Hi, park enthusiasts.I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.And the case I'm going to tell you about today is one that at its core involves two of the oldest motives in the book for murder, sex and drugs.
It took place in 2018 and was a case that got a lot of coverage within the state of California where the crime happened.
But overall, I didn't see a ton of national coverage about it, which to me felt like a shame because the circumstances that led up to this crime are things that millions of people deal with every day, either with a current or former romantic partner or maybe even an acquaintance.
I'm talking about stuff like out-of-control jealousy, stalking, manipulation, and even physical and emotional abuse.
The National Park Service's website for Joshua Tree National Park, where the story unfolded, dubs it as a place where two distinct desert ecosystems meet.
If you've ever been there, you know that the landscape has endured hundreds, even thousands of years of violent rainstorms and blustering winds.
Those events, plus volcanic activity, flash flooding, have all shaped the rocks and vegetation in the park, which are habitats to an array of animals and plant species that live in the landscape's harsh environment.
Most visitors go to the park during the springtime or on holidays.Temperatures in Joshua Tree tend to vary wildly throughout the year.
For example, it can get up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and sink well below freezing at night in the winter.The lives of the individuals involved in this crime were just as up and down as the well-known park's climate.
They were three distinct people whose lives collided in the most chaotic and violent way possible.
And the young man at the center of the entire saga had so many chances to stop and think about what he was doing, to make different choices, but he didn't.
And though the life he took as a result can never be brought back, the elements of Joshua Tree National Park made sure he didn't get away with cold-blooded murder.This is Park Predators.
Around noon on Friday, June 1st, 2018, a guy named Mark Powers was hiking alone inside Joshua Tree National Park when he spotted a group of vultures circling in the air and gathered on the ground about 15 feet away from him.
The area where Mark was hiking wasn't that off the beaten path.In fact, it was near the intersection of Bighorn Pass Road and Park Boulevard, which are two traveled roadways in the park.I checked on Google Maps and there's even a campground nearby.
So Mark assumed that maybe the vultures were picking apart a dead animal or something.
I don't know exactly what was going through his mind, but I imagine that since the road was right there and it might have been common for critters to try and cross it but not make it, Mark just figured whatever the birds were after was likely a casualty of traffic.
Intrigued by the sight, he decided to snap a few photos of the vultures.After a few minutes, he left and kept hiking. The next morning, Saturday, June 2nd, he was back with his family and doing what so many of us do after we've gone on a cool hike.
He shared a few of the photos that he'd taken.When his wife viewed the pictures of the vultures, she voiced concern.I imagine she must have felt like something was just off about the carcass the birds had been swarming around.
Because she told Mark that he should contact the closest park ranger station and report what he'd stumbled across. So around 9.15 in the morning that same day, Mark made the call.
He phoned the local NPS station and got a hold of a ranger who took his report, and then that ranger sent out another ranger to check the ground near the intersection of Bighorn Pass Road and Park Boulevard.
And sure enough, when that ranger got to the spot where Mark had taken his photos, he saw what appeared to be a man's torso sticking out of the dirt.
From the looks of it, the upper part was still partially buried, but the lower portion wasn't, and it had clearly undergone severe decomposition.
Because of the extent of the decomp, NPS surmised that the body had likely been in the area for several days.After finding the victim, Rangers immediately called the Riverside County Sheriff's Office to report what was going on.
Around 1 p.m., a deputy from that department came out to the scene and roped off the area around the remains.Shortly after that, homicide investigators from the sheriff's office arrived with forensic techs.
For a few hours, the group worked to gather clues and carefully remove the body so it could be sent off for an autopsy.By 5.15 p.m., there was nothing more to investigate, so the sheriff's office released the scene back to the Park Service.
The victim's body was sent to a local coroner's office for a full examination, but those results didn't come in until the morning of June 4th, nearly a day and a half later.
The forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy found several fractures on the victim's skull, as well as multiple wounds to his chest, neck, that all appeared to have come from a sharp object, which I assume probably was either a knife or something similar.
The case was quickly ruled a homicide.
During the autopsy, the pathologist was able to pull a fingerprint from the man's left hand, and after law enforcement ran that print through the California ID database, they learned the victim was 54-year-old Henry Allen Stange.
Something deputies found interesting was that Henry was not listed as a missing person anywhere in the country, which meant no one had been looking for him or even realized he was dead in the desert.
Investigators found more records for Henry and learned that he was from the city of Murrieta, which is in Riverside County.So on the evening of June 6th, four days after his body had been found, the sheriff's office went to Henry's home.
When they got there and went inside the garage, they found blood spatter, streaks of blood on the floor that appeared to be drag marks, a pile of towels soaked with blood, and a large pool of blood on the ground.
And when I say large pool of blood, I mean large.Police reports state that this pool was roughly four feet by two feet.So yeah, no small area.
After finding the scene, the sheriff's office linked up with the Murrieta Police Department, and it was the city officers who officially began to process and investigate the scene.
They found more blood spatter next to some ham radio equipment in the garage and beneath the underside of a fishing vessel that was being stored on a trailer there.
This boat was reported to be kind of small and investigators assumed that one way blood spatter could have gotten on the underside of it was if Henry, possibly his head, had also been on the ground nearby.
In essence, what all the blood evidence indicated to detectives was that the garage had clearly been the actual site of Henry's murder.
One detective later remarked that whatever had happened in there was not quick and said all signs pointed to a quote, prolonged assault, end quote.
Based on the fact that Henry had suffered so many blunt force injuries to his head, which the pathologist determined had collapsed a portion of his skull, investigators felt pretty confident that he'd not left his home on his own free will.
They suspected he'd likely been transported away from the initial crime scene in a vehicle, then driven into the desert where someone quickly tried to bury him.
In order to prove that theory though, crime scene techs processed everything of evidentiary value in the house, hopeful that something would point them in the direction of Henry's killer or killers.
According to Brian Rocco's reporting for the Press Enterprise and a press release by the Murrieta Police Department, it was at this point in the investigation that the case was officially taken over by the city investigators, since the crime scene was in their jurisdiction.
The first major clue that stuck out to the detectives was the fact that officers had not found any signs of forced entry to Henry's house, which typically means that the suspect or suspects could have been someone the victim might have known.
On the kitchen table, investigators found Henry's wallet and some cash still inside.
Even more odd, nothing of value appeared to be missing from the rest of the house, which reinforced for investigators a theory that robbery most likely was not the motive.It seemed more and more like the crime was personal.
When officers inspected the outside of the home, they realized Henry had a security system installed that had several cameras.
However, when detectives went to the area in the garage where the DVR system for the cameras was supposed to be, they found nothing but a bunch of disconnected wires.Someone had intentionally removed the archive system.
Now, this was a telltale sign to investigators that whoever had killed Henry knew where that system was kept, and they'd purposely sabotaged it to cover up or destroy video evidence of them at the murder scene.
So with all this information in hand, the big question law enforcement needed to answer was why.Why had someone done this to Henry?But before they could solve that piece of the puzzle, detectives needed to learn more about their victim.Who was he?
When was the last time anyone had seen him alive?These were crucial questions investigators had to follow up on.They learned that the 54-year-old was a father of two and at the time of his murder was separated from his wife, Melissa Stange.
The couple hadn't been together since she filed for divorce in 2017.At the time of his death, their divorce was still pending, and Henry was only allowed to visit with their kids on a limited basis because she had full custody.
Heavy.com reported that the couple's separation stemmed from allegations of domestic violence.
Investigators checked out these allegations, and even though according to police records, there were nearly two dozen past calls for service between the two of them from when they'd been together, detectives weren't too concerned.
The Press Enterprise and Heavy.com reported that Melissa's mother had filed a restraining order against Henry in 2017, and so did two other people.But from what I could find in the source material, it seems like those cases were eventually dropped.
It's hard to tell from the articles I found, so I don't know if this next bit of information came directly from Melissa or some of Henry's neighbors who also spoke with police.
But not long into the murder investigation, detectives learned that Henry had developed a serious addiction to prescription medication, specifically opioids meant to treat pain.
According to court documents, Henry's divorce had affected him deeply, and on top of that, he'd suffered some serious injuries in a car accident. While recuperating, he'd use prescription pain meds and become dependent on them.
In fact, detectives investigating Henry's murder learned that on May 23rd, 2018, nine days before that hiker Mark Powers had found his remains in Joshua Tree, Henry had picked up a prescription for 120 count dosage of oxycodone at a local grocery store.
Surveillance video confirmed it was Henry who'd picked up the medication.
It's unclear from the source material how the authorities knew to go to this specific pharmacy and check for that video, but I assume they must have found the oxycodone prescription at Henry's home and traced it back to the name of the store that he filled it in in order to confirm he was in fact the person who'd picked it up.
But regardless of when or why he got those pills, the authorities knew that the bottom line was, one, Henry was still alive on May 23rd, and two, all signs pointed to him having a poor quality of life shortly before his murder.
They reviewed his finances, and the picture they got was even more bleak.Henry had been struggling financially for a while, and sometimes he couldn't even afford to keep the lights on at his house.
So to say things were pretty rough for him is kind of an understatement. But there was one thing that made him really happy, and that was operating his ham radio within a community of other ham radio hobbyists.
According to police reports, signing on was something Henry did weekly, if not daily.
There had been instances in the past with some disgruntled amateur radio operators who'd gotten into arguments with Henry over the airwaves, but it seemed like by and large the hobby was mostly a positive experience for him.
And because he signed on so much, there was an online broadcast software called Broadcastify that kept a record of communications between Henry and other ham radio operators.
When law enforcement investigators reviewed the radio traffic from late May, 2018, they realized that Henry had been on the airwaves during that time, or at least up until Thursday, May 24th.After that, Henry had never logged back on.
According to court documents, at 3.35 p.m.on the 24th, Henry got on his radio for about 20 minutes to talk with other operators.And in those conversations, he indicated that he was doing well.
By 3.55 p.m., he'd signed off in good spirits, saying, quote, my beautiful, lovely, and smart Ashley was here, end quote.Now, obviously, law enforcement wanted to find out who this Ashley person was.And in a very short amount of time, they did.
However, what they learned only gave them more questions than answers.
After doing a little bit more digging into Henry's life, homicide detectives in Murrieta City Police Department learned that the 54-year-old had been in a relationship with a 27-year-old woman named Ashley Stapp.
It appeared the couple had met through Craigslist and gotten romantically involved sometime in the spring of 2017, so a little more than a year before Henry's murder.
In addition to the noticeable age gap between the two, what investigators also found surprising was the fact that Ashley appeared to be in another romantic relationship at the same time she was dating Henry.
The other man she was involved with was 30-year-old Curtis Kruger, a U.S.Marine lieutenant stationed at 29 Palms Marine Corps Base in 29 Palms, California.
Based on what detectives could find online, Ashley and Curtis's relationship seemed equally as involved as the relationship she had going on with Henry, maybe even more so.
Because there were several articles in the source material that stated Ashley and Curtis were actually husband and wife or engaged to be married.
A photo of the two of them on the Department of Defense's website, which was reportedly taken on May 10, 2018, showed Curtis applying camouflage paint on a woman.The caption beneath the image said the female subject was Ashley Stapp, Curtis' wife.
Now, maybe that was just an error by whoever took the photo and put it on the DOD's website.I don't know.
But the source material goes back and forth a lot when referencing Curtis and Ashley as either husband and wife, partners, boyfriend and girlfriend, or whatever.It definitely got confusing.
And to be honest, I'm still unsure if they were legally married or just engaged.But I don't think it really matters that much.
Because what I do know for sure is that in May 2018, Ashley and Curtis were living together as a couple inside Curtis' trailer in 29 Palms.
They'd met sometime prior to the fall of 2017 through one of Curtis' cousins who worked at the same smoothie shop as Ashley.
As soon as the authorities investigating Henry's murder realized Ashley might've been seeing both men at the same time, they got suspicious and they secured a search warrant for her, Curtis, and Henry's cell phone records.
And this is where things got interesting.
The record showed that Curtis's phone had been at or near Henry's house on Thursday, May 24th, the last day Henry was heard from by his ham radio friends, which was also the day that investigators believed he was killed.
Even more suspicious was the fact that Curtis's phone had traveled from the 29 Palms Marine Base to Henry's house by 5.20 p.m.on the 24th.
Then his device stayed put there for 20 minutes, traveled to Ashley's mother's house in Canyon Lake, California, and then returned to Henry's house at 7.45 p.m.
The phone remained there for 40 minutes, then traveled from Henry's house back to 29 Palms, then several miles to the general vicinity of Joshua Tree National Park.
The Desert Sun reported that because of reception issues, the phone couldn't be tracked to the specific spot in the park where Henry's body was eventually found.
Now, as damning as this evidence seemed, it's important to understand that the cell phone data took some time for investigators to collect and analyze.
They didn't know all of this stuff right away, which meant for June and July 2018, they just had their suspicions.And really, only the authorities knew that Curtis and Ashley might be possible suspects.However, by mid-August, that changed.
On August 14th, law enforcement secured a warrant to listen in on Curtis and Ashley's phone conversations.
That same day, a police detective spoke with Ashley's brother, Kevin Stapp, and this detective asked Kevin what he knew about his sister's relationship with a man named Henry Stange.
Not long after that conversation ended, Kevin called Ashley and Curtis to tell them that the authorities had contacted him asking questions.
What Kevin, Curtis, and Ashley didn't know was that investigators were covertly surveilling their communications and heard everything that the couple, their friends, and their family members discussed. On August 24th, the cops struck gold.
They recorded several phone calls between Curtis and Ashley in which the couple discussed some really incriminating things.
For one, they talked about whether or not anyone had seen them loading a body into Curtis's black truck while at Henry's house, or if any surveillance cameras on the road had captured images of Curtis's black truck coming or going from Henry Street.
So yeah, pretty damning conversations. which is why five days later on Wednesday, August 29th, investigators felt like they had more than enough to arrest Curtis and Ashley for Henry's murder.
According to Brian Rocco's reporting for the Press Enterprise, the couple wasn't together when they were taken into custody.Curtis was at the 29 Palms Air Ground Combat Center and Ashley was at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree.
Each of them was brought in under suspicion of murder and conspiracy. The judge over their case ordered they be held under $1 million bail.
After Curtis' arrest, a Marine Corps spokesperson responded to reporter Brian Rocco's request for comment by writing in part, quote, The Marine Corps takes allegations of this nature and that of any criminal misconduct seriously.
The command is cooperating with the law enforcement agency in charge of this investigation, end quote. After the couple was taken into custody, detectives searched their trailer in 29 Palms and Curtis' office on his military base.
They seized phones and computers as evidence.Newsweek reported that in addition to that stuff, investigators also took a foldable shovel from Curtis that was, quote, used for digging combat fighting holes, end quote.
Back at the police station, authorities questioned Ashley and Curtis separately.Investigators read Ashley her Miranda rights, and afterwards, she repeatedly told detectives that she didn't know anything about Henry's murder.
However, once the police confronted her with some of the evidence they'd gathered so far, her story started to change. She told them that she had been at Henry's home on May 24th, and not long after getting there, she said Curtis showed up.
She believed some kind of confrontation had happened between the two men in Henry's garage, and Curtis ended up beating Henry in the head.
She said together, she and Curtis cleaned up the scene as best as they could and transported Henry's body to Joshua Tree in Curtis's black truck.
She claimed that while they'd been at the house attempting to load the body, Henry was still breathing, but in really bad shape.
And how once they got to the spot near Bighorn Pass Road, Curtis dug a makeshift grave with a shovel a few yards off the roadway.Then they unloaded Henry's body and each of them took turns scooping dirt onto him.After that, they left.
When investigators pressed Ashley for more details as to why Curtis would have fought with Henry, she vaguely mentioned that prior to that day, she told Curtis that Henry had sexually assaulted her while she'd been high on drugs at his house.
She assumed Curtis's arrival was his way of enacting retribution. When detectives interviewed Curtis in another room, they played excerpts of the wiretapped phone conversations he'd had with Ashley after the crime.
After a few minutes of listening to that audio, Curtis decided he wanted to speak with an attorney before answering any more questions.Basically, investigators didn't get anything from him.
And based off that outcome, you'd think things would have moved along well in those first 48 hours after the initial arrests.However, that's not what happened.
The Desert Sun and KESQ News reported that things came to an abrupt halt just a few days later on Friday, August 31st.
That's when the district attorney's office in Riverside County declined to officially file murder charges against Curtis and Ashley.
And because the couple had been held for the maximum 48 hours and didn't have prior felonies on their records, they were both released from custody.
According to the news coverage, all the DA's office would say about why they did this was that the case was under review and an official criminal complaint against Curtis and Ashley was still pending.
Now, I don't know if this meant that the DA just had a lot of questions about how the police department put its case together or what, but the fact that the couple just walked right out of the jail a few days after being arrested for murder surprised a lot of people.
Folks who knew Henry and wanted to see justice served spoke out on social media in the wake of this news.
One of his sisters, Judy Stange Gardner, posted on social media saying, quote, he was a son, a father, a brother, a cousin, and a friend to many.He was murdered the last week of May.His remains were found in the desert near Joshua Tree in California.
Our lives will never be the same.If you know anything, please contact Murrieta PD, end quote. After August, things in the case went radio silent for several months.
News stations and newspapers stopped covering the story, and it kind of went stagnant for a while.That is until December 7th, 2018.
That's when investigators with the police department and the Riverside County District Attorney's Office formally filed a first-degree murder charge against Curtis and rearrested him for Henry's killing.
Sean Snow reported for Marine Corps Times that Curtis was picked up at Camp Pendleton in California by detectives on December 13th, then transferred to a detention center in Murrieta.Now you're probably asking yourself, what about Ashley?
Was she charged too?And the answer is no.Officials chose not to formally charge her with any crimes in December 2018.At the time, it seems like prosecutors were just mainly focused on getting Curtis.
At his arraignment a week later on December 19th, Curtis pled not guilty to the charges against him.
His bail was set at $1 million, and over the course of the next few months, his defense attorney and the state began to build their respective cases for trial.
At a court hearing in mid-January 2019, the court ordered for Curtis to undergo a routine physical at his detention center so that the U.S.Marine Corps could officially sever ties with him.
Apparently, this physical exam wasn't anything out of the ordinary because documents from the court state that it was basically just an administrative thing the military had to do.
In the time it had taken to get to that point, though, investigators had been hard at work gathering additional evidence to bolster their case against Curtis.
They'd combed through all of the confiscated digital devices and interviewed people who knew him or who lived in his trailer park.And it was the phone data that really revealed to detectives the kind of person Curtis was.The picture wasn't pretty.
According to an article by the Press Enterprise, to the outside world looking in, Curtis appeared to have a fairly respectable position as a First Lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
On top of that, he was also a communications officer with a combat logistics battalion.
The Desert Sun and KESQ News reported that after he'd enlisted in the Marines in 2005 at just 17 years old, he'd worked hard as a private and earned his way to the rank of officer.After that, he'd become a lieutenant in 2015.
He had extensive training in martial arts and was a black belt instructor for the Marine Corps.Photos of him at his court proceedings demonstrate the level of peak physical fitness Curtis had, thanks to all of that training.
But despite those accomplishments, Curtis had one major downfall.He had a very obsessive personality when it came to his romantic partners.In court documents, it stated that he had a temper which could cause him to become violent.
And when it came to his relationship with Ashley, he was described as quote, highly distrusting, totally obsessive, and extremely controlling, end quote.You see, for the first few months that he and Ashley were together,
Curtis would do things like track her cell phone, follow her places, check her emails, and threaten men he thought shouldn't be interacting with her.
An article in the San Bernardino County Sentinel stated that Curtis and Henry had actually gotten to know one another through their shared mutual interest in communications equipment like ham radios.
They'd attended radio enthusiast barbecues together and knew one another socially.
It's unclear from the source material, though, if Curtis knew when he met Henry that Henry was already involved with Ashley, or when exactly the messiness in the love triangle began.
But what is clear is that by mid-January 2018, Curtis had become aware of Henry and Ashley's relationship after he snooped through her email account and found some messages Henry had sent to her.
Curtis threatened Henry in writing to stay away from Ashley, but just a few days later, Ashley went to see Henry at his house in Marietta. While there, she ignored Curtis's attempts to contact her for hours.
And the next day, Curtis drove to Henry's house, broke in, and went after the 54-year-old with a hammer.Henry was wounded in that attack, but chose not to involve law enforcement or file an official report.
So no one really knew this incident had happened.They just kept Curtis's confession to themselves. Anyway, after the hammer attack, Ashley and Henry continued to carry on their relationship, much to Curtis' dismay.
However, it appears Ashley also continued to be with Curtis too, so it definitely seems like none of these folks could stay away from one another.
Court filings state that throughout February, March, April, and May 2018, Curtis escalated his controlling and obsessive behavior toward Ashley.He wrote notes in his phone that analyzed where she would go and when.
He calculated how much time she would be driving in a car versus possibly spending time at her mother's house or at Henry's.
He also kept a log of when he suspected Ashley would turn her phone off in an attempt to keep him from tracking her, as well as times he believed she would have sex with Henry.
He also wrote about how he believed her sexual relationship with Henry was related to her desire to score and use drugs with him.
A detective who worked closely on the case also concluded that part of the reason Ashley had started a relationship with Henry in the first place was because she might've struggled with substance use disorder and saw Henry as a means to satisfy her addiction.
But it wasn't just the presence of so many toxic notes and stalkerish writings about Ashley on Curtis's phone that alarmed prosecutors.
It was the fact that on the day Henry was killed, it appeared that Curtis had openly lied to his commanding officers to manipulate circumstances so that he could get out of his duties and track Ashley down.
According to court documents presented by prosecutors and reporting by Christopher Damien for the Desert Sun, on the morning of May 24th, 2018, Ashley sent Curtis a text message that stated she was going to her mother's house in Canyon Lake, California to get some luggage.
Curtis immediately wrote her back, accusing her of lying and warned her that she better not be going to do drugs.In their exchange, Ashley wrote that she wasn't planning to use any drugs, but eventually her communication with Curtis dropped off.
He tried to track her phone, but the device stayed idle at Ashley's mother's house, which Curtis suspected meant his girlfriend had intentionally left it there so that he couldn't follow her movements.
Later that day, Ashley failed to show up at a family day event at Curtis's military base.Enraged that he was being ignored, Curtis asked his superiors if he could leave base for a quote, family issue, end quote.
He was released from duty and immediately called 911 to report Ashley as mentally unwell and suicidal.He asked Riverside County deputies to go to her mother's home and do a welfare check. But when authorities got there, no one was home.
Curtis then went to the house after asking Ashley's mother, who was out of the area, if he could go inside.And there, he discovered Ashley's cell phone abandoned in a potted plant.That confirmed for him what he already suspected.
Ashley had ditched him and was likely at Henry's house. It's this kind of behavior that investigators and prosecutors realized made Curtis a dangerous individual who was likely capable of committing murder.There was just one problem.
Prosecutors needed Ashley to corroborate a lot of their suspicions about Curtis's potential motive for the crime.
Essentially, they needed her to fully cooperate, but that was going to be difficult because you see, in January 2019, right when authorities needed her most, Ashley was nowhere to be found.
Law enforcement couldn't locate Ashley Stapp for months after they rearrested Curtis for Henry's murder.It wasn't until mid-April 2019 that authorities finally caught up to her and took her into custody, again.
She'd been living in Riverside County, but not where detectives could easily find her.
In May, a month after her arrest, the district attorney's office filed a criminal complaint against her that noted she was being charged with accessory after the fact of murder, and then she also got an additional charge for kidnapping Henry from his home while he was technically still alive.
Alongside her lawyer, she sat down with investigators and gave an official statement.
She explained that what she'd confessed to before back in August 2018, which was that she'd been in Henry's house when he was murdered and helped Curtis clean up after the fact, was true, but not the whole truth.
She brought up the fact that Curtis had previously attacked Henry back in January 2018 with a hammer, and even went as far as giving investigators the location of that weapon.
She also confessed that when she'd spoken to police the first time while in custody, she lied about why Curtis had come over to Henry's house in the first place on May 24th.
Henry had emailed her earlier in the day on May 24th and invited her to a quote, oxy party, end quote.And while she was there, Curtis had shown up and attacked Henry in a jealous rage.
She said the reason she'd helped her boyfriend clean up and why she made up the story about the sexual assault was to protect Curtis. In June, she took a plea deal for one count of harboring a person suspected of committing a felony.
In exchange, the prosecution dropped the kidnapping charge against her, and she was ordered to spend around 300 days in jail, be on probation for three years, and participate in a substance abuse treatment program.
Because she'd already served some time in jail, she actually went straight to the rehab center and wasn't required to spend any time behind bars.
Later that same month, the court held a preliminary hearing for Curtis, in which investigators testified and showed several pieces of evidence they planned to present as part of their case.
Also during that hearing, prosecutors tacked on an additional charge against Curtis for the hammer attack he was accused of committing against Henry in January 2018.
The exhibits the state presented included pictures of Henry's burial site, his autopsy, that large pool of blood on his garage floor, and the traces of blood spatter throughout the crime scene.
Investigators also presented an email between Henry and Curtis that they felt should be shown at trial. At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge decided that there was more than sufficient evidence to have Curtis stand trial for Henry's murder.
A few months later, while each side was preparing their case, Ashley made headlines again for failing to adhere to the terms of her supervised release.
It turns out, after getting what many people considered to be an extremely lenient deal, Ashley didn't finish the mandated 180 days of substance abuse treatment she was supposed to.
Not only that, she continuously broke the rules of the facility she was sent to, racking up 14 different violations.
A detailed probation violation report states that she brought in things that weren't allowed, hung out with men participating in the program, which was also not permitted, and didn't abide by the Lights Out policy or finish the necessary paperwork for her AA meetings.
Christopher Damien reported for the Desert Sun that on November 22, 2019, a bench warrant was issued for her arrest, and deputies found her shortly thereafter and took her into custody. By that time, Curtis was 32 years old and Ashley was 29.
Christopher Damien reported that the one thing both the prosecution and defense agreed upon was that the love triangle element had created an environment for tensions to be high.
Both sides also felt that Ashley's substance use disorder had made things even more complicated. The defense alleged that Curtis and Ashley were engaged when she began her affair with Henry.From Curtis's point of view, he'd found his soulmate.
And because of this passionate connection, he'd grown increasingly distraught by Ashley's continual use of drugs and her infidelity.
The defense argued that even though Curtis's controlling behaviors toward Ashley seemed aggressive, he'd only been that way because he deeply cared for her wellbeing and wanted her to recover from her addiction.
But the state firmly disagreed with that notion.Prosecutors alleged that on May 24th, 2018, Curtis had simply had enough of being cheated on.He'd purposed in his heart to end Henry Stange's life for good.
The state argued that Curtis had the motive, means, and opportunity to end his girlfriend's relationship with Henry once and for all, and that's exactly what he did.
Christopher Damien reported for the Desert Sun that several of Curtis's colleagues from the Marine Corps testified at trial, and they said he'd been to Joshua Tree National Park many times prior to May 24th, and he knew the area well.
An investigator with Riverside County Sheriff's Office testified that shortly after Henry's body was discovered, online search history for Curtis' laptop and Ashley's cell phone showed that their devices had been used to look up things like, quote, Henry Stange, identifying human remains in Joshua Tree, and man found dead in Joshua Tree.
It was also revealed in court that Ashley had played a significant role when it came to helping Curtis brainstorm ways to cover up or conceal their involvement in the murder.
For example, transcripts of their wiretapped phone calls indicated that Ashley recommended Curtis remove the tires off his black truck after Curtis mentioned that the tread might've left a unique impression on the ground near the burial site.
She also told Curtis that if she was questioned by police, she would tell investigators that Henry sold drugs to a few other people, not just her.
That way she could cast suspicion off of her and Curtis and give the cops a legit reason to investigate other people for the crime.
The couple also talked about whether or not they'd been seen by one of Henry's neighbors when they came and went from the crime scene.They also discussed whether Henry could have afforded to back up his home surveillance system on cloud software.
The wiretap transcripts also revealed that eventually the couple grew paranoid about police potentially watching them and listening to their communications. So they ceased talking about details of the murder over the phone after a few weeks.
But by that point, it was already too late.The cops had gotten what they needed.Interestingly, Ashley did end up taking the stand to testify during the trial, but not as a witness for the prosecution.She testified as a defense witness for Curtis.
Christopher Damien reported for the Desert Sun that the story she told to jurors was one no one had really heard before.
She described how things had escalated between her, Henry, and Curtis, starting with the January 2018 hammer attack at Henry's house.
She stated that at the time, she was addicted to prescription medications and hiding her substance use disorder from Curtis.The day of the January hammer incident, she'd falsely told Curtis that Henry had sexually assaulted her.
And when Curtis learned that information, he instructed her to take him to Henry's house. When they arrived, she saw Curtis grab a hammer from his truck and go inside.When he returned to the truck, he told her he wasn't sure if Henry was alive.
Ashley told jurors that after that incident, even though she cared about Curtis and wanted to have a life with him, she was afraid of him, afraid he might harm her.
She also explained that even though Henry had viewed their relationship as healthy and normal, she'd only ever seen it as business.
She admitted to engaging in a relationship with him in order to feed her $600 a day substance use disorder by having sex with him in exchange for pills.She told jurors that she only ever saw Henry as her drug dealer, not her lover.
On the day of the murder, she'd visited Henry in the afternoon and together they'd snorted drugs at his house.Then they'd had sex and she went into the bathroom.
While washing up, she heard a loud scream from the garage and moments later, Curtis came into the bathroom and remarked that they needed to leave the area.
She told the jury that from her perspective, Curtis had gone too far and let his anger issues cause him to commit murder.
After she testified in court, Curtis took the stand in his own defense and gave a similar story as Ashley's, but with a few critical details that only he could corroborate.
For example, he told jurors that when he'd arrived at Henry's home on May 24th, Henry had told him that Ashley wasn't there, and when Curtis didn't believe him, Henry came at him with a knife.
Acting in self-defense, Curtis said he tussled with Henry to try and avoid getting stabbed, but ended up stabbing the 54-year-old in the neck.
Then the men kept wrestling, and Curtis said Henry tried to clock him with a weight, but Curtis got the object from him and struck him a few times. When Henry still wouldn't let up, Curtis said he stomped on him.
And after that, he and Ashley left Henry's house for a short time, but then later returned and cleaned up the evidence and removed Henry's body.
After loading Henry into the truck, Curtis said he and Ashley drove to a Lowe's Home Improvement store to buy a shovel to take to the desert.
And on their way home, he discarded the knife in a trash can at that same Lowe's, as well as other incriminating evidence in a different trash can.
He emphasized that it was Ashley who'd spearheaded the efforts to cover up the murder from the very beginning.It was not something Curtis had initially wanted to do.
In early September 2020, before the case went to the jury for deliberation, the lead prosecutor stated that he believed Ashley had played a pivotal role in the entire ordeal.
Even though she may not have been present when Henry was allegedly beaten to death or taken part in the killing, she had manipulated both men, and for that, she should feel remorse. But in the end, it wasn't Ashley who had to face the music.
The jury returned after four days of deliberation with a verdict and found Curtis guilty of second-degree murder, as well as assault with a deadly weapon for the hammer attack from January 2018.
The fact that jurors felt the state hadn't met its burden of proof for first-degree murder, aka premeditation, meant that Curtis faced a range of possible sentences, as much as life in prison or as few as 15 years.
A few weeks later at his sentencing in October 2020, a judge handed Curtis a sentence of 15 years to life for the murder and three years in prison for the assault charge.The likelihood that he would ever get out of prison was slim to none.
In court, several of Henry's loved ones read victim impact statements and they expressed how hurtful the entire ordeal had been.
They described their lives as having been forever fractured and were disturbed by the fact that Curtis had tried to claim self-defense.
They said it had been devastating throughout the trial to learn that both he and Ashley showed so little regard for Henry's life.
Henry's mother wrote in her statement, quote, Henry's sister, Judy, was just as distraught and said she felt that Curtis's co-conspirator had gotten off far too easy. Judy said, quote, End quote.
The only words Curtis offered up at his sentencing were tearful statements of regret.He told the court he felt remorse over what had happened and said, quote, I took an American's life thinking he was more of a threat than he was.
I destroyed a family, a beautiful American family, end quote. As of 2021, Ashley Stapp was an inpatient at a treatment facility in Ventura, California.I imagine that by now, she's out.
Curtis appealed his conviction, but in December, 2021, the California Court of Appeals upheld the trial court's verdict of guilty.
At last check, he's still serving his time behind bars at a men's prison in California and won't be eligible for parole until January, 2029. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production.
You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators.So, what do you think, Chuck?Do you approve?
