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Kidnapper and Killer: David Meirhofer · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Discretion is advised. This is ten minute murderer. David Meierhoffer grew up as
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  an outcast. Soon after he was born in nineteen forty nine, his parents
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  moved their five kids to Manhattan, Montana, a tiny town with a population
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  of just over seven hundred. At Manhattan High School, David had a hard
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  time making friends. His peers thought that he was weird because he was quiet,
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  and he kept to himself, and he always seemed to be depressed or
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  lost in his thoughts. The year after David graduated from high school, he
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  was drafted into the United States Army. He then completed basic training in California.
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  While he was fighting in the Vietnam War, David started getting the recognition
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  that he had never received as a teenager. His superiors noticed his talent in
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  military strategy and telecommunication, and he received a collection of awards before being honorably
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  discharged four years later. After his discharge, David wanted a quiet life.
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  He moved back to Manhattan, Montana, and he set up shop as a
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  carpenter and general handyman. That same year, a seven year old girl disappeared
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  from Missouri Headwaters State Park, where her family had been camping. That park
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  was only a fifteen minute drive away from Manhattan. Three days later, Susan
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  Yager was taken from her family's tent. The FBI in Denver received the phone
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  call. The caller claimed that he had kidnapped Susan and said he would release
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  her in exchange for twenty five thousand dollars, but until the second call came
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  through, investigators thought it was a hoax. On the second of July,
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  the same caller rang the Gallatin County Sheriff's office. Once again, he claimed
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  to be Susan Yager's abductor, but this time he doubled down his ransom demand
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  to fifty thousand dollars, wanting the deputy who answered the phone to take him
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  seriously. The caller described Susan Yeager in detail, sharing that she had a
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  deformed fingernail on one of her index fingers, a fact that was only known
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  by Susan's family and the police. Now that they knew they were dealing with
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  a legitimate caller, the police arranged for the ransom to be dropped off,
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  hoping that they would be able to apprehend the kidnapper when he came to collect
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  the money. Despite waiting for hours, nobody ever showed up. Hoping that
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  the kidnapper would risk calling Susan's family, The police wire tapped the house and
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  had paid off in September. When the kidnapper called the land line at Susan's
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  house, her teenage brother Daniel picked up the phone. The caller seemed eager
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  to prove that he was the real deal. He provided details about his previous
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  calls to the FBI so that Daniel would know the call was not a hoax.
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  The FBI traced the call to a gas station in the city of Cheyenne,
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  Wyoming, but it didn't bring them any closer to catching the killer.
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  Then, for months, there was silence. In February nineteen seventy four,
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  more than a thousand pieces of human bone were found on an unused ranch in
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  Three Forks, Montana. The bodies had been burned beyond recognition, but the
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  forensic analysis revealed that they belonged to two people, a girl of around seven
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  years old and a woman in her late teens or early twenties. Four months
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  after the bone fragments were discovered, the Yager family received another phone call from
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  their daughter's kidnapper. This time, he talked to Susan's mother, Marietta,
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  for all almost an hour. Once again, he proved that he was legitimate
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  by referencing previous conversations with the FBI, but shortly before he hung up,
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  he informed Marietta that he would not be able to give her daughter back.
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  The FBI discovered that the call had been made using several communications devices built into
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  the telephone cables of an innocent man living in three Forks. Although this didn't
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  show the identity of the caller, it revealed that he was more intelligent than
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  they'd previously thought. This was a highly sophisticated, meticulous man with an expertise
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  in telecommunications who was determined not to be caught. The FBI created a profile
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  of the person they believed was responsible for the crime. The profile described a
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  white male in his late twenties who had grown up in the area. They
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  believed he would spend his life as an introverted outcast, and at some point
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  he either had worked in telecommunications or the military, possibly both. There was
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  one man who fit this profile exactly, David Meierhoffer. The more that the
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  investigation zeroed in on David, the more evidence suggested that he was the killer.
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  He had been in Wyoming on the day that Susan Yeager's family received a
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  phone call from their daughter's kidnapper, and he had also worked several jobs at
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  the ranch where the two sets of burnt human remains had been discovered. In
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  August nineteen seventy four, David Meierhoffer was arrested. He initially claimed that he
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  was innocent, and investigators were forced to release him, but when Susan's parents
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  listened to the recordings of David's voice, they were convinced that that was the
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  man that had called them. When Susan's family received another threatening call from their
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  daughter's killer in September nineteen seventy four, the FBI positively identified the caller as
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  David Meierhoffer, and he was arrested for a second time. As soon as
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  he was in jail, they carried out a search of his house, and
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  in his refrigerator they found several severed fingers, as well as an entire human
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  hand. Now David was backed into a corner, he felt as if he
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  had no choice but to confess, telling investigators that he had fatally stabbed Susan
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  shortly after her abduction because he could not get her to stop struggling. Even
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  if the ransom had been paid immediately, Susan's family never had the chance to
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  see their daughter again. She had died the same day she was taken.
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  David never revealed his motive for the kidnapping. He repeatedly denied that he sexually
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  assaulted her, but he made no efforts to provide investigators with another theory.
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  As well as confirming that he'd kidnapped and murdered Susan, David confessed to carrying
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  out a similar crime in February of nineteen seventy three. That victim was nineteen
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  year old Sandra Dykman, who had disappeared while watching a basket skitball game.
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  David revealed that he had been sexually interested in Sandra, but she rejected him.
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  Infuriated, he kidnapped her, tied her up, and gagged her to
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  prevent her from escaping, but he was too aggressive with Sandra's bindings and she
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  ended up suffocating to death. Once his victims were dead, David had disposed
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  of their bodies in the same way. He used a saw and his hunting
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  knife to dismember them before he burned them, then dumped the bones and ashes
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  in the abandoned ranch where they were later found. Investigators working on the case
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  suspected that Sandra and Susan weren't David's only victims. He'd abducted both girls,
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  easily, been confident enough to contact the police, and he had a clear
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  thought out process for disposing of the bodies. The theory that David was a
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  more prolific killer was confirmed before the trial when his defense attorney proposed a plea
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  deal. In exchange for a void execution, David would confess to two more
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  murders. The additional victims were twelve and thirteen years old, and had both
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  been killed in the nearby city of Three Forks. Twelve year old Michael E.
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  Rainey had been fatally beaten in May of nineteen sixty eight, and thirteen
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  year old Bernard Pullman had been shot to death in nineteen sixty seven. Bernard's
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  death had initially been thought of as a tragic accident, as the police thought
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  he'd been hit by a stray bullet from somebody hunting nearby. David had still
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  been a teenager when he'd killed the boys, and once again he did not
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  admit to a motive for the murders. The only clue he gave was admitting
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  that before murdering Michael Rainey, he had thought to himself that he wanted to
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  get a little kid. Still, the investigators were suspicious that David had only
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  confessed to murders that had taken place in Gallatin County, Montana. They believed
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  that the four crimes were only the tip of the iceberg, but they would
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  never find out the true extent of David's crimes. The jailers who were responsible
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  for David Meierhoffer had never been informed that he was arrested for murder, so
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  in a massive oversight, he was never regarded as a suicide threat. Only
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  a few hours after confessing to Michael and Bernard's murders, David used a towel
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  to hang himself to death in his jail cell. More than a decade after
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  David's suicide, his little brother, Allan was convicted for raping several children in
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  Washington. He spent almost twenty years behind bars, surrounded by rumors that there
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  was a connection between David's murders and Allan's crimes. Allan refused to give any
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  statements about his brother, creating yet another mystery about the motives of the men
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  in the Meyerhoffer family. That's ten Minute Murder for today, brief and binge
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• 12:43
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