The Search for Sheree | Last Man Standing | 10 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Cold

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Episode: The Search for Sheree | Last Man Standing | 10

Author: KSL Podcasts | Wondery
Duration: 01:08:13

Episode Shownotes

Cary Hartmann returns to Ogden after leaving prison, only to face fresh suspicion. Charles Warren’s health declines, leaving him unable to clear up lingering questions. The Cold team pieces together the evidence to provide the most likely scenario in the unsolved cold case disappearance of Sheree Warren.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, investigative journalist Dave Cawley continues to explore the unsolved disappearance of Sheree Warren, focusing on the renewed scrutiny of Cary Hartman following his release from prison after 32 years. As Sheree's father, Charles Warren, faces health issues, the investigation delves into complicated legal scenarios and Cary's hesitance to accept an immunity offer that could reveal crucial information about Sheree's fate. The team examines witness testimonies, inconsistencies in Hartman's alibi, and potential scenarios of her disappearance, all while reflecting on the broader implications of abuse and victim-blaming in this cold case.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Search for Sheree | Last Man Standing | 10) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_23
This season of The Cold Podcast includes descriptions of rape, sexual assault, murder, and domestic violence. Please take care in listening. The world had gone into lockdown. COVID-19 had exploded into a full-blown pandemic.

00:00:22 Speaker_23
Schools and businesses were shuttered. Streets and cities across the United States were eerily quiet. It was the spring of 2020, but at least one business in Ogden, Utah remained open. Dave Moore's sewing machine repair shop.

00:00:39 Speaker_23
Dave and his brother, who co-owned the business, were trying to keep up with a sudden surge in demand for their services. We were extremely busy when COVID broke out because everyone was staying home making masks.

00:00:51 Speaker_23
Dave's shop is still located right where it had been in October of 1985, on the night when Sheree Warren had disappeared.

00:00:59 Speaker_23
The bar on the other side of the parking lot, where Dave had gone for a drink with his friend Carrie Hartman that night, was still there too, but it had changed names and owners several times over the decades.

00:01:11 Speaker_23
There's a small office tucked in the back of Dave's shop. Dave was working in the office one day that spring of 2020 when he heard someone come through the door onto the sales floor.

00:01:22 Speaker_13
My brother was down on the floor and Kerry came in and my brother's not real fond of Kerry. He said, let me see if he'll see you. So he came up and I just walked down real briefly, said hi, you know, what are you doing?

00:01:36 Speaker_13
And he basically gave me the story that he was living in a halfway house. Somebody donated a bed and a small TV to him, and that was basically the conversation.

00:01:46 Speaker_23
A modest new beginning for Cary Hartman. Cary had just returned to Ogden after spending 32 years in prison. Dave had struggled over those years to reconcile the charming Cary he had once known with the secretive man Cary had revealed himself to be.

00:02:03 Speaker_13
To be honest with you, I didn't believe he did it until he was convicted.

00:02:07 Speaker_23
They'd remained in contact for a while, but fell out of touch during the 90s. Years later, Dave wrote a letter to Carey.

00:02:15 Speaker_13
Just to see how he was doing, just to see what the situation was. And I basically wanted to know what's wrong with you, you know.

00:02:25 Speaker_23
Carey had not responded. So when Carey dropped in unannounced on Dave at work in early 2020, Dave hadn't felt too eager to renew their old friendship. Yeah, we've all changed.

00:02:39 Speaker_23
Carey and Dave had been together at the bar on the evening of Sheree Warren's disappearance, almost 35 years earlier. Carey had tried to use Dave as an alibi.

00:02:48 Speaker_23
So it's interesting one of the first things Carey did after getting out of prison was check up on his old friend. Kerry had told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole before leaving prison he'd anticipated a tough transition.

00:03:01 Speaker_01
I know there's going to be rejection when I go out there in one form or another. Now when I can't handle that, that's a risky situation for me. I know who I can call to say, whoa, my self-esteem is in the dirt.

00:03:16 Speaker_23
I wonder if Kerry's self-esteem took a hit when he realized he could no longer count Dave Moore as a friend.

00:03:23 Speaker_23
Another old friend of Kerry's, Brent Morgan, the taxidermist, told me he also wants nothing to do with Kerry, which is saying something, because Brent and Kerry grew up together.

00:03:34 Speaker_25
If you go back to friends, I can remember him the farthest back because of the association of my parents and his parents.

00:03:44 Speaker_23
Cary had written letters to Brent's mom for years after his conviction. And Cary's own mother, Donna Hartman, had kept in touch with the Morgans as well.

00:03:53 Speaker_25
Donna was always after mom and myself to go and visit him. And there was a couple of times I thought about it and I just didn't want to.

00:04:04 Speaker_23
Didn't want to. Carrie's mom, Donna Hartman, had attended her son's parole board hearings. She had heard him say, under oath, he had lied to his family about being innocent. I was in denial. I couldn't face up to what I had done.

00:04:20 Speaker_23
I was wracked with guilt and shame. But Brent Morgan told me Carriot privately held to a different story. He hadn't raped anyone and was only admitting to the crimes because otherwise the parole board would never let him out of prison.

00:04:38 Speaker_23
Donna Hartman died in 2013.

00:04:40 Speaker_25
His mother went to her grave believing that he was innocent.

00:04:47 Speaker_23
Cary's dad, Bill Hartman, had defended his son from the start. He had paid Cary's bail, put up his own money to fund DNA testing, and also attended his son's parole board hearings. But Bill Hartman didn't live to see Cary regain his freedom either.

00:05:03 Speaker_23
Bill died in January of 2020, just two months shy of Cary's release from prison. Sheree Warren's friend and former coworker, Pam Volk, hadn't realized Carrie was free when she and I met a year and a half later.

00:05:20 Speaker_15
Is he out? Yes. Oh, I didn't know he was out. Yeah, yeah. That honestly makes me a little nervous.

00:05:27 Speaker_03
Okay, well, interesting. And he lives in Ogden?

00:05:31 Speaker_23
Yeah, he does. I know, because I paid Carrie Hartman a visit myself. This is Cold, Season 3, Episode 10. Last Man Standing. From KSL Podcasts, I'm Dave Cauley.

00:06:02 Speaker_23
Sheree Warren's dad, Ed Sorenson, told Salt Lake City TV station KTVX in 2019 he hoped to someday learn what happened to Sheree.

00:06:12 Speaker_20
Sure, I'd love to know what happened. But I don't think we'll ever find out.

00:06:19 Speaker_23
Roy City Police were at the time actively investigating Cherie's disappearance. The cold case remained in the hands of Detective John Frawley, who still has the case today. John told me meeting Cherie's family had changed his perspective.

00:06:34 Speaker_05
Kind of sobering feeling that this family, they didn't get any answers.

00:06:41 Speaker_23
Those conversations were driving John and his fellow detectives to keep digging. They wanted to at last be able to tell Cherie's dad, Ed Sorenson, they were bringing his daughter home.

00:06:53 Speaker_05
I don't know how to explain that other than we want answers just as much as anyone else. It's important to us.

00:07:02 Speaker_23
John had come to believe Carrie Hartman held those answers and he had wanted to ask Carrie about it.

00:07:09 Speaker_05
I went down to the prison twice, and then I met with him at AP&P, so three times.

00:07:16 Speaker_23
AP&P is short for Adult Probation and Parole. It's a state agency in Utah responsible for supervising people after they are released from prison. John told me these interactions with Kerry hadn't proved very fruitful.

00:07:30 Speaker_05
You know, I've been in a room with some interesting people during this career. and he's one of them. It's just very different.

00:07:40 Speaker_23
We've heard several people over the course of this season describe Carey as having two personalities. He could come across as debonair or devilish, depending on the moment. John didn't tell me which Kerry he encountered.

00:07:56 Speaker_23
Kerry's release hadn't come without strings. He had to abide by conditions set by the parole board.

00:08:02 Speaker_05
As part of his parole agreement, he was mandated to submit to random polygraph.

00:08:08 Speaker_23
A lie detector about whatever police wanted to ask him about. Random polygraphs are a standard condition of parole in felony sex offense cases in Utah.

00:08:19 Speaker_23
The results aren't typically admissible as evidence in court, but they can help investigators figure out if they are on the right track. Kerry Hartman had never taken a lie detector test about his relationship with Sheree Warren.

00:08:32 Speaker_23
He might end up back in prison on a parole violation if he refused to cooperate now. John Frawley had Kerry in a corner.

00:08:42 Speaker_05
Oh man, yeah, he does not. He's not happy with me.

00:08:45 Speaker_23
John called in an FBI agent with decades of experience as a polygraph examiner. The agent sat Carey down and asked him a series of questions about Cherie's disappearance.

00:08:56 Speaker_05
and he did fail that polygraph test.

00:08:58 Speaker_23
Spectacularly, or so I have heard. Roy police have refused to give me any records related to the polygraph. The FBI won't even acknowledge such a report exists, which would be comical if it wasn't so frustrating.

00:09:15 Speaker_23
This put John in something of a tight spot. He's told me the polygraph report is important, but he's also not at liberty to discuss it in detail. He could only give me this three-word summary without getting into trouble. It shows deception.

00:09:31 Speaker_23
Carey's performance at the polygraph went so poorly, it made John rethink his entire take on the Sheri Warren case. From that point forward, he no longer saw Chuck Warren as his prime suspect.

00:09:46 Speaker_23
I asked John, if that was so, why hadn't he just arrested Carey?

00:09:51 Speaker_05
It doesn't give me what I need because I have two persons of interest.

00:09:55 Speaker_23
Chuck Warren's unwillingness or inability to provide a clear story about where he had been after Cherie disappeared meant John couldn't completely count Chuck out.

00:10:07 Speaker_05
Yeah, the two persons of interest are still Charles Warren and Carey Hartman.

00:10:13 Speaker_23
Chuck Warren never showed much interest in what had happened to his estranged wife, Cherie, in 1985. He had just moved on with his life. In the last episode, we heard Roy Police Detective John Frawley's 2015 interview with Chuck.

00:10:29 Speaker_06
You say you can't remember too much, but you're doing pretty good. Well, since you're bringing it up, I can remember a few things.

00:10:37 Speaker_23
John had asked Chuck about Carrie Hartman.

00:10:40 Speaker_06
Did you know about him at the time? I mean, did you know that she was dating him or?

00:10:44 Speaker_07
I can't remember.

00:10:46 Speaker_06
Can't remember that.

00:10:50 Speaker_07
Yeah, I just can't remember she. OK. When he got arrested, it seemed like that I heard something about that she'd been dating.

00:11:00 Speaker_06
That she had been dating.

00:11:02 Speaker_07
I think that's how I found out, but I don't know. She never said anything to me about it.

00:11:06 Speaker_06
OK.

00:11:07 Speaker_07
And I never asked her this. Right. because I was dating a lot of girls at the time.

00:11:14 Speaker_23
In case you didn't catch that, Chuck said he had been dating a lot of girls when Sharia disappeared, but we also know Chuck had reunited with his first wife, Alice, during that same period.

00:11:26 Speaker_23
By the time of John Frawley's interview with Chuck 30 years later, Chuck was living with his third wife, a woman named Willow. She had sat by Chuck's side while John questioned him.

00:11:38 Speaker_23
Willow had interjected at one point, saying she wasn't surprised to hear Chuck had acted unconcerned when Cherie didn't show up looking for her son on the night of her disappearance.

00:11:48 Speaker_03
He'd been a pretty easy-going guy too, so when she didn't actually come pick him up at that time, he probably wasn't too worried about if she'd be there eventually.

00:11:57 Speaker_23
The first time I heard this audio recording, I thought Chuck and Willow shared an odd dynamic.

00:12:02 Speaker_23
Chuck and Willow had lived together for about 10 years, but had only been married a year or so at the time of the interview, and they didn't stay married long. Three years later in 2018, Chuck filed for divorce.

00:12:16 Speaker_23
Court records show Willow tried to lay claim to a lot of Chuck's property, including stuff he had bought well before they had married. Willow also refused to move out of Chuck's house. He twice filed eviction lawsuits against her.

00:12:30 Speaker_23
She left under protest in early 2020, but didn't stay gone. Willow soon convinced her ex-husband, Chuck, to let her back into his heart, his life, and his house. You might be wondering who you're supposed to root for in all this.

00:12:46 Speaker_23
Neither Chuck nor Willow seem very sympathetic, but there's a revelation I found in the court records that puts their squabble in a different context. Chuck filed a third eviction lawsuit against Willow in September of 2020.

00:13:00 Speaker_23
It says, quote, Willow was supposed to help Chuck as he had been diagnosed with dementia. Willow has not been giving Chuck his medications.

00:13:13 Speaker_23
Looking back, the beginnings of Chuck's mental decline seemed apparent five years earlier, during his interview with Detective John Frawley.

00:13:21 Speaker_07
Well, I have trouble remembering how to say different words.

00:13:27 Speaker_23
In the last episode, I told you how Willow was 27 years younger than Chuck. They had met and moved in together years before the onset of Chuck's memory problems.

00:13:36 Speaker_02
He never used to be like this. How do I do this? How do I do that? And I'd get frustrated with it.

00:13:43 Speaker_23
but Willow had only married Chuck in a spur of the moment Las Vegas Elvis Chapel wedding after Chuck's memory started failing. Willow Hendricks went to court herself. She asked a judge to appoint her as Chuck Warren's legal guardian.

00:14:00 Speaker_23
That hadn't sat well with Chuck's brother and two sons, one of whom was also Cherie's son. Court records show they intervened, trying to block Willow from taking control of Chuck's assets. On February 1st, 2021, a judge declared Chuck incapacitated.

00:14:20 Speaker_23
Under the legal definition, that meant Chuck could no longer provide for his own protection, health, or safety. His ability to evaluate information, make decisions, and provide for the necessities of life were impaired.

00:14:34 Speaker_23
Chuck's dementia meant whatever he might've known about Cherie's disappearance was locked away where even he couldn't get to it. And if evidence were to somehow emerge proving Chuck had killed Cherie, no prosecutor would ever charge him.

00:14:49 Speaker_23
Chuck wouldn't be able to aid in his own defense or even understand what he was accused of doing. I learned about Chuck's condition early in my research for this season. I realized I wouldn't ever have a chance to interview him.

00:15:04 Speaker_23
I couldn't in good conscience knowing Chuck lacked the cognitive ability to understand the questions I would ask. and it's a terrible lost opportunity.

00:15:14 Speaker_23
From February of 2021 onward, Chuck Warren was off limits in the search for answers about Cherie's disappearance.

00:15:28 Speaker_23
A couple of months later, in April of 2021, an investigator for the Weber County Attorney's Office brought Carrie Hartman to an office in downtown Ogden.

00:15:37 Speaker_23
The investigator, Steve Haney, introduced Carrie to a criminal defense lawyer named Michael Bowis. Michael was a public defender, who'd represented thousands of clients over the years.

00:15:49 Speaker_23
Haney had called both Cary and Michael here as part of a plan he had conceived. He hoped he might coax Cary into admitting to Sheri Warren's murder by making Cary an offer he couldn't refuse. What I tell you next has never before been revealed.

00:16:05 Speaker_23
Steve Haney, the investigator, handed Cary a letter from the county attorney. It offered Cary immunity from criminal charges if he revealed the location of Sheri Warren's remains. a promise, take us to Cherie and we won't charge you with her murder.

00:16:26 Speaker_23
This is what's known as transactional immunity.

00:16:28 Speaker_23
It's sometimes used to obtain testimony from witnesses or accomplices, see season two of this podcast for an example, but it's almost never provided to the primary target in a major criminal investigation like this.

00:16:44 Speaker_23
The wording of the immunity offer was broad. There were no hidden gotchas. It was a literal get out of jail free card for Carrie Hartman. The letter even said this promise of immunity did not depend on the successful recovery of Cherie's remains.

00:17:00 Speaker_23
So long as Carrie told the truth about what he had done and made a good faith effort to show where he had left her body, he wouldn't face any consequences. the county attorney had already signed the letter.

00:17:13 Speaker_23
All it needed to become binding was Carey's own signature. Carey, I'm told, seemed suspicious and skeptical. He didn't know Michael Bowis, this lawyer that Cop Haney said was supposed to represent him.

00:17:29 Speaker_23
Besides, Carey said he already had his own lawyer, a fact Haney hadn't realized. Carey called his attorney on the phone. They talked, then informed investigator Steve Haney they needed time to discuss the offer.

00:17:44 Speaker_23
Carey then left, taking the immunity letter with him. About a week later, Steve Haney received a follow-up call from Carey's attorney. The lawyer reportedly said Carey was not going to accept the immunity offer.

00:17:59 Speaker_23
But here's the thing, as far as I know, Kerry still has the immunity letter, and he could at any time sign it, walk into the Weber County Attorney's office, admit to killing Shuri Warren, and face no consequences.

00:18:14 Speaker_23
But maybe Kerry doesn't need to do that. After all, why would he need immunity for something he's insisted he didn't do? Maybe Kerry just doesn't like talking to cops. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable speaking with a reporter. Let's find out.

00:18:39 Speaker_23
The air feels stifling. I sit in the driver's seat of a small Honda Crossover, pulled into a parking stall at an apartment complex not far from the mouth of Ogden Canyon. It's the same place where Cary Hartman lived at the time of his arrest in 1987.

00:18:54 Speaker_23
It's the apartment complex where police had found a gray suede jacket, possibly belonging to Cherie Warren, when they had searched Cary's unit in the rape investigation.

00:19:08 Speaker_23
For some reason, Cary Hartman chose to move back here in 2020, after he left prison, following a short stint at a halfway house. I step out of the car. or not, and walk toward one of the three-story buildings.

00:19:23 Speaker_23
It's the start of May 2021, and Utah's experiencing a spring swelter. Air conditioners whir as I pass by. I look at the numbers on the doors, counting up until I find the right one, stop, and knock. No answer.

00:19:45 Speaker_23
I look at the unit number again, comparing it to Kerry's public listing in the Utah Sex Offender Registry. It's the right place, I'm sure. But Kerry doesn't seem to be home. Or at least, he doesn't answer the door.

00:19:59 Speaker_15
I expected this, and I've come prepared with a pen and notepad.

00:20:08 Speaker_23
That's the voice of my boss, Cheryl Worsley, who's joining me on this outing. All right, let's see, what do we want to see here? Mr. Cary Hartman. This isn't the first letter I've written to Cary.

00:20:19 Speaker_23
I'd reached out to him once before, when he was still incarcerated. At that time, I was researching the murder of Joyce Yost for season two of this podcast. I had come across the recording of William Babble, aka Charlie, the FBI informant.

00:20:35 Speaker_23
We heard from him back in episode six.

00:20:38 Speaker_08
I was in a therapy group with Cary Hartman, and I know Cary Hartman's story very well.

00:20:43 Speaker_23
William Babbel had told the FBI Cary Hartman killed Sheree Warren. But Babbel later switched up his story and told a South Ogden police detective a different guy, Doug Lovell, killed Sheree.

00:20:54 Speaker_09
He was afraid he was gonna get questioned in a rape, kidnap, murder of somebody named Sheree Warren.

00:21:02 Speaker_23
I had wanted to know what Cary made of Babbel's contradictory claims. Was William Babbel a liar? But Cary never responded to my first letter. So this is why I'm standing at Kerry's door.

00:21:16 Speaker_23
I'm carrying a transcript of the William Babble police interview with me as I knock at Kerry's apartment. When he doesn't answer, I tuck the transcript behind his screen door, along with the following note. Mr. Kerry Hartman, my name is Dave Colley.

00:21:31 Speaker_23
I'm a reporter with KSL. I previously wrote you while you were still incarcerated, hoping to set up an interview regarding a story I was working on about the Joyce Yost case. I never heard back, but would still like an opportunity to speak with you.

00:21:43 Speaker_23
I will be publishing a story next week that includes a claim Doug Lovell had some involvement with the disappearance of another woman whom you knew, Sheree Warren.

00:21:51 Speaker_23
I've included a copy of a police interview with a prison informant named William Babble.

00:21:55 Speaker_04
I'd love to hear your thoughts about what William had to say. Look forward to hearing from you. Dave Cawley.

00:21:59 Speaker_23
Here you go. So be it. Then Cheryl and I walk back to our car and crank up the AC. I'm about to put the car in reverse when I glance at the rear view mirror and freeze. Act cool, I say to Cheryl, but take a look to our left.

00:22:20 Speaker_23
As she does, I reach down and switch off the ignition. So we're sitting in the car outside Carrie Hartman's apartment. having just left a note in his door telling him that he wanted to speak with him. And Cheryl, what happened?

00:22:35 Speaker_15
And he pulls up, backs into a parking spot, and we're like, we think that's him.

00:22:41 Speaker_04
Yeah, I recognize the car driving past in the rear view being a Chevy Avalanche, which is what was listed as one of his vehicles on the Utah Sex Offender Registry.

00:22:51 Speaker_23
And you watched him get out.

00:22:53 Speaker_15
Yeah, it looks like it's him. So we're going to give him a second to get our note. and we'll try again.

00:23:01 Speaker_10
Give them a doorknock.

00:23:02 Speaker_15
Yep.

00:23:04 Speaker_23
We decide five minutes seems fair, enough time to read the letter and skim the transcript. We wait, watching the clock, then go knock on Carrie Hartman's door a second time. The door opens just a crack. I can see the lights are off inside.

00:23:26 Speaker_23
It's dark, cave-like, as if blackout curtains cover all the windows. But enough light shines through the crack in the door to illuminate a face I recognize in the shadows.

00:23:38 Speaker_04
Hey, Gary. Dave Colley from KSL. I left you a note, but then I saw you pulling in as we were getting ready to leave. Can I talk to you for just a second? And that's the entirety of my communication with Carrie Hartman.

00:24:11 Speaker_23
It struck me as odd Kerry had referred me to his attorney. At the time, I wasn't aware Weber County had offered Kerry immunity just a couple of weeks earlier. I did reach out to Kerry's attorney, by the way, but I received no response.

00:24:27 Speaker_23
Kerry Hartman won't talk to me. I did talk to former Ogden Police Detective Chris Zimmerman, the guy who had made the rape case against Carey in 1987, around the same time I went to knock on Carey Hartman's door.

00:24:43 Speaker_23
Zimmerman told me he believes Carey's paid his debt to society and deserves a chance to prove he is a changed man. Zimmerman's position surprised me. He's not someone I expected would show Carey much sympathy.

00:24:58 Speaker_23
Zimmerman's notes and reports include a lot of detail about what Carey reportedly did to his suspected victims back in the 80s. I haven't shared all of what's in them, mostly to avoid being salacious and to protect the innocent from additional trauma.

00:25:13 Speaker_23
Zimmerman declined my request for an on-the-record interview, but I shared what he told me with former Roy Police Detective Jack Bell, the original investigator on Sheree Warren's disappearance.

00:25:24 Speaker_11
What Zimmerman said about him doing his time is true, because he has done more time for the rapes than he would for a manslaughter.

00:25:34 Speaker_23
Kerry had spent 32 years in prison, more than double the 15-year minimum on his sentence. Over the course of this season, we've heard how the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole kept Kerry in for a few reasons.

00:25:48 Speaker_23
They included Kerry's own refusal to accept responsibility for what he had done.

00:25:52 Speaker_12
There is tremendous repression and denial going on. So strongly that therapy would be completely a waste of time until there's a change of your perception.

00:26:04 Speaker_23
The parole board had at times feared Kerry might revert to his past behaviors. And there was the matter of Carey's possible involvement in the disappearance of Shuri Warren. But in the end, the parole board decided to send Carey back out into society.

00:26:21 Speaker_23
Jack Bell told me he doesn't believe Carey Hartman's squared his debts.

00:26:26 Speaker_11
I don't feel like he's done his time.

00:26:28 Speaker_23
I also asked former Weber County Attorney Reed Richards, the prosecutor who had first put Kerry away, if he believes Kerry's paid his debts.

00:26:36 Speaker_17
Well, that's an interesting discussion, and I don't know that I have an opinion on it.

00:26:40 Speaker_23
Reed said he had felt surprised, not that the parole board let Kerry out, but instead that it kept Kerry in as long as it did.

00:26:48 Speaker_17
Why so? Well, because it was 15 to life. So generally people were doing 15 years and getting out. But I can say that if he had been convicted at the same time of homicide and the rape cases, he probably wouldn't have spent any more time than he spent.

00:27:03 Speaker_23
You could make an argument, Kerry's already received punishment for a crime he's not been charged with. Would that mean Carey no longer bears responsibility if he killed Shuri Warren?

00:27:15 Speaker_17
And I guess the other question is, what would a court do with it anyway? You know, if you were to convict him now, he's probably, what, 75 or so?

00:27:24 Speaker_23
Carey is 74 years old at the time I'm recording this.

00:27:27 Speaker_17
Yeah, so what are they going to do with him?

00:27:29 Speaker_23
If prosecutors today charged Kerry Hartman with Sheri Warren's murder based on the evidence at hand, and if that case went to trial and you ended up on the jury, odds are you wouldn't hear a word about lingerie survey phone calls, the Ogden City rapist investigation, or the lies Kerry told the parole board over the years.

00:27:50 Speaker_23
Courts operate under rules of evidence. Those rules spell out what kind of information prosecutors can use to try and prove their case.

00:27:58 Speaker_23
The stuff I just mentioned would likely not be allowed because it doesn't directly tie into Sheri Warren's disappearance. And even if it did, a judge might still not allow it because of the risk it could prejudice the jury against Carey.

00:28:15 Speaker_23
This explains why the Weber County Attorney's Office offered Carrie Hartman immunity. They were willing to give up on ever charging Carrie if it meant they might recover Cherie's remains for her family.

00:28:28 Speaker_17
Like with any person who's lost a loved one, to have the body and know where the grave is is pretty important. So yeah, I think there's value in doing that even if you don't prosecute.

00:28:37 Speaker_23
But as we heard, Carrie rejected the immunity offer.

00:28:41 Speaker_17
I'm not sure where you go at this point unless you find the body somewhere. And even if you find the body, that doesn't necessarily tell you who killed her.

00:28:51 Speaker_23
That would depend on where. We have two likely suspects, Chuck Warren or Carrie Hartman. Finding Sheree Warren's remains somewhere in the desert partway between Ogden and Las Vegas wouldn't directly tie her death to either of them.

00:29:09 Speaker_23
On the other hand, finding Cherie's remains buried in the backyard of Chuck's house would clearly point toward him. Finding her remains on the mountain behind Kazi Reservoir would point to Carrie.

00:29:22 Speaker_23
Most of my attention has so far focused on Causey because we have a confluence of evidence all pointing that direction. It's near where Kerry Hartman lured Heidi Posnien at the start of our story. It's where his friends owned land and liked to hunt.

00:29:37 Speaker_23
It's where the elk hunting guide, Fred Johns, spotted Kerry four days after Cherie disappeared. And it's where an anonymous caller reported finding a woman's body.

00:29:46 Speaker_07
I'm reporting a body that I found.

00:29:49 Speaker_23
remains that to this day have not been located. Let's imagine that changed. Pretend somebody found Cherie's remains on the mountain behind Causey, where the elk hunting guide sighted Carrie Hartman.

00:30:03 Speaker_23
How would we then interpret everything we've learned so far this season? I'm now going to walk you through a step-by-step of what Cherie Warren's murder could have looked like, based on the evidence and witness testimony we have gathered.

00:30:18 Speaker_23
There are gaps which I will bridge with some speculation. Keep in mind, I'm not saying this is what did happen. I am saying it's one possible explanation of what could have happened.

00:30:31 Speaker_23
On the evening of October 2nd, 1985, Cherie Warren walked out of an office building in Salt Lake City. She told Richard Moss, the man she'd been training, she was headed to Wagstaff Toyota to pick up her estranged husband.

00:30:45 Speaker_10
It was about 6.25 that we finally balanced and left the office. We got to the parking lot, she went to the west, I went north.

00:30:55 Speaker_23
But Cherie's husband, Chuck Warren, wasn't waiting for her at Wagstaff. He had changed his plans at the last minute and decided not to take his Toyota Supra from his home in Ogden to the dealership in Salt Lake City.

00:31:08 Speaker_07
I remember calling her to tell her I wasn't coming.

00:31:13 Speaker_23
Around that same time, Carey Hartman dropped in at his friend Dave Moore's shop in Ogden. Carey suggested they go grab a couple drinks at a bar across the way. Carey and Dave spent a couple hours at the bar, from about 6 to between 8 and 9 p.m.

00:31:31 Speaker_23
So Carey was at the bar when Cherie left her work 40 miles south in Salt Lake City. Cherie would have headed toward Ogden, either straight from work or after realizing Chuck wasn't waiting for her at Wagstaff Toyota.

00:31:45 Speaker_23
Given the drive time, Cherie would have arrived in the Ogden area around 7.30 p.m. at the earliest. Her daily routine was to meet Chuck at the Denny's restaurant just off the I-15 freeway in Roy.

00:31:58 Speaker_23
But she had been late getting out of work, so I don't know if she would have gone there or not on this particular night. She didn't have a cell phone, making it difficult to change plans on the fly. Chuck wasn't at that Denny's in any case.

00:32:12 Speaker_23
He later told police he had gone out for that jog. Maybe Cherie stopped at the Denny's in Roy looking for Chuck. We know she didn't go home because her mom, Mary Sorenson, said Cherie never showed up for dinner.

00:32:30 Speaker_23
Everything I have heard about Cherie suggests her top priority would have been picking up her son, so I believe she would have headed toward Chuck's house.

00:32:40 Speaker_23
If you today ask your phone for directions from Roy to Chuck's house in Ogden, it will route you up Ogden's 7th Street. That's where Carrie Hartman lived at the time.

00:32:51 Speaker_23
Give a little more drive time to get from Roy to Ogden, and we see Cherie could have driven past Kerry's basement apartment around 8 p.m. or a little after.

00:33:01 Speaker_23
That's around the same time Kerry's friend, Dave Moore, told me they had left the bar, meaning Kerry could have already been home by the time Cherie, hypothetically, drove past his place.

00:33:14 Speaker_23
She could have seen his yellow truck parked in the driveway at the top of the stairs that lead down into the basement.

00:33:22 Speaker_23
The two women who had lived above Carey, the teachers, Kaylynn and Mary, later told police they believed Sheree had stopped there that night. They told Detective John Frawley they had overheard a loud argument.

00:33:35 Speaker_05
And the argument was Sheree had found out Carey Hartman was dating someone else. And during this argument, they heard a loud thud. And then Carey Hartman cusses, and then they don't hear anything after that.

00:33:51 Speaker_23
Carey had a history of using physical force against his romantic partners. He outweighed Sheree by at least 50 pounds. It's possible a single blow could have knocked her unconscious or even killed her.

00:34:06 Speaker_23
I can imagine Carey then in a panic, wondering who else knew Sheree was at his place. Sheree's mom, Mary Sorenson, told police Carey had called her around 8 p.m. Carey had asked where Sheree was.

00:34:20 Speaker_23
She told Carrie Sheree had intended to meet Chuck at the car dealership, then come home for dinner. But Sheree hadn't showed up yet.

00:34:29 Speaker_23
As far as we know, Mary didn't say anything to Carrie about Sheree having plans to stop off at Carrie's apartment that night. So Carrie would have presumably known he was safe, at least for a little while.

00:34:43 Speaker_23
After hanging up with Mary, Cary could have wrapped Cherie in his black parka before taking her up the stairs from the basement apartment and placing her in his truck. Where to then? He would have needed somewhere dark and remote.

00:34:59 Speaker_23
Maybe Lost Creek, where Cary had spent time deer hunting with his brother and cop buddies in the past. Lost Creek was an hour and a half drive away, most of it on the interstate. Too far and too risky. How about Causey?

00:35:15 Speaker_23
The secluded confines of Causey Estates were only 45 minutes from Ogden. The route, along Utah State Highway 39, wound through dark canyons. And Carey knew his way around Causey Estates.

00:35:29 Speaker_23
He had spent time there with friends, like the taxidermist, Brent Morgan. There was a locked gate. Brent just happened to have loaned Carey his key to the gate at Causey Estates a couple of weeks earlier.

00:35:42 Speaker_21
Once he's passed the gate to get into Qazi Estates, he can go up top.

00:35:45 Speaker_23
That's correct. That's correct. There is no proof Kerry visited Qazi Estates on the night of Sheree's disappearance. This is speculative, and you should treat what I say here with due skepticism.

00:35:58 Speaker_23
I don't think it's likely Carey would have spent too long at Causey Estates if he had gone there that night.

00:36:05 Speaker_23
It's not likely he would have gone all the way up the mountain, because in this hypothetical scenario, Cherie's car would have still been sitting on the street outside his place in Ogden. Every second it remained there, he would have been exposed.

00:36:20 Speaker_23
he would have needed a quick but safe drop site.

00:36:23 Speaker_25
The thing you got to understand about Cary is he's lazy. You know, he's not going to do anything that's too hard.

00:36:30 Speaker_23
Cary had spent the first part of that evening at the bar with his friend Dave Moore. And Dave had owned a lot in Qazi Estates at the time.

00:36:39 Speaker_13
Pretty quiet back in those days? It was real quiet.

00:36:43 Speaker_23
Carey would have known Dave's lot at Qazi Estates was unoccupied that night, making it a safe place to temporarily stash Sheree. Carey could have driven from his apartment in Ogden to Dave Moore's lot in Qazi Estates and been back home before 11 p.m.

00:37:01 Speaker_23
Sheree's mom, Mary Sorenson, told police she had received a second call from Carey on the night of Sheree's disappearance between 10 and 11. He had again asked if Sheree had made it home. Mary had said no.

00:37:15 Speaker_23
In this hypothetical scenario, Carey could have made this second call to Mary Sorenson after returning from dropping Sheree's body, using it to bolster his story. He hadn't seen Sheree at all that night.

00:37:29 Speaker_23
Next, Carey would have needed to get rid of Cherie's car. He would have taken her keys and gone out to her Toyota Corolla. Chuck Warren liked to go to Las Vegas. He had honeymooned there more than once.

00:37:43 Speaker_23
His brother told me Chuck had gone to Vegas regularly. It seems plausible Cherie might have shared that detail with Carrie. If so, it's conceivable Carrie might have chosen to take Cherie's car to Vegas as part of an effort to frame Chuck.

00:38:00 Speaker_23
If Carey had driven through the night, he could have arrived in Las Vegas just before sunrise.

00:38:05 Speaker_23
A quick jog to the airport, a false name at the ticket counter, and a breeze through the pre-9-11 security process could have put Carey on a plane and back in Salt Lake City by 9.30 a.m. He would have then needed to get from Salt Lake to Ogden.

00:38:22 Speaker_23
A taxi cab's one possibility, but I don't think someone sneaking home from dumping murder evidence in another state would want to leave a random cab driver as a witness if it could be avoided.

00:38:33 Speaker_23
A trusted friend or relative seems more likely to me, but to my knowledge, no one's ever come forward to say they picked Carrie up at the airport. That's one major hole in this hypothetical scenario.

00:38:47 Speaker_23
Cherie's mom, Mary Sorenson, reported her daughter missing to Roy Police around noon on October 3rd, the day after Cherie's disappearance. Her report landed on the desk of Detective Jack Bell.

00:38:59 Speaker_23
Jack at first tried to get a hold of Chuck Warren, but couldn't find him. Jack had then turned his attention to Cary, placing a call to Cary around 2.30 p.m. Cary would later claim he called Jack, not the other way around.

00:39:14 Speaker_23
Cary said he made that call from work, but his time card told a different story. It said Cary had taken that day off. In any case, Cary had arrived at Roy Police Headquarters around 2.45.

00:39:28 Speaker_23
He had told Jack he had gone to the bar with his friend, Dave Moore, the prior evening. Carey had said he hadn't realized Cherie was missing until that morning, when he had supposedly talked to her mom on the phone.

00:39:42 Speaker_23
This contradicted what Mary Sorensen described about getting two phone calls from Carey the night prior.

00:39:50 Speaker_23
In this first interaction between Carey Hartman and Jack Bell, Carey didn't say Cherie was supposed to be waiting for him at his basement apartment while Carey was at the bar. That implausible story came later.

00:40:05 Speaker_23
The first newspaper report of Cherie's disappearance published the next day, Friday, two days after Cherie was last seen leaving her work. Carrie's upstairs neighbors saw the article and recalled the loud fight they had heard.

00:40:20 Speaker_23
One of them, Mary, taped a sympathy note to Carrie's door. Carrie responded by grilling Mary about whether she had seen Cherie at the house at any point during the last couple days.

00:40:33 Speaker_06
he had been so convincing about how he felt about losing her.

00:40:37 Speaker_23
Those are Mary's words from her written statement, read by a voice actor.

00:40:41 Speaker_15
He told us at that time that he was sure it was her ex-husband.

00:40:47 Speaker_23
The next day, on Saturday, three days after Cherie was last seen, Carey dropped by the home of his TV reporter friend, Larry Lewis. He asked Larry to go on a three-wheeler ride looking for Cherie's body.

00:41:01 Speaker_23
They had taken the three-wheelers into the foothills above the city. Larry would later say Carey had said they didn't need to look around Chuck Warren's house because police had already done that, which wasn't true.

00:41:16 Speaker_23
Cariad showed up at gatherings after Cherie disappeared, where her family prayed for her safe return.

00:41:22 Speaker_23
Detective Shane Miner had talked to people who said Cariad claimed to be spending all his time searching for Cherie and handing out missing persons flyers.

00:41:32 Speaker_14
But then the question is, is he really, or that's just who wants people to believe.

00:41:37 Speaker_23
He did pass some of the flyers around to his friends and even his own brother. But remember, Carey's upstairs neighbors ended up finding a full box of those flyers abandoned in his closet after he moved out, a year following Shuri's disappearance.

00:41:53 Speaker_14
It seems like... That would be pretty common. You would hear one side from Kerry on what he's doing, who he's doing it with, and everything they're doing.

00:42:02 Speaker_14
But then when you talk to the person he's referring to, they describe it as quite a bit different. None of that was taking place.

00:42:10 Speaker_23
If Kerry had left Sheri Warren's body at Kazia Estates on the night of her disappearance, he might have felt nervous in the days that followed as he put on this ruse of searching for her. It was opening weekend of the annual elk hunt.

00:42:24 Speaker_23
Cary would have known many of the cabin owners of Kazi Estates would be headed up the mountain. Cary might have decided to move Shuri deeper into the backcountry. It's a theory his former friend, the taxidermist Brent Morgan, told me makes sense.

00:42:42 Speaker_25
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.

00:42:54 Speaker_22
but it's gotta be a place that he can get to. Hypothetically get a body to, right?

00:42:58 Speaker_25
That's exactly right. And there are places up there where roads go to those type of areas, but it's a big area.

00:43:05 Speaker_23
Cary at this time still possessed the key for the gated Qazi estates he had borrowed from Brent. Back in episode four, Brent told us he had tried to get his key back, but Cary had dodged him for days, not wanting to return it.

00:43:20 Speaker_23
so Carey could have gone back to Kazi Estates early on Sunday, October 6th, four days after Cherie disappeared with his ugly yellow truck and another man. A man who resembled his younger brother, Jack.

00:43:34 Speaker_23
Because this is when the elk hunting guide Fred Johns would later say he saw Carey Hartman trespassing on private property.

00:43:43 Speaker_23
Carey could have retrieved Cherie's body from Kazi Estates and driven farther up onto the mountain behind Kazi to the middle of nowhere. Carey might have backed his truck into some trees off the side of the primitive dirt road.

00:43:58 Speaker_23
It would have provided cover as he transferred his payload from the back of his truck to one of his three-wheelers.

00:44:05 Speaker_23
From there, Carey might've gone off into the brush until he found a protected, private place to once again abandon Cherie's body, this time for good. Back in episode four, we met a former Weber County Sheriff's detective named Rod Layton.

00:44:30 Speaker_23
He had led the search for the anonymous caller who had reported finding a body near Causey.

00:44:35 Speaker_24
I was a lieutenant over investigations division when I left.

00:44:38 Speaker_23
Rod told me in his experience, most crimes and most criminals are not complicated.

00:44:44 Speaker_24
Don't give these people more credit than they deserve for being smart or being motivated because they're not.

00:44:50 Speaker_23
Rod said this same logic applies to killers who try to cover their crime by concealing the victim's body. They tend to act irrationally, out of fear.

00:44:59 Speaker_24
And they're not smart and they're lazy.

00:45:02 Speaker_23
This assumption is common in law enforcement circles, and for good reason. It keeps investigators from wasting time on fantastical theories. Keep it simple.

00:45:13 Speaker_24
Do I think that this guy went up there, you know, carried the body back a mile?

00:45:20 Speaker_23
No. But the assumption might break down if your suspected killer is a person who knows this is how cops tend to think. A person with police training. a person who knows to take that one bit of extra effort.

00:45:36 Speaker_23
So I'm going to challenge Rod's assumption here, because evidence suggests Cary Hartman had the training, the means, and the mindset to be an exception to the rule.

00:45:46 Speaker_23
We've now explored a hypothetical scenario involving Carey killing Cherie, then later enlisting the help of an accomplice to move Cherie's body to a place it wouldn't be found on the mountain behind Kazi. Moving a body is not a trivial task.

00:46:01 Speaker_23
I wasn't sure if the three-wheeled ATVs Carey owned in 1985 would have been up to the job. If the answer is no, the whole hypothetical falls apart.

00:46:12 Speaker_23
If the answer is yes, it suggests Cherie's remains could be on that mountain today, in a place where no one's yet bothered to look. I decided to buy a three-wheeler and conduct an experiment.

00:46:26 Speaker_23
I wanted to know if it was feasible for someone to use a machine like the ones Carrie Hartman had owned to move a body off-road into the backcountry behind Kazi. But first, some context. Three-wheeled ATVs first hit the market at the start of the 70s.

00:46:45 Speaker_23
By the 80s, they were exploding in popularity.

00:46:48 Speaker_00
Many hunters today will quarter a deer and haul it out of the forest on a four-wheeler, but I didn't know if that would have been so simple with a more primitive three-wheeler.

00:47:08 Speaker_23
Vintage three-wheelers are narrower, weigh less, and are more maneuverable than four-wheelers. People took them everywhere, cutting new trails and ripping up vegetation.

00:47:18 Speaker_19
It's mainly the small all-terrain cycles, or ATCs, that are at the heart of the problem. Popular with kids and adults alike, they're fun to ride and go almost anywhere. They're also dangerous.

00:47:31 Speaker_23
Most three-wheelers didn't have suspension, meaning they couldn't carry as much weight and were rough to ride. They also had a tendency to tip or roll, causing injuries or even death. That's why manufacturers stopped making them in 1987.

00:47:46 Speaker_23
But you can still buy old ones second-hand, which is what I did.

00:47:50 Speaker_23
Former South Ogden Police Detective Terry Carpenter, who I met while working on the Joyce Yost case in season two of this podcast, was able to secure permission for me to access the private land on the mountain between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs, the slash in the percent sign.

00:48:07 Speaker_23
Terry and I met at Lost Creek one morning in July of 2022. I unrolled a large map of the area across the tailgate of Terry's truck.

00:48:15 Speaker_22
So we're gonna come up Kill Foil, all the way up to the corral, right? And we're gonna hang a left.

00:48:23 Speaker_23
Our target established, we headed up the mountain. Terry had the key to open the gate. It was a long ride, nearly 15 miles one way from Lost Creek.

00:48:35 Speaker_23
We came to the spot on the mountain where Fred Johns, the elk hunting guide, had told police he saw Kerry Hartman and another man, possibly Kerry's younger brother Jack, on the Sunday after Cherie Warren disappeared.

00:48:48 Speaker_23
Terry Carpenter and I stepped out into the clearing on the ridge. Standing there in the summer sun, I tried to imagine what reason Kerry might have had for coming to this isolated spot four days after his girlfriend vanished.

00:49:03 Speaker_23
He had reportedly told Fred Johns, the hunting guide, he was looking for elk. But as we have heard from Kerry's own brother,

00:49:11 Speaker_17
What did he hunt, to the best of your present recollection? Deer. Just deer? Just deer.

00:49:16 Speaker_23
So was Terry stalking elk, or had he harbored more sinister intentions? To test whether an old three-wheeler could have carried a human body from this roadside clearing deeper into the forest, I needed an object similar in size, shape, and weight.

00:49:34 Speaker_23
I pulled three bags of rock salt out of Terry's truck. Each one weighed 40 pounds. I spread a set of painter's coveralls on the dirt, then poured the 120 pounds of rock salt into the coveralls through a zippered opening on the chest.

00:49:51 Speaker_23
Cherie's driver's license listed her as 5'5 and 115 pounds.

00:49:56 Speaker_21
So this is about as much as a human body would weigh, 120 pounds of rock salt.

00:50:02 Speaker_23
And it is not easy to move. Terry and I lifted the simulated body onto the rack mounted on the back of my three-wheeler.

00:50:09 Speaker_21
One, two, three.

00:50:11 Speaker_23
I'm a reasonably fit guy, but this task felt more difficult than I had anticipated.

00:50:16 Speaker_21
Come around this side. You got it?

00:50:18 Speaker_23
Not just because of the weight. The simulated body proved unwieldy.

00:50:23 Speaker_21
That is a two-person job.

00:50:25 Speaker_23
You are not doing that alone. I've never moved an actual deceased human body, so I'm not sure how well this approximated reality. But a second set of hands made a huge difference. I'm not sure I could have managed on my own.

00:50:41 Speaker_23
With the simulated body in place, I fired up the three-wheeler's small engine and headed down the dirt road. Having so much additional weight over the rear axle took pressure off the single front tire, which in turn made steering less effective.

00:50:57 Speaker_23
The engine felt sluggish. The rear tires rubbed on the plastic fenders, but the frame didn't bottom out. And with enough extra throttle, the three-wheeler did go.

00:51:08 Speaker_23
I rode about a quarter mile to a place where I knew from my research an old jeep trail forked off from the road. Maps from the 80s showed that trail descending into a canyon called Pete Nelson Hollow.

00:51:21 Speaker_23
This was one of the places I believed it was plausible Cary Hartman might have gone on that Sunday so many years ago. It appeared evident the Jeep trail hadn't seen use in a long time.

00:51:33 Speaker_23
Trees had fallen across the path, and the underbrush had reclaimed the old tire tracks. I decided not to try and ride down it myself because of the risk of getting stuck. Instead, I scouted the old trail on foot.

00:51:48 Speaker_21
This would be a pretty tough path to get a three-wheeler down. You could do it, but you would need to be a pretty good rider. And with the extra weight from a body,

00:51:58 Speaker_22
It would not be a fun ride.

00:52:00 Speaker_23
That might have been different in 1985, when the path wasn't so overgrown. The old ATV trail ended at a set of springs, where water rose out of the ground and created a series of murky pools. These springs feed into Qazi Reservoir.

00:52:17 Speaker_23
They were surrounded by thick fields of a poisonous plant called false hellebore. I crashed through it, finding it so dense I couldn't see down past my own waist.

00:52:28 Speaker_21
You might walk by a human body in this kind of environment and be 10 feet away from it and not ever see it.

00:52:38 Speaker_23
Emerging on the other side of the Hellebore patch, I saw meadows of dandelions and clear views farther down into the canyon. If I had been on the three-wheeler, I could have easily kept riding.

00:52:50 Speaker_21
It's hard to describe. without being up here and seeing this landscape, just how futile it feels if you were trying to find a human body up here.

00:53:04 Speaker_23
Still, I found myself getting sucked into the moment. I wanted to abandon my experiment and instead wander, searching for Cherie. I knew the odds of finding anything were slim, but a irrational hope sometimes leads the mind astray.

00:53:20 Speaker_23
What if, I wondered, I just happened to cross a chip of bone or fragment of cloth, some remnant? But no, no delusions of grandeur. I hiked back to the three-wheeler with a newfound knowledge of what I had only suspected before.

00:53:39 Speaker_23
Human remains could easily go undetected in these mountain meadows.

00:53:44 Speaker_21
And it's possible, I believe, Somebody could have driven a three-wheeler down from the ridge into this opening.

00:53:56 Speaker_23
If Kerry Hartman killed Sheree Warren, my experiment suggests it's plausible he could have used one of his three-wheelers to move her body into the backcountry on this mountain, beyond where police might bother to look.

00:54:11 Speaker_23
But maybe there's another explanation for what Carey was doing here four days after Sheri Warren disappeared. It's a question I would very much like to ask him. And Carey, if you're listening, you have an open invitation to come give your answer.

00:54:47 Speaker_23
When I first met former Roy Police Detective Jack Bell, we didn't start off talking about the Cherie Warren case. Instead, Jack opened our conversation by talking about another case I wasn't familiar with from the mid-'80s.

00:55:01 Speaker_11
It's a strange story. We had a serial bank robber.

00:55:05 Speaker_23
This robber had committed holdups at a few banks and a pharmacy. He was a smooth operator who had worn a suit and trench coat. he didn't make the ignorant mistakes many novice criminals do.

00:55:17 Speaker_11
Had a pretty good hunch that this bank robber was an ex-cop or a cop. You know, he knew too much about how we did business.

00:55:26 Speaker_23
Detectives hadn't had much to go on, aside from a photo that didn't show the man's face and a brief audio recording of his voice. Jack had began to look and listen suspiciously at his fellow officers.

00:55:39 Speaker_23
He honed in on one particular guy he often saw working out at the city's gym. One day, Jack made a surreptitious tape recording of this suspect.

00:55:49 Speaker_11
Tape this guy and turn it over to the FBI and their voice comparisons and say, yeah, I think you're on the right track. This sure sounds like him.

00:56:00 Speaker_23
Jack had grown more and more certain he had his man, but he had no evidence to support that, just a theory. Lo and behold. The guy from the gym was not the bank robber. Jack had been wrong.

00:56:16 Speaker_23
Hard evidence, including a confession, ended up pointing to a different guy, a former Roy City police officer named Boyd Wilcox.

00:56:24 Speaker_11
And his voice was perfect.

00:56:27 Speaker_23
I didn't at first understand why Jack wanted me to know about the mistake he'd made in the search for this bank robber, since it was unrelated to the disappearance of Shuri Warren.

00:56:38 Speaker_23
It wasn't until more than two hours later in our conversation, Jack came back to it.

00:56:43 Speaker_11
It's like I told you about that bank robber. I mean, I left that gym that day convinced I had the right guy.

00:56:53 Speaker_23
Jack was trying to warn me, be careful about what you think you know. Don't let your theories get too far in front of your facts. The hypothetical scenario we've discussed in this episode probably does that.

00:57:08 Speaker_23
It requires some assumptions that go beyond the available evidence.

00:57:13 Speaker_11
You gotta be broad, you can't narrow down unless there's absolutely evidence that somebody is guilty and it's right there.

00:57:23 Speaker_23
But narrow it down is exactly what Jack had done at the start of the Cherie Warren case. He'd focused so much attention on Cherie's estranged husband, Chuck Warren, he hadn't seen the subtle signs Kerry Hartman might instead be responsible.

00:57:38 Speaker_23
Jack and I have talked several more times since our first meeting. He's admitted he loses sleep after each of our conversations. None of us like to fail, and I feel like I failed.

00:57:53 Speaker_23
Jack hadn't at first noticed how Carrie's story shifted a little with each retelling.

00:57:58 Speaker_11
All Carrie's stories about her waiting there for him with candles and wine.

00:58:05 Speaker_23
Jack hadn't caught the significance of Carey slipping in references to Cherie staying over at his place in the middle of the week, even though that contradicted what Cherie's parents said about her routine.

00:58:16 Speaker_11
He wants everybody to know this is her normal procedure and how much this lady's in love with him, supposedly.

00:58:27 Speaker_23
Carey had made repeated references to Cherie wearing his black parka on the morning of her disappearance. But Jack hadn't picked up on the potential significance of that. I'll admit, that one's not super obvious.

00:58:41 Speaker_23
It hadn't seemed suspicious until police later found a gray suede women's jacket in Carey's apartment.

00:58:48 Speaker_23
It's the tale of two coats we've discussed multiple times this season, and it leaves Jack wondering what other clues might have slipped under his nose during those critical early days.

00:58:59 Speaker_11
What did I miss? What did I miss? What did I miss? How many times have I asked myself that question?

00:59:06 Speaker_23
Former Ogden Police Detective Shane Miner shared a similar sentiment with me when we spoke about the search for Cherie.

00:59:12 Speaker_14
You hate to miss it. And there's been cases where I've worked and I've missed things, and then you go back and when you realize what you missed, it's like, hey, we'll make that mistake again. Do you think this case is solvable?

00:59:25 Speaker_14
I think it's a long shot, but I hate to say it's not. I think there's a chance.

00:59:34 Speaker_23
what would solving it look like? Is it just getting the answer? Is it getting a conviction? Is it finding a body?

00:59:41 Speaker_14
Well, my opinion on that would be, I think it's solvable, but an effective prosecution, I think, would be extremely difficult at this point in time.

00:59:53 Speaker_23
We might someday get a definitive answer to the question, what happened to Shuri Warren? But the window of opportunity to hold anyone accountable is rapidly closing.

01:00:05 Speaker_23
Consider what might happen if a prosecutor were to try and charge Kerry Hartman with murder today, based on the current evidence.

01:00:12 Speaker_23
They would first have to clear the hurdle of convincing a judge probable cause existed to believe Kerry committed the crime. the circumstantial evidence we've uncovered in this podcast likely achieves that.

01:00:24 Speaker_23
But it's not likely to meet the higher standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt required for a criminal conviction. In the U.S. justice system, the accused are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty.

01:00:38 Speaker_23
It's up to the prosecution to present that proof. It doesn't have to be absolute proof, but it must be enough to convince a judge or jury no other reasonable explanation exists. Apply that standard to what we know of Sheri Warren's disappearance.

01:00:56 Speaker_23
Could a serial killer have abducted Cherie off the streets of Salt Lake City? Unlikely, but not impossible. That's doubt, but maybe not reasonable doubt. Could Chuck Warren have killed Cherie in anger over their stalled divorce?

01:01:13 Speaker_23
Maybe he set up their meeting at Wagstaff Toyota as part of a plot. That's doubt. And it's reasonable, given what we know about how Chuck attacked his first wife with a tire iron during their divorce.

01:01:26 Speaker_23
Convincing a judge or jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, Chuck Warren or Carrie Hartman killed Sheree would require more than just a good theory. It would take hard proof. Investigator Shane Miner spent years trying to find that proof.

01:01:43 Speaker_23
I'm not going to ask you to say a name, but do you feel like you know who was responsible in this case?

01:01:48 Speaker_14
I think so. I think there's one person who knows exactly what happened, and I don't think that person's going to admit to it. Maybe on his dying deathbed, but I doubt it.

01:02:03 Speaker_23
I don't think Shane was talking about Chuck Warren. Cherie's ex-husband, Charles Chuck Warren, died on October 22, 2022, as a result of his dementia.

01:02:17 Speaker_23
Chuck had lived most of his life in Ogden, aside from a brief stint in Roseville, California during the 70s, working for the railroad. He had one brother, Richard, but they hadn't been close for much of Chuck's life.

01:02:30 Speaker_23
They only reconciled in Chuck's later years. Richard told me Chuck had been a car nut, whose favorite pastime had been taking long road trips all across the American West.

01:02:42 Speaker_23
Chuck Warren's death occurred very late in the reporting process for this podcast. It underscored to me, Sheree Warren's case runs a very real risk of soon becoming unsolvable.

01:02:54 Speaker_23
Earlier in this episode, you heard Sheree's dad, Ed Sorenson, say he didn't think he would ever know the truth of what happened to his daughter. Ed was right. He passed away in December of 2021. People involved in the case are passing away.

01:03:11 Speaker_23
That's happening. That's again the voice of Roy Police Detective John Frawley. So, yes, the clock is ticking. Absolutely. At the time I'm recording this, Kerry Hartman is still alive.

01:03:27 Speaker_23
He is the last man standing, and the evidence suggests Carey has never been fully forthcoming about his actions during the days surrounding Sheree Warren's disappearance. Detective John Frawley told me he's not giving up, but he needs our help.

01:03:47 Speaker_05
If someone interacted with Sheree Warren, Carey Hartman, or Charles Warren on October 2nd, 1985, and maybe they haven't spoken to law enforcement. I would love to speak to them. Our ultimate goal is, you know, getting a case filed in prosecution.

01:04:13 Speaker_23
My job as a journalist is a bit different than a detective's or a prosecutor's or a judge's. I'm not trying to make an arrest, to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, or to decide guilt or innocence under the law.

01:04:27 Speaker_23
My role is to uncover and report truth. So as we bring our story to a close, allow me to share the truth I have found while investigating Sheree Warren's case.

01:04:39 Speaker_23
As I speak to you now, I'm looking at a picture of Cherie from 1970 or so, when she was about 10 years old. Cherie is staring into the camera lens. I see youthful curiosity and determination in her eyes. Cherie's life held so much potential.

01:04:57 Speaker_23
She grew up and was just finding her own path when someone stole that life from her. I've had a few people say to me, boy, Cherie sure knew how to pick em, or she sure had poor taste in men, as if her murder was somehow her own fault.

01:05:15 Speaker_23
We have to stop doing that. Stop putting the blame on women when they are lied to, manipulated or abused by the people who are supposed to love them.

01:05:28 Speaker_23
More than half of the women who die by homicide in the United States each year are killed by a man who is either their current or past intimate partner. Cherie had both a current partner and a past partner who became plausible suspects in her death.

01:05:44 Speaker_23
So I can't tell you who killed Cherie, but I can say, she is not responsible for the heartless actions of the two men in her life. Cherie's estranged husband, Chuck Warren, should have shown a bare minimum of human concern about her welfare.

01:06:01 Speaker_23
But he didn't. He acted as if her disappearance came as a favor.

01:06:06 Speaker_23
Cherie's short-term boyfriend, Kerry Hartman, role-played the part of a respectable man while steering the investigation away from himself and terrorizing an entire community of unsuspecting women.

01:06:22 Speaker_23
We can only imagine what he subjected Cherie to during their brief time together. Abuse in relationships doesn't always lead to murder, but there are stories like Cherie's where everything escalates until there is no coming back.

01:06:43 Speaker_23
We have to do better than this. That is my truth. If you have experienced abuse or sexual violence, you are not alone. There are trained experts ready to listen and help.

01:07:17 Speaker_23
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.

01:07:30 Speaker_23
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.

01:07:49 Speaker_23
Thank you for listening.

01:08:13 Speaker_16
from the award-winning masters of audio horror.

01:08:17 Speaker_18
I see a face right up against the window. Bleach white, no hair, black eyes, a round hole for a mouth. It's flat, Taylor. It's completely flat. I don't know what that is. I don't know what kind of a head is flat.

01:08:30 Speaker_16
Comes the return of Dark Sanctum. Seven. Original, chilling tales inspired by the Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt. starring Bethany Joy Lenz, Clive Standen, and Michael O'Neill. Welcome to the Dark Sanctum.

01:09:05 Speaker_16
Listen to Dark Sanctum season two exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.