343. The Monster In The Woods - The Murder of Danielle Houchins

When a 15-year-old girl’s death in Montana is ruled an accident, her family refuses to stop searching for answers and what they find will shock everyone. Links: Netflix Video Every Monday @11am PST, 12pm MST, 2pm EST 1pm CST https://www.netflix.com/murderwithmyhusband Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderwithmyhusband NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-with-my-husband/id1508098400 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GaodpBsSpBuUMhmEXhjK2?si=8ad6ec0368a94dbb Case Sources: TheIndependent.com - https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/danielle-houchins-cold-case-killer-suicide-b2593949.html NBCMontana.com - https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/belgrade-teens-murder-solved-after-28-years Medium.com - https://dani-erinn.medium.com/cold-case-murderer-kills-himself-after-being-accused-of-the-death-of-danielle-houchins-87e31624b622 ForensicMag.com - https://www.forensicmag.com/3594-All-News/614482-Decades-Old-Cold-Case-Solved-with-DNA-Evidence/ YPRadio.com - https://www.ypradio.org/regional-news/2024-08-08/dna-testing-solves-belgrade-teen-murder-case-28-years-later ABCNews.com - https://abcnews.com/US/suspect-idd-teens-1996-murder-dies-suicide-hours/story?id=112710822 TheExpress.com - https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/145515/danielle-houchins-cold-case-murder-killer KBZK.com - https://www.kbzk.com/news/crime-courts/danielle-houchins-cold-case-solved ABCNews.com - https://abcnews.com/US/suspect-idd-teens-1996-murder-dies-suicide-hours/story?id=112710822 CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danielle-houchins-cold-case-murder-dna-suspect-paul-hutchinson-found-dead-after-interview/ MontanaRightNow.com - https://www.montanarightnow.com/bozeman/homicide-case-of-belegrade-teen-danielle-houchins-solved-after-almost-30-years/article_fb20e716-55a4-11ef-9a49-9bfef9e8adbb.html MontanaFreePress.com - https://montanafreepress.org/2024/08/09/wife-of-deceased-suspect-in-cold-case-montana-murder-speaks-out/ NBCNews.com - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dna-testing-led-suspect-1996-murder-15-year-old-montana-girl-died-suic-rcna165956 Legacy.com - https://web.archive.org/web/20240809145802/https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/paul-hutchinson-obituary?id=55760029 People.com - https://people.com/man-raped-killed-montana-girl-1996-id-d-after-28-years-8693252 Belgrade-News.com - https://www.belgrade-news.com/townnews/mountaineering/obituary-for-danielle-houchins/article_b4153cdb-6ae1-5ea5-aacf-04ca88288891.html FindAGrave.com - https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/201858253/danielle_adeline-houchins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 1:01Payton Moreland?

  You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Morland.

• 1:08Garrett Moreland?

  And I'm Garrett Moreland.

• 1:10Payton Moreland?

  And he's the husband.

• 1:11Garrett Moreland?

  And I'm the husband. Well, do we have some news for you? It is the last time that we will be recording until we have a

• 1:24Payton Moreland?

  munchkin.

• 1:25Garrett Moreland?

  A little munchkin with us. We're having the baby soon. I have a lot of DMs. I'm sure Peyton has a lot of DMs as well. People asking if we've had the baby yet. As of this recording, on Saturday, October, what is the date? Seventeen?

• 1:41Payton Moreland?

  No idea.

• 1:42Garrett Moreland?

  Seventeen. Yes. There's no baby, but there will be a baby.

• 1:48Payton Moreland?

  This week.

• 1:49Garrett Moreland?

  This week.

• 1:50Payton Moreland?

  Yep. She's coming. It's been like, honestly, I don't know if any other parent can relate to this, our first time parent. Maybe I just have too much time in my head, but it, it's been a really weird, there's just gonna be a baby soon. Like last night, Garrett and I were just sitting, watching a show, and I was like, in a couple days, we're gonna have a baby while doing this. Like, I don't know, it's just so life-changing in a second.

• 2:20Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know what else to say. We're gonna have a baby.

• 2:25Payton Moreland?

  Like, you have nine months to wrap your head around it. My head is nowhere near wrapped.

• 2:30Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I feel like that's pretty normal. I feel like until you take the baby home, it's like, oh, dang.

• 2:37Payton Moreland?

  Even then, she comes home and I'm just like,

• 2:41Garrett Moreland?

  All right. Hey, what's up?

• 2:44Payton Moreland?

  It was kind of like that, like, on a really small

• 2:46Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:47Payton Moreland?

  with Daisy, where it was just like, one second we had a dog, or one second we didn't have a dog, and then the next we did.

• 2:54Garrett Moreland?

  That's why I feel like it'll be

• 2:55Payton Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Garrett Moreland?

  somewhat similar. But just keeping everyone updated, we will keep everyone updated as time goes on with everything. Stay up to date on our socials. That's where we're gonna be posting any updates on anything, kind of all in due time. I'm assuming everything goes well and so forth. But yeah, I think everything's gonna go great. Everything seems good. Baby seems healthy. That's kind of all I got. It's kind of my 10 seconds. That's kind of our life right now. We've just been preparing 24/7 for the baby. So, yeah, I don't know. Anything else?

• 3:28Payton Moreland?

  I kind of said this over on Into the Dark, my solo show, but thank you, guys, for being just patient and understanding as we navigate this change, because, you know, episodes might look a little different, ads might look a little different, as in like, Garrett might be here, or it might just be me. As we try to like, kind of figure out, we'll probably throw in some old episodes, some bonus episodes. So, just thank you for going through this journey with us and understanding that we're trying to keep putting content out. But it might look a little different for a couple months as we adjust.

• 4:07Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, like Peyton said, there still will be content coming out. It just might look different for the next 48 weeks, or two, eight weeks.

• 4:14Payton Moreland?

  Forty-eight.

• 4:15Garrett Moreland?

  Forty-eight weeks, depending on how Peyton's feeling, how everything's going. But we're really trying to give her, I'm really trying to give her like, a month off, or two months off, depending on how things look. So, yeah, the next four weeks are gonna look a little different, and then it should be back to normal. But

• 4:32Payton Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Garrett Moreland?

  that's what we got. So, on that note, let's, let's hop into it. Let's do it.

• 4:37Payton Moreland?

  Our sources for this episode are theindependent.com, nbcmontana.com, medium.com, forensicmag.com, ypradio.com, abcnews.com, theexpress.com, kbzk.com, ABC News, CBS News, Montana Right Now, Montana Free Press, NBC News, legacy.com, people.com, belgrade news.com, and findagrave.com. A disclaimer, this episode includes discussions of suicide. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the Suicide and Crisis

• 5:14Payton Moreland?

  Lifeline by texting or dialing 988. You can also go to 988lifeline.org. And as always, please listen with care. When a loved one is taken unexpectedly, the family is already left dealing with the unthinkable. The grief, the funeral arrangements, the impossible task of figuring out how to keep going when someone you love is suddenly gone. But loss is even harder to process when the most important questions go unanswered. How did this happen? Was it an accident? Or was something else at play? And that's why families turn to

• 5:57Payton Moreland?

  law enforcement to help them through those big unanswered questions, to try and get some closure, maybe justice, some sense of resolution. So when people go to these resources, looking for hope, and critical truths are withheld from them, it doesn't ease the pain, it prolongs it. Because sometimes what keeps a family stuck isn't just the loss itself, but it's simply living in the unknown. So today, we are dialing back the clock to 1996. I was being born, and we are heading to the state of Montana, to a fast-growing residential

• 6:38Payton Moreland?

  community outside of Bozeman, Montana, called Belgrade. And it's here in 1996 that we meet a 15-year-old girl who has her entire life ahead of her. Her name is Danielle Houchence. Now Danielle was born on November 11th, back in 1980. But at the time of our story, she and her family had actually just moved to Belgrade, Montana about two years earlier. So in 1994-ish, they moved from Alexandria, Minnesota, to Belgrade, Montana. But Danielle

• 7:18Payton Moreland?

  really seemed to be falling in love with her new town, even as a young teenager. She and her little sister Stephanie, and younger brother Jake, were all pretty into outdoor activities. Dani, as her family called her, loved hiking, rock climbing, river rafting, fishing, skiing, you name it. Dani had probably tried it. It was almost like she was actually born to be out there in the Montana wilderness, connecting and learning from nature in every way that she could. And even though she only had been at her new school for two years now, Dani had already made a lot of close friends, people who described her as incredibly down-to-earth

• 8:00Payton Moreland?

  and friendly. She was also very involved in school. She made sure to keep her grades up as high as she could. In fact, she had recently been recognized in a publication as a who's who of American high school students, primarily for her achievement in her honors studies. And unlike most 15-year-olds, Dani already had an idea of what she wanted to study once she graduated. She really wanted to become a biological engineer.

• 8:32Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 8:33Payton Moreland?

  She was always super interested in science. She had a deep fascination with how the world worked around her. Plus it tied in well with her love for the great outdoors. But if there's one thing that stood out to everyone about Danny, it was how witty and funny she was, how she had no problem cracking a joke at her own expense. She was also super excited about one recent development in her life, getting her driver's license, which in the state of Montana, you get when you turn 15. For Danny, it meant a taste of freedom she didn't have before. A method of escape when things got a bit tense in the Houchins household.

• 9:16Payton Moreland?

  A way for her to cruise out into the wilderness, go off on her own adventure when the situation called for it. Which is exactly what happened on the afternoon of September 21st, 1996.

• 9:31Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 9:31Payton Moreland?

  Now that morning, Danny, like most teenagers, got into a bit of an argument with some members of her family. Her sister, 12-year-old Stephanie, didn't say what the argument was about, but Danny found the perfect way out of it. Like the good and respectful kid she was, Danny asked her mom's permission to go down to the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access Site, about three miles away from their home, just to hang out, be alone on the river. Now, her mom Cheryl was probably a bit hesitant about it at first. Not because Danny wasn't responsible, but because she was actually in a knee brace at the time. Danny had just injured it a few weeks ago, dancing at a street fair. She was still on the mend.

• 10:16Payton Moreland?

  But Cheryl, her mother, trusted that Danny knew her limits. She wouldn't push herself beyond what she was comfortable with at the river. So she gave her her blessing and watched as Danny, in her blue jeans and gray sweatshirt, used her brand new driver's license, got into her Chevy pickup truck and drove away.

• 10:33Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 10:33Payton Moreland?

  Now, this was at 11:00 AM in September. But hours passed and Danny still didn't come home from just like going to the river and taking a breather. Now Cheryl, her mother, and Stephanie, her little sister, knew Danny was upset, but being gone this long felt out of character for her. So by mid-afternoon, Cheryl and a friend drove over to the access point to go look for her. And when they got to the parking lot, they do see Danny's truck sitting there. So they get out, they pull on the door handles, but it's locked. And they can clearly see that Danny is not inside the truck.

• 11:15Payton Moreland?

  So they continue searching around the area, heading up and down between the parking lot and the water a few times. And eventually they discovered Danny's water bottle and her car keys. But there's still no sign of Danny herself, which I think to any mom would be worrisome. But when you add in the fact that there's like a large body of water right near where her truck and car keys are found, it's a lot more worrisome. So by 5:00 PM, Cheryl and her friend decide it's time to call the local authorities. And within the hour, police were down at the Cameron Bridge Access Site, searching for Danny with her family.

• 11:59Payton Moreland?

  They waited through the marshy wooded area for Danny. But once the sun began to set and it was getting dark, too dark for the teams to make progress, they decided they would return the next morning to keep searching for her. Now, obviously not everyone is ready to call it quits for the night, like her family. They're like, what do you mean you're going home? When Danny's friend got wind of her disappearance, she recruited her father and uncle to head out and search for her. It made sense. Both of them lived nearby. They were pretty familiar with the area and the terrain. So wielding flashlights, they continued down one of the paths well after the sun had set.

• 12:39Payton Moreland?

  And eventually around 9:00 PM, Danny's friend and her family stumble upon something. Just before a small bridge in this area was a body faced down in a shallow, muddy pool of water. To say this discovery was heartbreaking was an understatement. Here was a teenage girl, so excited about her future, who was just looking to escape, have a moment to herself. And instead, she ended up here, out in the woods, all alone. Dead, faced down in this small pool of water.

• 13:19Payton Moreland?

  Word of Danny's death and her body being discovered had reached everyone in Belgrade by the following morning.

• 13:25Garrett Moreland?

  I can't imagine that it's a very big town or city.

• 13:30Payton Moreland?

  I mean, it was definitely on the rise in the 90s. Uh, yeah, but I mean, I think any.

• 13:36Garrett Moreland?

  I guess I don't know the statistics, but I can't imagine more than 30,000 people.

• 13:41Payton Moreland?

  So it reaches the next morning. Everyone's like, oh my gosh. Uh, Danny Houchins was found in the woods and the story that's being told is that she drowned. They were like, oh, she went to the, you know, she went to the river and she drowned. But as we know, she was just found in a small pool of water. That doesn't really make sense to most people.

• 14:04Garrett Moreland?

  But maybe I would assume nearby, there's like a river. Maybe other people have drowned there. So it's like, oh.

• 14:09Payton Moreland?

  Maybe. Now Danny was a tough young woman. She knew how to handle herself in the outdoors. She was athletic, strong, well-equipped. Like I said, she did a lot of outdoor activities. Yes, she did have a knee brace on at the time, but it wasn't anything that should have like weighed her down or caused her to drown in a shallow pool of water. So for most people, the situation just isn't making much sense. Which was when they start asking, okay, did something else happen? Like, did she really go out here, go to this spot in the woods and end up drowning? Or something else happened? Or rather, someone else? Could Danny have been a victim of foul play? It certainly seemed like a possibility to the Houchins.

• 14:54Payton Moreland?

  They did not believe this was an accident. But unfortunately, with not much evidence left behind at the crime scene and no eyewitnesses, Danny's autopsy was the only way to fill in the gaps. Which obviously like, I think any parent would be like, you absolutely need to do an autopsy so we can make sure this was an accident.

• 15:17Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I'm curious how the autopsy comes back.

• 15:19Payton Moreland?

  Well, it begged more questions than it answered. On September 23rd, just two days after Danny was found dead, officials did perform her autopsy. Her cause of death, a drowning. And while her manner of death was listed as undetermined, which means they didn't list it as an accident, authorities indicated, although we can't like officially rule it an accident, we think it was an accident.

• 15:47Garrett Moreland?

  Isn't it pretty impossible? I read an article and at one time, like what the human body will do, but it's fairly nearly impossible to drown yourself. To, depending on what you're doing.

• 15:59Payton Moreland?

  Right.

• 15:59Garrett Moreland?

  Like just jumping in a pool and trying to drown yourself.

• 16:04Payton Moreland?

  With no waves.

• 16:05Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, with no.

• 16:06Payton Moreland?

  Current.

• 16:07Garrett Moreland?

  Correct. Like it's, it's fairly impossible. Ah, what articles that I read on it. It was really interesting though, but it talked about how the human, like basically it just takes over you and the will to survive kind of kicks in. But anyways.

• 16:23Payton Moreland?

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• 17:49Payton Moreland?

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• 18:34Payton Moreland?

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• 19:18Payton Moreland?

  Now, the Gallatin County Sheriff at the time, a man named Bill Slaughter, told the media, okay, we've done the autopsy. There were no signs of any cuts or bruising on Danny, like she simply drowned. There was no.

• 19:34Garrett Moreland?

  Interesting.

• 19:34Payton Moreland?

  Indications of foul play. Bill told the local paper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, straight up, quote, "I think we've got to be prepared for the fact that this may have been an accidental drowning."

• 19:47Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, but in that shallow of water.

• 19:49Payton Moreland?

  Right.

• 19:50Garrett Moreland?

  Seems.

• 19:52Garrett Moreland?

  Hard.

• 19:53Payton Moreland?

  Right.

• 19:55Payton Moreland?

  Now, what many people didn't know was there actually were a few tiny pieces of evidence gathered at the crime scene that wasn't necessarily public information. Four hairs were found on Danny's body that didn't belong to her.

• 20:12Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 20:13Payton Moreland?

  Police sent those off to a forensic lab for further analysis, but nothing came of it. There was no match in any database. And as days turned to weeks and then weeks to months, the Houchins family got no closer to the answers they were looking for because there begins to be a divide because they felt for sure whatever happened to their daughter wasn't an accident. They are adamant that there's more to this story. For Stephanie, she said her sister's death was the single most impactful event of her life. It left her with many sleepless nights. And as they came upon the first anniversary of Danny's death, they were no closer to any

• 20:56Payton Moreland?

  answers because even, even the, the authorities couldn't exactly tell the family how she drowned.

• 21:03Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, you know, I think, like, and not even with death, with anything, not having closure is very difficult. It's hard for the human brain to grieve and process something correctly when there's no closure or answers. Very difficult. And in this case, that's exactly what's happening, right? There's not really any closure. There's no answers.

• 21:27Payton Moreland?

  And I think when you have a situation that doesn't necessarily scream accident, like if she was found in a huge pool of water.

• 21:36Garrett Moreland?

  Sure.

• 21:37Payton Moreland?

  Or in a car accident with another car. You would be like, okay, this was an accident. But when someone is found in a situation where would have been hard to drown or their car was just found abandoned on the side of the road or a one car accident, it is a lot harder, I think, to swallow the possibility that this was an accident versus did something else happen here? Police said they had looked into everyone that was close to the family and ruled out any potential suspects, but with no other evidence to go off of outside of those four hairs, the case ran cold. But it wasn't just the family that had issues with the investigation.

• 22:22Payton Moreland?

  It was also some members of the police force themselves. Specifically, a patrolman named Keith Barquar. He had spent a lot of time working with the detectives who were assigned to Danny's case, and he too felt like something was off, especially after he spoke with Danny's personal physician. So this detective is taking a little bit more interest in the case because he's like, it just doesn't seem like it acts like an accident. And when he talked to her doctors, they tell him, okay, if this was in fact, an accident where she fell into this pool of water, there was nothing in her medical files that showed

• 23:05Payton Moreland?

  she shouldn't have just been able to roll over in a few inches of water. Like even if she broke her legs, which isn't what her autopsy showed, there was no reason she should would like, shouldn't have been able to just like pop over. So Keith goes back to his supervisors and he tries to make a case. He's like, listen, the doctor's claims are a good reason to keep up the search for a possible attacker that maybe this wasn't an accident, but they don't agree. Instead, he said he felt ridiculed, especially by the sheriff at the time, Bill Slaughter. Keith said he remembered the words he used to, something along the lines of what the F does the doctor know?

• 23:48Payton Moreland?

  It was something that affected Keith so much, he actually resigned from the force just three months after Danny's death.

• 23:54Garrett Moreland?

  It's crazy to me that people like that even get leadership positions.

• 23:58Payton Moreland?

  I know.

• 23:59Garrett Moreland?

  But can't stand it. It's, yeah.

• 24:01Payton Moreland?

  Well, because also I'm like, well, if you have one detective who's like, hey, this isn't sitting right with me, tell them to look into it.

• 24:08Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, who cares?

• 24:08Payton Moreland?

  Who cares? And with Danny's now one true advocate in the sheriff's office resigned, the case stalled entirely. The Houchins were left to live in the unknown for years, thinking, how did our daughter drown in inches of water? What was her final moments of life like? And they eventually spread her ashes on a nearby mountain, Bridger Range on Sacagawea Peak. And then 24 years later.

• 24:36Garrett Moreland?

  24 years is crazy.

• 24:40Payton Moreland?

  Everything changes.

• 24:41Garrett Moreland?

  Oh my gosh.

• 24:42Payton Moreland?

  So it is now 2019. Okay. Again, this happened in 1996. 35 year old Stephanie Houchins has gotten married, started a family of her own. She's now going by Stephanie Molett. Again, this is her sister. And while she's moved forward on the path of time, she hasn't gone a day without thinking about her sister's death and the answers that she still wanted. But luckily in 2019, she catches a break. Danny's case is officially reopened.

• 25:16Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 25:17Payton Moreland?

  This is thanks in big part to the family's persistence over the years. They never stopped applying pressure to the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office to just look into it a little bit harder, but also because of a man named Matt Boxmeyer. He is now the sheriff's captain in Gallatin in 2019, and he too feels the case needs a second look. He's surprised by how little investigation was actually done back in 96. And he also realizes that the department has made some effort to get those four hairs reanalyzed over the years by the Montana State Crime Lab. They never got a usable DNA profile.

• 25:58Payton Moreland?

  So in February of 2020, he reaches out to Stephanie to tell her, hey, we're going to dig back into your sister's case. And that's when the family learns something about Danny's case for the very first time. And again, these are things that like were discovered back in 96 that weren't communicated to the family. It turns out the family's suspicions of foul play were more valid than we thought because when Stephanie finally gets her hands on the actual autopsy report, she learns her sister didn't just drown in inches of water. She had mud in her lungs and her stomach.

• 26:42Garrett Moreland?

  I just don't understand why.

• 26:44Payton Moreland?

  Like swallowed mud.

• 26:45Garrett Moreland?

  Why is that kept from the family?

• 26:47Payton Moreland?

  Which suggests obviously that she had been forced, like forcibly held down into mud and was inhaling it, not just like sitting on top of it. Now, if you remember, the Gallatin Sheriff's Department also originally stated Danny had no cuts or bruises found on her body, but this is a blatant lie. According to the autopsy, she had bruises all along the back of her neck as if someone had held her neck down. I don't know, in a pile of mud and water.

• 27:19Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 27:19Payton Moreland?

  And she suffocated and drowned. They also found that her gold elastic watch had been pulled up over her hand, like kind of slid up over her hand, maybe like someone was dragging her by her wrist. And her bra was pulled up over her breasts. Her underwear was rolled to the side and she had vaginal injuries that were indicative of sexual assault. This was all found in her autopsy back in 96.

• 27:47Garrett Moreland?

  This is crazy.

• 27:48Payton Moreland?

  And the sheriff's office was like, nope, it's an accident. Sorry, family. It was an accidental drowning and they moved on.

• 27:55Payton Moreland?

  Her bra was pulled up.

• 27:56Garrett Moreland?

  No, this isn't, that's insane.

• 27:58Payton Moreland?

  I can't imagine how irate the family must have been in 2020 when they learned this.

• 28:05Garrett Moreland?

  I would have gone absolutely ballistic.

• 28:07Payton Moreland?

  Also props to the sheriff's captain for being like, this case deserves a second look and it's because my predecessors literally botched the investigation. Like I find it nice when there's someone in law enforcement who's willing to come forward and be like, it doesn't matter if the people who worked before me botched this. I care about justice and I care about.

• 28:31Garrett Moreland?

  He's not going to get in trouble, wasn't him. But I want to know who the people before were because are they still alive?

• 28:38Payton Moreland?

  Mr. Slaughter.

• 28:40Garrett Moreland?

  Because that's insane.

• 28:41Payton Moreland?

  So if you remember, the medical examiner said they couldn't determine the manner of death. And the police were like, they said it's undetermined, but it's definitely an accident. This is not indicating an accident at all to me. The fact that there was bruising on the back of her neck.

• 28:59Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Payton Moreland?

  That she had mud in her lungs, suggesting her face had literally been shoved into mud and held there for her to suffocate or drown. And then that there was signs of sexual assault. And yet that was the narrative that had been pushing publicly back in 96, when they could have been gathering tips. They could have been looking for witnesses. They could have been investigating a homicide. Better late than never, I guess. And luckily come 2021, there's a new sheriff in town. A man named Dan Springer, who actually remembers Danny's case well, because he was a rookie deputy with the department. When Danny died back in 96. In fact, he had only been on the job five days when Danny's body was found.

• 29:44Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 29:44Payton Moreland?

  So when Boxmire, this is our captain, goes to him with the case, he's willing to offer whatever resources. Are necessary to finally solve it. And he promises Stephanie that this time they will leave no stone unturned. Springer even calls on outside help. He recruits a retired Los Angeles detective named Tom Elfmont to provide a fresh set of eyes to the case. Now Elfmont had since moved to Bozeman after retiring in LA. And he was now running his own global security firm, but everyone knew that he was a bulldog. He was not gonna let it go. So it didn't take much for them to go to him and be like, hey, you want to work this old case?

• 30:28Payton Moreland?

  Now, once Springer met him for lunch, told him about Danny's case, he was willing to put his detective hat back on for one more job. So he spends every free moment going through the evidence and taking a second look. And one thing feels undeniable to him, and that was the state of Danny's body and clothing. And this is when he learns about another detail. That had been kept from the family that's literally going to make you even more angry when you hear that this has been. Basically ruled an accident by every person who's looked at this case for this long. There was semen found in Danny's underwear. They have DNA.

• 31:08Garrett Moreland?

  Okay. It's gotta be, I don't know, there's gotta be a re like, there's a reason. Not saying it's a good reason, I'm just saying there's something there high like there's something gonna, there's something going on.

• 31:19Payton Moreland?

  So when all of this is basically unearthed, they decide to try to officially have her manner of death changed from undetermined to homicide. They're like, let's get this reclassified. Let's make this official. It's a step in the right direction, but the suspects still aren't there, but they did have something else. Those four rootless hairs that never found their match. So they send those samples to a state of the art private lab called Austria Forensics. And basically have them use their latest technologies on these hairs. They can't get anything usable off the first three hairs, but the fourth is a winner. They're able to create a detailed genetic profile.

• 32:04Payton Moreland?

  Problem is, after running it through the FBI's combined DNA index system.

• 32:09Garrett Moreland?

  No hits.

• 32:09Payton Moreland?

  CODIS, they still don't find a match, but it doesn't deter them. Instead, they reach out to a woman named Cece Moore, an investigative genealogist to see what she can find, which is so cool that like. This has now become a profession, like an investigative genealogist. Cece had started working with law enforcement back in 2018, just a few years before getting assigned to Danny's case. And by this point in 2024, she had helped solve 325 cases.

• 32:39Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 32:39Payton Moreland?

  So like this girl knows what she's doing when it comes to genealogy. She's good at reading these charts. She's gonna find our guy. All right, you guys, we are getting into an ad and you know what is the worst smelling bad? Honestly, it is the worst, but you know what makes it even worse? Is when the products you're using to try to combat smelling bad are bad for you. But that is where Salt and Stone comes in. Salt and Stone's viral deodorant, I think the best way you guys can even discover this is using their discovery sets. So each set includes all four scents that they have.

• 33:17Payton Moreland?

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• 33:56Payton Moreland?

  And use code husband at checkout for 15% off your first order. So use code husband to get money off. That's salt and stone.com slash husband and use code husband for 15% off your first order. Have you ever noticed everything seems to start breaking down right after the warranty runs out? Our car, our refrigerator, our washing machine. Apparently our bodies don't come with an extended warranty. Somewhere along the way, our resiliency changes and we may not be able to bounce back as quickly. And these changes add up, making it harder to keep doing the things we love. But True Niagen has been studying the science behind that for years and there's a common denominator.

• 34:36Payton Moreland?

  It's your cells. Your cells have been taking care of you since before you were even born, protecting you, repairing you, keeping you strong and healthy. And to do all of that, they depend on NAD plus, but NAD plus declines with age. So that's why I help replenish my NAD plus with True Niagen. It contains NR, a form of vitamin B3 that helps cells make NAD plus more efficiently. I've seen the studies, guys, I actually do take this supplement and it is shown clinically shown to increase NAD plus. No warranty on this one, so I'm taking care of the cells that take care of me with True Niagen. Go to trueniagen.com and use promo code husband for 20% off.

• 35:19Payton Moreland?

  Again, if you've been looking into NAD plus or anything, I highly, highly recommend True Niagen spelled. T R U N I A G E N dot com and then use promo code husband. She begins by comparing the sample to those that are submitted to user based genealogy websites, ancestry.com, so forth. And by the spring of that year, she is ready to start building out a family tree. Cause again, it's not like she's gonna find the match.

• 35:47Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, no, it's a whole process.

• 35:48Payton Moreland?

  But she's gonna take the time to build out a family tree. She soon finds the great grandparents on both sides.

• 35:55Garrett Moreland?

  My gosh, that's crazy.

• 35:58Payton Moreland?

  This suspect's family tree. So she doesn't know who they are, but she works it all the way down to their great grandparents. And eventually she zeros in on one couple who had three sons. However, that family lived in New Hampshire. Not nowhere near the crime scene. So Cece digs deeper. She's looking at marriage, birth certificates, public registries. I mean, in order for her to do her job, she's on Facebook, she's looking at everything she can to try to figure out who belongs to who. And finally, she finds the couple's youngest son on Facebook.

• 36:36Payton Moreland?

  And on his page, on his Facebook page publicly, it says that on July 1st, 1996. He updated his Facebook profile to say that he had moved to Bozeman, Montana.

• 36:50Garrett Moreland?

  Crazy.

• 36:52Payton Moreland?

  Three months before Danny was killed. The youngest son of this family tree that she is, you know, made admits to moving to the area. So on May 1st, 2024, Cece calls Sheriff Springer with the good news. She's like, I think I have your suspect. His name? 55 year old Paul Hutchinson, who lived at this point, just over a hundred miles away in Dillon, Montana. Now, when Stephanie, the sister hears the news, her first reaction is a sigh of relief. They have been living all of these years with this unsettling feeling.

• 37:34Payton Moreland?

  That not only was this not an accident, but that it also could have been someone they knew, who then continued to be in their life. That it could have been someone close to the family, but Paul's name is not one that she knew. Or her family knew, he's a complete stranger. And yet she has this gut feeling that this is the guy, something inside her screaming. Not only is everyone now admitting that this wasn't an accident, like we finally made progress that way. I think we're getting pretty close. The thing is, on paper, Paul doesn't seem like a very likely candidate. He has no criminal history. He's married with two adult children, a son and a daughter.

• 38:14Payton Moreland?

  He works for the government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management for the last 22 years as a biologist.

• 38:20Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 38:21Payton Moreland?

  One thing that does stand out is Paul had always been big on the outdoors. He loves hunting, fishing, trapping. He's someone Danny could have easily crossed paths with that day near the river. So investigators dig deeper. They're like, is there some type of connection here? They learn in 1996, when Paul was 27 years old. He had just finished serving with the Marine Corps and moved to Bozeman to be a grad student at Montana State University. This is about 10 miles from where Danny's body was found. And at the time, he was doing a work study for the Fish and Wildlife Service, which meant. He literally worked along the waterways near Belgrade.

• 39:02Garrett Moreland?

  Can you imagine getting caught because of a couple of hairs?

• 39:05Payton Moreland?

  One hair.

• 39:06Garrett Moreland?

  Hair, yeah, one genuinely one hair. That's, that's pretty mind blowing.

• 39:12Payton Moreland?

  He does this, he ends up going on in life. He moves to Dillon. He meets his wife Christine on match.com in 2004 years after the murder.

• 39:20Garrett Moreland?

  I, this happens a lot in our cases. I don't understand how like someone will kill someone and then just go live a completely quote, in quotations, normal life.

• 39:30Payton Moreland?

  Yeah. They separated in their head.

• 39:32Garrett Moreland?

  How is that possible? I don't know how that's possible.

• 39:36Payton Moreland?

  He's separated. They separated in their head.

• 39:38Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, easy. Yeah. Let me just separate me killing somebody real quick.

• 39:42Payton Moreland?

  So.

• 39:44Payton Moreland?

  By Christmas 2001, he's engaged. He's later married back in his home state of New Hampshire. But here he is, a match for the hairs on Danny's body. So detectives figure he's been hiding this dark secret from his family this entire time. One they likely had no idea about, but that's about to change. What's interesting is that while the Houchins had never heard his name before, there were other people in their circles that had. Stephanie's childhood friend, Rochelle Schrute, actually knew Paul pretty well. By 2024, Rochelle's working as an editor for the hunt and fish section of Gear Junkie. It's an online media outlet. She's also an avid hunter and former guide at Yellowstone National Park.

• 40:28Payton Moreland?

  She said she met Paul around the early 2000s, considered him a mentor. They went on fishing trips together, just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere. And now she's getting news that this guy possibly killed her friend. And she's like, just years later, I was going on trips alone with him.

• 40:45Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, that's what I mean though. Like, normal.

• 40:49Payton Moreland?

  Well, and she says, I never questioned that Paul was a good guy. He never rubbed me the wrong way.

• 40:55Garrett Moreland?

  She's like, I don't understand.

• 40:56Payton Moreland?

  I considered him a friend, someone I trusted. She nev- he never made me feel unsafe. So can you just imagine the shock, the shock when she learns he's the primary suspect in her friend's sister's case? Now, there's just one catch, obviously. They need more. They need to prove that Paul's DNA matched what was found at the crime scene. The tree CC built was incredible, but again, it's just a theory.

• 41:19Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Payton Moreland?

  So on July 23rd, 2024, Elfmont and another detective from the sheriff's department go down to Paul's office in Dillon at the Bureau of Land Management. They don't want to spook him away. So they approach him getting out of his truck. They say, hey, we just want to chat about cases going on around local rivers. We could use an expert opinion. So Paul invites them into the office to chat and they sit down in a conference room. And while they don't quite ask about Danny's case, they can tell Paul is uncomfortable, which obviously if you have this secret, like if this is real and, and you know, police show up and they're like, oh, we just want to talk to you about some, we're homicide detectives. We want to talk to you about just some cases. We need, you know, advice.

• 42:04Payton Moreland?

  You would still sweat.

• 42:06Garrett Moreland?

  A thousand percent.

• 42:07Payton Moreland?

  You would sense that something's up.

• 42:08Garrett Moreland?

  Oh crap.

• 42:10Payton Moreland?

  And eventually he asks, hey, um, can I step out and just go look for a coworker who can help us? But once he comes back, they turn up the heat. They start showing him pictures from other cases. They're like, you know, this woman died on the river. This woman died on the river. And then they bring out a picture of Danny Houchins. And they're like, she died along the river. And they're like, have you ever been to this area where her body was found? Gallatin River, specifically the Cameron Bridge access? And he says, yeah, probably. It's along a street called Jack Rabbit Lane, right? They start zeroing in, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever gone fishing or trapping in this area? Actually Danny spent some time here. Did you ever see her? Do you recognize her?

• 42:54Payton Moreland?

  And while he denies it, they know that he's uncomfortable. He's shaking, he's sweating, he's scratching at his face, he's chewing his fingernails. And that's how he spends most of this two hour interview. Now they don't drop the ball. They don't arrest him that day. They don't have a warrant. I'm not sure if they ask him for a DNA sample or not, but I know they do tell him, we already have DNA of the suspect in the case. We're just trying to learn more about the area. So they let him know that they have a DNA profile of the person who did it. And after the two hour interview, they let him go. They place him under surveillance.

• 43:36Payton Moreland?

  They catch him driving like a maniac later that day, showing that he's unwell. And meanwhile, Stephanie's already bracing herself for the next phase. She's emotionally preparing for a lengthy trial, for a road to justice. She knows she's getting closer until the day after Paul's interview.

• 43:54Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, he a hundred percent offs himself, doesn't he?

• 43:58Payton Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Payton Moreland?

  And honestly, this is no dig to the detectives because just uncovering and working this case, good for them and doing all they did. I would have just tried to collect DNA and compare like they've done in other cases.

• 44:14Garrett Moreland?

  I don't know if I really.

• 44:16Payton Moreland?

  But I think they were hoping for a confession.

• 44:19Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Payton Moreland?

  I think they were hoping because of the type of profile he was, because he never re-offended in their eyes, that they would, you know, confront him and he would just confess.

• 44:28Garrett Moreland?

  I think he was going to do it no matter what.

• 44:31Payton Moreland?

  Less than 12 hours later, on July 24th, they get a call. Deputies arrive along a roadway just outside of Dillon. And there they find Paul Hutchinson dead from a self inflicted gun wound. They didn't suspect it would end this way. Stephanie didn't, but it led to another development in the case. They now are able to collect his DNA just to close Danny's case. It's a hundred percent match.

• 44:58Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Payton Moreland?

  Paul's death also means though, they'll never get answers they were hoping for. What happened that day? How did they stumble upon each other? How did this even happen?

• 45:06Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, which I.

• 45:06Payton Moreland?

  What was going through his head?

• 45:08Garrett Moreland?

  That's what I was going to ask is how, why, like what, like what's going on?

• 45:12Payton Moreland?

  Did they just?

• 45:13Garrett Moreland?

  He's a coward, so here we are.

• 45:16Payton Moreland?

  They're assuming he just acted on impulse. He came across her alone out there. He sexually assaulted her and then drowned her. It was purely a crime of opportunity. In the first few days after Paul's death, his family posts his obituary. It's then pulled down and replaced with a message from his wife. It reads in part, quote, "In 24 years of marriage, there was never any hint that something like this could be lurking in the background. Paul was an exceptional husband and father. This latest news makes our grieving so much more complicated," which would have to be true. Like you find out that your husband took his life and then you find out the, the reason

• 45:56Payton Moreland?

  they think he took his life is because cops had just confronted him about a murder he committed where his DNA is a hundred percent the match.

• 46:04Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, the, ooh, it's really hard because the psychology behind that, like being the wife and the kids and then being like, well, that's my dad and he's never done anything to us.

• 46:16Payton Moreland?

  And he's dead now.

• 46:17Garrett Moreland?

  But when he was in his twenties, he killed someone like, I don't even know the twist that does to your brain.

• 46:24Payton Moreland?

  Like you're grieving.

• 46:25Garrett Moreland?

  I don't know.

• 46:26Payton Moreland?

  The father you knew, you're grieving the person that you knew.

• 46:30Garrett Moreland?

  But.

• 46:30Payton Moreland?

  But then you're also trying to fathom the idea of a person you don't know.

• 46:34Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 46:34Payton Moreland?

  But it's real.

• 46:35Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Payton Moreland?

  Right?

• 46:36Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I don't, it's hard.

• 46:38Payton Moreland?

  Stephanie, then 39 years old, gives in a victim impact statement to the press. She says the following, "Even though this man will not face a jury of his peers, I have no doubt he was the one who forcefully and violently sexually assaulted my sister and then held her head down in a marsh until she choked to death on mud. But the questions surrounding Paul aren't the only ones going unanswered. To this day, Stephanie and the rest of the Houchins family still don't understand why the sheriff's department initially lied to them about the autopsy, lied about Danny's death, like it's so blatantly screamed homicide.

• 47:19Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Payton Moreland?

  Why lie about it? Especially because there was no tie to the department. They weren't protecting anyone they knew.

• 47:26Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I said earlier, like, yeah, there's no, what's the reason? There's zero reason. I'm very confused.

• 47:31Payton Moreland?

  There's just another aspect to this case.

• 47:33Garrett Moreland?

  I don't know, maybe someone knew him. We'd like, there's also questions we'll probably never find out.

• 47:38Payton Moreland?

  Well, people find Bill Slaughter, the sheriff back at the time. And they're like, hey, uh, this case came out of cold case and was turned to a homicide. And then they ended up finding the person and all of this information came out. So why did you lie?

• 47:55Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Payton Moreland?

  Like, why did you lie back then about this case? He says, he's in retirement now. He says publicly, he admitted to withholding some information about the autopsy.

• 48:08Garrett Moreland?

  Some information, bro.

• 48:10Payton Moreland?

  But he says, I didn't lie to the family. I thought this was an accident. I guess it depends how you define a lie because he literally told them there were no bruises or cuts.

• 48:21Garrett Moreland?

  Just people trying to justify their actions. It's annoying.

• 48:24Payton Moreland?

  And omission of the truth is just as damaging. In this case, not only did it leave a family questioning for longer than necessary, it also bought Paul Hutchinson time to build a life, time to walk away from his past, time to think he was getting away with something he never should have gotten away with, time to then go on and victimize even more people like his wife and children, who then would have to discover this one day. And those facts are just as painful as if.

• 48:53Garrett Moreland?

  That's insane.

• 48:54Payton Moreland?

  The sheriff's department had just released the truth back in 1996.

• 48:57Garrett Moreland?

  Killed the 15 year old girl, fif- or I guess she, oh yeah, 15.

• 49:00Payton Moreland?

  And that's the case of Danny Houchins.

• 49:04Garrett Moreland?

  No one knows why, no one knows how, like, okay.

• 49:07Payton Moreland?

  Crime of opportunity is what their theory is.

• 49:10Garrett Moreland?

  Absolute insanity. It's like, it's hard because I feel like sometimes the human psyche wants to feel bad for someone like this in a sense where it's like, well, he was a dad and he had kids and he was a husband. It's like he killed a 15 year old girl.

• 49:26Payton Moreland?

  And just hurt even more people now. This psychological torment that so many people now have to live with when his actions came to light.

• 49:35Garrett Moreland?

  Like, sorry dude, I don't think you get to kill a 15 year old, go get married, then have kids and then potentially mess them up as well because of all this.

• 49:43Payton Moreland?

  Yeah, well, and also then to just kill yourself and not even leave a note to the family, explaining what happened at least. The least you could have done is just answer some questions. They've been living with this unknown, huge part of their lives for this long.

• 49:59Garrett Moreland?

  It's insane.

• 49:59Payton Moreland?

  All right, you guys, that was our episode and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

• 50:04Garrett Moreland?

  I hate it.

• 50:05Payton Moreland?

  Goodbye.

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