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[Music] [Music] They call it the Taj Mahal. It's picturesque. It's beautiful. Until
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you have to come here for a murder trial. Case 2011 CR 3314 people versus Daniel Dwalt.
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>> The last time I was in this room was to uh make a determination whether Daniel
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Dew Wild was guilty of murder. From the very beginning, it was clear that it was
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a confusing case. It was old and that uh this was a murder case involving identical twins, Dan and David DeWild.
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>> The prosecution's theory was that the two brothers conspired together to kill
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Daniel's wife, Heather, and kept it a secret from pretty much everybody. It was a case that went cold in 2003.
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[Music] My name is Robert Winer, Chief Deputy District Attorney, Jefferson County,
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Colorado, lead prosecutor on the Dwild homicide. July 24th of 2003, Heather Dew Wild was
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going over to her strange husband's house. Heather had two young children, Hannah and Jacob, and she would do
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anything for her kids. She was supposed to sign a check. She also went over to pick up a set of insurance cards for her
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children. The check was never endorsed. The cards were never picked up. She apparently arrived at the house and
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then after that she was never seen or heard from again. So, um there's no evidence that she ever left the house.
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>> You don't have any kind of murder weapon. >> Correct. You don't have any kind of
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fingerprints from any suspects. >> Correct. >> You don't have any of Heather's blood in
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the house where you believe she was murdered. >> Correct. There was no proverbial smoking
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gun to tie Daniel to Heather's murder. During testimony, we had learned that they were watching crime shows
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such like CSI and other forensic shows to figure out how to get away with murder.
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>> We got nothing. Nobody cleans a car this good. There is no evidence. >> Daniel and David would watch those shows
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and formulate their plan. And they certainly did not leave any forensic evidence.
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[Music] >> 12 of us coming here. We're getting along just fine. Then once we had to dig into the
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evidence, things changed dramatically because the nature of the case was so circumstantial and there wasn't any real
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hard physical evidence. You spend your time trying to piece it together >> and we went backwards. We went forward
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and then we started putting it up on the walls, surrounding ourselves with it. >> I had no idea how the deliberations were
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going. >> It was really difficult. People were emotional. People were getting on one
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another's nerves. >> There's a lot of pacing. There's a lot of just nervous anxiety.
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>> There was some crying. There was some some yelling that went on. >> You start thinking, okay, what are they
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thinking about? What are they hung up on? Why are they taking so long? >> We took a poll, you know, six and six,
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and where do we go from there? Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] This is basically the route I took in
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the evening to come over here to look for her. >> Dave Springer is driving the same route
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he did on July 24th, 2003. >> And I was looking between the houses. >> But on that day, the retired Denver cop
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was in a frantic search for his own daughter. When you were just driving around, what were you hoping you'd see?
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>> Maybe I would see my daughter's car move and see her somewhere. >> 30-year-old Heather Dew Wild thought
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she'd be safe going to her soon to be ex-husband's house in Edgewater, Colorado, if she took along her two
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children, Jacob and Hannah. She planned to just stop by to take care of the insurance cards and the check.
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>> I told her not to go there, and I didn't think she would, but she did. And then
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she vanished. >> As you're driving around, you have a sinking feeling. >> Yeah. I really had a bad bad feeling
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about it. >> Dave Springer says he had been worried what his son-in-law Dan Dew Wild might
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do. As the final divorce approached, >> he wanted to keep things under control, his control, and uh that was slipping
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away from him. And I think he was getting more and more desperate and more and more uh hostile. So when Heather
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didn't return after going to Dan's house, her anxious mother, Carol Springer, thought the worst and called
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him. >> He told me that she went shopping. And I says, "Well, that's not true." That's
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what I told him. I says, "No, that's not true." >> We knew immediately that was a lie.
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>> Why? >> Cuz she before she left the house, she didn't take any money with her or a
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credit card. And he said she went shopping, >> right? >> How much sense did that make to you?
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>> Well, it didn't make any sense. >> And Heather would never leave her children behind, even with their dad,
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says her sister, Rebecca Barger. >> There's no way she would leave without her kids. No way. I just instantly knew
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he did something to her. >> You were sure it was Dan? >> Mhm. Heather's mother rushed over to Dan's
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house to pick up her grandchildren. And what was going through your mind at that point?
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>> Let me get the kids and be gone. I wanted to get out of there. >> The kids, only 3 and 5 years old,
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couldn't say where their mother had gone. Local police stopped at Dan's house and looked around, but didn't find
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anything suspicious. But Heather's father, the veteran cop, was convinced something terrible had
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happened. >> Dave was obviously extremely concerned. >> The next morning, Mark Krider, a
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detective with the Denver PD, was pulled in to assist the Edgewater Police. Heather was now officially a missing
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person. >> It was a little unusual because it was a Denver police officer's daughter who was
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missing. And that does personalize a little bit more. Krider learned that after a rocky six-year marriage, Heather
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and Dan Dew were just days from finalizing their divorce. >> I had learned that the divorce was
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getting a little nasty. >> And that Dan was upset when Heather was awarded temporary custody of Jacob and
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Hannah, and he was ordered to pay child support. >> He was very angry over that because he
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thought he was going to lose his home. He couldn't pay all his bills. That's when twin brother David came to the
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rescue by moving in along with his girlfriend Roseanne to help Dan pay the bills. Born a minute and a half apart,
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Dan and David were inseparable, even working as mechanics for the transit authority.
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So, the first stop for Krider was the Dew Wild's house. Heather's husband Dan answered the door. Quickly into our
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conversation, he had mentioned that he had had an attorney, which I thought was a little odd, and his attorney told him
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that he shouldn't talk to the police. What lights in my mind is, why do you have an attorney? This is a missing
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person. We're trying to help find your wife. >> And when David Dew pulled into the
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driveway, Dan made sure his twin brother didn't talk to the police either. >> Dan walks over as if to physically grab
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his brother. And as he's walking over, he's yelling for him not to talk. He doesn't have to talk to get inside.
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I'm thinking now we don't have a missing person. We have a murder. But without the DeW's cooperation,
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Crider couldn't search their house. By the time police got a warrant, Heather had been missing for 6 days.
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Was there any sign of a a murder weapon in the house? >> No, there was not. >> Any blood?
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>> No, there was not. >> Any sign that Heather had been in there or been killed in there?
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>> No, there was no sign of that at all. >> But investigators soon learned that David was taking his Suburban 15 miles
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away to be repaired. >> Why? He's a mechanic. His brother's a mechanic. Did it pique my interest?
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Absolutely. Investigators wanted to check out the vehicle. >> What were you looking for?
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>> Uh, some form of decomposing human scent. In other words, had there been a body in there.
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>> Deputy Sheriff Al Nelson and his dogs searched the Suburban. >> They hid on the rear end. I believe it
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would be the driver's side rear door area. >> And that's the person that maybe Heather's body had been in there.
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something had been in there, right? >> Krider's next step was to confront David Dew Wild.
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>> We said, "Hey, there's the decomposing body in your vehicle." And he talked around things. He talked around things.
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And at one point, we put it to him directly and said, "Did you kill Heather?" His head's kind of down. He's
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a little emotional. He says he needs to talk to an attorney. And he walked into his house.
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>> Crider now believed that both brothers had killed Heather. And what convinced
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him even more was when one day later, David suddenly married his longtime girlfriend, Roseanne. Suddenly, you
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know, Dave says to you, "Let's get married." Doesn't that seem strange? >> It um at the time it didn't. Really, it
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didn't because I've beenounding him and then Heather went missing and it wasn't a happy time. So, you know, we didn't do
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that. And um so I I I griped a lot and then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, well, let's go get married then.
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So it didn't it didn't seem strange at all to me. >> It never occurred to you. He might be
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thinking, well, she won't be able to talk to the cops. She won't be able to testify against me if I marry her.
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>> No, I I don't know the law. >> We're looking at the rear of a white four-door
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Nissan Sentra. Two weeks after Heather disappeared, her car was found in this apartment complex just five miles from
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the Dew Wild home, but no Heather. >> Inside the rear back seat, there are two baby car seats.
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>> Crime Lab investigators searched the Nissan, but found nothing helpful. >> Each and every hour it's out in the
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environment, in the elements, we lose a little bit more evidence. When the car was found, did that make
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things worse? >> It worse. Yeah. That was uh that was a major breakdown for me right there.
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>> Why? >> You knew at that point for sure she was gone. >> One month later, Curtis Johnson was
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moving dirt on this canyon road. This is identical to what I was doing that day >> when he uncovered Heather's body.
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>> Basically, the body would have been on that side right there. This is where the
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body would have been sitting. >> Heather had been wrapped in trash bags. There was tape on her face. Her hands
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and neck were bound with rope. Her death was ruled a homicide, but her body was so decomposed, the cause of death was
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undetermined, and investigators still didn't have enough evidence to arrest either of the
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brothers. And let's be honest, detective, it really does look like they're going to get away with this.
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>> Oh, absolutely. [Music] The police were saying that they were doing what they could and they were
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looking into it. After a while, you just think, is anything ever going to happen?
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The Springer family couldn't understand why the police were dragging their feet in arresting the primary suspect in
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Heather's death, her husband, Dan Dew Wild. >> Here you are, a member of the Denver
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Police Department. How much were you allowed to know about the investigation into
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>> Absolutely nothing. At times I would think, well, they're really not doing anything. They're just telling me
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they're doing something and they're just letting it slide. You do start to lose hope, but you try to stay in there. I
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did. >> Their prayers were answered in 2005, nearly two years after Heather's murder,
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when Scott's story became Jefferson County's new district attorney. >> They just poured their hearts out about
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how frustrated they were, uh, how they yearned for justice for Heather. >> Story promised to reopen the
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investigation. When you made that promise, did you realize what you were getting yourself into?
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>> Did you have any idea? >> Not entirely. >> He assembled a task force and put investigator Russ Boatright in charge.
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>> What was it that drove you drove all of you to try to get this case solved? >> It just at first blush, I think you knew
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what what the case was. Um, and it just it seemed solvable. It seemed like it was right there at your fingertips.
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>> But after combing through 1,500 pages of reports and retesting all the forensic evidence,
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>> I don't even know how many times we went back through things and double check
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things. And we had no DNA. We really had no physical evidence. >> Not that DNA would have helped.
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Remember, Dan and Dave are identical twins. >> They could have the same DNA. So if we
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would have found, you know, one of the Dwild's hairs in that car, you know, that was not going to be the smoking gun
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piece of evidence. >> Along with the brothers, the prosecution team was also convinced that Roseanne,
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who was living in the house, had to be involved. >> We really believed that that she had to
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know what went on. She couldn't just be in that house. She just couldn't be totally ignorant of what what happened.
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There was that suspiciously timed marriage to David. >> It was the day after David is confronted
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on the front porch and told that the cadaavver dog hit on on his Suburban. >> And what Russ Boatright says Roseanne
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told others was the real reason they tied the knot. >> She had made the statement um she had to
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marry him so she couldn't testify against him. And I really I don't know what else that means other than what it
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sounds like it means. I mean, it sounds incriminate. >> Yes. >> Incriminating or not, investigators
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still didn't have enough evidence to arrest any of the DeWilds. And as the years passed, David
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Springer's frustration grew. >> How angry were you? >> Very angry. I would be screaming angry
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at times. After pleadings from the family in 2009, six years after Heather was murdered,
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Russ Boatright was assigned to the case full time. >> And that really was the turning point.
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The file would grow to 30,000 pages, filling more than 15 boxes as Boat Wright and his team methodically built a
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circumstantial case piece by piece, but clearly the killer or killers have been careful. How would you describe how this
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car was found? >> It was clean at the time. Heather's car was so clean, there was no evidence that
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she had ever been in it. >> We didn't find any evidence of Heather's DNA being present inside or outside the
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vehicle. Uh nor did we find any fingerprints or anything else to indicate that that Heather um used that
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vehicle. >> What he did have was this. >> This DVD is a copy of a videotape that we recovered from the residence. a
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sex tape that Dan and Heather made years earlier, showing Dan's fascination with
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bondage and ropes. >> What we end up seeing in this videotape um are images of Daniel tying Heather up
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in a very similar manner to how she was found. >> And this discovery, >> what we have here is Daniel's dating
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profile from an online dating service. He described himself as a widow widowerower. The trouble is Heather's
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body had not been found yet. >> What did that say? >> Well, that said he probably knew he was
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a widowerower at that point. >> While the pieces of the puzzle clearly pointed at the Dew Wilds, prosecutor
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Robert Winer still couldn't answer some important questions. >> We didn't know how she died. And you
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know, the autopsy report didn't say how she died. >> You don't even know where she died. No,
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>> you don't know exactly who killed her. >> We didn't. >> But when Winer took what evidence he had
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to a grand jury, he got an indictment. And so on December 14th, 2011, more than 8 years after Heather's body was found
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on that canyon road, Dan, David, and Roseanne De Wild were finally arrested for her murder. You still have a pretty
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weak case. >> Yeah. I mean, >> you have enough to indict these three, but now you got to you got to prove
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these three, >> right? And that was kind of my my thought is now the work begins.
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>> Dan's attorneys, Tom Ward and France Simonette, were feeling very confident as they prepared for trial. Was there
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any physical evidence that tied Dan to the death of his wife? >> Not a shred. none
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>> until they were hit with a bombshell. >> And how did that change the case for the
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two of you? >> It completely flipped it upside down. [Music] [Music] As prosecutors prepared for trial,
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district attorney Scott Story worried about their purely circumstantial case. >> In today's world,
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>> with like the CSI shows and those kinds of shows, jurors want more than just circumstantial evidence.
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>> Their best hope to somehow get one of the DeWilds to turn on the others. Investigators say it was just a matter
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of finding the weakest link. Did you think Roseanne was going to turn against her husband and her brother-in-law?
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>> I thought there was a possibility Roseanne would. >> And did she? >> No. >> Instead, in a stunning turn of events,
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it was Roseanne's husband, David, who suddenly broke down. 9 years after Heather was killed, David Dew Wild
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admitted that he hit her body after his twin brother, Dan, killed her. I just fell to pieces.
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>> Roseanne claims that until that moment, she never guessed the two brothers were
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involved in Heather's death. >> It's hard to explain my feeling. Um, denial. No, it's it's not true, but it
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was true. >> With David finally ready to talk, it fell to Russ Boatight to uncover all the
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details. According to David, Dan began planning Heather's death in April of 2003 after
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he was ordered to pay child support. >> And that's when I started to realize that this was actually a wellthoughtout
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plan. >> But why would David go through with this and help his brother? >> I think David describes it as I'm trying
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to talk him out of it most of the time. But he said when um Daniel told him, look, I'm doing this with you or without
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you. He said at that point he made a decision to help his brother. He said he knew if his brother did this on his own,
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he would get caught. >> I'm investigator Boat Right. Today's date is August 4th, 2012. Present is
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David Dew Wild. He's going to walk through what occurred um during the time that Heather was murdered. a clean
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shaven David DeWild agreed to take investigators back to the scene of the crime, the Dew Wild's garage
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to show exactly where and how Heather was killed. >> You could tell it impacted him. You
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could tell he was upset going back in there again. >> Let's start at the beginning with where
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you >> a warning. Some of what David is about to tell is disturbing to hear. >> We're going to jump ahead to the point
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where you're waiting for Heather's arrival. Okay. Okay. >> According to the plan, Heather and the
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kids arrived at noon on July 24th, 2003. As Dan went to meet them, David says he
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tried to stop his brother. >> And I I stop him right when he's walking up and I'm in his way and I say, "Dan,
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don't do this." But he was very calm. >> As the children played in the house, Heather followed her husband Dan into
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the garage. Prosecutor Robert Winer believes Dan lured her there with a promise to return the sex tape the
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couple had made. >> He knew he had to use something to get her into that garage. And that was that
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tape because she wanted that tape back. >> The door opens. Heather walks through
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and she says, "What did you want to show me out here?" And my brother walks through, closes the
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door, grabs her by like both shoulders, throws her down hard, and she it just hit her like like pretty
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hard where she didn't know that was going to happen. And then she goes to get up like this
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and she looks at me and I look at her. >> At that moment, David could have stopped
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Heather's murder. But he didn't. >> She knew something was going to happen, was just about to happen, and kind of
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looked to him to say, you know, help me here. And he said, I didn't do anything.
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I didn't do a thing to help her. >> And he takes a mallet off the counter and this she's trying to get back up.
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Whacks her. Drops. He tosses a hammer down. He takes his noose, puts it around her neck.
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>> Dan then hanged Heather from the rafters. >> I guess cinches it up, comes over and pulls on the rope.
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>> My jaw dropped. Are you kidding me? At that point, he began to stage her body
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by tying her and making it look like it was a bonded sex act gone bad. Daniel proceeds to place her body in trash
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bags. >> As Heather's children continued to play elsewhere in the house, David abandoned
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Heather's car at the apartment complex parking lot. By the time David returned, Dan had already placed his wife's body
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in the back of the Suburban. >> In there, and I just just make sure she's not breathing or anything, you
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know. I just I put my hand on her is what I remember. Okay. As David tells it, the brothers were
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bound by their terrible secret. And he revealed how he and Dan managed to erase all evidence of Heather's brutal murder.
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>> They were watching crime shows, the CSI type shows, any any crime shows that they could watch and learn.
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So, they double gloved. They had two sets of gloves on because they didn't want to leave any trace evidence. They
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didn't want to leave blood. >> I'd say it was a single strike to the head. Explains the lack of spatter at
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the scene. First hits free. Killer knew what he was doing. >> And Heather's body might never have been
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found if David had made it to a pre-planned burial site. Instead, transmission problems with his Suburban
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forced him to hide her along that canyon road where Curtis Johnson discovered her.
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The prosecution believed they finally knew how Heather had been killed. But could they trust David?
00:27:00
>> I mean, David's lied for nine years. Um, >> he's a liar. >> He is a liar, and he's certainly capable
00:27:05
of lying. >> So, before they gave him a deal, David had to pass a polygraph. How did he do?
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>> He passed on the issues as far as killing Heather. But were there some areas that he he
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failed or that were in? >> He had he had some issues on some other questions, primarily the involvement of
00:27:26
others >> on the issue of Roseanne. >> Yes. >> But Roseanne will not go on trial after
00:27:32
all. Although prosecutors maintain she was not part of any deal. After spending more than eight months in jail, all
00:27:40
charges against her were dismissed for lack of evidence. Do you have any regret about putting her in jail for eight
00:27:49
months? >> Oh, no. I was uh very uh confident that uh after the fact that she had some
00:27:55
knowledge and that very likely she had some participation of one degree or another. Um we just couldn't prove it
00:28:02
beyond a reasonable doubt. >> It's hard to believe that a woman who was in the house when Heather was killed
00:28:08
and was married to one of the killers would know nothing, see nothing. But that's exactly what Roseanne says.
00:28:17
Roseanne, did you have anything to do with Heather's death and her disappearance?
00:28:22
>> I did not. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't know anything. >> You think there's still some people who
00:28:28
think you do? >> I'm sure. >> As they head to trial, the prosecution is counting on David to convict his twin
00:28:38
brother. >> I mean, it's kind of like dancing with the devil >> in this situation. We I guess had agreed
00:28:44
to make a deal with the devil's twin. [Laughter] N and a half years after Heather Dew
00:29:02
Wild was murdered, her husband Dan finally goes on trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse.
00:29:09
Defense attorney Tom Ward. There was a kind of tension in the air that I've never felt in a courtroom before.
00:29:18
>> There are no cameras allowed, but the courtroom is packed. >> I was worried. I didn't know what I was
00:29:24
going to find out. >> The state's most important witness, David Dew Wild, is about to testify
00:29:32
against his identical twin brother. Without forensic evidence, the whole case rides on David. I watched him come
00:29:39
in and I was um holding my fingers and crossing my toes. And >> prosecutor Robert Winer, you saw him
00:29:49
look at his brother. >> Yeah. >> And you're wondering, "Oh my gosh, will he lose his nerve?"
00:29:54
>> That's exactly what I was thinking. And then I asked him, "Who killed Heather?"
00:29:59
>> And what did David say? >> He pointed to his brother. David tells the court that it was his
00:30:05
twin brother who killed his wife in the garage and that he just went along with it. But Dan's defense attorney claims
00:30:12
his client is completely innocent. That Dan never knew where Heather went after she left his house on July 24th, 2003.
00:30:22
>> She didn't say exactly where she was going. He expected her back in a couple of hours and she never came back and he
00:30:28
didn't know what happened to her. The story Dan told was always consistent. It never changed.
00:30:35
>> In fact, Dan's defense is that it's David who killed Heather. Just look at David's actions that day.
00:30:43
>> David, by his own admission, uh, is responsible for getting rid of the car. He's responsible for getting rid of the
00:30:51
body. All of those things are very hard to believe that someone would do if they
00:30:55
weren't the perpetrator. But why would David kill his brother's wife? >> David Dew Wild uh says that he always
00:31:06
felt that Heather was attracted to him, that there was a possibility that after Dan and Heather's divorce was final,
00:31:12
that he and Heather would be able to get together. There's no other evidence of any of this besides uh what David Dew
00:31:20
Wild says about it. So, I question whether he had some sort of an obsession with Heather
00:31:26
>> and he killed her because she wouldn't respond to him. >> It's possible. >> But prosecutor Winer says that's absurd.
00:31:34
>> I don't think there's any way David could have done it by himself. In looking at the dynamics, it became
00:31:40
pretty clear that David was set up by Daniel. Daniel is the controlling one. David wasn't going to lose his house.
00:31:48
Daniel was losing his house. David had absolutely no motive, none whatsoever, to to kill Heather.
00:31:54
>> What's more, says Winer, why would a man who got away with a murder for almost a
00:31:59
decade suddenly tell investigators a story where he implicates himself? >> He throws himself under the bus more
00:32:06
than anybody else does. He could have very easily fashioned a story that made this look like an accident. But defense
00:32:13
attorney Tom Ward claims David turned against his brother Dan because he got a great plea deal. Instead of life, he got
00:32:22
just 12 years. >> He was able to give a statement that completely pinned the entire murder on
00:32:28
his brother Dan and at the same time completely exonerated his wife Roseanne, whose case was dismissed.
00:32:35
>> What's more, Ward says it's David who has a history of violence. He was married once before and attacked his
00:32:43
wife. >> David at one point tried to choke his wife and had his hands around her neck
00:32:49
until she passed out and said, "Next time I'll kill you, bitch." >> The jury won't hear the most shocking
00:32:55
claim David makes against his twin brother. He says that Dan proposed teaming up to kill each other's
00:33:03
ex-wives. That in Dan's mind, committing murder beats paying child support. >> I was shocked when David told me that. I
00:33:14
thought, "You have got to be kidding me." Apparently, Daniel, according to David, had had worked the whole thing
00:33:19
out in his head. >> The judge rules that information is just too prejuditial. Instead, it's left to prosecutor Winer
00:33:27
in his closing to remind the jury which twin he's convinced was pulling the strings. Dan Dew Wild is a cool,
00:33:36
calculated killer. >> On Friday, November 16th, 2012, after a 2-week trial, the case goes to the jury.
00:33:49
>> One of the first things we did was take kind of a straw poll. There were six people who voted that they weren't sure
00:33:54
and six people who thought straight away he was guilty. >> As time goes, I'm getting more and more
00:33:59
nervous. Are you worried that the jury is just going to not know who actually killed
00:34:06
Heather? Yes, that occurred to me in the courtroom that it's going to be a problem and it
00:34:13
was [Music] on the second day of deliberations. The vote is now 10 guilty, two not sure.
00:34:37
>> The two jurors came back and they were completely shut down. They said, "We don't think that there's enough
00:34:44
evidence." >> The holdouts wouldn't talk to us, but the others say it all comes down to
00:34:51
David Dew Wild's credibility. Did he downplay his own involvement in Heather's murder to get a plea deal and
00:34:59
get his wife Roseanne out of prison? They felt that David had too much to gain. So, David could have done it. And
00:35:06
I think the point that the other 10 of us had arrived at was it didn't matter at that point in time because they were
00:35:12
both involved. >> I think they must have felt like they needed to know exactly what happened and
00:35:17
they had to have a piece of direct evidence of that happening. >> Yeah. >> And the rest of us didn't. It wasn't
00:35:22
their job to connect the dots. >> The prosecutors had to do it for them. >> I was incredibly frustrated because I
00:35:29
had committed to think for myself and I felt that they didn't do their duty. >> The jurors are able to agree on two
00:35:38
lesser charges. They all believe that Dan Dewild planned to kill his wife and that he helped cover up the crime, but
00:35:46
they're hopelessly deadlocked on whether Dan is the twin who murdered Heather. Darren, how heated did it get?
00:35:53
>> I walked out and I said, "If you guys are truly done, then we need to go back
00:35:57
and tell him that we're done." >> How did you all feel when you went into the courtroom?
00:36:01
>> I was angry, >> discouraged. >> Dan Dewald is convicted only of conspiracy, an accessory to murder.
00:36:09
Jurors failed to convict him of firstdegree murder. >> What was your reaction? >> We're doing it again.
00:36:18
>> Oh, right away. >> Oh, absolutely. What were you feeling? >> Pretty disappointed.
00:36:25
>> Yeah. >> He was convicted on two counts. He's going to prison for a while. >> Mhm.
00:36:31
>> Yeah. But he'll get out and that's a problem. >> You want him to go away for life,
00:36:37
>> right? We've been fighting this long. We'll keep fighting. >> The plan is to retry Dan Dwild on
00:36:44
first-degree murder. But just one month later, fearful of ending up in prison with no
00:36:51
chance of parole, Dan takes a deal and pleads guilty to seconddegree murder. [Music]
00:37:04
On February 28th, 2013, Dan Dew Wild is back in Judge Christopher Munch's courtroom.
00:37:11
>> Let's call Keepa versus Daniel Dw. This time, cameras are allowed. >> Today, we're here for sentencing.
00:37:19
>> Dan De Wild comes as close as he ever has to admitting he killed his wife. >> I pled guilty to knowingly causing the
00:37:27
death of another person. >> He also agrees not to appeal. >> You're giving up the right to appeal.
00:37:34
You understand? Judge Munch has nothing kind to say about the father who destroyed so many lives, including the
00:37:42
children he claims to love. >> He killed their mother. He did it brutally and then he lied about it for
00:37:50
years. >> I'd just like to say that Daniel destroyed the life of his children. He
00:37:56
destroyed the life of his own family members. All for an unnecessary greed and ego
00:38:05
that accomplished nothing. >> Come on, you guys. >> Not in the courtroom are the children.
00:38:14
Jacob and Hannah are now teenagers living with their grandparents who are raising them the way they think their
00:38:21
daughter would. >> Do you sometimes think about how much she missed out on with her kids?
00:38:27
>> Of course. >> Of course. Yeah. All the time. And I always think, you know, how proud she'd
00:38:31
be. [Music] >> After almost a decade, Heather's family wonders if they'll finally hear from the
00:38:39
man who caused so much heartache. >> You have the right to say anything you want me to consider. Now, if you don't
00:38:45
want to say anything, you don't have to. >> Dan Dew Wild has a chance to apologize,
00:38:50
much like his twin brother did in the same courtroom weeks earlier. >> You know, David did apologize to the
00:38:57
Springers. I feel horrible about the pain. All I can say is I'm sorry. I'm just sorry for all the pain it caused.
00:39:04
>> Daniel never did. Never did. >> Is it true that you do not want to exercise that right?
00:39:10
>> That's true. >> It would have taken nothing for Daniel at sentencing just to turn to the
00:39:14
Springer family and just say, "I'm sorry. It's just not in Daniel's character to do that."
00:39:19
>> Do you think Daniel feels any remorse? >> No. In fact, David Dew Wild told investigator Russ Boatright he believes
00:39:29
Dan enjoyed inflicting pain on Heather's family. >> He thought Daniel went to bed every
00:39:34
night knowing that Dave Springer thought he killed his daughter and couldn't prove it. And he said, "Daniel, I know
00:39:41
got satisfaction from that." >> The defendant then is remanded to be delivered to the Department of
00:39:46
Corrections to serve his sentence. Judge Munch sentences Dan De Wild to 74 years
00:39:54
in prison. >> I'm glad he got the length of sentence he did and he deserved more, but that's
00:39:59
it. >> It has taken Scott's story eight years, his entire two terms as district attorney to get justice for Heather. Was
00:40:09
it worth it? >> It's absolutely worth it. Many times politicians can't can't fulfill their
00:40:15
promises. This is one promise that was kept. >> But the question remains, just how close
00:40:27
did Dan Dew Wild come to getting away with murder? If David had not testified if he had not turned on his brother,
00:40:35
could you have convicted Dan? >> Based on the evidence we saw without that, I don't know that I could have.
00:40:42
>> I don't think any jury would have probably found him guilty. Those two men would have gotten away with murder.
00:40:48
>> Probably. >> Probably. Yeah. [Music] >> CBS Next. >> We talk about our physical health. She
00:41:08
was just a little spitfire. There are 17 impact wounds. It's passionate. It's premeditated. It's
00:41:17
cold. >> Must be some mad man out there. 48 hours crime time double feature continues next
00:41:24
on CBS.