Dark Woods | FULL EPISODE | The FBI Files

in a montana campground the little girl is taken as she sleeps recalling a similar crime investigators fear a killer is back desperate to find the girl alive they face grim clues false leads and a coming suspect police agents and a mother with unshakable determination struggle to solve the mystery of what happened in those dark woods [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] while camping with her family in montana a seven-year-old girl was abducted from her tent no one in the campground witnessed the crime and the kidnapper left no clues i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office at the time little was known of criminal profiling agents would use it as they raced against the clock to find a criminal more monstrous than anyone imagined southwestern montana a land of epic mountain ranges and vast prairies in june 1973 the yeager family came to montana from michigan marietta yeager was excited about her family exploring the west bill yeager a longtime auto worker had taken a month off for this once in a lifetime trip [Music] it was seven year old susie's first family vacation marietta's parents had also joined them for the trip on sunday june 24th they prepared to spend their last night in montana's headwaters state park [Music] in the morning they would continue west the eldest boy slept in the van while the four young ones had their own tent guys like every night susie wouldn't go to sleep without a good night hug and kiss [Music] the night was chilling still the jaeger children slept peacefully the adult slept in a camper truck a few feet away but not everyone in the campground was asleep [Music] [Music] around 4 a.m a breeze awoke 13 year old heidi yeager she noticed a hole in the tent then she noticed susie wasn't there confused and scared she rushed to tell her parents marietta yeager tried to understand what her daughter was saying i just thought that she must be somewhere around she's around she's she had to go the bathroom she you know um but at the same time there's this terror rising in you that you know oh please god don't let this be true don't let this be true i mean i remember wanting to wake up and find out that this is not real this is not really happening then they saw the hole sliced in the tent that's when it's like like it or not marietta this is this is reality and more than she's gone but someone has taken her their heart sank further when they spotted susie's stuffed animals in the grass she was sleeping with them she always slept with them and she must have dropped them because she couldn't hold on to them it made it clear to me that she was taken away by force [Music] right away bill yeager drove to a phone to call police okay mr yeager slow down i need you to tell me what's going on i want you to hold on the line i'm gonna get help the sheriff's dispatcher immediately radioed gallatin county deputy don houghton who's working the night shift campground have reported on the way to the headwaters deputy houghton stopped to pick up city county investigator john onsted violent crime was rare in the area so at first investigator onstead thought it a false alarm we're thinking that it really must be something else that something like this would would would not be a kidnapping and it would resolve itself somehow when the investigators arrived the jaeger family was distraught as the yeagers explained what they could they brought the investigators to the back of the campsite [Music] that changed everything for deputy houghton and that's when we saw the tent and that the tent had been slipped and uh that kind of picked things up a little bit it was a little eerie footprints from the family were scattered around the tent in the damp grass but investigator onsted could see one set with a clear direction i could see the tracks in the dew coming to an and from the area where the tent was going back to a parking area and the parking area had no vehicles in it the gallatin county sheriff's office contacted the fbi special agent pete dunbar took the call at the bozeman field office the fbi often joins kidnapping investigations because of the possibility of interstate travel in any abduction time is critical as the chance of finding a victim alive diminishes with each passing hour what is it i'll tell you on the dunbar and special agent william terry left for the campground immediately by the time the agents arrived local deputies had started to search for susie and had begun interviewing the other campers the only clues so far were the footprints and the gash in the tent but that was enough to convince special agent dunbar what happened no question there was a kidnapping in some cases you don't know some types of the parental type thing but in this instance absolutely no question but there was a kidnapping of a child the search quickly became one of the largest in montana history we had helicopters we used the national guard flying we had boats we had all-terrain vehicles we had riders out identifying areas of abandoned buildings old mine sites anywhere where a person might be located they began at the yeager campsite then expanded in widening circles during the search a few veteran deputies recalled a similar investigation in the same campground five years earlier [Music] that crime was discovered may 5th 1968 when during a troop outing a boy scout tried to wake up his tent mate the 12 year old had been stabbed and beaten during the night scouts long had been punctured and he suffered severe head trauma he died the following day that case remained unsolved many of those searching for susie couldn't help but wonder if that killer was back while the search of the woods continued some deputies began tracking possible suspects reviewing criminal records they began with sex offenders living nearby those without alibis were asked to come in for lie detector tests according to special agent dunbar in the immediate area there were three or four absolute prime suspects because of past activities dealing with children one in particular that was looked at very carefully the polygraph examiner asked the suspect about the night susie vanished though their use is controversial polygraphs monitor changes in heart rate respiration and perspiration that most people exhibit when they tell a lie 3 30 am the suspect said he could not remember what he was doing that night the polygraph results were inconclusive hoping for more information agents sent the suspect to a nearby psychiatric hospital to be interrogated under sodium amital often referred to as truth serum a barbiturate sodium produces a relaxed state in which suspects become less defensive and therefore more talkative under its influence most people are unable to lie [Music] once the drug took effect and the suspect relaxed his memory returned he remembered what he had been doing during the time of the kidnapping he had been in butte montana we checked it out people in butte could verify what he said was correct and he was eliminated hopes of a quick arrest were dashed police and the fbi sought the public's help [Music] hundreds of alarm citizens throughout montana called in tips deputies followed up on each one [Music] one caller urged authorities to interview his 25 year old neighbor in manhattan montana describing him as odd deputies knew the man a local contractor nothing appeared suspicious however and like others in the community he said he would do what he could to help firm down there we promised to help then a week after susie disappeared a man telephoned the home of a gallatin county montana deputy the deputy's wife answered the caller claimed to be susie's kidnapper and demanded a 50 000 ransom be delivered to a bus station in denver to confirm he had susie he described a minor deformity rounded hump-like nails on the young girl's index fingers okay the woman called her husband who contacted the fbi at the command center set up at the campground special agent dunbar told the yeagers about the ransom call when he mentioned the fingernails they were stunned susie did have rounded nails on her index fingers the call was legitimate agents needed the kidnapper to call back with details about the ransom drop [Music] but the call never came a crushing blow for the family and investigators according to fbi special agent william terry as time went by and there was nothing to give directions as where the money should be placed or how she was going to be returned the hope left watching deputies drag the rivers in headwaters park for a body was agonizing for the yeagers yet marietta and bill refused to give up hope i made a commitment to stay faithful to her as my as her mother that not to give up to continue to believe that she was still alive until such time if ever it would have to happen that i would have to accept concrete proof to the contrary still the jaegers could not remain in the campground forever bill needed to return to work so after more than a month the family had to go home and it was so hard to leave you know for me to leave the last place that i had seen her despite the best efforts of law enforcement they had not been able to find the kidnapper but soon he would find marietta in june 1973 seven-year-old susie yeager was abducted from her tent in headwaters state park montana [Music] although the family had to return to michigan the fbi assured susie's parents bill and marietta yeager that they would not give up on the case as soon as we got to detroit the fbi agents were there were waiting for us and so i felt i felt um i could trust them i felt that they were competent and they were willing to keep me informed and for me that was very important i needed to know everything that was going on though investigators thought susie had likely been murdered the yeagers still hoped she was alive and that the kidnapper would make contact again the fbi arranged for the phone company to trace any calls from the kidnapper and ask the yeagers to place a recording device on their telephone i think the kids and i should be able to handle that the family and their friends worked diligently to make certain nobody forgot about susie [Music] they established the suzy jaeger reward fund and printed 10 000 posters which they mailed to every sheriff's office in montana and the surrounding states asking for them to be posted locally months passed still the family continued to hope the kidnapper would call it just sort of became my task to be there on the phone and only one time did i leave in the beginning and that was to pick up a son one of my kids at a class from which she was supposed to have gotten a ride home and it but that did show and so i was out of the house 10 minutes and the kidnapper called following established routine the eldest son dan who remained in the house snapped on the tape recorder who is this would you like to know [Music] dan asked the kidnapper to release his sister the caller complained that the police and fbi were involved yeah he said he couldn't release susie without getting caught seconds later marietta came home danny had just hung up the phone and i could just tell by the look on his face it was just stricken he didn't even have to tell me i knew he had just spoken to the kidnapper and we had that call on tape but no way of knowing who it was authorities traced the call to a diner in wyoming local officers checked the place but the caller was gone and employees did not recall anyone who had been on the pay phone fbi special agent william terry it was a consensus of opinion at that time that susie was uh dead yeah and for some reason this individual was attempting to torment the yeager family months passed with no new leads or calls eight months after susie's kidnapping the gallatin county sheriff's office received a report that a 19 year old woman had disappeared from manhattan montana 10 miles from the campground where susie vanished [Music] her mother was worried and told the deputies what she knew she said that her daughter sandra smulligan was last seen on february 9th returning to her apartment around midnight after a night out with friends her mother said sandra's car was gone and no one had heard from her in days [Music] like almost everyone in the small town the deputies knew sandra they opened a missing person's case and set out in search of her car gallatin county deputy don houghton still working the susie yeager kidnapping was also part of the new investigation the area that i was assigned was to the northwest of the town of manhattan and this was a large area and what we were doing was driving county roads dirt roads farm roads looking for the car on an abandoned ranch in the horseshoe hills deputy houghton noticed fresh tire tracks off a dirt road then spotted something that seemed out of place got out to see what it was and it happened to be a pair of women's panties houghton wanted to check out the barn nearby the door was nailed shut [Music] inside a tarp and other debris covered a car the license plate had been removed but in the small community most people knew their neighbor's vehicles deputy houghton recognized the car it was sandra smalligan's there was no trace of the young woman needed 10 13 on a white four pound called in the find wp 521 deputies sheriff's posse members and volunteers scoured five square miles surrounding the barn in line searches they marked any items that might be evidence two days into the search one group investigated a 55-gallon drum they found in a field something right here something had been burned inside step back please among charred wood were bone fragments the more we looked we found bones spread out probably over a 75-yard area most in very small pieces they'd been broken up chopped up they were burned in the end they collected more than 1200 bone fragments a forensic pathologist determined they were human and some were probably from an adult white female dental records confirmed several teeth and jawbone fragments belonged to sandra smalligan [Music] investigator jon onsted feared that sanders killer might have also kidnapped susie yeager there was beginning to be a connection probably partly due to the to the uh part of the country we live in and and what what goes on here what doesn't go on here sandra smalligan had been dismembered whoever committed such an unspeakable crime might have taken susie too eight months after susie yeager vanished from a montana campground deputies discovered the remains of sandra smalling at a nearby horseshoe hills ranch authorities feared a connection the investigators working the two cases frequently ate lunch together one resident often joined them always asking about the cases david masterson was an ex-marine and a well-known local contractor some townspeople considered him strange [Music] in the first week of the investigation masterson had been questioned about susie's disappearance deputy don houghton knew that people who are overly curious about a crime are often involved on numerous occasions david would come in and and sit with us and eat always inquisitive uh we were always cautious of what we said around him but he was always volunteering volunteering for a search just kept in front of us i guess he just bugged us fbi special agent pete dunbar realized masterson was familiar with the area where sandra's body was found david surfaced as a suspect again because we knew enough about david from before to know that he knew the horseshoe hills very well and also it developed that he had dated this girl sanders mulligan investigators asked masterson to take a polygraph examination he agreed i had a great deal of faith in the polygraph i had had it utilized in other cases before and invariably was a tremendous tool and never had one where it backfired during the examination masterson denied knowing anything about susie yeager's kidnapping or sandra smulligan's murder he confirmed he dated sandra only once because she didn't want to go out with him again the polygraph examiner detected no sign of deception as they had with other suspects in the susie jaeger case agents asked him to submit to questioning under sodium amitol at the psychiatric hospital under the barbiturate's influence masterson calmly answered every question he said everything then that he told me in my interview before we did sodium amitol he didn't deviate one iota as far as my interview was concerned there was no difference whether he had it or did not have it put the investigation back to where we had nothing we just ran out of everything couldn't have been more discouraged we didn't know where to go we had run out of suspects in the spring of 1974 the stalled case gathered new momentum after dunbar met special agent patrick mullaney who worked in the emerging field of criminal profiling believing he could help mullany asked for the files in the jaeger case [Music] give us all the interviews you've conducted give us all of the results of the investigations you've conducted and we sat down for days going over all of those interviews especially what kind of investigation that they were conducting and we came back with an idea to the profilers the nature of the crime including surveillance and a stealthy abduction suggested the kidnapper had military training he must have had the physical strength to carry and keep quiet a 55 pound girl who might be struggling the profilers believe the perpetrator was a loner possibly a schizophrenic who has trouble with the opposite sex one suspect jumped out again david masterson when we came up with david masterson as our most likely suspect we met a whole lot of opposition from the local police department as well as the fbi agent and the reason for the opposition was very reasonable it was simply that he had been a suspect early on and they had asked of him to take certain truth tests and david had passed both of them but a schizophrenic can disassociate from reality to such a degree he might be able to lie without exhibiting any stress thus beating the tests the profilers also made a prediction that the kidnapper would telephone marietta yeager on the anniversary of the abduction we felt that this was such an intimate killer you know that he had become personally involved in the killing and in the victim in the victim's life and in the victim's family's life that he would much celebrate this event like a normal person would celebrate an anniversary to flush the kidnapper out marietta yeager granted an interview to an associated press reporter she said her religious faith allowed her to feel sorry for the kidnapper and that on the night of june 24th 1974 one year after susie vanished marietta went to bed knowing that although she needed it she would not rest as she raced to the phone and recorder she hoped finally to get some answers exactly one year after susie yeager vanished from a montana campground a man telephoned susie's mother marietta hello the first thing he said was is this susie's mom and i mean i just then i knew for certain who it was he said this is the man who took her from you uh one year ago to the minute can we have her back and then the phone went dead what happened with him the jaegers were devastated the call was so short a successful trace was unlikely another call if it should come would be the only link to their little girl hello i was so relieved i was so relieved but my mind was spinning you know what's going to happen what can i say and so in the beginning i sort of gave the lead to him in the conversation he had this need to let me know that he was the one who was in control i have susie she's doing great the kidnapper boasted he was too smart to get caught he said he and susie had been traveling together we've been going all our place having a great time people think we're a family where is she right now marietta wanted proof that her daughter was alive she wanted to talk to susie you don't need to worry the kidnapper said the girl was nearby sleeping in his cabin by this time i knew that my husband had notified the fbi they were trying to trace the call so i knew it was important to keep him on the phone i wanted the fbi to get to him before he got away and find out you know if i was going to get my little girl back again and i will do whatever it takes as she talked marietta yeager began to take control of the conversation she said she had been praying for him don't pray for me at all she said she felt sorry for him is she really still alive her strengths and compassion wore the caller down according to fbi profiler patrick mullaney to be able to contain herself over an hour with the person that she viewed as having her child was beyond belief the caller initially starting with the typical psychopathic challenge i am the one that kidnapped your child one year ago to the minute this day to turn him from that point where he's really sticking it to her to where at the end of the hour that caller could not hang up the phone and when he ultimately did hang up the phone he was sobbing crying agents responded to the jaeger home hoping the call would finally lead them to the kidnapper at the time long-distance calls passed through a series of relay stations telephone personnel traced the call as far as sarasota florida but a system failure there prevented further tracing [Music] agents had to tell the yeagers it didn't work all i could think of was that he had said susie was asleep in his cabin and we lost the chance to find her then a month later a rancher in montana showed investigators where somebody tapped into his telephone line his phone bill showed a call to the yeagers in michigan that he hadn't made under the lines he had noticed fresh tire tracks that did not match his truck tires when asked for names of people who knew the ranch well the ranchers said david masterson used to work for him the investigators recalled masterson had been a communication specialist in the marines and would know how to tap the lines [Music] agents looked into a new technology voice print analysis a person's voice is made unique by their body's physical makeup and scientists had begun charting voice patterns using a sound spectrograph the voice print experts compared the anniversary call recording to a recording of an interview with masterson they reported a match [Music] investigators confronted masterson with the voice print analysis they explained the results indicated he had very likely made the anniversary call to the yeagers masterson told special agent pete dunbar he was unimpressed and he said oh shoot you know i've got relatives whose voices sound just exactly like mine so we asked who they were to begin with investigators put together a voice lineup consisting of masterson and the relatives he named [Music] from the ranch where the anniversary call was made they telephoned the yeagers yes it's marietta hi pete yeah we're ready each speaker identified himself by a number and read an excerpt of the anniversary call i'm number one is this susie's mom we went to lakeside park in the southern california zoo i'm number two park in the southern california zoo as soon as i heard the second one i knew that that was the voice that i had heard you know that was indelibly etched in my memory i would not forget that voice it was more circumstantial evidence but still nothing concrete yes hello mrs yeager investigators wanted a confession we came up with the notion that the only thing that would bring him off target and motivate him to do something that might betray himself ultimately was to put him into a direct confrontation with marietta yeager we requested marietta yeager fly all the way back out into the bozeman area an area which had nothing but dark memories marietta had always believed that she and susie's kidnapper would meet i felt this must be the opportunity so i was very grateful for the opportunity to come out and say to him face to face and not just to a voice on the phone that i had forgiven him [Music] she's an extremely strong person very different from any victim's mother that i know and her forgiveness oh frankly i think is very much different very much different i know she feels strong about it and i'm not sure i agree with her on the morning of september 12 1974 marietta yeager and david masterson met at his attorney's office something in the depth of me knew that this was this was the man and when i looked into his face i could tell by his eyes that he was a mentally ill man unwavering marietta told him she knew he had taken susie masterson insisted he was innocent [Music] they spoke for more than an hour marietta trying to get him to admit what he had done but he never cracked [Music] finally the attorney said well you know i think this is enough we've given it a fair shot and so we stood up and he shook hands with me but it took all the discipline i had to let go i mean i just he was the one i knew he was the one and i didn't want him out of my sight we'll be right back to keep the pressure on masterson gallatin county deputies put him under 24-hour surveillance they made no effort to hide the fact that they were watching the surveillance seemed to amuse him but on september 24th the suspect slipped away according to deputy don houghton the team of officers watched him go into his house but he didn't come out the following morning it got to the point that we actually went and knocked on the door somebody did and nobody home we started looking everywhere we knew uh david frequented went to his job sites and there was no david while authorities were searching for masterson a man called the yeagers it was exactly one year after the kidnapper had called the first time when marietta was out the caller identified himself as mr travis stop playing games but as soon as he got on the phone i knew it was his voice what he was trying to convince me and the fbi that the real kidnapper was somebody in salt lake city utah and not this person david who's being considered as a prime suspect here in montana he said he could prove that susie was alive by putting her on the telephone well then listen to this he's a nice man mommy we are having fun together i knew it wasn't susie's voice susie never called me mommy she always called me mama then my fear was that he bribed a child to speak those words and that in his sick mind this child would become susie and that he would harm this child too when marietta kept calling him david he began to unravel he blurted out information marietta discussed with masterson in montana yeah things only david would know and so he totally incriminated himself and when he realized what he did he said you'll never see your little girl alive again and he slammed down the phone marietta called the fbi and authorities traced the call to a salt lake city motel room more than 400 miles from masterson's home but by the time they arrived he was gone [Music] after david masterson alluded surveillance investigators believed he called marietta yeager [Music] marietta heard a young girl's voice but she knew it wasn't susie [Music] gallatin county prosecutor thomas olsen who had been hoping for more evidence before an arrest feared masterson was more dangerous than ever i was in a state of panic i immediately assumed he had taken another child and we knew had to act we couldn't wait any longer when masterson came back into town they decided to make the arrest and hope to find more evidence against him later he offered no resistance he had already hired one of the area's top attorneys [Music] among his personal effects they discovered stationery from the salt lake city motel where the latest call originated with the name travis written on it authorities executed a search warrant created with the help of fbi profilers according to deputy don houghton newspapers they told us that a suspect in this kind of a crime or these kind of crimes would probably keep souvenirs or trophies with his victims to include everything from jewelry clothing to body parts our search warrant listed all those items inside the freezer deputies made a grisly discovery packages wrapped in butcher's paper marked with the initials of the murdered woman sandra marie smalligan then they found a human hand with two severed fingers clutched in its palm they discussed the evidence with masterson's attorney who announced his client had a shocking confession the attorney says david's going to admit to four murders and that hit me like a sledgehammer [Music] masterson told them about the four killings they began in 1967. he was a high school senior when he committed the first one a fellow student had picked a fight with him one day he spotted the student's brother fishing with a friend [Music] he killed the student's brother for revenge [Music] masterson said his second murder was when he killed the boy scout at the headwaters campground in 1968. he did it to embarrass the local troop that had terminated his participation with the scouts his third victim was susie yeager he waited until he thought everyone was asleep he said he took susie to the horseshoe hills ranch where they had found sandra smalligan's bones he strangled her dismembered her body and scattered her remains anything special stand out everyone wanted to know why masterson had no answer he's just upset he also confessed to killing sandra smalligan after she refused to see him again he broke into her shut listen apartment to me keep your mouth shut don't move you'll be all right his plan was to abduct her but when he covered her mouth with duct tape he inadvertently covered her nose too as he packed her clothes sandra smalligan suffocated sandra at the same ranch he dismembered her body then incinerated the remains over a fire of cedar shingles and spread her bones among susie's it was late i mean i think it was like 3 a.m and my lasting vision of david was that as he confessed to four murders he seemed to shrink smaller and smaller in in stature and size and so at the end he was a shell of a person [Music] deputies returned him to jail but he never made it to trial although prosecutors told them they would not seek the death penalty david masterson hanged himself with a towel hours after he confessed [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Keywords: FBI, FBI Files, FBI Documentary, Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True crime daily, Unsolved, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Full Episode, unsolved true crime, fbi files full episodes, we got him, mystery, solved, investigation, police, criminal, prison, jail, dark woods, abduction, young girl abducted

Id: rQkBBfXSsYM

Length: 49min 23sec (2963 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021