It’s About Danni

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Not available in all states or situations. Not a day since I was 12 years old have I not thought about my sister, Dani.
That day in September of 1996, Dani disappeared. My name is Stephanie.
Dani was my older sister. Hey, Mom.
Dani was 15 years old, the kind of older sister that every little sister looks up to. Nice stuff.
Sorry. Dad was sitting there, he's like, come on, let's try.
I'm like, no. She was upset with my parents and needed some space to herself.
Danielle had gone out to Cameron Bridge. And she was familiar with this area? Absolutely.
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. My mom and her friend walked around calling Danny's name and called the sheriff's department

and reported her missing.

And a search party was being pulled together.

Everybody's calling out her name.

Yep.

So if you were out here, you can hear them in the distance.

Danny, Danny, right?

Yep.

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

615-15.

7.30 to 8 started to get dark enough to where I called off the search. Family friends came out after dark.
That was about 930 when the dispatcher called me and said they found her body. How were you informed that Danny was gone?

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.

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, they found her.

She's gone.

She was strong and she was brave. And she was everything I looked up to being.-6 to the Fish and Game at Cameron Bridge.

Go ahead.

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

There was never a doubt in my mind

that someone killed this 15-year-old girl.

From the instant you saw her body. From the moment I saw her.
There's never a doubt in my mind that someone killed this 15-year-old girl.

From the instant you saw her body?

From the moment I saw her.

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

It took almost 30 years, but I had to know.

I spent 27 years on the Los Angeles Police Department, and when I retired, I moved here to Bozeman, Montana. What did you think of the original investigation into Danny's death? Oh, it was terrible.
It was terrible. So I know where the body was.

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

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

I promised myself, I promised my sister,

I'm coming for you, Danny.

I never would have guessed how this ended.

Peter Van Sant reports.

It's about Danny.

It was the end of September 1996. A Saturday night.
A fishing area just outside of Bozeman, Montana. A place of tranquility.
Until this night. A few miles up a rural highway near the small town of Belgrade,

searchers discovered the body of 15-year-old Danny Houchins. What brought your sister,

Danny, down to this area back on September 21st, 1996? That morning, we had kind of a family spat.

Stephanie Molette was Danny's little sister. And so she got 15-year-old mad about it,

I'm sorry. morning, we had kind of a family spat.
Stephanie Molette was Danny's little sister. And so she got 15-year-old mad about it and needed some space and some time, and she had her driver's license.
Now people wonder, how does a 15-year-old get a driver's license? In the state of Montana in 1996, you actually got your driver's license at 15. She was a very proud driver.
She hops into her Chevy pickup truck. Yeah, it gets...
Why would she come to this place if she wanted to just kind of take a break? It's peaceful. After Danny's pickup truck was located, a sheriff's posse had searched this wilderness for Danny until it got too dark.
But that same night, two brothers, friends of the Houchens family, refused to call it quits. So they came down this very path at night with their flashlights.
That's right. They would have crossed this bridge, right? Somehow, in the dense, muddy woods, they found her body.
The body, I believe, Peter was right in this area when she was found. Right in here? Yes.
Keith Farquhar, then a Gallatin County Sheriff's deputy, was the first officer on the scene. In the first hours after Danny was found, no one was really sure what had happened to her.
Did this look like an accident scene or something else? Something entirely different. There's nothing here then or now that would suggest a 15-year-old girl should all of a sudden be faced down in a small amount of water and mud and be dead.
She's a mountain kid. And is it possible to put into words the shock and horror of that moment? It's like everything you knew doesn't exist anymore.
To not understand how that could have happened, and to just feel a gaping hole in your whole being. Rochelle Schrute went to school with Stephanie and Danny.
And I always thought Stephanie and Danny were super cool. Danny was like my friend's cool older sister.
They were the most down-to-earth friendly people. The sisters loved the Montana wilderness.
She is pretty. This is like a nature playground out here, and our family, we just played.
A classic Montana girl, right? She could fish, she hiked, she could ski. And Dani was smart.
She loved science. She was so interested in the way that the world worked.
And she had a sense of humor, right? Uh, yeah. Danny, that is really nice.

Isn't she lovely? Look at your lovely daughter here. She was witty, and she was funny, and everyone loved her.
Danny. She'd make humor at her own expense.
You see my nose? can use my eye. How quickly did word spread that Dani had been found and that she was dead? Oh, like wildfire.
It was a lot of shock. You know, learning about Dani dying, it came in stages.
You know, there were the rumors all of a sudden of somebody died.

Initially, I just heard somebody drowned.

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.

Small town Montana, if you haven't heard a rumor by 10 o'clock in the morning, you're going to start one. The rumor started flying of maybe it was a murder.
And then we're all like, what? And if it was a murder, who would want to end this young girl's life? And was there a killer on the loose?

It just was like this strange roller coaster of,

did someone, should we be worried as a community?

I think the rumor mill around Belgrade High School

was ruthless.

There was so much other speculation.

I remember thinking, man, what if? What if? It just caused fear. I tried to be strong.
Danny died on a Saturday, and I tried to go back to school on Monday, I thought if, um...

I thought that if I was strong,

then it'd be easier for my parents.

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. We just couldn't believe what they told us.
It didn't make any sense. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
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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 Dani's autopsy. They did not say Dani was murdered.
Her manner of death was undetermined. Her family was dumbfounded.
They told us that she drowned, and they told us that it really could have been an accident. The sheriff told the media that there were no cuts or bruises on Danny's body and no indications of foul play.
She could have just tripped and fell. We don't really know.
Tripped and fell. Uh-huh.
And as avid experienced outdoors people, even at 12, you thought that was absurd. Absurd.
What the family didn't know at the time was the coroner said Danny had inhaled both water and mud into her airways. The family also didn't know that there were bruises and cuts on Danny's body and signs of possible sexual assault.
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. Common sense says this girl was not an accidental death.
Caught in the middle of this controversy was Deputy Keith Farquhar, then a young patrolman. He was assigned to work with detectives on the case.
Keith spoke with Danny's doctor. 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 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. I was pretty much ridiculed by the sheriff.

What did he say?

He said, what the f*** does a doctor know?

And that statement sticks in my mind to this day.

The former sheriff, Bill Slaughter, denies Farquhar's allegations.

He says Farquhar was a disgruntled employee and that his department never ignored any evidence. Fed up and disillusioned, just three months after Danny's death, Farquhar resigned from the sheriff's office.
As years passed, Danny's family tried to accept that her death might have been an accident.

As all that time, weeks to months to years go by and you have no answers, what was that like? Traumatizing. It was having a big wound in your life and this big gap that was unexplainable.
and you somehow had to find a way to heal without answers, to live without resolution, to hope with no reason to hope. Until 24 years after Danny's death.
Matt Boxmeyer was the detective sergeant with Gallatin County. He took an interest in Danny Houchins and her family.
I found out that they really hadn't been given much information back in 1996 regarding the investigation, which is 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.

Boxmeyer also found out that there had been several efforts over the years

to get evidence analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab.

But after each attempt, nothing.

No usable DNA profile ever came back. So he was starting from scratch.
Meantime, Stephanie decided to turn up the pressure. I had been calling the sheriff's department, trying to get someone to talk to me about Danny's case.
Finally, Boxmeyer and his bosses made a decision. They deserved some answers.
They told the family that Danny's death was no accident. I shared with them that I believed that it was a homicide.
Homicide. Stephanie then demanded to read the autopsy and look at the crime scene photos.
I was so angry at the people who lied to my family and let my sister's murder go unsolved, but uninvestigated for all of these years. I learned that rather than drowning on just water, Dani's head had been held down in the mud.
She had mud all the way down into her lungs and into her stomach. There was subcutaneous bruising on the back of her neck.
Someone had held her head down forcefully. There was vaginal injuries.
There was semen in her underwear. She had fought and scratched.
This is like a nuclear bomb going off emotionally, I would think, for this family and for you. I remember asking them, so you mean to tell me that in fact my sister was raped? And they said, yes, we believe she was raped.
I remember not being able to breathe. I remember feeling like I needed to puke.
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. You were rookie deputy when this crime came down, right? Yes, five days after I started is when we found Danny's body.

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

I felt like, well, this is our time. Let's go get some answers.

Sheriff Springer reached out to Stephanie.

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

Now determined to set things right, Springer reached outside the department to a most unusual investigator, Tom Elfmont. I'm very persistent.
I have a bulldog personality. I just don't give up on something.
I just don't do it. He'd spent a lifetime in tough jobs, from a soldier in Vietnam to a cop working the streets of LA.
I wanted to put bad people in jail. And after a conversation with Sheriff Springer, he was also drawn to Danny's case.
She was a great kid. And the way she died, I get choked up about this a little bit, really, to this day, bothers me.
And so when they said, would you like to work the case? I said, yes, I want to work the case. I, of course, internet stalked him immediately and came to find out that he's like the man that never retires.

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

And she said, okay, I'm going to trust you.

And with Elfmont leading the way, he soon found a suspect.

Why do I know that name?

Like, that sounds so familiar.

But it took a little bit of time for it to go, oh

no, oh no, oh my gosh, no way.

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? Never. No, I never thought so.
By mid-2023, retired LAPD Captain Tom Elfmont was back to working full-time, committed to finding Danny Houchen's killer. The only reason I stayed in it was Danny.
For Danny's sister Stephanie, Elfmont's refreshing dedication, professionalism, and enthusiasm was what the case had always needed. what does tom do? Tom got to work.
Tom worked on Danny's case every day. He went through and re-examined all of the evidence.
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. He most importantly made sure that DNA got tested.
Elfmont asked the Montana State Crime Lab to use their newest technology to retest the semen on Danny's underwear. At last, a breakthrough, a partial DNA profile.
But there were no matches to names in the case file. And when Elfmont compared it to CODIS, the vast federal digital repository of DNA samples from convicted felons, we didn't get any hits.
But Elfmont was undeterred and decided to go a less conventional route. He turned to genetic genealogy, an investigative genealogist, Cece Moore.
Since I started working with law enforcement in 2018, I've been able to help solve over 325 cases. Moore is an expert at building out family trees from DNA samples, using information from popular genealogy websites, bringing cold cases back to life.
But to solve this case, Moore needed a special type of DNA profile. Problem was, they didn't have enough DNA from that semen.
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. Elfmont did have more evidence for retesting.
Four male hairs that had been found on Danny, which had been perfectly preserved for 27 years. They had never yielded any usable DNA because they were rootless hairs without any skin cells.
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. As if there wasn't enough drama in this case, the first two hairs Astraea tested produced nothing usable.
So the last two hairs are examined. Are they able to get a profile? Yes.
In the last hair. Oh, I was so excited.
It was a critical breakthrough. 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.
By spring 2024, Cece had what she needed to get to work. I'm looking for patterns, commonalities, overlaps, eventually common ancestors.
Moore was able to identify the great-grandparents on both sides of the suspect's family tree. She then found one marriage that proved decisive.
The couple that I finally zeroed in on, they had a lot of children. Including three sons.
Moore felt like she had to be close, but there was a problem. What was really confounding was that everybody lived in New Hampshire.
Yet the mystery was, what was the link to Montana? Moore scoured through the birth indexes, marriage certificates, and even social media of those sons. When I finally got to the youngest son's Facebook page, he had posted that he moved to Bozeman, Montana on July 1st, 1996.
Remember, Danny had been murdered in September 1996. Finally, all the pieces fell into place.
On May 1st, 2024, I called up the detectives to let them know that I believed I had identified Danny's killer.

Finally, after nearly 28 years, it was now time for Elfmont to call Stephanie and give her the momentous news. We found Danny's killer and he is alive and we are going to make a case against him.
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. 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. And incredibly, it turned out Stephanie's childhood friend, Rochelle Schrute,

knew Paul Hutchinson. He was a trusted mentor who she had first met in the early 2000s.

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.

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

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

It was the moment at which I knew that everything I had put into my fight for my sister had been worth it. Back in September 1996, suspect Paul Hutchinson was 27 years old.
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. When he was at Montana State, he had a work study.
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.

Do you think your sister Danny

knew Paul Hutchinson?

No.

Paul Hutchinson was a stranger to Danny.

There's no way that she would have known him.

But many people in the area

did know Hutchinson

through his passion for hunting and fishing and high-profile government job. He just was like this respected source of information in the hunting and fishing space.
Rochelle knew Hutchinson for years. She's an expert hunter and former Yellowstone park guide and is now the Hunt and Fish editor for GearJunkie.com.
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.
Rochelle says she never once questioned Hutchinson's integrity, even when she went on fishing trips with him, just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere. I've always trusted my gut instinct when it comes to people, especially men.
I never had any feeling that he was unsafe. Though she hadn't seen Hutchinson in years, Rochelle kept up with him online.
He would often post on message boards about hunting trips he had taken across the country. 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. Hutchinson had no criminal record.
By all accounts, he had been leading a quiet existence since 1996. And what did you know about his family life? Well, we knew that he had a wife and a daughter and a son.
And he lived just a few hours away. And Dillon, Montana, how far is that from Bozeman? 140 miles.
Elfmont knew he couldn't make an arrest until he got Hutchinson's DNA,

which he was working out how to get. In the meantime, Montana law did allow Elfmont to talk to Hutchinson with some conditions.
It just basically has to be in a public area where he can walk away anytime he wants to.

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.

We saw Paul come in and get out of his pickup, and then we started walking up, I got up about 10 feet from Paul and I said, Hey Paul, how are you doing? Good. Good.
My name's Tom Elfant. I'm with the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office.
They came ready with a clever excuse for why they wanted to speak with Hutchinson, hoping it wouldn't raise his suspicions. 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. 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.
Right at the start, they caught a break, thanks to an unusually scorching hot day. It was 98 that day, and Dylan, he said, let's go inside.
You guys want to come inside and talk? That'd be great, man. If he invites us in, we don't have to give him Miranda.
So we go inside. He takes us in a small conference room.
While they didn't ask about Danny Houchens right away, Elfmont says he could tell Hutchinson was nervous. I appreciate you sitting down with us.
No, I'd like to help. What's up? And he breaks into a sweat.
It's just his head starts sweating, and he asks, can I leave? Um, can you give me a second?

Absolutely.

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

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

So I had pictures of four women that died, one in a river in Idaho, two over on the Yellowstone, and then Danny.

Elfmont's partner, Court Depwick, took over the conversation.

Okay, this is Daniel Couchins.

She was killed in September of 96, and she was found off the Gallatin River.

Did you ever fish up there?

I trapped on the Gallatin. Have you ever heard up there? I, uh, I trapped on the Gallatin.

Have you ever heard of the Cameron Bridge access?

Mm-hmm.

Have you been there before?

Probably. Jackrabbit Lane?

Yeah, exactly.

Hutchinson had confirmed he had not only been to the remote area where Danny was attacked,

he remembered the street that led there. Elfmont says it was a revealing exchange.
He's shaking. 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.
Do you remember seeing her there? Or a similar face? I honestly don't know. I mean, I probably, I've been to a bunch of fishing access sites for one reason or another.
Hutchinson denied knowing anything about Danny's death. Even when they told him, they had the suspect's DNA.
Is there a possibility that you were there when she was murdered? No. You weren't trapping or anything during that time? Not in September.
I would have been, you know. Are you asking me? I mean.
I was asking if you remember anything

during that time. No.
No. Did you ever directly say, did you kill Danny Houchins? No.
Why?

Didn't need to. Because he knows that you know.
That's right. And you know that he knows that you know.
Correct. As they wrapped up the interview, Hutchinson had a question for them.
Appreciate what you want to ask me, why 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.

But the investigation was far from over.

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

He started driving like a maniac.

High speed, doing U-turns.

He takes off. With the possibility of an arrest of her sister's killer, Stephanie began imagining what justice would look like for Paul Hutchinson.
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. 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.
So I called Stephanie, and I said, Stephanie, he's dead, he killed himself. It's a big pause.
And she said, you know, I don't know how I feel about that.

I said, I get it. I understand.

Police say Paul Hutchinson drove to a remote area

and called the sheriff's dispatch line, saying an officer needed help.

When cops arrived, they found Hutchinson's body,

dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 55.
Give me a sense of that moment for you. Shock.
I didn't expect that to happen. When Hutchinson's DNA was checked against evidence from Danny's body, including the semen on her underwear, there was a match.

The ratio, 10.7 trillion to one.

So he was the guy.

This case is solved, 100%.

Stephanie's friend, Rochelle, who had considered Hutchinson a mentor,

learned what happened as she watched the sheriff's news conference.

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

Like, it makes me mad to know him.

How dare you?

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

I'd like to express my family's gratitude to Tom Elfmont for overcoming every roadblock. To Dan Springer, thank you for being a man of your word.
And then she did what no one there expected. She unleashed years of pent-up anger.
The sheriff lied to my parents. Bold-faced lied and betrayed the trust of shocked and grieving parents.
Those institutions failed my sister, failed my family, and failed this community. I asked Sheriff Springer about Stephanie's allegations that the Sheriff's Department for years had lied to her family.
If what they say is true, were they lied to? I don't know what they said, to be honest. What the parents said is that they were told that their daughter did not have any injuries.
If what they are saying is true, were they lied to? Of course. I mean, I think the reports speak for themselves.
There were remarks on her body. And if that's what they were told, then that's not the truth.
We reached out to the man who was sheriff in office back in 1996, Bill Slaughter, now retired. 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.
Weeks after the news conference, Stephanie went back to the scene of the crime.

When I finally saw the exact spot where her body was found.

And I sat there and imagined that about her last moments and how it went from peaceful rustling of leaves and, you know, the sounds of squirrels running through the forest and the birds chirping to suddenly turning to this awful and violating and terrifying experience. experience, and then that realization that she must have had when he was holding her face down

in the mud, that she was have had when he was holding her face down in the mud,

that she was going to die right there.

And I am so sorry for her that she had to experience that moment.

For you, what is this case about?

Danny. It's about Danny.
I would wake up at night, and I would say, middle of night, 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'd say, Danny, I got you. And it's about Danny.

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

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

Oh, I think there's a good possibility.

Yeah. I think that anyone who is able to rape and murder a young girl and then get away with it for almost 28 years had plenty of chances to do it again.
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. 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.
Years ago, Danny's family spread some of her ashes on a nearby mountaintop. We spread half of Dani's ashes on top of the tallest mountain on the Bridger Range, Sacagawea Peak.
And now, almost 30 years later, Stephanie was back here, on the banks of the Gallatin River, where died to spread the last of her ashes and to tell her sister that she'd made a difference. Love you, Danny.
I think the biggest thing has been after so many years of begging and pleading 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.

Join me Tuesday for Postmortem from 48 Hours,

where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.