: these samples, specifically weren't hairs with roots, which contain a
29:36
Speaker 1: lot more DNA in them. They were rootless arm hairs,
29:40
Speaker 1: which typically have only trace amounts of DNA. But technology
29:46
Speaker 1: had advanced dramatically since the nineties, and the lab Arstea
29:50
Speaker 1: Forensics managed to extract enough genetic material from one of
29:54
Speaker 1: the hairs to build a partial DNA profile of the
29:58
Speaker 1: potential suspect.
30:00
Speaker 2: Okay, that's I was not thinking that it was going
30:03
Speaker 2: to be our mayor's Yeah, that blows my mind. Now.
30:06
Speaker 1: Initially, this DNA profile was run through COTIS, the FBI's
30:10
Speaker 1: Combined DNA Index system, which holds millions of DNA profiles
30:15
Speaker 1: of convicted offenders from arrestees. No match turned up, which
30:21
Speaker 1: meant the person who left those hairs had never been
30:24
Speaker 1: convicted before. So, with COTIS failing to identify anyone, the
30:29
Speaker 1: team moved on to more revolutionary approaches, the forensic genetic genealogy.
30:36
Speaker 1: So this technique that had nabbed the Golden State Killer
30:39
Speaker 1: and many others in recent years. It worked by taking
30:42
Speaker 1: DNA profile from the crime scene evidence and uploading it
30:45
Speaker 1: to commercial as ancestry databases, the one that I mentioned
30:49
Speaker 1: like ancestry dot com. Right, So this is going to
30:52
Speaker 1: find relatives of the unknown suspect. Basically, if any distant
30:57
Speaker 1: cousin or aunt or uncle, anyone who may have you
31:00
Speaker 1: know what, submitted their own DNA to a public genealogy
31:03
Speaker 1: service and they are related to the killer, they might
31:06
Speaker 1: show up as a match, maybe a second cousin, whatever,
31:09
Speaker 1: And then by finding these family matches, skilled genealogists can
31:13
Speaker 1: now build out a family tree and zero in on
31:15
Speaker 1: the suspect from there. So to tackle this complex task,
31:20
Speaker 1: the Gatlin County team turned to one of the country's
31:22
Speaker 1: best known genetic genealogists, CC Moore. Now CC was working
31:27
Speaker 1: with Parabon Nanolabs in Virginia. They had helped solve dozens
31:32
Speaker 1: of cases using this technology before and when the detailed
31:36
Speaker 1: DNA from Danny's case was passed to them, well, the
31:39
Speaker 1: painstaking research began. Months went by as CC and her
31:44
Speaker 1: colleagues analyzed the genetic profile from these armhairs and search
31:48
Speaker 1: for any notable matches in any databases. Bit by bit,
31:53
Speaker 1: they piece together a possible family tree for Danny's unknown killer.
31:57
Speaker 1: This is very time consuming work. They don't just plunk
31:59
Speaker 1: it in and just get a family tree on a
32:01
Speaker 1: website and say, oh, well, there's the killer. This often
32:05
Speaker 1: involves historical records, obituaries, public documents, and sometimes even contacting
32:10
Speaker 1: family members directly to ask about their extended family and relatives.
32:15
Speaker 1: In this case, the genetic genealogist was able to connect
32:18
Speaker 1: DNA from the crime scene to four of the suspects,
32:22
Speaker 1: the unknown suspects grandparents, so they were able to confirm
32:27
Speaker 1: whoever did the killing. These are their grandparents.
32:30
Speaker 2: Okay, WHOA. So that's freaking exciting.
32:34
Speaker 1: It is. This dramatically narrowed down the suspect pool, and
32:38
Speaker 1: before long they zeroed in on someone in this family
32:41
Speaker 1: tree of these grandparents who had a name, and his
32:44
Speaker 1: name was Paul Nathaniel Hutchinson. Now it's not it's very
32:49
Speaker 1: close to Danny's name, Danny Houchins. This is Hutchinson. It's
32:53
Speaker 1: not a relationship, right, Okay. So digging into his background,
32:57
Speaker 1: they discovered why he evaded notice for so long. In
33:00
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, Paul was a twenty seven year old
33:03
Speaker 1: graduate student at Montana State University in Bozeman. He had
33:08
Speaker 1: only recently moved to the area around the time that
33:10
Speaker 1: Danny was killed. He wasn't a known troublemaker. In fact,
33:14
Speaker 1: he had no criminal history at all. Paul went on
33:17
Speaker 1: built a quiet life, a respectable life, even, you may argue.
33:21
Speaker 1: He earned a master's degree in Fisheries and Wildlife biology
33:24
Speaker 1: and eventually took a job with the US Bureau of
33:26
Speaker 1: Land Management or BLM as a fisheries biologist. By twenty
33:31
Speaker 1: ten's he was working out of Dylan, Montana, roughly one
33:34
Speaker 1: hundred miles southeast of where Danny was killed, and he'd
33:38
Speaker 1: been working with BLM for twenty two years. Paul was
33:42
Speaker 1: also married for over two decades and had two kids,
33:45
Speaker 1: and by all outward accounts, he was a stable family
33:49
Speaker 1: man and an avid out doorsman. It was a profile
33:53
Speaker 1: that stunned investigators when they figured this out. Could this
33:57
Speaker 1: fifty five year old husband, father biologist really be the
34:01
Speaker 1: person who raped and killed a fifteen year old girl
34:04
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety six. It was hard to reconcile,
34:08
Speaker 1: and yet the science was pointing directly at him. Sheriff
34:13
Speaker 1: Springer's team gathered more intelligence on Paul. Quietly, they confirmed
34:17
Speaker 1: that in September of nineteen ninety six, he indeed lived
34:20
Speaker 1: in Bozeman for grad school, placing him in the vicinity
34:23
Speaker 1: of the crime. If he frequented outdoor spots, you know what,
34:27
Speaker 1: it's conceivable that he might have gone fishing or exploring
34:30
Speaker 1: at Cameron Bridge, where he may have randomly encountered Danny
34:33
Speaker 1: that day. Investigators theorized that this was a chance encounter,
34:39
Speaker 1: a crime of opportunity by a predator who saw young
34:42
Speaker 1: girl alone and seized the moment. Since there was no
34:45
Speaker 1: evidence that connected Danny to Paul, he didn't know her
34:48
Speaker 1: or anything. They were just complete strangers. By the summer
34:51
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four, the Gatlin County Sheriff's Office had
34:55
Speaker 1: enough confidence in the DNA and genealogical evidence. However, they
35:00
Speaker 1: based a challenge because the DNA profile from the hair
35:03
Speaker 1: technically was a partial profile and not yet confirmed with
35:07
Speaker 1: one hundred percent certainty that it was in fact Paul Hutchinson.
35:11
Speaker 1: They didn't have probable cause to just go simply arrest
35:14
Speaker 1: him or take a DNA swamp to test. What they
35:17
Speaker 1: did need, though, was DNA to test and actually compare
35:21
Speaker 1: the two to see. So legally they needed more and
35:24
Speaker 1: ideally they wanted to obtain his DNA for that direct comparison,
35:28
Speaker 1: but doing so can take time, you know, having people
35:30
Speaker 1: trail him wait around for the right opportunity of a
35:33
Speaker 1: discarded cup that he'd been drinking from, or a cigarette
35:36
Speaker 1: butt or something. So instead of waiting, they decided on
35:40
Speaker 1: a different approach. They wanted to confront him in an
35:44
Speaker 1: interview and gage his reaction. Sometimes a suspects behavior under
35:48
Speaker 1: questioning can be quite revealing, and in the best case,
35:51
Speaker 1: he might even volunteer a DNA sample or you know what,
35:54
Speaker 1: admit to his crimes. So on July twenty third, twenty
35:58
Speaker 1: twenty four, investigators made their move. They drove to Dylan, Montana,
36:02
Speaker 1: where Paul worked, to interview him. Unexpectedly, there they found
36:06
Speaker 1: Paul outside the BLM Field office unloading a pickup truck
36:10
Speaker 1: with a couple of coworkers. They approached him with badges
36:13
Speaker 1: in hand, you know saying who they are, and asked
36:15
Speaker 1: to speak with them. The effect on Paul was reportedly instantaneous,
36:21
Speaker 1: as he turned pale white immediately. Paul rarely agreed to
36:26
Speaker 1: the interview, and for nearly two hours in a conference
36:29
Speaker 1: room or an office at his workplace, the detectives questioned
36:32
Speaker 1: Paul about the events on September twenty one, nineteen ninety six. Now,
36:38
Speaker 1: they deliberately did not mention that he was under arrest,
36:41
Speaker 1: because he wasn't. This was a voluntary conversation. The goal, though,
36:45
Speaker 1: was partly to observe his demeanor and possibly prompt you
36:49
Speaker 1: a confession or at least inconsistencies in his story to
36:52
Speaker 1: strengthen their investigation. Now, Paul did not confess, but his
36:58
Speaker 1: body language spoke volumes. According to investigators, he was a
37:02
Speaker 1: wreck during the interview. He was extremely nervous start to finish,
37:07
Speaker 1: sweating profusely, biting or chewing on his hand, and repeatedly
37:10
Speaker 1: scratching on his face in an agitated manner.
37:13
Speaker 2: Well, he would never have expected.
37:15
Speaker 1: This to no, especially after this long right, so he
37:18
Speaker 1: was not prepared.
37:19
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm loving this. He should be fricking uncomfortable now.
37:23
Speaker 1: At one point, they presented him a photo of Danny,
37:28
Speaker 1: and Paul visibly slumped in his chair at the sight
37:30
Speaker 1: of this photo, as if the weight of the whole
37:32
Speaker 1: moment hit him physically. He grew even more uncomfortable and
37:37
Speaker 1: had no good explanation for anything. As the entire interview
37:40
Speaker 1: went on, the detectives noticed every little telltale sign of
37:44
Speaker 1: fear in the man now sitting before him, and by
37:46
Speaker 1: the end of the questioning they were more convinced than
37:48
Speaker 1: ever that they had the right guy. They still couldn't
37:52
Speaker 1: make an arrest, though they needed to directly match his
37:55
Speaker 1: DNA first, otherwise their case could fall apart. In court
38:00
Speaker 1: after the interview, Officers kept a very close eye on
38:03
Speaker 1: him as he drove off, and interestingly, Paul didn't just
38:07
Speaker 1: head straight home calmly. Instead, he drove his vehicle in
38:11
Speaker 1: a strange, erratic pattern, possibly even checking if he was
38:14
Speaker 1: being followed, and investigators described it as if he were
38:18
Speaker 1: performing counter surveillance maneuvers, perhaps a sign that he was
38:23
Speaker 1: paranoid about being tailed and indeed he was subtly.
38:26
Speaker 2: Being tailed well and had something to hide.
38:29
Speaker 1: Correct now. Eventually, though, he lost a police surveillance and
38:33
Speaker 1: they decided not to pursue aggressively and tip him off.
38:36
Speaker 1: You know, they were trying to keep a distance and
38:38
Speaker 1: he was able to get away. You know, they hadn't
38:41
Speaker 1: charged him with anything yet. They didn't want to be
38:43
Speaker 1: too pressuring him too much, I guess is the best
38:46
Speaker 1: way to put it. The plan now, though, was to
38:49
Speaker 1: regroup and figure out how to get a definitive DNA sample. Then,
38:54
Speaker 1: in the early predawn hours of the very next day,
38:57
Speaker 1: July twenty fourth, twenty twenty four, as detectives were now
39:01
Speaker 1: strategizing their next move, Paul Hutchinson made a decision of
39:06
Speaker 1: his own. Sometime around four am, he phoned the Beaverhead
39:11
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office, which is the local county for Dylan.
39:15
Speaker 1: He phoned from his cell phone and in a brief,
39:17
Speaker 1: odd call, he stated that he needed some assistance with
39:21
Speaker 1: his vehicle, gave a location, and then abruptly hung up.
39:27
Speaker 1: After police received the strange phone call from Paul, they
39:30
Speaker 1: were dispatched to the spot where he said he was
39:32
Speaker 1: having vehicle trouble, which was a roadside area west of Dylan.
39:38
Speaker 1: What they found there ended any hope of a traditional
39:40
Speaker 1: path to justice because they found Paul Hutchinson dead sitting
39:45
Speaker 1: in his car. He had shot himself with a thirty
39:48
Speaker 1: eight caliber pistol, ending his life in an apparent suicide.
39:53
Speaker 2: Okay, I was wondering if that was going to happen,
39:57
Speaker 2: but I just feel like, Wow, he took the ease
40:00
Speaker 2: way out there. Hey, what a complete coward.
40:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, the man who evaded responsibility for twenty eight years
40:07
Speaker 1: chose to evade it once again by taking his own life.
40:10
Speaker 1: And this happened barely ten hours after the investigators had
40:14
Speaker 1: first approached him for the interview. For the law enforcement
40:18
Speaker 1: team and for Danny's family, the news of this suicide
40:21
Speaker 1: was a gut punch of mixed emotions. On one hand,
40:24
Speaker 1: this seemed to effectively provide a kind of confirmation of guilt.
40:28
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, if this was true, then
40:31
Speaker 1: his death meant there would be no arrest, no trial,
40:35
Speaker 1: no public reckoning in a courtroom, nothing. Investigators quickly moved
40:40
Speaker 1: Paul's body into custody, and crucially, they collected DNA samples
40:45
Speaker 1: from him during post mortem procedures.
40:47
Speaker 2: I guess that's one way to get it, eh.
40:50
Speaker 1: The samples were then sent for immediate comparison to the
40:52
Speaker 1: crime scene DNA profile from Danny's case. It was a
40:56
Speaker 1: moment of truth, the one that everyone had been waiting
40:59
Speaker 1: twenty eight years four. Within days, by the end of
41:02
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty four, the results came back from the lab.
41:06
Speaker 1: The DNA was a complete match. The profile from the
41:11
Speaker 1: hair found on Danny's body match Paul Hutchinson's own DNA
41:14
Speaker 1: with essentially one hundred percent certainty. The statistical odds of
41:19
Speaker 1: it being anyone else was astronomically small.
41:23
Speaker 2: This nasty piece of shit. Hey, he was literally twenty
41:26
Speaker 2: seven years old and she was fifteen. Yeah, like what
41:30
Speaker 2: like that is just so disgusting.
41:32
Speaker 1: And then he chose to just run away from it all.
41:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.
41:35
Speaker 1: Not only that, but he's also leaving behind his wife
41:37
Speaker 1: and children in the wake.
41:39
Speaker 2: Well, and the fact that he got to live these
41:41
Speaker 2: extra twenty eight years is just it's that just sucks.
41:45
Speaker 1: I agree. But ultimately this means Danny's killer was in
41:49
Speaker 1: fact identified. It was bittersweet. They had solved the case
41:52
Speaker 1: and kept their promise to never give up finding the
41:54
Speaker 1: truth for Danny. Yet the suicide meant the case would be,
41:58
Speaker 1: you know what, closed in a way no one idea
42:00
Speaker 1: he wanted. There'd be no opportunity to possibly get more
42:03
Speaker 1: information out of Paul, to ask why he did it,
42:05
Speaker 1: whether he stocked Danny or it. Truly was a spur
42:08
Speaker 1: the moment attack. You know, whether he'd done similar crimes before.
42:12
Speaker 2: Or after, Yeah, because that was pretty brutal, you can
42:16
Speaker 2: only expect he did other things.
42:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, So all those answers just died with them. Now,
42:21
Speaker 1: investigators didn't know if that Paul had no prior criminal
42:24
Speaker 1: record and was not linked to other cases using the
42:27
Speaker 1: genealogy testing. Still, given his extreme actions, authorities in Montana
42:33
Speaker 1: quietly began looking into other unsolved cases in the region
42:36
Speaker 1: to see if he might be connected, especially any assaults
42:39
Speaker 1: or murders near where he lived over the years. As
42:42
Speaker 1: of now, he has not been tied to any other crimes,
42:44
Speaker 1: but that possibility remains open. On August eighth, twenty twenty four,
42:50
Speaker 1: at the Gatlin County Sheriff's office held a press conference
42:53
Speaker 1: that Danny's family had waited for twenty eight years. Flanked
42:56
Speaker 1: by photos of Danny and aided by the diligent team
42:59
Speaker 1: that cracked the case, Sheriff Dan Springer announced to the
43:02
Speaker 1: world that the nineteen ninety six murder of Danielle Danny
43:06
Speaker 1: Houchins had been solved and that the killer was identified
43:10
Speaker 1: as Paul Nathaniel Hutchinson, who was fifty five years old.
43:15
Speaker 1: He was a man who tragically would never face justice
43:18
Speaker 1: in court because he had taken his own life shortly
43:20
Speaker 1: after being identified. And standing besides the sheriff when he
43:23
Speaker 1: announced all this was Stephanie Houchins or now Stephanie Mullett,
43:29
Speaker 1: Danny's sister, who was thirty nine years old. Stephanie had
43:33
Speaker 1: been the driving force from the family side, never letting
43:37
Speaker 1: authorities forget Danny's case, and when it was her turn
43:40
Speaker 1: to speak, Stephanie delivered a very powerful and emotionally charged
43:44
Speaker 1: statement on behalf of her family and her long lost sister.
43:48
Speaker 1: In her speech, she vividly described what happened to Danny,
43:51
Speaker 1: how this man had raped her and then held her
43:54
Speaker 1: down in the marsh until she choked on mud and died.
43:58
Speaker 1: She also spoke about Paul's suicide and didn't hold back, saying, quote,
44:02
Speaker 1: when the time came to face up and account for
44:04
Speaker 1: his violence, he instead chose to end his life. He
44:09
Speaker 1: knew of his guilt and couldn't face my family or
44:12
Speaker 1: his family and the pain he caused. End quote. In
44:17
Speaker 1: those words, she labeled him as a coward, without using
44:20
Speaker 1: the word itself, a man who literally ran from justice
44:23
Speaker 1: in the final hour. Importantly, though, Stephanie did not shy
44:28
Speaker 1: away from criticizing how the case was handled back in
44:31
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six either. She recounted the many ways that
44:34
Speaker 1: the system failed her sister and her family. She reminded
44:37
Speaker 1: everyone that the evidence of the homicide had always been there.
44:41
Speaker 1: There was, in fact, bruising on the back of Danny's
44:43
Speaker 1: neck indicating that she was forced down, the mud found
44:46
Speaker 1: in her stomach, the state of her clothing, the hair
44:48
Speaker 1: samples found the seaman that was recovered from her underwear,
44:52
Speaker 1: Yet those in charge in nineteen ninety six chose to
44:55
Speaker 1: label the death as undetermined and even lie to her
44:59
Speaker 1: parents about the sexual assault. She also revealed that some
45:03
Speaker 1: evidence had been mishandled or lost over the years, such
45:06
Speaker 1: as the seamen that was never mentioned. Such as the
45:09
Speaker 1: very watch that her mother lent Danny that day, the
45:12
Speaker 1: crime lab reportedly somehow lost it. Even the very crucial
45:17
Speaker 1: hair evidence that was ultimately the thing that solved the case.
45:22
Speaker 1: It had been misfiled for years, an astounding error that
45:26
Speaker 1: delayed justice even further. Still, Stephanie, she expressed deep gratitude
45:32
Speaker 1: for those who finally stepped up and refused to let
45:35
Speaker 1: Danny's case remain unsolved. Danny's family at last had an
45:40
Speaker 1: answer of who did it, a huge weight off their shoulders,
45:43
Speaker 1: but they were left to process a very fresh wave
45:45
Speaker 1: of grief from Danny. As for Paul's wife of twenty
45:49
Speaker 1: four years and his two children, they were stunned by
45:53
Speaker 1: this revelation. By all accounts, he had been a good
45:57
Speaker 1: husband and father in their eyes. They never had an
46:00
Speaker 1: inkling that back in nineteen ninety six, before he even
46:02
Speaker 1: met his wife, and birthed his kids he had committed
46:06
Speaker 1: such a horrible act. His wife posted a public message
46:10
Speaker 1: of condolence to the Houchin's family after learning the entire truth, saying, quote,
46:15
Speaker 1: our hearts go out to the Houchin's family. They will
46:18
Speaker 1: let last be able to find the closure they deserve.
46:22
Speaker 1: She also described being absolutely heartbroken and said that the
46:26
Speaker 1: news made their own grieving from their loss so much
46:29
Speaker 1: more complicated, as they now had to reconcile that the
46:32
Speaker 1: man they loved was secretly a monster. In the community
46:37
Speaker 1: of Belgrade and Bozeman, people remember that fifteen year old
46:41
Speaker 1: girl with a bright smile from nineteen ninety six and
46:44
Speaker 1: felt comforted that at long last, the question of who
46:47
Speaker 1: killed her was finally answered. Danny's case is just one
46:52
Speaker 1: of several across the country and even more in recent years,
46:57
Speaker 1: where a suspect identified through genetic genius died by suicide
47:02
Speaker 1: before they could ever be arrested. It's a growing trend
47:06
Speaker 1: that showcases both the power of these new tools and
47:09
Speaker 1: the tragic reality that some offenders, when finally cornered after years,
47:14
Speaker 1: choose to escape legal consequences through death. In the end,
47:19
Speaker 1: it's important to remember who was at the heart of
47:22
Speaker 1: this story, Danielle Danny Houchins herself. Today, Danny would be
47:29
Speaker 1: forty five years old. If she was alive, she might
47:32
Speaker 1: have become a biological engineer like she once aspired to be.
47:36
Speaker 1: Or perhaps she would have followed a different path, maybe
47:39
Speaker 1: using her love of outdoors in an environmental career or
47:42
Speaker 1: starting a family of her own. But unfortunately we'll never know,
47:48
Speaker 1: because a vicious crime cut her life short at just
47:50
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. But those who knew and loved her
47:54
Speaker 1: while they keep her memory alive, and they have throughout
47:57
Speaker 1: all these years. At the Cameron Bridge fishing access site
48:01
Speaker 1: across stands with the words Justice for Danny written across it,
48:05
Speaker 1: a tribute to a young life lost and a demand
48:08
Speaker 1: for her killer to be found, which thankfully has now
48:13
Speaker 1: after twenty eight years, that justice has been realized in
48:17
Speaker 1: the only way left possible now. Danny's story is an
48:21
Speaker 1: example of how crucial it is for law enforcement to
48:24
Speaker 1: listen to victim's families and never give up on finding
48:27
Speaker 1: the truth. It also showcases the remarkable power of modern
48:31
Speaker 1: forensic science. How a few tiny rootless hairs saved in
48:35
Speaker 1: an evidence file for decades held the key to solving
48:39
Speaker 1: a crime that once seemed unsolvable. Danny Houchin's case will
48:43
Speaker 1: forever be part of Montana's history, not just because of
48:46
Speaker 1: the tragedy that occurred, but because of the hard won
48:50
Speaker 1: resolution that followed. Now, while the ending was not the
48:53
Speaker 1: conventional justice system outcome, the truth was still uncovered and
48:57
Speaker 1: in remembering Danny, those who knew her her as a fun, loving,
49:01
Speaker 1: kind and ambitious girl who brought joy to those around her.
49:05
Speaker 1: She deserved so much more in life. Though nothing can
49:10
Speaker 1: bring her back, one hope remains that she can now
49:13
Speaker 1: truly rest in peace, and that her family can sleep
49:15
Speaker 1: a little easier at night, knowing that the mystery that
49:18
Speaker 1: plagued them for decades has finally been put to rest.
49:22
Speaker 1: Danny's story shows us that no matter how much time passes,
49:25
Speaker 1: determination can light the way to justice, and even the
49:29
Speaker 1: darkest secrets can eventually see the light of day. And
49:34
Speaker 1: that's the story of Danielle Houchin's.
49:39
Speaker 2: Who. That is a story and a half.
49:43
Speaker 1: YEP.
49:44
Speaker 2: I have a few thoughts. First of all, I feel like, well,
49:47
Speaker 2: Paul is a nasty piece of shit. YEP, I agree.
49:51
Speaker 2: I wonder what Paul's family would have felt, you know,
49:56
Speaker 2: his kids, for example, hearing that their dad did this too,
50:00
Speaker 2: a fifteen year old girl. Yeah, oh my gosh, I
50:03
Speaker 2: just I don't even I can't even imagine.
50:05
Speaker 1: That's why. I mean, like the kids, I'm sure maybe
50:10
Speaker 1: not around that age of fifteen, they could be depending
50:12
Speaker 1: on like when they had the kids, but thinking like
50:16
Speaker 1: that could have been me someone that did that to me.
50:19
Speaker 1: My dad is the monster to do those things. My
50:22
Speaker 1: dad did that, like holy shit.
50:24
Speaker 2: And I also just want to touch on Stephanie too.
50:27
Speaker 2: I feel like Danny would be proud of her. I
50:29
Speaker 2: think so she everyone needs a Stephanie. I think, right,
50:34
Speaker 2: should we?
50:34
Speaker 1: Uh you want to do the honors?
50:37
Speaker 2: I do, well. I yeah, she's totally the badass of
50:40
Speaker 2: the day, but what she did also shouldn't have had
50:44
Speaker 2: to be done.
50:44
Speaker 1: I agree, you're right.
50:46
Speaker 2: So she definitely is the badass of the day because
50:49
Speaker 2: she did, you know, she really helped everything come together
50:53
Speaker 2: with this, but it shouldn't have had to be that way.
50:56
Speaker 1: And I think now would be a good time to
50:57
Speaker 1: say that some of those those investigators and officers earlier
51:03
Speaker 1: on in nineteen ninety six should not have been in
51:05
Speaker 1: that field. They should not have had those jobs. Fuck
51:07
Speaker 1: those guys, I know.
51:09
Speaker 2: I mean I most of the cases, I feel like
51:12
Speaker 2: they're done fairly well, like pretty good if we have
51:15
Speaker 2: nothing against like investigators and stuff. But if you are
51:17
Speaker 2: in that role, you do need to take it very seriously,
51:20
Speaker 2: or you need to find a job that doesn't need
51:23
Speaker 2: to be taken that seriously. I guess.
51:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like you need to treat a homicide with
51:28
Speaker 1: more diligence than flipping a burger like, oh, okay, well
51:33
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't cook the burger quite right. Whatever I mean.
51:37
Speaker 1: I mean that technically still has implications if you have
51:39
Speaker 1: raw or something like that. I guess, But I digress.
51:42
Speaker 1: This is a person's life. This is affecting families, communities
51:47
Speaker 1: so much more.
51:48
Speaker 2: Someone got to live twenty eight years because of you.
51:53
Speaker 2: And imagine like an extra twenty eight years when they
51:56
Speaker 2: should not have them, when they should have been in jail.
51:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and imagine if he fed off that and he
52:00
Speaker 1: became a serial killer. Oh imagine the lives that could
52:04
Speaker 1: have cost potentially still have costs we don't know.
52:08
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, hopefully he didn't do anything remotely like this
52:12
Speaker 2: Daniel and else.
52:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's a monster and we'll never get to
52:16
Speaker 1: know because well he chose the easy way out.
52:19
Speaker 2: Mm hmm he did so.
52:22
Speaker 1: Anyways, I'm glad I got to tell Danielle's story because
52:24
Speaker 1: she deserves it.
52:25
Speaker 2: She does.
52:26
Speaker 1: And that guy, I hope he burns for eternity. I'll
52:30
Speaker 1: just put it that. I'll end it there. Thank you
52:33
Speaker 1: for being here. We appreciate you. Don't forget to check
52:35
Speaker 1: your description for all the links and everything for this podcast.
52:38
Speaker 1: Give us a rating if you can. We really appreciate.
52:40
Speaker 1: It goes a long way. We are an indie show,
52:43
Speaker 1: independently produced, independently owned, written, researched, hosted. All of it
52:48
Speaker 1: is done by us in our tiny home, next to
52:51
Speaker 1: our two dogs who are curled up waiting for the
52:53
Speaker 1: show to end so they can go outside and maybe
52:55
Speaker 1: go for a walk and have treats and stuff like that.
52:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do as soon as we say stay with
53:00
Speaker 2: especially the one Ripley. She gets up and knows, okay
53:03
Speaker 2: we can bug bug them again. Yeah.
53:06
Speaker 1: They know when it's recording time and when to chill,
53:09
Speaker 1: and they know when when we're done and uh yeah,
53:11
Speaker 1: when things move on. Actually, I just looked at her
53:13
Speaker 1: and her ears starting to twitch, so she she knows.
53:16
Speaker 1: So with that, thank you for being here. We really
53:18
Speaker 1: appreciate you. You guys are incredible, and until next time,
53:22
Speaker 1: stay wicked.