Pod Insights Crime Junkie SERIAL KILLER: David Meirhofer About this episode In the summer of 1973, the Jaeger family wakes at a Montana campground to every parent's nightmare: their young daughter, Susie, is gone. Searches turn up nothing, until a man begins tormenting the family with chilling calls and letters. He has Susie, and he has no intention of giving her back. As investigators race to find her, more victims begin to surface. The case finally breaks when a determined mother joins forces with the FBI’s newly formed behavioral profiling unit. Together, they uncover the truth about what happened to Susie and bring long-awaited answers to three other grieving families.
Transcript 10,445 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:17 Ashley Flowers? Hi Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
2:19 Speaker 01 And I'm Britt.
2:20 Ashley Flowers? And today, I'll be taking you on a trek through the mountains of Montana, where a little-known serial killer went undetected for years despite his brazen crimes, murders that he likely would have gotten away with had it not been for the surprising investigative combo of a mother's unrelenting determination for answers, and this brand-new thing that the FBI was developing. A little something that you might be very familiar with now, but at the time, no one had heard of: criminal profiling. It was still in its infancy at the time, but this would be one of the very first cases where the FBI put their learning to work to catch serial killer David Meirhofer.
3:36 Ashley Flowers? It's summer 1973, and 12-year-old Heidi Jaeger wakes up to a breeze on the back of her head. She might have had this brief, hazy moment where she embraces the Montana mountain air, but then she realizes that's all wrong. Yes, she's outside. She's camping with her family, but she's inside a tent. There shouldn't be a breeze. When she opens her eyes, it is pitch black, so she starts to feel around, and her hand actually touches grass. And when her eyes finally adjust to the darkness, she notices that there is this gaping hole sliced through the back of her tent. And her little sister, Suzie, who had been sleeping right next to her, is gone.
4:20 Ashley Flowers? Now Heidi doesn't hesitate. She runs to wake up her parents in their nearby camper. Bill and Marietta Jaeger hurry out with flashlights, hoping to see seven-year-old Suzie wandering their campsite somewhere, maybe using the restroom. But what they find causes even more panic. Suzie's stuffed animals that she'd been sleeping with are in the grass outside the back of the tent, near where the hole was. Now, they figure that she couldn't have been gone very long. It's just after 5:00 a.m. now, and Heidi tells them that she last laid eyes on her sister at 1:30 a.m. They'd both, like, woken up, chatted for a little bit before then falling back asleep.
4:55 Speaker 01 Did something wake them?
4:56 Ashley Flowers? Not that she remembers, but it's something that I've wondered about because their parents had put them to bed earlier before going to their camper to sleep. So I know that they were asleep earlier. But it seems unlikely because it wasn't just Suzie and Heidi in the tent. Two of their brothers were actually in there too. You see, the Jaeger family had an order about their campsite. So for this month-long excursion that they were on from their home in Michigan to Montana, the four youngest kids slept in the tent. Their oldest son, Dan, had a sleeping set up in the family van. Parents, Bill and Marietta, have their own camper. And even the grandparents, Marietta's parents, who are on this trip, they also have their own sleeping quarters. And no one else reported hearing anything strange in the night.
5:40 Ashley Flowers? They all stayed asleep until the family started waking them up one by one to help search for Suzie. In the book, The Lost Child, which was written by Suzie's mom, Marietta, she describes the moment that she saw Suzie's stuffed animals on the ground and the hole in the tent. And Bryn, I'm actually just gonna have you read from this sentence so people can hear directly from her.
6:04 Speaker 01 "As I stumbled around the campground searching, I was gripped by a terrible sense of separation, panic, and hopelessness in my inability to see. I remember looking up at the black night sky and begging God to send the sun. The darkness was unbearably frustrating."
6:20 Ashley Flowers? And in that moment, like desperate for a logical explanation, Marietta and Bill are asking Heidi if there was anything inside the tent that Suzie could have used to cut the hole herself. But of course, there wasn't. And right away, Marietta knows in her heart of hearts that someone has her daughter. She just hopes that they haven't gotten too far. Using flashlights, they all start searching for Suzie around the campground, even waking neighboring campers. But there is no sign of Suzie. So Suzie's dad and grandpa drive to the closest town to alert police. The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office and FBI Special Agent Pete Dunbar out of the nearby Bozeman, Montana, office rush to the campground. And right away, they see what Marietta sees.
7:04 Ashley Flowers? They search every car and building and question all the campers. A volunteer's search party forms to help look for Suzie. And as the crowd of helpful people begins to grow, the Jaeger family overhears something that must have made them even more worried for their little girl. One of the volunteers is talking to another one about the other child that was attacked at that very campground while asleep in his tent just a few years prior. So Marietta goes right to law enforcement and asks them about this. Like, what are they talking about? And they confirm this is true. Five years before, in May of 1968, 12-year-old Michael Rainey was stabbed in his tent at that same state park.
7:48 Ashley Flowers? He'd been on a Boy Scout trip and was sleeping right next to another kid. That case was never solved. And now, this seems like way more than just a coincidence that Suzie went missing from the same place. So finding her might mean actually solving two cases and preventing more, which makes the stakes all that much higher. When the light of day begins slowly creeping in, the sun reveals one more clue. Where Suzie's stuffed animals had been, they can barely make out a footpath in the dew of the grass leading away from the tent toward the parking area. There's also a rock with reddish-brown stains. This is by no means comforting to anyone,
8:32 Ashley Flowers? and this ramps up the urgency of the search. The FBI sets up a command center at the campground. Authorities start working on a BOLO for Suzie, and they rush Suzie's sleeping bag, her stuffed animals, the rock that cut part of the tent, all to their lab for testing. And they also widen the search area to include Rivers, the local dump, and the nearby towns of Three Forks and Manhattan, Montana, where they start going door to door. And all of those efforts do result in some suspect names being tossed around, mostly local oddballs. And any of them who didn't have a solid alibi for the early morning hours of June 25th were brought in for questioning and polygraphs.
9:13 Ashley Flowers? They even dispatched police to the Jaeger's home in Michigan to check their house and mail to see if anyone made any threats. And they go door to door there to find out if any neighbors had any information about Suzie or somebody who could be a threat to her. But no matter how much or where they search over the next several days, nothing is found. And mind you, this case is getting some real headlines around Montana. And Marietta is giving local reporters interviews in case it could help, thinking that someone out there had to know something. Her desperate pleas just had to reach the right person. It takes five full days before the first big development comes in. And strangely, it comes to the Denver field office of the FBI.
9:58 Speaker 01 Like Denver, Colorado.
10:00 Ashley Flowers? Yeah. They get a call at 7:00 PM on June 30th from a man who says that he is Suzie's kidnapper. And he says, "Tell someone the ransom is $25,000." But he hung up without giving any more information. Where should they take the money? When?
10:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:17 Ashley Flowers? No one knew if this was a hoax or if they should be expecting another call. But the phone didn't ring again until July 2nd. This time, not in a Denver field office, not actually in any office at all. The phone rang at the home of Gallatin County Deputy Ron Brown. The thing is, Ron Brown isn't home. Even though it's 11:16 PM, he's still out helping with Suzie's search. So his wife Jane answers. And the man says to her, "The Denver FBI must think I'm a crank. I'm raising the ransom to $50,000." And this time, he gives real instructions. He demands that the ransom be put in a suitcase in small bills and placed in the end stall of the men's restroom. At the Denver bus stop.
11:02 Speaker 01 The Denver Colorado connection.
11:04 Ashley Flowers? We're back to Denver, yeah. And this time, it feels legit because he says that he can prove he has Suzie by telling them something about her that a random stranger wouldn't know. He says that Suzie's fingernails, like on her index fingers of each hand are humped a little, like slightly deformed. And this is true of Suzie. And it's also true that a stranger wouldn't know that. I mean, it wasn't put on any of the press bulletins about this case. Actually, Marietta writes in her book that in the chaos and fear after Suzie first disappeared, they were like giving her description to the authorities and stuff, but they had like totally forgotten this detail about her. Like it was barely noticeable and Suzie was born with it. So like, again, literally she was born with it and they never thought about it anymore.
11:49 Ashley Flowers? So this caller, this is either someone who knows Suzie, knows the family and would play some kind of, like, not some kind, the cruelest hoax on them.
11:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:00 Ashley Flowers? Which seems absolutely out of the realm of possibility. Or this is really the man who kidnapped her. So once authorities are made aware of this call, they send an urgent teletype to the Denver field office to get someone to the bus depot to do surveillance. They also launch a plan to get some dummy bills together to fill a suitcase because the Jaegers don't just have $50,000 in cash laying around. And they also put a tap on Deputy Brown's phone in case the kidnapper calls back. But whoever was that called never comes to the bus depot, never picks up the cash, or I don't know if they saw the police or what, but like, that pickup never happens.
12:42 Speaker 01 Never materializes.
12:43 Ashley Flowers? No. And in the time that the sheriff's office is waiting, another crime in the area happens. And actually, it's one that I've already covered on my other show, The Deck. 20-year-old nurse Donna Lemon goes missing after last being seen buying a can of beer at a bar in Gallatin Gateway on July 5th, 1973. So this is just 10 days after Suzie and 30 miles south of Headwater State Park. Now, her case- Ends up seeing slightly more resolution than Suzie's because within four days, they end up finding Donna's body on the banks of the Snake River down in Idaho. And I say all that to say, like, while this may pull on some resources, take away from Suzie's case,
13:25 Ashley Flowers? that investigation happens like much smaller. It's much quieter as it plays out. And honestly, the most distracting part for police at the time is like they start getting tips from locals suggesting that maybe Suzie's case and Donna's case are somehow connected. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to officials, like the circumstances, the victims themselves, everything about the two cases felt very different. And none of the tips had anything concrete to point to. They were all just basically saying like, this is a really weird coincidence, like in such a small place, having two cases like this back to back.
14:00 Speaker 01 How could they not be connected?
14:01 Ashley Flowers? Right. But the investigators aren't bringing the cases together. They have a kidnapping right now and all of their effort is going into locating Suzie, hopefully alive. And the Jaeger family is doing anything they can to support. In order to feel like they're doing something helpful, they start fundraising for actual cash, should the kidnapper call back and want to follow through on the ransom demand. They also make calls and organize a reward fund for information. It's like the 1970s version of GoFundMe. And Marietta writes in her book that thanks to a major donation from an anonymous person, they actually do raise $50,000. So they are quickly ready for a call.
14:44 Ashley Flowers? A call that just never comes. Cause July becomes August and as summer comes to an end with very little in the way of legit leads, the Jaeger family has to think about heading home. They have been living at the campground this whole time, fueled by locals who brought them food and other necessities. Marietta has a whole chapter in her book titled God's Good People about how nice everyone was to them in their time of need. But I can't imagine that feeling, like packing up that long drive back to Michigan. I mean, on their way out west, everyone had been buzzing with excitement for their family adventure. Marietta had taken to doing a head count after each pit stop.
15:27 Ashley Flowers? So on the way home, not only was the tone in the van just sad, but Marietta's head count was down by one. Montana had stolen their youngest child and they were returning home without her. The other kids needed to return to school. Bill has to go back to work. Authorities assure them that they'll still be working the case, though. And they hatch a plan for the Jaegers to get a tape recorder so that if they get any calls from the kidnapper at home, they'll be recording. So the Jaegers eventually settle into a new normal in Michigan without Suzie. I don't even know that "normal" is like the right word because Marietta barely leaves the house just in case the kidnapper calls, like tape recorder at the ready.
16:09 Ashley Flowers? And the house phone does ring constantly with well wishers and psychics even offering visions. And Marietta answers every single one. It is her job now, her post, and she will not abandon it. But on September 24th, her youngest son Joe calls from catechism class. He unexpectedly needs a ride home. I guess Bill's at work, Marietta, I mean, she's at home on phone duty, but Joe is only five minutes away. So that's the moment when she rushes out to get him. And in the 10 minutes she is gone, the phone rings. Now luckily, the oldest of the Jaeger kids, 16-year-old Dan, he is home and presses record before answering the phone. And of course, this is the call.
16:55 Ashley Flowers? It's the kidnapper. I recently showed a picture to my sister-in-law of me from like 15 years ago. And she was like, "Oh, my God, look at your hair. You have a mane." And I said, "Yes, that is the hair of a young woman who has never had a baby. If you know, you know." But you wouldn't know, looking at me now, because after I had my daughter, I got really proactive about taking care of my scalp inside and out. Many of the women I knew swore by Nutriful. Nutriful is the number one dermatologist. Recommended hair growth supplement brand and it is the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. So I gave it a try and it really works wonders. The Nutraful Women's Formula has been upgraded to its most advanced version yet. It is 100%
17:39 Ashley Flowers? vegan, biotin free, and comes in a smaller capsule size to make daily routines easier. So whether you're just starting a hair health journey or taking Nutraful for years, this update offers their most advanced support yet. See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in three to six months. Right now, Nutraful is offering listeners $15 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutraful.com and enter promo code CRIMEJUNKIE. That's nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code CRIMEJUNKIE. I believe getting a great night's sleep is at the core of having a good day, not just for me,
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19:34 Ashley Flowers? The call from the kidnapper lasts only two minutes in total, and the recording no longer exists, but a transcript does. So I'm gonna have voice actors read part of it, so you can hear the exact words that the man said.
19:51 Speaker 02 Now, you're Suzie's brother, huh? Yeah. You'd like to know where she's at? Yeah, I would. Well, you're gonna have to wait a while. Why? You've had too much police and FBI activity. You may think I'm a hoax, but I know something about Suzie that nobody knows. Oh? Why don't you tell us? Okay. Fingernails of her first fingers are humped. I know that. I meant, why don't you tell us where she is? Because I can't hardly do that. It's a pretty dangerous situation, you know? Well, can't you just drop her somewhere and let us pick her up? Do you wanna come west quite a ways? Yeah, no problem there. Well, we'll make arrangements one of these days,
20:34 Speaker 02 but for right now, you're gonna have to wait a while. Why do we have to wait? 'Cause that's the way things have to be. Why? Well, 'cause a person does things like this, he can't get caught. He's gotta figure out ways not to get caught. Just drop her somewhere a day ahead of time and just leave that place. Yeah, sure. I don't wanna drop her just for nothing. Anyway, I just wanna tell you to wait a while. You'll be contacted. It may be another week, it may be a month or two months or so, but you'll get contacted.
21:11 Ashley Flowers? He's keeping them in like suspended torture. Maybe a week, maybe a month. This feels way less like finding a way out and more like he's Screwing with them. Like kinda screwing with them. I know. Were they able to trace calls like this back then, like in the 70s? They actually were, but I guess in 73, this, I mean, it takes like a few weeks to do. But the FBI finds a receipt of the call through a phone company and traces it to a payphone at a gas station diner near Cheyenne, Wyoming. But by the time they get there in like October, I mean, not only is the guy not there, but like so many people have used that payphone. Yeah, it's public. It's impossible to actually get like usable fingerprints. And nobody reports seeing any kidnapper-looking guys
21:56 Ashley Flowers? using that particular phone. Great. Now, around this same time is also when the lab results come back in of like all the stuff they sent off to the FBI, but all of that stuff is a dead end too. No prints on anything. Now, they do confirm that the substance that they saw on that rock, that like reddish brown stuff, that was human blood, but the sample wasn't even suitable for any further testing. And the only hair that they collected from the sleeping bag turns out to be consistent with Suzie's. And the cut didn't tell them anything either, other than it was cut with a sharp instrument, which like It was cut. So, there is nothing physical that is going to tie back to their guy. And if he was still looking for a way to let Suzie go and get something out of it, he hasn't found it.
22:39 Ashley Flowers? Because he never called back like he told Dan he was going to. So, the family endures the holidays without Suzie. And the end of 1973 also marks the end to any solid leads or action in the investigation. And while I'm sure nobody wants to say it out loud, there is less and less hope of finding Suzie alive. If they were to do more searches, it would probably be for remains. They just don't even know where to look. But the truth is, remains are what they would end up finding, but in the strangest way possible. Come February 1974, this is now over seven months since Suzie's kidnapping.
23:20 Ashley Flowers? The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office is faced with another missing persons case. Now, on its surface, this case looks closer to Donna Lemmons, remember her? Than it does Suzie's case, because the missing young woman, Sandy Dykman, was 19 years old and living on her own in Manhattan, Montana, which is like this small town like 10 minutes from the state park. So, her dad, John Dykman, reported her missing on Monday, February 11th. He said that Sandy hadn't been seen since Saturday night. She wasn't answering her door or her phone, and her car, this little white Ford Cortina, was missing. All of this totally not normal behavior for his daughter. Now Manhattan is a small town, so deputies taking this report are even familiar with Sandy,
24:04 Ashley Flowers? who waitresses at the Bowling Alley Cafe. So after they can't seem to find anyone who knows where she is, the sheriff organizes a search for her and her car, which aren't anywhere in this small town. So their search has to expand to the far-reaching corners of the county, which is how Deputy Don Houghton and Town Marshal Ron Skinner end up at this old abandoned ranch about a week after Sandy was last seen. And as Don and Ron are like walking around the property, something white catches their eyes in the sagebrush. It's a pair of women's underwear, and they look like they've been recently worn. So the men bag the underwear and they continue their search to a nearby barn, where they have to force their way inside.
24:49 Ashley Flowers? And peeking out from under a tarbin some hay is Sandy's little white car. Now when Don and Ron approached, they're like probably expecting to find Sandy's body, but the only thing they see when they peer through the windshield is some clothing. No sign of Sandy, not even a bloody crime scene. But this is still highly suspicious, so they bring in reinforcements to process this place over the next several days. And the FBI and the rest of the sheriff's office search almost every inch of the property, the house, the barn, the outbuildings, and it is just red flag after red flag, both in what they find and in what others bring to them. Like, one day during crime scene processing at the ranch, this local guy shows up saying
25:34 Ashley Flowers? that he found a woman's red blouse nearby. And then they find more clothes and a suitcase in Sandy's car, all of which seem to belong to her, but they don't appear to have been packed up the way that she would if she had left voluntarily. And then, in the abandoned house, they find melted candle wax in like various places, and they discover a closet that looks as if it had been nailed shut with a pile of feces in it, and a bloody whip is found in the barn, or at least they think it's blood on this whip. And then, it's on February- February 19th, that they find bones in a burn pile near the old ranch house and scattered around outside.
26:16 Ashley Flowers? They collect over a thousand pieces of bone fragments, including some teeth. The picture that's getting painted is that something very bad happened to Sandy here. But, there was still a twist yet to come for investigators. When the pathologists and anthropologists review the biological materials and bones from the ranch, they conclude without a doubt that some of the remains belong to Sandy Dykman. Yes. Specifically, it's the teeth that they compare and match to Sandy's dental records. Here's the twist. Experts say that not all of the remains belong to Sandy. There are at least two people who were reduced to a pile of ash because some of the bones
26:59 Ashley Flowers? belonged to a girl between the ages of five and eight years old.
27:03 Speaker 01 Suzie.
27:04 Ashley Flowers? It is everyone's first thought. But they have nothing as definitive to ID Suzie yet. But if it's her, this is the biggest development Suzie's case has seen in months. And it without a doubt connects Suzie and Sandy's cases. And if Sandy's killer is Suzie's killer, there is one name that actually appears in both investigations. David Meirhofer. I recently showed a picture to my sister-in-law of me from like 15 years ago and she was like, "Oh my god, look at your hair, you have a mane." And I said, "Yes, that is the hair of a young woman who has never had a baby. If you know, you know." But you wouldn't know, looking at me now, because after I had my daughter, I got really
27:49 Ashley Flowers? proactive about taking care of my scalp, inside and out. Many of the women I knew swore by Nutriful. Nutriful is the number one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it is the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. So I gave it a try, and it really works wonders. The Nutriful Women's Formula has been upgraded to its most advanced version yet. It is 100% vegan, biotin-free, and
28:18 Ashley Flowers? In a smaller capsule size to make daily routines easier. So whether you're just starting a hair health journey or taking Nutraful for years, this update offers their most advanced support yet. See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in three to six months. Right now, Nutraful is offering listeners $15 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you visit nutraful.com and enter promo code CRIMEJUNKY. That's nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code CRIMEJUNKY.
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29:52 Ashley Flowers? David Meyerhofer is a 20-something-year-old lifelong Manhattan resident, a former Boy Scout and Marine who served in Vietnam. And he is back home now, working as a self-employed carpenter in town. And David is someone who is known to them. This guy's always eager to help. He's curious, constantly asking the deputies questions about the kidnapping investigations that they were working when he sees them at the local cafe. He was one of those local oddballs that actually came up in Suzy's case. One of the guys that witnesses told the cops they should just look at early on. And they did. But David had been pretty cooperative. So back then, he's like, kinda annoying, but not really suspicious. But his name came up in Sandy's case, too,
30:37 Ashley Flowers? for two different reasons. One, he is actually the local man who just happened upon that blouse that he turned over to police by the ranch. And two, apparently, he had gone on a date with Sandy just a few months ago. And when he asked for a second date, Sandy turned him down.
30:54 Speaker 01 Okay, so there's a connection to Sandy, but how does he connect to Suzie?
30:59 Ashley Flowers? I mean, only by her bones, or probably her bones being found with Sandy and Sandy being socially connected to David. Like, it's not solid, but it's something. And they gotta start somewhere. So agents actually go and pay David a visit at his warehouse in Manhattan, which is only like a half block from where Sandy lived. And he acts as if he has nothing to hide. He agrees to even take a polygraph test and he passes. So the agents move on. But there's nothing to really move on to. The cases both just kind of hit a dead end. And they only heat back up because Agent Dunbar ends up going to Quantico, Virginia for this routine FBI training that following spring.
31:44 Ashley Flowers? And he happens to attend this session that's being put on by some agents who have psychology backgrounds. And they're talking about this like, brand new idea, how studying a crime scene could give insight into the killer themselves. And with nothing to lose, Dunbar asked them if they will take a look at Sandy and Suzie's cases. And they must see it as a worthwhile challenge, because they start to put together a psychological profile of the probable killer. They say that Suzie was probably murdered within two days of her abduction by a man who likely is white and in his twenties. He has to be at least modestly intelligent, they say. He's a loner, unmarried, and has little experience with women.
32:27 Ashley Flowers? They think he's a local guy, but has military experience and would be physically fit. He most likely has killed before, and from those murders, he's probably Souvenirs and he's likely the type that would try to insert himself into an investigation.
32:44 Speaker 01 Which the blouse hits two of those, right? Like a souvenir and inserting himself into the investigation.
32:51 Ashley Flowers? Also, the calls taunting the Jaeger family. Actually, they say he probably isn't even done doing that. Even though it's been a while, like this is their like prediction, if you want to say. They think that he is going to call again and they think it's going to be on a significant date. So with the one year anniversary of Suzie's kidnapping coming up, agents work with Marietta to make sure that she is prepared.
33:16 Speaker 01 Wait, they know this is David, right? Like I'm like checking everything off on the whole profile.
33:21 Ashley Flowers? Again, like profiling isn't proven at this point.
33:23 Speaker 01 Exact, right?
33:24 Ashley Flowers? Not even that's not exact. These local agents, it's almost like Hui, right? It's like, there's no way you can know this. It's not a proven thing. And so like they're listening to them and they're willing to like, you know, be prepared. But they are less convinced because in their mind, the thing that they know is polygraphs.
33:39 Speaker 01 Right.
33:39 Ashley Flowers? David passed a polygraph.
33:41 Speaker 01 They are known science, already cleared him.
33:43 Ashley Flowers? But they're still, they're going to move along with the plan. They let the press have access to Marietta for anniversary headlines, knowing that that might trigger the kidnapper to call her. And Marietta is prepared to play her part, though she has been haunted over this dream that she had. Like it is so vivid. She says it's like watching a movie. And in this dream, she says she sees Suzie being taken from her tent, put in a truck and waking up afraid because she's with a strange man. And the man takes her somewhere, undresses Suzie and then strangles her before dismembering her. But maybe it's just a dream. Maybe those bones of a little girl they found aren't her little girl. They still haven't proven it.
34:27 Ashley Flowers? She has to have hope, especially as the phone rings on the morning of June 25th, 1974. Now, only the transcript of this has survived from this call and it is heartbreaking to read. The caller asks if it's Suzie's mom that he's speaking to. And when she says yes, he says, well, I'm the guy who took her from you exactly a year ago to the minute. He says that she's alive, but he can't give her back because he's gotten used to her. And Brett, I don't know how, but Marietta keeps the kidnapper talking for an hour. And in that time, he says that he and Suzie have been traveling west and sightseeing.
35:10 Ashley Flowers? And Marietta is like sobbing and begs the man to give Suzie back, saying they will pay any amount. But he says it's too late for that because if he gives Suzie back, she's going to be able to identify him. But Marietta says, like, no one is going to make a child testify. Like, you don't have to worry about her identifying you because it would never make it to court.
35:29 Speaker 01 Right, it would just never happen.
35:30 Ashley Flowers? Yeah.
35:31 Speaker 01 I can't believe she's able to basically negotiate with this man.
35:36 Ashley Flowers? I know. And at one point, she actually does call his bluff, saying that she doesn't actually believe that he still has Suzie. She's like, prove it to me, like, prove to me that she's alive. But he can't. He says that he has been using psychotherapy to wipe her memory. And Marietta goes, how are you qualified to do something like that? Now, he doesn't give a real reason, so she switches tactics and she asks how he knew that Suzie was even in the tent. And he said that he'd been lurking around the campsite that night. And he had come by, heard her and her sister talking, but then he waited till they fell back asleep. And then he took her.
36:13 Speaker 01 Okay, maybe we should add never go camping to our, like, list of life rules.
36:17 Ashley Flowers? Honestly, putting your kids in a different tent is one of mine. This is not the only time something like this has happened. And something like this even happens, like, in recent memory of mine, like, it made headlines. It is rare, but it is legit nightmare fuel. Keep your kids close. Camping, just because you're out in the middle of nowhere, doesn't mean you're out in the middle of nowhere alone.
36:39 Speaker 01 Right.
36:40 Ashley Flowers? So this man tells Marietta that he has been good to Suzie and that he took her because he always wanted a little girl, which is not what a mother wants to hear. And when Marietta asks where Suzie is, at that very moment, he says that she is up in his cabin, sleeping. And when she asks again if Suzie's okay, the kidnapper says yes and talks about how he could never kill a little girl like that. And like, the man even gets emotional on the phone before hanging up.
37:09 Ashley Flowers? Now investigators study every detail of this call. This guy had a Western accent. There was no background noise, but it sounds like he's outside. And the FBI tries to trace the call, but for technical reasons, for some reason, like this time, it doesn't work. However, a few days later, they catch a lucky break because this Montana rancher notices a suspicious call on his phone bill. Suspicious because it was over an hour long and placed at 3:25 in the morning. So he goes to the telephone company in Bozeman to dispute the charge because he knows like it's not-
37:47 Speaker 01 He's like, "It's not my call."
37:48 Ashley Flowers? "I'm not paying for it." Right. And when the employee makes a copy of the bill, she notices the recipient of the call was William Jaeger of Farmington Hills, Michigan. Remember, Suzy's case was huge there in Montana. She recognizes the Jaeger name immediately. She knows this is the father of the missing girl, so she reports it to police.
38:08 Speaker 01 I mean, you said lucky break. This is like a one in a million chance of this happening.
38:14 Ashley Flowers? It's not even done. The odds get more wild from here because the farmhouse where this call was placed from, that ranch is right next to the old abandoned ranch where the human remains and Sandy Dykman's car had been found. Now, when Agent Dunbar interviews the rancher, he swears that his whole family had been asleep when the call was made, and he has no idea how that call got made because all the doors were locked, so no one could have come in and used their house phone. And there wasn't even a break-in or anything like that. But, come to think of it, the rancher had recently seen some suspicious tire tracks out on some land where he had another phone line. Now, it wasn't like an actual phone receiver that you could just like pick up and use.
38:57 Ashley Flowers? It would take someone with know-how to be able to tap into the line, but it was a possibility. Now, he's not thinking about that back then, but he had been so bothered by the tracks on their own that he had inspected them closely and noticed that they were made by a specific Goodyear tire. Tires that he knew were on the truck of his former ranch hand, David Meyerhorner.
39:20 Ashley Flowers? Agent Dunbar doesn't want to jump to conclusions.
39:23 Speaker 01 I mean, I don't think anyone's doing any jumping at this point. All roads are leading to David.
39:28 Ashley Flowers? But he doesn't want to go right to him. So first, he goes to a manager of the local phone company to figure out how someone could have tapped into the phone line. Basically, he finds out it could be done, honestly, with an ordinary phone, as long as the person was familiar with phone lines and wires. And guess who has telecom's experience from his military service?
39:48 Speaker 01 David.
39:49 Ashley Flowers? So this convinces him enough that he now needs to talk to David again. And he wants to get right to the point. We know David already passed one polygraph, but Agent Dunbar convinces him to do another one, this time using truth serum.
40:03 Speaker 01 Hello, 1974.
40:05 Ashley Flowers? I know. And by now, by the way, David has a lawyer, but he doesn't stand in the way. And Britt, he passes again.
40:12 Speaker 01 Again.
40:13 Ashley Flowers? Yes. So they let David Meirhofer leave. And once again, Agent Dunbar is convinced that David is probably not the man who killed Sandy and Suzie. But those FBI profilers, they are not so convinced. They try to make local authorities understand something about a true psychopath. Like, those kind of people can pass polygraphs all day long, even under the spell of truth serum. So it's them who pushes Agent Dunbar, just keep at David. So agents pay him another visit the next day, asking if they can search his property. And David and his lawyer say, like, sure, have at it.
40:55 Ashley Flowers? Which shocks me, though, because what agents find is incriminating and downright creepy. It turns out, David is a record keeper. Investigators find a receipt time stamped for the same day and location. Remember that first call that was made to the Jaeger House, like the one from the gas station diner in Wyoming? There's a receipt. Next, they find sheets with bloodstains. Two unused Disneyland tickets, one of which is for a child. They find a tube of lip- Stick. They find a little girl's blouse and a necklace. David also has cut out a ton of newspaper articles,
41:37 Ashley Flowers? some about the criminal investigations in which he's now the center of, and others that seem almost like a to-do list. And there actually was one in particular that stands out. There was this article about upcoming Girl Scout camps, their dates and their locations, including a hand-drawn map of Camp Silver Cloud. Now, what's so interesting about that is during the time when they had been looking at David, there had been an attack on two girls who were at that camp. They were like on a walk in the trails when this man jumped out at them, tried to strangle one with a rope before being scared off by the other. And they were never able to determine who that guy was, but now they're pretty sure they know.
42:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:19 Ashley Flowers? Then there is the actual to-do list on stationery labeled "Things to Do Today", and he wrote "easiest ways to access the camps", and wrote things like "densely wooded" and "good cover". He even had a checkmark next to Camp Silver Cloud, like dude marked it off his list, which makes the next clipping that they find scary. David had cut out a newspaper photo of a little girl named Karen Smith, who was photographed fishing with her dad.
42:53 Speaker 01 What was the date?
42:54 Ashley Flowers? So around the 4th of July, which means they weren't too late. Karen Smith was okay. And actually, even though this is an old case, our reporter Emily got a hold of Karen Smith and interviewed her for this episode. She's a grandma now, living her best life, but she says she was like five years old at the time. And the FBI sent an agent to basically be her bodyguard after this. Because, keep in mind, David is not in jail.
43:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:21 Ashley Flowers? This dude is free to roam. So she wasn't allowed to go out to recess with her friends, and this agent even crashed on the family's couch, basically around the clock protection from David Meirhofer.
43:32 Speaker 01 Wait, I like knew he wasn't in jail, but how is he not in jail after this search?
43:36 Ashley Flowers? I couldn't tell you, because nothing in the case File tells me, but Karen says she basically felt like she survived a serial killer thanks to that agent.
43:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, but like, I'm sorry, in what world are bloody sheets and a little girl's shirt, not to mention a crime to do list, honestly, not enough to arrest this guy?
43:58 Ashley Flowers? Like, this kind of gets me conspiratorial because like, why did he even let them search so easily, knowing what they would find? It's almost like he felt untouchable.
44:07 Speaker 01 That's exactly what I was going to say.
44:09 Ashley Flowers? And for some reason, he was. Apparently, David just like talks his way out of all of that stuff, saying like, oh, those sheets, those clothes, like, those were there when I bought the place. Now, I don't want to make it sound like they were just not interested in him anymore. They're still very interested. They just, I guess, don't feel like they have an airtight case.
44:31 Speaker 01 I mean, a to do list.
44:32 Ashley Flowers? I know. So they, what they do next is they arrange a voice lineup for Marietta and Bill. Because remember, they've talked to the kidnapper on the phone. They separately ID David Meirhofer as the man who had been calling their house. Still, police want more. The FBI flies the Jaegers to Montana and arranges a face to face meeting between Marietta and David Meirhofer. Again, his lawyer allows this because according to author Ron Franzel, who wrote the book Shadow Man, which was a valuable resource when looking into this case, David's lawyer still genuinely believes in his client's innocence. And David says straight to Marietta's face that he is not the man who abducted Suzie.
45:16 Ashley Flowers? But Marietta knows in her gut, she like, she knows she was just face to face with the guy who kidnapped her daughter. However, because he denies it, they tell her they can't do anything.
45:26 Speaker 01 I mean, what do you do? Like, you come all the way to Montana and they're just gonna like, let him walk out of there?
45:33 Ashley Flowers? I don't know, I don't know how, I don't know how they went back the first time and like to go back again to not like, knowing you know.
45:40 Speaker 01 Knowing you saw him.
45:41 Ashley Flowers? I, I don't know. I don't know. But they send them back to Michigan. And the FBI profiler says that if David is their guy. He will want to regain power over the situation. He's gonna call Marietta again soon. That's what they say. And they say in the meantime, they're gonna be surveilling him, watching his every move. And they do a pretty good job. But one day in late September, agents somehow lose track of them. And of course, that's exactly when the phone rings at the Jaeger house. And Marietta didn't come to play. When she accepts the long distance call, she gets right to it. And she literally says, hello, David. And listen, he tries to play dumb, like, who's David? I don't know what you're talking about.
46:24 Ashley Flowers? But Marietta is like, David, I just sat across from you. I know it's you. And he won't admit anything, but he tries to tell her he still has Suzie. And he's saying that Suzie is safe. And so she says the same thing she said all along, prove it. And that's when the voice of a little girl comes on the phone and says, this guy, he's nice and I'm sitting on his lap. Now Marietta knows her daughter's voice. Even after all this time, she would recognize it. That was not her daughter. This call triggers an intense reaction from authorities. They swarm Manhattan, Montana, but David's in the wind. Even his lawyer doesn't have tabs on him.
47:09 Ashley Flowers? And now that he seems to be on the run, the county prosecutor agrees to an arrest warrant. But within 18 hours, David reappears in town swearing that he's just like been there the whole time. But they find a piece of paper in his pocket from the motel in Salt Lake City, where they determined that last call to Marietta was made from. So now it's over. And it's almost as if he wanted to get caught. And when investigators go back and tear apart his property, looking for more, they realize they must have missed something the first time. And the most damning piece of evidence is actually packed away in David's freezer.
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50:05 Ashley Flowers? David Meyerhofer's freezer is filled with many normal things. Packages of deer, elk, frozen dinners. But among them is a package wrapped in butcher paper with the letters S M D S on the outside. And inside is Sandy Dykman's hand, fingers with nail polish severed from the palm.
50:31 Speaker 01 Wait, why didn't they find this when they searched before?
50:35 Ashley Flowers? I don't know. I guess this is their first foray into the freezer. I get the sense that like the first search was pretty surface lover. I don't know if it's because they found a decent amount of stuff. They were like, surely it's all out in the open.
50:47 Speaker 01 Maybe that's why he was fine with them looking like, you know, they didn't find it in the first search. What are you gonna find this time?
50:53 Ashley Flowers? Well, they have it now, and there is no more talking his way out of this situation. And David knows it now, too. He tells his lawyer that he will confess to killing Sandy and little Susie. But if the state agrees not to pursue the death penalty, he'll also tell them about two other murders that he got away with. On September 29th, 1974, more than a year since Susie's kidnapping, Agent Dunbar and the county attorney sit down with David Meirhofer. He admits to abducting Susie from her tent and taking her to his truck and then to the abandoned ranch. He says that he undressed her, but when he started to sexually assault her, Susie fought, so he strangled her.
51:36 Speaker 01 I mean, that's just like Marietta's dream.
51:39 Ashley Flowers? I know. He says that he ended up cutting her up and scattered the remains and then burned them, except for her head, which he put in the outhouse. And they end up finding it, just like he said. This monster tossed this little girl's head into an outhouse, which happened to be the one place at the ranch that they'd never searched. As for Sandy, he says that he went to her apartment while she was sleeping and jumped on her, strangled her, tied her up, and put tape over her mouth. And he says that she must have suffocated under the tape because while he was packing her car, he came back and just found her dead. So he took her body to the abandoned ranch and proceeded to conceal it in the same way
52:23 Ashley Flowers? that he had Suzie's: dismemberment and fire. Those two confessions weren't really a surprise to anyone. I mean, even the dismemberment part, they had kind of determined that based on the remains that they had found. The next confession, though, that one was a surprise. David said that he was the person who killed Michael Rainey, the 12-year-old boy scout who was found stabbed in his tent at the same state park but five years before Suzie was taken.
52:51 Speaker 01 That people were talking about when they were searching for Suzie.
52:54 Ashley Flowers? The thing is, he gives no explanation for this other than he wanted to take a kid.
52:59 Speaker 01 But, but he didn't take him.
53:01 Ashley Flowers? Exactly. It doesn't make much sense. And then the fourth murder that he confesses to is another curveball, because it's not like any of the other cases, and it was one that they really hadn't even been considering a homicide. It was the death of a teenage boy named Bernie Pullman back in 1967. So Bernie had been on a bridge above the river in Manhattan, Montana, when he was shot, and it had sort of been deemed an accident, like maybe Bernie caught like a wild or stray bullet from someone's hunting rifle or something. And at the time, David was just a senior in high school when that happened, and he doesn't give investigators any reason for that murder either, not that there would like be a good one.
53:43 Ashley Flowers? And listen, Agent Dunbar asks David about a few other missing and murdered Montana girls and women, including Donna Lemon, but David says he had no involvement in any of the other cases they bring up. He even denies being the hooded guy who tried to take the girls from Camp Silver Cloud.
54:03 Speaker 01 Even though that was literally on his, like,
54:06 Ashley Flowers? Marked off.
54:07 Speaker 01 Murder to-do list.
54:08 Ashley Flowers? Marked off, which like, to me, makes everything else he's saying like, less credible.
54:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:13 Ashley Flowers? And then he wouldn't even entertain the idea of talking about cases outside of Montana, even though he had lived in California during boot camp and Vietnam during his service. So who knows if David left a trail of cases in his wake?
54:25 Speaker 01 Wait, so who was the little girl on the phone?
54:29 Ashley Flowers? This is what I'm like spiraling on. He refused to talk about that too. They don't know if the voice Marietta heard was like a kid talking in real time? Maybe it was a recording?
54:41 Speaker 01 I mean, either way, doesn't that prove that he was at one point in time with another kid?
54:47 Ashley Flowers? That is still a mystery. They talked to people, at least at the hotel, right? We know he like calls Marietta that time from a hotel in Salt Lake. And they said they talked to people, but nobody remembered seeing anything odd or like they don't really point out him. So we don't know if he was like even with a kid there, was he solo there? I lean more toward the idea that this was maybe recorded because he was only out of sight for 18 hours. And I would assume that if another kid went missing in that time.
55:15 Speaker 01 And between those two locations.
55:17 Ashley Flowers? It's also 1970, right? Like maybe they don't know, like if something, but like, I don't know. To your point though, when, how he got that recording, I don't even know. Where is it now? Like he would have had it at the hotel, like maybe a recording makes even less sense. Like the thing is, I'm fully convinced this man had more victims that we just don't know about. Because remember the blouse and the necklace and like the lipstick found at his house? Here's the thing, Sandy and Suzie's parents were shown those items and they say that they didn't belong to their daughters. So those are probably souvenirs from other girls and women, which means there might have been hope to get answers for other families. Maybe they could do some kind of like plea to close out other cases that he was like most certainly connected to.
56:02 Ashley Flowers? But that never happened. Because just a few hours after his confession, David's found dead in his jail cell. He died by suicide. This man's method of murder was essentially random, which is why it is so astonishing to me that FBI profilers were able to peg him so well. I mean, they predicted the phone calls. You know, it might have been partially luck, but it paved the way for all of the criminal profiling that came after this because it made some of the doubters respect their craft a little bit more. You know, something that really bugs me about these cases is that David only called and taunted the Jaeger family.
56:45 Ashley Flowers? Like, he didn't, as far as we know, torment any of the other victims' families with phone calls. And nobody seems to know why. And actually, in the Donna Lemon case, like, when they were early on, like, oh, these are so separate, they're not connected, I think that was one of the reasons why they never connected them, or why he wasn't considered a serious suspect, because he never called her family after her murder. But then I go back to like, well, if he really only did that once, that we know of-
57:11 Speaker 01 Then why would it matter if he did?
57:13 Ashley Flowers? Why aren't we considering him in Donna's case? We know David traveled a lot. He was delivering machinery for his dad's company. He could have easily taken Donna to Idaho where she's found and left her there.
57:25 Speaker 01 And did they ever compare the stuff they found at his place to Donna? Or like, show any of that to her family?
57:31 Ashley Flowers? And that's the thing, like, not that I know of, no. And like, I kind of get, maybe all these years later, why people don't. You would think that he would have taken Donna to the same abandoned property that he took Sandy and Suzie to. And maybe that's why they're like, oh, well, they're found together. The other cases he confessed to were so long ago, like, Donna was like, in that same timeframe, he would have just taken her there. But like, I think that's looking at that, like, yeah, sure, logically, that makes sense.
57:55 Speaker 01 But that's not what we're dealing with.
57:56 Ashley Flowers? Right. We interviewed Ron Franzel for this episode, the author of Shadow Man, and he reminds us that it is a waste of time to try and apply logic and reasoning to the actions of a psychopath. But as a crime junkie, it's hard not to think about these things because somehow, I think, answers to other cases are in there somewhere. Like, why Suzie? Why then? And who else? Marietta wrote in her book that in the months leading up to their vacation that summer, as she planned their trip to Montana, she developed a healthy fear of snakes and bears invading their campsites. Never in her wildest dreams did she think that a man
58:36 Ashley Flowers? on the hunt for a child would be far worse than any animal she could ever dream of encountering. But in the end, Marietta forgave David. She went on to become an advocate for forgiveness and speaks openly against the death penalty.
59:05 Ashley Flowers? You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.
59:10 Speaker 01 And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
59:13 Ashley Flowers? We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
59:53 Ashley Flowers? Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.
1:00:02 Speaker 03 When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing: Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful, you never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
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