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Before we begin, just a trigger warning. The following episode contains references to graphic physical violence.
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Please listen with care. >> We lost our matriarch. I lost the love of my life. When Victoria Herd found out her beloved
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mother Claudia and stepfather Chip had been killed, her whole world fell apart. >> She was my world. She was she was the
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past and the future and that's changed now. >> She couldn't imagine someone stabbing
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Chip and Claudia dozens of times. But even when Victoria and her daughter Sarah arrived at the funeral home, they
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had no idea just how brutal the murders actually were. So, as they planned the burial, Sarah and Victoria asked to see
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Claudia's body. >> And we were very persistent about wanting to see her. Really just having a
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clarification like that that is my grandmother that died. It's my mom that died. And I need to know that. I don't
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want to just believe it because somebody told me, >> right? >> And we went to the funeral home and the
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the woman there, she was like, "You you can't see her." >> No one at the funeral home would explain
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why they couldn't see Claudia, who Sarah affectionately called Granza. And the woman at the funeral home told
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us that they needed at least 24 hours before we could see Granza. >> So they waited the 24 hours and then
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finally were brought into the room with Claudia's body. >> They called in a specialist from UC
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Davis. I found all out all this after the fact to do a reconstruction on my mother and
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she was beautiful when we saw her. >> Yes, >> she looked like herself. >> It would be more than a year before they
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learned the full truth that Chip and Claudia had been stabbed a combined 128 times.
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>> To this day, I am amazed. Yeah. >> You know, what I know now, it's >> she she looked like the grand I knew she
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did. >> I mean, >> she did. They washed her hair. The makeup artist >> did amazing.
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>> Amazing. >> Her little hands, her little feet, you know. >> Victoria remembered that her mother
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Claudia had always said she didn't want a viewing when she died. But I felt at the time that we as a family under the
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circumstances needed to have that moment of closure with her. So it was closed to
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the public. But it was just our family >> and it was just a few of us. >> It was just a few of us chose to say
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goodbye that way. But I I am grateful to that woman. They said they stayed up all night and put her back together.
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Roughly two weeks after that small private viewing, the family held a memorial service to celebrate Chip and
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Claudia's lives at the Unitarian Universalist Church. [Music] But even as the grieving family members
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were saying last goodbyes, they were also contending with another problem. Police were beginning to suspect that
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one of them might be the killer. We would try and question them. We try and get information, but they were very
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tight lipped. They weren't saying anything, but they were looking at members of your own family.
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>> Yeah, they were. [Music] >> I'm 48 hours correspondent Aaron Morardi. This is 15 inside the Daniel Marsh
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murders. Episode two, unanswered questions. >> Normally, if you have a crime that's
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committed with that much passion and anger, a lot of times it it it just happens. It's a crime of opportunity um
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or an escalating argument, maybe. Uh so, you know, in this case, we just we weren't finding much.
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Davis police Lieutenant Paul Durishev was assigned early on to the murder investigation of Claudia Mopin and Chip
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Northup. It was an all hands on deck situation. The department only had about 100
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employees total and this was the first murder case the city of Davis had in nearly 2 years.
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[Music] What impact did it have on the officers, you and everyone else investigating? I
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heard it was it it it had an impact that there were officers who really even had
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to talk about it because it was such a horrific scene. >> Yeah. I don't And it's not just the
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scene. I think it's the scene plus the loss when you're dealing with the family that you could never replace that loss.
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and um I think a lot of frustration because we weren't solving it right away. You know, a lot of homicides we
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clear fairly quickly. >> So I assume then if if you see you see a scene that appears to be driven by rage,
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you look at members of the family >> or people close to um the victim in any way, shape, or form.
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In most murder cases, officials start their investigation with people close to the victims, not necessarily as
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suspects, although it's a fact that most victims are killed by people they know.
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But in this case, police were trying to create a complete picture of the situation.
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They talked to all of Chip and Claudia's family members who lived in Davis. One was Chip's daughter, Mary Northup. Mary
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was as perplexed by the murders as the police were. >> Well, first you need to understand that
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I didn't know how gruesome the murder was. >> So, the police didn't tell you. >> They told me they were stabbed. I got
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the death certificate where it said multiple stabbed death within minutes. So, I knew that it wasn't good or easy.
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Even though Chip and Claudia's window screen had been cut, police told Mary they thought the killer had a different
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point of entry. >> I said, "So, had they left the slider open? Is that what the problem? Is that
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how he got in?" And the police said, "No, all the doors were locked from the inside." So, we think it was somebody
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with a key. And I was like, "No, I had a key to their place." But just since I lived in Davis, it was
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convenient if they didn't if they lost their keys, Mary could come let them in. >> Mary thought the police had a theory
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that a person with a key cut a hole in the window screen to make it look like a breakin.
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>> If you come up with that theory, then you have to look at family members or close friends that they might have
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shared a key with, right? I was very worried that they were going to just make an arrest of someone in the family
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because believe me, this was the talk of the town. You know, I would go to the store
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and people could come up to me and they would be crying and saying, "We're not safe anymore." You know, so I know there
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felt an urgent need to do something to try to solve this. My name's Robert Northup and Chip
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Northup was my father and I also knew Claudia very well and we all live we all lived together in the same town so I was
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close to both of them. >> Mary's brother Robert also lived in Davis with his adult son Tony. Tony's
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brother Oliver lived nearby. At the time of the murders, Tony was 28 and Oliver was just a year older. I spoke to Robert
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and Oliver 5 years after that in 2018. The two sat next to each other, shouldertosh shoulder. They were both
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softspoken and a bit hesitant in their answers. They looked somber and stoic. Oliver spoke gently about his
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relationship with his grandfather, the man he was actually named after. >> Yeah, I was named after him. My mom
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chose that name. He was my grandfather and uh is he is probably the best grandfather I could have had.
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Oliver and his brother Tony spent a lot of time with their grandfather going on camping trips, eating dinner, and they
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grew close with Claudia after she joined their family. >> Oh, she's very, very loving towards me
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and very caring, and she treated me very nicely. I guess not necessarily like a stepg grandmother,
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more like her own grandson. and then some. >> Oliver's dad, Robert, had been the first
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one to check on Chip and Claudia's house when they didn't show up to church. He only found out what really happened
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after receiving a call the morning after the murders. >> So, I just I had just gotten the news
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and I came back and I uh told Oliver and he and I were both in the kitchen. We just started sobbing for a moment.
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>> What did you think? >> You know, at at my initial reaction, I didn't even go that far with it. I was
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just in disbelief that it you know, like this can't be right. This is somebody's
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somebody's got their facts wrong. This can't this can't be what really happened cuz cuz nobody would have done such a
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thing. >> Robert remembered that soon after hearing the news, he and his sons were
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called into the police station. At first, Robert understood that this was all part of the usual procedure.
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>> I well, I wasn't surprised at all that it began. You know, I thought, okay, yeah, that makes sense. They have to
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look at every possibility. And I kept thinking, well, my father would would want us to cooperate in every way. And,
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you know, the sooner they the sooner they realize it wasn't us, the sooner they can start looking in the right
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places. >> They wanted to be as helpful as possible. >> That first day, it was about 8 hours of
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questioning. the next day was another six. It was just day after day, long hours of questioning.
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>> Mhm. >> But then, in addition to interrogating the family at length, Davis police began
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to scour Robert's home and belongings for evidence. There they found something that made them suspicious.
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Now, it didn't help, did it, that you had just had the carpet cleaned. So much was made of that. Not just that
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had I just I just rented the carpet cleaner and uh yeah it was bad timing. I didn't I didn't
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anticipate that that would be the same weekend my father got murdered. >> And what did they think when they heard
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you had just cleaned the carpet? >> It looked like I was covering up removing evidence.
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>> Officers were having a hard time finding any evidence connected to the crime. So,
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a newly cleaned carpet. That looked like one of their best clues. If Robert had committed the crime, police thought they
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might find blood in that carpet. Maybe it had seeped into the floor below. Or maybe they'd find evidence that someone
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had tried to flush down the toilet. >> And I mean, the search, just tell me what the search did to your house.
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Well, they did find some blood stains and then they cut out the carpet. They took out some of the plumbing fixtures
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looking for things that might have been put in the drain. Um, and in the course of moving things around, they well, they
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did some damage and they also took out a little bit of flooring. >> Investigators thought they had really
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found something until the blood turned out to be Robert's son Tony's blood. Robert kept cooperating, hoping the
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police would finally be satisfied and leave them alone. But the suspicion and the questions seemed endless.
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>> You said that you would you would have expected that they look at your family
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for 24 hours, but it went longer. How much longer did it go? >> 6 weeks. Seven. >> It wasn't just Robert who was under
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suspicion. Police had their eyes on his two sons, Tony and Oliver. >> Here you had just lost your grandparents
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and all of a sudden the police are questioning you. How tough was that? >> It wasn't a good experience.
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>> That's Oliver who went through hours of interrogation. Now, at one point they did I think there
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was like a a good cop bad cop routine or something, but I had volunteered. I agreed to to help out with the
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investigation. >> Oliver had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. His brother Tony was a year younger.
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Tony had volunteered for the US Army and even served in the California Conservation Corps for a year. But Tony
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may have had his own struggles. Investigators had found a disturbing drawing, an image of a man with a knife
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standing over two children in a bed. It had been drawn by Tony. Investigators zeroed in on the two
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brothers, but there was still no physical evidence connecting them to the murders, only circumstantial
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theories. Were you worried that as time went on and they didn't have any evidence and
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they didn't have any suspects that they might arrest one of your sons? >> I was I was worried that possibly
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one of my sons could be arrested. I didn't think there was the slightest chance that he could ever be charged or
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indicted or certainly not convicted. Other members of my family became so concerned that they uh kind of insisted
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on getting a criminal defense attorney for my younger son. This was weeks into the investigation after well we've
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already voluntarily cooperated with dozens I'm I'm not exaggerating dozens of hours of questioning.
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>> Oliver told me that the pressure on him and his brother wore them down. >> Were you scared?
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>> Very nervous. >> What was your fear? What was your fear at that point? I was tired of it and I
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didn't want to be blamed for something I didn't do. Is this horrifying? >> And his father, Robert, shared those
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same fears. >> I mostly fear that the suspicion would have never gone away. The case would
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have never been closed and and we would have remained just the only the only real suspects. Mhm.
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>> I mean, was there Did you feel that other people in the community were wondering about your family? Did you
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feel it, Oliver? Did you feel like >> I was worried that people might have had the wrong idea about me?
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>> And what's that feel like? >> Alone. The Northups began to feel they had to prove their innocence, not only to the
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police, but to everyone around them in the Davis community. >> Our neighbors saw a dozen uniformed
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officers go in and do an 8-hour search and and they knew that they knew what it was related to. Well, they must be
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suspects in this murder. >> According to Robert, the investigation ended up costing his family tens of
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thousands of dollars. They had to replace the carpet, plumbing fixtures, and the flooring that was
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pulled up and taken as evidence. They lost work opportunities when their computers were seized.
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Insurance covered some of the costs, but not all. And it certainly didn't touch the emotional damages they suffered.
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>> You kind of laugh about it now. >> Kind of. But what was that really like to go through?
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a nightmare. >> Through it all, however, the family's faith in Oliver and Tony's innocence
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never wavered. [Music] The only thing I can say is that they were the three of them. They're not
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violent. None of them. >> To Mary, the police had it all wrong. There was no chance Robert or his sons
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would kill Chip and Claudia. >> My father was always providing emotional support for all three of them. He's the
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last person they would have tried to kill. >> Do you think that the police were listening to other members of the family
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saying that when you told them that when there's no way it could >> there? They obviously didn't listen to
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me. Uh because I told them there isn't anybody in the family that would have done this. There was nothing that would
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have warranted murder. There just wasn't. I was very angry because they took the
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members of the family that needed more emotional support. They put them under a great deal of pressure.
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>> Mary broke it down plain and simple. I don't mean some flippant, but my father was 87. But honestly, why wait
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and kill him at 87 if he's just a, you know, five years or so away from death anyway? You waited this long, wait a
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little longer if it were a family member. I'm just speaking logically. It made no sense that at this point in
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time, a family member would kill him. There wasn't any money involved. There wasn't anything that my father would
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have given to that day that he wouldn't still have later. And the longer the investigation went on without any
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arrests, the more uneasy the family became. [Music] >> And it did create problems within the
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family. And you know, I not I don't know how much it was just the investigation. It
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the difficulty of living in the town, waking up every day wondering, you know, what's going to happen today? Is
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everybody still alive? that kind of a thing. >> What a horrible thing to go through.
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>> I don't think we have a a vocabulary that can really describe it. >> I think in this case we were just sort
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of stumped and because how weird the murder scene was. Lieutenant Paul Durashav and the rest of the Davis
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police had spent weeks investigating the case, but they had found nothing but weak circumstantial evidence and
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theories that weren't panning out. Maybe the family wasn't involved after all. I think we all thought there was a
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possibility it was some kind of throw kill and there's this u suspect out there. is not connected to the victims,
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which was probably our worst fear because at that point, you know, how do you keep people safe if someone out
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there is like that? >> So, they decided to call in a specialized FBI team. >> A crime such as this, that's more of an
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interior motive where this person has a fantasy. That's the one that the profilers really
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can sink their teeth into. FBI special agent Chris Campion led the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
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in Sacramento. >> The way I like to explain it to people is if you ever watch the TV shows where
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the profilers from Quantico get off the plane and meet the agent in the field, that's me.
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>> Special Agent Campion's team was 25 agents in total. They specialize in analysis of violent crimes and
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behavioral aspects of criminal investigations. I would do the prep work. I would screen
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the cases. If we can help with the police or sheriff's departments that are uh asking us for help, then we'll help
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them. But when it gets time for the profilers to be involved, then we would be the ones that would help package the
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case up and present it to the profilers in Quanico. Through his experience, Special Asia Campion knew what details
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were important to share and showcase. >> Some of the really kind of outlandish factors here is the post-mortem cutting.
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You don't see that a lot after the victim's already dead for them to be the offender to be cutting and experimenting
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apparently with the uh the dead body. And then the placement of the objects he placed, I think it was a phone um inside
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the the wife and then glass inside the husband. That's weird. >> I mean, had you ever run into anything
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like that before? >> We had not run into that. >> With Campion's expertise, the FBI
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started building out a profile as fast as they could with a few facts they had been given.
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We thought we were looking for somebody who was probably between 20 and 30, probably a white male, probably lived
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close by or had some kind of reason to be in the neighborhood. And we thought that this person would have had some
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precursor crimes that he would have had prior assault or even, you know, at least a burglary or maybe even something
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much more minor like a peeping, you know, or some kind of a trespass case. What were the factors that made you
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think it would be someone between 20 and 30, white male with a criminal history?
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>> The profilers back at Quantico see thousands and thousands of cases. They've interviewed offenders in prison.
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They have data um sets that um they coalate and it's not an exact science. I mean, we're talking about probabilities
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here. [Music] Even after bringing in a special team, investigators were still unable to pin
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down a primary suspect. In the end, it wasn't the profile they had developed, but a surprise tip that pointed them in
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the direction they needed to go. >> Davis, place emergency. >> Uh, can this be anonymous?
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Two months after Chip Northup and Claudia Mppen were murdered, the Davis Police Department got a 911 call.
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>> What are you reporting? >> Double homicide. Um, the double homicide that happened in April this year.
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>> You have like the suspect information? >> Yes, I have. I know him. I know every He
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told me everything that happened, everything he did, like all the little details.
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That's next time on 15 inside the Daniel Marsh murders. This series was reported by me, Aaron
00:24:42
Morardi. Alan Pang is our producer, Mora Walls is our story editor, and Jamie Benson is the senior producer. Megan
00:24:53
Marcus is the vice president of podcast editorial for CBS. Special thanks to 48 hours executive
00:25:01
producer Judy Tyiggard along with 48 hours producers Judy Ryback, Stephanie Slifer, and Greg Fiser from Goat Rodeo.
00:25:12
This podcast was written and produced by Carara Schillin, Max Johnston, Jay Venibals, Isabelle Kirby McGawan, Megan
00:25:21
Nadulski, and Ian Enright. Additional reporting and recording by Cara Schillin. Our executive producers
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at Goat Rodeo are Megan Nadulski and Ian Enright. Original theme in music by Hans
00:25:38
Delshi with additional music from Paramount. Final mix by Rebecca Sidell. Then Fulton is our fact checker. Our
00:25:48
production manager is Carara Schillin. I'm Aaron Morardi. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to give it a rating
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and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. If you liked 15
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Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders, check out the rest of our 48 hours podcasts by searching 48 hours on your favorite
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podcast app. Thanks for listening. [Music]