The Search For Sheree | Bonus: The Causey Search | 15 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Cold
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Episode: The Search For Sheree | Bonus: The Causey Search | 15
Author: KSL Podcasts | Wondery
Duration: 00:34:52
Episode Shownotes
COLD discovers an odd rock pile in the mountains. It looks like a possible grave. Detectives head into the hills, believing the rock pile could hold evidence related to the disappearance of Sheree Warren. In this bonus episode of COLD season 3, you’ll join investigative journalist Dave Cawley on the
mountain near Utah’s Causey Reservoir and hear exactly what happened as detectives and CSI excavated beneath the rocks.Season 3 of Cold includes descriptions of rape, sexual assault, murder and domestic violence. Please take care when listening.Listen to Cold on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/cold/ now.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 bonus episode, investigative journalist Dave Cawley examines a possibly significant grave site near Causey Reservoir related to Sheree Warren's 1985 disappearance. The excavation, carried out by detectives and CSI teams, aims to uncover evidence while paralleling the unresolved case of Joyce Yost. Key suspects include Sheree's boyfriend, Charles Warren, and Kerry Hartman, with connections to both cases. This investigation sheds light on domestic abuse issues and the complexities of cold cases, emphasizing the ongoing pursuit of truth in the search for Sheree Warren.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Search For Sheree | Bonus: The Causey Search | 15) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_02
Hey Prime Members, you can listen to this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. This season of the Cold Podcast includes descriptions of rape, sexual assault, murder, and domestic violence. Please take care in listening.
00:00:21 Speaker_02
Each swing of the pick brought a loud clank of metal against stone. Sweat dripped from the faces of the detectives who took turns heaving shovelfuls of dirt into an orange bucket.
00:00:34 Speaker_02
Next to them, standing over a blue tarp, CSI workers sifted loose dirt through a mesh screen, pausing to peer at any odd roots or rocks. What they really hoped to find were fragments of bone.
00:00:54 Speaker_02
Roy City Police and Weber County Crime Scene investigators, along with search and rescue staff, conducted an excavation of a possible clandestine grave near Qazi Reservoir in the mountains of northern Utah on August 23rd, 2023.
00:01:07 Speaker_02
They were looking for skeletal remains, possibly those of Shuri Warren.
00:01:14 Speaker_19
How many years has it been, Dave?
00:01:26 Speaker_02
Sheree Warren's case and these mountains that may hold secrets about her fate have consumed my attention for quite some time. You've heard the result. The story of the search for Sheree is chronicled in Cold Season 3.
00:01:48 Speaker_02
Through months and years of research, I honed in on this specific spot as a possible place to look for Sheree Warren's remains.
00:01:57 Speaker_02
Circumstantial evidence suggests one of the two named suspects in Sheree's disappearance could have known this place very well.
00:02:05 Speaker_02
There was also an outside chance this site could hold evidence related to the murder of Joyce Yost, the subject of Cold Season 2.
00:02:14 Speaker_02
These two cases, Sheree Warren's and Joyce Yost's, are likely unrelated, but they occurred in close proximity to one another in space and time. Over the last nearly 40 years, they've bled into one another.
00:02:29 Speaker_02
We've now taken detailed looks at both in this podcast and heard repeated references to Qazi Reservoir.
00:02:35 Speaker_21
The Qazi area is about 20 miles east of Ogden. There's a Qazi Reservoir.
00:02:41 Speaker_10
Did you ever hunt in the Qazi Reservoir area? Qazi is an area up the canyon.
00:02:48 Speaker_08
and they drove to Causey.
00:02:50 Speaker_06
You got two reservoirs up there that are deep, Causey and Lost Creek.
00:02:55 Speaker_02
Really steep trails going up to the right-hand side of Causey. That's why Royce City Police invited myself and several of my colleagues from KSL-TV, the Salt Lake City-based news station I work for, to watch as they excavated this site.
00:03:08 Speaker_01
Breaking news happening right now. Law enforcement agencies in Weber County are digging right now what appears to be at a burial site that might be connected to a four decades old murder case.
00:03:19 Speaker_02
But if you're not in Utah or don't watch the news here, you probably didn't hear anything about this. So let me bring you up to speed. In this episode, we'll review the evidence that points to the possibility of a grave site near Kazi.
00:03:33 Speaker_02
We'll go to the site of this dig, and I'll share where the search for Cherie Warren stands now that the dust has literally settled. This is a bonus episode of COLD, Season 3, The Causey Search. From KSL Podcasts, I'm Dave Cauley.
00:04:05 Speaker_02
Let's begin with a recap of the Joyce Yost and Cherie Warren cases. Both had their start in the area of Ogden, Utah back in 1985. Joyce's case came first. That April, a man Joyce had never met followed her home from a club late one night.
00:04:21 Speaker_02
Doug Lovell confronted Joyce in the carport outside her apartment in the city of South Ogden. Lovell sexually assaulted Joyce, kidnapped her, and held her captive.
00:04:33 Speaker_02
Joyce, fearing for her life, promised not to tell anyone what Lovell had done if he'd just let her go. He did. When Joyce made it to safety at home in the early morning hours, she called her sister.
00:04:48 Speaker_02
This is Joyce's own voice explaining what her sister said.
00:04:51 Speaker_07
She said, well, you called the police. And I said, I really don't want to be put through the humiliation. She said, In fact, the more she heard from me, the angrier she was getting. And she says, well, you call the police right now.
00:05:06 Speaker_07
And she said, if you don't, I will. So I said, I will.
00:05:11 Speaker_02
Joyce soon met with Detective Bill Holthouse. She told him her story. Holthouse believed Joyce, and he arrested Doug Lovell that same morning on suspicion of rape.
00:05:23 Speaker_10
He looked at me with an expression that got my attention, but it just was like it froze the moment. And he said, this will not go to trial.
00:05:36 Speaker_02
Through a series of mistakes and mishaps, Lovell found himself out of jail while awaiting trial that summer. He tried to hire two hitmen, but both fell through.
00:05:47 Speaker_02
So in August, 10 days before the scheduled start of the trial, Doug Lovell crept into Joyce Yost's apartment through a window, startled her awake and slashed her with a knife. Lovell then took Joyce away in her own car and hit her body.
00:06:06 Speaker_02
Weeks later, at the start of October, Cherie Warren walked out of her work at the headquarters office for the Utah State Employees Credit Union in Salt Lake City.
00:06:15 Speaker_02
She told a coworker she was going to meet her estranged husband at a nearby car dealership. Afterward, Cherie planned to take her young son to her parents' house in the city of Roy. She never made it.
00:06:27 Speaker_00
Right now, police say they're investigating the disappearance, but have very little to go on.
00:06:32 Speaker_11
What we're asking for is just to locate where she may be or any evidence to show that it or indicate that there is maybe some foul play involved so that we can do a different type of investigation rather than missing persons.
00:06:45 Speaker_02
Roy's city police at first focused on Cherie's estranged husband, Charles Warren, thinking he might have killed Cherie over their ongoing divorce.
00:06:53 Speaker_02
Charles told Roy Police Detective Jack Bell he had cancelled his planned meeting with Cherie at the dealership on the evening of her disappearance and instead went jogging. A weak alibi, Detective Bell was never able to corroborate. He did.
00:07:14 Speaker_02
Charles Warren wasn't the only suspect, though. Police also came to wonder if a former Ogden City Police Reserve officer named Kerry Hartman might have had something to do with Sheree Warren's disappearance. Kerry and Sheree had been dating.
00:07:31 Speaker_02
Six weeks into the investigation, Sheree's car unexpectedly surfaced behind a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
00:07:38 Speaker_06
That opened up a whole new can of worms. How did it get there? Which one of these two birds that I'm looking at have the opportunity to get it down there?
00:07:51 Speaker_02
As Roy Police were trying to answer that question, Doug Lovell revisited Joyce Yost's body somewhere in the mountains, burying Joyce to prevent anyone from finding her. Then, snow fell, blanketing those same mountains.
00:08:06 Speaker_02
In December, Doug Lovell stood trial for raping Joyce Yost. She didn't show up to testify. The jury convicted Lovell anyway and sent him to prison, but not for murder.
00:08:17 Speaker_02
Without a body, South Ogden police were unable to link Joyce's disappearance to Lovell. Without a body, Roy police were unable to say what might have happened to Cherie Warren.
00:08:30 Speaker_02
These two separate cases were still both under investigation when, in April of 1987, an anonymous man called Royce City and the Weber County Sheriff's Office to report finding a woman's body in the mountains near Qazi Reservoir.
00:08:53 Speaker_02
Kazi is way out in the hills, about 20 miles east of Ogden and its suburbs of South Ogden and Roy. But the land around Kazi is rough and remote. Investigators needed more specific information if they ever hoped to find the body.
00:09:10 Speaker_02
The anonymous caller wasn't willing to help. Weeks later, a witness told police he'd bumped into Cherie Warren's boyfriend, Kerry Hartman, on the mountain behind Kazi four days after Cherie disappeared.
00:09:29 Speaker_02
And detectives learned several of Hartman's close personal friends owned property in Kazi Estates, a cabin community near the reservoir.
00:09:37 Speaker_21
We had to have a key. There was a gate down right at Kazi Reservoir.
00:09:42 Speaker_02
One of those friends, Dave Moore, was Carey's alibi for the night Sheree disappeared.
00:09:47 Speaker_21
At the time, I didn't have no idea that he was using me as an alibi.
00:09:53 Speaker_02
Another of those friends, Brent Morgan, told police Carey had borrowed his key for the gate at Causey Estates shortly before Sheree vanished.
00:10:01 Speaker_16
Back then, there wasn't a lot of people up there.
00:10:04 Speaker_02
Police searched around Kazi during the spring and summer of 1987, hoping to find the body the anonymous caller had mentioned. Those searches came up empty.
00:10:13 Speaker_16
You take where he had my key. If he had access up there and could go up and down the roads, you can find the right place where you can, one, two, three, heave ho, and it's going to be in a spot where people aren't going to go.
00:10:28 Speaker_02
Kerry Hartman, I should note, ended up in prison, but not because of anything to do with Sheree Warren.
00:10:35 Speaker_02
Ogden City Police arrested him as a suspect in a series of home invasion sexual assaults around the same time as the anonymous call and the searches around Kazi. A jury convicted Hartman in one of those cases.
00:10:51 Speaker_02
Years later, another clue emerged pointing toward Kazi, this time in the Joyce Yost case. In 1991, Doug Lovell's ex-wife Rhonda Butters told police on the night Lovell killed Joyce Yost, he took her up by Causey.
00:11:07 Speaker_07
He said he made her drive up the canyon and they went up by Causey and got her out of the car and walked up this hill and it wasn't very far off the road. And he said he buried him as best he could.
00:11:24 Speaker_02
Rhonda Butters' confession helped prosecutors secure a capital murder charge against Doug Lovell.
00:11:30 Speaker_02
Butters wore a wire into the Utah State Prison and captured audio of her ex-husband as he described burying Joyce Yost in the mountains, covering her with leaves.
00:11:40 Speaker_08
The only thing I'm nervous about is that one time that caller called in. I remember seeing it on TV. The way they projected this was, you know, you're the body of Joyce Yost.
00:11:54 Speaker_02
Lovell cut a plea deal, hoping to avoid the death penalty by promising to take police to Joyce Yost's grave. In the summer of 1993, he led police to a mountainside east of Ogden. It held no signs of human remains. It was also nowhere near Causey.
00:12:13 Speaker_02
Former South Ogden detective Terry Carpenter told me he believes Lovell lied about where he buried Joyce Yost. She is someplace else.
00:12:21 Speaker_17
And honestly, to this day, I believe Sheree Warren's with her. Otherwise, if we go up and dig and find Joyce and find Sheree, that negates all the agreements that we've had with him of not executing him. And he knows that.
00:12:38 Speaker_17
So he's not going to take us to Joyce.
00:12:41 Speaker_02
I've looked for evidence that might link Doug Lovell to Sheree Warren. And I've not found any. Lovell himself denied having ever met Sheree Warren when this speculation first surfaced 30 years ago.
00:12:53 Speaker_02
But there are those who hold to this theory even today. In 2004, Weber County investigators flew over the mountain behind Causey in a state helicopter.
00:13:03 Speaker_02
They were operating on the assumption Carrie Hartman had killed Cherie Warren and left her body somewhere near Causey.
00:13:09 Speaker_13
This would have been the road that I think he had access to. There's unlimited places where he could have dumped her along here.
00:13:16 Speaker_14
Hard to think like a bandit, you know, would you have I picked a characteristic turn or rock or tree or something as a landmark.
00:13:24 Speaker_02
A year and a half later, a detective named Shane Miner questioned Kerry Hartman about Cherie Warren's disappearance. Miner asked Hartman directly if he had killed Cherie and taken her body to Kazi. Did you kill Cherie?
00:13:39 Speaker_02
Hartman said he didn't have any idea what had happened to Cherie.
00:13:43 Speaker_08
You know what she was placed in an area
00:13:49 Speaker_02
A year after this, in 2006, a prison informant started talking to police about Joyce Yost. He said Doug Lovell had drawn him a map of the place where he'd left Yost's body.
00:14:00 Speaker_08
This is the lake. There's some gates up here and some property.
00:14:06 Speaker_02
The informant claimed Lovell had taken Joyce Yost to Causey Reservoir.
00:14:11 Speaker_08
See these circles here? He's telling me this is Huntsville and this is Causey.
00:14:19 Speaker_02
Your head's probably spinning by this point. It's so much to keep track of, I know. Not all of these leads are credible. Sorting fact from fiction remains a major challenge in these two cases.
00:14:32 Speaker_02
But what I hope you're seeing is a lot of circumstantial evidence points toward Qazi Reservoir as an important landmark in the disappearances of Shuri Warren and Joyce Yost.
00:14:46 Speaker_02
My job involves taking scattered fragments of a story, spreading them out, and putting them in order. Sometimes the individual pieces don't look like much on their own. It's only when they're assembled that a picture emerges.
00:15:01 Speaker_02
If done well, the story that comes out of this process should draw as close to truth as I can possibly get it. Perfect truth is nearly impossible to find. Often holes remain.
00:15:15 Speaker_02
unanswered questions, like where is the body the anonymous caller reported finding near Kazi, and why couldn't anyone find it? I've struggled to come up with a satisfactory answer.
00:15:27 Speaker_02
I've studied a century's worth of old maps, seeing the gradual development of trails and roads in the mountains around Qazi. I've read newspaper archives about the generations of sheepherding families who owned those hills.
00:15:39 Speaker_02
I've hunted down aerial photographs of Qazi, from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, to the 1990s, even paying to have old films scanned at ultra-high resolution.
00:15:52 Speaker_02
I've gone up into the air myself, by plane and helicopter, to study the thousands of acres of inaccessible private land behind Causey.
00:16:00 Speaker_03
Through all this, I became very interested in a stretch of old jeep road.
00:16:19 Speaker_02
In the 1980s, this trail linked Causey Estates, where Cary Hartman was known to spend time, to the spot on the mountaintop where a witness said he saw Hartman four days after Cherie Warren disappeared.
00:16:33 Speaker_02
Much of the Jeep trail falls within the radius that anonymous caller referenced when he described finding a woman's body.
00:16:39 Speaker_11
Is it in Weber County? It's over there by Causey Day.
00:16:48 Speaker_02
As my focus narrowed onto this old trail, I came across something unusual in the aerial images and video I had collected. The trail climbs a hill heading east out of Qazi Estates.
00:17:01 Speaker_02
At the top of that hill, I saw a pile of rocks, about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. roughly the size and shape one might expect for a clandestine grave. It wasn't clear from the images I'd collected if the rock pile existed before the 1980s.
00:17:19 Speaker_02
Those older pictures just weren't clear enough to tell. But I was able to determine the rock pile had sat undisturbed since at least the early 90s.
00:17:30 Speaker_03
As we come up on the anomalous rock pile,
00:17:34 Speaker_02
I was able to visit the rock pile myself. You should see how it stands out from the surrounding environment. I carried a camera with me to document the site and the old Jeep trail nearby.
00:17:48 Speaker_02
And as you look around, you can see there are rocks on this trail, but there are no other piles of rocks of similar shape and size. So that is unique. This discovery presented a bit of a conundrum.
00:18:03 Speaker_02
The code of ethics that guides my work as a journalist says I need to act with independence. I don't work for the police, and I don't automatically share everything I know with them.
00:18:14 Speaker_02
But if this rock pile did mark a possible grave, it felt irresponsible to simply ignore it, or to publish that speculation without taking steps to find out for sure.
00:18:25 Speaker_02
I shared images of the rock pile with a handful of trusted colleagues and sources, who all agreed my eyes were not mistaken. It did look like it could be a grave. Again, unnatural. Unnatural rock pile.
00:18:43 Speaker_02
So I provided this information to Roy City Police Detective John Frawley, the lead detective on the Cherie Warren case. He thanked me for it. Some time passed. Then, in August of 2023, I received word Roy Police had news to share.
00:19:02 Speaker_19
Good evening, breaking news out of Weber County, where police plan to conduct a major search related to a Utah cold case dating back to the 1980s.
00:19:09 Speaker_00
It's a case we've covered extensively right here at KSL as part of the Cold Podcast.
00:19:15 Speaker_19
We plan to be on the mountain with police as they explore this site tomorrow. Stay with KSL TV throughout the day for any breaking developments.
00:19:23 Speaker_02
I had an exclusive invite to come along as police went to Causey to dig below the rock pile, looking for possible human remains. Don't make yourself the subject of your own story. This mantra is foundational for journalists.
00:19:50 Speaker_02
It's drilled into our heads by professors and editors. But college didn't prepare me for a career in which journalism would take me on the hunt for human remains.
00:20:01 Speaker_02
Finding this odd rock pile while looking for a clandestine grave around Kazi made me a subject in my own story. My managers at KSL recognized this, and they decided to assign a different reporter to cover the story of the dig.
00:20:19 Speaker_02
I would still be there to watch and provide comment and context, but reporter Dan Rascone would put the story on the air.
00:20:26 Speaker_12
News specialist Dan Rascone giving us exclusive access to this site and the operation. So Dan, tell us where you are, what you've been seeing there. This is a big operation.
00:20:35 Speaker_18
Yeah, this is a major operation undergoing right now.
00:20:39 Speaker_02
This wasn't the only ethical consideration. KSL also took a few steps to safeguard our independence. We decided we would provide our own transportation to and from the site, which meant finding someone with four-wheelers available on short notice.
00:20:53 Speaker_02
We told police, if we came along, we'd have the freedom to share anything we saw or heard with you. They agreed. We met in the morning, as low clouds settled in the mountain valleys, catching sidelong rays of the rising summer sun.
00:21:13 Speaker_02
Our caravan of SUVs headed east from the small town of Huntsville, driving up Utah State Highway 39, following the South Fork of the Ogden River to Kazi.
00:21:23 Speaker_02
One by one, we drove across the dam to the gate for Kazi Estates, drawing curious stares from fishermen and paddleboarders. Another mile or two on dirt and gravel brought us to the bottom of a steep hill.
00:21:37 Speaker_02
We parked, doused ourselves in sunscreen, and loaded equipment onto ATVs. Cameras, coolers, pop-up shades, and shovels. There weren't enough seats for everyone.
00:21:48 Speaker_02
Some of us donned backpacks and hiked the remaining mile to the rock pile, grunting up steep switchbacks. We reconvened up top, on a saddle overlooking Qazi Estates.
00:22:01 Speaker_02
The CSI team set up a laser scanner, a $40,000 piece of equipment designed to make a 3D model of the site. It sat on a tripod, rotating and beeping as we all waited.
00:22:11 Speaker_04
They launched a small drone to collect more imagery from above.
00:22:22 Speaker_02
If evidence of a murder came out of the ground, this would be crucial to show what the site looked like prior to its excavation. Another member of the team used a small handheld saw to cut back overgrown brush and branches around the rock pile.
00:22:40 Speaker_02
With the ground clear, the CSI team set down their tarp and raised an awning over the rocks. As they did so, my KSL colleague Dan Rascone went to work conducting interviews. He asked Roy Police Detective John Frawley what would happen next.
00:22:56 Speaker_18
It seems like a very methodical process. It's not like you just bring out the shovels and start digging.
00:23:02 Speaker_20
No, we want to be very respectful. Also, there's a proper way to do this and so the Weber County CSI team is very professional and they're going to handle this.
00:23:14 Speaker_02
I think what John was getting at here was if the search about to get underway turned up human remains, we all needed to remember what that might mean.
00:23:23 Speaker_02
My mind turned to all the people I've met over the last several years who would be watching live coverage of this search on TV. We know there are families of
00:23:34 Speaker_02
victims, missing women, Cherie Warren, Joyce Yost, another person who could potentially be up in this area. And they have, for the last four decades, wondered where are their loved ones?
00:23:45 Speaker_02
And they're today watching and waiting to see what comes out of this. So that's really difficult.
00:23:51 Speaker_18
So we could find a body today.
00:23:55 Speaker_02
We won't know until Weber County CSI starts doing their work, but I don't think you get this team up here unless they think it's a reasonable possibility that they might recover human remains here.
00:24:06 Speaker_02
At the same time, none of us wanted to presume an outcome that hadn't yet happened.
00:24:11 Speaker_20
And if you find anything? If we find anything, we will slow down at that point and figure out what we have and what needs to happen then. We would obviously follow where the evidence leads us. We wouldn't want to make any predeterminations.
00:24:28 Speaker_20
If we did find something, we want to keep an open mind and see where the evidence would lead us at that point.
00:24:35 Speaker_02
A low roar began to rise from the south.
00:24:38 Speaker_13
It grew louder.
00:24:41 Speaker_02
drawing near until a helicopter crested above the mountain and began to orbit overhead. It belonged to KSL, Chopper 5, the very helicopter that had helped find this odd rock pile in the first place.
00:25:01 Speaker_02
Over the sound of the thrumming helicopter blades, the investigators began removing rocks from the pile and tossing them to the side. Stone by stone, they worked to expose the bare ground beneath.
00:25:16 Speaker_02
They sent spiders scurrying, and even disturbed a hornet's nest.
00:25:20 Speaker_04
To the pilot, we look like we found something. He doesn't know if it's lost.
00:25:23 Speaker_09
Yeah, everybody runs from me. Something's going on. Something's going on. Game on. Game on.
00:25:35 Speaker_02
With the rocks removed, we could see the pile had covered a divot, or depression. The ground under the pile sat 8 to 10 inches lower than the surrounding soil.
00:25:44 Speaker_02
This, I had learned, could be a clue, because when a buried body decomposes, the ground above it may settle. I felt a sense of guarded optimism as the investigators began removing soil. They passed the loose earth off to be sifted.
00:26:04 Speaker_02
The idea here is dirt will fall through, while larger items like teeth, bone chips, or cloth fragments will be caught by the screen.
00:26:12 Speaker_02
It's not as easy as it might sound, because each bucket load of soil held hundreds of small pebbles too large to fall through. The CSI team had to visually inspect them.
00:26:28 Speaker_02
The closest analogy I can think of for this is it's like looking for a single tiny piece of Lego in a giant heap of bricks that are all a similar size and color.
00:26:39 Speaker_02
While this work was unfolding, the KSL team went live on the air to share it with the public in real time.
00:26:46 Speaker_18
Yeah, we're high on a ridge right now, just outside of Qazi Reservoir. This, possibly, a burial site for Cherie Warren. She disappeared back in October of 1985. We're going to go ahead and bring in Dave Cauley here, of course, with a cold podcast.
00:27:02 Speaker_18
And Dave, tell us the significance of what is happening here right now.
00:27:06 Speaker_02
We're seeing the detectives are using shovels and picks to pull soil off of this site to see if there is anything of evidence related to Cherie's case coming out of that.
00:27:17 Speaker_02
They've taken just a few inches off the top, and it will be a really slow process over the next several hours. I wasn't surprised when no skeletal remains surfaced beneath the first few inches of dirt.
00:27:29 Speaker_02
It stood to reason if anything, or anyone, was buried here, it wouldn't be right at the surface.
00:27:35 Speaker_05
You just decide with Dave when you think you guys are at your limit.
00:27:49 Speaker_02
Load after load of soil went through the screen. Only once or twice did the searchers pause. Like when an old .22 caliber shell casing, maybe a century old, caught up in the mesh.
00:28:02 Speaker_04
22, number two, Jess.
00:28:04 Speaker_02
Another 22 that deep?
00:28:05 Speaker_09
Really? Huh. Is it the same? I'm still going to say it could be falling off the higher shelf up here and rolling in.
00:28:14 Speaker_02
Hour after hour passed. Scattered clouds crept across the sky, casting shadows that sat on the landscape like spots on a dalmatian. The hole sank progressively deeper.
00:28:27 Speaker_17
I'd be pretty blindfolded if they could dig this far. Yeah.
00:28:33 Speaker_20
I mean, I guess you're motivated, though.
00:28:40 Speaker_02
The excited, nervous chatter that had pervaded earlier in the day faded away. A specter of disappointment loomed.
00:28:47 Speaker_05
You know, in another 40 years, someone's going to find this rock pile, and a whole other team is going to come up here and do this all over again.
00:28:54 Speaker_04
You'll be the old retired person.
00:28:56 Speaker_05
I know, right?
00:28:56 Speaker_04
You'll say your war stories.
00:29:01 Speaker_02
By mid-afternoon, the hole reached a depth of between two and three feet. The detectives who were taking turns with the shovels noticed a change.
00:29:09 Speaker_09
So that color of dirt has been consistent all the way across. We're at least three, four inches into it.
00:29:18 Speaker_02
They reached a layer of soil that had not been disturbed before.
00:29:23 Speaker_09
Let's even that out to where... That level there? Yeah. Okay, I agree with that.
00:29:33 Speaker_02
Proof no one had previously dug a hole that deep at the site. It might have looked like one, but Detective Frawley said the rock pile didn't mark a grave.
00:29:48 Speaker_18
Your reaction to that? I mean, I guess you were hoping to find something.
00:29:51 Speaker_20
You're always hoping to find something, but I think like we've discussed as investigators, We keep going. If there's a place to dig, we're going to dig. If there's a place to search, we're going to search. And we're just not going to stop.
00:30:05 Speaker_20
So we will follow every tip and every lead.
00:30:10 Speaker_02
Look, I'm not going to lie. This outcome left me feeling deflated. In the time between my discovery of the rock pile and its excavation, I told myself not to build up any expectations.
00:30:22 Speaker_02
It was far more likely someone's dog was under those rocks than a murder victim. And even if human remains were buried there, they could have belonged to a sheep herder, a pioneer, a fur trapper, or an indigenous person. I knew this.
00:30:39 Speaker_02
Still, I couldn't ignore the possibility, no matter how low the probability. Maybe this would be a break. I'm human, so yeah, I allowed a little hope. But there was nothing. No bones of any kind.
00:30:58 Speaker_02
Sweeping my eyes across that mountain, as the police packed up their gear and raked loose dirt back into the hole, seeing the brush and trees spanning to the horizon, I felt a sting of futility.
00:31:11 Speaker_02
If Cherie Warren or Joyce Yost are up here, can we ever really hope to find them? Maybe not. This is the real nature of cold case work. It's perpetual disappointment. And yet I refuse to accept a fatalistic view. This search mattered for many reasons.
00:31:33 Speaker_02
It took one more location off the list of possibilities. It prompted new discussion about what happened to Joyce Yost and Shuri Warren. And it sent a message to their killers. We will not stop. Detective Frawley said it well.
00:31:50 Speaker_02
If there is a place to search, they are going to search. If there is a place to dig, they are going to dig. And is that what you do, too, in the Cold Podcast? Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:00 Speaker_02
So for the Cold Podcast, you know, our job is to tell these stories, to tell Cherie Warren's story, to let the public know about what's happened in the past and what's happening right now.
00:32:11 Speaker_02
But that doesn't mean that this case ends when our podcast ends or that we stop paying attention. So I, myself, KSL, the Cold Podcast, we're dedicated to continuing to follow Cherie's case.
00:32:23 Speaker_02
And if we come across any new information, we will be out on the next mountain doing the next search. In every setback, I see progress. In every hole excavated, we plant a seed of new opportunity. A fruitless search is not defeat.
00:32:45 Speaker_02
It's a step on the path toward truth. This will not be the last search. If you have information about the disappearance of Cherie Warren, now is the time to share it.
00:33:12 Speaker_02
You can reach me by emailing cold at ksl.com or contact the Roy City Police Department at 801-774-1063. 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.
00:33:31 Speaker_02
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.
00:33:42 Speaker_02
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.
00:33:58 Speaker_02
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.
00:34:09 Speaker_02
Michael Bonmiller composed our main theme, with additional music this season by Allison Leighton Brown.
00:34:15 Speaker_02
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 Allison Vermeulen.
00:34:30 Speaker_02
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.
00:34:48 Speaker_02
Most of all, thank you for listening.
00:34:59 Speaker_15
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