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Hi crime junkies. Today I have a solo episode for you. It's about a case that rocked the quiet California community where it unfolded. Twin teenage sisters were shot while their house was set on fire. And the identity of the biggest suspect fractured the family at the heart of the story. But as we dug in, I couldn't help but think maybe there's more to this story. Like on the surface, I can see how someone could think it's an open and shut case. But the more I learned, the more I wondered if it was as straightforward as police initially portrayed it to be. Or did they miss evidence pointing in other directions? This is the story of Jill and Julie Hansen. It's around 3am on Saturday, November 15, 1986 in Willow Creek, California when 40 year old Hans Hansen suddenly jolts awake from a deep sleep. His feet are on his bedroom floor before he knows what woke him up. But he immediately smells smoke and hears something popping. His wife Betty is already out of bed, scrambling to get her robe on. And when they throw open their bedroom door, they are met with a hellscape. The bathroom across the hall is engulfed in flames and Hands hears that popping noise again. He's assuming it's some hairspray cans exploding in the heat of the fire or something like that. And he knows he has to move quickly. He, Betty and three of their children are home and they all need to get out now. They live in a double wide trailer. The bedrooms and bathrooms are on one side. Then a hallway leads to the kitchen, living room and front room and a fire is going to move through the home fast. Hands rushes to the living room where he knows his 21 year old stepson Donnie was sleeping on the couch. But the sliding glass doors open and Donnie's gone. So he, he must have gotten out. Donnie check Hands just needs to find their 16 year old twin daughters, Jill and Julie. He tries to get to the bedroom that they were sleeping in, but his stomach drops as he realizes that the fire's blocking the door. He grabs a fire extinguisher from a closet and starts frantically spraying down the hallway yelling at Betty to call for help. But the fire is out of control so he runs to his warehouse to get another fire extinguisher. Betty's on the phone inside the warehouse and their son Donnie is also there grabbing more fire extinguishers. But they soon realize it's not going to help. The fire is just too big. So Hands gets the garden hose, breaks the window leading to the bedroom where the girls are and throws the hose inside which is when, according to the time standard, he hears one of the girls call out for help. So at least one of them is still in the trailer. And within minutes, firefighters are on the scene, battling the blaze. It's not until that moment that Hans realizes Julie is already outside. In all of the commotion, he missed her getting out. First responders are working on her, but she is in bad shape. She's clutching her stomach, and paramedics think that the fire caused an explosion that severely injured her and she needs to go to the hospital immediately. Hands knows that he and Betty have to go with her, but there's still no sign of her sister Jill. First responders have taken over the scene. So as torn as they are, Hands and Betty ask Donnie to wait for word on Jill. As they rush to the hospital, Hands and Betty have nothing to do but sit and wait for news. And when a doctor finally comes out to give them an update, it's something that they're not expecting at all. Julie's stomach injury isn't from the fire. The doctor tells them that she was shot at close range. As the reality of what happened to his daughter strikes Hands and he thinks back to the fire. It hits him. That popping sound he heard when he woke up, that could have been gunshots. But none of it is making sense. As doctors work to save Julie, Hands and Betty stand by for any updates on Jill. They're holding on to the hope that maybe Jill will be okay. But between 10 and 11 that same morning, they get news that while combing through what's left of the house, first responders found Jill in the kitchen. She died in the fire. And while they were still reeling from the revelation about Julie's injuries, they get Jill's autopsy results and find that she had also been shot. So this is now a murder investigation. And as police start cataloging evidence at the crime scene, they find two empty gas cans, one in the house and one on the deck, the same kind Han says he kept in his warehouse. And investigators quickly realize gas was used to start the fire intentionally. Investigators want to know who would want to harm Jill and Julie, and they start looking into the girls and their lives. And it's an understatement to say that Jill and Julie were adored in their community. Everyone knows the Hansen twins because when they were just 10 years old, Jill was diagnosed with leukemia. And the whole town of Willow Creek rallied behind the family in her six year road to recovery. And just recently, she had been given a clean bill of health. As far as the family can tell, there Is no one who would want to hurt them. And while the town where the Hansons lived was relatively safe, the county around it was a different story. It is literally known as Murder mountain because of the number of killings and disappearances thought to be connected to massive drug deals in the area. And we know crime does spill over. And I'm sure investigators have that in the back of their minds as they start to investigate. They ask witnesses in the area about what they saw that night, and they seem to get some like, half leads. One neighbor tells them that sometime after the fire, she saw two teen boys standing near the trailer watching the fire unfold. And one had what looked like ashes on his shoulder. Some neighbors report having heard two blasts and then a car peeling off in the distance. And other neighbors say they saw a car driving toward Highway 199, according to the Times Standard. And I wish I could tell you what kind of car it was, but we couldn't get investigative records for this case. So most of the information we have is from archives of local papers. The Times Standard reported that investigators also find spent shotgun shells in the trailer. And hidden behind some boxes in the back of hans warehouse, they find a 12 gauge shotgun with an obvious palm print. And they send the shells and the gun off for testing to see if they match. This discovery, of course, sets off alarm bells for police. And they ask hands about the gun. And he tells them it's not his. He only has an old rifle that he kept from his childhood, not a 12 gauge shotgun like the one they found. But that's when investigators find something else. 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They send those unspent shotgun shells off for testing too, and they immediately want to talk to Donnie to get his story of what happened that night. And like I mentioned, our request for investigative files was denied. So we had to piece together what Donnie told police from reporting by the time Standard, Unsolved Mysteries and other records and from those sources, here's what we know. Donnie says he was asleep on the couch in the living room the night of the fire and he was woken up by a shotgun blast. He sat up on the couch and in the flash from the gun going off, he saw Julie collapse at the end of the hallway that opens up into the living room. He says the house was already on fire and he ran over to pick Julie up and carried her outside. And Donnie told police that he didn't get a good look at who else was in the house. He just said he saw a, quote, dark figure. They asked Donnie about the unspent shotgun shells in his car, and Donnie says he'd bought them because they were in the store. He'd borrowed a 12 gauge shotgun from his friend, and they took it. Target shooting earlier that week. He had meant to return the gun, but forgot it in the backseat of his car, which Donnie's friend later backs up. And with no ballistics back yet, investigators are still waiting to see if they're all a match. The gun in the warehouse, the unspent shells in Donnie's car, and the spent shells in the house. As police continue their investigation, they're surveilling the Hansen property to see if anybody comes back to the scene of the crime. And during their stakeout, their waiting pays off. Patrol officers watch as a man lurks around the warehouse. Officers call a detective to the scene, and when the detective confronts this person, it's Donnie. According to an episode about the case on Unsolved Mysteries, Donnie tells them he's looking for the family dog who sleeps in the warehouse at night. But the police don't buy it. Hans and Betty have been camping out in a motorhome outside the hospital as they wait for Julie to wake up. And when police later ask hands, he tells them that Donnie knew the dog was being watched by a friend and wasn't at the house. So police think he might be looking for the shotgun that they now think he hid. Now, Donnie doesn't know that the police already found it because they didn't mention that to him when they first interviewed him. And it doesn't help Donnie when ballistics come back and police are able to confirm that the shotgun found in the back of Hans warehouse was the same gun used to shoot the girls and the same gun Donnie had borrowed and taken. Target shooting the unspent shells in his car, also a match. They also find that on Wednesday, which would be a couple of days before the shooting, Donnie had asked hands for the credit card that the family used for gas to fill up his car. Investigators look at the credit card statements and see that there was a charge for 5 gallons of gas at a gas station nearby. Police look into the gas station Donnie purchased the gas from. They're able to confirm that he purchased gas that day. But Donnie didn't fill his car with the gas. He filled a gas can. When police ask Donnie about this, he tells them that the fuel spout was bent on his car, so he had to use a gas can to fill up. But all of this coupled together isn't looking great. My question is, why would Donnie do this? By all accounts, Donnie was a good kid. He wasn't into drugs or partying. He was a star student in high school. But his parents did say that after graduation, he began to drift a little. After one semester in college, he dropped out and didn't seem to have the drive that he used to. He'd moved in with his grandmother in Fortuna, about an hour and a half away. But he would come down to Willow Creek every once in a while to help with the family business. And that's actually what he was doing there, why he was sleeping on the couch the night of the fire. The Thursday before the fire, Donnie and Betty got into a squabble. Betty asked Donnie to take something out of the freezer for her, and he had an attitude. Apparently. Donnie stormed out and said he was going back to Fortuna. But Donnie ended up calling Betty later, apologizing for this back and coming back to Willow Creek the next day. Friday the 14th. That's the day before the fire. But that fight that Betty and Donnie had wasn't anything new. Donnie and Betty got into low stakes arguments often, mostly because Betty would get on Donnie about not working or being in school. And to me, it seems like kind of a huge leap to go from just bickering with his mom to murder. It seems like just run of the mill family stuff. Like, my son is only 17, but I kind of get it. It seems so normal. And other than that moment between Donnie and his mom. Hands said Donnie was in a great mood that week. Hands is Donnie's stepdad, but the two were so close that he called Hans dad. And his family said that Donnie also had a good relationship with Jill and Julie. So it doesn't make a lot of sense why he'd just shoot them. And while investigators are trying to parse out a motive, a few days after the fire, Julie wakes up. And this could be the moment that police find out what really happened. At first, she's only able to communicate through writing. But about a week from the fire, she starts talking. Investigators waste no time asking her what she can remember. Julie tells police a noise woke her up just before 3am the night of the fire. It sounded like someone loading batteries into a flashlight. She left Jill asleep in the room that they shared that night and walked toward the living room. Julie later told Hands that she didn't remember any Smoke or fire at that point, which is a little weird to me because by the time Hand said he heard popping, he already smelled smoke and the fire was spreading fast. But Julie's memory is actually pretty shaky. Like, she does remember being ambushed at the end of the hallway, but in the darkness, she didn't see who shot her. As she gets better, she tells police that as the shotgun fired, she could make out Donnie's face for a split second. But Julie doesn't actually say he was the shooter. And Donnie did say he was woken up in the living room by a shotgun blast, too. So it really just proves that Donnie was in the room, which we know. And Julie's story changes. Detectives speak to a doctor who treated Julie at the hospital, who says Julie never mentioned that she saw anyone when she was shot. A first responder who was in the ambulance with Julie says that she told them Donnie carried her outside after she was shot, which does confirm what he said. And even though she's awake, she's still needing round the clock medical care. Hans and Betty are still camped outside the hospital, and they haven't seen Donny much since the fire. And that's been bothering Hands. Police told Hands about the shotgun that was found in the warehouse, and they asked him specifically not to bring it up with Donnie while they looked into him more. But Hans has a bad feeling about the whole thing, and despite the directive from police, he just wants to talk to Donnie. So one night, Donnie stops by the motorhome, and Hans just straight out asks Donnie about the 12 gauge shotgun. Donnie flips out as if the question was an accusation. He yells at his stepdad that he didn't do it and runs out of the motorhome. Hans told us Donnie's reaction that night changed everything for him. From then on, he believed that Donnie had something to do with what happened. And look, I can see how high emotions must have been for Hands. But to be fair, if I'm Donnie and I'm innocent, I just lost my sister and I'm now feeling accused of having something to do with it, I'm probably going to react pretty strongly, too. And around two weeks after the fire, Donnie voluntarily goes into the station and sits through about two hours of questioning. And according to Unsolved Mysteries, police also give Donnie two polygraph tests. And he fails not one, but both polygraphs. And he tells something new to the cops, something he didn't mention in his first interview. He said he did hide the shotgun that they found in the warehouse, but not for the reason they might think he says in the midst of the fire, he was scared he would be framed for shooting the girls if they found the shotgun in the backseat of his car. So he moved it. And I don't know, it's kind of tough to follow this thought process, right? I mean, your family is dying in a house fire, and you're thinking, pause, let me go hide this shotgun so I don't get blamed. But it's obvious that police aren't buying any of this. And it's not just this interview and the two failed polygraphs. Remember that handprint on the gun? Well, it comes back that it's Donnie's. The print is encased in fire extinguisher residue. So it shows that Donnie had handled both the gun and a fire extinguisher that night. And police are thinking all roads lead to Donnie at this point. And they arrest him, and he's charged with arson and Jill's murder. But then two weeks after his arrest, Julie suddenly dies. And it's a shock to everyone because she was getting better. But after about a month in the hospital, an air bubble entered her bloodstream through an IV feeding tube and ultimately stopped her heart. It was a super rare medical accident. But it's then that Donnie's charges are upgraded to another count of murder. So now the family has to cope with the loss of two children and in another way, the loss of a third child. Because Hand said after that night when he confronted Donnie about the shotgun and he reacted the way he did, Donnie has been dead to him. And that could have been it. Like, case closed, right? Donnie's prints encased in fire extinguisher residue are on the gun. The gun that he admitted he had borrowed from a friend just days before. And the matching shells. The evidence seems pretty damning, but when it goes to trial, it becomes clear that the case against Donnie has some significant holes. And this case that seemed so cut and dry suddenly seems to fall apart.