Footprint in the Dust

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I think that's the hardest day of my life.

And I've had a lot of hard days, but that was the hardest.

Losing her.

But still consuming us. To have her get out of a car and then never make it to the front door, 20 steps, and we can't explain what happened in those 20 steps.
It just didn't make sense to me. I wondered about everybody.
Everybody was a suspect. You know you were a person of interest.
We still love each other very much.

Somebody knew that we were seeing each other and didn't like it. There's somebody out there

some jealousy probably. My stomach was in my throat.
All of us were a little taken back.

This can't be happening. It was really hard for my brain to wrap around that.
It was early morning, still dark. The spring air was a cold blanket around the pickup parked and running near the main street of little Glendive, Montana.

At 5.20 a.m., the passenger side door opened,

the woman stepped out and hurried across the empty street toward the entrance to her downtown apartment.

Her coat disheveled, her bra slung over one arm.

The man's eyes followed her through the dark,

drawn as other men's eyes were,

like moss to a flame, to her, to the woman now crossing the sidewalk to her doorway, Susie, lightning in a bottle. They were all there.
There, at Susie's front door. Each one of them was part of that crime scene.
But how many, and who? Who owned the eyes in the dark that started that awful cascade of events, of terrible things? I just dropped the phone and cried and cried and cried. I just couldn't believe that that could happen three times in one family.
Sunlight in the badlands of eastern Montana is like nothing else. That wide blue arch of unsullied sky, the vast rolling all-but-unpeopled prairie, dotted sparsely with tiny old hamlets in which business is personal and where friends and families have worked the same sun-baked gumbo for generations.
Places like Circle, population 600, Susie's hometown. She livened things up a lot.
This is Susie's elder sister, Carlene. It was kind of nice to have that little breath of fresh air in the family because the rest of us were a little more quiet, you know.
Susie was the fifth of six kids born to Marlene Limison and her husband Jack, then the county undersheriff. She loved them horses and she loved to go riding.
Her and I go riding quite a bit. Susie's love affair with horses grew as she did and shaped her work ethic.
Her sister-in-law, Val. She was a very hard worker.
You know, everybody thinks the Montana and the cowgirls and the cowboys. She was one of those hard workers.
She was not afraid to be out there shoveling manure or fixing a fence or... You saw her do that kind of stuff? Yeah, yeah.
She was tough. She was a feisty thing.
But if there was one word most used to describe Susie, it wasn't so much feisty as... Fun with capital F.
She was very impulsive, so she didn't think a lot ahead. She just kind of went with the moment.
And so when Susie went off to a technical school three hours away in Billings and got herself a boyfriend, perhaps what happened next shouldn't have come as a very big surprise. It was, oh, she's pregnant, and well, you know, you get married.
That's just what you do. And so she did.
They made a big happy thing of it. The whole family gathered in circle for a real country church wedding where Susie introduced her parents and siblings to her new husband, a kid named Marty.
What was that like for you two? Finding out that she was pregnant and that things were going to be a little bit different than you thought. You know, the whole family accepted him because it was Susie's choice.
Before long, Susie gave birth to a little girl named Mariah, followed by a son, Shay. But again, no real surprise.
The marriage didn't last. She really loved her kids.
They were really a big part of her life. And then when her and Marty split, they were really everything in her life.
So late 90s now, Susie was working as a medical transcriptionist in a town less than an hour from Circle, a place called Glendive. And that's where she met Ted Casey.
He was the real deal. A grown-up this time.
A rancher 14 years older than Susie. He had horses, and boy, that was just right for her.
Wedding number two. This was 1998.
The kids, Shea and Mariah, called, Dad. Then there were two more kids, girls, Kiana and Charlie.
And for almost a decade, the marriage seemed to be just fine. But by then, Susie was sharing secrets with Val about Ted.
He wanted to tame her, I think. I guess I kind of joke around and say that he wanted her to be home in time for the 10 o'clock news.
You know, he didn't want her to stay out and have fun. Fun was just beginning at 10 o'clock.
At the Casey Ranch, love started to feel like one more chore to be put off till tomorrow. I think they grew apart.
They just really both changed.

And then one liquid evening out at a bar, things went seriously sideways. Ted got mad,

dumped a beer on Susie's head, slapped her, spent the night in jail. Not long after,

Ted pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault. Susie was gone from the ranch.

She wasn't very happy with Ted, and she was starting to make some good decisions to find some happiness again. And so, by the spring of 2008, Susie and the kids were living at the Ponderosa Apartments here in downtown Glendive, and a little town like this, people noticed what Susie was up to.
Liked her, said family acquaintance Olivia Rieger, but noticed. People thought of Susie as someone that was going through a time, kind of sowing some wild oats.
She liked to have fun. Sure.
And she was having a lot of fun. And then it got to that Friday evening in April.
When she came in to see me, she was really happy and she had makeup on, which wasn't really a Susie thing. And that was great.
So I knew something was up. And so Val watched as Susie bounded out the door to take her two youngest kids to Ted's for the night, while the two teenagers fended for themselves.

And Susie headed out on the town.

I don't like that. This girl's got to have a date tonight.

And the very next morning... Mom, check up.

When Susie's worried children,

an increasingly frantic family called to check on her.

Call me whenever you get the message. Susie, who always kept her phone within reach, did not answer.
I thought, oh, this is silly. She went somewhere, the kids forgot, and it's all going to be, you know, a funny ha-ha.
I thought that maybe she had just fainted somewhere or had a heart attack or just an accident or anything.

Susie Casey's sudden disappearance.

Can the people she loves help solve it?

I mean, what do you do? How do you find somebody?

I was a detective. I was going to backtrack all of her steps.

You could tell the house was dark and it was kind of, it was like an eerie feeling. The morning sun warmed toward another glorious spring day in Glendive, Montana.

But in the Ponderosa apartments, it was anxiety that infected the air,

as 14-year-old Mariah tried again and again and again to reach her mother, Susie.

Mariah knew very well that her mother enjoyed evenings out and trusted her two older children to look after themselves in the apartment. But she'd never once failed to come home.
Mariah's next call was to her grandparents. She told Grandma, Mom made her own.
And so Mariah's anxiety infected Jack and Marlene too. She loved the kids a lot.
And her and Mariah were really, really close. Very close.
Sometimes you almost thought that Mariah was the mom and Susie the kid because Mariah was pretty grown up and smart for her age. She was the somewhat more level-headed one.
Right. I mean, she wasn't scared to tell her mother her opinion.
Soon, phones were ringing all over. Susie's sister, Carlene.
I thought, oh, this is silly. She went somewhere, the kids forgot, and it's all going to be, you know, a funny ha-ha.
The kids were sufficiently independent to get themselves up and leave for their respective activities. But from Susie, not a word.
Across town, sister-in-law Val hadn't heard yet that Susie failed to come home. We had like a craft show in town, and I thought that maybe she would want to come with me.
Hey, it's Valerie. I'm down at Spring Point.
Just wondering if you were coming down. And she didn't respond that morning, and I thought that was kind of odd.
And when I was at the actual craft shows, when I got the call from Rusty. Rusty Limison, Val's husband, Susie's little brother.
What did Rusty say? He told me that the kids couldn't find Susie when they woke up, and that everybody was just really worried because that just wasn't Susie. She would never just not tell her children or be there for them.
And she wasn't there. Val's next attempt to reach Susie wasn't quite so calm.
You need to call her back as soon as you get this message. Your dad's freaking out because nobody can find you.
I mean, what do you do? How do you find somebody? I was a detective. I was like, I was going to backtrack all of her steps.
And so that's exactly what I did. Val made some calls, found Susie had been drinking with friends the night before till about 11 p.m.
when she left for what was apparently a date with a new boyfriend. Someone Susie had just started seeing after her separation from her husband, Ted.
Val's mind was racing. I also thought that maybe she had just fainted somewhere or had a heart attack or just an accident or anything.
Still, when her mind settled, her first move was... I just figured that I had to go to Ted's.
Because? Maybe she was at Ted's and they were having an argument and she couldn't answer her phone. Maybe something happened over there.
Maybe something happened, exactly. Remember, Ted Casey had pleaded guilty to assaulting Susie six months before.
That's why she moved off the ranch to the apartment. But when Val arrived at Ted's place...
You could tell the house was dark and there were no cars there and it was kind of, it was like an eerie feeling. I just felt like I couldn't get out of the car by myself.
So she decided to leave and picked up her husband, Rusty. The two of them got a key to Susie's apartment.
They opened the door. And here's what they found.
This is a videotape the police made later. I was just kind of thinking that maybe the kids just didn't see her, that she was asleep under the blankets or something.
You know, you're just kind of like, you're, you don't want to go there. Your body doesn't let you, mind doesn't let you go there.
As we kind of walked through the apartment and really realized that she wasn't there, again, that adrenaline burst of that something isn't right, something isn't right. It's empty.
She's not here. She's gone.
She's not here. Yeah.
So Val decided to go find that new boyfriend Susie had a date with, the last person to be seen with her. His name was Brad Holzer.
He would know where she was. Brad lived with his soon-to-be ex-wife less than five minutes from Susie's apartment.
Val drove over, knocked on the door. I said, Susie's not home.
We can't find her. She's not answering her calls, and we're all really worried.
And then I remember exactly what he said to me. He said, what do you mean she isn't home? I dropped her off at 5 a.m.
That's when it hit that we're going to the police. Something's not right.
It certainly wasn't. A man whose marriage was breaking up, the last man to be with her, didn't know a thing.
Really? How long have you known, Susan? Well, we went out in high school. Susie's new boyfriend fields a few questions down at the station.
Brad, do you know where Susan's at?

I have no idea where she is. I wish I didn't.

Did you ever wonder about

Brad and whether he was capable of any

bad thing? When she went missing,

I wondered about everybody.

Everybody was a suspect.

Your mind just continues to play and play

and play different scenarios

of what could have happened

and where she is. People disappear all the time in America.
Many of them turn up again. And maybe in some big city somewhere, Susie's absence wouldn't have raised the alarm quite so fast.
But here? Olivia Rieger was a young lawyer then. I just thought, you've got to be kidding.
You know, this is Glendive, right? She's got to be around somewhere. But when Susie's brother and sister-in-law roared around town looking, it only made them more upset.
I have a younger sister and older brother and two younger brothers, but I just, you know, as a kid, when you're younger, you always wish you had things you didn't have, and I just always wished I had a big sister.

And when I met Susie, she was... She was my big sister.

She was that sister that I didn't get to have

and that I wished for when I was a kid.

And I just, I guess I never, like, imagined that she wouldn't be in my life.

Mid-afternoon, Val and her husband, Rusty, drove over to the Glendive Police Department.

They sat down with then-captain, later chief, Ty Ulrich.

They said, Susie always answers her phone. Always.

And I went to my office twice and tried to call in to voicemail. In a town the size of Glendive, the police were keenly aware of Susie's history.
The abuse six months prior, at the hands of soon-to-be ex-husband, Ted. I had a little insight and kind of knew the dynamics.
And then Val told the chief Susie's life had just become even more complicated. The night before she disappeared, said Val, Susie was with another man, a guy named Brad, who she said she was crazy about and who had to have been the last person to see her before she vanished.
Did you ever wonder about Brad and whether he was capable of any bad thing? When she went missing, I wondered about everybody. Everybody was a suspect.
Everybody was... Your mind just continues to play and play and play different scenarios of what could have happened and where she is.
And while that question remained unanswered,

Brad Holzer came in for an interview. Brad told the police that he and Susie

actually had quite a long history. Then they lost touch for nearly two decades, said Brad, until St.
Patrick's Day 2008, just three weeks before she disappeared, when their eyes met at the bar downtown. The little came up to me and said hi.
I knew who she was right away. Recognized her immediately.
And in the weeks since? Brad said he and Susie spent every possible moment together. Though given her kids and their respective tangled marital issues, it was complicated.
The night before she disappeared, said Brad, Susie had been drinking with a couple of girlfriends before he picked her up and they drove out of town to sit by the Yellowstone River.

And then that's where we were from, what, 10.45 or 11 until 5 a.m.

We drove out there and parked.

And we did the same thing we usually did.

Dog kissed, stuff like that.

It was just about 5 in the morning, said Brad, when he drove back to town and parked across the street from Susie's apartment.

Did you guys make out or anything before? Probably for five years, yeah. Before she exited the park? Yeah.
She got out, walked back to her, across the street, her place, as she normally does. I know she was at least halfway across the street when they turned and started backing out, so she was that close to getting into that apartment.
Brad swore he drove straight home and went to bed. And then Brad cast suspicion elsewhere.
Brad, do you know where Susan's at? I have no idea where she is. I wish I did.
Okay. Where do you think she is, if you had to guess? My guess would be Ted.
I can't help but think he had to be behind this somehow. And there was one more thing, said Brad.
Somebody sent him a weird email the morning before his last date with Susie. Maybe Ted was behind it somehow.
Here it is. It reads, how's your girlfriend? How does your wife feel about it? The sender? Denise Johnson.
Still in the cop's ears perk up. A missing woman, a mysterious email, one guy pointing toward another.
There's somebody out there with some jealousy, probably. I needed to find out who sent those emails.
So they told Brad, don't leave town. And they set out to talk to Susie's soon-to-be-ex,

Ted Casey. What did you think about this deal with Brad?

Well, I wasn't very happy. I said, you know, we are still married, even though we're not living

today. The scorned husband in the interrogation room and details of a confrontation with Susie.

I dumped a drink on her head, but then we were both drinking and, you know, dimmed me into it just half.

But, you know, I suppose you get to such a, so much pressure and after a while, you know, it explodes.

Your thoughts about Ted were not very friendly ones at that point.

No.

By the Sunday of that anxious weekend in April 2008,

the whereabouts of Susie Casey was a local preoccupation in Glendive, Montana.

Thank you. By the Sunday of that anxious weekend in April 2008, the whereabouts of Susie Casey was a local preoccupation in Glendive, Montana.
What did her disappearance do to the people around town? People were interested, really interested, I think. A few years prior, probably back when I was in college in Glendive, we had a homicide,

and it was a drug-related homicide.

But this was different.

This was a mom who worked at the hospital that interacted with people generally,

and here she is, she's gone.

There was a lot of talk about, oh man, we saw her walking down the street sometime.

Maybe someone picked her up.

The young attorney and family acquaintance, Olivia Rieger, couldn't help but hear what people were saying. Did she go home with someone? Did she drive off somewhere? Susie's mother was afraid something awful had happened.
And for the second time, she called Sister Carlene two hours away in North Dakota. And that's when I knew something was really, really wrong.
And so we packed up suitcases and headed to Glendive to see what we could do to help find her. But where could they look? Glendive is the biggest town in a sparsely populated county the size of Delaware.
Far more hiding places than there are people. We had a few pings off of cell phone towers.
So we kind of thought we had maybe an idea off of her phone where it would have been last.

We had horseback, we had four-wheelers, airplanes, helicopters, people on foot, and nothing.

Meanwhile, they processed Susie's Chevy Trailblazer for any sort of evidence.

Same in her apartment.

And found... Nothing.

Nothing of particular importance, anyway. But then they had to look around outside Susie's apartment building and found something kind of curious, a couple of curious things actually.
Thing one was a shoe print in the alcove of the building next door to Susie's place. And thing two, over in the alley, maybe 40 or 50 feet away, looked like something had been dragged, something heavy, along the ground near the dumpster.
Did either of those things have anything to do with Susie's disappearance? Maybe the rejected husband could tell them, Ted Casey. The morning Susie vanished, he went to work, helped his brother with a project, and went to a rodeo.
So by the next day, police were very eager to talk to Ted. Your thoughts about Ted were not very friendly ones at that point.
No. Ted had reasons to be upset with the woman who was leaving him.
He was angry, humiliated. A costly divorce was looming, child support to pay.
First, they asked Ted about that incident in the bar the night they arrested him and put him in jail. I dumped a drink on her head, you know, barely slapped her because she threw herself on the ground.
I mean, we were both drinking and, you know, didn't mean to. It just happened.
But, you know, I suppose you get to such a, so much pressure, and after a while, you know, it explodes. Explodes? That was a curious thing to say.
Ted insisted he'd last seen Susie about 7 o'clock the evening before she disappeared, when she dropped off the two little girls, Kiana and Charlie, at his house for the night. But Ted did admit that he confronted Susie on the phone a couple of hours later

after receiving a strange phone call himself around 9 p.m.

What was this?

Just that Brad Holzer or whatever, or however you say his last name,

has been screwing you away quick.

Brad Holzer, Susie's boyfriend of three weeks. What did you think about this deal with this Brad? Well, I wasn't very happy.
I mean, I called her up and said, Hey, who's this Brad Holzer or whatever? I said, I just got a call that you've been doing it. Oh, no, no.
I'd never do that. I'd never cheated on you.
I said, you know, we are still married, even though we're not living together. And I got by this time off the phone, you know.
Well, she called me right back. And then she admitted that she knew the guy.
She knew who he was. And that was about the end of the conversation.
Was he upset? Yes, of course, he said he was. And yet Ted told his interrogator he fell asleep right away.
Then got up around 5 a.m. to do chores and drop off his girls with a babysitter and meet a co-worker at City Hall by 6.
It was by 6 o'clock, you know, at the very latest.

I was thinking it was like 10 to 6 or something like that when I got there.

But here's the thing.

Ted drove right past Susie's apartment.

He admitted as much on his way to that meeting at the City Hall.

And his own timeline put him right there around her front door

within minutes of when she walked across the street all disheveled after making out all night with Brad Holzer.

The very time Susie vanished from the face of the earth.

As the Glendive Police Department checked out the story, Ted went home to look after the two youngest girls who were now living with him full time.

While Susie's two older kids, Mariah and Shay, went to live with Val and her husband. Mariah was just tormented.
She just didn't know what to do with herself. She was so close to her mom.
It was just really, really hard for her, and I just can't imagine kids that age trying to wrap their brains around it. We couldn't wrap our brains around it.
So how can a kid of that age wrap their head around

what's happening around them?

Harder and harder for everyone,

as day after day, the search for Susie produced nothing.

As time went on, it was clear that she wasn't around anywhere.

So it was just a really scary time.

What were those days like?

They were pure hell.

You just sat and wait and wait for the phone to ring. And then, nearly a month after Susie's disappearance, it did.
I think that's the hardest day of my life. And I've had a lot of hard days, but that was the hardest.
A horrifying discovery by the river.

And another discovery at the station.

They said, can I give a message for Brad?

And I said, okay.

And they said, tell him to

stop messing around with Mary Roman.

And they said, what are you talking about?

Brad holds her

wife. What was she

doing there?

Honestly, you're my sister. Right Honestly, do you want to suspect?

Right now, both you and Brad are.

Nearly a month after Susie Casey vanished, on an early spring morning in Glendive, Montana, it was the Yellowstone River that finally gave her back. I was actually sitting on my desk, and the sheriff at the time walked over and said, there's a body floating in Fallon.
Fallon is a small town 28 miles upstream from Glendive. And we jumped in the vehicle, and by the time we got there, it was on shore.
Took a look, I knew what she was wearing from the description, and just the features, I knew. At that point, it's we're changing from missing persons to homicide.
After we had the positive identification,

I had to go tell the family.

And that was probably one of the hardest times I had to do that.

It just got so close to them over the weeks

and knowing what they were going through

and especially knowing what those kids, that was tough.

Susie's family gathered at Val and Rusty's house.

I knew it couldn't have been anybody else,

but I didn't go there all the way.

Because I had a job to do.

And my job was to keep this family together.

To get us through this.

And the authorities came and told us adults

that it was our body. I didn't let my emotions just run with it because I knew we had those children downstairs.
The older two, Mariah, 14, Shay, 12. Carleen is the one who told them.
I think that's the hardest day of my life. And I've had a lot of hard days, but that was the hardest, I think.
As word spread that Susie had finally been found, the town of Glendife both mourned and relaxed to some degree. I think it was almost like a sense of relief, like, oh, we found her, we can move forward and see what happens.

By this time, agents from Montana's Department of Criminal Investigation had been called in

to help the local police. DCI agent Lee Johnson.

We determined from the autopsy that she was not breathing when she went into the water,

so it was not a drowning.

All right, so she was killed first.

That's correct. And the autopsy revealed that her hyoid bone was broken, which is consistent with manual strangulation.
Strangled, but when and by whom? At this time, Brad, the last person known to have seen Susie alive, had been interviewed time and again. When she left, she was wearing my white sweatshirt.
Okay. And they talked, repeatedly, to Brad's wife.
Though she and her husband maintained they had no motive to kill Susie, they were headed for a divorce. Basically, I kind of need to start from the beginning with you.
But how did she feel, really? After all, they were still living together. Did Brad's wife, who might be considered the odd woman out in a love triangle, have a reason to get rid of Susie? Honestly, we have a variety of suspects.
And yet, right now, both you and Brad are. But Brad's story didn't change.
He and Susie were out all night. He dropped her at her apartment around 5 a.m., then drove a few blocks home and went right to sleep.
And his wife insisted that was true, said she came home from a date of her own about 6 a.m. and found him already asleep.
I went in and the bedroom drawer was closed. And I looked at him, he was in bed sleeping.
But Brad's wife added to the mystery as well. Because it turned out she too claimed she got a strange phone call that week, the week Susie disappeared.
They said, can I give a message for Brad? And I said, okay. And they said, tell him to stop messing around with married women.
And he said, what are you talking about?

And then she had a...

So it was a female?

Yeah.

A woman?

This was getting stranger by the minute.

Ted, remember, claimed it was a male who called him to rat on Susie.

Brad said a female named Denise Johnson sent him an email

asking how his wife felt about his girlfriend.

What police really needed was something concrete, something physical,

proof of Brad's whereabouts to back up his story and clear his name.

And...

It was just by fluke that we decided to check the bank for the footage,

and sure enough, there it is.

The bank.

A U.S. bank branch just a couple of doors down from Susie's apartment.
Well, of course, it had a camera on its ATM. And so they asked to see the video.
And what do you know? Though very grainy and extremely hard to see clearly, it appeared to back up everything Brad said. Early in the morning, just before 5 a.m., 4.52 to be exact, you can see a pickup pull up across the street from the Ponderosa apartments.
We see Brad Holzer pull up in his vehicle on the security cameras, and Susan Casey is with him in that vehicle for a period of time, over 20 minutes. The dome light comes on.
We believe that's when Susie exits the vehicle. And this was about 5.19 a.m.
Then Brad's pickup pulled away out of frame. So then when Brad Holzer's wife is interviewed, she had been out all night.
She comes home and said when she got home at 6 a.m. that Brad was in bed sleeping.
We have a time frame from 5.20 a.m. to 6 a.m.
where Brad Holzer has to commit this homicide and he has to dispose of the body or he has to hide the body somewhere and dispose of it later. And we just didn't feel that Mr.
Holzer had strong opportunity in that time period and certainly didn't have much of a motive to murder Susan Casey. To hear that was quite a relief, as you might imagine, for Brad, who has replayed the scene countless times, saying goodnight to Susie and pulling away before she got inside the apartment door.
In hindsight, it bothers me that I didn't wait and watch her. But there is no reason that anybody should be there.
It's five in the morning, the whole town was dead. I just remember needing to get home, wanting to get home as soon as possible.
It didn't cross my mind for a second that anything had happened or that anyone was there. The gallant little gesture he didn't make.
Brad Holzer has all kinds of time to think about that.

Sometimes I think about her, yeah.

I wonder what we'd be doing right now.

There could have been a future there.

Susie was laid to rest on a sunny day in May 2008

in the little cemetery outside her hometown.

No one the slightest aware

of how much more was still to come. Seems like you didn't make it home last night.
An angry message from Susie's husband, Ted, and a closer look at his story. You know you were a person of interest.
Yeah, and you can expect that. Sure, but how was it to be treated that way?

It doesn't feel good.

You know every place you go, everything you do,

you got people watching, talking, you know, pointing.

Exactly what did he do?

The morning of the murder. Love and money make the world go round, of course.
Though here, as anywhere, they also happen to be leading motives for murder, Hus scorned, convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault, on the hook for alimony and child support, and a life insurance beneficiary. So, of course, the cops had reason to suspect Ted.
You're not being detained, man. Oh, yeah.
Got him to admit that he drove right past

Susie's apartment, very near the time she disappeared, that he was angry, tried to reach her on the phone. Actually, I called Susie.
Whatever time I called her, I left City Hall then. And yes, indeed.
Here is the angry voicemail Ted left. Well, Susie, I just called Mariah, and seems like you didn't make it home last night.

So maybe what somebody called me and said maybe is true, or you're doing somebody else. So once again, it seemed those age-old motives pointed at the husband.
90% of the time he would be right. But was it possible Ted could be the exception that proves the rule? A little checking revealed that Ted was in fact at work that morning, as seen by a co-worker, exactly when he said he was.
If he did commit a homicide, when would he have time to dispose of a body? Remember, they found Susie in the Yellowstone River, 28 miles upstream from Glendive. So, once again they pulled out that ATM video from the U.S.
Bank, the one beside Susie's apartment building. Ted said he dropped his girls off at his brother's house that morning about 5.45 a.m., then drove to City Hall to work.
It's a small town, and City Hall is just blocks from Susie's place. Ted said he drove right past her apartment.
And sure enough... We could see a vehicle driving by at approximately the time that Ted said he drove by the Ponderosa apartments on the video at the bank.
The time? 5.52 a.m., just like Ted told the police. So he's basically got a 15-minute window in there where he's dropping his kids off and he's accounted for, and then he drives to City Hall and works there for a period of time.
Given how close together everything was, it wouldn't have taken much time to kill Susie, hide her body, and retrieve it later for disposal. Possible? Quite, thought police.
Mind you, phone records seem to back up what Ted said about calling Susie the night she went missing, that angry message he left on her voicemail. The timestamp proved it was hours after she vanished, meaning that either Ted was trying to fool the police with the voicemail and his public movements that morning, or he didn't have any idea what happened to Susie.
And therefore, this time the husband didn't do it if he was telling the truth, that is. You know you were a person of interest.
Yeah, and you can expect that. Sure, but how was it to be treated that way? It doesn't feel good.
You know every place you go, everything you do, you've got people watching, talking, you know, pointing. Whispering behind your back? Yeah.
What's that like? Walk around sort of feeling a little itching your back or something? Well, you don't realize you're on edge all the time, you know. It's hard to relax.
You don't realize it until you go through it that, you know, you just can't relax. You do, but you don't.
Like, it's not normal, you know. Yeah.
How does that affect your health, your fatigue level, all of those kinds of things? You know, it probably ages you, you know. But I guess you get used to it.
You really don't notice it quite as much until you get pressure off at you, you know, like 10,000 pounds of weight off your shoulders, you know, but I did nothing wrong and I had nothing to hide from, so. Did the police believe that? You'd think if they did believe him, they'd make some sort of announcement that Ted was in the clear.
But they did not. And so it was awkward.
Especially when they were looking for Susie. Did you take part in the search? I did.
What was that like? It's kind of a tough situation.

You know, what happens if you find her?

If you're by yourself and you find her, you know, what would that look like?

And I never did give up hope that she was alive, you know.

I was hoping, praying that she was still alive, you know,

even though she was missing, that she would show up. You know, reality, you know, it's probably not going to happen, but, you know, I never give up hope.
But at the same time, if you found her, that would suggest you knew where she was in the first place because you put her there? It could. So Ted was still a target of the investigation, and also quite suddenly a single parent of two little girls,

Kiana and Charlie, age six and eight.

Six days seemed like six months, you know.

I mean, you weren't sleeping much.

I had headaches every day for over a month, all day long.

So how do you tell a little girl that her mother's never coming home, that she's dead? Well, I guess I just told them. How'd they take it? They broke down.
You know, they didn't let me out of their sight for quite a few days. I can imagine.
And especially when it came nighttime, you know, they were glued to you. There was, remember, an insurance policy on Susie's life.
Ted was the beneficiary. Wasn't a lot, but they cut the check, and Ted Casey cashed it.
What'd you do with it? Paid her funeral expenses, and what was left, I split four ways between the four kids.

Could have kept it.

Could have, but that's not the right thing to do.

Was it enough to be very much help to the kids?

Not much.

You know, there was probably maybe $3,000, $4,000 left after funeral expenses.

But it helped Shay and Mariah, too. So, does Ted sound like a guilty man? But if it wasn't him, and it wasn't the boyfriend, Brad, then who killed Susie? And why? A mystery caller.
Please call me. I'm worried.
Someone was desperate to reach Susie. Over and over again, it was the same voice.
Please let me know that you're okay. Please.
Everybody is very worried about you. I just thought that this guy's strange to call that many times.
It was really kind of obsessive. And we're all worried.
Call us. Yeah, who was he talking about? Yeah.
And said, boy, this is something we need to look at here. What if you could turn your curiosity for true crime into a degree? At Southern New Hampshire University, you can.
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Combined with a healthy lifestyle. A true crime story never really ends.
Even when a case is closed, the journey for those left behind is just beginning. Since our Dateline story aired, Tracy has harnessed her outrage into a mission.
I had no other option. I had to do something.
Catch up with families,

friends, and investigators on our bonus series, After the Verdict. Ordinary people facing

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Podcasts, Spotify, or at datelinepremium.com. There was something in the air that night,

no doubt about it.

Not every deadly sin, but certainly several,

swirling on one city block in Little Glendive, Montana.

Something that put at least two men, Ted Casey and Brad Holzer,

on the same street within minutes of one another.

Who owned those eyes in the dark that watched Susie Casey in the moments before she disappeared? From the first moments that dawned on the kids, parents, and siblings that Susie Casey hadn't come home. About all of them tried calling the woman who never went anywhere without her phone.
That phone was her lifeline. As Susie's brother, Rusty, and sister-in-law, Val, said during their interviews with investigators.
Among whom was then-Captain Ty Ulrich. So I thought, let's see which phone calls she had.
That is what a very strange story began to emerge. And that's where we're seeing all these phone calls from a number that we didn't know who belonged to.
A number nobody recognized, calling Susie again and again all night long. But did that mystery caller leave a message? Neither Val nor Rusty knew how to access Susie's voicemail.
But they didn't know who just might. When I called Mariah and I asked her if she knew her mother's password to get into her voicemail, she knew it instantly.
And Ty was sitting across the table from us. And the messages started to play.
If you don't call me back to one o'clock. Over and over again, it was the same voice.
I would love to hear from you and make sure everything is okay with you. And then we're starting to get like more desperate and needy.
I don't know what to do. You won't answer me.
Like, really reminded me of when you're a teenager and you have your first crush, and the guy or the girl goes to call them the next day and they don't answer. Usually most of us would stop.
Please let me know that you're okay. But as a teenager, sometimes their emotions aren't really under control, and they'll continue to call and call and call.
I still need to hear from you, please. It was like that, but the messages just continued to get closer together and just more desperate.
Please let me know that you're okay. Please.
Everybody is very worried about you. I just thought that this guy is strange to call that many times.
It was really kind of obsessive. And we're all worried.
Call us. Yeah.
Who was he talking about? Yeah. And more to the point, who was this guy? Who was he to Susie? And why in less than four hours did he leave not one or two or four or six, but 22 voicemail messages for Susie? Please call me.
I'm worried. Then Val suddenly knew.
Susie had only hinted at it, but there was another man in her life. Someone from her past, with whom she'd reconnected as her marriage to Ted fell apart.
This man, her long ago first husband, the father of her two older children, Marty Larson. Did she talk about him at all? I knew that she had had a previous marriage and had she and Mariah, but I didn't know anything really more beyond that.
Marty had been out of Susie's life for nearly a decade. No contact, no child support, nothing.
But then in 2007, Mariah, curious about her biological father, found him on the internet and reached out. And Marty came to visit a time or two.
At least once Susie took the kids to see him three hours across the prairie in Billings, Montana. Her parents were among the very few people who knew.
They were not happy. We got into an argument, and I said, Susie, you don't want to do this.
And I said, you know, the family isn't going to really go for this. And she said, you mean everybody's going to disown me? And so I just backed off.
And I told him, I said, I'm not going to lose my daughter over him. And that was the end of it.
How serious it got, nobody knew, really. Maybe they were just friendly.
Maybe it was more than that. Now, Investigator Ulrich typed Marty Larson in the database.

And it popped up.

And I've seen criminal trespass.

Remember, Susie married Ted pretty quickly after she left Marty back in 1998,

but that wasn't the end of it.

Not long after the wedding, apparently in a fit of pique,

Marty drove three hours down the highway from Billings to Glendive and turned up outside the newlyweds' house with a shotgun. And he admitted, you know, that Susie and the kids were probably safe, but Ted probably wasn't.
So that's pretty much saying that he'd blow you away. You know, a 12-gauge shotgun isn't to wound you.
But that would be for you, not for her. Yeah.
What he intended to do with the shotgun was never made clear. But he was convicted of criminal trespass and was slapped with a lifetime restraining order.
No contact with Susie or Ted. Ever.
At that point, I had a little red flag go up and said, boy, this is something we need to look at here. To judge from his 22 phone messages, Marty, and by the way, his given first name was Walter, was very worried about Susie, desperate even, as those nighttime hours went by without a word from her.
But Marty still lived three hours away in Billings. So is that where he was calling from? One surefire way to find out, check the cell towers.
We looked at Marty's cell phone and we actually started seeing him pinging from Billings all the way to Glendive. Can I ask you one question first? Sure.
Am I under arrest for something?

No.

Being charged with something?

No.

Marty has a revelation for police.

We still love each other very much.

Were you kind of thinking that you two would get back together?

That was the plan. It's a long, lonely road under the Montana moon.

And even at the elevated speeds allowed on I-94,

it's a good three hours east-northeast across the rolling prairie, from Billings to the Ponderosa apartment building in downtown Glendive. Ping, ping, ping, past the ever-listening cell towers.
And suddenly the cop had some homework to do. I didn't know who Marty was.
Had no idea. But he knew from the towers that Marty Larson was the third man to put himself near Susie Casey the night she vanished, which is why he called the State Department of Criminal Investigation.
And soon after Marty returned from Glendive, Agent Lee Johnson found himself standing outside Marty's apartment, staring at this freshly washed minivan. Video, again, courtesy of the police.

It was obviously very clean on the exterior

because it had been through an automatic car wash.

The interior of the vehicle had heavy condensation on the windshield.

What did you find inside?

The vehicle had been shampooed, the carpets had been cleaned.

When you get into the cargo area, the back of the van

had been vigorously cleaned out with some type of solution, water and maybe some cleaning solution. And in Marty's apartment? There was an empty bottle of toilet bowl cleaner in the kitchen garbage.
Detectives looked at the toilets in the residence. They didn't look like they'd been recently cleaned, but yet we had an empty container of Lysol bathroom cleaner.
That wasn't all they found in the garbage. There was this.
It appeared to be a list of expenses, as if someone was planning quite seriously for a Las Vegas wedding. Basically a breakdown of the trip for lodging, paying for a minister to marry them, and the return trip home.
Then, when investigators asked Marty to take off his shirt, they saw scratches on his back. Now, how in heaven's name would he have gotten those? Some sort of struggle, perhaps? So, while the search for Susie was still going on, the agents suggested they all sit down for a little Q&A.
And Marty said, sure. But...
Can I ask you one question first? Sure. Am I under arrest for something? No.
Am I being charged with something? No. Marty said he and Susie had reconnected the year before, mostly for the children.
But right away, said Marty, they fell for each other all over again, like true soulmates. That time, 10 years prior, when he had taken a shotgun to Ted and Susie's house, all forgiven.
He was a different man now. The 10 years we were apart, I spent thinking she hated me.
She thought I hated her. And in fact, we still love each other very much.
Were you kind of thinking that you two would get back together? That was the plan. So, said Marty, just before Susie went out, the night she vanished, he talked to her on the phone.
And I told her before she went, I said, make sure you eat. Make sure you don't drink too much.
You don't need to get a DUI and get in trouble like that. And she promised to call him back later.
I said, if I'm sleeping, don't worry about it. It's okay.
Wake me up. After all, thought Marty, they were a couple again.
It was his business to worry about her. And when she didn't call...
Then I called her at 12.30 because I hadn't heard from her, and I thought I'd make sure everything was okay. If you don't call me back to 1 o'clock.
I didn't know whether she'd gotten arrested or what was going on. Okay.
And then I thought, I'm going to go up there and I'm going to see if she's okay. Make sure that she got home, make sure everything's OK.
What time did you leave Billings, do you recall?

1.30-ish.

And sure enough, when police pulled video at the Blue Basket,

where Marty said he gassed up, timestamps said 1.39 a.m.

And so he drove, he said, calling and leaving voice messages for Susie

during the entire 220-mile trip. I just need to hear from you.
Please, please call me. I'm worried.
Expecting to hear back from her, saying, I'm fine, don't come. But Susie's call never came.
What time did you get in Glendive then? 4.30, quarter to five. Again, the truth.
Marty's cell phone pinged on a tower in the Glendive area just before 4.30 a.m. He said he parked around the corner, walked to her apartment.
Her car was parked outside, as if she was home. I went in the building.
I went up and I knocked on the door softly because her bedroom is near the door, hoping, you know, it would wake her and not any of the kids and hoping you know she'd come and tell me she was okay and there's no answer so I went out and called and texted a few times hoping to wake her up so did you ever encounter Susie at all no okay I wish I would have have seen her. He swore he didn't see Susie arrive just before 5 a.m.
with Brad. Didn't see what they were doing in the truck.
Didn't see her cross the street to her door at 5 19 a.m. But he did leave town he said and video from another nearby bank seemed to back him up at 5.45 a.m., leaving one last frantic voicemail.
Hello, just hoping to hear you're okay. Police, of course, are paid to be skeptical.
There's no doubt in my mind you saw her this morning. No, I didn't.
But Marty stuck to his story. And when detectives asked him why his minivan was so freshly washed...
On the way up there, I did kind of have one sort of major thing. There's a dead deer in the road that I hit, and there's a bunch of deer stuck to the bottom of it.
Okay. So I went and cleaned the bugs off the van and hoping that going through one of the drive-thru carers would spray the deer off.
It didn't do a very good job, though. A deer? Really? But...
Did you check into whether or not he actually did hit a deer? We did. We did.
We checked with the highway patrol, and they said it was consistent with a deer. It was not a live deer that he hit running.
It was actually laying in the interstate. And when they tested the tissue on the van, sure enough, it was not human.
It was animal tissue. But then when police asked if there was any way they'd find Susie's DNA in, on, or even under the van, Marty said something, as he often did, that made police wonder.
Well, I guess what I'm saying is what I know is what I thought is that was a deer.

I guess I don't know for certain that it couldn't have been her.

What?

Was he trying to tell police he ran Susie down?

Is there something you want to tell us?

No.

I haven't done anything.

You can scrape everything out from underneath that van.

It's deer.

As far as I know.

And if that wasn't weird enough, as the detectives left the room.

Oh, Susie, where are you?

Where are you?

Those kids need you.

I need you.

I love you, Susie.

Just wish I knew where you were.

Need hardly say it.

Marty was now the prime suspect, the man in the crosshairs.

But suspicion is so easy.

The real question was, did he provably do it? What cop or prosecutor would want to stake his or her career on a wild bet like that? Susie's death consumed him. He wouldn't sleep much at night.
And he told me one night that he just wanted to stop feeling. I think it just haunted him.
He was going to get justice for our family, even if he had to do it himself. A whole new tragedy is about to hit Susie's family.
I get a phone call in the

middle of the night. It was really impossible to believe that.
We've already lost Susie. This

can't be happening too. Once Susie's family found out that her ex-husband Marty Larson had been in Glendive the night she disappeared,

reaction was quick and to the point.

If I'd have knew all this ten years earlier, I'd have took him for a ride.

Well, meaning, well, you know.

Here's what most of them thought pretty well right away. It just didn't add up that it was Brad.
And it didn't add up that it was Ted. But Marty, perhaps? There were signs, like those obsessive voicemails.
Please call me. And the bank video.
His own admission that he hoped to reunite with Susie.

The probability he saw Susie canoodling with Brad.

The minivan washed to a fairly well on his return home.

And yet, Marty Larson was not arrested.

I think that frustration was really, really hard for the family.

What was your expectation that they would look at this material that they had and then just go and arrest Marty? You know, when you watch shows like this, things move. They progress.
I guess I just anticipated that these things would move forward and that who was responsible would be held accountable. And time just kept on going.
Thing is, at that point, Susie's sister-in-law, Val, and her husband, Rusty, were still hearing that Marty and Ted were both suspects. At the time, Susie's two youngest kids were with Ted.
The older two, Shay and Mariah, were living with Val and Rusty. It was extremely difficult for Shay and Mariah both.
I remember we were so excited for him to have his own bedroom, his own space, but at night he couldn't he couldn't sleep in his room. He had to sleep with Mariah.
Because? I think he was scared Marty was going to come to him. His own father.
I don't think he ever really called him father. I don't think any of us really did.
I think that he was just afraid of Marty. Val had a newborn of her own to go along with those extra responsibilities, and an overwhelming sadness that sneaked into her bed, her kitchen, her life, an unwelcome houseguest that simply refused to leave.
My son was four months old when Susie was taken from us. I don't remember.
I don't remember him walking. I don't remember those moments I should remember as a mother.
Meanwhile, the investigation was stuck in the weeds. I was thinking, a couple months, and we're going to have an arrest.
And we just didn't have the pieces at that time that we needed. 2008 went the way of all years.

Ted kept to himself.

Marty moved, left Billings, went to Phoenix, got a job.

And at home in Glendive, Susie's brother, Val's husband Rusty,

was having trouble with the rage.

Susie's death consumed him. He wouldn't sleep much at night.
And he told me one night that he just wanted to stop feeling. I think it just haunted him that he felt like he could have done something.

And by the time a representative of Montana's Attorney General's office met with the family, many felt they were teetering on the edge of sanity, still wondering, Marty or Ted, what was the holdup? That day I asked if she could tell us, as a family, that Ted was no longer a suspect. And she asked me why I'm asking the question first.
And I told her because the two little girls were living with Ted at the time, and Mariah and Shay were living with me, and I just felt like I was the only person trying to salvage the relationship with the little girls and their siblings, and I just really wanted her to kind of crash that wall down and say that he wasn't a suspect, and then her response to me was that the case is still moving forward, and he's still a suspect. It's quite a thing to hear.
Yeah. I mean, I just really felt like I needed to hear that at that time, and I didn't get to hear that, and that it was still possibly he could have had involvement.
Ted, who still lived under a cloud of suspicion, believed that Marty killed Susie. There was a lot of nights I didn't sleep real good wondering if somebody was going to show up in the middle of the night with a gun.
But it was Rusty during his many sleepless nights who devised a plan to do what police and prosecutors seemed unable or unwilling to do. He was going to get justice for our family, even if he had to do it himself.
What do you mean by that? He had made several plans about how he was going to kill Marty, take Marty's life, just like Marty took Susie's. What would you say to him when he said things like that? That the case was moving forward and that that wasn't something he needed to do.
We had a son, and our son needed him and me. And that he couldn't leave us.
Eventually, it all came to that anyway. First, Val and Rusty divorced.
And then in November 2011, three and a half years after the night Susie was murdered. I get a phone call in the middle of the night.
It was really impossible to believe that. Rusty, her brother, 32 years old, committed suicide.
We've already lost Susie. This can't be happening, too, you know.
And so it was really hard for my brain to wrap around that. And so Jack and Marlene went to the little cemetery in Circle to lay another child to rest.
It crushed them. And then to lose their two youngest, it just seems like they aged 15 years.
Do you think Rusty would be around today if they had moved quicker on that case? I try not to go there. I mean, there's all these what-ifs, what-ifs.
But then, it wasn't long after her Rusty was put in the ground, a new county attorney was elected in Glendive. You've already met her, Olivia Rieger.
I really felt like we had a duty to give some sort of explanation to Jack and Marlene and their family as to what was going on. If the case was going to go somewhere or if it wasn't, they needed to know.
They couldn't be left dangling out there. And they certainly were dangling.
Absolutely. And if that were all, the hope for an answer and justice might have simply ended there.
But one morning as Olivia was settling into her new office, there was a knock at the door. A man had come to call, and he smiled and said, Hi, I'm Brant Light, and we're going to try a homicide.
I think my stomach was in my throat, because especially when he said, we're going to try a homicide. And I thought, are you kidding me? An arrest at last, and new anguish that no one in the family saw coming.
That hit you pretty hard, didn't it? Yeah. I just dropped the phone and just cried.
Cried and cried and cried. I just, I couldn't believe that that could happen three times in one family.
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Olivia Rieger could scarcely believe her eyes. The man at the door, the man who clearly intended to enlist her in some sort of cause, was one of the best-known prosecutors in all of Montana.
So when you saw him at the door that day, what happened to you? I think my stomach was in my throat, because, especially when he said, we're going to try a homicide.

And I thought, are you kidding me? Because I am new here. He brought boxes of files and he said, I'm going to be back in six weeks and I want you to get on this and read all this stuff.
And we're going to talk about how we're going to do this. This is Brand Light, who, before he showed up at Olivia's door, was appointed the state attorney general's chief prosecutor.
The AG's office often helps small jurisdictions handle big cases. How did you get involved in this particular case? Well, I had come to the attorney general's office.
There was another chief prosecutor at that time. Simply didn't think there was enough evidence.
I then took her position and I told my team, let's look really hard at this. And months later, after a very hard look, I thought it was a great case.
I thought circumstantially it was overwhelming. Then Brant Light met with Susie's family, asked for their patience, and promised he would issue an

arrest warrant for the man he was now convinced was the killer, Marty Larson. I just, I saw my family and their family, a good, strong family.
And to have this death occur, to have her get out of a car and then never make it to the front door, 20 steps, and we can't explain to them what happened in those 20 steps. I thought they deserved to find out.
In February 2012, almost four years after Susie's murder, a Phoenix SWAT team descended on Marty Larson as he walked out of his apartment on his way to work. Back in Glendive, a certain ex-suspect finally relaxed.
When you knew he was under arrest and in jail, how did it change your life? You know, it took a lot of stress off me. Mr.
Larson, I'm Assistant Chief Ty Alder with the Glendide Police Department. How are you doing? And the man who took Susie's original missing persons report sat down to interview Marty.
I just arrested a guy for homicide. When I walk in, I'm expecting somebody to say, you're crazy, I didn't do this, I don't want to talk to you at all.
But. I find a guy sitting in a chair with his legs crossed and arms, you know, across the side.
The only thing I have to say is I have no idea what happened to her. I don't know how she passed away.
That's it.

I pretty much knew when I was targeted years ago

that something like this could happen at any time.

I knew this day could come, so...

What did that say to you?

That said to me that he'd always been thinking in the back of his head

that he would be arrested for this crime.

They took Marty back to Montana, stuck him in the county jail to await his murder trial. And as the spring of 2012 arrived, it seemed that things were finally looking up for Susie's family.
It was a lot of relief, especially mom and dad. I think really felt like Susie would finally get some justice.

And there was another reason, finally, for the family to celebrate. Susie's eldest child, Mariah, was graduating from Circle High School.
Senior photos were taken, announcements were printed up and sent out, a party was planned in Circle. Then, the day before the ceremony.
She had said, you know, it's going to be my graduation and my mom is not here to see me. And I said, I know, but I said, she'll be with you.
And she cried. And so Mariah and Marlene dried their tears and the young girl bounded out of the house and drove away.
What happened anyway? Well, they said she'd tell us to leave. Went off the road.
There were no skid marks or nothing until she hit the ditch and it rolled. And that kid would never leave without her seatbelt on.
And that night she didn't have it on and it throwed her out. Mariah Larson was just 18 years old.

All I remember is answering the phone my mom telling me.

And that's all I remember. I just dropped the phone and just cried.
Cried and cried and cried. I just, I couldn't

believe that that could happen three times in one family. I never really grieved for Susie.
Just like I never really grieved for Rusty until Mariah's accident. And that was the day

I grieved for all three of them

I can't imagine that scope of loss

I don't know how you managed it

I don't know either

that hit you pretty hard

when she was killed

didn't it

is that the point

that gets you every time

yeah

Thank you. when she was killed, didn't it? Yeah.
Is that the point that gets you every time?

Yeah.

Mariah was laid to rest in that little cemetery outside Circle,

next to her Uncle Rusty and her mom Susie.

She had a hard time living without her mom.

And I guess that's why she finally went to be with her mom. It was tough.
The spout didn't make it through that one. Three of them.
And right along with the family that day was the new prosecutor on the case. It showed me a lot about Brant Light because he traveled from Helena.
After only meeting that young girl one time, he came from Helena to her funeral.

And he had a message for the family.

And from Marty Larson.

It was very clear in this case from both sides that there was not going to be any plea negotiations.

We never talked negotiations. We simply talked about trial.
Let's go to trial. Bravado? Circumstantial cases, especially like this one, can be tricky things.
That shoe print, those drag marks, and the surveillance video from the bank, would any of it point to

Marty? He looked like a different person. My belief was he tried to change his look so he

would not look like the person who was on the bank ATM. There's a big husky guy, maybe 210 pound

man, and here's a person who might now be 150 pounds, 160 pounds. All of us were a little taken back.
Glendive is, as we have said, not a very big place. To walk from Susie's apartment door to the Dawson County Courthouse would take less than a minute.
Five years from crime to trial. Five years and one city block.
Where in April 2013, Marty Larson finally faced a jury. Clearly to me, he was the person that committed that crime.
Now my chore was to go out and prove it.

But when Marty walked in, the courtroom gasped. It sure didn't look like the picture that I was shown of him.
He had lost like 77 pounds or something like that. So he looked like a different person altogether.
So I think there was a little shock in everyone's mind that all of us were a little taken back. Wait, was it intentional?

More on that in a minute. First, Prosecutor Light listed what he said were motives for Marty to kill Susie.
Motives as old as time. Jealousy, pride, rage.
I think Marty was absolutely convinced that he and Susan were going to get back together,

that his family was going to be reunited, that they were going to move out of state,

away from her family, and that they were going to have this close-knit relationship.

He was prepared to marry her. He was making financial plans to marry her.

And I really think he thought that was going to happen.

I don't think Susan did, but he certainly thought that.

And all of a sudden, here comes Brad. Here comes somebody telling him that she's seen this other guy.
That's why, said the prosecutor, and phone records backed it up, Marty made those phone calls to Brad's estranged wife and to Ted Casey shortly before the murder, alerting these estranged but still married people that something untoward was going on. I think at that point he thought, well, let me just break this up.
So his efforts were all just about breaking them up. And that effort included emails, though Marty denied it.
Did you send the emails? No, I did not. A search of Marty's computer revealed that he had created that email account under the name Denise Johnson and sent those emails to Brad asking how his wife felt about his girlfriend.

And when police showed up at Marty's door the very first time...

You know, he's erasing things on his computer and defragmenting the hard drive.

Appeared to be getting rid of something.

Something. Yep.
On the night Susie disappeared, phone records revealed that she and Marty last spoke at 9 51 p.m. By then, Susie was aware that Marty had been trying to sabotage her relationship with Brad.
After the phone call, Susie called her daughter, Mariah, with a question. She wanted to know how to restrict a number.
Okay. And I asked her why, and she told me because Marty was calling.
Okay. She was calling Ted and saying stuff about her mom.
The phone record showed Susie stopped returning Marty's calls. That's why, at 1.39 a.m., Marty was caught on that gas station surveillance camera, leaving Billings to head toward Glendive.
I think when he left Billings, it was never his intent to kill her. I think it was his intent to confront her, to find her and confront her about what's going on.
Please call me. The jury heard that Marty left 22 voicemails as he drove over the next three hours, his cell phone pinging in Glendive just before 4.30 a.m.
Then, by his own admission, Marty parked right around the corner from Susie's apartment building, next to the bank. And that's when the bank's ATM started telling a story like nothing else could.
427 AM. Prosecutors argued this figure right here is Marty walking towards Susie's apartment.
Our theory was he got to Susan's apartment before Brad, before she returned, and there's a little concave, a little storefront, and we believe that's where he was standing. That, said the prosecutor, is when he left that footprint found in the dust in the alcove of the building next to Susie's.
Then the tape showed at 4.52 a.m., Brad and Susie pulled up in Brad's truck. 5.19 a.m., the dome light came on.
Susie opened the door, got out, just steps from her apartment. When she stepped out of Brad's car, after he had stood in that concave for 15 to 20 minutes as they were in the car doing whatever they were doing, I think he was extremely angry.
And when he saw her, I think he confronted her. I think she confronted him right back.
I think when she told him that she was going to continue a relationship with Brad and that Marty and her were done, I think he was a no-one's-going-to-have-Susie sort of guy. It came to a head in that little alley there, and I think that's when he strangled her.
Strangled her, prosecutors argued. But not before Susie left those telltale scratch marks found on Marty's back.
The state's theory? That Marty dragged her body across the alley, leaving those drag marks near the dumpster. Then, at 5.38 a.m., a figure walked back toward Marty's minivan.
After he walks back, the next thing you see is that silver van pulled back in front of Susan's. There's about a five-minute wait.
I believe he's putting the body into the back of that van, and then you see the van pull aside. That, said prosecutors, is when Marty started driving back to Billings.
You have a body in your van. I think the river was the fastest and easiest way for him and to buy him some time.

Prosecutors produced this video, showing Marty at 8.15 a.m., 78 miles down the road, stopping for gas, wearing a white t-shirt and black shoes that were never found. Did he throw them away when he dumped her body? At 10.29 a.m., Marty was back in Billings, leaving his first voicemail in almost five hours.
This one with a decidedly different tone. Good morning, sweetie.
I was just hoping that you would be willing to talk to me. I have my phone charging right now, so if you could give me a call on this one.
Thank you. Totally different tenor.
When he still hadn't talked to her, I would have thought that you would have been even more angry as time went by, that he still hasn't returned your calls. They still don't know where you are.
Now he's gone into alibi mode. And the final piece of the puzzle for prosecutors? Remember how Marty vigorously cleaned his minivan inside and out? Not quite enough.
One hair was found. It was in the back of the van, where you'd put a body.
And of course, you know, we did the mitochondrial DNA, and it was hers. It was in the back where we believe he laid her.
So, a strong circumstantial case. Except, the Marty who showed up in court did not look a bit like the man in the videos.

My belief was he tried to change his look so he would not look like the person who was on the bank ATM.

You know, there's a big husky guy, maybe 210-pound man,

and here's a person who might now be 150 pounds, 160 pounds. But would it work? Good question.
After all, the state's case was entirely circumstantial. There were no eyewitnesses.
The bank video was so bad, even the judge wondered at times what he was looking at. And they never found shoes to match the footprints in the alcove.
So, Brad Light had taken a chance, all right, on a difficult case. And the defense was yet to come.
I don't think anyone knows how this crime happened. There was not enough evidence to bring this case.
Ted Casey, I believe, was the only one who had a real motive. A shot from the defense was the wrong man on trial.
I couldn't have done that. Listen, you put yourself there.
That's the point. You put yourself at the crime scene.
I put myself in a position for them to look at me. Right.
You had the opportunity. You had the motive.

Marty Larson speaks.

Can you see how it looks?

Oh, yeah.

I can.

And so does the jury.

Marty Larson's defense attorney had one big headline for the jury. I don't think anyone knows how this crime happened.
Randy Hood is a seasoned and respected Montana defense attorney, and her review of the prosecution was harsh. Sheer speculation, she said, made for a good story, but offered very little in the way of actual proof that Marty killed Susie.
I believe that there was not enough evidence to bring this case, and that's one of the reasons why it wasn't filed for all those years, because other prosecutors had determined there wasn't sufficient evidence. Much more evidence against Ted Casey, she said.

Ted Casey, I believed, was the only one who had a real motive. They were fighting about the children, the monetary aspects of their marriage, and she had indicated to Marty on several occasions that she was fearful of Ted.
And I believed that his recounting of what he did that morning, had it been properly investigated, would have found to have been less than a perfect alibi. Prosecutors, of course, argued that there was no evidence that Ted, or for that matter, Brad, or his then wife, or anyone but Marty Larson killed Susie.

The defendant himself testified at the trial and agreed to sit down with us too. So what do you want people to know about you? I guess the main thing is just that I had nothing to do with killing Susie.
I would never have done anything to her or to take her away from my kids or her two little girls. I couldn't have done that.
It's hard to imagine being in a frame of mind where a person could do that.

Uh-huh. It is hard to imagine.

For anybody.

Yeah, it's... I mean, there were times where I wasn't happy with her,

but I've never done anything to physically hurt her.

I... it just wasn't anything I...

Thank you. never done anything to physically hurt her.
I, it just wasn't anything I, I just, I, I could never get that angry, I guess. Usually if I was angry, if I'm, even now, when I'm angry, it's more verbal.

I tend to say things I shouldn't say and hurt that way, I guess.

Marty insisted that his very last contact with Susie was that phone call at 9.51 p.m.,

eight hours before she disappeared.

What happened in that conversation?

Why did she not want to talk to you at all afterwards and block your number and the rest of it? During that call, she called to ask me. I don't remember if she asked me or if she accused me of calling Ted.
And in fact, you had. I did.
And she was mad about that. Yes.
I told her I didn't do it and it wasn't me. Why? Why would you do that? A lie about it? The lying about it was because I knew I had done something stupid and I felt guilty about it.
The why I did it, a lot of it was because of being hurt. Because what she had been telling me was that whatever she had

as far as a relationship

with Brad

she had been telling me for a week

to ten days or so that that was over.

Apparently it wasn't.

No.

And I guess somewhere in my head

I suspected that and that's why

I sent the emails. There was a lot of confusion.
Confusion? Or something else? That made him decide to drive three hours to Susie's place in the middle of the night? That's a bad decision, right? You see that now. Oh, yeah.
The whole time I was driving, I was hoping that she would respond and say, I'm fine, so I could just turn around and go home. That was all I wanted, was to know she was okay.
And still Marty insisted that when he got to her apartment, he just didn't see Susie right across the street with that guy, Brad. No, he claimed he waited for her in a spot where he couldn't have seen her walking to the door.
That's the part that sticks with me. I'm thinking, here's a guy who cares deeply about this woman and what she's up to, and he sits where he can't see the entrance to her apartment building? Don't give me that.
That's crazy. I can't make people believe, believe anything.
I know what I did. I know where I was.
Listen, you put yourself there. That's the point.
You put yourself at the crime scene. I put myself in a position for them to look at me and...
Right. You had the opportunity.
You had the motive. If just being in the vicinity...
You could have, in other words. Within that time frame, yes.
Can you see how it looks? Oh, yeah. I can.
I can. There are a lot of things I don't understand myself why I did them.
I don't understand why, especially now, why I couldn't have just stayed home and tried to contact her a few times. and I guess in my head I had some sort of thought that I could do something to help if she needed help.
Sometimes with a girl like Susie, the thing you can do to help is to walk away. Yeah, probably would have been best, at least for me.
Marty Larson's jury was out for about as long it took Marty to drive from Billings to Glendive the night poor Susie left his life. Three hours.
The verdict? Guilty. What was it like to hear that guilty verdict? There was.
Everybody hooped and hollered and hugged. It was just like a big weight just lifted off you.
There's something hugely important about justice. Couldn't bring her back, of course.
But did the verdict matter? Oh, yes. It did really set my mind at ease.
It really did help us to move on. Every time we get a guilty verdict, the first thing I do is turn to the family.
I love for that two or three minutes to look in their eyes and to see the smile on their faces

and to see the joy that they have.

For me, that's what it's all about.

I'll never, ever in my probably whole career have a time that I loved being a prosecutor like I did right then.

This is where Marty Larson lives now.

Crossroads Correctional in Shelby, Montana, up near the Canadian border. What did they sentence you to? 110 years.
What does it do to you? What does it do to your soul? It's hard for me to put it into words, but when you wake up in the morning, I look around a lot and just have trouble believing that it's real, that I'm here. Your first parole possibility is what? Way, way...
2042. It's a long wait.
Yes, it is. But of course, it's far more than just a long wait for Susie, Rusty, Mariah.
The cascade of grief begun that night was deep and long.

I just can't understand how the guilt and the emotions aren't just consuming him.

Because losing her, it's still consuming us.

He took her life and he took part of our heart, but he'll never break this family up. And he hasn't.
No, he hasn't. Shay, just 12, when his mom was murdered, graduated from high school in 2013.
Ted and Susie's daughters, Kiana and Charlie, were junior bridesmaids when their aunt Val remarried. But there are too many from this family in the Circle Village Cemetery.
Not something a family gets used to. They just learn to work around it.
They go on. We're not victims, we're survivors.
And survivors keep on living life. And we're survivors.
A true crime story never really ends. Even when a case is closed, the journey for those left behind is just beginning.

Since our Dateline story aired, Tracy has harnessed her outrage into a mission.

I had no other option. I had to do something.

Catch up with families, friends, and investigators on our bonus series, After the Verdict.

Ordinary people facing

extraordinary circumstances with strength and courage. It does just change your life,

but speaking up for these issues helps me keep going. To listen to After the Verdict,

subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at datelinepremium.com.