The Jaeger family set out for a month-long summer
road trip on June 16th of 1973. Their first stop was Chicago, then they stopped at a few places
in Colorado and Wyoming. The bulk of the trip though was going to see various scenic spots in
Montana because they were scouting out a place they might want to move to. The father of the
family, Bill, had been to Montana before and was quite fond of the state. The trip was a breath
of fresh air for Bill and his wife Marietta, as they hadn’t taken such an extensive road trip
together since they started their family. They had five children, all ranging from age 16 to their
youngest, Susie who was just seven years old, and they’d finally decided she was old enough
to go on a big summer road trip. They were just over a week into their trip when they arrived at
the Missouri State Headwaters Park in Montana. The park marks the spot where the Missouri
River starts, and the Jaegers were excited to explore the expansive wilderness around
the river. They spent a few days camping and taking in the sights, and Marietta's parents
drove up from Arizona to spend time with them. On Sunday the 24th the children went to bed
bundled up because of the chill in the air. Susie’s eldest brother and grandparents slept
in the camper van, while Marietta and William had a shell in the back of their grandparent's
truck. This left the four youngest children all together in another tent where they were free to
chat late into the night. Susie and her sister Heidi woke up at around 2 am and talked for a
bit before going back to bed. Evidently restless, Heidi also woke up around 4:30 am and noticed
something disturbing. She saw a light coming through the edge of the tent where Susie had
been sleeping. On the edge of wakefulness, Heidi thought that the tent was falling down
and she was looking out the window that had fallen to the ground. But when she moved in for a
closer look, she found Susie’s sleeping bag empty, and that the morning light was coming in through
a hole in the tent. Susie was gone. While Heidi, and their brothers Frank, and Joey all slept,
someone had carved into the tent with a knife, and taken Susie so silently
that none of them had woken up. The hope that Susie had somehow gotten ahold
of something to cut the tent open and left voluntarily was unlikely. She had a stuffed
dog and a teddy bear that she would never go anywhere without, and both animals had
been discarded just outside the tent. She’d apparently taken them with her in whatever silent
struggle happened before they were tossed aside. Within minutes the whole family was up and
looking. Neighboring campers quickly joined in, and Bill took off in the truck to drive
to the nearby city of Three Forks where he could find a phone to call the police.
Deputy Don Houghton was first on the scene, and he quickly called for backup
to get more boots on the ground. A 7-year-old girl was missing
and the hunt was on to find her. This is Monsters Because Susie was a child, and the slash
in the tent made kidnapping likely, the FBI was called in that morning. They
sent over special Agent Byron Dunbar, who went by Pete. Dunbar had considerable
experience working a variety of cases all over the country but had asked to be stationed back in
Montana a few years before to help care for his parents. His family had actually owned the land
that was donated in the ’60s to become Missouri Headwaters State Park. He brought with him both
worldly experience in high-profile crimes and kidnappings, as well as local knowledge
of the area, the people, and the land. The campers nearby who’d helped with the
search were brought in for questioning, as they were close by when Susie was taken.
Then as the search intensified locals were allowed back in to help as volunteers.
During those first few days of the search, police brought in dogs and small aircraft.
They searched by boat along the Missouri River and rode on horseback through the woods.
Teams with citizen volunteers trekked on the hiking trails while authorities trudged
through more untamed parts of the woods. The search went through abandoned
cabins and homesteads, and farmers anywhere nearby were encouraged to scour
their land. Within the first few days, the most notable finding was the remains of
a campfire that sat on a cliff overlooking the campground where the Jaeger family had
stayed. There had been a drought in the area for about three weeks so authorities couldn’t
tell how recently the fire had been made, but they could see the Jaeger family
campsite from the cliff with binoculars. By then, both authorities and the media were
considering the idea that whoever had taken Susie might have prior experience in violent crime.
The first case that the media immediately wanted to connect to Susie was a strange incident that
occurred in 1968, five years prior, in the very same park. A troop of boy scouts had been camping
in the park, strangely enough in the exact same spot the Jaegers had set up their campsite. The
trip had been uneventful until the morning of May 5th when a scout named Ken Summers woke up to
find his tentmate, 12-year-old Michael Rainey covered in blood next to him. The tent had been
slit open and someone had stabbed Micheal near the armpit. Micheal was unresponsive but alive and
he was rushed to the hospital. Though the stabbing had punctured his lung it was not serious enough
to have been life-threatening, but Micheal died anyway two days later. An autopsy would eventually
reveal that the real cause of death was trauma to the head. However, the lack of any visible
bruises or abrasions on Micheal pointed to the fatal blow having been struck while Micheal was
being smothered with some kind of pad or pillow. The killer had been so silent that Ken did
not wake up at all while the boy next to him was being murdered. Though one scoutmaster later
said he heard someone yelling for help that night, when the scoutmaster went to investigate he
saw nothing. The sounds appeared to be coming from a different tent, and regardless, Ken
Summers likely would have heard if Micheal Rainey had been screaming next to him.
Police questioned all of the boy scouts who were camping that night, and many
nearby campers, but the case went cold. That first week the Jaegers stayed in their
camp, hoping for news and wanting to be nearby if anything was found, but they all slept
together in the camper now. Locals helping with the search offered support, they brought
them food and notes with good wishes. Toys were sent in for the Jaeger children and William and
Marietta brought them on various activities to help distract them while they waited. Heidi went
horseback riding, a local vet took the kids to watch sheep getting herded, and the younger
boys went to a rodeo. This provided a small glimpse of fun to distract the children from the
constant wait for news on Susie’s disappearance. While law enforcement combed the
woods and searched waterways, the FBI took on the brunt of interviewing and
canvassing. They brought in a polygraph expert right away and the FBI sent half a dozen agents to
accompany Dunbar. The agents worked 16-hour days, canvassing the neighborhood and helping
with the search. Local law enforcement worked overtime too. Houghton, who’d been first
on the scene, didn't sleep those first few days, desperate to find something. The Detroit News
in the Jaeger’s home state posted a $3,000 reward for information, which when adjusted
for inflation would total over $20,000 today. Tips and phone calls were pouring in and most of
them were dead ends. The notable exception being a strange phone call someone made to the Jaeger’s on
June 28th. The family kept the details of the call secret for a week until they needed the media’s
help. Someone had called to ask for a ransom, and in describing Susie he’d mentioned a
unique birth defect she had that Marietta had forgotten to mention to authorities when they
circulated her description. The family was trying to cooperate with the caller’s demands, but they
needed the media to advertise that they needed the caller to contact them again. Marietta
told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that they were hoping that Susie was alive, but they were
considering the possibility that she wasn’t. After a month the Jaegers decided
they should pack up and head home. The Billings Gazette spoke with
William about if his daughter’s disappearance had changed his idea that
he might like to live in Montana someday, and he said it had not. If anything the locals
banding together to bring them food, and take their kids around the local ranches had endeared
the state to him even more despite the tragedy. Leads kept pouring in but went nowhere
and the FBI did not contact the Jaegers about most of the tips that came in as they
didn’t want to get their hopes up. Most of the tips were psychics describing their dreams, or
scammers trying to cash in on the reward money. Back in Michigan, the family kept
Susie's belongings where she’d left them, but all things considered, they reported
that the other children were coping very well as summer ended. They still fielded
phone calls, but less often than they had, and nearly all of them lead nowhere. Though one
call on September 24th that was taken by Susie’s brother Danny stood out. The caller told Danny
the same detail he’d mentioned before about Susie, and taunted him a bit, saying maybe
they would get Susie back after all, before hanging up. Law enforcement had gotten a
call in July that was likely from the same man, so it appeared that they might be hearing from him
again if he’d already contacted them a few times. By the year's end, the family had nothing
new to report. Susie’s name would show up in the papers on occasion. Two girls were
kidnapped in another part of the state, and a little girl from Missoula was murdered, and
each time authorities made a statement that the crime was not necessarily related. This didn’t
stop the public from staying on high alert, and the citizens of the cities near Missouri
Headwaters state park were all on edge. Though people were eager to connect any murder
or kidnapping in Montana to what was happening, it was February before there was
another missing person’s case nearby. On February 9th a woman named Sandy
Dykman Smallegan vanished from the nearby city of Manhattan. Manhattan was the second
closest city to the park after Three Forks. The night Sandy vanished she’d been walking home
from the American Legion Bar near her apartment. She’d run into her estranged husband
Jack Smallegan at the bar that night, but the two were friendly. She
also possibly had plans to meet up with her boyfriend Bob Harrison, so
both men quickly fell under suspicion. Sandy’s parents called the police, but they
weren’t too worried the first day. They thought Sandy was just off hanging out with her boyfriend
or perhaps another friend. But when the second day rolled around authorities started to worry about
foul play, and the media started printing Sandy’s picture. Sandy’s apartment was a small space
above the local implement store and held no clues to suggest foul play. They found no blood and no
sign of a struggle, but Sandy’s car was missing. As the week wore on, police diverted some
of their resources that were still focused on Susie to finding Sandy. Police brought
in riders on horseback, off-road vehicles, and a formidable search party of around
100 searchers made up of law enforcement, local hunters, and other volunteers,
many of whom no doubt had just trekked the same wilderness to look
for Susie Jaeger that summer. Don Houghton, who’d been first on
the scene at Susie’s abduction, and had already spent countless hours
looking for her, was once again sent off into the wilderness on February 17th.
He was paired up with Marshall Ron Skinner to participate in a search of old farmsteads.
Skinner was familiar with the area and knew where to find many of the area’s old
wells, barns, and abandoned houses. The search of the old Lockhart family homestead
started out like the others. The men went through the decaying house, disused since the family
had all either passed away or moved on. The yard held a burn barrel that looked like
it had been used to burn trash. There were small signs of recent human activity. The
barrel looked to have been used recently, and some of the chairs in the house lacked
the distinctive patina of dust that the rest of the household had, but it wasn’t uncommon for
travelers to venture into these old homesteads. When the men got to the barn they found the main
entrance unlocked and took a peak around. They didn’t see anything concerning, but there was
part of the barn that had been sectioned off for storage. The outside entrance to get in had
been nailed shut, but the men were able to take a look into the room through an access flap, and it
looked to just be full of old boxes and barrels. The men were getting ready to leave when
they spotted something in the grass on the way back to the car. It was a pair of women's
underwear that looked to have been very recently discarded. The men both agreed they needed
to take a closer look at the barn. Houghton kicked down the access panel and crawled
inside. There he found a large tarp that had been covered in hay hidden amongst the
boxes. When he pulled the tarp up he found a white Ford Cortina. The plates were gone,
but the make and model matched Sandy’s car. There was no signal to radio back so
Houghton drove up the nearest hill, and Skinner was left to wait and stand vigil
at what was quickly starting to look like a murder scene. Backup arrived over an hour later
at the remote farm. By then darkness was falling, but they had time to confirm that
there was not a body in the vehicle. The next day officers processed the scene and
found Sandy’s purse and numerous other belongings in the car. Searchers combed the nearby woods,
hoping to find Sandy herself if by some miracle she was alive, or at the very least to recover
her body. Sandy’s family was able to identify the underwear as being hers and police quickly found
her license plates hidden nearby in the shed. But that wasn’t all they found, there was a knotted-up
rope, a bloody leather whip, and a handsaw. A suitcase in Sandy’s car held the clothes she’d
been wearing on the night of her disappearance. A closer inspection of the burn barrel
revealed something rather disturbing. Half buried in the dirt were blobs of something
that appeared charred and bloody that would later be identified as partially melted fat and
intestines. There were small shards of burnt bone scattered in close concentration to the
fire ring, and strewn about the property. The bones were so smashed up that police couldn’t
say for sure if they were human or animal, or even how many different skeletons the bones
might have come from. By the 26th authorities were able to determine that the bones belonged
to two skeletons, but were only able to identify one as human. There were over 1,200 charred
and smashed fragments collected for analysis. The FBI was assisting fully in the
investigation, hoping to help if there was any possibility Sandy was alive
and they were dealing with a kidnapping, and also ready to help process the scene
as the bones hinted at multiple victims. The story was all over the news. Everyone in
nearby Manhattan was ready to help. Sandy had been a sweet girl and was well-liked, and though
the bones were still being processed many were assuming it was her. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle
interviewed one anonymous man who had put up a noose in the window of his shop. He said it
was a sign that the people wanted justice and that “if we catch the guilty party, we’ll save
the county the expense of getting rid of him.” Numerous citizens showed up to the crime scene
to try and offer their help with the search, as police were still recovering bone
fragments. One man, David Meirhofer, brought officers a red woman’s blouse that
he said he’d found in the woods nearby. The police thanked him, and quickly shooed him away
as David was known for hanging around the local police and trying to help out with cases. Police
would normally humor David and let him speculate when he wanted to chat with them at the bar,
but they didn’t have time for him that day. Unbeknownst to him, David Meirhofer was
getting the attention of the police in more ways than one. That same week David’s
father, Clifford Meirhofer made a trip up to special agent Pete Dunbar’s office. He told
Dunbar that he did not have any evidence, but that he was worried that his son might have
had something to do with Sandy’s disappearance. David and Sandy had briefly dated and David
lived in the same apartment building as her, which was actually owned by Clifford. At
the time David’s father asked to remain anonymous and said he only had a hunch, and
he wanted Dunbar to prove his hunch wrong. On March 3rd the media announced that
police had reconstructed a jawbone from the bone fragments and that some of the
remains did belong to Sandy. The next day The town held a funeral for Sandy, and
over 500 people showed up. One strange detail that was not disclosed to the
public until later was that the police found bone fragments from almost every part of
Sandy’s skeleton except her hands and pelvis. While analysis of the other bones was still
ongoing a miscommunication with the media said that the lab at the Smithsonian that had
tested the bones had ruled out that they belonged to Susie Jaeger, and speculation slowed
on the connections to other cases in the media. Really though, behind closed doors, speculation
was ramping up. The findings had actually shown that the other skeleton was human and belonged
to a girl around Susie’s age who had been killed sometime within the past year. There were
also numerous animal bones found at the ranch. Throughout the course of the investigation,
police would look at over 1500 people in connection with the death of Sandy and
the disappearance of Susie. Shortly after Sandy’s bones were identified though, they had
seven men they were focusing on. Bob Harrison, Sandy’s boyfriend, was a prime
suspect. He failed his polygraph, refused to submit to a truth serum test
and was belligerent with law enforcement. Nearby sex offenders were all questioned and
cleared except for two. One was a pedophile who was out on parole and had a house full
of hundreds of naked dolls. The other was a man who’d committed numerous rapes and tried to
kill his family but had been stopped before he could burn his house down with them in it. He was
also out on parole. These two men were scheduled to sit down for a polygraph test. Though they’d
conducted polygraph tests already, Dunbar wanted to bring in a more experienced polygrapher from
the FBI now that the suspect pool was narrowing. Dunbar also decided to ask David Meirhofer to
take the polygraph. David had been questioned in Susie’s kidnapping, and needed to be lumped
in as a suspect in Sandy’s murder because he’d dated her. More than anything though, Dunbar
just wanted to eliminate David, because he didn’t think there was any way David was guilty.
Dunbar had dated David’s mother, Eleanor in high school and knew him tangentially, and he respected
David for his military service. On top of that, David kept going out of his way to speak with
law enforcement and ask how the case was going, and provide them with leads. Of course, this
would be considered suspicious behavior today, as some killers will try to inject
themselves into an investigation, but in the 70s, investigators weren’t
really aware of that fact yet. Dunbar went for an informal questioning first.
David gladly brought Dunbar and a few agents into his workshop and let them look around. David
did handyman work and owned a few properties, and sometimes worked as a ranch hand. He enjoyed
being self-employed and was well-liked around town for the most part, though a few of his
fellow citizens had thrown him under the bus as being a suspect because they found him to
be a bit odd for reasons they couldn't explain. Dunbar found David easy to talk to, but when he
brought up Susie Jaeger David bristled. He was offended that law enforcement kept bringing her
kidnapping up to him instead of finding the man who did it. David was a bit hesitant when Dunbar
brought up the polygraph, but agreed when Dunbar insisted it was a concrete way to clear his name
and get law enforcement to stop bothering him. Both the sex offenders and David passed
the polygraph. The first two were nervous, and one was hiding something, but not
concerning Sandy or Susie. David made only one confession, and that was that
he was wearing socks he’d stolen during his time in the Marines. After that,
Dunbar found himself at a dead end. The next month, Dunbar was down
at the FBI base in Quantico, Virginia. He’d visited to attend a seminar
about criminal psychology, led by agents Patrick Mullany and Howard Teten. Mullany
and Teten lead the Behavioral Science Unit, a division formed just two years prior that
was trying to explore new ways to combat violent crime. They were especially interested
in the nascent science of criminal profiling. Dunbar felt that Mullany and Teten could
provide him some new insight into the case that had stumped him, and asked them to
weigh in informally. When Dunbar went back to Montana he sent them copies of everything,
and they became invested. The fact that the killer targeted both adults and children and put
careful consideration into concealing his crimes interested them. They hoped that the case might
give them some new information about profiling, as the victims did not fit a usual
pattern, and they also thought that the case could be a good testing ground for
some of their theories. Dunbar was stumped, and at the very least they could
give him more eyes on the case. While Dunbar followed up on psychics and
sightings that went nowhere, Mullany and Teten were putting together the basic patterns
they knew from similar offenders. The killer would be a white male in his late twenties or
early thirties, simply because most killers of this type were. The term serial killer had
not yet been coined, but a younger agent who assisted Mullany and Teten on the case, Robert
Ressler would coin the term that same year. Beyond the basics, Mullany and Teten surmised
that the killer would have sparingly been able to hold down a long-term relationship with women
and that the level of planning and stealth he exhibited pointed to intelligence and military
experience. They thought he would be someone well-known in the area, but someone who worked a
solitary job. He would be someone that tried and failed to completely hide his oddities, and those
around him might find him to be a bit strange. As Mullany and Teten were able to ask Dunbar more
questions they began to put together more obscure traits they believed this unknown subject or
unsub possessed. Based largely on Ed Kemper, they assumed other multiple murderers likely had
issues stemming from a bad relationship with a parent. They thought this killer would likely
enjoy keeping bits of his victims as trophies, and they predicted that when they found him,
they would find the bits of the victims that hadn’t turned up. They predicted he would be
someone that wanted to insert himself into the investigation, and would likely be friendly
with local police. They also predicted that he was not yet done with the Jaegers, he
would call or write again to taunt them, perhaps on the anniversary of when he stole Susie. Dunbar encouraged a local
reporter, Hugh Van Swearingen, to call the Jaeger family to get
an article ready to print on the anniversary of Susie’s abduction. He wanted
to play into Mullany and Teten’s hunch and figured that having an article in the paper
might encourage the killer to call that day. The anniversary article covered all the
bases and ran a few days ahead of time to give papers time to print the
story the day of. In the interview, Marietta spoke extensively about the first
ransom call and how she wished the kidnapper would call again. She said she still believed
Susie was alive and would continue to do so until something proved otherwise. When asked
about her thoughts about the man who stole her daughter Marietta said “I guess I feel sorry
for him. Anyone who can do a thing like that can’t be happy. I would like to talk to him, to
find out why. I guess I’ll never get the chance.” The topic of the FBI came up, and when Van
Swearingen asked Marietta if her phone was tapped, she said that she didn’t think it was because a
call coming from Montana to Chicago would take hours to trace anyway. As Marietta was saying
she didn’t think the FBI was listening in, they were in fact listening in as
they had tapped Van Swearingen’s phone. Despite encouraging him to
run the article in the first place, they elected to listen in secretly
rather than attempt to work together. The call came just as Mullany and Teten had
predicted in the early morning hours of June 25th, 1974, one year after Susie vanished. The FBI
had gotten the Jaegers phone ready to record, and were on standby should anything
come up. When Marietta picked up the phone the caller asked if he
was speaking to Susie’s mother, to which Marietta responded yes. The caller then
said, “We’ll I’m the guy who took her from you, exactly a year ago to the minute.” Marietta asked
about Susie’s whereabouts and if she was alive, to which the caller said yes. To that Marietta
expressed skepticism that Susie was alive, asking how someone like him could take care of a
little girl, and the caller responded by saying he was taking better care of her than Marietta could.
He said he was traveling the country with her, “We have covered the west pretty well, just
sightseeing. Me, I’ve gotten used to her.” At that point, the call cut out, and
Marietta thought the caller had hung up, but he promptly called back, saying they’d been
disconnected. The FBI was in fact taping the call and attempting a trace, so if Marietta
could keep him on the phone for long enough, there was a slim chance they could
find out where the call had come from. The caller confirmed the dates and times of his
other calls. He also once again confirmed the detail about Susie that had not been shared
with the media. She had a deformity with her fingernails where some of them were ‘hooked’,
which is where the nail sticks up from the finger, almost resembling a dog claw. Marietta
was unfazed by all of this information, she wanted to hear something new.
She said “Tell me something else about her. If you have been with
her and traveling around with her, if she is really alive and with you, then
you must know a lot of things about her.” The caller dodged the question by attempting to
taunt Marietta, saying he was working on altering Susie’s memories to get her to forget about her
family. Marietta would not humor him on his claim, telling him she had a good home and a good
family and she would not forget them. She then tried to get some useful information
out of him, prying about how he’d managed to steal Susie without alerting anyone else.
He said he’d heard Susie and Heidi talking in the middle of the night, then he waited
outside the tent until they fell asleep. The caller redirected the conversation back to
his strange tale about reprogramming Susie’s memory and said he took her because he
wanted a daughter of his own. He said they’d been traveling the country together
and he took her to Disneyland. When Marietta directed the conversation back to the night of the
abduction the caller became suspicious and asked if Marietta was recording the conversation,
to which she replied that she wasn’t. She later remarked that she felt guilty lying, even
though this man had likely stolen her daughter. Despite the caller's paranoia, he stayed on
the phone with Marietta for over an hour. The two mostly argued about whether or not Susie
was really alive. He said he’d only called to give her peace of mind that Susie was living a
good life. Marietta told the caller that she was praying for him, and wanted to believe him but she
needed proof. She asked the caller what she could do to help him and he started crying. He said,
“I wish this burden could be lifted from me.” Soon after that the caller wanted
to end the call but said he couldn’t bring himself to hang up on Marietta, so he
asked Marietta to do it for him. Strangely, he asked, “Won’t you say goodbye to me
so that I can say goodbye to you?” But Marietta did not say goodbye to him,
she simply hung up on the crying man. On the other end of the line, on the other side
of the country, David Meirhofer heard the line go silent. David wasn’t calling from any kind
of traditional phone. He’d driven into a ranch he worked at, one he knew well enough to drive
through in the dark, and he’d tapped into their line using a mobile telephone handset. He’d talked
to Marrietta standing up in his pickup truck, just barely getting close
enough to the line to tap in, all while the Green family that owned
the land slept in their home nearby. David knew the Green family land well from working
on it, but also because it was right next to the old Lockhart ranch where he’d killed Sandy
and burned her body. Just as Mullany and Teten had guessed, David had military experience.
He’d been a switchboard operator in Vietnam, where he learned how to hack into a phone line.
But that night he wasn’t as careful as he should have been when he snuck out to make the call to
Marietta. He had left his tire tracks behind. When July rolled around the patriarch of the Green
family, Ralph noticed some bizarre charges to his phone bill. When Ralph contacted the phone
company about the charges, the girl processing his complaint immediately recognized the name of
the recipient: William Jaeger in Farmington Hills. When Dunbar questioned Ralph, he was adamant
that he was not involved. He even remembered finding strange tire tracks on his land the day
in question. Ralph’s car had a spare with the same track pattern so it stood out to him, and he
remembered the model of tire that had likely made the tracks. Conveniently, he even knew someone
who had a car with those tires, David Meirhofer. Although it’s easy to judge with hindsight
and 50 years of advancement in psychology and forensic science, it’s important to
remember that at the time profiling was in its infancy and the flaws with polygraphs
were not nearly as well understood as they are today. Every clue seemed to point to David, but
Dunbar was determined not to let some untested new theories put an innocent man in jail. He’d
been in law enforcement for decades and he knew how quickly a town could turn on someone.
The town of Manhattan was out for blood, and desperate to find someone to blame. This
new clue also relied solely on one witness claiming they’d recognized tire tracks that
were now washed away, a witness who very well might have had something to hide since
the ransom call came from his property. Before the discovery was made that the
call came from the Green’s property, the FBI had been attempting to gather
any and all usable data the call could provide. Mullany and Teten tried to
use the call to build their profile further. They were certain the unsub was
a sadist and enjoyed tormenting Marietta, but they also discovered that he seemed somewhat
afraid of her. Strong women likely intimidated him, and she’d managed to catch him off guard
numerous times throughout the call. They felt further validated in many of the basic assumptions
they’d made, but they felt that getting the most out of the call was above even their skills.
They ended up bringing in Dr. Murray Miron, a professor who specialized in psycholinguistics,
and who’d worked with law enforcement before. Miron was able to guess an astounding number
of things right. He guessed the caller was from a rural area but had at least a high school
education. He guessed the caller was well off, perhaps even owning several properties. He was
certain the caller would crumble when faced with a strong woman and enjoyed preying on those
weaker and younger than him. Miron said that if the FBI had a good subject in mind, they
should arrange for Marietta to confront him, she alone might be able to get the truth
out of him. But he also cautioned that this was a violent, moody, unstable saidst
they were dealing with. He craved control, and if he was ever caught, he
would almost certainly lash out, either by attacking others or perhaps by enacting
one final act of control and killing himself. While Mullany and Teten felt almost certain
that David Meirhofer was their killer, Dunbar needed more evidence. The police presence
around David tightened and he was occasionally followed. David noticed that right away and
was tolerant and even friendly to the cops, playing up the act that he wanted to do
all he could to find the real killer. At one point he even walked up to the officer
who was tailing him and asked if they could carpool to save gas. He got a thrill out
of being so close to the investigation. With no other leads coming in, Dunbar eventually
had to tell David formally that he was a prime suspect and that he should hire a lawyer.
David chose Doug Dasinger to represent him, a lawyer local to nearby Bozeman. Though
Dasinger would defend David no matter what, he did genuinely believe he was innocent. He thought David was being singled out
because there were no other suspects. Although Dunbar was only finding more evidence to
point to David, he still didn’t think he did it. David even opened up to him, saying the town
had turned against him when he was a kid. He said he’d been in a fight when he was younger
where a knife had fallen out of his pocket, and even though he was the one who got stabbed
with it, the town decided he was a monster for having the knife in the first place. He’d even
had to attend counseling about the whole thing. David went so far as to give Dunbar written
permission to speak to the psychiatrist he’d spoken to in his youth. Though David had only
attended a few sessions, the psychiatrist had a lot to say. He told Dunbar a slightly different
version of events about the fight that had turned the town against David. Apparently, David had
befriended a 14-year-old middle school boy when he was seventeen, and the two had become so
close that the child's parents were worried the boys were romantically involved. When another boy
became close to the boy David was friends with, David decided to teach him a lesson. When
recounting the story David insisted to the psychiatrist that he was not gay, and was not
jealous of this other boy, he simply thought he was a bad influence on his friend. David ended up
driving the boy out to the middle of the woods, where they both got out of the car and proceeded
to fight. David said the knife came out of his pocket by accident but once it was out the boys
fought over it and David ended up getting stabbed. At that point, the fight diffused and the boys
drove back to town to take David to the hospital. This incident was disturbing enough to the
psychiatrist that when Michael Rainey was stabbed in 1968, he told authorities that they should
look into David. David was questioned and cleared, and after seeing him grow up into a well-adjusted
man the doctor changed his mind. He told Dunbar he no longer believed David was capable of murder
and did not stand by his earlier accusation. As far as the psychiatrist was concerned
David had a relatively normal home life, though when his parents divorced it hit
David hard. He did think David might have had homosexual tendencies, but wouldn’t
admit it, and that David very clearly had issues with women. Despite all of these issues,
the doctor told Dunbar emphatically that he did not believe David was capable of murder,
and he thought Dunbar had the wrong man. Desperate for some kind of way to
move the investigation forward, Dunbar asked David to submit to a truth
serum test using sodium amytal. The test took place on August 19th and just like with
the polygraph David was hesitant but eventually agreed to help clear his name. Just like with
the polygraph he passed with flying colors. Though he would never admit guilt, that night a
strange attack happened at a nearby girl scout camp that was almost certainly David’s work.
The truth serum test had been administered at a hospital over an hour away from Manhattan,
so David had had to travel out of town for it. That night, at a girl scout camp just
twenty-seven miles from the hospital two girls were attacked. They were walking around
camp together after dark when a man in a mask emerged from the woods. He threw one girl
down and wrapped a rope around her neck, but another girl nearby heard the girls
screaming and shined a flashlight over. The flashlight spooked the man and he
retreated into the woods. Apparently, the camp counselors thought the girls might
have made the whole thing up, but called the police anyway to report the incident, on the
off chance the girls were telling the truth. The dismissive nature of the person who’d
called in the incident coupled with the fact that it was so far from Manhattan
meant it did not get to Dunbar right away, and when the tip did arrive it was mixed in with
all of the other endless calls from psychics and local townspeople vaguely speculating
that they had a bad feeling about David. That same night Dunbar had called Mullany
and Teten. They had the old argument, that profiling was a new science, and that
Teten and Mullany had never actually spoken to David or been to the location where
the crimes had taken place. They were speculating at their desks on the other side
of the country, and they desperately needed to be proven right because their work was
still being viewed as pseudoscience. Dunbar even hung up on them that night after the
conversation was just going in circles. The next day David consented to let the police
search his home and workshop. David likely hid the most damning evidence against him but
neglected a few things. In his record book, he had a receipt from a truckstop in
Cheyenne Wyoming from September 24th, 1973, the day one of the calls was made to the
Jaeger family. David had also written instructions in his calendar on how to get to the girl scout
camp where the strange attack happened the same day he was out of town. However, Dunbar hadn’t
yet heard the report of what happened there so he didn’t immediately connect the dots. They also
found bloodstained sheets and numerous items that looked to have been taken from a woman or child;
a little girl's blouse, a tube of lipstick, and a silver heart necklace. There was also an
extensive collection of newspaper clippings, one of which was just a clipping of a picture of a
little girl from Butte named Karen Smith. Nothing unfortunate had befallen her yet, but David had
saved her picture from the paper for some reason. Perhaps most strange of all were two
tickets to Disneyland for one adult and one child. Though Susie’s parents
and much of the law enforcement involved were convinced Susie was dead,
they had no concrete proof yet, and Dunbar was still hoping there was a
small chance they could find her alive. David had excuses for everything, saying
many of the suspicious items were already in his workshop when he bought it, and that
the Disneyland tickets were a gift he’d never ended up using. Although they didn’t find
anything that would justify an arrest, the disturbing items on David’s property
were enough to finally turn Dunbar against him. He started to believe that
David might actually be guilty. Police launched another search of the Lockhart
property, hoping to find something concrete to link the older skeleton to Susie Jaeger, and
determine once and for all if the ranch was where she’d met her end. They’d managed to piece
together most of Sandy’s skull by then but hadn’t found any identifying bones for the child's
skeleton. Police dug up much of the property, hoping to find something buried, and they found an
intact sacrum bone, a connective bone between the pelvis and spine. This bone hadn’t been smashed,
instead, it was hacked away intact and buried. But any kind of jaw bone or skull fragment
from the second skeleton still evaded them. As summer drew to a close, Dunbar and the rest
of law enforcement came up with the idea to do a voice lineup of David and a few other suspects.
David didn’t fight them on that at all. On the surface he was just exasperated and ready
to prove his innocence. They brought in a few of David’s family members and a local man
that David thought had a similar voice to him, and one by one had each man read off
the first lines of the anniversary call. Marietta and Bill sat in separate rooms so they
wouldn’t influence each other's reactions. They both picked David as a clear match. Three
days later Dunbar informed David that he was the prime suspect in the murder,
and to discourage him from lashing out, he told him he was being watched by law
enforcement around the clock. David went about his business as usual and was friendly
with the police tailing him. He ran errands and chatted with locals, even attending a
church potluck, bringing a venison casserole. Back in Quantico, Mullany started making plans
to try out Miron’s idea of making David have a discussion with Marietta. Mullany, Dunbar,
and Teten talked the plan through with the higher-ups and were surprised to see they would
allow for the unusual plan to move forward. David and his lawyer, Doug Dasinger, readily
agreed as well. All parties agreed that the meeting would take place in Dasinger’s office,
and the FBI would be allowed to listen in. On September 18th, Marietta and Bill
flew out to Bozeman. Part of David’s condition was that the meeting
needed to be held in secret, so the Jaegers stayed with Dunbar in his
house in Bozeman. That night Dunbar spoke with Marietta about how the meeting would go
and described David in detail so she would have an idea of what to expect, and not
feel thrown off when she first met him. The next day Marietta went into
the meeting hoping she could get David to trust her. As a deeply religious woman,
she trusted in God to protect her. She had also been praying to God to help her forgive
David, and approach him with compassion. When David sat down, Marietta calmly asked him
where Susie was. She told him matter-of-factly that she knew he’d taken her, and she
just wanted answers. David responded just as cordially that he would never do such a
thing, and he wanted the case solved as much as anyone else. This went on for over an hour, and
neither Marietta nor David betrayed any serious emotion. Though the subject matter was grim,
the discussion was civil and calm. Eventually, Dasinger put a stop to the meeting, and
Marietta and David even shook hands at the end. David ended by saying, “I’m really
sorry Mrs. Jaeger. I wish I could help you, but I don’t know anything about your
little girl. I hope you find her.” Bill asked Marietta in private if she wanted
him to go after David, but she told him not to. Despite the conversation going nowhere, Dunbar
was convinced they were close to getting what they needed. He thought if there was a way they could
have David and Marietta talk somewhere they could be alone without lawyers and police listening
in, she might be able to get him to crack. That night Marietta called David’s home phone
and the two talked again. They went in circles for about 45 minutes before Marietta felt she
was getting nowhere, though David did get more emotional this time around. Marietta felt like she
was close to getting him to admit something if she could only see him face to face again. As they
were saying goodbye, Marietta asked David if he would talk to her one more time in person, and he
invited her to come to his workshop the next day. Though the two had agreed to meet without
anyone else present, local police sent plainclothes officers to hang around near
David’s workshop and even put a sniper on a nearby building. Manhattan being the small
town it was, the sniper was Ron Skinner, one of David’s old acquaintances from high school,
and the man who’d helped find Sandy’s car. Skinner later remarked that he wasn’t sure if he would
have been able to shoot David if he had to. When Marietta showed up at David’s
workshop, she stayed on the stoop. He didn’t try to get her to come inside, and
he didn't step outside. Marietta kept the conversation brief. This time she focused
on the evidence found in David’s house, asking if he’d stolen Susie to replace whatever
girl he had taken to Disneyland. This notably threw him off and he said nothing. She also took
the opportunity to say that she had forgiven him, and that God could forgive him too if he would
only just admit what he had done. She told him that she only wanted to help and that if he would
confess he could get the help he needed, to which he replied “I don’t need any help. Nothing’s
wrong with me. I’m not sick.” Eventually, Marietta felt she’d covered all the bases, and
once again shook his hand before departing. Days later on September 24th, the Jaegers were
back home in Michigan. David called them just after noon, using the alias Mr. Travis. When he
introduced himself and said his fake name Marietta responded with “Yes, Hello David.” To which David
stuttered out “David who? What are you talking about?” which derailed the conversation into
Marietta insisting they’d met, and David acting flustered that he had no idea what she was talking
about. He did not attempt to disguise his voice. Eventually, Marietta agreed to stop calling him
David as he was becoming irate and she wanted to see if she could get anything useful out of
him. He kept up the ruse that Susie was alive and talked vaguely of finally trying to make
a ransom exchange work. Marietta told him she didn’t believe he really had Susie, and said that
if he did she would be allowed to talk to her, to which David refused. The two discussed whether
it would be possible to arrange a ransom exchange without the FBI present, and Marietta insisted
that she didn’t believe David had Susie. By this point, Marietta didn’t think there was any
way David had kept Susie hidden all this time. Eventually, David stopped speaking and
Marietta heard a door open, and to her shock, Marietta heard a little girl start speaking
into the phone. She said simply “This guy, he’s nice. And I’m sitting on his lap.” Then
shuffling around was heard and the girl was gone. Mariette knew Susie’s voice, and this girl was not
her. But it had been a year, perhaps Susie’s voice had changed, and even if it wasn’t Susie, did
David have his next victim in the room with him as he taunted Marietta? The slim possibility that
Susie might have been kept alive all this time, even if Marietta didn’t really believe it,
had her rattled, but she didn’t show it. She immediately told David that she knew Susie’s
voice and this girl was not her. The conversation went in circles as Marietta tried to get David to
give back whatever girl he had in his possession. When she said, “Please David. Please let her
come home.” David became irate that she was calling him David again. Finally, he simply said,
“You’re never gonna get Susie back.” and hung up. The minute Marietta picked up the phone,
she’d signaled to her family to call the police and have authorities confront David back in
Montana. But despite round-the-clock surveillance, David had managed to sneak out of his house.
They couldn’t find him anywhere in Manhattan. He’d gone home around 4 pm the previous day
and hadn’t been seen since, so if he’d escaped soon after being spotted, he could be almost
anywhere in the western half of the United States. His car was in the shop, but that didn’t
mean much, he could have stolen or borrowed one. Police had all phone operators on the western
switchboards trying to track down the call that had gone to the Jaeger family home. In just two
hours they’d traced it to a motel in Utah called the Salt Place Travelodge. By the
time police arrived at the motel, David was gone, and no one at
the motel recalled seeing him, so it’s possible he hacked into the phone lines
or used the lobby phone when no one was looking. David re-appeared in town the next
day and when questioned by police, said he’d been so busy working that he
wasn’t answering the door. He also said he’d been going about town running errands,
they must have just been missing each other. On September 27th law enforcement made
the decision to arrest David. He was a potential danger to himself and others, and
though they would like to have more evidence, they needed to move forward with what
they had. Don Houghton and Ron Skinner were both present at the arrest.
When they booked David however, he had a rather incriminating piece of evidence
still on him. It was a piece of stationary from the Salt Place Travelodge with the alias Mr.
Travis scrawled on it. Apparently, he’d been worried that he would forget his fake name when
he called and felt the need to write it down. With David in jail, police were free to search
his property more aggressively. They found the telephone device that could be used to hook up
a phone at any point in a line. They found a mask David had made out of a woman’s blouse. But
the most damning evidence of all was in David’s freezer. He had the usual deer and elk meat
from his hunts, but he also had some packages that were marked with the initials SMDS. Another
package was unmarked but when detectives opened it they found a severed human hand that had been
wrapped around two additional severed fingers. Police brought Dasinger onto the scene,
and he was ready to criticize them for trashing his client's house. But
when they showed him the severed hand he simply replied with “Oh fuck”
and then went to throw up outside. Forensic analysis of the meat in David’s
fridge showed that the ones he’d labeled deer meat were actually human flesh mixed with
cow fat. He’d also made jerky out of the human meat. The fingerprints from the severed hand
came back as belonging to Sandy and police concluded that SMDS was likely Sandy’s initials
as her full name was Sandra Mae Dykman Smallegan. That discovery brought about the disturbing
revelation that David was likely not always bringing deer meat to all of the potlucks
he’d attended over the years. It’s impossible to prove conclusively, but the cow
fat he’d added to the human flesh was what hunters usually added to
game meat to make it taste better. When Dasinger made his way to David’s cell that
night he couldn’t help but lose his composure. He’d genuinely believed David was innocent until
he’d seen one of his victims chopped up. He yelled at him and told him he didn’t know if there
was anything he could do to save David from the death penalty. But David had his own ideas.
He asked his lawyer if he could be spared the death penalty if he was willing to confess to his
other murders. He said he would confess to two other murders that he hadn’t been charged with,
and that night told Dasinger the grisly details. The next morning Dasinger met with County Attorney
Tom Olsen. David was willing to plead guilty and confess to everything, as long as he would be
spared the death penalty and the recording of his confession would never be made public. He
did not want his family to hear what he had done. In the early morning hours of the 29th,
Dasinger, Dunbar, and Olsen were ready to sit down for the confession. They’d been
drafting the paperwork all day, and though it was nearly 3:00am they had not slept. During the
confession, David revealed some useful details, but also evaded questions and said things
that did not line up with the evidence found. David told the police they could find
Susie’s severed head thrown in the outhouse on the property, ending once and for
all the speculation that she might have been alive. David claimed he had killed Susie after
he undressed her but that he did not do anything sexual with her before he killed her, as she
was fighting back. David formally confessed to murdering Sandy and said that she’d suffocated
in the trunk of his car, so he’d killed her by accident. Neither of these stories accounts for
the bloody whip and knotted rope found at the ranch or the fact that a closet within the house
had been nailed shut and had human waste in it. David confessed to the murder of Michael
Rainey as well, but wouldn’t admit he’d hit him over the head. David did not say why
he killed Michael, but it’s possible it was for personal reasons. That year David had been
an assistant to the scoutmaster. That was when he was in high school and apparently, David
would befriend many of the very young campers, which unsettled some of the parents of
the boys. David was even kicked out of the program because of what was reported
vaguely as concerning behavior. Micheal Rainey was killed just two days after
David was removed from the program. David also confessed to the murder of
a 13-year-old boy named Bernard Poelman who died on March 19th of 1967. David had
been driving around when he spotted Bernard playing with a friend on a bridge in the woods.
David got out of his truck to watch the boys, and when Bernard climbed up on a pole on the
bridge David shot him in the chest. Bernard had fallen into the river and it took almost a
month to find his body when it washed into a wire net five miles downriver. Though his death was
strange, there was speculation on if he’d perhaps been killed on accident by a stray bullet, as
people hunted nearby. His death would occasionally show up in papers as a local mystery, sometimes
even alongside the story of Michael Rainey, and now police had answers for both murders. David
said he’d recognized Bernard from around town but did not provide any motive for why he killed him.
David was only 25 at the time of this confession, so he would have still been in high
school for both of those murders. Dunbar went through several other unsolved
murders, kidnappings, and assaults that happened in Montana or nearby states and questioned David
on his involvement in them. David would insist he had not killed anyone else, and he also insisted
he had not been the one to attack the girl scouts on the day he was out of town. Conveniently,
all four murders that David confessed to were in the same county, which upped his chances
of getting a lighter sentence. Also, Dunbar was going off of his memory alone concerning the
other murders and got a few of the names wrong. As Olsen, Dasinger, and Dunbar departed that
morning Dunbar told Sheriff Andy Anderson, “Andy, if you’ve ever watched a prisoner in
your life, watch this one.” They emphasized he was a possible suicide risk. When the deputy
sheriff who had been on duty during the ordeal was preparing to swap with his relief, one
of Anderson’s sergeants told him not to tell his replacement anything. The man coming in was
apparently a known gossip and they didn’t want word of the confession spreading. David was left
alone most of the night because officers were not allowed in the cell block if they were alone in
the building, but around 8:30 the guard went to check on David. He asked him how it was doing and
David responded: “Not so good.” The next jailer after that came on duty around 9:30 but didn’t get
time to check the cell block until an hour later. Sometime that morning between 8:30 am and
10:25 am David Meirhofer hung himself with his bath towel. By the time police found
him there was no chance of resuscitation. When word spread that David had killed
himself Sandy’s father went to find the local pastor. Sandy’s dad was good
friends with Clifford Meirhofer and he wanted the pastor to go with him
to comfort Clifford as now they’d both lost a child. Only David’s mother
and a select few other family members attended his funeral. He was buried outside
of town. Manhattan was finally done with him. The search for Susie’s remains began that day,
and the police on the scene drew straws to see who would wade through the outhouse muck. Don Houghton
was the unlucky winner, He’d been first on the scene of her disappearance, Now, over a year
later, he finally found what was left of her. He found her skull wrapped in
newspaper, decomposing in the muck. On October 4th an inquest was held to determine
if law enforcement would be held responsible for David’s death. All nine members of the
jury involved agreed that Sheriff Anderson was responsible for David’s death, but
not criminally responsible as the death was caused by negligence. This meant that
the Sheriff would not do any jail time, or be fined, but his career in law
enforcement was effectively over. Marietta never expressed any happiness over David
being dead. Even in those tense last days when she’d been talking face to face with David, she
told law enforcement that she did not want to push for the death penalty, as it’s not what
Susie would have wanted. Before she left town, Marietta went to the cell David killed
himself in to pray for his soul. On October 15th a second funeral was held for
Sandy. By that time over 1800 bone fragments of hers had been collected and were finally
returned to the family. They buried the bones in a child-sized coffin. Over 30 years later
Sandy’s wallet and one of her notebooks would be found in the wall of David’s workshop when
it was being renovated, and law enforcement returned those items to her family as well.
Susie’s parents finally had a death certificate and were able to properly lay her to rest,
though they’d accepted her death long before. In the years that followed, Marietta
would periodically travel the country, speaking at churches and rallies about
the power of forgiveness. She told the Billings-Gazette that “Susie had been chosen
by god, he had allowed her to be a little sacrificial lamb to give her life so other
children could live and grow up without the threat of death and evil.” Marietta and David’s
mother still exchange Christmas cards and speak when Marietta travels to Montana. Eventually,
Marietta became active in politics and started campaigning against the death penalty.
Though she always cautioned that she believed some people did need to spend life
in prison to keep the rest of society safe. After David killed himself, the FBI ordered
the coroner to examine his brain and try to see if any abnormalities might have helped explain
what was wrong with him. They didn’t find anything conclusive. Perhaps the single tragic aspect of
David killing himself was that the true extent of his crimes may never be known. There were
other murdered children and other slain women, but none that could be linked conclusively
back to him. The little girl's voice heard over the phone was never linked to a crime,
though the audio quality and a click heard just before she spoke gave police hope that the
voice was simply a recording. If David did have additional victims they might not ever all be
traceable, as there were likely some overseas. David was in the Marines from October
1st of 1968 to August 26th of 1971, which meant he had already killed two people by
the time he had joined. Accounts given later of David’s behavior in the service seemed on the
surface to show a clean-cut, responsible man. He had no interest in frequenting brothels with
his fellow Marines, instead, he preferred to spend time alone. For a while, he was stationed
near an orphanage, and he loved to spend his time helping the nuns with the children. He could have
had any number of victims while he was there. The chilling manner in which David planned
out his later murders, killing and kidnapping when witnesses were just feet away made him
uniquely terrifying. Though there were many unsolved murders in Montana, there were not
many that involved the same level of planning and stealth. However, in 1987 David’s brother
Alan was arrested in connection with a string of child rapes in Washington State, and his crimes
bore a striking resemblance to David’s. Alan would stalk his victims beforehand, and sneak
into their houses in the middle of the night. He’d cut the phone line so no one could call for
help, then take children from their houses away in his car to assault them in a private place.
When he let his victims go he told them not to identify him or he would burn their houses
down and kill their families. The string of rapes that happened around when Alan was at large
were never all conclusively linked back to him, so he was not given a life sentence. In 2017 Alan
was released from prison and remains a free man to this day. Interestingly, when Alan and David’s
father Clifford passed in 2009 he had David’s name stricken from his obituary, but not Alan’s
despite the fact that Alan was already in jail. When dealing with serial killers and sexual
predators police often look for a history of childhood abuse, but that’s never been proven
to be the case with the Meirhofer family, though it is disturbing that two of the children
grew up to be so violent. By all accounts, Clifford Meirhofer was not abusive, but there were
a few things about the Meirhofer family that were a bit strange. Clifford had a proclivity
for young girls, and when he and Eleanor divorced he married his 18-year-old secretary.
Clifford had numerous affairs over the years, and one of his partners even lived at the
Lockhart Ranch before it was abandoned. It’s also strange that Clifford suspected his
son of murder right away when Sandy vanished. It seems that he knew something was off about his
son. He also may not have been the only member of the family to suspect something. Days before
he was caught, David’s teenage sister turned in a creative writing assignment to her English
teacher that involved a murderer hiding body parts in a freezer and stealing jewelry from
his victims. But law enforcement didn’t follow up with her until years later, and by then she
claimed she didn’t remember why she wrote the story. Though she did say David would help her
with homework. It’s possible she asked him for ideas for a story and he gave her a thinly
veiled account of his own crimes dressed up as a story. He did enjoy the thrill of almost
being caught. The whole thing is very odd. Many questions still linger about David Meirhofer.
He was a man who butchered a little girl and kept part of her pelvis as a trophy but also cried
to her mother over the phone about the guilt he carried around. He quite possibly fed his
neighbors and family bits of his victims, but he didn’t want his family to read the
grisly transcript of his confession. Though police could not gain the answers they hoped
for from David, his case did pave the way for new advancements in psychological profiling,
and an overhauling of the polygraph system. Patrick Mullany and Howard Teten would
go on to further refine their methods after their first success. The Behavioral
Science unit took off the next few years, and Robert Ressler would go on to make a name
for himself when he started working with John Douglas and Ann Burgess to continue Teten
and Mullany’s work. They traveled the country interviewing serial killers and attempting to
put together a more concrete idea of how to catch them. John Douglas would eventually write
the book MindHunter which brought the practice of FBI profiling into the pop culture zeitgeist.
Though the true extent of David Meirhofer’s crimes may never be known, the methods used
to catch him have no doubt helped to keep countless other families from experiencing
the same grief caused by a similar monster.
