It’s About Danni

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Speaker 2 Not a day since I was 12 years old have I not thought about my sister, Danny.

Speaker 2 That day in September of 1996,

Speaker 2 Danny disappeared.

Speaker 2 My name is Stephanie. Danny was my older sister.

Speaker 2 Hi, Mom.

Speaker 2 Danny was 15 years old, the kind of older sister that every little sister looks up to. Nice stuff.

Speaker 2 Sorry. The other sibling is like, come on, let's try.

Speaker 2 She was upset with my parents and needed some space to herself.

Speaker 2 Danielle had gone out to Cameron Bridge.

Speaker 3 And she was familiar with this area?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Danny didn't return home. The mother grew deeply concerned.
And so she and one of her friends drove out to Cameron Bridge to see what was going on.

Speaker 2 My mom and her friend walked around calling Danny's name and called the Sheriff's Department and reported her missing.

Speaker 2 And a search party was being pulled together.

Speaker 3 Everybody's calling out her name. Yep.
So if you were out here, you can hear them in the distance.

Speaker 4 Danny, Danny, right? Yep.

Speaker 5 If she's out here, here, we just want her to come home.

Speaker 4 6.15153.

Speaker 5 7.30 to 8 started to get dark enough to where I called off the search.

Speaker 2 Family friends came out after dark.

Speaker 5 That was about 9.30 when the dispatcher called me and said they found her body.

Speaker 3 How were you informed? that Danny was gone.

Speaker 2 I was at home. My dad came home and told my mom and I could hear him telling her that Danny was gone.
And she said, I know they're going to look again in the morning.

Speaker 2 As soon as it's light, they'll be back out there looking for her. They're going to find her.
They're going to find her. And he said, no, honey,

Speaker 2 they found her. She's gone.

Speaker 7 She was strong and she was brave.

Speaker 7 And she was

Speaker 2 everything I looked up to being.

Speaker 2 656 to the fishing game at Cameron Bridge. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Law enforcement didn't tell my family a lot in 1996.

Speaker 5 There was never a doubt in my mind that someone killed this 15-year-old girl.

Speaker 3 From the instant you saw her body.

Speaker 9 From when I saw her.

Speaker 5 15-year-old girls don't die in the swamps at night.

Speaker 2 It took almost 30 years,

Speaker 2 but I had to know.

Speaker 6 I spent 27 years on the Los Angeles Police Department, and when I retired, I moved here to Bozeman, Montana.

Speaker 3 What did you think of the original investigation into Danny's death?

Speaker 6 Oh, it was terrible.

Speaker 11 It was terrible.

Speaker 6 So I know where the body was?

Speaker 2 There is zero doubt in my mind that they lied to my family.

Speaker 6 I told Stephanie, I will solve this case, Stephanie.

Speaker 2 I promised myself, I promised my sister,

Speaker 2 I'm coming for you, Danny.

Speaker 2 I never would have guessed how this ended.

Speaker 4 Peter Van Sand reports, it's about Danny.

Speaker 8 It was the end of September 1996, a Saturday night, a fishing area just outside of Bozeman, Montana.

Speaker 13 A place of tranquility

Speaker 8 until this night.

Speaker 13 A few miles up a rural highway near the small town of Belgrade, searchers discovered the body of 15-year-old Danny Houchins.

Speaker 3 What brought your sister, Danny, down to this area back on September 21st, 1996?

Speaker 2 On that morning, we had kind of a family spat.

Speaker 8 Stephanie Molette.

Speaker 13 was Danny's little sister.

Speaker 2 And so she got 15-year-old mad about it and and needed some space and some time and she had her driver's license.

Speaker 3 Now people wonder, how does a 15 year old get a driver's license?

Speaker 2 In the state of Montana in 1996, you actually got your driver's license at 15. She was a very proud driver.

Speaker 3 So she hops into her Chevy pickup truck and gets it. Why would she come to this place if she wanted to just kind of take a break? It's peaceful.

Speaker 17 After Danny's pickup truck was located, a sheriff's posse had searched this wilderness for Danny until it got too dark.

Speaker 16 But that same night, two brothers, friends of the Houchins family, refused to call it quits.

Speaker 3 So they came down this very path at night with their flashlights. That's right.
They would across this bridge, right?

Speaker 18 Somehow, in the dense, muddy woods, they found her body.

Speaker 5 The body, I believe, Peter, was right in this area when she was found. Right in here.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 22 Keith Farquhar, then a Gallatin County Sheriff's Deputy, was the first officer on the scene.

Speaker 27 In the first hours after Danny was found, no one was really sure what had happened to her.

Speaker 3 Did this look like an accident scene or something else?

Speaker 5 Something entirely different. There's nothing here,

Speaker 5 then or now, that would suggest a 15-year-old girl should all of a sudden be face down in a small amount of water and mud and be dead.

Speaker 29 She's a mountain kid.

Speaker 3 And is it possible to put into words the shock and horror of that moment?

Speaker 2 It's like everything you

Speaker 7 knew

Speaker 2 doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 2 To not understand how that could have happened

Speaker 2 and to just feel a

Speaker 4 gaping gaping hole

Speaker 4 in

Speaker 4 your whole being.

Speaker 23 Rochelle Shroot went to school with Stephanie and Danny.

Speaker 31 And I always thought Stephanie and Danny were super cool. Danny was like my friend's cool older sister.

Speaker 31 They were the most down-to-earth friendly people.

Speaker 18 The sisters love the Montana wilderness.

Speaker 1 She is pretty.

Speaker 2 This is like a nature playground out here, and our family, we just played.

Speaker 3 A classic Montana girl, right? She could fish, she hike, she could ski.

Speaker 32 And Danny was smart.

Speaker 2 She loved science.

Speaker 2 She was so interested in the way that the world worked.

Speaker 3 And she had a sense of humor, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 33 Danny, that mother girl.

Speaker 34 That's really nice.

Speaker 34 Isn't she lovely?

Speaker 34 Look at your lovely

Speaker 2 She was witty and she was funny and everyone loved her.

Speaker 4 Danny.

Speaker 2 She'd make humor at her own expense.

Speaker 3 How quickly did words spread that Danny had been found and that she was dead?

Speaker 11 Oh, like wildfire.

Speaker 31 It was a lot of shock.

Speaker 31 You know, learning about Danny dying, it came in stages. You know, there were the rumors all of a sudden of somebody died.
Initially, I had just heard somebody drowned.

Speaker 21 While Danny's family was awaiting an official cause of death, everyone, it seemed, from first responder Keith Farquhar to folks all over town, were speculating about what had happened.

Speaker 5 Small town, Montana, if you haven't heard a rumor by 10 o'clock in the morning, you're going to start one.

Speaker 31 The rumor started flying of maybe it was a murder. And then we're all like, what?

Speaker 27 And if it was a murder, who would want to end this young girl's life?

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 28 was there a killer on the loose?

Speaker 31 It just was like this strange roller coaster of did someone, should we be worried as a community?

Speaker 2 I think the rumor mill around Belgrade High School was ruthless.

Speaker 31 There was so much other speculation. I remember thinking, man, what if? What if?

Speaker 31 Just caused fear.

Speaker 2 I tried to be strong.

Speaker 2 Danny died on a Saturday and I tried to go back to school on Monday. I thought if,

Speaker 2 I thought that if I was strong, then

Speaker 2 it'd be easier for my parents.

Speaker 17 But within days, the family's grief would turn to heartbreaking shock when they heard the Sheriff's Department's jaw-dropping announcement about how Danny died.

Speaker 2 We just couldn't believe what they told us.

Speaker 2 It didn't make any sense.

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Speaker 18 Just two days after the discovery of Danny's body, with the people of Belgrade, Montana fearful and demanding answers, Authorities released the partial findings of Danny's autopsy.

Speaker 27 They did not say Danny was murdered.

Speaker 32 Her manner of death was undetermined.

Speaker 10 Her family was dumbfounded.

Speaker 2 They told us that she drowned, and they told us that it really could have been an accident.

Speaker 13 The sheriff told the media that there were no cuts or bruises on Danny's body and no indications of foul play.

Speaker 2 She could have just tripped and fell. We don't really know.

Speaker 15 Tripped and fell.

Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 And as avid, experienced outdoors people, even at 12, you thought that was absurd.

Speaker 4 Absurd.

Speaker 32 What the family didn't know at the time was the coroner said Danny had inhaled both water and mud into her airways.

Speaker 27 The family also didn't know that there were bruises and cuts on Danny's body and signs of possible sexual assault.

Speaker 29 The sheriff back then, Bill Slaughter, told us it is often common for investigators to withhold key details to protect their investigations as they looked into potential suspects, including people who were close to Danny.

Speaker 7 Common sense says this girl was not an accidental death.

Speaker 11 Caught in the middle of this controversy was Deputy Keith Farquhar, then a young patrolman.

Speaker 35 He was assigned to work with detectives on the case.

Speaker 11 Keith spoke with Danny's doctor.

Speaker 5 He said there's nothing about her physical condition that would have prevented that girl from being able to roll over in a few inches of water and mud

Speaker 21 to breathe if she had just fallen if this was an accident but when farquhar tried to report the doctor's opinion to other investigators

Speaker 5 i was pretty much ridiculed by the sheriff

Speaker 5 what did he say he said what the does a doctor know

Speaker 5 and that that statement sticks in my mind to this day.

Speaker 36 The former sheriff, Bill Slaughter, denies Farquhar's allegations. He says Farquhar was a disgruntled employee and that his department never ignored any evidence.

Speaker 22 Fed up and disillusioned, just three months after Danny's death, Farquhar resigned from the sheriff's office.

Speaker 21 As years passed, Danny's family tried to accept that her death might have been an accident.

Speaker 3 As all that time, weeks to months to years, go by and you have no answers, what was that like?

Speaker 2 Traumatizing.

Speaker 2 It was

Speaker 2 having a big wound in your life and this big gap that was unexplainable.

Speaker 2 And you somehow had to find a way to heal without answers, to live without resolution,

Speaker 4 to hope

Speaker 2 with no reason to hope.

Speaker 13 Until 24 years after Danny's death.

Speaker 25 Matt Boxmeyer was a detective sergeant with Gallatin County.

Speaker 30 He took an interest in Danny Houchins and her family.

Speaker 44 I found out that they really hadn't been given much information back in 1996 regarding the investigation, which is

Speaker 44 not uncommon with investigations. You know, you don't openly talk about them with the family usually.
They'd been told that she had fallen down and drowned and it was marked as accidental.

Speaker 45 Boxmeier also found out that there had been several efforts over the years to get evidence analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab.

Speaker 29 But after each attempt, nothing.

Speaker 17 No usable DNA profile ever came back.

Speaker 21 So he was starting from scratch.

Speaker 29 Meantime, Stephanie decided to turn up the pressure.

Speaker 2 I had been calling the sheriff's department, trying to get someone to to talk to me about Danny's case.

Speaker 18 Finally, Boxmeyer and his bosses made a decision.

Speaker 44 They deserved some answers.

Speaker 18 They told the family that Danny's death was no accident.

Speaker 44 I shared with them that I believe that it was a homicide.

Speaker 22 Homicide.

Speaker 41 Stephanie then demanded to read the autopsy and look at the crime scene photos.

Speaker 41 I

Speaker 2 was

Speaker 2 so angry

Speaker 2 at the people who lied to my family and let my sister's murder go

Speaker 2 unsolved but uninvestigated

Speaker 2 for all of these years.

Speaker 2 I learned that

Speaker 2 rather than drowning on just water,

Speaker 2 Danny's head had been held down in the mud. She had mud all the way down into her lungs and into into her stomach.
There was subcutaneous bruising on the back of her neck.

Speaker 2 Someone had held her head down forcefully. There was vaginal injuries.
There was semen in her underwear. She had fought and scratched.

Speaker 3 This is like a nuclear bomb going off emotionally, I would think, for this family and for you.

Speaker 2 I remember we're asking them,

Speaker 2 so you mean to tell me that in fact my sister was raped?

Speaker 2 And they said, yes, we believe she was raped.

Speaker 2 I remember

Speaker 2 not being able to breathe.

Speaker 2 I remember feeling like I needed to puke.

Speaker 13 In 2021, with Danny's family now knowing the explosive truth, Solving Danny's murder would become a top priority for newly appointed sheriff, Dan Springer.

Speaker 3 You were rookie deputy when this crime came down, right?

Speaker 46 Yes, five days after I started is when we found Danny's body.

Speaker 47 When you become the boss, you get to decide to do things the way you want to do things.

Speaker 12 I felt like, well, this is our time.

Speaker 47 Let's go get some answers.

Speaker 11 Sheriff Springer reached out to Stephanie.

Speaker 47 And I told her, I am making a promise that we will find an answer to this case.

Speaker 19 Now determined to set things right, Springer reached outside the department to a most unusual investigator, Tom Elfmont.

Speaker 6 I'm very persistent. I have a bulldog personality.
I just don't give up on something. I just don't do it.

Speaker 8 He'd spent a lifetime in tough jobs, from a soldier in Vietnam to a cop working the streets of L.A.

Speaker 6 I wanted to put bad people in jail.

Speaker 40 And after a conversation with Sheriff Springer, he was also drawn to Danny's case.

Speaker 6 She was a great kid.

Speaker 6 and the way she died,

Speaker 6 I get choked up about this a little bit, really

Speaker 6 to this day bothers me.

Speaker 6 And so when they said,

Speaker 6 would you like to work the case? I said yes, I want to work the case.

Speaker 2 Well, I, of course, internet stalked him immediately and

Speaker 2 came to find out that He's like the man that never retires.

Speaker 6 I told Stephanie, I will solve this case, stephanie and she said okay i'm gonna trust you and with elfmont leading the way he soon found a suspect

Speaker 31 why do i know that name

Speaker 31 like that sounds so familiar but it took a little bit of time for it to go

Speaker 31 oh no oh no oh my gosh no way

Speaker 3 Did you ever think coming out here in the mountains outside Bozeman, Montana, that you'd be going back to work as a homicide investigator here?

Speaker 4 Never.

Speaker 6 No, I never thought so.

Speaker 13 By mid-2023, retired LAPD Captain Tom Elfmont was back to working full-time, committed to finding Danny Houchin's killer.

Speaker 6 And the only reason I stayed in in it was Danny.

Speaker 21 For Danny's sister Stephanie, Elfmont's refreshing dedication, professionalism, and enthusiasm was what the case had always needed.

Speaker 25 What does Tom do?

Speaker 2 Tom got to work. Tom worked on Danny's case every

Speaker 2 day.

Speaker 2 He went through and re-examined all of the evidence.

Speaker 17 Elfmont had access to everything, including a list of potential suspects from the old case file and that previously tested clothing that Danny had been wearing when she was found.

Speaker 2 He, most importantly, made sure that DNA got tested.

Speaker 22 Elfmont asked the Montana State Crime Lab to use their newest technology to retest the semen on Danny's underwear.

Speaker 17 At last, a breakthrough, a partial DNA profile.

Speaker 22 But there were no matches to names in the case file.

Speaker 26 And when Elfmont compared it to CODIS, the vast federal digital repository of DNA samples from convicted felons, we didn't get any hits.

Speaker 26 But Elfmont was undeterred and decided to go a less conventional route.

Speaker 24 He turned to genetic genealogy and investigative genealogist CeCe Moore.

Speaker 33 Since I started working with law enforcement in 2018, I've been able to help solve over 325 cases.

Speaker 10 Moore is an expert at building out family trees from DNA samples using information from popular genealogy websites, bringing cold cases back to life.

Speaker 18 But to solve this case, Moore needed a special type of DNA profile.

Speaker 22 Problem was, they didn't have enough DNA from that semen.

Speaker 33 We have to start from scratch, which means there has to be remaining biological evidence for us to go back and retest using more advanced technology.

Speaker 40 Elfmont did have more evidence for retesting.

Speaker 26 Four male hairs that had been found on Danny, which had been perfectly preserved for 27 years.

Speaker 18 They had never yielded any usable DNA because they were rootless hairs without any skin cells.

Speaker 25 But Elfmont asked around and connected with Australia Forensics, a state-of-the-art private lab that's at the forefront of extracting DNA from previously unattainable genetic matter.

Speaker 17 As if there wasn't enough drama in this case, the first two hairs Australia tested produced nothing usable.

Speaker 3 So the last two hairs are examined.

Speaker 8 Are they able to get a profile?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 6 In the last hair.

Speaker 6 Oh, I was so excited.

Speaker 30 It was a critical breakthrough.

Speaker 10 Elfmont got permission from a judge to compare this enhanced DNA profile to samples in popular genealogy databases, where people voluntarily submit their DNA profiles.

Speaker 39 By spring 2024, Cece had what she needed to get to work.

Speaker 33 I'm looking for patterns, commonalities, overlaps. Eventually, common ancestors.

Speaker 8 Moore was able to identify the great-grandparents on both sides of the suspect's family tree.

Speaker 13 She then found one marriage that proved decisive.

Speaker 33 The couple that I finally zeroed in on, they had a lot of children, including three sons.

Speaker 43 Moore felt like she had to be close, but there was a problem.

Speaker 33 What was really confounding was that everybody lived in New Hampshire. Yet the mystery was, what was the link to Montana?

Speaker 24 Moore scoured through the birth indexes, marriage certificates, and even social media of those sons.

Speaker 33 When I finally got to the youngest son's Facebook page, he had posted that he moved to Bozeman, Montana on July 1st, 1996.

Speaker 18 Remember, Danny had been murdered in September, 1996.

Speaker 33 Finally, all the pieces fell into place. On May 1st, 2024, I I called up the detectives to let them know that I believed I had identified Danny's killer.

Speaker 22 Finally, after nearly 28 years, it was now time for Elfmont to call Stephanie and give her the momentous news.

Speaker 2 We've found Danny's killer, and he is alive,

Speaker 2 and we are going to make a case against him.

Speaker 37 The suspect was Paul Hutchinson, a married father of two who Elfmont soon learned was widely known and respected in local hunting and fishing circles.

Speaker 6 We learned that he's been working for the Bureau of Land Management in Dillon, Montana for 22 years as a fisheries biologist. He was a big outdoorsman, bow hunter, rifle hunter, fisherman, trapper.

Speaker 24 And incredibly, it turned out Stephanie's childhood friend Rochelle Schroot knew Paul Hutchinson.

Speaker 39 He was a trusted mentor who she had first met in the early 2000s.

Speaker 31 Paul came across as just an under-the-radar person that was always so kind of calm and quiet. He was just so utterly unremarkable.

Speaker 18 Stephanie Maulette had spent years dreaming of the day someone would be held responsible for her sister's murder.

Speaker 10 That day, that dream, seemed to be finally coming true.

Speaker 2 It was the moment at which I knew that everything I had put into my fight for my sister had been worth it.

Speaker 18 Back in September 1996, suspect Paul Hutchinson was 27 years old.

Speaker 22 He had served in the Marine Corps, then moved to Bozeman to study at Montana State University, just 13 miles from where Danny's body was discovered.

Speaker 6 When he was at Montana State, he had a work study.

Speaker 6 He worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service, which would have put him on the waterways around Belgrade, where on September 21st, 1996, Danny ended up on a hike. That's correct.

Speaker 3 Do you think your sister Danny knew Paul Hutchinson?

Speaker 2 No. Paul Hutchinson was a stranger to Danny.
There's no way that she would have known him.

Speaker 14 But many people in the area did know Hutchinson through his passion for hunting and fishing and high-profile government job.

Speaker 31 He just was like this respected source of information in the hunting and fishing space.

Speaker 27 Rochelle knew Hutchinson for years.

Speaker 22 She's an expert hunter and former Yellowstone Park Guide and is now the hunt and fish editor for Gearjunkie.com.

Speaker 31 I think I would have considered him a friend. You know, if we were doing some sort of hunt camp, I would have not even thought twice about inviting him.

Speaker 16 Rochelle says she never once questioned Hutchinson's integrity, even when she went on fishing trips with him.

Speaker 32 Just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 31 I've always trusted my gut instinct when it comes to people, especially men. I never had any feeling that he was unsafe.

Speaker 37 Though she hadn't seen Hutchinson in years, Rochelle kept up with him online.

Speaker 10 He would often post on message boards about hunting trips he had taken across the country.

Speaker 31 Paul was super active in the hunting community. It seemed like he was constantly hunting.
Always sharing where he was headed or where he just got back from.

Speaker 32 Hutchinson had no criminal record.

Speaker 18 By all accounts, he had been leading a quiet existence since 1996.

Speaker 3 And what did you know about his family life?

Speaker 6 Well, we knew that he had a wife and a daughter and a son.

Speaker 20 And he lived just a few hours away.

Speaker 3 And Dillon, Montana, how far is that from Bozeman?

Speaker 6 140 miles?

Speaker 26 Elfmont knew he couldn't make an arrest until he got Hutchinson's DNA, which he was working out how to get.

Speaker 18 In the meantime, Montana law did allow Elfmont to talk to Hutchinson with some conditions.

Speaker 6 It just basically has to be in a public area where he can walk away anytime he wants to.

Speaker 26 So on July 23rd, 2024, Elfmont and another detective drove down to Hutchinson's office at the Bureau of Land Management in Dillon, Montana, with a body camera rolling.

Speaker 6 We saw Paul come in and get out of his pickup and then we started walking up and I got up about 10 feet from Paul and I said, hey Paul, how you doing?

Speaker 34 Good.

Speaker 6 Good, my name's Tom Elcott. I'm with the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 34 Uh-huh.

Speaker 13 Hey guys. They came ready with a clever excuse for why they wanted to speak with Hutchinson, hoping it wouldn't raise his suspicions.

Speaker 6 We wanted to talk to you. We've been talking to some fisheries people about some things that have been going on here at the rivers in southwest Montana.
Okay.

Speaker 6 I explained to him that we're investigating some cases up and down the rivers, and so we want to talk to people that are experts.

Speaker 19 Right at the start, they caught a break thanks to an unusually scorching hot day.

Speaker 6 It was 98 that day, and Dylan.

Speaker 6 He said, let's go inside.

Speaker 34 You guys want to come inside and talk?

Speaker 9 That'd be great, man.

Speaker 6 If he invites us in, we don't have to give a Miranda.

Speaker 6 So we go inside. He takes us in a small conference room.

Speaker 16 While they didn't ask about Danny Houchins right away, Elfmont says he could tell Hutchinson was nervous.

Speaker 34 Nothing's wrong with us.

Speaker 6 And he breaks into a sweat. It's just his head starts sweating.
And he asks, can I leave?

Speaker 34 Can you give me a second? Absolutely.

Speaker 26 Hutchinson said he had to go help a co-worker.

Speaker 22 When he returned, they asked him about the other cases.

Speaker 6 So I had pictures of four women

Speaker 6 that died, one in a river in Idaho, two over on the Yellowstone, and then Danny.

Speaker 16 Elfmont's partner, Court Deppwick,

Speaker 30 took over the conversation.

Speaker 9 Okay, this is Danielle Houchins. She was killed in September of 96,

Speaker 9 and she was found off the Gallatin River.

Speaker 34 Did you ever fish up there?

Speaker 34 I trapped on the Gallatin.

Speaker 9 Have you ever heard of the Cameron Bridge access?

Speaker 9 Have you been there before?

Speaker 4 Probably.

Speaker 34 Jackrabbit Lane? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 27 Hutchinson had confirmed he had not only been to the remote area where Danny was attacked, he remembered the street that led there.

Speaker 30 Elfmont says it was a revealing exchange.

Speaker 6 Shaken, he's all distressed now. He was sitting back in the chair like this as far as he could get from the table and the pictures.
I knew we had him.

Speaker 9 Do you remember seeing her there?

Speaker 9 Or a similar face?

Speaker 34 I honestly don't know. I mean, I probably, I've been to a bunch of fishing access sites for one reason or another.

Speaker 18 Hutchinson denied knowing anything about Danny's death.

Speaker 18 Even when they told him they had the suspect's DNA.

Speaker 9 Is there a possibility that you were there when she was murdered?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 9 You weren't trapping or anything during that time?

Speaker 34 Not in September. That would have been...

Speaker 12 Are you asking me? I mean...

Speaker 9 I'm just asking if you remember anything at all during that time. No.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 3 Did you ever directly say,

Speaker 4 did you kill Danny Houtchens?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 6 Didn't need to.

Speaker 3 Because he knows that you know. That's right.
And you know that he knows that you know correct

Speaker 16 as they wrapped up the interview hutchinson had a question for them

Speaker 16 anything else you want to ask me while i'm here no we're good we're good now to elfmont it seemed like hutchinson couldn't believe they didn't arrest him thank you but the investigation was far from over

Speaker 6 So we walk out of the building and we had surveillance people to follow him.

Speaker 6 He started driving like a maniac.

Speaker 6 High speed, doing U-turns. He takes off.

Speaker 30 With the possibility of an arrest of her sister's killer, Stephanie began imagining what justice would look like for Paul Hutchinson.

Speaker 2 I was preparing myself for the next three to five years of a court battle to staring him down to being present every day in that courtroom.

Speaker 39 But what Stephanie could never prepare herself for was the startling phone call she got from Tom Elfmont just 12 hours after he had interviewed Hutchinson.

Speaker 6 So I called Stephanie and I said, Stephanie, he's dead. He killed himself.

Speaker 6 It's a big pause.

Speaker 6 And she said, you know, I don't know how I feel about that.

Speaker 6 I said, I get it. I understand.

Speaker 21 Police say Paul Hutchinson drove to a remote area and called the sheriff's dispatch line, saying an officer needed help.

Speaker 22 When cops arrived, they found Hutchinson's body, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Speaker 39 He was 55.

Speaker 3 Give me a sense of that moment for you.

Speaker 2 Shock. I didn't expect that to happen.

Speaker 27 When Hutchinson's DNA was checked against evidence from Danny's body, including the semen on her underwear, there was a match.

Speaker 6 The ratio, 10.7 trillion to one.

Speaker 6 So he was the guy.

Speaker 3 This case is solved.

Speaker 6 100%.

Speaker 27 Stephanie's friend Rochelle, who had considered Hutchinson a mentor, learned what happened as she watched the sheriff's news conference.

Speaker 31 I am gutted. I've known him most of my life.

Speaker 31 It makes me mad to know him. How dare you?

Speaker 8 At the news conference, Stephanie thanked the current sheriff's team.

Speaker 2 I'd like to express my family's gratitude to Tom Elfmont

Speaker 2 for overcoming every roadblock. To Dan Springer, thank you for being a man of your word.

Speaker 13 And then she did what no one there expected.

Speaker 8 She unleashed years of pent-up anger.

Speaker 2 The sheriff lied to my parents, bold-faced lied, and betrayed the trust of shocked and grieving parents. Those institutions failed my sister,

Speaker 2 failed my family, and failed this community.

Speaker 26 I asked Sheriff Springer about Stephanie's allegations that the Sheriff's Department for years had lied to her family.

Speaker 3 If what they say is true, were they lied to?

Speaker 47 I don't mean, I don't know what they said, to be honest with you.

Speaker 3 What the parents said is that they were told that their daughter did not have any intrigue.

Speaker 3 If what they are saying is true, were they lied to?

Speaker 46 Of course. I mean, I think the reports speak for themselves.
There were marks on her body. And if that's what they were told, then that's not the truth.

Speaker 18 We reached out to the man who was sheriff in office back in 1996, Bill Slaughter, now retired.

Speaker 10 Slaughter admits withholding some information from Danny's family, but claims he never lied to them, despite the fact he told the local newspaper in 1996 that there was no indication of foul play.

Speaker 8 Weeks after the news conference, Stephanie went back to the scene of the crime.

Speaker 2 When I finally saw the exact spot where her body was found,

Speaker 2 and I sat there and imagined that

Speaker 2 about her last moments and how it went from peaceful rustling of leaves and you know the sounds of squirrels running through the forests and the birds chirping to suddenly turning to this awful and violating and terrifying experience.

Speaker 2 And then that realization that she must have had when he was holding her face down in the mud, that she was going to die right there.

Speaker 2 And I am

Speaker 2 so sorry for her that she had to experience that moment.

Speaker 3 For you, what is this case about?

Speaker 6 Danny.

Speaker 4 It's about Danny.

Speaker 6 I would wake up at night

Speaker 6 and I would say,

Speaker 6 middle of the night, three o'clock in the morning, and I'd say, Danny, I got you.

Speaker 6 It's about Danny.

Speaker 13 In the aftermath of Hutchison's death, there were so many questions unanswered.

Speaker 8 Perhaps the most troubling, says Elfmont, were there other victims?

Speaker 6 Oh, I think there's a good possibility. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that anyone

Speaker 2 who is

Speaker 2 able to

Speaker 2 rape and murder a young girl and then get away with it for almost 28 years had plenty of chances to do it again.

Speaker 8 Stephanie is now trying to make changes in how Montana funds and supervises law enforcement so that cases like Danny's don't fall by the wayside.

Speaker 2 On the table, I have what was in Danny's pocket when she died, and then her driver's license, which she was really proud of having.

Speaker 8 Years ago, Danny's family spread some of her ashes on a nearby mountaintop.

Speaker 2 We spread half of Danny's ashes on top of the tallest mountain on the Bridger Range, Sacagawea Peak.

Speaker 11 And now, almost 30 years later, Stephanie was back here on the banks of the Gallatin River where Danny died to spread the last of her ashes and to tell her sister that she'd made a difference.

Speaker 2 Love you, Danny. I think the biggest thing has been

Speaker 2 after so many years of

Speaker 2 begging and pleading

Speaker 2 for people to pay attention to my sister, for people to believe that she mattered. I'm feeling so often like I was screaming into an echo chamber.
Now suddenly she matters to everyone all over again.

Speaker 48 Join me Tuesday for post-mortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.