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The Case That Birthed FBI Profiling · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to just close your eyes for a
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Speaker 1: second and try to put yourself in a highly specific,
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Speaker 1: truly terrifying place.
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Speaker 2: Oh this is yeah, this is a rough one.
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Speaker 1: It really is. So it's the dead of night, summer
0:12
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy three, and you are deep in the
0:15
Speaker 1: mountains of Montana at Headwaters State Park. Imagine you are
0:21
Speaker 1: twelve year old Heidi Jaeger. You're asleep in this heavy
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Speaker 1: canvas tent with your siblings, and suddenly you just wake up,
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Speaker 1: just out of nowhere exactly, and there was this cold
0:31
Speaker 1: breeze hitting the back of your neck, which is weird
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Speaker 1: because your inside a zipped up tent. I mean, there
0:35
Speaker 1: absolutely shouldn't be a breeze. Oh not at all. So
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Speaker 1: you reach out your hand and the pitch black just
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Speaker 1: kind of feeling around, and your fingers brush against wet,
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Speaker 1: dewey grass.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
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Speaker 1: And as your eyes slowly adjust to the dark, you
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Speaker 1: realize you're looking at this gaping hole slice surgically right
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Speaker 1: through the heavy canvas, and your seven year old sister Susy,
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Speaker 1: who's sleeping inches away from you, is completely gone.
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Speaker 2: It is the ultimate nightmare, I mean, and it's a
1:00
Speaker 2: scenario completely stripped of any logic, any warning. There's no
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Speaker 2: rational explanation for a kid waking up to that. The
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Speaker 2: psychological terror of that moment.
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Speaker 1: Is just absolute, it really is. And today we are
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Speaker 1: opening up a massive stack of case files, original police transcripts,
1:16
Speaker 1: and this harrowing memoir written by Susie's mother, Marietta. It's
1:20
Speaker 1: called The Lost Child.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that book is. It's incredibly tough to read, but so.
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Speaker 1: Important, right, because our mission in this deep dive is
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Speaker 1: to unravel a story that didn't just shatter a family,
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Speaker 1: but it actually forced law enforcement into like completely uncharted
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Speaker 1: territory too. This is the case that birthed modern FBI
1:41
Speaker 1: criminal profiling, and they did it out of sheer, desperate necessity.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we really need to set the stage for
1:47
Speaker 2: what investigators were up against here. You know, this isn't
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Speaker 2: just a story about a tragic kidnapping. This is a
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Speaker 2: terrifying psychological cat and mouse game. It's between a grieving
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Speaker 2: mother and a highly intelligent, calculating psychopath. And you have
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Speaker 2: to remember the era we're talking about. This is playing
2:01
Speaker 2: out in the early nineteen seventies, which means like no
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Speaker 2: tech exactly, there is no DNA testing. There are no
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Speaker 2: cell phone pin I mean, there are no security cameras
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Speaker 2: capturing license plates on the highway. The investigators are essentially
2:15
Speaker 2: operating completely in the dark, armed with tools that were
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Speaker 2: just well, woefully inadequate for the mind they were hunting.
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Speaker 1: So true, So the timeline starts at about five am.
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Speaker 1: Heidi runs to her parents' camper. Bill and Marietta Yeger
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Speaker 1: rush out with flashlights, frantically sweeping the beams across the campsite,
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Speaker 1: just calling into the trees, and what they find just
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Speaker 1: drops your stomach. Susie's stuffed animals, the ones she had
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Speaker 1: been literally clutching when she fell asleep, are lying abandoned
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Speaker 1: in the wet grass just outside that sliced hole in
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Speaker 1: the tent.
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Speaker 2: Marietta later described looking up at the pitch black sky
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Speaker 2: and just begging the sun to rise. She said the
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Speaker 2: darkness itself felt like a physical weight on her. But
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Speaker 2: when the sun finally does come up, I mean, the
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Speaker 2: reality of the situation somehow gets even darker.
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Speaker 1: Right because a massive volunteer search party forms and as
3:02
Speaker 1: they are combing the woods, the Jaggers overhear this volunteer
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Speaker 1: mentioned a chilling historical detail to another searcher.
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Speaker 2: This part always gets me.
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Speaker 1: It's awful. They hear that. Five years earlier, in May
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Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, a twelve year old boy scout
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Speaker 1: named Michael Rainey was fatally stabbed inside his tent at
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Speaker 1: this exact same state park.
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Speaker 2: Which you know, that completely shifts the paradigm for the police.
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Speaker 2: This instantly elevates the situation from a standard missing person's
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Speaker 2: case to a potential serial predator scenario.
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Speaker 1: Right, they're dealing with a monster exactly.
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Speaker 2: But the agonizing part for the early investigators is the
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Speaker 2: absolute vacuum of physical evidence. When daylight fully breaks, they
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Speaker 2: basically find a feate footprint path in the morning dew
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Speaker 2: leading toward the parking lot, and they find a rock
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Speaker 2: near the tent with reddish brown stains on it.
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Speaker 1: And back in nineteen seventy three, they test that rock.
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Speaker 1: They confirm its human blood. But that is literally the
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Speaker 1: end of the road scientifically, I mean, it's un testable.
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Speaker 2: Beyond that, Yeah, they couldn't do anything else with it.
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Speaker 1: It's a dead end. So the days tick by, the
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Speaker 1: physical search turns up nothing, and that is when the
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Speaker 1: psychological torture begins. Five days after the abduction. The FBI
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Speaker 1: field office in Denver gets a call demanding twenty five
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Speaker 1: thousand dollars, but the caller hangs up before giving any instructions.
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Speaker 2: Classic control tactic, right.
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Speaker 1: And then two days after that, a call goes to
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Speaker 1: the home of a local Montana deputy who's actually out
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Speaker 1: in the woods searching for Susie at that very moment. Wow.
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Speaker 1: His wife answers, and the caller demands fifty thousand dollars,
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Speaker 1: telling her to put it in a dummy suit case
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Speaker 1: at a Denver bus depot.
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Speaker 2: Now, in kidnapping cases, the authorities always demand proof of life, right,
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Speaker 2: or at least proof that the caller actually has the
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Speaker 2: victim and isn't just some opportunistic crank making things.
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Speaker 1: Up exactly some weirdo reading the paper.
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Speaker 2: Right, So the caller volunteers a piece of evidence. He
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Speaker 2: tells the deputy's wife to look at the index fingernails
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Speaker 2: on Susie's hands. He says, they are humped like they
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Speaker 2: have this slight, very specific deformity.
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Speaker 1: Well wait, this is a detail that completely threw me
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Speaker 1: when reading the files. The parents hadn't released that information
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Speaker 1: to the press.
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Speaker 2: No, they hadn't.
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Speaker 1: In fact, they had actually forgotten to tell the police
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Speaker 1: about it entirely. It was something Susie was born with,
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Speaker 1: a quirk they barely noticed anymore. I mean, there was
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Speaker 1: absolutely no way a random stranger could.
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Speaker 2: Have guessed that exactly. And we have to look at
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Speaker 2: what that tells us about the offenders pathology right out
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Speaker 2: of the gate, because he isn't just looking for a
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Speaker 2: ransom payout here. No, he is inserting himself directly into
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Speaker 2: the family's trauma. He wants the parents to know, with
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Speaker 2: this terrifying intimacy that he's looking right at their little
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Speaker 2: girl's hands. He is demonstrating total omnipotent control over the situation.
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Speaker 2: It's a massive power trip, and.
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Speaker 1: He flexes that power by never even showing up. The
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Speaker 1: FBI sets up the dummy drop at the Denver bus depot.
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Speaker 1: Agents are swarming the place under cover, and the guy.
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Speaker 2: Just ghosts them, just leaves them hanging.
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Speaker 1: Yep. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Ten days after Susie vaned,
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Speaker 1: a twenty year old nurse named Donna Lemmon goes missing nearby.
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Speaker 1: Four days later, she's found dead in a river in Idaho, which.
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Speaker 2: You'd think would be a massive red flag.
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Speaker 1: You would think, but local police totally dismiss any connection
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Speaker 1: to Susy. They claim a twenty year old woman and
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Speaker 1: a seven year old girl are completely different victimologies.
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Speaker 2: Which I mean is such a rigid way.
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Speaker 1: Of looking at it, right, So the investigation basically hits
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Speaker 1: a wall. The summer ends, the Jaegers have to pack
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Speaker 1: up their camper and make the agonizing drive back to
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Speaker 1: Michigan without their daughter.
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Speaker 2: The silence that must have filled that vehicle is just unimaginable,
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Speaker 2: and that silence stretches on for months. The local authorities
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Speaker 2: are paralyzed by the lack of physical evidence until we
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Speaker 2: get to the harsh Montana winter of February nineteen seventy four.
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Speaker 1: Right, so transport yourself now to Manhattan, Montana. It's this tiny,
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Speaker 1: quiet town just about ten minutes away from that state park.
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Speaker 1: A nineteen year old waitress named Sandy Dykman suddenly vanishes. Okay,
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Speaker 1: her dad reports are missing, and deputies start scouring the
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Speaker 1: rural county. About a week later, they find themselves at
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Speaker 1: this abandoned ranch, surrounded by desolate, snow dusted sagebrush. They
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Speaker 1: spot something white caught in the brush. Yeah, it's a
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Speaker 1: pair of worn women's underwear.
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Speaker 2: It's a deliberate breadcrumb. He wanted them to find it,
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Speaker 2: and it leads.
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Speaker 1: Them straight to a barn on the property. They force
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Speaker 1: these heavy doors open, and inside, hidden under hay in
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Speaker 1: a heavy tarp is Sandy's little white Ford cortina. But
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Speaker 1: it's the outbuildings that are pure nightmare fuel. Picture the
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Speaker 1: investigators walking into these freezing abandoned sheds. They find a
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Speaker 1: bloody whip. Oh gosh, they find melted candle, wax pooled
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Speaker 1: in these bizarre ritualistic places. And inside the abandoned main
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Speaker 1: house they find a closet that someone had literally nailed
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Speaker 1: shut from the outside.
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Speaker 2: You have to think about what the physical environment of
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Speaker 2: a crime scene tells you about the offender's mind. Here,
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Speaker 2: what investigators are walking into isn't just a murder scene,
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Speaker 2: the nailed closet, the wax, the whip. This is a
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Speaker 2: meticulously constructed environment for prolonged psychological and physical torment. It
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Speaker 2: requires time, it requires privacy and intense premeditation. This isn't
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Speaker 2: a crime of passion, no at all.
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Speaker 1: And the climax of that horror comes on February nineteenth,
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Speaker 1: outside in the freezing cold, they find a burn pile.
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Speaker 1: When they sift through the ash, they recover over one
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Speaker 1: thousand bone fragments, including teeth.
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Speaker 2: And this is where forensic anthropology, I mean, even in
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Speaker 2: its early stages back then completely flips the script because,
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Speaker 2: using dental records, they quickly confirm that Sandy Dykman's remains
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Speaker 2: are in that burn pile. But as they analyze the fragments,
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Speaker 2: the anthropologists make this sickening discovery.
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Speaker 1: It's so awful.
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Speaker 2: There aren't just one set of remains in those ashes.
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Speaker 2: There are two distinct biological profiles, and the second set
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Speaker 2: of bones belongs to a child, specifically a little girl
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Speaker 2: between the ages of five and eight.
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Speaker 1: It had to be Susie.
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Speaker 2: The realization just hits them like a freight train. Suddenly,
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Speaker 2: these aren't isolated tragedies anymore. They are dealing with a
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Speaker 2: highly organized serial predator operating right in their backyard, which.
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Speaker 1: Means they aren't looking for a disorganized drifter anymore. They
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Speaker 1: are looking for someone who feels entirely comfortable in this
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Speaker 1: specific rural terrain exactly, and that geographic profile points them
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Speaker 1: squarely at one local guy, David Meyerhoffer. He's in his twenties.
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Speaker 1: He's a local carpenter, a former marine, and a Vietnam veteran.
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Speaker 1: He actually grew up right there in Manhattan, Montana. And
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Speaker 1: his name just happens to be sitting in both case files.
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Speaker 1: What a coincidence, right right with Sandy, he had recently
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Speaker 1: asked her out on a date and she turned him down.
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Speaker 1: With Susie, he was one of the local odd balls
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Speaker 1: who hung around the search parties asking the cops highly
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Speaker 1: specific questions. Plus he just so happened to quote unquote
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Speaker 1: find a woman's red blouse near the abandoned ranch and
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Speaker 1: helpfully hand it over to the police.
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Speaker 2: Which is a classic tactic for an arrogant psychopath. It's
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Speaker 2: called insertion.
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Speaker 1: Insertions.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, by finding evidence, he gets to monitor the police's progress,
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Speaker 2: talk to the detectives directly, and basically toy with them
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Speaker 2: right to their faces. But when investigators finally sit David
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Speaker 2: down in an interrogation room, he is calm, he is polite,
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Speaker 2: and he readily agrees to take a polygraph test and he.
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Speaker 1: Passes it easily. Hold on, we really need to stop
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Speaker 1: here because this is where the entire history of criminal
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Speaker 1: investigation fractures. I mean, how do you solve the case
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Speaker 1: when the accepted science of the day says your prime
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Speaker 1: suspect is innocent.
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Speaker 2: It's a massive roadblock.
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Speaker 1: The local authorities are stumped. They completely trust the polygraph,
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Speaker 1: but this desperate FBI agent named Pete Dunbar refuses to
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Speaker 1: let it go. He decides to travel to the FBI
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Speaker 1: academy in Quantico, Virginia and present this bizarre case to
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Speaker 1: a few rogue agents who are experimenting with a brand
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Speaker 1: new concept. Yeah, something called psychological profiling.
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Speaker 2: This was truly revolutionary. Remember, law enforcement at this time
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Speaker 2: relied entirely on tangible evidence blood, finger prints, eyewitnesses. What
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Speaker 2: these early profilers were attempting to do was read the
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Speaker 2: behavior or residue left at the crime scenes to construct
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Speaker 2: a psychological portrait of the unknown subject.
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Speaker 1: But how do they actually do that? Because the files
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Speaker 1: say they deduced the killer was white in his twenties,
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Speaker 1: modestly intelligent, but a loner with military experience who kept souvenirs.
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Speaker 1: How do you pull all of that from a sliced
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Speaker 1: tent in a burn pile.
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Speaker 2: Well, it's all about reverse engineering the behavior. Take the
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Speaker 2: military experience for instance, Okay, to walk into a pitch
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Speaker 2: black tent containing multiple sleeping people, silently slice the canvas,
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Speaker 2: extract a child, and vanish without waking anyone. That requires
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Speaker 2: immense tactical discipline, stealth, and nerve.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that points far away from a disorganized amateur and
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Speaker 2: strongly toward military training. They assumed his age and race
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Speaker 2: based on the demographics of who could move through that
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Speaker 2: specific rural Montana community without drawing suspicion. That makes sense, right,
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Speaker 2: And the souvenirs. While an organized killer who builds a
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Speaker 2: literal torture room at an abandoned branch is obsessed with
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Speaker 2: the fantasy, souvenirs allow him to relive that fantasy long
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Speaker 2: after the crime is actually over.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, So it's like a medical diagnosis in the
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Speaker 1: dark ages Like the local cops have this machine, the polygraph,
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Speaker 1: with its neat, little squiggly lions telling them David Meierhoffer
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Speaker 1: is scientifically innocent, and these guys in a basement at
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Speaker 1: Quantico are using untested behavioral theory to say no, the
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Speaker 1: machine is being manipulated by a monster. That must have
12:27
Speaker 1: caused massive friction.
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Speaker 2: The fuction between the departments was huge, But you have
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Speaker 2: to understand why the polygraph failed in the first place.
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Speaker 2: A polygraph does not detect lies, right, It detects physiological stress,
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Speaker 2: your heart rate, spiking, your palm, sweating, your respiration changing.
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Speaker 1: So relying on a polygraph to catch a psychopath is
12:47
Speaker 1: basically like using a metal detector to find plastic. The
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Speaker 1: machine isn't broken, it's just completely blind to the material
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Speaker 1: at scanning.
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Speaker 2: That is the perfect analogy. Yes, a true psychopaths resting
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Speaker 2: heart rate. It doesn't jump when they lie about a
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Speaker 2: murder because the murder didn't cause them distress or guilt.
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Speaker 2: It gave them pleasure.
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Speaker 1: It's showing it is.
13:07
Speaker 2: But agent Dunbar actually listens to Quantico. He convinces the
13:11
Speaker 2: local authorities to set a behavioral trap. They allow the
13:14
Speaker 2: press to run massive anniversary stories about Susie, knowing it
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Speaker 2: will stroke the killer's ego and prompt him to act.
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Speaker 1: And it works flawlessly. It is June twenty five, nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy four, exactly one year to the minute after Susie
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Speaker 1: was taken from that tent. Put yourself in Marietta Yeager's
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Speaker 1: shoes for a second.
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Speaker 2: You can't even imagine.
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Speaker 1: You are sitting by the phone in your kitchen in Michigan.
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Speaker 1: It rings, you pick up the plastic receiver, and a
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Speaker 1: voice on the other end says, I'm the guy who
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Speaker 1: took her from you, exactly a year ago to the minute.
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Speaker 2: What follows is one of the most agonizing psychological duels
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Speaker 2: in criminal history. Marietta's fortitude here just defies belief. She
13:50
Speaker 2: knows that if she hangs up, or if she just
13:53
Speaker 2: screams at him and he hangs up, she loses her
13:55
Speaker 2: only link to her daughter. Right, she has to keep
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Speaker 2: him talking, so she engages him full hour. She negotiates,
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Speaker 2: She pleads, she actually leverages his own arrogance against him.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she actually challenges him. When he claims he wiped
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Speaker 1: Susie's memory using psychotherapy so she wouldn't remember her parents,
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Speaker 1: Marietta calls his bluff.
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Speaker 2: She does.
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Speaker 1: She demands to know his qualifications. She openly questions his intelligence.
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Speaker 2: Which is brilliant because psychopath's biggest vulnerability is narcissistic injury.
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Speaker 2: He couldn't stand being doubted by this mother. To prove
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Speaker 2: how smart he was, he felt he had to provide details.
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Speaker 2: Will Under that pressure, he slips. He admits to her
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Speaker 2: how he took Susie. He tells this grieving mother that
14:40
Speaker 2: he lurked in the dark outside the tent, listening to
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Speaker 2: the two little girls talk, just waiting for them to
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Speaker 2: finally fall asleep.
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Speaker 1: It is absolute psychological warfare. Yeah, but keeping him on
14:51
Speaker 1: the line for an hour is what finally cracks the case,
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Speaker 1: because that massive hour long call generated a very specific
14:59
Speaker 1: anomaly on a law Montana phone bill.
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Speaker 2: Yes, this is the turning point.
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Speaker 1: A rancher gets his bill and disputes a massive long
15:05
Speaker 1: distance charge made it three point twenty five in the
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Speaker 1: morning to Michigan. The phone company realizes the number called
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Speaker 1: was the Jaeger residence. Now, the rancher's house was locked
15:15
Speaker 1: tight that night, everyone was asleep, right, But he had
15:18
Speaker 1: a secondary phone line running out to an empty field
15:20
Speaker 1: right next to the abandoned ranch where Sandydikman's car was found.
15:23
Speaker 2: And when investigators rush out to look at that remote
15:25
Speaker 2: phone poll, they find fresh tire tracks in the mud,
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Speaker 2: tracks from a specific set of Goodyear tires.
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Speaker 1: Well, I guess yep, the.
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Speaker 2: Exact same tires mounted on David Meierhoffer's truck.
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Speaker 1: Armed with this physical link, they finally move in and
15:39
Speaker 1: David agrees to a second polygraph test, but this time
15:44
Speaker 1: they administer it while he is under the influence of
15:47
Speaker 1: sodium pentathol truth serum.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they tried everything.
15:50
Speaker 1: And he passes it again. Yeah, how is that even
15:52
Speaker 1: biologically possible if his brain is chemically compromised.
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Speaker 2: Well, it comes down to what sodium pentathal actually does barbiturate, right.
16:01
Speaker 2: It depresses the central nervous system and lowers your cortical
16:04
Speaker 2: brain function, meaning you lose the cognitive ability to actively
16:08
Speaker 2: construct a complex lie. You default to your baseline reality.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so he couldn't think of a lie.
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Speaker 2: On the spot exactly. The problem is David's baseline reality
16:18
Speaker 2: was completely detached from normal human empathy. He didn't have
16:21
Speaker 2: to construct a lie to hide his guilt because he
16:23
Speaker 2: fundamentally felt no guilt to hide. He believes his own
16:26
Speaker 2: version of reality.
16:27
Speaker 1: But his physical reality is messy. They finally search his
16:30
Speaker 1: house and the evidence is terrifying. They find sheets stained
16:34
Speaker 1: with blood. They find two unused tickets to Disneyland, one
16:37
Speaker 1: of which is a child's ticket. They find a tube
16:40
Speaker 1: of lipstick, a little girl's blouse, and maybe most chilling
16:44
Speaker 1: of all, they find stationary with the heading things to
16:47
Speaker 1: Do today. Oh this part, it's a literal to do
16:51
Speaker 1: list of local girl scout camps, noting which ones are
16:54
Speaker 1: densely wooded and have good cover.
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Speaker 2: He is organizing his predatory behavior like he's running weak
16:59
Speaker 2: in errands. It's the banal documentation of pure evil.
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Speaker 1: But this is where the story makes you want to
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Speaker 1: just scream. At the archives they find all this evidence
17:09
Speaker 1: playless a newspaper clipping he cut out of a five
17:11
Speaker 1: year old girl named Karen Smith. Yeah, the FBI takes
17:14
Speaker 1: it so seriously. They send an agent to be a
17:16
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty seven bodyguard for this little girl
17:19
Speaker 1: literally sleeping on her family's couch with a shotgun. And
17:23
Speaker 1: yet they still don't arrest David. I know, he just
17:25
Speaker 1: calmly talks his way out of it, saying, the bloody
17:27
Speaker 1: sheets were left by the previous owner. How on earth
17:30
Speaker 1: was he allowed to stay on the street. It's just
17:33
Speaker 1: the arrogance of this guy.
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Speaker 2: It's infuriating, but it really speaks to the incredibly strict
17:38
Speaker 2: evidentiary standards of the time and a local justice system
17:42
Speaker 2: that simply could not comprehend that the polite military veteran
17:46
Speaker 2: carpenter they all knew was a monster.
17:48
Speaker 1: Y the hometown boy.
17:49
Speaker 2: Right. They didn't have a body, and they didn't have
17:51
Speaker 2: a confession. They needed one or the other to make
17:54
Speaker 2: a murder charge stick.
17:55
Speaker 1: So the FBI decides to force a climax. They fly
17:59
Speaker 1: the Jaggers out to Montana for a face to face showdown.
18:02
Speaker 1: Imagine the tension in that room. Marietta Yeager sitting across
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Speaker 1: a table, staring directly into the eyes of the man
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Speaker 1: she knows in her bones stole her daughter. Yeah, David coldly,
18:14
Speaker 1: calmly looks her in the eye and denies everything.
18:17
Speaker 2: And because they still lack the definitive legal hook, they
18:20
Speaker 2: have to let him walk out the door. Unbelievable, but
18:22
Speaker 2: the profilers at Quantico warned the agents on the ground.
18:25
Speaker 2: They said, David will need to regain his sense of
18:27
Speaker 2: power after being challenged like that by the mother. He
18:30
Speaker 2: will need to feel like he has the upper hand.
18:32
Speaker 1: Again, which leads to the final sickening taunt. David manages
18:37
Speaker 1: to slip away from the FBI agent surveilling him. He
18:40
Speaker 1: drives out of state, finds a payphone at a motel
18:43
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City, and calls Marietta one last time.
18:47
Speaker 2: So cruel.
18:48
Speaker 1: She picks up the phone, completely exhausted and just says hello, David.
18:52
Speaker 2: Eh.
18:53
Speaker 1: He tries to play dumb, but then he plays his
18:56
Speaker 1: trump card. He puts a little girl on the phone. Yeah,
18:58
Speaker 1: and the little girl says, this guy nice and I'm
19:00
Speaker 1: sitting on his lap.
19:02
Speaker 2: It's a move designed to completely break a parent's mind,
19:05
Speaker 2: to make her think he has Susie right there. But
19:08
Speaker 2: Marietta listens to the cadence the pitch of the voice,
19:11
Speaker 2: and she knows instantly that is not Susie's voice.
19:14
Speaker 1: The FBI swarms. The man hunt lasts eighteen hours before
19:17
Speaker 1: they finally corner David back in Manhattan, Montana, and this
19:20
Speaker 1: time they don't mess around the Cares house apart in
19:23
Speaker 1: a deeper, much more aggressive search. Finally, and that is
19:26
Speaker 1: when they open his deep freezer.
19:27
Speaker 2: This is the moment the facade completely shatters.
19:30
Speaker 1: Picture this. You open the heavy lid of a chest freezer.
19:33
Speaker 1: It's packed with normal, mundane things, frozen deer meat, elk,
19:38
Speaker 1: TV dinners, but nestled right in the middle is a
19:41
Speaker 1: small package wrapped tightly in thick butcher paper. Yeah. Written
19:46
Speaker 1: on the outside and marker are the letters sm DS.
19:49
Speaker 1: When investigators unwrap the icy paper. They find Sandy Diykman's
19:53
Speaker 1: severed fingers, her nail polish still perfectly intact.
19:56
Speaker 2: He was keeping trophies, just as the profilers predict it,
20:00
Speaker 2: souvenirs to extend his fantasy, and the sheer undeniable horror
20:04
Speaker 2: of that physical evidence finally breaks his psychological armor. There's
20:08
Speaker 2: no talking his way out of that. No.
20:10
Speaker 1: Faced with the contents of his own freezer, David Meierhoffer
20:13
Speaker 1: finally folds in exchange for the state, taking the death
20:16
Speaker 1: penalty out the table, he starts talking. He confesses to everything. Yeah,
20:20
Speaker 1: he admits to taking Susan to the abandoned ranch. He
20:22
Speaker 1: confesses that he strangled her when she tried to fight
20:24
Speaker 1: back against his assault. He burned her body, but casually
20:27
Speaker 1: mentions he tossed our severed head into an outhouse on
20:30
Speaker 1: the property, the one place they hadn't searched.
20:32
Speaker 2: And he didn't stop there. He confessed to suffocating Sandy Diekman.
20:37
Speaker 2: But then the real shock waves hit the interrogation room.
20:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, he suddenly shifts the timeline way back. He calmly
20:44
Speaker 1: confesses that he was the one who crawled into the
20:46
Speaker 1: tent and stabbed twelve year old boy scout Michael Rainey
20:49
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. Horrifying, and even further back, he
20:52
Speaker 1: confesses to a nineteen sixty seven unsolved case where a
20:55
Speaker 1: teenager named Bernie Pullman was shot on a local bridge,
20:58
Speaker 1: a death everyone had a sooned was a stray hunting bullet.
21:02
Speaker 1: Yet despite confessing to all of this, he vehemently denies
21:05
Speaker 1: having anything to do with Donald Lemon or the attempted
21:08
Speaker 1: abductions at the girl scout camps.
21:10
Speaker 2: It's a selective confession. I mean, why admit to some
21:12
Speaker 2: brutal murders and deny others? Because it allows him to
21:15
Speaker 2: maintain a final sliver of control. By withholding certain truths,
21:19
Speaker 2: he ensures he is still the smartest guy in the room.
21:22
Speaker 2: He still holds secrets they want, But the.
21:24
Speaker 1: Justice system never gets the chance to parse those lies
21:27
Speaker 1: or put him on trial because just hours after signing
21:29
Speaker 1: his confessions, David Meierhoffer uses a towel to and his
21:33
Speaker 1: own life in his jail cell.
21:34
Speaker 2: It's an incredibly abrupt, infuriating end. He evades a trial,
21:39
Speaker 2: he evades facing the families in court, and he ensures
21:42
Speaker 2: that the full scope of his crimes dies with him.
21:45
Speaker 1: The lingering ghats of this case are just overwhelming. I mean,
21:48
Speaker 1: there were terrifying loose ends in these case files that
21:52
Speaker 1: will likely never be tied, right Like who was that.
21:55
Speaker 2: Little girl on the final phone call from Salt Lake City?
21:57
Speaker 2: Was it a recording he had made of another victim?
22:00
Speaker 2: Was there actually a child sitting on his lap in
22:02
Speaker 2: that motel?
22:03
Speaker 1: Makes you sick to think about?
22:04
Speaker 2: And what about the unclaimed souvenirs in his house, the
22:07
Speaker 2: little girl's blouse, the lipstick. The parents of Sandy and
22:11
Speaker 2: Susie confirmed those didn't belong to their daughters. David traveled
22:14
Speaker 2: extensively for his father's business across several states. How many
22:18
Speaker 2: other victims are buried out there? We will just never know.
22:21
Speaker 1: It's a chilling thought. But I want to leave you
22:24
Speaker 1: with a final, profound reflection from the source materials we
22:27
Speaker 1: dug into today. In her memoir, Maryetta Yeger wrote about
22:31
Speaker 1: preparing for that fateful camping trip. She spent months worrying
22:34
Speaker 1: about the wilderness. She feared bears, she feared rattlesnakes wandering
22:38
Speaker 1: into their campsite. She never, in her wildest nightmares, realized
22:43
Speaker 1: that the most dangerous, ruthless predator in those woods would
22:47
Speaker 1: be a human being.
22:48
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate subversion of our natural instincts. You prepare
22:51
Speaker 2: for nature, but you can't prepare for that kind of evil.
22:54
Speaker 1: But here is the part that truly stops you in
22:56
Speaker 1: your tracks. And it's what I want you to think
22:58
Speaker 1: about today. Despite the unimaginable psychological torture that David Meierhoffer
23:03
Speaker 1: put her through, Marietta Yeger ultimately chose not to let
23:07
Speaker 1: his darkness consume her.
23:09
Speaker 2: Wow.
23:09
Speaker 1: She chose to forgive him. She went on to become
23:12
Speaker 1: a fierce vocal advocate for forgiveness, traveling the country speaking
23:16
Speaker 1: out against the death penalty. David Meierhoffer's entire pathology was
23:21
Speaker 1: built on control, stealing agency from his victims and their families.
23:25
Speaker 1: But by choosing forgiveness, Marietta Yeger did the one thing
23:29
Speaker 1: a psychopath can't comprehend. She took the control back. She
23:33
Speaker 1: refused to let him dictate her emotional reality. It makes
23:36
Speaker 1: you wonder is forgiveness just a moral high ground or
23:40
Speaker 1: is it actually the ultimate psychological defense against people who
23:43
Speaker 1: want to break you.
23:44
Speaker 2: That is just a powerful reframing of what it means
23:47
Speaker 2: to truly survive.
23:48
Speaker 1: Exactly well until next time. Keep digging and keep asking
23:51
Speaker 1: the hard questions.