← Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
161. The Mysterious Murder of An Aspen Socialite
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It was February 26, 2014, just as the sun was setting over Aspen, Colorado, and the frigid winter air began its nightly dive towards freezing. The switchboard at a local 911 call center suddenly lit up, but the caller on the other end was about to tell the operator would shake up America's poshest city like a snow globe. The caller's name was Kathy Carpenter, and she was so hysterical the 911 operator had trouble understanding her at first. In a firm and steady tone, the operator asked Kathy to calm down and explain what was going on. Kathy was hyperventilating, but she pushed out the words as best as she could. It was her friend, she said. She found her friend in the closet and her friend was dead. Dead. Kathy gave the address of the emergency. It was the house on Buttermilk Road at the top of the mountain. And then she gave the name of her friend who had died. Her name was Nancy Pfister. Everyone in town knew who Nancy Pfister was. Nancy was like Aspen royalty, a lifelong resident and small town socialite whose circle of friends included Jack Nicholson, Cher, even the Dalai Lama. It was shocking enough that Nancy was dead, but the way Kathy described it was even more terrifying. It looked like murder. Kathy had found Nancy wrapped in sheets, stuffed in a closet, and there was blood everywhere. In a city that averages less than one homicide a year, the murder of one of its most prominent citizens would quickly become the only story anyone in Aspen was talking about. And the one question on everyone's mind was who would have wanted Nancy Pfister dead? It's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome back to the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters, everyone, for another deep dive into the darkly curious. As always, I'm your host for this very snowy tale today, Kaylin Moore. Today I have a story for you that features a peek behind the curtain of how the other half, the uber wealthy, live. It's going to show you how far people will go to keep up appearances. And at the center of it is a murder that is so confusing, even the police don't believe they have the full story. Oh, this one also has some of the most petty landlord drama I've ever heard. And I think you guys are going to want to smack your head against the wall as much as I did while researching this case. But before we jump back in, two quick updates. First, just a reminder that we are reading Riley Sager's the Only one Left for our book club this month. To join the conversation, you can head over to Patreon where there is a chat open to everyone, including the free tier. We're going to be discussing as a group at the end of February, so make sure you sign up for that. And second, I just wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you so much to everyone who reached out to check in or say congratulations as I welcomed my son into the World on January 14, the second he was born. The nurse actually said that he had a, quote, very familiar soul and had already been in the hospital at some point. It was very fitting and spooky already, so I think he is off to a great start. But seriously, thank you guys. Anyways, let's head back to Aspen. First responders soon converged on Nancy Pfister's house on Buttermilk Mountain. And once they were inside, deputies walked up the stairs to the master bedroom and they opened the closet door where the body reportedly was. But as they looked inside, police weren't immediately sure what they were looking at. Yeah, they saw a bundle of sheets, but they didn't see a body. It wasn't until they moved in closer and touched the sheets that deputies realized they had found the victim. And it was worse than they had imagined. Not only was Nancy wrapped up in sheets, but her head had been covered with a white plastic garbage bag. Meanwhile, deputies met with Kathy Carpenter in front of her Subaru outside, which was parked down the road. As there was a restless puppy yipping from the passenger seat. Kathy was so upset that she was barely coherent as she explained that she had gone to Nancy's house to feed her dog when she discovered her body. The deputy caught a whiff of alcohol in the air as Kathy was speaking, and he asked her if she had been drinking that night. But Kathy shook her head and insisted that she hadn't, though she could hardly stand upright. And soon after this, she began throwing up in the snow. Maybe it was because she was so distraught. Whatever the case, she was such a mess that deputies ended up calling an ambulance to take her away. And after she was gone, they impounded her car. Now back at the house, investigators were processing the crime scene, and they were troubled by some information that they had gotten from dispatch. Kathy had told 911 that she found her friend dead in the closet. But there was something about the identification she made that didn't really make sense to the officers. Detectives couldn't grasp how Kathy was able to identify Nancy F. Beneath those sheets in the plastic bag when they entered the closet. They couldn't even spot the body at first glance. Now, a little background on Aspen, Colorado. For those who aren't familiar, it's one of the most exclusive cities in the United States, and it's not known for its luxury ski resorts, its high end retail stores, its designation as the home away from home for the rich and incredibly famous. There's even a neighborhood that they've nicknamed Billionaire Mountain. With the highest real estate prices in the country and its dense concentration of wealth. You actually might be surprised to learn that Aspen's median individual income was just under $40,000 per year in 2014. When this story takes place. What that reveals about Aspen is that the city has a very stark class disparity. Aspen is really something of an upstairs, downstairs community. There's the city's workforce, like the hospitality workers, the bank tellers, retail associates, and so on. They literally can't afford to live there. So some of them live on the outskirts of town in trailer parks, while many of Aspen's frontline workers live in employee housing. And now Kathy Carpenter lived in housing like that. On the surface, Nancy Pfister and Kathy Carpenter were the unlikeliest of friends. Nancy was one of the town's biggest personalities. She was a true local luminary. Her father, Art, had developed his family's ranch into the Buttermilk Mountain ski resort, which helped him amass a huge fortune over the years, while Nancy's mother, Betty, was an Air Force service pilot in World War II and an inductee in the Colorado Aviation hall of Fame. And Nancy's life was no less exciting. She socialized with people like the Kennedys. She threw lavish parties at her multi million dollar home at the crest of Buttermilk Mountain. She was close friends with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. She even dated Jack Nicholson at one point. She was engaged to Michael Douglas. Kathy, on the other hand, was among the town's working class. And she also had her share of personal troubles. She worked as a bank teller. She lived in a condo that was provided to her by that bank. Kathy had recently been demoted at her job, partly due to her struggles with alcoholism. She had been arrested for public intoxication at least twice, and she had filed for bankruptcy at least once. Kathy and Nancy's paths first crossed by chance one afternoon in 2007 when when Nancy walked into Kathy's Alpine bank branch to open a new account following her father's death. As Kathy assisted Nancy in opening this new account, the two women got to know each other, and they immediately bonded. Nancy thereafter made Kathy her exclusive contact at Alpine bank, and before long, Nancy began meeting Kathy for lunch. Then the two of them would go out for dinner and then for evenings out on the town. They would even spend the entire weekend together. But now Nancy Pfister was dead. And the only thing police knew was that Kathy's story didn't make any sense. The medical examiner quickly was able to determine Nancy's cause of death. However, once the plastic and the sheets that wrapped her body were removed, it was revealed that she had received several hammer blows to the head, and that was likely the thing that killed her. However, Nancy had no defensive wounds on her body, so she likely would have been asleep when she was attacked. And whoever killed her wrapped her in sheets, put a plastic bag over her head, stuffed her in the closet. But then they also went back to flip her mattress over, maybe to hide the blood stains. Investigators that were processing the house found valuables that were intact There was no evidence of a burglary. Whoever had done this would went to that house to kill Nancy. The morning after, deputies brought Kathy Carpenter in for a formal sit down interview, and Kathy walked detectives through the events leading up to her discovery of her friend's body. Kathy said that she last saw Nancy Pfister on the morning of February 24th. The night before, she had gone to Whole Foods and did Nancy's grocery shopping. And it was really this detail that made investigators curious about her and Nancy's friendship. They asked Kathy if it was common for her to run errands for Nancy. And Kathy said she ran errands for Nancy all the time. She didn't mind because she loved Nancy, and that's what you do when you love your friend. That night, Kathy said she returned to Nancy's house with the groceries. She found that Nancy was already in bed. After asking Kathy to fetch her some pills from her nightstand, Nancy then asked her to spend the night. And then, somewhat out of the blue, one of the detectives asked Kathy if she and Nancy had ever been intimate. Apparently, the idea of two women spending the night together really made this detective think that the two were a couple. And at first, this question really came as a surprise. But Kathy ended up revealing that they had only once been intimate with each other. But they didn't have that kind of relationship, she insisted. And then she had nothing more to say on the subject. Kathy told investigators that she didn't hear from Nancy for a couple of days after this, and she started to become really concerned. So at around 5:30 in the evening on February 26, she drove over to her place to check on her and feed her dog. But when she walked inside, she was hit with a foul odor. She checked on the fridge, but she didn't see the obvious source of this smell. She did happen to notice several unopened bottles of champagne in the fridge, though, which was unusual because Nancy wouldn't really ever leave a bottle of champagne untouched for more than a day. And that really gave Kathy a bad feeling. So she walked upstairs to the master bedroom, where she found her friend's bed in a state of total disarray with the sheets missing and the comforter draped over the side. Kathy said she tried opening the closet door at first, but it was locked. So she drove back to her apartment to get the skeleton key Nancy had given her. And then she returned to Nancy's house, opened the closet door, and screamed in horror when she saw her friend's body. One of the detectives who was at the scene and Couldn't tell even at first glance, that there was a body in the closet. Asked Kathy how she knew that it was Nancy in the closet, it was obvious. Kathy said she could see Nancy's blonde hair now. After hearing that, the detectives looked at each other, and one of them opened the case folder in front of him to take another look at the crime scene photos. It was clear that the white plastic bag that covered Nancy's head completely concealed her features. The detective thought to himself there was no way Kathy could have seen Nancy's hair through that garbage bag over her head. Detectives continued interviewing Kathy for several more hours, and the more Kathy revealed, the more they dug up from police records, the more suspicious she looked. Investigators soon learned of prior incidents involving the two women and law enforcement. Like how in 2009, Nancy called the police to report that Kathy was at her house, drunk and having a mental breakdown. Nancy told the police that she wanted Kathy out of her house, but that Kathy wouldn't leave and was trying to bust into her locked bedroom. Kathy then charged at the police, who responded and was arrested and taken to jail to sober up. Not long after that, Kathy was demoted at work from supervisor to her previous role of bank teller. And the following year, Nancy again called the police to her home. And this time, it was because Kathy had taken a handful of pills and was wandering around Nancy's house in a daze. When police arrived, Kathy blurted out that she hated Nancy. And then there was the time when Nancy herself was arrested for DUI in August of 2012, which Kathy said she felt somewhat responsible for, because the two women had gone out that night with the agreement that Kathy would be the designated driver. But by the end of the night, both women had become far too drunk to drive. This led to a heated argument, during which Nancy called 911. Authorities soon arrived to find Nancy behind the wheel of her car, so they arrested her. And in the morning, she called Kathy and demanded that she bail her out of jail. Kathy did just as Nancy asked, and she used her own money to do so. And then later, Nancy, who had far more money than Kathy, made Kathy pay her legal fees. Detectives interviewed Kathy for nearly 10 hours, after which they asked her if she would be willing to take a polygraph test. She did agree to this, and so they brought in an examiner who wired her up and began the test. And Kathy failed. Upon learning that she flunked the polygraph, Kathy insisted that she had absolutely nothing to do with Nancy's murder. She knew how bad it looked, but it wasn't her. She promised well, if it wasn't you, then who was it? The detectives asked. They didn't really think that she would have an answer for them, but she did. She said that Nancy had two tenants living in her home recently while she was out of the country, and Kathy had heard they owed Nancy a lot of money. Their names, she said, were Trey and Nancy Styler. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. You guys, I can't even begin to tell you how many subscriptions I have in order to make this show. Yes, Heartstarts Pounding requires a lot of different programs. I have subscriptions for newspaper archives, for academic books. I have one that helps me with the sound design. I have one that helps me with the music. It is impossible to keep track of everything that I've signed up for at this point. And most importantly, it's impossible to cancel them when I'm done using them so they don't charge me truly forever. That's where Rocket Money comes in. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. As you can imagine, that is very important to me and for our whole heartstrings pounding team. It can also monitor your spending and help lower your bills so that you can actually grow your savings. The app I find to be very useful on it, you can set budgets, you can set goals for yourself. You can even get personalized insights and regular reports and receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and even low balances. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com HSP that's RocketMoney.com HSP RocketMoney.com HSP this episode is brought to you by Kachava. I always feel my best when I'm tapped into that slightly feral, adventurous version of myself. The one that says yes to a long walk with no destination or being outside for just a little bit longer than I planned. But when I crave simplicity in life, my nutrition can become complicated. My cabinets are basically a graveyard of supplements and powders that I've tried before. But that's why I love cachava now. My cabinet is just one bag. Cachava provides clean nutrition to fuel wherever your day takes you. There's no fillers, no nonsense, just two scoops. Provide 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens, and so much more. My personal favorite way to enjoy cachava is to make it very creamy and delicious. I take my chocolate cachava. I'll add yogurt, milk, peanut butter, sometimes some chia seeds. Anything to make it so thick I almost need a spoon to eat it. Matt actually got me 6% milk the other day, which I didn't realize they made milk that's even thicker than whole milk. Anyways, I added that to it and it was amazing. 10 out of 10. Rewild your nutrition@kachava.com and use code HSP. New customers get $20 off an order of two bags or more now through the 31st. That's Kachava K A C H A V A.com code HSP now maybe at first police thought Kathy was sending them on a wild goose chase, but they still decided to track down the Stilers and bring them in separately. The couple began describing their relationship with Nancy Pfister, Dr. Trey Styler and his wife Nancy, who I'll call Mrs. Styler, were a couple in their 60s who had just moved to Aspen. They answered a newspaper ad from Nancy, who wanted to rent out her mountaintop home while she escaped to Australia for a couple of months. And when the Stylers first knocked on her door, Nancy appeared like a character from a soap opera in a bathrobe, decked out in pearls, champagne in hand. She was this picture of Aspen royalty. And this was entirely different for the Stylers, who were not from Aspen but were looking for a place to stay for a couple of months. Now the two Nancy's hit it off right away. They bonded over organic gardening and Mrs. Styler's dream of opening a health spa. Nancy agreed to rent them her home for $12,000 for three months, plus an extra fee for using her car. The Styler said that they could only pay half of that up front. They said that the recession had wiped them out, but Nancy seemed really understanding about this and she told them to just pay the rest later to her friend at Alpine Bank, Kathy Carpenter. Then she sweetened the deal a little bit. She said that they could move in with her immediately, a month before their lease was set to start. For the Stylers, who really needed a place to stay and were already charmed by their new landlord, this felt like a miracle. It's karma, she told them. But as the Stylers would later tell police, that karma quickly turned sour when they moved in. Within weeks, their relationship with Nancy deteriorated. Nancy treated them less like tenants and more like personal assistants. She asked them to run errands and do chores for her. And then she sprung this new obligation on them. Could they also watch her 8 month old labradoodle while she was out of the country? Trey didn't really like this part of the deal. Dog sitting wasn't necessarily something he was up for, and Nancy's puppy was completely untrained. He had already eaten through their phones and one of Trey's expensive cameras. But Nancy was never one to take no for an answer, and she even told them that her friend Kathy Carpenter could take the dog on the weekends. The Stylers felt really boxed in by this ask, and they reluctantly agreed. They by the time Nancy threw herself a going away party, her Persona and their telling had shifted from this warm extrovert to a heavy drinker who used everyone around her like staff. She made the couple help her pack for her trip, and Trey drove five hours each way to get her to the Denver airport. And he later told investigators that Nancy was so sedated on pills by the time that they arrived at the airport, he had to wheel her to the gate in a wheelchair. But he was relieved, because at least they would finally have the house to themselves. But their time without Nancy would not really last very long. Soon after she landed in Australia, Nancy began emailing the Stylers, accusing them of misusing her credit card and demanding the remaining $6,000 in rent immediately. Her tone was threatening. She said that they would be hearing from her lawyer and they better start packing because she wanted them out unless they could pay immediately. So the Stylers decided that all they could really do was pay Nancy. So they went to Alpine Bank. They sat down with Kathy Carpenter, and they handed over the $6,000 balance plus $650 for utilities, hoping that this would end all of the hostility. But it didn't. From Australia. Nancy now insisted that they owed her more money because they moved in a month early, even though she insisted they do so. And if they didn't like it, she suggested they could always go live in a trailer park. Quote down Valley, where the working class of Aspen lived. Nancy then vented on Facebook that her tenants weren't paying rent or utilities. She hinted that she might have to cut her trip short. In another post, she advertised her home as available to rent again, and she mentioned that she needed a dog sitter. In this post, Trey took the hint. He scrambled to find a solution for him and his wife. He applied for a bank loan. He called old colleagues, but nothing came through. And on February 19, just a week before the murder, Nancy left the Stylers a voicemail. She said that she would be back in Aspen in three days and they needed to be out. If they weren't, she would check into a hotel and she would send them the bill, she said. So the Stylers did what she asked. They rented a motel room an hour and a half away, and they started looking for a moving van and a storage unit. Kathy, who had become their friend, felt really bad, and she lent them her Subaru to help them move their belongings, while also keeping Nancy updated on the situation. And on the evening of February 22, four days before the murder, Nancy returned to her mountain home. The Stylers were gone, but to her dismay, many of their things were still in her house. And Nancy was furious about this. She accused them of breaking her bed, of not paying utilities or snow plowing fees. And now she said that they owed her an additional $14,000. She even told them that she would hold their remaining belongings hostage until they paid up. I mean, I've had some bad landlords in my day, but I've never experienced anything to this degree. Mrs. Styler told the police that she and Trey, who were at this point so exhausted and so desperate to be done, started planning on how they could retrieve the rest of their stuff. And on February 25, just a day before Nancy's body was found, they drove up to the house with a moving crew. The house was locked, which they found odd, but Trey still had a key, so he let himself, his wife, and the movers all inside. Now, according to the Stylers, when they went inside, they found Nancy's dog alone and unfed, and there was a really bad smell in the air. However, given Nancy's substance abuse issues, they didn't really think that much of it. And they just continued moving their stuff out of the house. And this was all coming out in the interviews they were doing with the police. And the police could feel how much resentment the Stylers had built up towards Nancy. I mean, Trey even referred to her as a multiple times in these interviews. That anger, combined with their financial dispute, gave him motive. But there was the fact that Trey was 65 and was a pretty frail guy. Investigators struggled to picture him beating someone to death, moving a body, flipping over a queen sized mattress all by himself. But still, they had to take this seriously. So they put him on a polygraph test. And just like Kathy Carpenter, he failed. So detectives swabbed Trey and Mrs. Styler for DNA, and then they let them go home. But they kept turning over his story. In their minds, Nancy had pushed them to the brink. But they were also on the verge of finally collecting their things and walking away. So was that really the moment to kill her? Then investigators heard from one of Nancy's friends. He said that he had gone to her house on the 25th to keep plans that he had with her, only to find that the Stylers were there loading their belongings into a vehicle out front and Nancy was nowhere in sight. Wondering if she was inside, he went upstairs to the master bedroom to look for her, and Mrs. Styler followed him closely the whole way. There was nothing unusual about the scene, though he said the picture of what happened was getting a lot murkier and suspicions were starting to really mount. But police were actually about to find their biggest piece of evidence the very next day. This episode is brought to you by Alma A year from today, who do you want to be more patient, maybe less reactive? I always think about these things around the new year and I know I want to work on managing my anxiety personally. Well, you deserve to feel like the future version of yourself. And the right therapist can really help. 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So the next morning, after the Styler's questioning, a sanitation worker found a large, durable black trash bag inside of a city owned garbage dumpster. Because that bag had been dumped there illegally. Remember, this is Aspen. Rich people get to decide who throws their trash into their receptacles. The worker tore it open to see if he could determine who may have dumped it there. And inside of the bag, the worker found a jewelry box, an old photograph, and a pill bottle with Nancy Pfister's name on it. Nancy's murder was the biggest story in Aspen that week, so the worker immediately recognized the name and he turned over the trash bag and its contents to the police. Investigators did a more thorough examination. And inside of the bag they also found that there was another, smaller bag. And the contents were a lot more damning because inside of that bag they found more of Nancy Pfister's belongings. Her passport, credit cards, banking documents, as well as a hammer speckled with a dried red substance that they assumed was blood. They kept digging through the bags and found more more of Nancy's things that looked like they were very intentionally dumped. And that's when they found something that did not belong to Nancy. It belonged to someone else. It was a vehicle registration and inspection sheet and a P.O. box receipt, all bearing the name of Dr. Trey Styler. Now, it's worth noting here that the bag was found directly behind the hotel where the Stylers were staying. Could it be that they had been so careless as to discard this almost perfectly curated bag of evidence within just a few feet of where they were staying? Or did someone maybe plant this? Either way, investigators Decided that it was time to do a deeper dive into the Stilers. And that's when they found that the couple wasn't necessarily the helpless victims that they had portrayed themselves as. For the first decade of their marriage, Trey and Nancy Styler had been the picture of success. Trey was a successful anesthesiologist. And Nancy was one of the world's experts on the Victorian water lily. And they lived with their young son in a luxurious 6,000 square foot home in Kansas. Their backyard water lily ponds attracted attention far and wide. And they were even featured at one point on hgtv. Life at that point was great for the Stylers. Until one afternoon, Trey was digging another lily pond in the family's backyard when suddenly a backhoe came tumbling down on his leg, sending him to the er. Many surgeries followed and Trey would never be the same again. The nerves in his leg were completely damaged, forcing him to use a cane. He was forced to close his practice and retire early. And with the money Trey inherited from his mother, he and his wife started a printing business. But that business was not successful. And around this time, Mrs. Styler was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. It was a horrible, horrible time in the couple's life. By the early 2000s, the Stylers had hit what I call the American nightmare. Wiped out by medical debt and almost completed. Completely out of money as a result. So Trey went back to work developing scheduling software for an anesthesiology group. But the working relationship was really bad. He had trouble meeting his deadlines and that relationship completely soured. The group fired Trey. They ended up suing him for breach of contract. Trey countersued and the lawsuit dragged on for so long, over five years, that it completely depleted the Stylers finances, which is another aspect of the American nightmare. Not only being wiped out by medical debt, but being wiped out by legal legal Feees. By the mid 2000s, they had to sell their luxury home and move into a modest house in suburban Denver. I know, I know it's a little cry me a river but stay with me. Trey's money kept dwindling until he could no longer afford to pay his attorney. So he fired that attorney and represented himself. And when the years long lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, Trey sued his attorney for legal malpractice. And he actually won a nine hundred thousand dollar judgment in that case. But the attorney later declared bankruptcy and had his legal obligation discharged. So Trey ended up not receiving any of that money. And then after that, the recession came and Trey's health continued to decline. Which forced him to use a wheelchair more and more. By 2013, the Stylers Fortune was essentially gone because of medical debt and legal fees. And it forced them to relocate yet again to an even more modest home in an even smaller town 20 miles outside of Denver. Mrs. Stiler at this time, began thinking about other work she could do, like maybe open a med spa. She obtained an anesthetician's license, and she intended to use it to provide spa services to wealthy clientele. And what better place to find wealthy clientele that want spa services and Botox, she reasoned, than Aspen, which is basically the Beverly Hills of Colorado. So in the summer of 2013, the Stilers sank the last of their savings into spa equipment and began visiting Aspen, seeking out work opportunities and a place to live. But spa jobs and affordable housing are hard to come by in Aspen. Every day, the Stylers scanned classifieds in the Aspen Times, and for weeks and weeks, they searched for work, until finally there was an advertisement for a a rental that caught their eye. Quote, three bedroom house, three and a half baths, the ad read. House on the mountain, no cats. The price seemed totally doable for their family at the time. $4,000 a month for six months from November 22 until May 22, when the owner would return from abroad. The Styers decided that they were going to contact the owner, and before long, they drove up to the house and. And knocked on Nancy Pfister's door. Now, that Nancy Pfister comment that I mentioned earlier, when she said the three of them meeting seemed like karma, that took on a pretty cruel irony in the wake of her murder. And whether the Stylers were responsible or not, they had plenty to worry about on their own end because they were now nearly destitute. All they had was their spa equipment, some jewelry, and their luxury car that they refused to trade in for something more affordable. Investigators soon learned that Trey had tried pawning some of that jewelry at a local pawn shop. And when the owner's offer was lower than what he liked, Trey hung his head, said he was going to end his life, and then walked out of the door. The branch manager, who refused Trey Styler alone because of his poor credit, also reported that Trey made a similar remark about taking his own life inside of the bank. And then in the same breath, he mentioned that his landlady was ruining him and his wife's lives, and that if something were to happen to her, it would be the best thing for everyone involved. That was enough for detectives to impound the Styler's Jaguar and Have the car sprayed with luminol. And the result was some areas near the driver's side of the vehicle lit up, which indicated the possible presence of blood. Police also found cleaning supplies in the trunk and black plastic garbage bags similar to the ones found in the dumpster behind the Styler's motel. Investigators sent all of this evidence they found from Styler's car and from the motel dumpster to the crime lab and awaited results. They put both the Stylers and Kathy Carpenter under 24 hour surveillance because they didn't want to lose track of either of them. But one thing became very clear from this surveillance of the Stylers. Trey really was in very poor health. He used his wheelchair most of the time. Meanwhile, investigators discovered that $6,000 in cash and two diamond rings were missing from Nancy Pfister's safe box at Alpine Bank. And they knew that Kathy Carpenter had access to that safe deposit box, so they questioned her. And that's when Kathy did admit to taking the money and the rings. And that was all investigators needed to obtain a search warrant for Kathy's condo. There, police found notebooks containing Nancy Pfister's personal information, as well as a ripped up business card with Nancy Pfister's name on it. Not long after all of that, results came in from the crime lab for the items that were found in the motel dumpster. That hammer with the red specs tested positive for blood, and the DNA profile from the blood matched Nancy Pfister's DNA. Additional DNA found on the garbage bags that contained the hammer could not be ruled out as coming from Trey Styler. So the following day, on March 3, 2014, Trey Styler and his wife were arrested at their motel and charged with murder in the first degree. Even after all of this, investigators weren't completely satisfied that the case was closed. They were still bothered by Kathy Carpenter's role in all of this, especially in some of the statements she made to authorities. So investigators went back to the transcript of her initial call to 91 1. And they read it careful. And there was something in the transcript that jumped out at them. Now, Kathy had told the dispatcher that she saw blood on Nancy's forehead when she found her body. It was clear from the crime scene photos from how Nancy Pfister's head was completely covered with that white plastic bag that there was no way Kathy could have seen blood on Nancy's forehead unless she had seen Nancy before the bag was placed over her head. Now, for prosecutors, this basically sealed the deal. Kathy had to have been involved so 10 days after the arrest of the Stylers, Kathy Carpenter was also taken into custody and charged with first degree murder. Prosecutors believed that Kathy had become close with the Stilers, and the three commiserated over their shared hatred of Nancy Pfister. And ultimately, they conspired to kill her. And afterwards, they each helped each other cover up the evidence. Soon, additional charges would be filed against all three, including aiding and abetting murder after the fact. But then, in mid June, a shocking turn of events took place. Trey Stiler said he was ready to confess, and he claimed that he and he alone had killed Nancy Pfister. Through his attorney, Trey said that he was ready to plead guilty to the crime, but only under the condition that all charges against his wife be dropped and she be made immune from any future prosecution. Before agreeing to this plea deal, the D. A carefully revisited and reviewed all of the evidence they had. This went all the way back to the transcript of Kathy Carpenter's phone call to 91 1. They obtained the tape recording so that they could listen to it. While reading the transcript of what was said on the call. And at the point in the phone call where they say that Kathy made this smoking gun statement that she saw blood on Nancy's forehead, Kathy can be heard telling the 911 dispatcher that she saw blood on Nancy Pfister's headboard, not forehead, like the transcript read. They replayed that portion of the call several times, and Kathy had unmistakably spoken the word headboard and not the word forehead. So whoever had transcribed the call had made a mistake. But that's a pretty significant one is the difference between Kathy saying she saw Nancy's forehead even though it was covered in plastic, and saying she saw her headboard, which, of course, she would have seen just by walking into the room. Now, personally, I don't think that this explains how she saw Nancy's hair, specifically her blonde hair, in that moment. But at this point, police decided that all of the forensic evidence pointed towards Trey Styler, and none of it pointed to Kathy Carpenter or his wife, Nancy Styler. So all charges against the two women were dropped. Prosecutors agreed to Trey's terms, and Nancy Styler was given immunity. Trey would then sit down with investigators and give them a full account of what happened. He said that he had driven up to Nancy Pfister's home with the intent to confront her. He parked outside of her house, let himself inside the home, proceeded upstairs with a hammer to the master bedroom, and upon seeing Nancy Pfister sleeping peacefully in bed while he and his wife's lives were falling apart, he decided he was going to bring the hammer down on her repeatedly until she died. Afterwards, he wrapped her body in the bed sheets all by himself, moved it to the closet, and then flipped the mattress over. He insisted that his wife wasn't there and had no involvement. And while prosecutors remained very skeptical of this, given his limited mobility and his long term health issues, they decided they were just going to take him at his word. So on June 20, Trey Styler entered a plea of guilty and was immediately sentenced to 20 years in prison. But he would only serve one year of that sentence because on August 6, 2015, he took his own life in his prison cell at the Arrowhead Correctional Facility. Now, to this day, and maybe you feel the same way, a lot of people are very skeptical of Trey's story. After Trey's death, Mrs. Stiler filed a claim on Trey's life insurance policy and was awarded $1 million. And a few months after that, she wrote and published a book about her experience in this entire case called Guilt by Matrimony. And I personally always find it weird when people publish books after crimes are committed to. In this book, she claims that she had no idea about the murder, but that Nancy most likely had borderline personality disorder. And people thought this was incredibly inappropriate because not only was she making money off of the crime, one that a lot of people thought she had a major role in, but she was disparaging the memory of Nancy Pfister. Luckily, the book was panned, and I'm not sure that many people read it to begin with. But again, why the need to write this book in the first place if you're so innocent? Now we may never have a concrete answer as to what happened to Nancy Pfister. Did Trey commit this crime alone? I mean, I personally don't really believe so. I would doubt he'd be strong enough to do it by himself. But if that's not the case, then which of the two women helped him out? Or did both of them? I'm very curious to hear what all of you think. That's all I have for you today. You can leave a comment wherever you listen. I think for me personally, the saddest part in all of this is that Nancy lived her life in a way where you could see multiple different people killing her for multiple different reasons. And to me, that's tragic. If at the end of your life, people can look around at the people who are closest to you and think, yeah, that person had a reason to kill her, you don't want to live a life like that. I promise you I'll be back here next week with another twisty case for you all this time, one that Reddit helped solved. You're not going to want to miss it. I will be here then. And until next time, stay curious. Ooh Art Search Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our Associate producer is Juno Hop. Additional research and writing by Paul Haynes Sound design and mix by Redrum Creative Special thanks to Travis Dunlop Grayson Jernigan the team at WME have a heart Pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartsbounding.
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