The Search for Sheree | A Picture in the Lobby | 9 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Cold
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Episode: The Search for Sheree | A Picture in the Lobby | 9
Author: KSL Podcasts | Wondery
Duration: 01:12:44
Episode Shownotes
A human skull is discovered on a hillside next to a busy Utah highway. Roy City police detective John Frawley digs into an abandoned box of Sheree Warren case files. Sheree’s ex-husband, Charles Warren, botches an opportunity to clear himself as a suspect in her disappearance.Season 3 of Cold includes
descriptions of rape, sexual assault, murder and domestic violence. Please take care when listening.Follow Cold Season 3: The Search for Sheree wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all 10 episodes ad-free only on Amazon Music. Or you can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+ in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App.Please support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Summary
In this episode of 'Cold,' titled 'The Search for Sheree | A Picture in the Lobby | 9,' investigative journalist Dave Cawley explores a renewed investigation into the 1985 disappearance of Sheree Warren, sparked by the discovery of a human skull. Detective John Frawley retraces old case files while scrutinizing discrepancies in the alibis of Sheree's ex-husband, Chuck Warren. As he navigates complex jurisdictional issues and investigates suspicious transactions, the episode delves into the themes of domestic violence and unresolved cold cases. The discovery of a gray jacket in a suspect's closet raises further questions about Sheree's fate, highlighting ongoing challenges in the pursuit of justice.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Search for Sheree | A Picture in the Lobby | 9) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker_06
This season of The Cold Podcast includes descriptions of rape, sexual assault, murder, and domestic violence. Please take care in listening. A human skull rolled down a brushy hill between a suburban neighborhood and a busy Utah highway.
00:00:26 Speaker_06
The cranium came to rest in a litter of decaying leaves at the base of a barren scrub oak tree. It sat there for some time, hours, days, months, before a man walking his dog caught a glimpse of it. What you got there?
00:00:45 Speaker_22
The man who initially found it walks along this furniture road every day and noticed something in the bushes.
00:00:53 Speaker_06
He wasn't sure what it was at first, just that it appeared round and off-white, out of place amid the drab remains of last autumn's long-fallen foliage. But it had captured his curiosity, so he went in for a closer look.
00:01:09 Speaker_06
Only then could he see the unmistakable shape of the hollow eye sockets, the six teeth still stubbornly lodged into the maxilla.
00:01:18 Speaker_06
This was once the head of a living human being, but judging by the brittle appearance of the bone, this person had been dead for quite some time.
00:01:28 Speaker_06
The man, recognizing the skull as the partial remains of a person, recoiled, then pulled out his phone and called 911. Davis County Sheriff's deputies rushed to the site. They put up crime scene tape as the frigid dark of the February night descended.
00:01:46 Speaker_06
A sergeant fielded questions from curious reporters, her face lit by the hard lights of the TV cameras, her breath turning to fog in the chill.
00:01:54 Speaker_22
You don't know if an animal could have brought it from a different location. There's so many factors that we're going to try to piece together and find the origin of this skull.
00:02:03 Speaker_06
In other words, they didn't know much. In the days that followed, crime scene technicians scoured the hill for more bones. They uncovered a shallow grave at the top of that hill, just a few feet behind the backyards of several homes.
00:02:17 Speaker_06
The grave contained the skeletal remains of a young woman.
00:02:22 Speaker_18
It was a little disturbing to realize that there's a parts of remnants of a body there.
00:02:28 Speaker_06
This discovery of a clandestine gravesite in early 2015 along US Highway 89 between Salt Lake City and Ogden resulted in police agencies all across Utah questioning if the bones belonged to one of their missing people.
00:02:42 Speaker_06
Police in the city of Roy hoped the skull might belong to Cherie Warren. The grave sat midway between where Cherie had lived and where she had disappeared.
00:02:52 Speaker_06
Jack Bell, the original investigator on the Cherie Warren case, had retired six years earlier, in 2009, as assistant chief for the Roy City Police Department. He had never stopped wondering what had happened to Cherie.
00:03:06 Speaker_10
The last time I talked to anybody out here about that case, they had a pretty good-sized cardboard box. full of stuff.
00:03:17 Speaker_06
That stuff included Jack's handwritten notes. Jack told me he'd at one time tried to type those chicken scratches into a computer.
00:03:23 Speaker_10
Because I wasn't very proud of the work, and I know my handwriting's terrible, but I didn't get very far, so.
00:03:33 Speaker_06
So the notes had gone back into the box, and the box had gone onto a shelf, all but forgotten. It had collected dust until that skull rolled down a hill next to a busy highway between Salt Lake and Ogden.
00:03:52 Speaker_11
I was just in my office one day, and my supervisor comes in with a box, one of those cardboard boxes, and said, hey, they found remains in Davis County, so we're reopening this cold case. It was Sheree Warren.
00:04:09 Speaker_11
I didn't, I honestly didn't know much about the Sheri Warren case at all.
00:04:14 Speaker_06
That's the voice of Detective John Frawley. He had started with the Roy City Police Department in 2008, meaning his and Jack Bell's paths crossed only briefly.
00:04:25 Speaker_06
John had only been a cop about six years when he ended up with Jack Bell's old box of Sheri Warren case files. He was still relatively new to investigations, but had a sharp analytical mind.
00:04:37 Speaker_06
The box contained Jack Bell's notes, a copy of the statement Kerry Hartman had given to his private investigator, reports from Las Vegas police about the discovery of Cherie's car, and a few other tidbits.
00:04:50 Speaker_06
John told me he had seen Cherie's face hundreds of times without ever realizing it.
00:04:54 Speaker_11
Cherie Warren's picture was actually in a display case in our lobby, and I never made the connection.
00:05:03 Speaker_06
John had never stopped to study that old missing persons flyer. It looked a lot like the one Carrie Hartman had carried into Jack Bell's office almost 30 years earlier. The box also contained one of those old flyers Carrie Hartman had printed.
00:05:21 Speaker_06
John looked at it, seeing again the photocopied picture of a smiling Cherie Warren. He picked through the rest of the cardboard box, pulling out Jack's notes, struggling to decipher the former detective's handwriting.
00:05:35 Speaker_06
John read the original missing persons report. It described how Mary Sorensen had called police the day after Cherie failed to return home from work one October evening.
00:05:45 Speaker_11
Mary really kept her finger on the pulse of the case, you know, and was involved.
00:05:50 Speaker_06
John decided Roy Police needed to reconnect with Cherie's relatives.
00:05:55 Speaker_11
I met with some of Cherie Warren's family members and just to collect some DNA so we had something to compare to.
00:06:02 Speaker_06
In the process, he learned Cherie's mom, Mary, had died about two years earlier. I was never able to meet her and talk with her. But he did meet Cherie's dad, Ed Sorensen, as well as her son.
00:06:15 Speaker_11
And talking with her son, he asked about that. He said, you know, is her picture still out in the lobby? And I said, yes. And it's, you know, It's important to them.
00:06:27 Speaker_06
These interactions drove home to John just how frustrating the years with no answers must have been to the people who cared most about Sheree. So John went back to that banker's box of old case notes and reports.
00:06:41 Speaker_11
Yeah, literally taken off the shelf, yeah.
00:06:44 Speaker_06
The box didn't have everything, only a fragment of the Sheri Warren case, covering the first year and a half of the investigation.
00:06:51 Speaker_06
That's because, as I've mentioned before, the case had been split between investigators from Roy, Ogden, and Salt Lake City. So John didn't yet have a full picture of the case, but he found himself fascinated by what he'd seen.
00:07:05 Speaker_11
I was taking it home and reading it, you know, it was just, I was hooked on it.
00:07:10 Speaker_06
Yeah, I know the feeling, John. Meanwhile, the office of the Utah State Medical Examiner was trying to identify the bones found on that hillside.
00:07:20 Speaker_06
John sent the medical examiner one of the items he had found in the box, Cherie's dental records, for the sake of comparison.
00:07:27 Speaker_11
everything sort of fit, meaning the time frame, it was a female, it was the same stature that Cherie Warren was.
00:07:36 Speaker_06
Cherie's case had been dormant nearly a decade when the discovery of these skeletal remains infused Detective John Frawley with a desire to find answers for Cherie's family.
00:07:46 Speaker_11
And I felt like, I felt like there was more that I could do on it. As an investigator, that's what you're driven to do, you know, dig in.
00:07:57 Speaker_06
This is Cold, Season 3, Episode 9, A Picture in the Lobby. From KSL Podcasts, I'm Dave Cauley.
00:08:08 Speaker_04
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00:09:34 Speaker_06
Roy Police Detective John Frawley had picked up the Sheri Warren cold case in February of 2015 after the discovery of unidentified skeletal remains in a clandestine grave.
00:09:46 Speaker_11
I started reading through this information in this box. That's how the Cole case started.
00:09:53 Speaker_06
John couldn't get Sheree's case out of his head. He had done some preliminary research and re-established contact with Sheree's family, but he wanted to do more. So he had gone to talk to his boss.
00:10:04 Speaker_07
Carl Marino, C-A-R-L, and Marino, M-E-R-I-N-O.
00:10:10 Speaker_06
Carl Marino served as chief of police for Roy City from March of 2015 to May of 2021. We're going to spend a little time diving into Carl's background now, to help you better understand his philosophy on cold cases.
00:10:24 Speaker_06
It's important because it shows why he was willing to greenlight John Frawley's continued work on the Sheri Warren case. And he had bumped up against one of the two suspects, Kerry Hartman, several times over the years.
00:10:38 Speaker_07
It's been really interesting to think how that case and my career have interacted.
00:10:44 Speaker_06
So let's look at Carl Marino's history with the Sheri Warren case. Carl started as a cop in 1983, when he took an unpaid, volunteer position as a reserve officer with the Ogden Police Department.
00:10:56 Speaker_06
He signed on to the Reserve Corps right after Ogden Police Brass kicked Cary Hartman out of it. Carl told me he had known Cary back then, from his day job.
00:11:06 Speaker_07
He would come in where I worked as an industrial supply sales rep, and so I knew him from there. We had talked a little bit, but not much. He was a really outgoing guy. Came across always as very confident.
00:11:22 Speaker_07
You got the feeling that he thought he was better than everybody else. And kind of that feeling of he had a scam going on everybody. You know how somebody's always getting over. That was kind of the way he came across.
00:11:33 Speaker_06
It wasn't until a few years into Carl's time as an Ogden Reserve officer that he came to see Kerry Hartman in a different light.
00:11:40 Speaker_07
I was at work the one day and I got called by our coordinator, who coordinated with the reserves, and he said, I need you to come to the police station and bring your gun.
00:11:52 Speaker_07
And that usually means you've done something wrong and, you know, they're taking your gun away and, you know, going to not let you volunteer anymore. And I thought, I can't think of anything I could have done that would have done that.
00:12:03 Speaker_07
So I went home and got it and took it to Ogden Police Department. And he said, your gun was issued to Kerry Hartman when he was a reserve with Ogden. And he has intimated that
00:12:16 Speaker_07
He used a gun with several of his rapes, and we're thinking that it was probably this gun, so we're taking it back to use as evidence in case we can actually prove something with that.
00:12:28 Speaker_06
He only knew from reading the newspaper Carrie had also been dating Cherie Warren when she had disappeared.
00:12:33 Speaker_07
You know, it's easy to imagine that something happened between the two of them that got out of hand. Two years later, Carl took a full-time, paid position as a police officer.
00:12:45 Speaker_06
August of 89, I got hired with Roy P.D. By that point, the Cherie Warren case was already four years old and well on its way to going cold. Five more years went by before, in 1994, Carl switched departments. He became a detective for Salt Lake City.
00:13:03 Speaker_07
I was assigned to Homicide, and while I was assigned there, we started to work cold cases.
00:13:11 Speaker_06
Carl had arrived in Salt Lake right at the end of that department's search for a suspected serial killer, a search that had soaked up a lot of money and manpower without much to show for it. Nothing was getting solved.
00:13:23 Speaker_07
As we've already seen in past episodes. I was assigned to look into some of those cases from the mid-80s, and that's the same time that Sheree Warren went missing from Salt Lake.
00:13:35 Speaker_06
Carl saw how jurisdictional politics had made Sheree's case a hot potato from the start.
00:13:41 Speaker_07
The last place she was known that people knew where she was was Salt Lake, so the case should have been handled out of Salt Lake. But they said, no, she's a Roy citizen, and so we're not going to work it.
00:13:53 Speaker_06
Roy police detective Jack Bell had worked Shuri's case for a few years before handing it off to the Ogden Police Department, where it promptly went cold.
00:14:03 Speaker_06
Ogden detective Shane Miner had picked Sheree's case up again in 1998, honing in on Kerry Hartman as his lead suspect.
00:14:11 Speaker_07
And so they thought that there was a connection there, since he was a convicted rapist as well.
00:14:17 Speaker_06
But Shane's investigation had itself stalled in 2006, leaving Sheree's case cold once again. all the information Shane had gathered up to that point remained with him.
00:14:28 Speaker_06
His report didn't find its way into the hands of Salt Lake detectives like Carl Marino. Shane told me he had taken part in a few cold case conferences over the years. He had presented the Sheri Warren case, hoping to drum up some help.
00:14:43 Speaker_09
He put a bunch of guys together, a bunch of cops especially, and everybody's going to have great ideas. But then there's the follow through of, OK, who's going to do what and make sure this gets done.
00:14:53 Speaker_06
It had felt like doing a group project in school. A lot of people had great ideas, but no one seemed interested in doing the actual work. Years passed.
00:15:03 Speaker_06
Carl Marino was approaching retirement from his job in Salt Lake City when, one day, he saw yellow crime scene tape out of the corner of his eye while driving home from work. The body on the east side of 89.
00:15:17 Speaker_06
The spot where the dog walker had found that skull.
00:15:21 Speaker_07
I was still in Salt Lake when they found her.
00:15:24 Speaker_06
Carl followed the news of the discovery, wondering if the bones might belong to Cherie Warren.
00:15:30 Speaker_02
Deputies aren't saying who they have questioned in this current case, and they're not disclosing the cause of death at this time.
00:15:36 Speaker_06
Dental records allowed the medical examiner to identify the skeletal remains as those of a missing woman who had disappeared during the 1980s. But the medical examiner told Detective John Frawley the bones did not belong to Cherie Warren.
00:15:51 Speaker_11
The remains were later identified as Teresa Greaves.
00:15:56 Speaker_20
She was 23 years old when she disappeared back in 1983, and right now deputies here in Davis County are investigating this as a homicide case.
00:16:04 Speaker_06
If this sounds familiar, it's probably because the discovery of Teresa Greaves' remains also came up in Cold Season 2. We don't have time to repeat Teresa's story here, but I will note her case still remains unsolved.
00:16:18 Speaker_02
Greaves had left her home in Woods Cross and told a roommate that she was taking a bus into Salt Lake City for a job interview.
00:16:24 Speaker_06
Salt Lake detectives had at the time declined to work Teresa's case, leaving it to investigators in the much smaller suburb of Woods Cross where Teresa had lived. Why did the Salt Lake detectives turn their back on Teresa in the 1980s?
00:16:39 Speaker_06
Perhaps a mixture of big city copy elitism and a desire to keep their crime stats down. The majority of missing persons cases resolve quickly with the missing returning home, but those that don't, like Teresa Greaves' case, can linger for decades.
00:16:56 Speaker_06
Carl Marino told me Salt Lake Detectives did the same thing two years later with Cherie Warren's case. They pushed that investigation off onto the Roy Police Department.
00:17:07 Speaker_06
But Roy did not at the time have the resources to conduct a robust investigation 40 miles away.
00:17:13 Speaker_07
I wonder if they spent the time in Salt Lake to gather all the evidence down here that they could have.
00:17:18 Speaker_06
Carl had started out in Roy, then gone to work in Salt Lake City, so he had seen both sides of the coin over the course of his career.
00:17:26 Speaker_06
But that career had taken an interesting turn in March of 2015, just weeks after the discovery of those skeletal remains on a hillside next to the highway. Carl Marino returned to the Roy City Police Department.
00:17:40 Speaker_07
They had an opening for chief of police and I applied and they selected me.
00:17:46 Speaker_06
And so that's how Carl became Detective John Frawley's boss, just weeks after Frawley had reopened the Cherie Warren cold case.
00:17:54 Speaker_11
I did have one supervisor say, you know, after the remains were identified, well, okay, well, we're done, you know, we can kind of just move on. But there was a separate supervisor who said, you know, you don't have to put that back on the shelf.
00:18:07 Speaker_11
You can still work it. And that's what I wanted to do. I just felt like there was more to do on it.
00:18:14 Speaker_06
Carl told me he believes cold cases matter. And as chief, he vowed to put money and manpower behind that belief.
00:18:23 Speaker_07
Detective Frawley came to me and said, are you okay if I work as chief? I said, yeah, you know, let's get going.
00:18:34 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley had both a personal desire and a mandate from his new boss to dig into the Cherie Warren case. He started by examining the facts. What did he know for sure about Cherie's final day?
00:18:48 Speaker_11
What does she plan on doing? She planned to meet Charles Warren at Wagstaff Toyota and give him a ride back to Ogden.
00:18:56 Speaker_06
John knew from reading Detective Jack Bell's notes, Chuck Warren had talked to Jack a couple of times.
00:19:02 Speaker_11
He told Detective Bell he never made it to Wagstaff's. He became ill. He went for a jog. At the end of that jog, he was too tired to go home, and he called his previous wife, Alice, to come pick him up. To me, that makes no sense at all.
00:19:20 Speaker_06
It seemed like a shaky alibi. In John's mind, Sharizak's husband also had motive.
00:19:26 Speaker_11
There's a divorce. They're in the process of a divorce. So there's a house, a pension, a child.
00:19:32 Speaker_06
All these things are involved. John could see a hypothetical scenario in which Chuck Warren killed Sheree in an act of domestic violence, seeking to put an end to their fight over alimony and child support. But did Chuck have opportunity?
00:19:47 Speaker_11
The last person to see Sheree Warren was a co-worker. His name was Richard Moss.
00:19:53 Speaker_06
We met Richard in episode two. He was the credit union manager Cherie had been training the day she disappeared.
00:20:00 Speaker_10
I never saw what car she got into or her own car or another car.
00:20:09 Speaker_06
I never saw her again. John called Richard in June of 2015. And he wanted to know or refresh or see what I could remember. It marked Richard's third round of questioning over a span of nearly 30 years.
00:20:23 Speaker_06
First by Jack Bell, then by Shane Miner, and now by John Frawley. Three conversations over the telephone. Richard lived in Richfield, a rural community about 200 miles from Roy.
00:20:36 Speaker_06
He told me I was the first person in nearly 40 years to come interview him face-to-face about Sheree Warren. Interestingly enough, I did speak to Richard Moss. He never did see Sheree get in her car.
00:20:49 Speaker_06
Richard's story remained consistent from the start through his telephone conversation with Detective John Frawley and my eventual meeting with him in 2021. He was under the understanding that
00:21:00 Speaker_11
Sheree was going to leave work and pick up her ex-husband and give him a ride back home to Ogden.
00:21:06 Speaker_06
Chuck Warren had said he had called off that meeting. But that's not what Sheree had told Richard, as they had parted ways that evening in the garage behind the credit union office. I need to get past. this plan that she had to meet him.
00:21:20 Speaker_06
John came across a report in the box of Roy Police Records. It talked about a tip that had come in about four months after Sheree disappeared.
00:21:28 Speaker_06
A credit union employee had told police Chuck Warren had made a cash advance on his credit card in person in Salt Lake City on the day of Sheree's disappearance. If that was true, it would mean Chuck had lied about where he was that day.
00:21:44 Speaker_11
Charles Warren was asked by Detective Bell if he would submit to a polygraph regarding his alibi.
00:21:51 Speaker_06
And as we know, Chuck Warren had refused that lie detector test. The tipster had told police she'd also heard Chuck had made credit card transactions in Nevada, days before Cherie's car surfaced in Las Vegas.
00:22:05 Speaker_06
I mentioned this tip in passing way back in episode two. But here, in 2015, Detective John Frawley couldn't find any indication his predecessor, Jack Bell, had ever verified it. So that needs to be looked into.
00:22:21 Speaker_06
John wrote a search warrant targeting Chuck Warren's financial records. He wanted account statements, copies of checks, or any details of transactions posted to Chuck's account during September, October, or November of 1985.
00:22:35 Speaker_06
A judge signed off on the warrant, and John sent it to the credit union. And a lot of that information was gone because of the time frame. The credit union no longer had Chuck Warren's checks, but it did have his credit card statements.
00:22:52 Speaker_06
I haven't seen them, so I can't tell you everything they revealed.
00:22:55 Speaker_06
But I do know the statements showed Chuck had made a purchase in Elko, Nevada on November 4, 1985, followed by another at the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nevada on November 8, 1985.
00:23:10 Speaker_06
That's a little over a month after Cherie disappeared, and a matter of days before staff at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas found her car abandoned in their back lot.
00:23:21 Speaker_11
I felt that it was a significant development.
00:23:25 Speaker_06
Because John suspected Chuck might have made those transactions while riding the train back to Ogden after dumping Cherie's car in Las Vegas. But there were some problems with this idea. Las Vegas sits at the far southern tip of Nevada.
00:23:40 Speaker_06
Elko and Reno are in the north. They're both nearly as far from Las Vegas as Ogden, Utah is. And there are no railroads directly connecting Elko or Reno to Las Vegas. And consider the timing.
00:23:54 Speaker_06
John had read the Las Vegas police reports about the car's discovery.
00:23:58 Speaker_11
They say it looks like it's been there for some time, based on dirt, debris.
00:24:03 Speaker_06
Chuck's transactions occurred on November 4th and 8th. Cherie's car turned up on the 11th, so that's a week at most. Not long enough for the car to have gathered a thick coat of dust.
00:24:16 Speaker_06
So Chuck Warren's credit card transactions in Nevada probably didn't have anything to do with dumping Cherie's car in Las Vegas. But John still found them suspicious. So did I, frankly, when I first found out about them.
00:24:31 Speaker_06
I wondered if Chuck had gone on gambling jaunts just weeks after his wife disappeared. If so, I didn't expect to get a straight answer about it. In fact, I thought I'd never hear Chuck Warren's side of the story. But it turns out I was wrong.
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00:26:21 Speaker_06
Roy City Police Detective John Frawley drove into Ogden on June 23, 2015. He carried a small voice recorder in his pocket, and he started it rolling as he pulled up to the curb outside an orange brick house.
00:26:36 Speaker_06
John stepped out of his car and walked past the driveway, noticing an old Toyota Supra parked there. He headed to the front door. John had come alone to the house belonging to Chuck Warren.
00:26:54 Speaker_06
The same house Cherie Warren had herself called home for a few brief years back in the early 80s. But it was a different woman who greeted John at the door.
00:27:06 Speaker_06
The microphone on John's audio recorder sometimes rubbed against his clothing as he moved, making a lot of noise. So I'll just tell you. The woman who answered the door identified herself as Willow, Chuck Warren's wife.
00:27:20 Speaker_06
A cat slinked between Willow's legs as she told John Chuck was in the other room. The house looked much the same as it had when Cherie had lived there more than 30 years earlier. Same carpet, same everything.
00:27:45 Speaker_06
Only now, Willow lived there as Chuck's wife instead of Cherie. Chuck had met Willow Hendricks at a restaurant in Ogden called The Stagecoach in the late 2000s. He was a regular customer, she was working there as a server.
00:27:58 Speaker_06
They had a significant age gap, 27 years, but they hit it off and began dating. Willow had soon moved in with Chuck. They were married in 2013 and soon after held a ceremony at an Elvis impersonator chapel, if you can call it that, in Las Vegas.
00:28:16 Speaker_06
So Chuck and Willow's wedding had come just a couple of years before Detective John Frawley showed up on their doorstep in 2015. Chuck stepped into the room after a moment to meet the detective.
00:28:28 Speaker_13
Is there somewhere we can talk for a couple of minutes? Sure.
00:28:31 Speaker_06
This is the first time you're hearing Chuck Warren's actual voice in this podcast. None of his prior interactions with police in this case were recorded.
00:28:41 Speaker_13
I'm here to talk to you. I just, I was assigned a case a few months ago, Sheree Warren. What had happened is some remains were found in Davis County. I don't know if you saw that on the news or not.
00:28:54 Speaker_15
I do.
00:28:54 Speaker_13
Okay. And anytime something like that happens, a lot of old case people kind of reopened and And so the case was assigned to me.
00:29:03 Speaker_13
I read through it and was wanting to know if I can just talk to you and help me answer some questions and clear some things out. I know that you talked to Detective Bell when I was about 30, not quite. 30 years ago.
00:29:18 Speaker_06
John said, I know that you had talked to Detective Bell not quite 30 years ago. Chuck replied, damn near.
00:29:25 Speaker_13
Yeah, go ahead, Chuck.
00:29:29 Speaker_15
His notes would probably be the best source.
00:29:34 Speaker_06
Chuck said Detective Jack Bell's notes from 30 years earlier would be the best source for his story. Chuck said he had recently suffered a stroke. It had impacted his memory.
00:29:45 Speaker_15
Sometimes I can remember things. Yeah. But what I said at that time, you know, he'd have it all down, I would think. Yeah. Good he wasn't taking his notes. I used to have a photographic memory.
00:30:01 Speaker_15
If I had a phone number, you know, I could remember it forever. Or even numbers on cars.
00:30:11 Speaker_13
Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But I was wondering if, you know, actually reading through that report, I have more questions, actually. So that's why I said, well, I'll Charles and maybe talk to him.
00:30:26 Speaker_15
Ask me and I'll see what I can do.
00:30:27 Speaker_13
Yeah, well, I'd like to, if we could, maybe just go back to stuff from the day that Cherie disappeared.
00:30:34 Speaker_06
They went through the child custody arrangement Chuck and Cherie had worked out during the summer of 1985, after they had separated. Chuck said he had worked graveyards at the railroad, and Cherie had worked days at the credit union.
00:30:48 Speaker_06
They would meet each morning to trade custody of their son.
00:30:51 Speaker_15
She would drop him off at Denny's. we'd have coffee together and she'd go to work. Okay. And then the same in the afternoon.
00:31:01 Speaker_06
Chuck told John he'd worked midnight to eight, and he had gone to meet Cherie at the Denny's shortly after that. But Jack Bell's notes said something different.
00:31:10 Speaker_13
In his report, he says that you and Cherie met at the Denny's at 7 a.m. Around 7 a.m. Couldn't have been 7?
00:31:21 Speaker_15
I worked till 8.
00:31:23 Speaker_13
Okay.
00:31:24 Speaker_15
I wouldn't have left an hour early.
00:31:27 Speaker_06
There were other small inconsistencies between Jack's notes and what Chuck Warren told Detective John Frawley in this interview.
00:31:35 Speaker_06
Jack's notes described Chuck taking his anchory son to breakfast before dropping the boy off with Chuck's parents for the day. But Chuck told John he didn't remember doing that. He thought he had given the boy to Alice, his first wife.
00:31:50 Speaker_13
then it actually says that you and Alice go to lunch. That day? Yeah. I ain't talking about that. Okay.
00:32:04 Speaker_06
John asked what Chuck had planned to do later that day, on the afternoon of Cherie's disappearance.
00:32:10 Speaker_13
You had asked her to pick you up at Wagstaff, Toyotas, or something like that? Yeah. Okay. Can you tell me more about that?
00:32:21 Speaker_15
Well, I never made it down there. And I called and told her that I wasn't going to make it. But I just never made it down there.
00:32:37 Speaker_13
You never made it down there. Yeah. Can you tell me, Charles, what changed your plans? Why didn't you go to Wagstaff? Do you remember that?
00:32:45 Speaker_15
I was looking at cars, I think.
00:33:01 Speaker_06
I can't remember, I don't know. Not a very satisfying answer. Chuck said he had called Shariat the credit union sometime around 4, which was consistent with what he had told Detective Jack Bell back in 1985.
00:33:16 Speaker_06
Chuck told Detective John Frawley he couldn't remember what he had done after making the call to Cherie. John said, according to Jack Bell's notes, Chuck had gone for a jog. Chuck said that was right.
00:33:28 Speaker_06
He had jogged from his house into downtown Ogden, but the sun had gone down, so he had stopped.
00:33:34 Speaker_13
Yeah, I was just going to say, he was running in the dark.
00:33:38 Speaker_15
No, it seemed like he got dark, and that's not what the deadies do.
00:33:42 Speaker_06
A different Denny's. Not the Denny's where he'd picked up his son from Cherie earlier that morning. Chuck said he'd ordered a cup of coffee and called his first wife Alice, asking her to come pick him up.
00:33:54 Speaker_13
Oh, okay. That makes sense. So you go for a jog and then you're there at the Denny's having some coffee.
00:33:59 Speaker_15
Yeah, I drink a lot of Denny's coffee.
00:34:03 Speaker_13
Do you still drink it? Yeah.
00:34:05 Speaker_06
Chuck Warren's story left him with a roughly two-hour window on the afternoon of Cherie's disappearance for which he had no real alibi. He had told Jack Bell in 1985 he spent those two hours jogging. Just jogging.
00:34:21 Speaker_13
And you actually gave your whole jogging route to him.
00:34:25 Speaker_06
That route took Chuck four miles from his house into the heart of downtown Ogden, then another mile and a half back to that Denny's restaurant.
00:34:35 Speaker_06
Chuck hadn't provided any specific destination for his jog back in 1985, and he didn't volunteer one now, either.
00:34:44 Speaker_13
Well, I appreciate you talking with me. Like I said, this case, you know, it's open. It's an open case. But reading through that, questions come up, you know. And I can't help you with them. Oh, you did, actually. You helped me quite a bit.
00:34:59 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley asked Chuck what he had done that night, after his jog. Chuck said he'd spent the evening at home with his first wife, Alice. I went to bed early. But wait, didn't Chuck work graveyards?
00:35:16 Speaker_06
John asked about this inconsistency, and Chuck became confused. He said he couldn't remember whether he had gone to work that night or if he had stayed home with Alice.
00:35:26 Speaker_15
I can't tell you. A long time ago.
00:35:28 Speaker_06
But Chuck remembered wondering where Cherie was, why she hadn't come to pick up her son. He said he had called Cherie's mom, Mary Sorenson.
00:35:37 Speaker_13
It was before 10 o'clock and after 9.30, that's all. OK. Between 9.30 and 10 p.m. Somewhere in there. You called Mary. Yeah. Where was she at?
00:35:51 Speaker_06
This was different from what Chuck had told Detective Shane Miner in 1999. Back then, Chuck said Mary had called him looking for Cherie, not the other way around.
00:36:01 Speaker_06
And there's no record in the case files Mary ever mentioned talking to Chuck on the phone that night. John moved on to the day after Cherie disappeared. He said, according to Jack Bell's notes, Chuck had gone to work that day on the day shift.
00:36:16 Speaker_13
And you worked for the railroad. What did you do for the railroad? I was a clerk at that time. But this wasn't like you getting on a train and traveling around. No. This was you working in an office. Right there, what you can have. OK.
00:36:29 Speaker_06
Jack Bell had tried to call Chuck at the rail yard that day. Chuck hadn't been there. A co-worker had reportedly told Jack Chuck had come in that morning, but left sick a bit before noon.
00:36:42 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley asked Chuck if he had, in fact, left work sick that day.
00:36:46 Speaker_15
The only time I took off work is when I was going partying. If I was sick, I went to work. So I used my sick leave to go partying.
00:36:58 Speaker_06
Chuck didn't explain what he meant by partying. John pressed. Why hadn't Chuck gone to police detective Jack Bell about his missing wife?
00:37:07 Speaker_13
I guess he had been trying to call you. Did he leave messages for you to call him?
00:37:12 Speaker_15
I wouldn't have left work in the middle of the shift.
00:37:16 Speaker_06
But according to Jack's notes, Chuck had described leaving work and going into downtown Ogden the day after Cherie disappeared, to more or less the same place he had gone while out jogging the afternoon prior. That seems a bit strange to me.
00:37:30 Speaker_06
I know from talking to police who worked Ogden in the 80s, the area where Chuck said he had jogged to the evening of Cherie's disappearance, then returned to the following day, happened to be a hotspot for prostitution.
00:37:44 Speaker_06
I bring that up because while researching Chuck Warren, I learned Salt Lake Police cited him for sexual solicitation in April of 1993. That's a fancy way of saying he got a ticket after being caught in a prostitution bust.
00:37:58 Speaker_06
The court record doesn't provide much detail, beyond saying Chuck pleaded guilty and paid a $200 fine. All in all, pretty petty crime. But embarrassing. The kind of thing a guy might want to keep hidden from a nosy detective.
00:38:13 Speaker_06
Now think back to that tip I mentioned several minutes ago. A credit union worker had told police she had heard Chuck took a cash advance on the day Cherie disappeared. Why would Chuck have needed cash?
00:38:26 Speaker_06
This all leads me to wonder if Chuck might have met someone while out for that jog.
00:38:32 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley needed to pin down as much of Chuck's timeline as possible, but Chuck said he couldn't remember anything specific about that day after Cherie disappeared.
00:38:42 Speaker_06
His wife, Willow, interrupted to ask if any of his old co-workers might remember.
00:38:46 Speaker_14
No one could say for sure where Chuck Warren was or what he had done the day after his wife disappeared.
00:39:01 Speaker_13
Do you keep any time card records from that time? Do you have any records like that? No. She said you kept everything, so... No, no, just phones.
00:39:12 Speaker_14
I have lots of checkbooks.
00:39:16 Speaker_06
I wasn't in the room, but I can just imagine Detective John Frawley's face when Chuck Warren's wife, Willow, said she had Chuck's old checkbooks. Those were just the kinds of records John wanted.
00:39:28 Speaker_14
How far back do your checkbooks go in the closet?
00:39:33 Speaker_15
I don't know, I think it's the 80s.
00:39:35 Speaker_14
That's the time period, honey. Do you want me to go look for a minute? No, I don't want to.
00:39:42 Speaker_06
Checkbooks weren't all Chuck had in his closet. He said he still had his very first cell phone.
00:39:48 Speaker_13
Your very first one and you still have it?
00:39:52 Speaker_15
He keeps everything. I saved all of them except the ones that got stolen.
00:39:58 Speaker_06
He keeps everything, Willow said. But Chuck couldn't remember if he'd had that cell phone in 1985. I don't know.
00:40:05 Speaker_14
You had a lot of the first ones that came out, so you might have, but I don't know. So you did have a cell phone a long time ago?
00:40:14 Speaker_15
I did a long time ago, but I don't know where I had it at that time.
00:40:17 Speaker_06
John didn't let this go.
00:40:19 Speaker_13
Did you have a cell phone in 1985? I don't know for sure. Possibly. I don't know.
00:40:24 Speaker_15
I can't remember what year I actually got it.
00:40:28 Speaker_13
would have been one of the first ones coming out. Yeah. I mean, I remember those daydreamers.
00:40:35 Speaker_06
The Motorola Dynatac was the first commercially available cell phone. Today, most people just know it as the brick. It hit the market in 1983, two years before Shuri disappeared.
00:40:48 Speaker_06
Chuck said he had for sure had a cell phone in 88, but he wasn't sure about 85. John Frawley wondered what evidence a digital forensics lab might be able to scrape from a device that primitive, if Chuck Warren had owned one when Cherie disappeared.
00:41:04 Speaker_06
I can tell you from my work on the Susan Powell case in Cold Season 1, cell phone forensics are a critical tool in many modern investigations. But cell phones of the 1980s are dinosaurs compared to the smartphones of today.
00:41:18 Speaker_06
The Motorola Dynatac didn't have a camera, GPS, or SIM card, let alone apps or a web browser. Still, you never know what you might find unless you look.
00:41:29 Speaker_14
Is it the one I still have down the hall? Might be, yeah.
00:41:32 Speaker_06
John didn't tell Chuck he'd already obtained his old bank statements with a search warrant, but he tipped his hand just a bit to ask about something specific.
00:41:41 Speaker_13
You had a financial transaction in Elko, Nevada in the beginning of November. Financial transaction in Elko? Elko, Nevada, yeah.
00:41:53 Speaker_06
Chuck said he had started commuting between Ogden and Roseville, California, just outside of Sacramento, at some point after Cherie disappeared. He had driven I-80 across Nevada every two weeks. Elko sat on that interstate.
00:42:07 Speaker_15
Whatever that was in Elko, I probably would have stopped there for gas. That was the halfway point. If you looked every two weeks, you'd probably see a receipt there.
00:42:18 Speaker_06
But he couldn't say for sure.
00:42:20 Speaker_13
When I heard you worked for the railroad, I thought you were like actually traveling from state to state on the railroad, but that's not what you did. OK.
00:42:29 Speaker_06
This seemed to further discredit the theory Chuck might have used his railroad access to hitch an untraceable ride home from Las Vegas after dumping Cherie's car there.
00:42:39 Speaker_06
But Chuck hadn't managed to allay many of Detective John Frawley's other suspicions, and he certainly hadn't cleared himself as a suspect. To the contrary, his actions on the day of Cherie's disappearance and the day after remained questionable.
00:42:56 Speaker_13
Hey Charles, is it okay if I come out and talk to you or call you again if I have any questions? Is that alright? I do appreciate your time and talking with me.
00:43:05 Speaker_06
Chuck apologized for his faulty memory and again said he believed Jack Bell's notes were the best source for his story. John tossed another question at Chuck, almost as an aside.
00:43:18 Speaker_13
How do you know Cary Hartman? I don't. Oh, OK. I've never seen him before. OK.
00:43:23 Speaker_06
Chuck said Detective Jack Bell had dropped by to talk to him once, after Cary's arrest in the rape case. Jack had reportedly told Chuck how Cary had come in a week or so after Shuri disappeared.
00:43:35 Speaker_06
At that time, Cary had described a co-worker of his having a psychic dream.
00:43:39 Speaker_13
You had a dream that she's up in the mountain?
00:43:42 Speaker_15
Yeah. Yeah, the big finder up there. Enough!
00:44:10 Speaker_06
Chuck was just regurgitating the same stories we've heard before. Carrie's co-worker had a dream about Cherie's death. An anonymous psychic sent KSL a letter about it.
00:44:21 Speaker_06
Only now, it had gone a few steps through the rumor mill and was being fed back into the investigation. This is how misinformation poisons investigations. Detective John Frawley wasn't going for it.
00:44:35 Speaker_11
It could be great information. It could be very interesting. But does it get us to our goal?
00:44:41 Speaker_06
John did not intend to entertain psychics and seances.
00:44:45 Speaker_11
We're going to stick to the evidence and what we can absolutely say we know and filter everything else out.
00:44:53 Speaker_06
Jack Bell, the original investigator on the Sheri Warren case, had tried to put the screws to his lead suspect, Chuck Warren, working the human angle.
00:45:04 Speaker_06
Shane Miner, the former Ogden cop who had taken up the Cherie Warren cold case in 1998, had focused on trying to find her remains on the mountain where the second suspect, Carrie Hartman, might have dumped her. John Frawley brought a new approach.
00:45:20 Speaker_06
He wanted to prove the case by the record. Show who had motive, means, and opportunity.
00:45:27 Speaker_11
Really dissect the involved parties' stories.
00:45:32 Speaker_06
and John suspected there was more to Chuck Warren's story than Chuck was willing to admit.
00:45:48 Speaker_01
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00:45:57 Speaker_01
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00:46:28 Speaker_06
Roy City Police Detective John Frawley had found several inconsistencies with Chuck Warren's story about the disappearance of his ex-wife Cherie Warren.
00:46:37 Speaker_06
John wanted Chuck's old time cards to see if they might shed light on where Chuck was the day Cherie turned up missing. That was, that was difficult. The railroad Chuck had worked for, Southern Pacific, had merged with Union Pacific in the mid-90s.
00:46:54 Speaker_06
By 2015, the old railroad's daily employee records were long gone.
00:46:59 Speaker_11
There's things that we couldn't get that were lost, like persons of interest, their time cards, you know, things like, you know, were they at work?
00:47:10 Speaker_06
Chuck's time cards might have revealed whether he had gone to work at all the morning after Cherie vanished. Without them, John could only wonder. You're really behind.
00:47:21 Speaker_06
If Chuck had gone to work on the day shift that morning, as he had originally told police in 1985, he would have started around 8 a.m. In a past episode, we did our math homework.
00:47:31 Speaker_06
The story problem about how much time it would have taken to get Cherie's car to Las Vegas on the night of her disappearance, then return home to Utah. Making it to Ogden by 8 a.m. would have been nearly impossible.
00:47:44 Speaker_06
But we can't say for sure if Chuck did or didn't go to work that day without his time card.
00:47:50 Speaker_11
Her car is found at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on November 11th. and it's processed by Las Vegas police.
00:48:00 Speaker_06
Processed means scouring the car for evidence.
00:48:03 Speaker_06
Today, forensic technicians would vacuum the car for hair or fibers, use chemical reagents to look for blood, check for fingerprints, or maybe even use a cadaver dog to sniff for a whiff of human decomposition.
00:48:17 Speaker_06
Collecting DNA evidence wasn't yet standard practice in 1985. The Las Vegas police records I've obtained only mention searching for fingerprints.
00:48:26 Speaker_11
There is a print. on the window, and they collect that print.
00:48:33 Speaker_06
The Las Vegas police records say it appeared the print came from a woman, but they had never linked them to anyone specific. In fact, Detective Jack Bell had never seen those prints.
00:48:44 Speaker_10
Because like I said, my bosses didn't want me to go down there.
00:48:48 Speaker_06
Jack had tried to find a copy of Cherie's fingerprints to compare against way back then, but had come up empty.
00:48:55 Speaker_10
I got a lot of faith. Las Vegas' PD.
00:49:01 Speaker_06
It's baffling to me police didn't show more interest in Cherie's car at the time.
00:49:06 Speaker_10
There's paperwork in one of the reports of what they found.
00:49:11 Speaker_06
In an alternate universe, Jack would have written a search warrant for the car, then had a wrecker haul it back from Las Vegas. Cherie's car would have ended up in evidence, and crime scene technicians here would have torn it apart.
00:49:24 Speaker_06
Who knows what they might have found? Maybe they would have kept the car all these years, giving John Frawley an opportunity to examine it again today with better techniques and technology. Instead, the car just sat in a Las Vegas impound lot.
00:49:42 Speaker_06
And then the car is later given back to Charles Warren. Records show Chuck picked the car up on Christmas Eve of 1985. Six months later, he had traded it into a dealer. John wanted to know where Cherie's car had gone from there.
00:49:57 Speaker_06
He ran the car's VIN number and was able to follow it for a few years before losing the trail.
00:50:02 Speaker_11
We tried to track it down and it's long gone.
00:50:07 Speaker_06
Whatever secrets Cherie's car might have held, they're lost to us now. John talked to Chuck and Cherie's son, Adam, in October of 2015. Adam remembered his dad visiting casinos in Reno when he was a kid.
00:50:23 Speaker_06
Adam also specifically recalled going to Las Vegas one time with Chuck, when he was about seven years old.
00:50:30 Speaker_11
And he told me that the Aladdin Casino was a place that his father frequented.
00:50:37 Speaker_06
The trip Adam described would have happened in 1989, four years after Cherie disappeared.
00:50:43 Speaker_11
And Adam actually remembered his father taking him there on a vacation to the Aladdin.
00:50:49 Speaker_06
Why would Chuck Warren have taken his and Cherie's son to the Aladdin, of all places? So I found that significant. John kept thinking about those old checkbooks, squirreled away in Chuck Warren's closet.
00:51:03 Speaker_06
Decades of financial documents that might reveal where Chuck had gone, and when, in the fall of 1985. He again went to talk to his chief, Carl Marino.
00:51:15 Speaker_07
We found out that there were a lot of mistakes made early in the investigation.
00:51:21 Speaker_06
Carl told me in his experience, cops often resist sharing information with the public, victims, witnesses, and even with other officers. And there can be good reasons for that. Giving out too much info can tip off suspects or taint an investigation.
00:51:37 Speaker_07
It's a balancing act. You've got to know what you can release.
00:51:40 Speaker_06
But Carl told me police egos sometimes cause investigators to be overprotective. That can lead to turf battles that stymie investigations.
00:51:51 Speaker_07
When you're trying to solve crimes, it's not a competition except between law enforcement and whoever committed the crime.
00:51:58 Speaker_06
Carl believed jurisdictional squabbles were part of what had gone wrong with the Cherie Warren case. There wasn't a big flashing neon sign that said murder with an arrow pointing to a body in Salt Lake where Cherie had last been seen.
00:52:12 Speaker_06
So the Salt Lake City Police Department had declined to put much effort into what it viewed as a Roy City missing persons case.
00:52:19 Speaker_07
I think there should have been more pressure put on Salt Lake to help with it. I have no idea even what evidence might have been collected there.
00:52:29 Speaker_06
There are no witness statements in any of the Cherie Warren case files from employees at Wagstaff Toyota, where Cherie had planned to meet Chuck on the afternoon of her disappearance.
00:52:38 Speaker_06
Likewise with patrons of the bar where Kerry Hartman supposedly spent that evening. No one identified or questioned them. The dealership was in Salt Lake City. The bar was in Ogden.
00:52:50 Speaker_06
The Salt Lake and Ogden Police Departments could have helped the much smaller Roy Police Department by gathering those statements.
00:52:57 Speaker_07
There were opportunities for evidence gathering.
00:53:00 Speaker_06
But both Salt Lake and Ogden had at first wiped their hands of the Sheree Warren case. It wasn't their problem. Carl agreed with his detective, John Frawley. They needed to chase the evidence.
00:53:13 Speaker_06
And they now knew at least some of that potential evidence was sitting in Chuck Warren's closet. With his chief's blessing, John wrote up another search warrant.
00:53:22 Speaker_06
This time, he asked a judge for permission to go into Chuck's home, the same house Cherie had once lived in, and hunt for any financial records from 1985. John also wanted Chuck's old cell phones.
00:53:36 Speaker_06
Chuck's wife, Willow, had told John she and Chuck kept everything, including his old cell phones, amid all her clutter in the basement.
00:53:45 Speaker_14
I thought that's why we had the burnt phones too, but it's not. I know I've seen them though. They're probably in your other closet.
00:53:53 Speaker_06
John served the warrant on December 14, 2015. He and others from the Roy City Police Department scoured Chuck's house, taking five checkbooks, a pile of floppy disks, bank statements, mortgage papers, and more. But they didn't find any old cell phones.
00:54:10 Speaker_06
Where those had gone, I can't say. I also don't know what Roy police learned from looking through all of Chuck's old financial papers. Chief Carl Marino told me that evidence has to remain private.
00:54:24 Speaker_07
You're right.
00:54:24 Speaker_06
You do have to keep certain things back. What I can tell you is the search warrant did not lead to an arrest. Nothing police found provided probable cause to book Chuck Warren into jail for his ex-wife's presumed murder.
00:54:39 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley was learning just how crushing the Cherie Warren case could be.
00:54:45 Speaker_07
And then Detective Frawley got transferred to Undercover Narcotics.
00:54:51 Speaker_06
Frawley had had Cherie's case for about a year. He had done more than anyone else had in a decade. And he had only just started getting some momentum when he had had to turn away.
00:55:02 Speaker_11
Yeah, it is tough because your day-to-day caseload doesn't stop.
00:55:08 Speaker_06
John handed the box of Sheri Warren case files back to Chief Carl Marino.
00:55:12 Speaker_07
The box would get passed and it just kept getting overlooked. And so the case moved on to another detective, Ryan Reed. And he worked at some, but he was, you know, again, he had all of his other duties, and so it didn't get worked a lot.
00:55:29 Speaker_06
The Sheri Warren case lapsed into inactivity once again. For Carl Marino, it felt like going back on a promise.
00:55:37 Speaker_07
It's not ideal, but for a smaller department, you can't task somebody with just working an old case like that. You just don't have the staffing to do that.
00:55:51 Speaker_06
Former Ogden City detective Shane Miner had himself spent years driven to find answers about what had happened to Cherie Warren. He had picked up that torch in 1998, but his flame had sputtered in 2006 after a series of setbacks.
00:56:06 Speaker_09
Like I said, a lot of this stuff I did on this case was when I had time to work on it. And that time got more and more precious.
00:56:15 Speaker_06
Right. Shane had documented all his contacts, building a list of potential witnesses. He had kept notes, newspaper clippings, and all sorts of other records.
00:56:25 Speaker_06
And he had compiled a 30-plus page summary of the case, making it ready for any future investigator who might one day take over.
00:56:33 Speaker_09
That's who's going to pick up that case on the shelf. start looking into it because of the time that's involved and costs that could be involved.
00:56:41 Speaker_06
By the time the remains of Teresa Greaves emerged on a hillside in 2015, Shane was deep in preparation for a capital murder trial.
00:56:50 Speaker_09
There's a couple other cases I was involved with that was very demanding.
00:56:53 Speaker_06
One of them was the case we covered in Cold Season 2, the disappearance of Joyce Yost. At the start of 2015, Doug Lovell, the man who had killed Joyce, was asking a Weber County jury to take him off death row.
00:57:09 Speaker_06
Shane had spent months working with prosecutors, helping them prepare for Lovell's trial.
00:57:14 Speaker_06
The Joyce Yost case consumed Shane's time and attention, so he didn't take part in Roy City's renewed Sheree Warren investigation in 2015, though he was aware of it. They did pick it up and assigned a detective to start doing some stuff on it.
00:57:30 Speaker_09
doing some stuff like interviewing Chuck Warren. They were just kind of reiterating, redoing the same stuff that had been done.
00:57:38 Speaker_06
And getting nowhere. Then Roy Detective John Frawley moved into Undercover Narcotics. As I said, the investigation went dormant for two years. John returned from his undercover assignment with a renewed desire to close the Cherie Warren case.
00:57:55 Speaker_11
what our goal and what we're driven for is to get the family some answers, you know?
00:57:59 Speaker_06
So, in February of 2018, he invited Shane Miner to come brief the Roy City Police Department about his work on the case.
00:58:06 Speaker_09
Yeah, I took it over to them and I'm like, you know, I'm done and I felt uncomfortable about Just looking for that one piece.
00:58:16 Speaker_06
John Frawley had operated under the assumption Chuck Warren was his prime suspect, and for good reason. That's the conclusion most people would draw by reading Jack Bell's old case notes.
00:58:27 Speaker_06
The notes do mention Carrie Hartman, first as a witness and then later as a serial rapist, but Jack's notes don't give the impression Carrie had any motive to murder Cherie.
00:58:38 Speaker_06
Shane Miner had learned a lot more about Carey during his years working the case. Shane told John about Carey's ties to the Ogden Police Department.
00:58:48 Speaker_11
He's a reserve police officer, you know, he understands police work more than your typical person.
00:58:55 Speaker_06
Shane told John about the two women who had lived above Cary at the time of Cherie's disappearance, who had reported Cherie coming to their house one night in early October 1985.
00:59:04 Speaker_11
They heard her voice, they knew her voice. They saw her car outside, they knew her car.
00:59:10 Speaker_06
Shane told John about how Cary had met up with his TV reporter friend Larry Lewis a few days later. They were actually riding three wheelers up in the foothills.
00:59:20 Speaker_06
And Shane said just one day after that, the elk hunting guide Fred Johns had seen Cary and another man on the mountain behind Qazi Reservoir.
00:59:30 Speaker_11
Fred Johns was positive that this was Cary Hartman.
00:59:32 Speaker_06
He knew him. Shane told John he had confirmed Cary knew his way around that mountain. It was private land, but he had a key from a friend. He had access to that area.
00:59:43 Speaker_06
The same general area where an anonymous caller had in 1987 told police he had stumbled across a body. No report of the body that I found.
00:59:53 Speaker_11
He described this decomposing body with a purse next to it.
00:59:58 Speaker_06
Human remains which had still not been found. Shane told John about how he had served a pair of search warrants at Carey's apartment after Carey became the key suspect in the Ogden City Rapist investigation.
01:00:11 Speaker_11
A grey leather suede jacket was found and placed into evidence at the Ogden Police Department.
01:00:19 Speaker_06
Shane told John how, years later, he had pulled that grey suede jacket out of evidence and showed it to Cherie's mom, Mary Sorenson.
01:00:29 Speaker_11
And Mary identified that jacket as to what she was wearing on October 2nd when she went to work.
01:00:35 Speaker_06
Or at least that's what Mary thought Sheree might have worn that day. There's some ambiguity on this point. And that jacket was located in Carrie Hartman's closet. John was coming to understand the potential significance of the gray jacket.
01:00:49 Speaker_06
If it's what Sheree left the house wearing on the morning of her disappearance, it couldn't have ended up in Carrie's possession unless Carrie and Sheree had met up at some point later that day.
01:01:01 Speaker_06
Shane Miner passed the baton of the Sheree Warren case over to John Frawley. That meant Roy Police assumed custody of the gray suede jacket.
01:01:11 Speaker_06
I told John I wanted to see it for myself, hoping I might be able to match it up to an old family photograph of Sheree. I could only do that if I knew what it was I was looking for.
01:01:25 Speaker_06
It's September of 2022, and I'm in the basement of Roy City Police Headquarters. I follow an evidence technician named Chelsea Scott through a locked door into a small room. Ooh, it stinks of marijuana. Metal shelving lines the walls.
01:01:43 Speaker_06
Chelsea points to a box on the top of the shelf in the back of the room. It says Office Depot on the lid.
01:01:50 Speaker_16
This contains the jacket.
01:01:52 Speaker_06
The jacket police seized from Carrie Hartman's apartment way back in 1987. Chelsea points to another, smaller box on the next shelf down.
01:02:02 Speaker_16
We have miscellaneous items here. We have fingerprints from her vehicle that was located in Las Vegas.
01:02:08 Speaker_06
And I can see a plastic case containing floppy disks off to the side, which I suspect came out of Chuck Warren's house.
01:02:15 Speaker_16
I can bring this up. Anything you want me to bring up, I'm happy to, and then you can get, like, different shots.
01:02:20 Speaker_06
Oh yeah, I'm carrying a still camera, and I'm accompanied by a TV videographer. Chelsea carries the boxes out of the evidence room and sets them on a conference table.
01:02:31 Speaker_06
Detective John Frawley's there, and I invade his personal space while clipping a small microphone to his shirt collar.
01:02:37 Speaker_11
John, excuse my familiarity here.
01:02:42 Speaker_06
John sits down in front of the Office Depot box, which is sealed by red plastic tape printed with the word EVIDENCE in black letters. John tears open the box, then pulls a brown paper bag out of it.
01:02:56 Speaker_06
I can see numbers written in red and black marker on the bag. I recognize them. They are the Ogden Police Department's case numbers for one of Carrie Hartman's rapes and the Cherie Warren homicide.
01:03:07 Speaker_06
The words coat and test fire bullets are written on the bag as well, along with a barcode label from the Utah State Crime Lab. John pulls another item from the box.
01:03:17 Speaker_11
So this was the hanger that the jacket was on.
01:03:20 Speaker_06
Then he opens the paper bag and removes the jacket. He sets it on the table, and I lean in for a closer look. That is not a men's jacket. No, it is not. My first impression, the jacket's smaller than I had expected.
01:03:38 Speaker_06
It has a crop body and pinches in a bit toward the waist. There's a tag on the inside that says eight. It's on the smaller side of medium.
01:03:46 Speaker_11
Yeah, this is not, in my opinion, not gonna fit even a medium build man, let alone a larger build man.
01:03:56 Speaker_06
The jacket has a stand-up collar and ruffles that run vertically over each shoulder. A decidedly feminine touch. There are five buttonholes down the lapel, but only four buttons on the opposite side.
01:04:08 Speaker_06
The button that should be second from the top is missing. The suede leather fabric is colored a medium gray. It's a neutral color that makes the jacket versatile.
01:04:19 Speaker_06
It would have coordinated well with a variety of outfits, but now it's crumpled, having spent decades wadded up in a bag. At some point, someone has used a sharpie to make markings on the inside of the jacket, toward the bottom of the front flap.
01:04:33 Speaker_06
John tells me he thinks it's from when Ogden police sent the jacket to the crime lab 22 years ago.
01:04:40 Speaker_11
And it was tested for any evidence of blood or hair or any sort of fibers that could be found.
01:04:47 Speaker_06
We heard about that in episode 6. The crime lab hadn't found anything.
01:04:52 Speaker_11
Based on the technology of that time, that's correct. It didn't yield any results.
01:04:58 Speaker_06
But I also know John recently resubmitted the jacket for another round of testing. Yeah, I mean, it's 22 years, you know. He doesn't tell me what, if anything, was different this time around.
01:05:13 Speaker_06
I've now gone back and looked at every photo I have of Cherie. There aren't many, and the gray suede jackets, not in any of them, but it does fit her style.
01:05:24 Speaker_06
It strikes me as perfectly plausible Cherie Warren might have worn that jacket to work on the morning of October 2nd, 1985.
01:05:32 Speaker_11
But the whole hangup is that Mary's the only one that can say,
01:05:38 Speaker_06
Again, Cherie's mom, Mary Sorenson, told police she thought it was the jacket her daughter left the house wearing on the day of her disappearance.
01:05:46 Speaker_06
If that's true, the jacket is evidence that potentially puts Cherie and Carrie Hartman together after Cherie was last seen. Mary Sorenson has since died. Police asked Cherie's dad, Ed, and sister, Marcy, about the jacket.
01:06:04 Speaker_11
Nobody can say whether she's wearing that or not. So the only person that could is now deceased.
01:06:10 Speaker_06
Maybe not the only person. There's one other who might know if Sheree was wearing it on that day. His name is Kerry Hartman. Detective John Frawley needed to pose this question to Kerry.
01:06:26 Speaker_06
But Kerry hadn't said a word to police about Sheree Warren since 2005. and Carey had no incentive to talk to John Frawley now. John had found himself mired in the middle of the Cherie Warren mystery, like all of us are now.
01:06:43 Speaker_06
He had walked past Cherie's picture in the police department lobby hundreds of times without giving it a thought. That had changed once he had looked inside the box.
01:06:54 Speaker_11
It's not just a picture in the lobby. It makes it very real.
01:07:06 Speaker_06
Cary Hartman had gone to prison at the end of 1987 on a sentence of 15 years to life. The prosecutor who had put him there had expected Cary would only serve the minimum, 15 years.
01:07:18 Speaker_06
But as we've heard this season, Cary's own unwillingness to take responsibility for what he had done resulted in a much longer stay.
01:07:26 Speaker_05
How long have you done in prison?
01:07:28 Speaker_08
32 years, sir.
01:07:30 Speaker_05
And how old are you?
01:07:31 Speaker_08
I'm 72.
01:07:36 Speaker_05
Yeah. You know, you've thrown away a big chunk of your life. I mean, it is sad.
01:07:43 Speaker_06
This comes from a recording of Kerry Hartman's hearing before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on October 29, 2019. If I had to describe Kerry's first trip before the board in 1992, I would say, Kerry, Kerry, quite contrary.
01:08:00 Speaker_06
You heard it yourself back in episode 6.
01:08:02 Speaker_21
Kerry Hartman didn't do it. There is no way on this earth.
01:08:07 Speaker_06
But 27 years and a few more rejections from the board had taught Carey how to speak to those who held his freedom in their hands, like parole board member Bradley Rich.
01:08:18 Speaker_05
Why do you think you were in here as long as you have been?
01:08:22 Speaker_06
My choices. Carey had learned to swap contrary for contrite.
01:08:28 Speaker_08
It was a blessing to come to prison, sir. I deserved what I got.
01:08:33 Speaker_06
Bradley, the parole board member, asked Kerry what had been happening in his life prior to his arrest all those years ago. What had led him to break into women's homes, to threaten to kill their children, and to sexually assault them?
01:08:47 Speaker_08
I operated on thinking distortions that were troublesome.
01:08:54 Speaker_06
Troublesome thinking distortions. How wonderfully vague.
01:08:59 Speaker_08
When I can't sort out these distorted thinking errors, which I have learned to do at this point. I've worked really hard throughout these many years to correct those distorted thinking errors. I met my needs in unhealthy ways.
01:09:14 Speaker_08
Like, he said, by impulse spending.
01:09:17 Speaker_06
Bradley said that answer didn't quite hit the mark.
01:09:21 Speaker_05
You had, to my way of thinking, a very peculiar and dangerous response to stress. I mean, others might go out and get drunk or revert to the use of drugs or, you know, binge spend or whatever it is, you know, go through a gallon of ice cream.
01:09:40 Speaker_05
You chose to violently rape under stress. And so I'm trying to make heads or tails of that.
01:09:50 Speaker_08
Those were parts of my life that were surrounded by pornography in those days. I described that as my drug of choice. When I felt lowly and had no self-esteem, when my life was falling apart, I turned to pornography and masturbation.
01:10:09 Speaker_08
That led to cruising for women and choosing women to make victims.
01:10:16 Speaker_06
Low self-esteem led to pornography, which then led to rape.
01:10:21 Speaker_08
I wish to be defined as who I am now and not who I was. I'm a different man now than I was 40 years ago.
01:10:29 Speaker_06
Cariad lived nearly half his life in custody.
01:10:32 Speaker_05
As much sympathy as I feel for your victims at the same time, You've made yourself a victim as well, and you've paid a heavy price for it.
01:10:43 Speaker_06
But had he paid in full? That was up to the parole board to decide. Bradley went over the latest memo from Carey's sex offender therapist.
01:10:54 Speaker_06
It said if paroled, Carey stood about a 1 in 10 chance of committing a new sex offense, a 3 in 10 chance of carrying out a violent crime, and a 5 in 10 chance of committing any crime.
01:11:06 Speaker_06
In other words, 50-50, Kerry would do something that might land him back in prison. And that makes you still kind of a risk. But on the other hand, Kerry had obtained a new, more favorable treatment memo just a few months earlier.
01:11:23 Speaker_06
He handed it over to Bradley. Treatment summary, Justin Clark. Right there. Ah, sure enough. The updated report said Carey now presented a below-average risk to re-offend.
01:11:37 Speaker_06
The parole board had repeatedly teased Carey with a promise of release, but to earn it, he had had to admit to rape. The board had cajoled him into taking part in a police interview about Shuri Warren.
01:11:50 Speaker_06
and the board demanded Carey make several trips through sex offender therapy. Carey had complied, and now the board seemed mollified.
01:12:00 Speaker_05
You're gonna get an opportunity to succeed or fail, my prediction, in the not-too-distant future.
01:12:08 Speaker_06
No more fake-outs. No more demands. the parole board had nothing left to ask of Carey.
01:12:15 Speaker_05
Then all we can do is wish you the best. You have done a big chunk of your life, 32 years in here, and you're not a young man. Can you see where this is heading? I wish you well, and like I say,
01:12:35 Speaker_05
With or without a further hearing, I think you're going to get an opportunity. And then we'll see if you've acquired the skills you need to stay out of trouble. Thank you so much. All right.
01:12:45 Speaker_06
Kerry Hartman left prison in March of 2020. His release escaped public notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic that was sweeping the globe. Kerry quietly headed back to Ogden, to the same community he had terrorized three decades before.
01:13:19 Speaker_06
on the season finale of Cold.
01:13:22 Speaker_16
Is he out? Yes. Oh, I didn't know he was out. Yeah. That honestly makes me a little nervous. OK, well, and he lives in Ogden.
01:13:31 Speaker_05
Let's go knock.
01:13:33 Speaker_14
Hey, Gary.
01:13:41 Speaker_06
If you have information about the disappearance of Cherie Warren, now is the time to share it. You can reach me by emailing cold at ksl.com or contact the Roy City Police Department at 801-774-1063.
01:13:56 Speaker_06
I also want you to know, if you've experienced abuse or sexual violence, you're not alone. There are trained experts ready to listen and help.
01:14:05 Speaker_06
In the United States, survivors of rape and sexual assault can connect to free resources through the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network at RAINN.org.
01:14:16 Speaker_06
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse in any form, you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org. Cold is a production of KSL Podcasts and Wondery, in association with Workhouse Media.
01:14:36 Speaker_06
Cold is researched, written, and hosted by me, Dave Cauley. Audio production and sound design by Ben Kebrick and Aaron Mason. Mixing and mastering by Ben Kebrick.
01:14:47 Speaker_06
Michael Bonmiller composed our main theme, with additional music this season by Allison Leighton Brown. Additional voices in this episode provided by Sean DeTore.
01:14:57 Speaker_06
My personal thanks to our editorial team, Amy Donaldson, Andreas Martin, Ryan Meeks, Becky Bruce, Kira Farrimond, Kellyanne Halverson, Josh Tilton, and Felix Bunnell.
01:15:09 Speaker_06
For Amazon Music and Wondery, Managing Producer Candice Manriquez-Wren, Producer Claire Chambers, Senior Producer Lizzie Bassett, and Executive Producer Morgan Jones. Special thanks to Kale Bittner and Alison Vermeulen.
01:15:24 Speaker_06
With Workhouse Media Executive Producers Paul Anderson and Nick Piniella. and for KSL Podcasts executive producer Cheryl Worsley. For pictures and more, go to our website thecoldpodcast.com and follow us on social at The Cold Podcast.
01:15:42 Speaker_06
Most of all, thank you for listening.
01:15:54 Speaker_03
It's me, the mean one, the green one, the Grinch, and I'm back for season two of Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast. And this holiday season, we're going big, baby.
01:16:04 Speaker_03
I'm talking A-list guests, B-plus comedy, and together with my crew, that's Max the Dog and Cindy Lou Who. Hello, everyone. I'll try to clear my name once again from the latest accusations leveled against me.
01:16:19 Speaker_03
Turns out somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and for some reason, everybody thinks I did it. It's a real Whoville whodunit. So join me for Season 2 of Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast when it drops on November 25th.
01:16:33 Speaker_03
Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.