00:00:00
Tonight on Dateline. We had a brutal murder, personal to so many people in Aspen.
00:00:09
That house has this story to tell. Are we going to be able to figure out what that story is?
00:00:15
Oh my god. Oh no. I was going in shock, hyperventilating. Hard to get that image out of your mind.
00:00:26
It is. There are no words for it, you know. Nancy was part of Aspen's history. This appeared to come out of the blue.
00:00:35
Yes, a crime that occurred while she was sleeping. I didn't believe this for last ever.
00:00:40
There's no way she saw what she said she saw. It looked like a setup. It really did look like a setup.
00:00:46
A murder in a secluded chalet sends shivers through a glamorous ski town. Took my world and just flipped it upside down.
00:00:55
I started praying that the truth would be revealed. We were all wrong. Everybody was wrong in this case.
00:01:03
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with While She Was Sleeping.
00:01:18
My, my friend! Oh my, my friend! Oh my God! My, my friend! The Cold Night, February 2014
00:01:30
He's not! He's so smart! 9-1-1 callers can often be hysterical. This one was all but incomprehensible.
00:01:40
I got my friend in the closet! He's dead! But then, this sort of thing just doesn't happen to people like the one now lying dead in the closet.
00:01:55
And certainly not in the caller's zip code. We don't see very many homicides in Pitkin County.
00:02:02
But there are moments when no place is safe. No person. Not the storied victim. Not her secure and pampered Shangri-La in the snow.
00:02:11
There are no words for it. you know, when a childhood friend dies. Yes, and Nancy Pfister, life of the party,
00:02:20
confidant of bellhops and billionaires. Who would want to harm her? And why? Aspen, Colorado.
00:02:39
The tiny municipal airport here tells a story. in the long line of private jets parked and waiting for their well-heeled owners
00:02:47
to come down from their mountainside chalets. Their beginner castles, as the late Nancy Pfister used to call them.
00:02:56
Half playfully, of course, these were her friends, as were the passing tourists and ski bums and busboys and just about everybody.
00:03:07
Mary Conover met Nancy when they were both teenagers. You cannot come to this town without meeting Nancy.
00:03:14
Come on, really? Everybody met Nancy at one point or another. I'll be showing you all the rich and famous people that I know.
00:03:21
Including a French TV crew, Nancy gave them a tour of Aspen Glitz. And this is where all the rich and famous people come in their private jet.
00:03:32
I've never known another person like her. As joyful and outsized personality and all of that that she was, she had a very deep and soulful connection to the world.
00:03:47
Some special sauce in Nancy Pfister. And when she smiled. It was just pure radiance, you know, it was just beaming.
00:03:56
Billy Clayton was perhaps closer to Nancy than anybody, almost like a brother. It was like she had a secret, and she wanted to share it with you.
00:04:03
And that secret was, let's all lighten up and have fun and enjoy life and be grateful.
00:04:10
Nancy had reason to be grateful. She was born into a legendary Aspen family, bit like local royalty.
00:04:16
Her father, Art Pfister, made a fortune when he turned his ranch into the Buttermilk Ski Resort.
00:04:22
And her mother, Betty, was a World War II pilot who, in later years, flew a helicopter, parked it in her driveway.
00:04:30
And Nancy? Stories about Nancy would fill a book, like the one about how she met Jack Nicholson.
00:04:37
A convertible pulled up and asked them directions. And Nancy said, well, I'll take you there, but I want to ride in that nice car of yours.
00:04:45
And the next thing you know, she and Jack are best friends. This is the house of Jack Nicholson.
00:04:52
Nancy could and did live any way she wanted, out loud. Many, many times when I just thought we were going to have a normal day,
00:05:00
she would say, let's go to St. Bart's or let's go to Hawaii or let's go somewhere.
00:05:04
And I'd go, okay. But a relationship with the impulsive and gregarious Nancy, Billy had to admit, came with a price.
00:05:11
Your business was her business. Your stuff was her stuff. Sometimes she just expected her friends to give her the stuff she wanted.
00:05:19
It was quite a job to love Nancy. Quite a job to love Nancy. Yeah, she would do things she felt were okay at any time.
00:05:33
So, after what happened to her, flies on a carcass. The tabloids feasted on the gossip and half-truths that flew around town.
00:05:43
She was a spoiled, wild child, they howled. Jack Nicholson's party girl, Hunter S. Thompson's drinking buddy,
00:05:49
an incurable flirt once engaged to Michael Douglas. All very breathless these stories about the quote Aspen socialite And insulting said her friends didn paint Nancy character accurately at all
00:06:06
Some people collect famous people as friends, and it's important to them to be able to, you know, talk about them.
00:06:12
Definitely not her. Show them all, you know? Mm-mm. She had a lot of famous friends.
00:06:16
She had a lot of friends who were not famous. She treated everyone the same way.
00:06:21
She had a very genuine connection with people. She didn't have the entitlement that made a snooty little rich kid or something.
00:06:29
She had an entitlement that every day of life was precious and should be lived to the fullest.
00:06:36
Nancy was a traveling philanthropist, a devoted environmentalist. She had a daughter, too, Juliana, born when Nancy was 29.
00:06:45
And sometimes she took Juliana with her when she traveled, but sometimes she didn't.
00:06:50
Nancy had a lot of very close friends and people who loved Juliana, and, you know, we all raised our children together.
00:06:58
Unusual? Oh, certainly. But... She just truly, deeply loved Juliana and did feel that this was her greatest role of her life, was to be a mother.
00:07:11
Thing is, Nancy Pfister trusted people, even with the care of her own daughter, with her house, with her money.
00:07:19
Like the teller she happened to meet in her local bank. She loved people, you know, all kinds.
00:07:25
It didn't matter who you were. Kathy Carpenter was that teller. And one day, out of the blue, Nancy asked her to lunch.
00:07:34
Kathy accepted and learned firsthand another of Nancy's hallmark traits. She was sometimes brutally honest.
00:07:43
No edit button? No edit button, I like that, yes. No edit button. And she actually, when I first met her, told me that I was very fat.
00:07:51
What a thing to say to somebody when you first meet them, though. Hi, be my friend. You're fat.
00:07:56
Yeah, well, you're fat. You're beautiful, but you're fat. So she was blunt, undiplomatic, but irresistible.
00:08:05
By the time lunch was over, Nancy and Kathy were fast friends. Just how Nancy was.
00:08:11
Like when she made plans to leave town for the winter, She decided to rent her house to a retired doctor and his horticulturalist wife, total strangers, whom she befriended in a heartbeat, actually invited them to move in a month early.
00:08:25
And so she and Dr. Trey Styler and his wife, who also happened to be named Nancy, they all lived together like roommates.
00:08:33
She kind of said, I'm going to take you under my wing and have you meet all my friends, and I know a lot of people around here.
00:08:39
But now, in February 2014, at just 57, Nancy Pfister was gone. Murdered. Apparently in her own bed.
00:08:51
While the grief was still very fresh, much of Aspen crowded into the storied Hotel Jerome
00:08:57
for a memorial that was more like a goodbye party. However she died, we needed to celebrate her life.
00:09:05
That's what she would have wanted. Because her life was a celebration. Except one person, notably absent from the overflow crowd in the Jerome, wasn't celebrating,
00:09:15
but certainly could hear the music and laughter that burst out of hotel windows that night
00:09:20
and drifted down the street and into a particular cell in the county jail. When we come back, what had happened to Nancy Pfister?
00:09:34
The awful discovery that launched this Aspen mystery. Oh my God, no! Hard to get that image out of your mind.
00:09:46
It is. That house has this story to tell. And are we going to be able to figure out what that story is?
00:10:09
Aspen, Colorado, February 2014. Any February is the center of the universe for a certain crowd that is.
00:10:18
That year as always an avalanche of skiers crowded onto lifts and filled the restaurants and bars and shops that line Aspen's carefully tended avenues.
00:10:29
A lovely if pricey skiing heaven. Except that is for Nancy Pfister. It used to be really different in the old days.
00:10:39
but now it has gotten more towards the champagne. Did she ever think of leaving here permanently?
00:10:44
I know she was away a lot. She thought of it all the time. She thought about it because Aspen's changed so much.
00:10:50
It's not that sleepy little town. There's traffic. I got stuck in traffic today.
00:10:54
With her daughter Juliana grown and out of the house by then, Nancy, at the peak of the ski season,
00:10:59
had no reason to winter in Aspen, which is why she rented her house to that retired doctor and his wife from Denver
00:11:06
while she sipped her champagne in warmer climes that year, Australia. So it was a surprise when that February she notified her friend she was coming home early.
00:11:17
She arrived in Aspen Saturday, the 22nd of February. Kathy Carpenter picked her up at the airport.
00:11:24
I hung out with her that evening, helped her unpack, kind of get organized. How was it to have her back?
00:11:30
It was wonderful. It was fun. She shared a lot of her video clips that she took on her trip.
00:11:36
Did you stay over the weekend? I did. She asked me if I would stay with her. So I did.
00:11:42
On Monday morning, February 24th, Kathy got up early and left for work, leaving Nancy and her dog Gabe at the house.
00:11:50
Knowing Nancy would need peace and quiet to get over her jet lag, she put a note on the front door asking would visitors to leave Nancy alone She did not want to be disturbed Nancy Pfister never wanted to be disturbed when she slept Right You do not call her you do not wake her
00:12:07
She always slept with her earplugs and her eye mask, everything shut, close the door,
00:12:13
and do not disturb. Billy Clayton also left Nancy alone, but felt much better just knowing she was home.
00:12:21
I worried about her constantly when she was away from Aspen. But when she returned to Aspen, I didn't worry about her.
00:12:28
I would relax. I sent her an email. There was a photo of my four-year-old son to Aunt Nancy.
00:12:35
We're so glad you're home because when you're home, we don't worry about you and everything's good.
00:12:41
But Billy didn't hear back. Not a word. And then on Wednesday, the people who'd been renting Nancy's house called Kathy.
00:12:48
They'd moved out quickly on Nancy's return, had been going back and forth to the house all week,
00:12:53
clearing out the last of their stuff. And they found it odd that they hadn't seen Nancy.
00:12:58
Not once. So, this is Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and you still hadn't seen her?
00:13:05
Still hadn't seen her. But they did see Nancy's dog, Gabe. And then I went and called Kathy
00:13:11
and said, this dog has been alone for two days. It's clear that she hasn't been back.
00:13:17
I was concerned because normally that's not Nancy's behavior. She would call me and ask me to pick the dog up.
00:13:24
So after work, Kathy drove up to Nancy's place in Buttermilk Mountain to check on her friend.
00:13:29
What was it like when you went inside the house? I called her name out and Gabe was there. He was happy to see me.
00:13:35
But Nancy wasn't there. Kathy checked her bedroom. You know, the stuff that was there that I unpacked, you know, it was clear, cleaned up.
00:13:48
And when I turned, went to the closet, it was locked. Was it usually locked? No.
00:13:55
Not, I mean, not with Nancy Pfister home. Kathy knew that when Nancy rented her house, she kept her personal belongings locked in a closet in the master bedroom.
00:14:04
But she and Kathy had unlocked it when she got home. At that point, I just, I was not feeling comfortable.
00:14:10
Something was not right. Kathy, who often housed that for Nancy, had a spare key,
00:14:14
but it was back at her house, so she went home, got the key, returned, opened the closet door.
00:14:21
When I opened that door, that odor is so overwhelming. It hit me in the face, and I looked down, and I could see the shape.
00:14:33
A shape hidden under a pile of blankets and coverings, But with one glimpse, Kathy just knew, she said, it was Nancy Pfister.
00:14:43
Hard to get that image out of your mind. It is. It's kind of stuck there. It is.
00:14:56
Kathy fled the house, got in her car, called 911. Oh, my God. No. No! It's pretty desolate up there, so I jumped in the car and I thought,
00:15:06
I'll just drive down the hill and get to the police department. I don't know. Her hysterics made it very hard for the dispatcher to comprehend exactly what was going on.
00:15:18
Can you get near your friend? No, no, I can't. Then, finally, understanding. The dispatcher told Kathy, pull over, wait for the first responders.
00:15:29
I want you to pull over and put your flashers on. When the police arrived, I stepped out of the vehicle.
00:15:37
I think I was going into shock, hyperventilating. Dash cam video shows a distraught Kathy as she was taken to the hospital.
00:15:45
And sheriff's deputies arrived on Buttermilk Mountain to look in that room and confront a mystery.
00:15:52
That house, and that room in particular, has this story to tell. And are we going to be able to figure out what that story is?
00:16:02
Coming up... They knew they were looking for a body. The discovery in the closet.
00:16:08
Who was behind it? Hard to do that alone. It is awkward and difficult to move a body.
00:16:14
More than one suspect, and maybe more than one killer, when Dateline continues. Lisa Miller, then the DA's investigator for the county that includes Aspen,
00:16:36
is a tall, rangy woman with an impish grin that looks like it's hiding a secret.
00:16:42
Investigator Miller was in an unfamiliar situation up here on Buttermilk Mountain.
00:16:46
Murder in Aspen? This doesn't happen. or hadn't at least in more than a decade. I was a little surprised that we had a murder in Aspen.
00:16:57
And being called to a person's home like Nancy Pfister, I should think, especially so.
00:17:02
Correct. And yet here she was in Nancy's living room looking out the big picture window.
00:17:09
The juxtaposition of arriving at that house and taking a look at this beautiful scenery
00:17:15
and then knowing an act of terrible violence had occurred just down the hallway.
00:17:21
Though in the bedroom, she saw surprisingly little evidence of it. There was a small blood smear on the headboard.
00:17:28
There was a couple small droplets of blood on the carpet and a little bit of a spatter on the wall.
00:17:38
And the body in the closet? Well, when first responders opened the door... They knew they were looking for a body.
00:17:46
And they opened the door and they look inside and they didn't immediately recognize the body.
00:17:52
You just looked down and you saw white coverings And underneath those coverings Ms Pfister had been bound with extension cord She had multiple plastic bags over her head that had been bound and secured tightly
00:18:09
And then another large, one of the tear-resistant, darker-colored bags over her body also.
00:18:16
With blankets wrapped all around that. Investigator Miller could clearly see that the killer, whoever it was,
00:18:22
had gone to a lot of trouble to hide what he or she had done. But there was no hiding now.
00:18:28
When the crime scene personnel started taking a look, they flipped the mattress and found blood on the bottom part of the mattress.
00:18:39
So it was clear. Nancy was killed on the bed, dragged to the closet, stashed there, wrapped up like a mummy.
00:18:46
Then whoever did it took the extra trouble to flip the mattress in an effort to hide the soaked-in pool of blood.
00:18:54
Deputy District Attorney Andrea Bryan started working on the case on the night Nancy's body was found.
00:18:59
We learned that she had died from blunt force trauma to the head, and it appeared she had had several blows to the head.
00:19:06
Any defensive wounds? No. So this appeared to come out of the blue for her. It did appear to be, yes, a premeditated crime that occurred while she was sleeping.
00:19:16
It looked as if it happened early Monday morning, and then the body lay in the closet undiscovered until Wednesday evening.
00:19:23
The investigators began compiling a list of possible suspects. The long list. None of us really lived like Nancy, so open.
00:19:32
I mean, she was totally open to strangers. That openness made Nancy friends everywhere she went, said Billy.
00:19:39
But when Nancy opened herself up, people didn't always like what came out. Say whatever she thought.
00:19:46
Say what she thought. Did she realize she was going to maybe make a negative impression sometimes when she did that?
00:19:54
Well, she definitely pissed people off. There's no doubt about that. Many times I could just see people's steam coming out of their ears and they're thinking,
00:20:03
no one's ever talked to me like that before. But her thinking was someone should have a long time ago.
00:20:10
No question Nancy rubbed some people the wrong way. Spoke her mind a bit too often, maybe.
00:20:15
Treated friends a little like her personal servants sometimes. Like Kathy, for example.
00:20:21
Did she treat you more like a friend or like she was your boss? You know, friends, and just depending on the day.
00:20:29
And some days, you know, she would boss me around, and I would express how I felt, and she always apologized.
00:20:35
And her friends forgave, because they loved Nancy for who she was. But investigators now had to figure out if someone in Nancy's life had stopped loving her,
00:20:45
or if she had simply opened herself up to the wrong person. We're working diligently at that point to follow up on other leads that were coming in.
00:20:56
Like? Leads of other people in the community that may have had some resentment towards Nancy Pfister.
00:21:04
Like perhaps a jilted lover? Might one of them have harbored some hidden rage? Her friends knew that the irrepressible Nancy was also a woman who fell in and out of love, often.
00:21:18
Usually Nancy's affairs or romances didn't last a long time. Because there were some stories about there was a jilted lover somewhere, somebody I didn't know.
00:21:30
So when I heard that, I thought, you know, there's crazy people out there. And I said, let's follow it up, because you never know.
00:21:36
Could be, you know. But no. No actual jilted lovers in Nancy's past, just rumor and unfounded innuendo.
00:21:45
And besides, after taking in the bedroom crime scene, the investigators decided they were not looking for a killer.
00:21:52
Hard to do that alone, carry a body around like that, flip a queen-size mattress.
00:21:58
The mattress is doable, but it would be awkward for a single person to flip the mattress on their own.
00:22:05
and they use the term dead weight for a reason. I mean, it is awkward and difficult to move a body.
00:22:14
But it seemed like a pretty clear indication of more than one person. Yes, that was our conclusion.
00:22:21
Something else, since there was no sign of forced entry, her killer, or killers as they now believe,
00:22:28
must have had a house key. Now, who might that be? The investigation was literally closer to home now.
00:22:50
That is to say, the detectives investigating the murder of Nancy Pfister began looking at anybody who had access without permission to Nancy's house.
00:22:59
That is, people with a key. For example, the couple who had been renting the place while Nancy was in Australia, Dr. William Trey Steiler, and his wife, also named Nancy, were hardly likely suspects, but they had to start somewhere.
00:23:14
Mr. Steiler is an anesthesiologist. Mrs. Steiler, from all accounts, was an intelligent woman herself.
00:23:21
Trey and Nancy met in the anesthesiology department at a Denver hospital. He a resident, and she an instructor.
00:23:27
I heard him go up to a woman on a gurney and say, Hello, I'm Dr. Steiler. I'll take care of you as though I were taking care of my mother, and I love my mother.
00:23:38
The gentle doctor chaired his anesthesiology department by the time he retired. They lived in an upscale area of Denver.
00:23:47
Their shared hobby was growing the gasp-inducing giant Victoria water lily. Their unusual level of success at that, or skill,
00:23:56
brought them world-renowned within the rarefied world of specialized botany. In fact, you two of you lived kind of a charmed existence for quite a while.
00:24:05
We did. Had 25 years of a life that I used to say I would never trade with anyone.
00:24:11
But right around the year 2000, it all began to fall apart. Trey got sick and had to quit practicing medicine. His attempt to start a medical support business
00:24:21
failed. He sued his medical group and lost. He sued the lawyer who took his life savings and
00:24:28
got nothing. He had to sell his house. He moved with Nancy into a rental where they were poisoned,
00:24:36
said Nancy, and very nearly fatally by carbon monoxide. Again, they tried to sue,
00:24:41
but were too broke to hire an attorney. And he was beside himself, suicidal, just,
00:24:49
you know, I can't believe what I did to the family, losing all this income. And I said,
00:24:56
you know, we can do this. And so I thought of Aspen, that we loved Aspen. Aspen, fresh mountain
00:25:05
air, a fresh start. They could open a spa, they decided. And that's when Nancy Styler picked up
00:25:12
the phone to answer another Nancy's real estate ad in the local newspaper, Nancy Pfister's ad.
00:25:18
She said, oh, excuse me, I was just watering my greenhouse. I said, you know, I would love to have
00:25:24
a greenhouse. And so we went up there and it just seemed perfect. Seemed perfect to Nancy Pfister,
00:25:32
too. Her share of the family fortune was doled out in regular but limited allowances. And by
00:25:37
renting her multi-million dollar house with the billion dollar views, she would have extra cash
00:25:42
for her upcoming trip to Australia. So no formal lease, just a handshake. The rent was $4,000 a
00:25:49
month. It was a lot of money, but not for Aspen. Nancy asked her good friend Kathy to help the
00:25:55
renters take care of her dog while she was away, collect the rent, and be her general go-between.
00:26:01
She really liked these people. She said that she felt that they had really great karma.
00:26:08
And that's part of the reason why she invited them to move in a full month before she left.
00:26:13
But it wasn't long before the stylers discovered that living with Nancy Pfister was not quite like they thought it might be.
00:26:22
After the first couple of days, she treated me like a slave. Like, get my cigarettes, get this, get my drink.
00:26:31
And I was not used to being so disrespected. Treated like a slave, though? A slave. It was not pretty.
00:26:40
You know, I told her that is how Nancy is. Don't take it personal. She comes off this way and that, you know, she really has a good heart.
00:26:51
Anyway, Nancy left soon enough for Australia. But then the stylist discovered the house wasn't so perfect after all.
00:26:59
So when I went to clean out the master bedroom and bathroom, I realized the hot water was rusty.
00:27:07
The dishwasher didn't work. The stove didn't work. Once again, the stylers sought redress.
00:27:14
They decided to withhold rent until those things were fixed. Nancy Pfister, half a world away, was not happy.
00:27:22
What'd she say? That she felt that these people were cons, squatters, and she wanted them out.
00:27:30
Kathy was caught in the middle. She arranged the repairs. The stylers paid the money they owed.
00:27:35
Gave Kathy $6,000 in cash that she put in a safe deposit box for Nancy. But the relationship between landlord and tenants had soured to the point that no amount of karma could preserve it.
00:27:47
And at that point, Nancy Steiler said, I don't want to stay. We will be out February 22nd.
00:27:53
How did Nancy Pfister feel about that? She was fine with it. She wanted them out.
00:28:00
Unable to find new tenants now, Nancy Pfister was faced with doing exactly what she hoped to avoid when she went to Australia.
00:28:08
spending peak ski season in Aspen. She got home February 22nd, the very day the stylers said they'd be done moving their stuff out.
00:28:17
The problem was, they weren't. She was not happy. You know, she had a few choice words, but she accepted it.
00:28:26
She was tired, jet lagged. She wanted to come home, see her dog. The stylers ended up in a motel in Basalt about 25 minutes away.
00:28:34
They stopped by the house again a few times during the week to get their things,
00:28:39
saw the dog, but not Nancy, and made that first alarming call to Kathy that something seemed wrong.
00:28:46
And when Kathy found the body, knowing better than anyone about the tension between the Stylers and Nancy Pfister,
00:28:53
she made sure to clue in investigators. She had some people living there, and she really pissed them off,
00:29:00
and she made threats to them without owing money. So, time for investigators to visit that motel
00:29:10
and meet the stylers. Coming up... I said, I haven't done anything wrong. From motel room to interrogation room,
00:29:20
investigators were fishing. You did this, man. You did it. What would they catch when Dateline continues?
00:29:30
Basalt, Colorado. Just down the highway from Aspen, you could see the same mountains breathe the same air.
00:29:46
But when Trey and Nancy Steiler checked into their motel, they were entering a world far beneath the rarefied heights
00:29:53
of Nancy Pfister mountainside retreat No billionaire starter castles here This is where many of the people who work in Aspen live And here the Stylers thought they were done with Nancy Pfister moving on And then there was
00:30:08
a knock at the door, 5.30 a.m. It was sheriff's deputies. They had questions, they said, about a
00:30:15
dead body. And I said, what dead body? And he wouldn't tell me. Who died? Wouldn't say a word.
00:30:24
The deputies escorted them to the back seats of separate cars, but said not a word as they drove down to the station.
00:30:31
Nancy listened to the chatter on the radio. I heard her sister's names being mentioned on the police radio, Nancy's sister's names.
00:30:41
And I thought, well, it must be something to do with Nancy. At the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, deputies put Nancy and Trey in different interview rooms.
00:30:50
And he had read me my Miranda rights beforehand, and I said, I don't need an attorney.
00:30:58
I said, I haven't done anything wrong. I said, I'll be happy to answer questions.
00:31:02
Which were, at least to begin with, pretty basic. Where did you and Faye come from?
00:31:07
We're from Denver. We met at the University of Colorado Medical School. They asked me if I knew any of the men that she, you know, had dated,
00:31:20
if I knew anyone that would want her dead. She didn't think it was that sort of thing at all, said Nancy.
00:31:26
She told the detective she was pretty sure she knew exactly what happened to Nancy Pfister.
00:31:30
I said, you're going to find the tox report. You're going to find out that she committed suicide.
00:31:36
I was absolutely sure that that's what happened. But of course, investigators knew Nancy Pfister did not die by suicide.
00:31:45
They knew someone beat her to death, attacked her as she slept, and they knew all about the rental arrangement that started well and went to hell.
00:31:54
And about the Stiler's rapid fall from success to ruination. Their financial situation was dire, and he was trying to pawn a very nice ring.
00:32:04
He was a desperate man. He was very desperate. it. They also knew from Kathy Carpenter how angry Nancy Steiler was at Nancy Pfister.
00:32:14
What kinds of things did she say? Just that I hate that woman. You know, Nancy Steiler was upset.
00:32:21
I could kill her. She did say that. I could just kill that woman. Did Nancy Steiler admit
00:32:26
that she had threatened Nancy Pfister? That she'd said, you know, I'd like to kill her.
00:32:33
She was, I think, pretty open about her feelings for Nancy Pfister, and she made some statements that were certainly consistent with that.
00:32:42
I said, you know, I would like to wring her neck because she is such a drunk and making me so crazy.
00:32:51
Nancy Stiler's personal opinion of Nancy Pfister had soured to such a degree she did not hesitate to speak ill of the dead,
00:32:59
whether true or not. There's not one person who said a nice thing about her Not one person
00:33:06
Investigators put Dr. Styler in a separate room They dressed him in an orange jumpsuit
00:33:11
Even though he wasn't under arrest And they asked a few softball questions But it wasn't long before the tone changed
00:33:25
And the accusations began Why did you go in there and hurt Nancy? Maybe you don't even know, but I know it's true.
00:33:33
I know it's true. The sheriff himself, a close friend to the late Nancy Pfister,
00:33:38
tried to get Trey Stiler to admit that in a desperate rage, he killed Nancy. You did this, man. You did it.
00:33:46
And the quicker you start saying that, the better this is going to be. But Trey insisted.
00:33:51
They were going after the wrong guy. He was innocent. How can you know it's true when it's not true?
00:33:56
Over and over, Trey stressed and demonstrated how his 65-year-old body, ravaged by disease, was far too frail to have done what was done to Nancy.
00:34:12
But it had already dawned on detectives. The more Trey claimed to be physically incapable.
00:34:23
The worse it looked for his wife. We definitely had to look at the fact that he had assistance, potentially.
00:34:31
My wife does everything. I'm disabled. I can't do s***. Trey still insisted, took a polygraph. Maybe he shouldn't have.
00:34:43
He failed his polygraph? Yes, he did fail his polygraph. You're smiling. Failed it badly or what?
00:34:50
My understanding from the polygrapher that's around the test, he did fail it badly.
00:34:55
Not admissible in court, but an investigative tool, they say, didn't look good for the Stylers.
00:35:01
But desperation and anger do not by themselves a murder case make. And to make things a little extra difficult,
00:35:09
investigators knew they couldn't count on DNA at the scene to link the Stylers to the crime.
00:35:14
It could easily be explained because of where they were living. They were staying in that bedroom.
00:35:21
So the investigators drove the Stylers back to their motel and went on with the hard work of a murder investigation.
00:35:27
They'd have to find a piece of good, solid evidence to tie someone, maybe the Stylers, to the crime.
00:35:34
Didn't look so far as if such a thing existed. And then? Occasionally, something fortuitous happens to law enforcement.
00:35:44
How's that old saying go? One man's trash is another man's treasure. The End Something was wrong with the equation didn it
00:36:06
Here in Aspen, in the house on Buttermilk Mountain, the crime scene around Nancy Pfister's body spoke in a way.
00:36:14
It told a story. And what it said was that at least two able-bodied people committed the murder.
00:36:21
How else would a heavy mattress get flipped? and Nancy's body get dragged across the room and into the closet
00:36:27
and get packaged in bags and wrapped up in blankets. And yet their suspects, Nancy's former tenants,
00:36:33
were not able-bodied spring chickens, anything but athletic. And besides, there was zero physical evidence
00:36:41
that would tie either one of them to the crime. I think we were faced with the reality
00:36:47
that this was always going to be a circumstantial case. So, that bedroom was keeping its secrets.
00:36:55
And might be keeping them still. Except for one total fluke. A couple of days later, one of those little gifts that chance or fade or something
00:37:05
just drops at a frustrated investigator's feet. All tied up with a neat little bow.
00:37:13
What do you got here? This is not just a standard trash thing. No, um, this broke the case.
00:37:25
How weirdly fluky was this? The town of Basalt, who knew, had a rule that you can't put personal garbage in public trash cans.
00:37:33
And a city worker, a little extra diligent, happened to be poking around in the trash,
00:37:38
just randomly checking for illegal garbage disposal. Tell me what this guy did and how he came across this stuff.
00:37:46
He pulls the trash, and then he goes to another location. He was going to actually check it to see if there was any...
00:37:52
Something stood out about him. Actually, does this stuff? People check it. Opens a bag.
00:37:58
And he did. And thank goodness he did, because when he opened the bag, he looks inside and he sees a prescription pill bottle.
00:38:05
And what was special about this prescription pill bottle is it had Nancy Pfister's name on it.
00:38:11
Of course, the city worker recognized the name. Aspen and the towns around it were buzzing with news about Nancy Pfister's murder.
00:38:19
In addition to that pill bottle, after which he phoned the police, what did you guys find in that bag?
00:38:25
Well, in addition to the pill bottle, the big one was a hammer, a bloody hammer.
00:38:29
A bloody hammer found in the same trash as medication belonging to Nancy Pfister?
00:38:35
That simply couldn't be a coincidence. Police were 99% sure they'd stumbled on the murder weapon.
00:38:42
They sent it off to the crime lab to be tested ASAP. But the trash bag wasn't done divulging its investigative gifts.
00:38:52
Another thing that we found that was concerning to us was the vehicle registration for William and Nancy Stiler's Jaguar.
00:39:00
What's more, the trash bin was located just behind the motel where the Stilers were staying.
00:39:06
And that was miles and miles away from Nancy Pfister's house. Again, as we say, a little gift, actually a big fat juicy gift,
00:39:15
dropped right into investigators' laps, and it, no question, linked the Stylers to the crime.
00:39:21
I cannot think of any other time, any other case I've ever heard about, where such obvious evidence is just kind of there.
00:39:30
Thrown out, carelessly, so close to where suspects are staying, yeah. Deputies hovered around the motel to keep an eye on the stylers
00:39:39
to make sure they didn't do a disappearing act. Well, they and the DA waited for the lab to test the hammer.
00:39:46
And then, three days later, another insanely improbable discovery. The key was found on the ground. It was right before the trash can.
00:39:55
Right there, just a few feet from the door of the stylers' motel room, was the owner's key to the closet in which Nancy Pfister's body was found,
00:40:04
lying around as if the stylers intended to throw it in the trash, but dropped it by mistake.
00:40:10
Just lying on the ground? On the ground, on the lighter portion of the concrete is where it was found.
00:40:16
And then that very same day, as if to punctuate the whole strange affair, the DNA results came back.
00:40:23
And? Nancy Pfister's DNA was on the hammer, so we were able to pretty clearly say that that was the murder weapon.
00:40:32
The murder weapon, the key, and a motive. Pretty much everything they needed to pin the crime on the Stylers.
00:40:40
It was March 3rd, 2014, not even a week since Nancy Pfister's body was found. They knocked on the door.
00:40:48
I stepped out of the door and they said, we're arresting you for murder one. And slapped the cuffs on me and took me away.
00:40:56
They let my husband out in my bathrobe. What is it like for a woman who had led a very successful life, who traveled around doing lectures on Victoria Lilies to societies of like-minded horticulturalists?
00:41:12
To be in jail. To be in jail. For murder. It was a shock. It was a shock for some of Nancy Pfister's friends, too.
00:41:22
Like Mary Conover. The Stylers? Really? It was just a big surprise, and not knowing anything about these people, it just seemed outrageous why you would do something like that.
00:41:35
But Kathy Carpenter, who pointed her suspicious finger at the stylers right after the murder, practically jumped for joy.
00:41:42
When I heard that, I was joyful that they found the person who murdered Nancy, and, you know, I just felt that there was justice.
00:41:51
and swift justice at that. What a relief to all those souls Nancy collected who loved her like family I was relieved that you know this is done But could one of the biggest crimes in Aspen history really be solved that fast
00:42:08
With so little drama? Of course not. Looked like a setup to you. It looked like a setup.
00:42:15
It really did look like a setup. Coming up, rethinking the case. Something doesn't add up.
00:42:22
Oh my God! Bizarre is the only way I can characterize that 911 call. A call now becomes a clue.
00:42:31
He's dead full of blood. There's no way she saw what she said she saw. When Dateline continues.
00:42:49
It was a quick business here in Aspen, Colorado, not even a week after Nancy Pfister's body was found in her own closet.
00:42:57
Her renters were led away in handcuffs. But was it too quick, too easy? It looked fishy to me.
00:43:06
Fishy? Fishy. Nancy Stiler's attorney, Beth Krulwich. Is she how? In terms of, you've got a very well-respected physician
00:43:16
who's now being accused of murder, and it was inconceivable to me that he would have killed somebody.
00:43:26
Plus, the elderly man they led away wrapped in his wife's blue bathrobe, looked far too frail and weak to bludgeon a woman to death,
00:43:34
carry her body, wrap it up, flip a mattress. And then been stupid enough to take the murder weapon,
00:43:42
some pill bottles with the victim's name on them, his vehicle registration and insurance,
00:43:48
package it all up in one bag, and then put it in a dumpster that was close to the botel he was staying at.
00:43:54
Made zero sense to me. It also made zero sense that Trey's accomplice was his diminutive 62-year-old wife, Nancy.
00:44:03
Even though she did actually say she could just kill that Nancy Pfister, but then lots of people around town said similar things
00:44:10
about the outspoken Miss Pfister at some point or another, Not meaning it literally.
00:44:16
I could see where she could be sitting around with Kathy Carpenter and they could be commiserating about, you know,
00:44:21
what Nancy Pfister did or didn't do or what she had said or the way they had been treated.
00:44:26
And she could have said something like, you know, gee, you know, I'd like to kill her.
00:44:30
But, you know, listen, that's not evidence of first-degree murder. Besides, Nancy Styler was more than open about it.
00:44:40
We've all said that about someone at some other, you know, I'd like to kill him or something like that, but not.
00:44:48
Not ever thinking, you know, taking it that far. Yes, I did say that. But no, I didn't kill her.
00:44:55
And if it wasn't Nancy, couldn't have been Trey either. Because he was frail, yes, said Nancy.
00:45:01
But also because he was never alone to do it. You were never without him. You're always together.
00:45:07
I said we were always together. What did make sense, said Attorney Krulwich, is that someone else killed Nancy Pfister
00:45:13
and planted the evidence against the Stylers in an attempt to frame them. The final piece of it was that the owner's closet key
00:45:22
kind of magically appears on the sidewalk near the Stylers' motel room the day they get arrested.
00:45:28
It was a thought that crossed investigators' minds as well. We would have been amiss had we not looked at the possibility
00:45:35
that someone was setting these people up. And so, even with the Stylers in jail, charged with murder, investigators were still quietly looking for other suspects.
00:45:47
For someone with motive and means to kill Nancy, and the foresight to frame the Stylers.
00:45:53
Someone close to Nancy. Someone Nancy trusted. Even loved. Like the person who pointed the finger of blame right in the middle of that 911 call.
00:46:05
Kathy Carpenter. Kathy Carpenter. She said she was Nancy Pfister's dear friend, but investigators were hearing a different story.
00:46:21
Their relationship had been a roller coaster. So we knew that there had been this cycle of the ladies having a good relationship
00:46:33
and that things would go south and they would have a bad relationship for a period of time.
00:46:37
And so with all that in mind, Deputy DA Andrea Bryan went back to that hysterical phone call from Kathy to 911.
00:46:45
What did you make of it? You know, I think bizarre is the only way I can characterize that 911 call.
00:46:52
Immediately identifying suspects. It was not getting help for Nancy Pfister. It was, oh, you should be looking at these two people immediately.
00:47:01
So that was interesting. So it was. And just as interesting, what Kathy told 911 about seeing Nancy Pfister's body.
00:47:11
The fact that immediately the deceased is identified as Nancy Pfister would have been impossible to do.
00:47:21
Impossible, said investigator Lisa Miller, because Nancy's body was completely covered head to toe when Kathy saw it in the closet.
00:47:30
She's dead for the blood. We're looking at photos of the crime scene, and we knew there's no way she saw what she said she saw.
00:47:40
There was more. Kathy, of course, had keys to Nancy's house, including a key to the closet,
00:47:46
was the last person to admit seeing Nancy alive. And when she left, pinned up that Do Not Disturb sign on Nancy's door,
00:47:55
supposedly because her friend needed to get over her jet lag. She ended up making a car.
00:48:00
A statement to another individual that Nancy would be sleeping and resting for the next three days.
00:48:05
And it was three days later the body was found. Correct. And the day that closet key magically appeared so close to the stylus motel room,
00:48:15
Kathy Carpenter was known to be in the very same neighborhood right around that time,
00:48:20
meeting with her therapist. So, next question. Was Kathy Carpenter truly Nancy's friend and helper?
00:48:27
or her murderer trying to pin the blame on someone else. Ski season in Aspen is a time to see and be seen
00:48:50
in crowded watering holes beneath carefully groomed world-class slopes. But in late winter 2014, attention was diverted from the fashionable pursuits Nancy Pfister once described to that French TV show.
00:49:04
We call Aspen adult Disneyland. Now the subject was her. Her murder, of course, but also her freewheeling life.
00:49:14
And in death, her reputation to the consternation of her closest friends was gleefully amplified by some media outlets.
00:49:22
Not in a good way. Why do we need to throw rocks at her? You know, just because she had too much fun, really.
00:49:30
Billy and the others defended their remarkable departed friend and devoted their energy to plans for a special memorial event,
00:49:38
which they decided would be a party, the sort of thing Nancy would have loved. What did she mean to you, personally?
00:49:45
She meant duration and consistency. She was the godmother of my children, and I was the godfather of Juliana.
00:49:54
Um, sorry. I'm trying. But, well, Billy and the others worked through their grief.
00:50:07
Nancy's buddy, Kathy Carpenter, was at the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office answering questions.
00:50:12
What did you see? I just remember opening the door. Okay. And I saw her. she wasn't
00:50:24
she was covered we were still giving her the benefit of the doubt she thought something was up
00:50:34
she had been worried about her friend so was there an innocent explanation for why Kathy seemed to see things
00:50:40
she could not have seen why she knew it was Nancy's bloody body that was in the closet
00:50:45
even though the first responders saw what looked like just a pile of blankets when they arrived
00:50:50
Could she have lifted up those blankets? She could have. And seen? She could have.
00:50:57
And during the interviews, I specifically asked her, did you step into the closet?
00:51:02
Did you lift any of the blankets? Did you touch? Did you manipulate in any way? And her answers repeatedly were no.
00:51:08
She had not touched. She had not moved. She had not manipulated. Do not touch. I ran out of her so fast.
00:51:15
And yet, at the same time, Kathy gave specific details about the body. I saw her first with my head.
00:51:23
I don't remember the position, but I knew her, the blonde hair. She tells me she immediately recognized her friend
00:51:31
because of the blonde hair and the length of that hair. How much hair did you see, I would ask Ms. Carpenter.
00:51:37
It seemed like me, me, and I just, she had highlights. So how many strands would you say that you saw?
00:51:50
So would it be like, was it matted with blood or just a little blood? I didn't even feel that hair.
00:51:59
If you've seen the crime scene photographs of how that body was found and how that body was in the closet, she did not see that.
00:52:08
The more Kathy talked. How much blood did you see? How much blood would you say you saw?
00:52:16
Because you saw her hair on the head. The more suspicious the investigators became.
00:52:25
She's describing in the interviews where the injuries were to the forehead. I went and I reviewed the autopsy photos,
00:52:33
and she was exactly spot on to where she indicated the injury to the forehead. It wasn't just Kathy's words, said Investigator Miller.
00:52:42
Looked to her like Kathy's grief, with more act than real. Oh, yeah, for the tears.
00:52:53
The bad act of that. There was no tears during the time that she was trying to portray herself as crying.
00:53:02
Some people cry without tears, surely? I'm sure some people do. What can you tell from a thing like that?
00:53:09
It's just always interesting when, you know, someone is going to such lengths to act like they're emotionally distraught
00:53:18
and the body doesn't respond. Then she discovered what Kathy did. The day after she said she found Nancy's body,
00:53:26
she went to the bank where Nancy had trusted Kathy with access to her safety deposit box.
00:53:32
And Kathy took from that box the styler's last rent payment, $6,000 in cash, and an heirloom ring Nancy had inherited from her mother.
00:53:43
Within 24 hours, or actually it was a little less than 24 hours, of her friend being found by her,
00:53:49
she's going into that safety deposit box taking in jewelry from it So investigators now had an idea fast gathering strength that Kathy Carpenter was far more involved than she claimed to have been She just made some very detailed descriptions of that body that she couldn have made unless she had seen her before she was put in that closet meaning right after she was actually murdered
00:54:18
Did she provide a rational explanation for being able to do that? No. They brought Kathy back again and again for questioning.
00:54:27
Five days, almost 20 hours of questioning. During one interrogation, detectives read back the transcript of the 911 call.
00:54:35
You talked about my friend in the closet is dead. There's impossible that she knew that she was dead.
00:54:42
Impossible. Threw her own words at her, the blood she reported seeing. In the dispatch you said blood on the forehead.
00:54:49
And how she so quickly accused the stylers. And they told her they just knew she was lying.
00:54:59
I believe that you know what happened. And I am going to be able to prove that because that's my job.
00:55:16
And Kathy Carpenter, like Trey Styler, submitted to a polygraph test. But if he failed his...
00:55:23
Kathy Carpenter failed hers worse. You absolutely bombed the polygraph. Now look at that.
00:55:28
On the 911, on the 911, right here, here's all this documentation of deceit and guilt.
00:55:39
So for detectives, the only question left was, did Kathy Carpenter kill Nancy and try to frame the Stylers?
00:55:46
Or were they all in together? I don't know what their name is. I don't know what their name is.
00:56:04
In the dispatcher said blood on the forehead. Hour after hour, Kathy Carpenter talked to the detectives investigating the murder of her friend, Nancy Pfister.
00:56:14
What did you see? I just remember opening the door. She was covered. She was alone with them.
00:56:24
She could have asked for an attorney. She did not. She told the detectives she didn't need a lawyer because she was innocent.
00:56:32
But as Kathy went on and on, those detectives became more and more sure. She killed her friend, Nancy.
00:56:39
Or helped, at least. So right now, I'm telling you, everything is crashing down on you.
00:56:46
I kid you not. It's absolutely coming down. The question now, was Kathy trying to frame the stylers?
00:56:55
At first blush, it certainly looked that way. And yet the more they thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed.
00:57:01
Why? Well, the trash bag containing so much incriminating evidence, for example,
00:57:06
the one the diligent city worker just happened to stumble on? I really think that this was actually pure luck.
00:57:13
I don't think anyone wanted that to be found. I think really the simple explanation here is really the right explanation,
00:57:21
which is that we had a great break in the case, and thank goodness for that. The only conspiracy theory assistant DA Andrea Bryan was buying
00:57:31
was one that involved the Stylers and Kathy Carpenter, all of them together committing the murder.
00:57:38
The two women perhaps bonding over their shared frustration with Nancy Pfister's behaviors.
00:57:43
It appears that they almost built, at times, a bit of a friendship around that mutual anger toward Nancy Pfister.
00:57:52
And Trey, pushed to his financial and emotional limits, was most likely the one to wield the hammer, reasoned the assistant DA,
00:57:59
while the women helped hide the body and clean up the bedroom. But if that theory was right, something went wrong after the murder.
00:58:08
The conspiracy did not hold. When Kathy Carpenter realized the gravity of what she had gotten herself into,
00:58:15
she got worried and worried that she would be fingered. So Kathy struck first, the DA's theory went,
00:58:24
called 911 and fingered the stylers to deflect attention from herself. In the interrogation room, investigators had tried to get Trey to turn on his wife or Kathy.
00:58:33
Nancy, your wife, do you want her to be involved in this? She's wrapped up in this, man.
00:58:38
We've had her here as long as you have. She's telling us a lot of good stuff. And they also tried to get Kathy to flip on the stylers.
00:58:47
Somebody's going to come clean and say, I get it, but this is what she knew. I'm like, she didn't tell us that.
00:58:51
Now you are responsible for it just like them. But you're going to be the one that didn't tell the truth.
00:58:58
But it didn't work. I just had my mission. What's your statement? No, no, no, no.
00:59:03
Okay, okay. On March 14th, three weeks after Nancy Pfister was murdered, Kathy Carpenter, like the stylers before her,
00:59:13
was charged with first-degree murder and put in the county jail. The newest suspect arrested was Catherine Carpenter.
00:59:19
Billy Clayton had been on the phone with Kathy just the day before, discussing Nancy's memorial service.
00:59:25
And I think I was supposed to get something for her to wear to the memorial. Now she was behind bars.
00:59:31
Seemed crazy. But in a town that could barely believe one of its own had been murdered,
00:59:37
anything seemed possible now. I should have been surprised or shocked or something.
00:59:44
But at that moment, I just, I was like, you know, who knows? Anything could happen.
00:59:52
I just it didn make any sense at all why anyone would kill her And so as Billy and the others went on finalizing memorial plans Kathy a bit late got a lawyer Greg Greer
01:00:05
This has been one of the more frightening experiences of my career to represent a person who is so totally and completely innocent.
01:00:17
As Greer and the lawyers representing the Stylers waded through the evidence trying to sort out who did what,
01:00:23
It became pretty clear, to them at least, that the truth about what happened in that bedroom on Buttermilk Mountain was still very much hidden.
01:00:33
We were all wrong about what happened. I mean, everybody was wrong in this case.
01:00:38
It was just where she would have wanted her last party Aspen's historic Hotel Jerome
01:00:57
And by their hundreds Locals crowded in out of the frigid March night Two and a half weeks after the murder
01:01:03
To tell crazy stories and remember the amazing life of Nancy Pfister. There were so many people that they couldn't all fit in the Jerome Hotel ballroom.
01:01:15
They went out the door, into the hallways. What do you say to a crowd like that?
01:01:22
I just basically wanted to celebrate her life and her spirit of adventure. Billy Clayton got up, too, said what was in his heart.
01:01:37
I said that if you've known me over the last 40 years or so, you know me because of Nancy.
01:01:42
When you see me, you think of Nancy. She was a connector. That was her real main role, I think, in everyone's life.
01:01:50
And when you look down there in that crowd, how were they reacting? A lot of tears, a lot of laughter, certain stories, and they were all just solidly there.
01:02:03
in that space at that moment. But at that very same moment, in a far different space just down the street
01:02:11
from the fine old Hotel Jerome, Kathy Carpenter wept in her cell at the Pitkin County Jail and listened.
01:02:20
I could hear the music, the band, and I cried. I cried a lot. I wanted to be there.
01:02:30
I should have been there. and it hurt. How could they think she had anything to do with it?
01:02:39
There was some suggestion that you had a motive to harm Nancy. Absolutely not. What was my motive?
01:02:48
There was no motive. A shared frustration with Nancy Styler about how difficult she was to...
01:02:54
Oh, heavens, no. No. Not at all. Nancy was her best friend, she said. I loved her.
01:03:02
Yeah. She was, I love Nancy Pfister. That's why she sat through all those hours of interrogation without a lawyer, she said.
01:03:10
She wanted to help them understand the truth. Like, for example, how it wasn't at all suspicious that she knew right away it was Nancy in that closet.
01:03:19
You know, the odor just about knocked me over. And to me, it was very apparent that that wasn't just a pile of clothes in the closet.
01:03:27
Who else but Nancy would be in that closet? You weren't a complete idiot. You understood that it had to be Nancy.
01:03:34
Right. Who else would it be? When she so quickly fingered the Stylers, she said it was just common sense.
01:03:41
They were in the house. You knew that they were pretty mad at Nancy? They were upset with her.
01:03:47
But what about those suspicious little details? Like saying she saw blood on Nancy's forehead when Nancy's forehead was completely covered up.
01:03:56
In the dispatch you said blood on the forehead. That's easy to explain, said Kathy.
01:04:02
She never actually said that. They said that I saw her forehead. Yes. I did not see her forehead.
01:04:08
I saw blood on the headboard. Headboard? In fact, crime scene text did find blood on Nancy Pfister's headboard,
01:04:16
but headboard is not the word that appears in the typed transcript of the 911 call.
01:04:20
And on page three of that transcript, it says, I saw blood on her forehead. Kathy's attorney, Greg Greer.
01:04:30
I go home and listen to the tape, and I hear headboard. But I listened to it, I bet, ten times, by myself, before I told anybody else.
01:04:42
I don't know. I felt one other headboard. Sure enough, Kathy in that 911 call did actually say headboard, not forehead.
01:04:52
I felt one other headboard, and the closet was locked. A transcription error. And though investigators said that made no real difference to them,
01:05:02
Kathy's attorney is sure the little error planted suspicion of Kathy from the very beginning
01:05:07
and started investigators off in an inaccurate and inappropriate direction. They used every technique in the book on her.
01:05:16
And honestly, as I watched those interrogations, I started thinking I might have confessed to doing something
01:05:24
just to make it stop. Here's all this documentation of deceit and guilt. And they told you you did it?
01:05:33
Yes. Repeatedly? Yes. And each time, what would you say? I did not do it. And even though it appears from the interrogation tapes
01:05:45
that Kathy did say some improbable things... I saw her in the head. I don't remember the position, but I knew her.
01:05:53
She was on doctor anxiety medication the whole time she said So in her confused fog and prompted by the investigator said Kathy her descriptions were unclear
01:06:06
She may even have imagined things she could not have seen. Is it possible that you were led into saying something like that?
01:06:13
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, she was in a plastic bag, and I saw just what threw the transparency of the bag.
01:06:25
I saw a little bit of her hair. So, why did you fail the polygraph? I was very upset.
01:06:33
I was very emotional. And they did tell me that in order for me to take this test properly,
01:06:43
I could not feel any emotions. and just hearing the words, just hearing her name.
01:06:56
It's very emotional. But it was true, she said, no denying it. She did take $6,000 in cash and an heirloom ring
01:07:05
from Nancy Pfister's safe deposit box the day after she found the body. But it wasn't for her, she said.
01:07:13
Rather, it was to fulfill a promise to Nancy. She often would say, you know, if anything happens to me in my travels,
01:07:20
you know, make sure you do this, can you do that, make sure you do my little to-do list.
01:07:24
And on the to-do list, that ring. She inherited a family ring from her mother, and her sisters wanted it,
01:07:32
and she had asked me, you make sure that Juliana, if anything would happen to me,
01:07:36
that she would get this ring. That was my intention, was to fulfill her wish. To give it to Juliana.
01:07:40
To give it to Juliana. Just as she had every intention of giving the money directly to Juliana, too,
01:07:47
so it wouldn't disappear into some disputed family trust. But then she said the investigators used everything she said and did against her.
01:07:55
I just thought, no, this is not happening. How can they be so wrong? I had nothing to do with this.
01:08:05
She was my dear friend. I loved her. Kathy's attorney told her, don't worry. the case won't hold up in court.
01:08:13
But even if he was right, the trial might be years away. And so she did all that was left to her.
01:08:20
And I started praying, praying that the truth would be revealed. That's what I wanted,
01:08:26
is the truth to be revealed. And then, suddenly, it appeared that it was. Truth, that is.
01:08:35
But would anyone believe it? It went the way it often does in criminal cases. A period of frenetic activity followed by a sort of calm stasis.
01:09:00
So it was with the murder case of Nancy Pfister. The flurry of action loosed from the moment her body was found in February 2014
01:09:08
to the arrest of the third and final suspect, Kathy Carpenter, in mid-March, dissipated with the spring thaw.
01:09:16
The case now slouched towards summer. Nancy's friend, Billy, missing her more than ever.
01:09:22
The last time I spoke with her, all we talked about were plans, everything we were going to do this summer, all the different ideas she had.
01:09:29
But the only thing on the calendar now was a preliminary hearing scheduled for late June.
01:09:34
All three defendants had pleaded not guilty, and their respective attorneys, Beth Krilwich for Nancy Styler, Greg Greer for Kathy Carpenter,
01:09:42
were deciding their strategies, analyzing the evidence. The evidence as I was seeing it suggested to me very strongly that Kathy Carpenter may have done this
01:09:52
and that she was setting up the Stylers. Kathy Carpenter is innocent, innocent, innocent. I can't say that enough.
01:10:00
But Deputy D.A. Andrea Bryan and her investigator Lisa Miller were preparing to argue it was a conspiracy involving all three.
01:10:10
And then less than two weeks before that hearing. In the process of getting all of your material together for the preliminary hearing, what happened?
01:10:19
I got a phone call from my assistant district attorney one afternoon. Saying? Saying that he had spoken with a defense attorney, specifically William Styler's defense attorney,
01:10:32
and that William Styler wanted to make a statement. Now that could be interesting.
01:10:40
The good doctor was wheeled into the interview room where Lisa Miller was waiting for him.
01:10:45
Mr. Styler, I'm going to have you right here, sir. Oh, but it was far more than just a statement.
01:10:53
Trey Steiler dropped a bombshell and blew the DA's meticulously assembled case wide open.
01:10:59
I lost my mind, or at least I lost my rational mind. It was a confession. After months of strenuous denials,
01:11:09
Trey Steiler told them. Can you hold this name? Okay. Detail by detail, Trey took them through the killing,
01:11:15
how he slipped out of his motel room while his unknowing wife was sleeping, and drove to Nancy Pfister's house intending to confront her.
01:11:23
I stuck my head in the door far enough to indicate that she was in fact in bed and I called her name again.
01:11:34
And she didn't respond. Then, he said, as he stood over the still sleeping Nancy Pfister,
01:11:40
all the rage that built up inside him during his dreadful physical and financial decline
01:11:45
suddenly focused on a singular idea. There she was, vulnerable, helpless. So he went down the stairs, got a hammer,
01:11:54
climbed back up to the bedroom. I went, got the hammer, came back, and struck her in the head of the hammer.
01:12:03
Then, strengthened by a rush of adrenaline, he said, he single-handedly wrapped Nancy, fisted her up,
01:12:08
dragged her into the closet, and covered her up. It wasn't as strong as it used to be.
01:12:15
I was able to do that. And then he grabbed and took away some of Nancy's belongings
01:12:20
to make it look like she was gone. He was very clear about what he did, how he did it, when he did it,
01:12:27
in very specific detail. And so you do what? Where? In that? Where is he? In what was in that position, the top of her head, which would have, if you don't find it.
01:12:45
I do want to teach you quite frankly. As for his wife or Kathy Carpenter? Neither one of them were involved in any way.
01:12:54
And until this moment, he insisted, he hadn't told either one of them a single thing about what he did.
01:13:02
He not only limited his wife's participation in that statement, he said she wasn't involved at all.
01:13:08
And that Kathy Carpenter wasn't involved at all. That he did the whole thing himself.
01:13:13
That he had a burst of energy and he was able to do all of those things on his own.
01:13:19
You have a skeptical look on your face. That's what he told me, yes. What did you think?
01:13:25
Having heard that, Investigator Miller told Dr. Steiler exactly what she thought.
01:13:29
I want you to walk out of here thinking that I have believed you, look my insaneer, because I will be very frank.
01:13:36
Remember, I told you, I'm called like I see it. I don't buy everything that you're selling me today, okay?
01:13:43
By this time, Investigator Miller was convinced all three were in it together. She looked straight at Trey Steiler and confronted him.
01:13:50
He was a frail old man. Surely he didn't expect she'd believe he did it all alone.
01:13:56
And you tell me you can't stand up. However, you were giving me an accounting of the story
01:14:02
where you were saying you were up and down the stairs multiple times. Moving dead weight is not easy work, Mr. Schuyler.
01:14:09
When I've thought about it since then, I'm reminded of those stories. Women lifting cars off of their children.
01:14:21
Mr. Styler, I will do a lot of things in the interview room, but I'm not going to compare another saving a child with you murdering Nancy Pfister,
01:14:29
so let's all go there. The tray remained resolute. He was the lone killer. The essential truths are that Kathy Carpenter really and truly had nothing to do with this.
01:14:41
Nancy Styler really and truly had nothing to do with this I have done my best to hide it from even myself my solicitor and you know in all listening
01:14:57
How concerned are you that he decided that he was going down anyway, he might as well get them off the hook?
01:15:05
And that's really what was going on here. That's a concern in any case like this.
01:15:10
so now it was decision time take Trey Styler's confession at face value and release both
01:15:17
Nancy Styler and Kathy Carpenter or send him back to his cell and proceed with the
01:15:23
prosecution of all three I got the hammer. Came back. A full confession. The best possible solution for a murder case.
01:15:48
If they could believe it, that is. I lost my mind, or at least I lost my rational mind.
01:15:54
Are you comfortable with that explanation of this crime? Are you comfortable that that is the whole thing?
01:16:00
I don't know if we'll ever know the whole thing. Around the Pitkin County DA's office was a nagging worry.
01:16:07
Dr. Trey Steiler demanded and the DA approved a quid pro quo, his full confession in exchange for his wife's unconditional release.
01:16:18
He's not yet. He's just safe. Fulfilled. I'm not even learning. But what if he was lying?
01:16:28
How would they ever prove it? We had no facts to refute his statement to me. We weren't in that room.
01:16:36
that night that Nancy Pfister was murdered, so we had no facts to refute what William Styler was saying.
01:16:44
So you're saying to me that Kathy Carpenter and Nancy Styler are both innocent. Neither one participated in this crime.
01:16:53
William Styler said that. I'm not saying that. But despite Investigator Miller's doubts,
01:16:58
on June 17, 2014, after three and a half months in jail, Nancy Styler was released.
01:17:05
And my attorney, Beth, was there, and she said, good news, you're getting out. And I said, great, you know, they figured it out.
01:17:12
And then she said, but there's a catch. She gave Nancy a letter. It was a private note from Trey.
01:17:19
And in this letter, he tells me about the plea bargain that he took. And one of the sentences that I've read a million times over said,
01:17:27
I know you innocent and you should believe I am too Trey wrote that he was only pleading guilty to save her He didn actually kill Nancy Pfister he wrote He was falling on his sword for love
01:17:42
I cried that whole day. Even though I was getting out, it should have been a great time.
01:17:48
I can't believe he's having to do this. The system is sick. It's, you know, messed up.
01:17:54
Three days later, June 20th, Dr. Trey Steiler formally pleaded guilty to second-degree murder
01:18:00
and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. That same day, the DA dropped charges against Kathy Carpenter,
01:18:07
and she walked out of jail, a free woman. I was very grateful, very thankful. I felt God answered my prayers, but at the same time, it was still scary.
01:18:22
I'm leaving jail after being locked up. What will people think? How will I be judged?
01:18:32
Grateful, scared, also sad. There was sorrow for still thinking of the loss of Nancy
01:18:40
and that he did something like this, that he did it. You know, that was still hurtful.
01:18:49
But Nancy Styler added a bitter anger to her whirlwind of grief and relief. If Trey was innocent as he told his wife he was,
01:18:58
then had the real killer just walked free? I had Kathy Carpenter pegged in my own little courtroom,
01:19:07
and every little piece of evidence that was given to me corroborated that. And then, it was just over two weeks later, Nancy took a call.
01:19:17
Trey had something to tell her. His letter wasn't quite true, he said. In fact, he and he alone murdered Nancy Pfister.
01:19:27
Kathy Carpenter had nothing to do with it. It was... Took my world and just flipped it upside down.
01:19:36
Felt like my whole life had been a lie. You know, my whole life with him had been a lie.
01:19:44
Nancy divorced Trey and moved on with her life, writing a memoir about her experience of being charged with murder.
01:19:52
In August 2015, Trey Styler hanged himself in his prison cell. He was 67 years old.
01:20:00
He had a million-dollar life insurance policy that Nancy collected. The year after that, she settled a wrongful death lawsuit
01:20:07
brought by Nancy Pfister's daughter, Juliana. As for Kathy Carpenter in the aftermath of the murder she lost her job her home And she lost her very best friend she said And she told us she felt guilty That why I said I wish that I could have helped her and been there
01:20:31
What could I have done differently? Talked her into staying there, not coming home.
01:20:42
Nobody can know the future. Right? But I do blame myself. You know, that's something that I'll have to work through.
01:20:55
And back then, she told us she had a message for Nancy Pfister's daughter, Juliana.
01:21:00
I had nothing to do with the murder of her mother. I was never with Still. And I just, you know, I was looking out for her and her mother's wishes.
01:21:14
and that I just hope that she would find forgiveness in her heart and know that I love her and her mother very much.
01:21:26
What does she have to forgive you for? I don't know. Nothing really. But there's just, you know, what she's had to go through.
01:21:41
And I don't know why I would even say forgive. but... It's curious, huh? Yeah. It's just,
01:21:51
I've been portrayed as this thief, this bad person, untrusting, and I don't know a way.
01:22:03
Trust. Something Nancy Pfister was known for. Not so much of it these days. Aspen will never be the same.
01:22:11
My life will never be the same. So what has Aspen lost? a lot of history, you know.
01:22:18
Nancy was part of Aspen's history. It's a huge loss for the community. Some members of which will be telling stories
01:22:27
about Nancy Pfister for a very long time. Nancy lived a fantastic life, and I think we all need a little more dreaming like that,
01:22:39
you know, a little more Nancy in this show. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:51
We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:22:58
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.