November 6, 2025 • 46 mins
Paul Hutchinson seemed like a regular Montanan—an ex-Marine, a fisheries biologist, a father, and a diehard turkey hunter. But behind that facade lurked a predator, hiding in plain sight. Nearly three decades after the brutal rape and murder of 15-year-old Danni Houchins, investigators uncovered the chilling truth: Hutchinson was her killer. His sudden suicide closed the case but opened a darker question—was Danni his only victim, or did Hutchinson use his hunting trips across America as cover for other crimes? In this episode of Blood Trails, host Jordan Sillars explores the disturbing possibility that a monster might be hiding in the hearts of the family, friends, and hunting partners we think we know best.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic descriptions of crime scene details involving
sexual violence and murder. It also deals with suicide. Listener
discretion is advised if you or someone you know is
having thoughts of suicide, call her text nine to eight
eight to reach the suicide and Crisis lifeline.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In nineteen ninety six, a fifteen year old girl was raped, drowned,
and left for dead along the banks of the Gallatin River.
Her murderer turned out to be a hunter and a
BLM biologist. He was brought to justice nearly thirty years later,
but not in the way that anyone expected. That's next
on Blood Trails. How well do you know the people
(00:57):
you hunt with? You know their names, what they do,
where they live. If you went with family, you know
a whole lot more. But when you venture into the
wilderness to spend days, sometimes weeks alone with another person,
do you ever wonder do I really know this guy?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think they just thought he was a pretty normal dude.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
We thought he was a kind of a quirky guy.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
But he was ex military and had a fisheries bo
just wildlife ball, just background, so we just always thought
he was kind of a different guy.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
We went way back out in the mountains by ourselves.
I didn't have any clue where we were and spent
the whole day and it was horrible.
Speaker 7 (01:40):
It was the worst day ever.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
He was so mean.
Speaker 8 (01:43):
I shot my first year ever with him when I
was nine years old, and I mean, he's always was
always there, and he was always the person who pushed
me to get more involved with the outdoor activities.
Speaker 9 (01:57):
Nobody had any idea, And thinking back on it, I
remembered that he had been kind of reserved and stuff
been like, yeah, I couldn't think of anything that I
was never like uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The voices you just heard are the relatives, coworkers and
hunting partners of a man named Paul Hutchinson. Hutchinson was
born in New Hampshire in nineteen sixty nine, but moved
out to Montana in the late nineties to attend Montana
State University. He earned a degree in fishery science and
enjoyed a long and award winning career as a biologist
(02:31):
with the Bureau of Land Management. He had a wife,
two kids, and a house in Dylan, Montana. He was
also a big time outdoorsman. He hunted elk, mule deer,
bighorn sheep, and waterfowl, but most of all, he loved turkeys.
He traveled to twenty states chasing gobblers, and he aimed
to kill a turkey in all forty nine states where
(02:51):
they live.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Most of Hutchinson's.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Social media accounts no longer exist, but his son posted
a video in twenty twenty of Hutchinson calling to a
group of turkeys from his truck. From the outside, he
seemed like a normal guy, maybe a little off putting
at times, maybe a little arrogant, but on the whole,
(03:15):
not a bad dude to go hunting with. Then last year,
that facade came crashing down night.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
After nearly three decades, a cold case murder in Gallatin
County is closed.
Speaker 10 (03:25):
In nineteen ninety six, fifteen year old Danny Houchins disappeared
after going for a walk by a river.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hours later, her body was found in a swampy area.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
Forensic evidence has determined Paul Hutchinson murdered Daniel Howchins at
the Cameron Bridge fishing access.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Hutchinson was accused of raping and murdering a fifteen year
old girl in a community just down the road from
where he lived worked and raised a family. Investigators used
cutting edge forensic technology to pin him for the crime,
and they confronted him in a high pressure interview you'll
hear at the end of this episode. The story rocked
the small town of Dylan. Hutchinson's family, friends, coworkers, and
(04:02):
hunting buddies ask themselves how they missed the giant, festering
atrocity in Paul Hutchinson's past. How could a person so
outwardly normal be capable of something so evil? Who was
Paul Hutchinson? How did he escape detection for so long?
Was anyone else in on his secret? And do his
family and friends believe he did what he's been accused
(04:25):
of doing.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I don't think any of us know what happened.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Obviously, something really terrible and provable happened, and there's no
like denying it or justifying it or rationalizing it. It's
completely crazy. I mean, you hear about the stuff on TV.
You never think you're going to be on the villain
side of the story.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And that story might not be over. Hutchinson traveled the
country hunting turkeys, and now investigators are wondering if he
used those trips to commit other crimes. Is it possible
someone could rape a fifteen year old girl, kill her
and then go on to live a crime free life.
(05:03):
Right now, no one knows for sure, but still it
makes you wonder what else could be hiding in the
hearts of those we think we know best. On Jordan
Siller's and this is blood Trails a Monster among Us
(05:25):
Part one Danny. On September twenty first to nineteen ninety six,
Danielle Houchens needed to clear her head. She'd had a
disagreement with her parents, as fifteen year olds tend to do, so,
she asked her mom if she could drive down to
the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access site just outside of Belgrade, Montana.
(05:47):
Danny had recently earned her driver's license, so it was
a quick ten minute ride in her truck. It was
peaceful down by the banks of the Gallatin River, and
she'd been there before with friends and family. Stephanie, her
younger sister, was twelve years old at the time. Her
memory of Danny is colored by the genuine admiration most
girls have for their older teenage sister.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
She was my hero.
Speaker 10 (06:11):
She was cool and tough, you know she. It was
the grunge era, and it was the nineties, and like
she wore cool, baggy flannels and listened to awesome music
like Pearl Jam and Dirvana and all this angsty, you
know kind of music. And so there was that cool factor,
(06:32):
and she was adventurous and you know, seemingly unafraid to
do things. But she excelled in a lot other ways too.
She was very, very very smart and did really well
in school. But she wasn't just studious smart. She had
this really dry sense of humor and sarcasm that she
(06:56):
would point to the people around her, but would also
like turn that on herself and be sarcastic and self
deprecating their humor. You know, just kind of that hilarious, snarky, sassy,
angsty fifteen year old girl.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
In the nineties, the Houchins didn't do much hunting and fishing,
but they did pretty much everything else in the outdoors.
They especially liked to skip. Stephanie's parents were both ski
patrollers in Big Sky, Montana, and Stephanie remembers doing everything
she could to keep up with her older sister on
the slopes.
Speaker 10 (07:32):
She was always the person I looked up to on
anything that we were doing as a family, and so
there was that innat desire to be like her, to
be able to accomplish the kinds of things that she
was able to accomplish, to push myself to be tougher,
(07:53):
whether it be on the mountain in the winter time,
or up hiking and kind of pushing through that last
mile of the tree trail before you got to the top,
or whatever it was that we were doing out in
the woods. She was my motivator to be able to
continue doing that when it sucked right and when I'm
like a little kid and want to give up. And
(08:15):
so it sounds too simple to say that she was
my hero, but she was my hero because she was
my older sister, and everything I measured myself against was
measuring towards her.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That Saturday in nineteen ninety six, the town of Belgrade
was celebrating a yearly fall festival. The festivities were taking
place right across the street from the Houchin's home, and
Stephanie was there at the park playing with her friends.
Speaker 10 (08:44):
And I remember my dad coming over to the park
and telling me that Danny was missing, and that you know,
they were going to try to look for her, but
that she was missing and I needed to come home
and so I I kind of ran back home.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Danny had left that morning, so when she didn't come
home by the early afternoon, her parents started to become concerned.
But that concern turned to panic when Stephanie's mom drove
down to the Cameron Park Bridge and found Danny's truck
but no sign of.
Speaker 10 (09:21):
Danny, and then pretty quickly there found her keys and
water bottle on a trail leading back into kind of
the marshy area of that fishing access. That was really
I think what set off all the explosive worry for
my mom.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Stephanie's mom called Danny's name and looked around the fishing
access site, but still she couldn't find her. That's when
she called her husband and they recruited family and friends
to start the search. Stephanie remembers driving around town with
a photo of Danny, asking if anyone had seen her sister.
Speaker 10 (09:57):
My friend's mom drove me around and I went to
the different bars, restaurants in Belgrade gas stations. I went
to the high school girls' basketball game and just asked
folks if they had seen her and tried to create
some awareness. I guess it was kind of really all
hands on.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Deck that day, finding Danny's truck and keys convinced law
enforcement that something had happened to the fifteen year old girl.
The Galatin County Sheriff's office scoured the swampy area near
the fishing access until it got too dark. They didn't
find anything, but two brothers who were friends of the
family kept searching. They noticed a footprint and a broken
(10:37):
cattail the searchers had missed and followed the trail over
a creek until they saw what they at first thought
was a dead deer lying in the mud.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
And then I was home that night after Danny's body
was found, and I heard my dad tell my mom
that she had died.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Part two. The crime scene.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Danny's body was found face down in about eight inches
of muddy water. Her body had been dragged twenty feet
and her watch had been pulled over her hand. One
of her sandals was missing, but she was still wearing
a leg brace due to recently torn ligaments.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
In her knee.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That brace and that injury, would have made it more
difficult to run away. Her face was scratched and bruised,
and the bruising on the back of her neck indicated
that her head had been forcefully held under the mud.
Even more disturbingly, if that's possible, her bra had been
rolled under her shirt and her underwear had been pulled down.
(11:48):
Later analysis found seamen and male hairs in her underwear
and in her genitals, along with mud in her lungs.
All of this was found and recorded by the sheriff's
and the medical examiner, and yet, for reasons that remain unclear,
coroner Robert Myers did not rule Danny's death as a homicide.
(12:10):
The death certificate lists the cause of death as drowning,
but in a box where Myers was supposed to describe
how the injury occurred, he simply wrote undetermined. In fact,
according to Stephanie, investigators told the Houchens that their daughter
may have drowned accidentally. Stephanie wouldn't see the case file
(12:31):
until twenty years later, but even in the days and
months following Danny's death, they questioned whether the sheriff was
being honest with them.
Speaker 10 (12:39):
It never made sense what law enforcement was saying to us.
How could she have just gone down there and accidentally died,
How could there have been no marks on her? How
could this just be such a mystery and I think
that they had all of that really innate guts to
(12:59):
suspicions that what they were being told couldn't possibly be accurate.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The sheriff at the time was a man named Bill Slaughter.
He has admitted to not telling the family everything about
their daughter's death, but he has denied lying to them.
It's sometimes important to withhold information to protect the integrity
of an investigation, and the Houchens aren't the only family
to be frustrated by a lack of information from law enforcement.
(13:28):
It's also true that in the months following Danny's death,
Slaughter told local media that he was investigating her death
as a homicide. In a nineteen ninety seven article published
in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, he said, quote, We've always
worked it as a homicide. He reiterated that position to
the Montana Free Press in twenty twenty four and said
(13:48):
he was frustrated the coroner and medical examiner listed the
cause of death as undetermined, But in that same article
from nineteen ninety seven, Slaughter also claimed that the evidence
was not quote conclusive. What's more, Gallatin County Coroner Rob
Myers told the media things at the time that contradicted
(14:08):
the actual reports. Meyers said there was no visible bruising
to indicate that Danny had been held under the water.
He also said there were no signs of a struggle,
even though she did have what appeared to be defensive
wounds on her hands. Slaughter also suggested that they hadn't
collected any foreign hairs from Danny's body, but that wasn't
(14:32):
true either. They had collected four hairs that didn't belong
to Danny, which would end up being crucial pieces of
evidence in identifying her killer. The decision not to list
Danny's death as a homicide or tell the family anything
about her sexual assault had far reaching effects both on
the investigation of the case and the Houchin's family.
Speaker 10 (14:54):
It's pretty likely that family members who suddenly lose such
someone to murder, and then you add in a complexity
of learning leader that there was a sexual assault incorporated
into that penus crime probably deal with a lot of
very real trauma throughout their entire lives.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Once Stephanie began looking into her sister's case, the decision
by the coroner to not list Danny's death as a
homicide made it impossible for Stephanie to enter Danny's case
into cold case databases. It also, she believes, solidified the
notion that Danny's death wasn't worth investigating seriously.
Speaker 10 (15:35):
The failure in nineteen ninety six sat up, in my opinion,
a culture of not taking her case seriously in the
Sheriff's office, because they listed undetermined on her death certificate.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Part three the investigation.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
The Sheriff's department did continue to investigate Danny's case. Former
detective Cindy Botek began reinvestigating the murder in the early
two thousands when she joined the detective squad, and I've
been told she took the case file out on a
regular basis to see if she'd missed anything. She told
the Montana Free Press that the mud in Danny's lungs
proved the teen didn't drown in an accident, and she
(16:25):
was as frustrated as anyone about the lack of progress
in the case. But the fact is, for any detective,
it's tough to justify spending your very limited time and
resources on a cold case when there are active investigations
in the here and now. So the case remained cold
until twenty nineteen, when Stephanie decided it was time she
(16:48):
found out what happened to her sister.
Speaker 10 (16:51):
Many times over five years, you know, kind of repeated
this mantra to my sister, like I'm coming for you, Danny,
I'm coming for you, Like no, we have not forgotten you,
and I'm coming and I will not give up until
I do this for you.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
At first, she hit a brick wall.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
The Gallatin County Deputies assured her they were working on
the case, but told her they couldn't release any information
about an active investigation. But she didn't give up, and
eventually her persistence earned her a call from Sergeant Matt Boxmeyer.
Boxmeyer was in charge of Danny's case, and he told
her he planned to review and digitize the entire case file.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That was the turning point for me.
Speaker 10 (17:31):
I was like, okay, jumping in head first, let's go,
because I thought I was going to have to work
a lot harder to get collaboration. And I was pretty
excited when I heard from Matt.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
The sheriff at the time, Brian Goodkin, worked with Stephanie
in the County Attorney's office to get approval for Stephanie
to see that file. That experience, Stephanie says, was both
heartbreaking and.
Speaker 10 (17:54):
Infuriating looking at her case file and looking at autopsy
photos and crime scene photos, and she and I look
a lot alike, and that was really terrible having to
do that. What happened to my sister was so much
(18:14):
worse than anyone had ever shared with us, and so
all my worst suspicions about the way her life ended
and what she endured leading up to her death and
then what killed her was awful. Awful.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Stephanie and Sergeant Boxmeyer stayed in touch over the next
few years, but the case didn't really get off the
ground until Tom Elfmont came on the scene.
Speaker 11 (18:47):
Once I sat down with the sheriff and they told
me about the case and that it was this really
wonderful fifteen year old girl who basically got ambushed out
at the Gallatin River, I said, you know, it's a
case I definitely would be very interested in investigating.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Tom had been a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department,
but he had since retired and moved to Montana. Dan Springer,
who'd been elected as Gallatin County Sheriff in twenty twenty one,
had been reaching out to his contacts for someone who
might be able to help with Danny's case. He'd heard
about Tom through a network of retired LAPD officers, and
Tom agreed.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
To work the case free of charge.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
He began his investigation by reading the case file and
familiarizing himself with witness testimony and available evidence. I asked
him if he agrees with Stephanie's assessment that the crime
scene evidence clearly pointed to rape and murder.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
She didn't drown.
Speaker 11 (19:44):
She was actually suffocated to death while he held her
head down, and she had small contusions on the back
of her head and also the front of her head,
so it was clear to me it was a clear
cut homicide from day one.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Next, Tom conducts did his own interviews of the various
parties involved. He ruled out the brothers who found Danny's body,
as well as another potential suspect investigators had identified in
twenty ten. He didn't believe any of these men were
capable of this crime, so he turned his attention to
the physical evidence that had been collected at the scene.
He started with a semen that had been found in
(20:20):
Danny's underwear. A DNA profile had never been extracted from
that semen, partly because the Montana State Crime Lab is
underfunded and partly because the underwear had been misfiled in
the archives.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
So I actually drove up to the lab and I
met with the people at the lab and I said, look,
you have to test the saman and you have to
get a DNA profile.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Previous investigators had asked the lab to conduct that testing,
but it had never been completed. But this time, thanks
to Tom's efforts, the DNA profile was done and submitted
to the FBI's DNA database. If Danny's killer had committed
a felony since about the year two thousand, it would
pop up in that system. But nothing appeared, and the
(21:02):
genetic information wasn't robust enough to complete another kind of
advanced genetic analysis, the same kind of analysis that had
caught the Golden Gate killer in twenty eighteen, a case
that had inspired Stephanie to begin the hunt for Danny's murderer.
By now, you've probably heard of forensic genetic genealogy. If
(21:23):
you haven't, the concept is actually simpler than it sounds.
If you're trying to identify someone from a DNA sample,
but that information isn't in any law enforcement databases, you
can look for relatives of the person you're trying to
find in one of those genetic testing services like twenty
three and meters or ancestry dot com. If you can find,
say the cousin or the father of the suspect, you
(21:45):
can narrow down the search to people related to those
cousins or fathers who were in the area around the
time the crime was committed. The semen wasn't enough to
do this analysis, but fortunately that was a the only
physical evidence collected.
Speaker 11 (22:02):
In all the evidence that they had from twenty eight
years ago, there were four hairs, and the four hairs
were actually preserved fairly well.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Tom got in touch with an expert in forensic DNA
analysis who connected him with a lab called Astria Forensics
in San Francisco. According to Tom, this is the only
lab in the country that can extract enough genetic material
from a hair to perform genetic genealogy. This technology is
so new that it didn't even exist just a few
(22:33):
years ago. He sent the first two hairs to Astria,
but they were too degraded to extract a DNA sequence.
Tom only had two hairs left. If those didn't produce
the results he was looking for, he'd have exhausted the
best evidence from the crime scene.
Speaker 11 (22:50):
I submitted the third and fourth hairs, and with the
third and fourth hairs on the fourth hair, they got
a lot of DNA and it was only the seventh
case in the United States involving a hare and DNA
that was solved with.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
A DNA profile in hands.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Tom then went to one of the best genetic genealogists
in the country, a woman named C. C. Moore, whose
website calls her the DNA Detective. She was able to
find two brothers and a first cousin who were related
to the DNA that came from the hares. These brothers
and cousin were from New Hampshire, but Tom discovered that
one of the brothers had moved to Bozeman, Montana, a
(23:30):
month before Danny was killed.
Speaker 11 (23:33):
So then we knew he was in the area where
the crime occurred, and then we zeroed in on him.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
The man they identified was Paul Hutchinson, a fifty five
year old fisheries biologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
Stephanie was given Hutchinson's name long before it was announced
to the public. I asked her what it was like
after five years of searching and nearly thirty years of
wondering to finally put a name and a face to
(24:02):
the man who killed her sister.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
Man, it was a pretty complex feelings.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It was relieving.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
And knowing that we were going to solve this.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It was.
Speaker 10 (24:22):
A validation that we were about to go have years
of a court battle ahead of us. But it was
also really weird knowing that that person, who is truly
a monster in my eyes, had like like I could
look him up online, and he had a life and
(24:47):
he had a career, and that introduces all sorts of weird,
just things to wrap your head around that I was
not ready for. But at the end of the day,
I knew that I had done everything I could for
my sister and that we were going to be successful
(25:08):
finally finding justice for her murder.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
After the break, Tom catches up with Hutchinson at the
BLM Field office in Dylan and we hear the voice
of Danny's killer. Does he admit to knowing Danny or
being in the area, how does he react to seeing
Danny's face in a photograph, and what is Hutchinson's next
move After being confronted about his crime for the first
(25:37):
time in nearly thirty years. That's next on Blood Trails,
Part four the interview. At this point, Tom knew he
(25:59):
had to tread carefully. The DNA evidence was convincing, and
it would become even more convincing once they compared the
hair on Danny's body with a current sample from Hutchinson.
But even with that forensic evidence, the case would be
difficult to prosecute.
Speaker 11 (26:14):
The first thing a defense attorney would have said, is okay,
your honor. For twenty seven years, this woman's death was
listed as an accident. Why are we here charging my
client with murder? Tom wanted to sit down with Hutchinson
and ask him questions about where he was and what
he was doing in nineteen ninety six. If he had
(26:35):
those kinds of statements, along with the physical evidence, prosecutors
would have an easier time convicting him. I really wanted
him to either lie to us or tell us things
about where he was, because you know, he could have
always used the.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Alibi that a lot of criminals use.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
Well, I met her there and we had sex, but
when I left, she was fine, and I didn't want
him to have any kind of an alibi.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Tom also knew that if he conducted a formal interview
with Hutchinson about Danny's case, he would have to read
Hutchinson his Miranda rights, and Tom's experience when a suspect
is read his miranda rights, he almost always clams up
and asks for a lawyer. So Tom consulted with a
criminal attorney to develop a plan that would let Tom
interview Hutchinson without reading him his rights.
Speaker 11 (27:28):
It was agreed that if I could interview him in
a public place where he could get up and just
walk away any time he wasn't under arrest, he was
free to go. That would be okay with the courts
in Montana and the federal courts.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Tom and another volunteer investigator, Sergeant court de Puigue, of
the Newport Beach Police, approached Hutchinson as he was getting
out of his truck in the parking lot of the
Dylan Blm Field office. Normally, we would have to rely
on Tom's account and police statements to learn about what
happened next, but Sergeant Dupuige was carrying a camera and
we were able to obtain the footage.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Hey, Paul, how you doing good? Good?
Speaker 7 (28:09):
My name's Tom Elfmont.
Speaker 11 (28:10):
Well, you've got your hands full, so that's okay. I'll
just give you a touch there with the Gallatin.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 11 (28:17):
Uh huh, guess, and we wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
We've been asking around.
Speaker 11 (28:23):
We were over in Ennis and we've been talking to
some fisheries people about some things that have been going
on here at the rivers in southwest Montana.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Well, Tom didn't tell Paul the real reason they wanted
to talk to him. He was concerned that if he
did that, Paul would end the interview then and there.
So as a pretext for speaking with Hutchinson, Tom found
other cases of women who have been found dead along
rivers in Montana. He and Sergeant to Pwig told Hutchinson
that as a fisheries biologist who spent a lot of
time on the river, he would have valuable insight into
(28:55):
these cases.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
We're working a couple of vescations involving the water and
your name came up as somebody that's been around a
long time that that could probably help us. We gotta
we got a we got a couple of names. You
might even know these guys, but we when we asked BLM,
obviously you guys were working the waterways all the time,
they said, Hey, these guys have been around forever. They
know they know the inside, inside out of everything that's
(29:16):
going on. So but that's why, that's why we're I'll
talking to you today. So appreciate you sitting down with
us to help.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Paul doesn't seem overly nervous in the initial minutes of
the interview. When Sergeant Apuigue asked to use the restroom,
Paul takes out his phone and sends a message to
one of his texts. While fielding questions from Tom about
his time at Montana State University, I went.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
To school in New Hampshire for a year. That was
a terrible student in high school. I was really lazy,
and then you know, military straightened j out.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Applied to Idaho, Wyoming, Montana over again. I got accepted
all of them. And I think it was a cost benefit.
M s U was had a good program and it
wasn't stupid expensive.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
This might seem like mundane small talk, but remember the
investigators believed that Paul killed Danny during his first year
at Montana State, and Tom and Sergeant de Puigue are
trying to get more information about that time or catch
Paul in a lie.
Speaker 7 (30:20):
So you went to Montana and that was for how
many years of school did you have to go to between?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Really? And then what year did you start there?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Ninety five? I think ninety six.
Speaker 7 (30:34):
Ninety five, somewhere around there.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
N ninety six, thinks ninety six.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
Do you think about nineteen ninety six? Okay? Do you
do you remember when in ninety six that you came
to Montana?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I don't. I mean, did you start the fall semester? Yes?
Speaker 7 (30:56):
Okay, so maybe August September, probably earlier than that, okay.
And then did you was that your first femine in Montana?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (31:09):
Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Paul must have been wondering why these guys seem so
interested in his biography. They're over fifteen minutes into the
interview and Tom and the sergeant still haven't asked him
a question about one of their cases. But if he's
starting to get suspicious, he doesn't show it. He's leaning
back in his chair with his right leg crossed over
his left and pressing against the edge of the table.
When Tom or the sergeant asks him a question, he
(31:33):
looks at them and furrows his brow as he thinks
he puckers his mouth and moves it from side to side.
But when Sergeant Tapuige finally mentions young women being killed
near waterways, Paul's body language starts to change.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
What we're looking into is we've had some deaths that
have popped up, females that have been popping up either
in the water or near water. And one of the
things is is the these cases are cold. Have you
ever heard that term before? And what we're trying to
do is stimulate him, is try to figure out, you know,
who may be responsible for him.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Obviously, Paul leans forward in his chair, arms folded, and
then immediately leans back. It's like he can't decide whether
to lean forward and look more closely at the images
in front of him, or lean back and act nonchalant.
It ends up looking like he was hit with a
small bolt of lightning. The sergeant shows Paul images of
two women who were killed along rivers in Montana, and
(32:29):
Paul says he doesn't recognize them at one point, pushing
the pictures farther away from him on the desk. Then
Depuige poses the question they're really there to ask.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Okay, this is Daniel Houchins. She was she was killed
in September ninety six, and she was found off the
Gallatin River. Did you ever fish up there?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
By this point, Paul had likely figured out what was
going on. Tom remembers noticing how difficult it was for
the fisheries biologist to keep himself together.
Speaker 11 (33:03):
I mean, he was profusely sweating. Clearly, he was unbelievably agitated.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Paul has a receding hairline, and even in the body
cam video you can see a sheen of moisture on
his forehead.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
I h I trapped on the Gallatin, but never fished
the Allatan. Okay, I never fished. I don't fish the
big rivers. It's always the strange, yeah, the little the
backcountry stuff.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
Okay, So and do you have you ever heard of
the Cameron Bridge Access? Have you been there before?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Probably? Jack graviit lane?
Speaker 7 (33:42):
Yeah, exactly? Is that where you trap?
Speaker 9 (33:44):
No?
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I trapped over Alberta Angus.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
I traveled back and forth, okay into a Loup right
around that time. And where you was this back in
ninety six, ninety seven eight before you shut down here?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Yeah, I trapped up until three years ago. So yeah,
I would have been in.
Speaker 7 (34:10):
That area then back in ninety six.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
I don't know if I tropped the ninety six that
was my first year of college.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Again, this line of questioning isn't random. They're trying to
get him to admit to being in the area around
the time Danny was killed, and even though he equivocates
a little, Tom believes his answer was close enough to
an admission.
Speaker 11 (34:29):
He admitted going out having trap lines out there, which
would have put him in the woods trapping whatever. He
trapped bobcats, skunks, coyotes, and so he was creeping around
the woods out there. So he put himself there, which
was a big deal. That was a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
As Paul's this comfort grows, he excuses himself from the
room for a third time during the course of the interview,
which had only lasted about thirty minutes. At that point,
he says one of his texts, it's his help, and
turns his phone towards the investigators to imply that he's
just received a text message. But as he does so,
you can see in the video that he's just opened
the on x app. Maybe he had a sudden urge
(35:13):
to do some online scouting, or maybe he wanted to
delete some pins he'd have trouble explaining if investigators were
to find them, But when he returns and the interview continues,
he tries to play things as cool as he can.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
Going back to Cameron Bridge access and obviously Danny was
killed in what she was found in September of ninety six. Danielle, Yeah,
houchinz Yeah, this one. Do you remember hearing about this
murder or anything about about that? I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I mean I might have.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
It was a big case just because she was so young,
and obviously for Bozeman, that's that's big news, you know,
especially in Montana. It wasn't common obviously back in the day.
I mean, do you remember this mayor or hearing her name?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I don't. I mean, what was that twenty thirty years ago?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
The investigators pressed Paul on whether he knows any fishing
guides or local fishermen who might have been on the
Gallatin around the time Danny was killed. Paul reiterates multiple
times that he's not much of a fisherman, and even
though he is a big time outdoorsman, can't think of
a single angler who might be able to help them.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
No, I'm saying, like any local fishermen back in the
day that you knew around Cameron Bridge that might have
information for us back in ninety six, remember night, he
SAIDs honestly, I don't.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I mean kind of Next Tom and the sergeant pressed
Paul Harder on his interactions with Danny.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Okay, and what about Danny Houches. Do you recognize that name?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I don't.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Indeed, do you know if you do, you remember do
you know her?
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Was she in school when I went to school?
Speaker 7 (37:09):
No, she was in she was over at Belgrade High
School when you were when you were in school, I
don't think as well.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I don't know where what circle I would have ran into.
Speaker 7 (37:24):
Yeah, I mean she's a fifteen year old girl, That's
what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:27):
So do you do you recall or does she look
familiar to you at all?
Speaker 3 (37:32):
No, honestly, I don't recognize any of them.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
But I mean if back then that would have been
what on the news of the newspapers.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was a big I mean this, especially
this one because it was in Bozeman. Danny was would
hang out at the Cameron Bridge access road. Do you
remember seeing her there or a similar face?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, I honestly don't. I mean, I probably.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
I've been to a bunch of fishing access sites for
one reason or another.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I don't one of them.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
She is, I mean, Danny does not look familiar.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
To you at all.
Speaker 7 (38:07):
You don't know her?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
No, I.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
What's the last name, Houchins? Houchins? Does she have an
older brother?
Speaker 7 (38:17):
No?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
No.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Paul maintains a baffled but concerned expression and shakes his
head and blinks a lot. The rest of the interview
circles around the same kinds of topics. Paul eventually admits
that he may have tubed the Gallatin in nineteen ninety six,
but he delivers most of his answers with a shrug.
Tom and Sergeant to Pwiege never accuse him of anything directly,
but they do come close, and at one point, Paul
(38:42):
almost asks the question that's likely been spinning around his
mind throughout the interview.
Speaker 7 (38:48):
Is there any reason or do you think there's any
possibility that you could have been in the area when
this happened? Do you remember a girl screaming or anything
like that?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I don't.
Speaker 7 (39:01):
Is there a possibility that you were there when she
was murdered? No, you don't remember any screaming or anything
like that. You weren't trapping or anything during that.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Time, not September that would have been Are you asking me?
Speaker 7 (39:15):
I mean, I'm just asking if you remember anything all
during that time. Don't no, nothing, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
When the interview concludes after a little more than an hour,
Paul seems relieved. He says he'll try to think of
someone who might be able to help them, and promises
to call Tom if he remembers anything that might be useful.
Speaker 7 (39:39):
If there's something I haven't asked you that you think
I should know this time, tell me now so that
might be.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
More okay, Yeah, question ask grew So.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I mean it's what it's part of the job.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
But yeah, I feel free to call me too.
Speaker 7 (39:52):
Man, all right, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Tom told me they weren't concerned that Paul would try
to flee the country, but he still instructed detectives to
follow their number one suspect. They wanted to keep track
of him and see if where he went and what
he did might implicate him further.
Speaker 11 (40:11):
But Dylan was a very very small town. It's one
way in, one way out, and it was just impossible,
and he was driving like a crazy man. So I
told the surveillance people back off and just sit on
the north side of town and the south side of
town and his house and just see where he comes
and goes. And that's what they did.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
But whatever the plan was for the subsequent days and weeks,
they never got the chance to put it into action.
Speaker 11 (40:38):
And then around four point thirty in the morning, I
got a phone call. They told me that he called
nine to one one and Dylan and he said officer
needs assist and hung up.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Just a day after their initial interview with Paul Hutchinson,
Sheriff Springer found out that Paul Hutchinson had died by suicide,
and he was dead.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
For most people, Hutchinson's reaction to being interviewed about Danny
is evidence enough of his guilt. But when they swabbed
Hutchinson's cheek for DNA and compared it to the hair
they found on Danny's body, there was no doubt in
Tom's mind.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
They turned it around really quickly and told us that
it was ten point seven trillion to one that it
was his DNA on Danny's panties.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
So we knew we got the right guy.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I asked Stephanie how she felt when Tom called her
and told her that the man who killed her sister
had committed suicide.
Speaker 10 (41:41):
My first thought was, you fucking coward, You fucking coward.
I personally have had to put so much courage into
an effort for driving justice from my sister, And how
(42:05):
dare he decide that he gets to make that last choice? Unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I was so.
Speaker 10 (42:20):
Just aghast at that reality. I felt like he a
selfish and as terrible as this sounds, because it's not
about It was never about me. It was always about
justice for my sister. But I was looking forward to
(42:44):
staring his ass down in court, and I was looking
forward to delivering a victim impact statement and to testifying
about the investigation. And I was looking forward to all
of that, and he totally robbed that from me.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Well, never know what Paul was thinking when he shot
himself with a thirty eight caliber Darryner pistol. He could
have been thinking about what Sergeant du Puig told him
that they'd found male DNA on Danny's body, and as
Tom said, modern technology had finally allowed them to unlock
its secrets.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
With the recent.
Speaker 11 (43:23):
Improvements in DNA technology, I think we're getting to we're getting.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
To the point where at some point, we're going to
be able to I think, don't you agree, identify somebody. Yeah, yeah,
I think we're going to be able to identify somebody.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Paul doesn't react to this beyond nodding his head. But
at that point he must have known he was cooked.
He knew he would likely go to prison or worse,
and as Stephanie says, he couldn't face that prospect. But
I also can't help but wonder if he was thinking
about this exchange with Sergeant du Puig just before the
close of the interview, and wondering how he could face
(44:02):
his own family when the world discovered what he'd done.
Speaker 7 (44:05):
They rocked this community. And obviously, you know, your dad,
you would understand losing your daughter at fifteen, and you know,
especially you know you have a girl who's who you know,
I'll use an old school term innocent, right, and then
somebody takes that innocence away and then murders her. I mean,
as a dad, I mean, how would you feel, you
(44:26):
know what I mean? I mean, you got a daughter,
if that, if she was taking tomorrow by that, how
would you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yeah? I mean, I mean who you didn't even say it?
I mean you have kids.
Speaker 7 (44:37):
I do, yeah, I mean I'd be I'd be absolutely devastated.
I'd be pissed. I'd be pissed off to be honest
with you, you know, and I want answers, and I
want to know what man did that to my little girl.
I mean, whether she's eighteen, she's thirty, she's always going
to be your little girl, right And that's what we're
trying to answer for Danny's dad right now and her mom.
(44:58):
You know, who did that and why I did that?
Just answer those questions. Why was it a mistake? Was
it you know, was this a one off? Why did
this happen to her being you know, fifteen years old?
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Man?
Speaker 7 (45:12):
You know, could you imagine I think an adult did it?
And then for them to come in and absolutely just
you know, you're you're sitting there as a dad thinking
my daughters. You know, it's probably screaming in his name,
you know, asking for dad's help. All if she wanted
to probably do was go home to dad, you know,
(45:33):
screaming for her dad to save her, and he couldn't
be there, you know, And that as a dad, you
know of daughters, and you and me are in the
same position.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
I mean, that just.
Speaker 7 (45:43):
Wrecks my heart out.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Paul's suicide brought Tom's investigation to a close, but it's
hardly the end of the story. Once news got out
about what happened, journalists, podcasters, and television personalities descended on
Bozeman to try to figure out how a seemingly normal
man could commit such a horrible atrocity and then hide
it for nearly thirty years. They wanted to know who
(46:07):
Paul Hutchinson was, how his family and friends were processing
the tragedy, and whether Danny was Paul's only victim. That's
next time on Blood Trails.
This episode contains graphic descriptions of crime scene details involving
sexual violence and murder. It also deals with suicide. Listener
discretion is advised if you or someone you know is
having thoughts of suicide, call her text nine to eight
eight to reach the suicide and Crisis lifeline.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In nineteen ninety six, a fifteen year old girl was raped, drowned,
and left for dead along the banks of the Gallatin River.
Her murderer turned out to be a hunter and a
BLM biologist. He was brought to justice nearly thirty years later,
but not in the way that anyone expected. That's next
on Blood Trails. How well do you know the people
(00:57):
you hunt with? You know their names, what they do,
where they live. If you went with family, you know
a whole lot more. But when you venture into the
wilderness to spend days, sometimes weeks alone with another person,
do you ever wonder do I really know this guy?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think they just thought he was a pretty normal dude.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
We thought he was a kind of a quirky guy.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
But he was ex military and had a fisheries bo
just wildlife ball, just background, so we just always thought
he was kind of a different guy.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
We went way back out in the mountains by ourselves.
I didn't have any clue where we were and spent
the whole day and it was horrible.
Speaker 7 (01:40):
It was the worst day ever.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
He was so mean.
Speaker 8 (01:43):
I shot my first year ever with him when I
was nine years old, and I mean, he's always was
always there, and he was always the person who pushed
me to get more involved with the outdoor activities.
Speaker 9 (01:57):
Nobody had any idea, And thinking back on it, I
remembered that he had been kind of reserved and stuff
been like, yeah, I couldn't think of anything that I
was never like uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The voices you just heard are the relatives, coworkers and
hunting partners of a man named Paul Hutchinson. Hutchinson was
born in New Hampshire in nineteen sixty nine, but moved
out to Montana in the late nineties to attend Montana
State University. He earned a degree in fishery science and
enjoyed a long and award winning career as a biologist
(02:31):
with the Bureau of Land Management. He had a wife,
two kids, and a house in Dylan, Montana. He was
also a big time outdoorsman. He hunted elk, mule deer,
bighorn sheep, and waterfowl, but most of all, he loved turkeys.
He traveled to twenty states chasing gobblers, and he aimed
to kill a turkey in all forty nine states where
(02:51):
they live.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Most of Hutchinson's.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Social media accounts no longer exist, but his son posted
a video in twenty twenty of Hutchinson calling to a
group of turkeys from his truck. From the outside, he
seemed like a normal guy, maybe a little off putting
at times, maybe a little arrogant, but on the whole,
(03:15):
not a bad dude to go hunting with. Then last year,
that facade came crashing down night.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
After nearly three decades, a cold case murder in Gallatin
County is closed.
Speaker 10 (03:25):
In nineteen ninety six, fifteen year old Danny Houchins disappeared
after going for a walk by a river.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hours later, her body was found in a swampy area.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
Forensic evidence has determined Paul Hutchinson murdered Daniel Howchins at
the Cameron Bridge fishing access.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Hutchinson was accused of raping and murdering a fifteen year
old girl in a community just down the road from
where he lived worked and raised a family. Investigators used
cutting edge forensic technology to pin him for the crime,
and they confronted him in a high pressure interview you'll
hear at the end of this episode. The story rocked
the small town of Dylan. Hutchinson's family, friends, coworkers, and
(04:02):
hunting buddies ask themselves how they missed the giant, festering
atrocity in Paul Hutchinson's past. How could a person so
outwardly normal be capable of something so evil? Who was
Paul Hutchinson? How did he escape detection for so long?
Was anyone else in on his secret? And do his
family and friends believe he did what he's been accused
(04:25):
of doing.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I don't think any of us know what happened.
Speaker 8 (04:27):
Obviously, something really terrible and provable happened, and there's no
like denying it or justifying it or rationalizing it. It's
completely crazy. I mean, you hear about the stuff on TV.
You never think you're going to be on the villain
side of the story.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And that story might not be over. Hutchinson traveled the
country hunting turkeys, and now investigators are wondering if he
used those trips to commit other crimes. Is it possible
someone could rape a fifteen year old girl, kill her
and then go on to live a crime free life.
(05:03):
Right now, no one knows for sure, but still it
makes you wonder what else could be hiding in the
hearts of those we think we know best. On Jordan
Siller's and this is blood Trails a Monster among Us
(05:25):
Part one Danny. On September twenty first to nineteen ninety six,
Danielle Houchens needed to clear her head. She'd had a
disagreement with her parents, as fifteen year olds tend to do, so,
she asked her mom if she could drive down to
the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access site just outside of Belgrade, Montana.
(05:47):
Danny had recently earned her driver's license, so it was
a quick ten minute ride in her truck. It was
peaceful down by the banks of the Gallatin River, and
she'd been there before with friends and family. Stephanie, her
younger sister, was twelve years old at the time. Her
memory of Danny is colored by the genuine admiration most
girls have for their older teenage sister.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
She was my hero.
Speaker 10 (06:11):
She was cool and tough, you know she. It was
the grunge era, and it was the nineties, and like
she wore cool, baggy flannels and listened to awesome music
like Pearl Jam and Dirvana and all this angsty, you
know kind of music. And so there was that cool factor,
(06:32):
and she was adventurous and you know, seemingly unafraid to
do things. But she excelled in a lot other ways too.
She was very, very very smart and did really well
in school. But she wasn't just studious smart. She had
this really dry sense of humor and sarcasm that she
(06:56):
would point to the people around her, but would also
like turn that on herself and be sarcastic and self
deprecating their humor. You know, just kind of that hilarious, snarky, sassy,
angsty fifteen year old girl.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
In the nineties, the Houchins didn't do much hunting and fishing,
but they did pretty much everything else in the outdoors.
They especially liked to skip. Stephanie's parents were both ski
patrollers in Big Sky, Montana, and Stephanie remembers doing everything
she could to keep up with her older sister on
the slopes.
Speaker 10 (07:32):
She was always the person I looked up to on
anything that we were doing as a family, and so
there was that innat desire to be like her, to
be able to accomplish the kinds of things that she
was able to accomplish, to push myself to be tougher,
(07:53):
whether it be on the mountain in the winter time,
or up hiking and kind of pushing through that last
mile of the tree trail before you got to the top,
or whatever it was that we were doing out in
the woods. She was my motivator to be able to
continue doing that when it sucked right and when I'm
like a little kid and want to give up. And
(08:15):
so it sounds too simple to say that she was
my hero, but she was my hero because she was
my older sister, and everything I measured myself against was
measuring towards her.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That Saturday in nineteen ninety six, the town of Belgrade
was celebrating a yearly fall festival. The festivities were taking
place right across the street from the Houchin's home, and
Stephanie was there at the park playing with her friends.
Speaker 10 (08:44):
And I remember my dad coming over to the park
and telling me that Danny was missing, and that you know,
they were going to try to look for her, but
that she was missing and I needed to come home
and so I I kind of ran back home.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Danny had left that morning, so when she didn't come
home by the early afternoon, her parents started to become concerned.
But that concern turned to panic when Stephanie's mom drove
down to the Cameron Park Bridge and found Danny's truck
but no sign of.
Speaker 10 (09:21):
Danny, and then pretty quickly there found her keys and
water bottle on a trail leading back into kind of
the marshy area of that fishing access. That was really
I think what set off all the explosive worry for
my mom.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Stephanie's mom called Danny's name and looked around the fishing
access site, but still she couldn't find her. That's when
she called her husband and they recruited family and friends
to start the search. Stephanie remembers driving around town with
a photo of Danny, asking if anyone had seen her sister.
Speaker 10 (09:57):
My friend's mom drove me around and I went to
the different bars, restaurants in Belgrade gas stations. I went
to the high school girls' basketball game and just asked
folks if they had seen her and tried to create
some awareness. I guess it was kind of really all
hands on.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Deck that day, finding Danny's truck and keys convinced law
enforcement that something had happened to the fifteen year old girl.
The Galatin County Sheriff's office scoured the swampy area near
the fishing access until it got too dark. They didn't
find anything, but two brothers who were friends of the
family kept searching. They noticed a footprint and a broken
(10:37):
cattail the searchers had missed and followed the trail over
a creek until they saw what they at first thought
was a dead deer lying in the mud.
Speaker 10 (10:48):
And then I was home that night after Danny's body
was found, and I heard my dad tell my mom
that she had died.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Part two. The crime scene.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Danny's body was found face down in about eight inches
of muddy water. Her body had been dragged twenty feet
and her watch had been pulled over her hand. One
of her sandals was missing, but she was still wearing
a leg brace due to recently torn ligaments.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
In her knee.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That brace and that injury, would have made it more
difficult to run away. Her face was scratched and bruised,
and the bruising on the back of her neck indicated
that her head had been forcefully held under the mud.
Even more disturbingly, if that's possible, her bra had been
rolled under her shirt and her underwear had been pulled down.
(11:48):
Later analysis found seamen and male hairs in her underwear
and in her genitals, along with mud in her lungs.
All of this was found and recorded by the sheriff's
and the medical examiner, and yet, for reasons that remain unclear,
coroner Robert Myers did not rule Danny's death as a homicide.
(12:10):
The death certificate lists the cause of death as drowning,
but in a box where Myers was supposed to describe
how the injury occurred, he simply wrote undetermined. In fact,
according to Stephanie, investigators told the Houchens that their daughter
may have drowned accidentally. Stephanie wouldn't see the case file
(12:31):
until twenty years later, but even in the days and
months following Danny's death, they questioned whether the sheriff was
being honest with them.
Speaker 10 (12:39):
It never made sense what law enforcement was saying to us.
How could she have just gone down there and accidentally died,
How could there have been no marks on her? How
could this just be such a mystery and I think
that they had all of that really innate guts to
(12:59):
suspicions that what they were being told couldn't possibly be accurate.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The sheriff at the time was a man named Bill Slaughter.
He has admitted to not telling the family everything about
their daughter's death, but he has denied lying to them.
It's sometimes important to withhold information to protect the integrity
of an investigation, and the Houchens aren't the only family
to be frustrated by a lack of information from law enforcement.
(13:28):
It's also true that in the months following Danny's death,
Slaughter told local media that he was investigating her death
as a homicide. In a nineteen ninety seven article published
in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, he said, quote, We've always
worked it as a homicide. He reiterated that position to
the Montana Free Press in twenty twenty four and said
(13:48):
he was frustrated the coroner and medical examiner listed the
cause of death as undetermined, But in that same article
from nineteen ninety seven, Slaughter also claimed that the evidence
was not quote conclusive. What's more, Gallatin County Coroner Rob
Myers told the media things at the time that contradicted
(14:08):
the actual reports. Meyers said there was no visible bruising
to indicate that Danny had been held under the water.
He also said there were no signs of a struggle,
even though she did have what appeared to be defensive
wounds on her hands. Slaughter also suggested that they hadn't
collected any foreign hairs from Danny's body, but that wasn't
(14:32):
true either. They had collected four hairs that didn't belong
to Danny, which would end up being crucial pieces of
evidence in identifying her killer. The decision not to list
Danny's death as a homicide or tell the family anything
about her sexual assault had far reaching effects both on
the investigation of the case and the Houchin's family.
Speaker 10 (14:54):
It's pretty likely that family members who suddenly lose such
someone to murder, and then you add in a complexity
of learning leader that there was a sexual assault incorporated
into that penus crime probably deal with a lot of
very real trauma throughout their entire lives.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Once Stephanie began looking into her sister's case, the decision
by the coroner to not list Danny's death as a
homicide made it impossible for Stephanie to enter Danny's case
into cold case databases. It also, she believes, solidified the
notion that Danny's death wasn't worth investigating seriously.
Speaker 10 (15:35):
The failure in nineteen ninety six sat up, in my opinion,
a culture of not taking her case seriously in the
Sheriff's office, because they listed undetermined on her death certificate.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Part three the investigation.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
The Sheriff's department did continue to investigate Danny's case. Former
detective Cindy Botek began reinvestigating the murder in the early
two thousands when she joined the detective squad, and I've
been told she took the case file out on a
regular basis to see if she'd missed anything. She told
the Montana Free Press that the mud in Danny's lungs
proved the teen didn't drown in an accident, and she
(16:25):
was as frustrated as anyone about the lack of progress
in the case. But the fact is, for any detective,
it's tough to justify spending your very limited time and
resources on a cold case when there are active investigations
in the here and now. So the case remained cold
until twenty nineteen, when Stephanie decided it was time she
(16:48):
found out what happened to her sister.
Speaker 10 (16:51):
Many times over five years, you know, kind of repeated
this mantra to my sister, like I'm coming for you, Danny,
I'm coming for you, Like no, we have not forgotten you,
and I'm coming and I will not give up until
I do this for you.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
At first, she hit a brick wall.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
The Gallatin County Deputies assured her they were working on
the case, but told her they couldn't release any information
about an active investigation. But she didn't give up, and
eventually her persistence earned her a call from Sergeant Matt Boxmeyer.
Boxmeyer was in charge of Danny's case, and he told
her he planned to review and digitize the entire case file.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That was the turning point for me.
Speaker 10 (17:31):
I was like, okay, jumping in head first, let's go,
because I thought I was going to have to work
a lot harder to get collaboration. And I was pretty
excited when I heard from Matt.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
The sheriff at the time, Brian Goodkin, worked with Stephanie
in the County Attorney's office to get approval for Stephanie
to see that file. That experience, Stephanie says, was both
heartbreaking and.
Speaker 10 (17:54):
Infuriating looking at her case file and looking at autopsy
photos and crime scene photos, and she and I look
a lot alike, and that was really terrible having to
do that. What happened to my sister was so much
(18:14):
worse than anyone had ever shared with us, and so
all my worst suspicions about the way her life ended
and what she endured leading up to her death and
then what killed her was awful. Awful.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Stephanie and Sergeant Boxmeyer stayed in touch over the next
few years, but the case didn't really get off the
ground until Tom Elfmont came on the scene.
Speaker 11 (18:47):
Once I sat down with the sheriff and they told
me about the case and that it was this really
wonderful fifteen year old girl who basically got ambushed out
at the Gallatin River, I said, you know, it's a
case I definitely would be very interested in investigating.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Tom had been a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department,
but he had since retired and moved to Montana. Dan Springer,
who'd been elected as Gallatin County Sheriff in twenty twenty one,
had been reaching out to his contacts for someone who
might be able to help with Danny's case. He'd heard
about Tom through a network of retired LAPD officers, and
Tom agreed.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
To work the case free of charge.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
He began his investigation by reading the case file and
familiarizing himself with witness testimony and available evidence. I asked
him if he agrees with Stephanie's assessment that the crime
scene evidence clearly pointed to rape and murder.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
She didn't drown.
Speaker 11 (19:44):
She was actually suffocated to death while he held her
head down, and she had small contusions on the back
of her head and also the front of her head,
so it was clear to me it was a clear
cut homicide from day one.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Next, Tom conducts did his own interviews of the various
parties involved. He ruled out the brothers who found Danny's body,
as well as another potential suspect investigators had identified in
twenty ten. He didn't believe any of these men were
capable of this crime, so he turned his attention to
the physical evidence that had been collected at the scene.
He started with a semen that had been found in
(20:20):
Danny's underwear. A DNA profile had never been extracted from
that semen, partly because the Montana State Crime Lab is
underfunded and partly because the underwear had been misfiled in
the archives.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
So I actually drove up to the lab and I
met with the people at the lab and I said, look,
you have to test the saman and you have to
get a DNA profile.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Previous investigators had asked the lab to conduct that testing,
but it had never been completed. But this time, thanks
to Tom's efforts, the DNA profile was done and submitted
to the FBI's DNA database. If Danny's killer had committed
a felony since about the year two thousand, it would
pop up in that system. But nothing appeared, and the
(21:02):
genetic information wasn't robust enough to complete another kind of
advanced genetic analysis, the same kind of analysis that had
caught the Golden Gate killer in twenty eighteen, a case
that had inspired Stephanie to begin the hunt for Danny's murderer.
By now, you've probably heard of forensic genetic genealogy. If
(21:23):
you haven't, the concept is actually simpler than it sounds.
If you're trying to identify someone from a DNA sample,
but that information isn't in any law enforcement databases, you
can look for relatives of the person you're trying to
find in one of those genetic testing services like twenty
three and meters or ancestry dot com. If you can find,
say the cousin or the father of the suspect, you
(21:45):
can narrow down the search to people related to those
cousins or fathers who were in the area around the
time the crime was committed. The semen wasn't enough to
do this analysis, but fortunately that was a the only
physical evidence collected.
Speaker 11 (22:02):
In all the evidence that they had from twenty eight
years ago, there were four hairs, and the four hairs
were actually preserved fairly well.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Tom got in touch with an expert in forensic DNA
analysis who connected him with a lab called Astria Forensics
in San Francisco. According to Tom, this is the only
lab in the country that can extract enough genetic material
from a hair to perform genetic genealogy. This technology is
so new that it didn't even exist just a few
(22:33):
years ago. He sent the first two hairs to Astria,
but they were too degraded to extract a DNA sequence.
Tom only had two hairs left. If those didn't produce
the results he was looking for, he'd have exhausted the
best evidence from the crime scene.
Speaker 11 (22:50):
I submitted the third and fourth hairs, and with the
third and fourth hairs on the fourth hair, they got
a lot of DNA and it was only the seventh
case in the United States involving a hare and DNA
that was solved with.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
A DNA profile in hands.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Tom then went to one of the best genetic genealogists
in the country, a woman named C. C. Moore, whose
website calls her the DNA Detective. She was able to
find two brothers and a first cousin who were related
to the DNA that came from the hares. These brothers
and cousin were from New Hampshire, but Tom discovered that
one of the brothers had moved to Bozeman, Montana, a
(23:30):
month before Danny was killed.
Speaker 11 (23:33):
So then we knew he was in the area where
the crime occurred, and then we zeroed in on him.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
The man they identified was Paul Hutchinson, a fifty five
year old fisheries biologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
Stephanie was given Hutchinson's name long before it was announced
to the public. I asked her what it was like
after five years of searching and nearly thirty years of
wondering to finally put a name and a face to
(24:02):
the man who killed her sister.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
Man, it was a pretty complex feelings.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It was relieving.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
And knowing that we were going to solve this.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It was.
Speaker 10 (24:22):
A validation that we were about to go have years
of a court battle ahead of us. But it was
also really weird knowing that that person, who is truly
a monster in my eyes, had like like I could
look him up online, and he had a life and
(24:47):
he had a career, and that introduces all sorts of weird,
just things to wrap your head around that I was
not ready for. But at the end of the day,
I knew that I had done everything I could for
my sister and that we were going to be successful
(25:08):
finally finding justice for her murder.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
After the break, Tom catches up with Hutchinson at the
BLM Field office in Dylan and we hear the voice
of Danny's killer. Does he admit to knowing Danny or
being in the area, how does he react to seeing
Danny's face in a photograph, and what is Hutchinson's next
move After being confronted about his crime for the first
(25:37):
time in nearly thirty years. That's next on Blood Trails,
Part four the interview. At this point, Tom knew he
(25:59):
had to tread carefully. The DNA evidence was convincing, and
it would become even more convincing once they compared the
hair on Danny's body with a current sample from Hutchinson.
But even with that forensic evidence, the case would be
difficult to prosecute.
Speaker 11 (26:14):
The first thing a defense attorney would have said, is okay,
your honor. For twenty seven years, this woman's death was
listed as an accident. Why are we here charging my
client with murder? Tom wanted to sit down with Hutchinson
and ask him questions about where he was and what
he was doing in nineteen ninety six. If he had
(26:35):
those kinds of statements, along with the physical evidence, prosecutors
would have an easier time convicting him. I really wanted
him to either lie to us or tell us things
about where he was, because you know, he could have
always used the.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Alibi that a lot of criminals use.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
Well, I met her there and we had sex, but
when I left, she was fine, and I didn't want
him to have any kind of an alibi.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Tom also knew that if he conducted a formal interview
with Hutchinson about Danny's case, he would have to read
Hutchinson his Miranda rights, and Tom's experience when a suspect
is read his miranda rights, he almost always clams up
and asks for a lawyer. So Tom consulted with a
criminal attorney to develop a plan that would let Tom
interview Hutchinson without reading him his rights.
Speaker 11 (27:28):
It was agreed that if I could interview him in
a public place where he could get up and just
walk away any time he wasn't under arrest, he was
free to go. That would be okay with the courts
in Montana and the federal courts.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Tom and another volunteer investigator, Sergeant court de Puigue, of
the Newport Beach Police, approached Hutchinson as he was getting
out of his truck in the parking lot of the
Dylan Blm Field office. Normally, we would have to rely
on Tom's account and police statements to learn about what
happened next, but Sergeant Dupuige was carrying a camera and
we were able to obtain the footage.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Hey, Paul, how you doing good? Good?
Speaker 7 (28:09):
My name's Tom Elfmont.
Speaker 11 (28:10):
Well, you've got your hands full, so that's okay. I'll
just give you a touch there with the Gallatin.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 11 (28:17):
Uh huh, guess, and we wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
We've been asking around.
Speaker 11 (28:23):
We were over in Ennis and we've been talking to
some fisheries people about some things that have been going
on here at the rivers in southwest Montana.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Well, Tom didn't tell Paul the real reason they wanted
to talk to him. He was concerned that if he
did that, Paul would end the interview then and there.
So as a pretext for speaking with Hutchinson, Tom found
other cases of women who have been found dead along
rivers in Montana. He and Sergeant to Pwig told Hutchinson
that as a fisheries biologist who spent a lot of
time on the river, he would have valuable insight into
(28:55):
these cases.
Speaker 7 (28:56):
We're working a couple of vescations involving the water and
your name came up as somebody that's been around a
long time that that could probably help us. We gotta
we got a we got a couple of names. You
might even know these guys, but we when we asked BLM,
obviously you guys were working the waterways all the time,
they said, Hey, these guys have been around forever. They
know they know the inside, inside out of everything that's
(29:16):
going on. So but that's why, that's why we're I'll
talking to you today. So appreciate you sitting down with
us to help.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Paul doesn't seem overly nervous in the initial minutes of
the interview. When Sergeant Apuigue asked to use the restroom,
Paul takes out his phone and sends a message to
one of his texts. While fielding questions from Tom about
his time at Montana State University, I went.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
To school in New Hampshire for a year. That was
a terrible student in high school. I was really lazy,
and then you know, military straightened j out.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Applied to Idaho, Wyoming, Montana over again. I got accepted
all of them. And I think it was a cost benefit.
M s U was had a good program and it
wasn't stupid expensive.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
This might seem like mundane small talk, but remember the
investigators believed that Paul killed Danny during his first year
at Montana State, and Tom and Sergeant de Puigue are
trying to get more information about that time or catch
Paul in a lie.
Speaker 7 (30:20):
So you went to Montana and that was for how
many years of school did you have to go to between?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Really? And then what year did you start there?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Ninety five? I think ninety six.
Speaker 7 (30:34):
Ninety five, somewhere around there.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
N ninety six, thinks ninety six.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
Do you think about nineteen ninety six? Okay? Do you
do you remember when in ninety six that you came
to Montana?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I don't. I mean, did you start the fall semester? Yes?
Speaker 7 (30:56):
Okay, so maybe August September, probably earlier than that, okay.
And then did you was that your first femine in Montana?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (31:09):
Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Paul must have been wondering why these guys seem so
interested in his biography. They're over fifteen minutes into the
interview and Tom and the sergeant still haven't asked him
a question about one of their cases. But if he's
starting to get suspicious, he doesn't show it. He's leaning
back in his chair with his right leg crossed over
his left and pressing against the edge of the table.
When Tom or the sergeant asks him a question, he
(31:33):
looks at them and furrows his brow as he thinks
he puckers his mouth and moves it from side to side.
But when Sergeant Tapuige finally mentions young women being killed
near waterways, Paul's body language starts to change.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
What we're looking into is we've had some deaths that
have popped up, females that have been popping up either
in the water or near water. And one of the
things is is the these cases are cold. Have you
ever heard that term before? And what we're trying to
do is stimulate him, is try to figure out, you know,
who may be responsible for him.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Obviously, Paul leans forward in his chair, arms folded, and
then immediately leans back. It's like he can't decide whether
to lean forward and look more closely at the images
in front of him, or lean back and act nonchalant.
It ends up looking like he was hit with a
small bolt of lightning. The sergeant shows Paul images of
two women who were killed along rivers in Montana, and
(32:29):
Paul says he doesn't recognize them at one point, pushing
the pictures farther away from him on the desk. Then
Depuige poses the question they're really there to ask.
Speaker 7 (32:40):
Okay, this is Daniel Houchins. She was she was killed
in September ninety six, and she was found off the
Gallatin River. Did you ever fish up there?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
By this point, Paul had likely figured out what was
going on. Tom remembers noticing how difficult it was for
the fisheries biologist to keep himself together.
Speaker 11 (33:03):
I mean, he was profusely sweating. Clearly, he was unbelievably agitated.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Paul has a receding hairline, and even in the body
cam video you can see a sheen of moisture on
his forehead.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
I h I trapped on the Gallatin, but never fished
the Allatan. Okay, I never fished. I don't fish the
big rivers. It's always the strange, yeah, the little the
backcountry stuff.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
Okay, So and do you have you ever heard of
the Cameron Bridge Access? Have you been there before?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Probably? Jack graviit lane?
Speaker 7 (33:42):
Yeah, exactly? Is that where you trap?
Speaker 9 (33:44):
No?
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I trapped over Alberta Angus.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
I traveled back and forth, okay into a Loup right
around that time. And where you was this back in
ninety six, ninety seven eight before you shut down here?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Yeah, I trapped up until three years ago. So yeah,
I would have been in.
Speaker 7 (34:10):
That area then back in ninety six.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
I don't know if I tropped the ninety six that
was my first year of college.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Again, this line of questioning isn't random. They're trying to
get him to admit to being in the area around
the time Danny was killed, and even though he equivocates
a little, Tom believes his answer was close enough to
an admission.
Speaker 11 (34:29):
He admitted going out having trap lines out there, which
would have put him in the woods trapping whatever. He
trapped bobcats, skunks, coyotes, and so he was creeping around
the woods out there. So he put himself there, which
was a big deal. That was a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
As Paul's this comfort grows, he excuses himself from the
room for a third time during the course of the interview,
which had only lasted about thirty minutes. At that point,
he says one of his texts, it's his help, and
turns his phone towards the investigators to imply that he's
just received a text message. But as he does so,
you can see in the video that he's just opened
the on x app. Maybe he had a sudden urge
(35:13):
to do some online scouting, or maybe he wanted to
delete some pins he'd have trouble explaining if investigators were
to find them, But when he returns and the interview continues,
he tries to play things as cool as he can.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
Going back to Cameron Bridge access and obviously Danny was
killed in what she was found in September of ninety six. Danielle, Yeah,
houchinz Yeah, this one. Do you remember hearing about this
murder or anything about about that? I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I mean I might have.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
It was a big case just because she was so young,
and obviously for Bozeman, that's that's big news, you know,
especially in Montana. It wasn't common obviously back in the day.
I mean, do you remember this mayor or hearing her name?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I don't. I mean, what was that twenty thirty years ago?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
The investigators pressed Paul on whether he knows any fishing
guides or local fishermen who might have been on the
Gallatin around the time Danny was killed. Paul reiterates multiple
times that he's not much of a fisherman, and even
though he is a big time outdoorsman, can't think of
a single angler who might be able to help them.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
No, I'm saying, like any local fishermen back in the
day that you knew around Cameron Bridge that might have
information for us back in ninety six, remember night, he
SAIDs honestly, I don't.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I mean kind of Next Tom and the sergeant pressed
Paul Harder on his interactions with Danny.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Okay, and what about Danny Houches. Do you recognize that name?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I don't.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Indeed, do you know if you do, you remember do
you know her?
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Was she in school when I went to school?
Speaker 7 (37:09):
No, she was in she was over at Belgrade High
School when you were when you were in school, I
don't think as well.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I don't know where what circle I would have ran into.
Speaker 7 (37:24):
Yeah, I mean she's a fifteen year old girl, That's
what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:27):
So do you do you recall or does she look
familiar to you at all?
Speaker 3 (37:32):
No, honestly, I don't recognize any of them.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
But I mean if back then that would have been
what on the news of the newspapers.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was a big I mean this, especially
this one because it was in Bozeman. Danny was would
hang out at the Cameron Bridge access road. Do you
remember seeing her there or a similar face?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, I honestly don't. I mean, I probably.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
I've been to a bunch of fishing access sites for
one reason or another.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I don't one of them.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
She is, I mean, Danny does not look familiar.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
To you at all.
Speaker 7 (38:07):
You don't know her?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
No, I.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
What's the last name, Houchins? Houchins? Does she have an
older brother?
Speaker 7 (38:17):
No?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
No.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Paul maintains a baffled but concerned expression and shakes his
head and blinks a lot. The rest of the interview
circles around the same kinds of topics. Paul eventually admits
that he may have tubed the Gallatin in nineteen ninety six,
but he delivers most of his answers with a shrug.
Tom and Sergeant to Pwiege never accuse him of anything directly,
but they do come close, and at one point, Paul
(38:42):
almost asks the question that's likely been spinning around his
mind throughout the interview.
Speaker 7 (38:48):
Is there any reason or do you think there's any
possibility that you could have been in the area when
this happened? Do you remember a girl screaming or anything
like that?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I don't.
Speaker 7 (39:01):
Is there a possibility that you were there when she
was murdered? No, you don't remember any screaming or anything
like that. You weren't trapping or anything during that.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Time, not September that would have been Are you asking me?
Speaker 7 (39:15):
I mean, I'm just asking if you remember anything all
during that time. Don't no, nothing, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
When the interview concludes after a little more than an hour,
Paul seems relieved. He says he'll try to think of
someone who might be able to help them, and promises
to call Tom if he remembers anything that might be useful.
Speaker 7 (39:39):
If there's something I haven't asked you that you think
I should know this time, tell me now so that
might be.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
More okay, Yeah, question ask grew So.
Speaker 7 (39:48):
I mean it's what it's part of the job.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
But yeah, I feel free to call me too.
Speaker 7 (39:52):
Man, all right, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Tom told me they weren't concerned that Paul would try
to flee the country, but he still instructed detectives to
follow their number one suspect. They wanted to keep track
of him and see if where he went and what
he did might implicate him further.
Speaker 11 (40:11):
But Dylan was a very very small town. It's one
way in, one way out, and it was just impossible,
and he was driving like a crazy man. So I
told the surveillance people back off and just sit on
the north side of town and the south side of
town and his house and just see where he comes
and goes. And that's what they did.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
But whatever the plan was for the subsequent days and weeks,
they never got the chance to put it into action.
Speaker 11 (40:38):
And then around four point thirty in the morning, I
got a phone call. They told me that he called
nine to one one and Dylan and he said officer
needs assist and hung up.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Just a day after their initial interview with Paul Hutchinson,
Sheriff Springer found out that Paul Hutchinson had died by suicide,
and he was dead.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
For most people, Hutchinson's reaction to being interviewed about Danny
is evidence enough of his guilt. But when they swabbed
Hutchinson's cheek for DNA and compared it to the hair
they found on Danny's body, there was no doubt in
Tom's mind.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
They turned it around really quickly and told us that
it was ten point seven trillion to one that it
was his DNA on Danny's panties.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
So we knew we got the right guy.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I asked Stephanie how she felt when Tom called her
and told her that the man who killed her sister
had committed suicide.
Speaker 10 (41:41):
My first thought was, you fucking coward, You fucking coward.
I personally have had to put so much courage into
an effort for driving justice from my sister, And how
(42:05):
dare he decide that he gets to make that last choice? Unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I was so.
Speaker 10 (42:20):
Just aghast at that reality. I felt like he a
selfish and as terrible as this sounds, because it's not
about It was never about me. It was always about
justice for my sister. But I was looking forward to
(42:44):
staring his ass down in court, and I was looking
forward to delivering a victim impact statement and to testifying
about the investigation. And I was looking forward to all
of that, and he totally robbed that from me.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Well, never know what Paul was thinking when he shot
himself with a thirty eight caliber Darryner pistol. He could
have been thinking about what Sergeant du Puig told him
that they'd found male DNA on Danny's body, and as
Tom said, modern technology had finally allowed them to unlock
its secrets.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
With the recent.
Speaker 11 (43:23):
Improvements in DNA technology, I think we're getting to we're getting.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
To the point where at some point, we're going to
be able to I think, don't you agree, identify somebody. Yeah, yeah,
I think we're going to be able to identify somebody.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Paul doesn't react to this beyond nodding his head. But
at that point he must have known he was cooked.
He knew he would likely go to prison or worse,
and as Stephanie says, he couldn't face that prospect. But
I also can't help but wonder if he was thinking
about this exchange with Sergeant du Puig just before the
close of the interview, and wondering how he could face
(44:02):
his own family when the world discovered what he'd done.
Speaker 7 (44:05):
They rocked this community. And obviously, you know, your dad,
you would understand losing your daughter at fifteen, and you know,
especially you know you have a girl who's who you know,
I'll use an old school term innocent, right, and then
somebody takes that innocence away and then murders her. I mean,
as a dad, I mean, how would you feel, you
(44:26):
know what I mean? I mean, you got a daughter,
if that, if she was taking tomorrow by that, how
would you feel about that?
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yeah? I mean, I mean who you didn't even say it?
I mean you have kids.
Speaker 7 (44:37):
I do, yeah, I mean I'd be I'd be absolutely devastated.
I'd be pissed. I'd be pissed off to be honest
with you, you know, and I want answers, and I
want to know what man did that to my little girl.
I mean, whether she's eighteen, she's thirty, she's always going
to be your little girl, right And that's what we're
trying to answer for Danny's dad right now and her mom.
(44:58):
You know, who did that and why I did that?
Just answer those questions. Why was it a mistake? Was
it you know, was this a one off? Why did
this happen to her being you know, fifteen years old?
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Man?
Speaker 7 (45:12):
You know, could you imagine I think an adult did it?
And then for them to come in and absolutely just
you know, you're you're sitting there as a dad thinking
my daughters. You know, it's probably screaming in his name,
you know, asking for dad's help. All if she wanted
to probably do was go home to dad, you know,
(45:33):
screaming for her dad to save her, and he couldn't
be there, you know, And that as a dad, you
know of daughters, and you and me are in the
same position.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
I mean, that just.
Speaker 7 (45:43):
Wrecks my heart out.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Paul's suicide brought Tom's investigation to a close, but it's
hardly the end of the story. Once news got out
about what happened, journalists, podcasters, and television personalities descended on
Bozeman to try to figure out how a seemingly normal
man could commit such a horrible atrocity and then hide
it for nearly thirty years. They wanted to know who
(46:07):
Paul Hutchinson was, how his family and friends were processing
the tragedy, and whether Danny was Paul's only victim. That's
next time on Blood Trails.
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