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Four people versus Daniel DeWild. The last time I was in this room was to make a determination whether Daniel DeWild was guilty of murder. From the very beginning, it was clear that it was a confusing case. It was old. And that this was a murder case involving identical twins, Dan and David DeWild.
The prosecution's theory was that the two brothers conspired together to kill Daniel's wife, Heather, and kept it a secret from pretty much everybody. It was a case that went cold in 2003. My name is Robert Weiner, Chief Deputy District Attorney, Jefferson County, Colorado, lead prosecutor on the DeWilde homicide.
July 24th of 2003, Heather DeWilde was going over to her estranged husband's house. Heather had two young children, Hannah and Jacob, and she would do anything for her kids. She was supposed to sign a check. She also went over to pick up a set of insurance cards for her children. The check was never endorsed. The cards were never picked up.
She apparently arrived at the house and then after that she was never seen or heard from again. So there's no evidence that she ever left the house. You don't have any kind of murder weapon? Correct. You don't have any kind of fingerprints from any suspects? Correct. You don't have any of Heather's blood in the house where you believe she was murdered? Correct. There was no proverbial smoking gun to tie Daniel to Heather's murder.
During testimony, we had learned that they were watching crime shows, such like CSI and other forensic shows to figure out how to get away with murder. We got nothing. Nobody cleans a car this good. There is no evidence. Daniel and David would watch those shows and formulate their plan, and then they certainly did not leave any forensic evidence. Twelve of us come in here. We're getting along just fine.
Then once we had to dig into the evidence, things changed dramatically.
Because the nature of the case was so circumstantial and there wasn't any real hard physical evidence, you spend your time trying to piece it together. And we went backwards, we went forward, and then we started putting it up on the walls, surrounding ourselves with it. I had no idea how the deliberations were going. It was really difficult. People were emotional. People were getting on one another's nerves. There's a lot of pacing. There's a lot of just nervous anxiety.
there was some crying there was some some yelling that went on you start thinking okay what are they thinking about what are they hung up on why are they taking so long we took a poll you know six and six and where do we go from there aaron moriarty reports the devil's twin
This is basically the route I took in the evening to come over here to look for her. Dave Springer is driving the same route he did on July 24, 2003. And I was looking between the houses. But on that day, the retired Denver cop was in a frantic search for his own daughter. When you were just driving around, what were you hoping you'd see? Maybe I would see my daughter's car move and see her somewhere.
Thirty-year-old Heather DeWild thought she'd be safe going to her soon-to-be ex-husband's house in Edgewater, Colorado, if she took along her two children, Jacob and Hannah. She planned to just stop by to take care of the insurance cards and the check. I told her not to go there, and I didn't think she would, but she did. And then she vanished.
As you're driving around, you have a sinking feeling? Yeah, I really had a bad, bad feeling about it. Dave Springer says he had been worried what his son-in-law, Dan DeWild, might do as the final divorce approached. He wanted to keep things under control, his control, and that was slipping away from him. And I think he was getting more and more desperate and more and more worried.
So when Heather didn't return after going to Dan's house, her anxious mother Carol Springer thought the worst and called him. He told me that she went shopping. I says, well, that's not true. That's what I told him. He says, no, that's not true.
We knew immediately that was a lie. Why? Because she, before she left the house, she didn't take any money with her or a credit card. And he said she went shopping? Right. How much sense did that make to you? Well, it didn't make any sense. And Heather would never leave her children behind, even with their dad, says her sister Rebecca Barger. There's no way she would leave without her kids.
No way. I just instantly knew he did something to her. You were sure it was Dan? Mm-hmm. Heather's mother rushed over to Dan's house to pick up her grandchildren. And what was going through your mind at that point? Let me get the kids and be gone. I wanted to get out of there. The kids, only three and five years old, couldn't say where their mother had gone.
Local police stopped at Dan's house and looked around, but didn't find anything suspicious. But Heather's father, the veteran cop, was convinced something terrible had happened.
Dave was obviously extremely concerned. The next morning, Mark Kreider, a detective with the Denver PD, was pulled in to assist the Edgewater police. Heather was now officially a missing person. It was a little unusual because it was a Denver police officer's daughter who was missing. And that does personalize it a little bit more.
Kreider learned that after a rocky six-year marriage, Heather and Dan DeWild were just days from finalizing their divorce. I had learned that the divorce was getting a little nasty. And that Dan was upset when Heather was awarded temporary custody of Jacob and Hannah.
and he was ordered to pay child support. He was very angry over that because he thought he was going to lose his home. He couldn't pay all his bills. That's when twin brother David came to the rescue by moving in along with his girlfriend Roseanne to help Dan pay the bills. Born a minute and a half apart, Dan and David were inseparable, even working as mechanics for the transit authority.
So the first stop for Kreider was the DeWild's house. Heather's husband, Dan, answered the door. Quickly into our conversation, he had mentioned that he had had an attorney, which I thought was a little odd. And his attorney told him that he shouldn't talk to the police.
What lights in my mind is, why do you have an attorney? This is a missing person. We're trying to help find your wife. And when David DeWild pulled into the driveway, Dan made sure his twin brother didn't talk to the police either. Dan walks over it as if to physically grab his brother. And as he's walking over, he's yelling for him not to talk. He doesn't have to talk to get inside. I'm thinking now we don't have a missing person. We have a murderer.
But without the DeWilds' cooperation, Kreider couldn't search their house. By the time police got a warrant, Heather had been missing for six days. Was there any sign of a murder weapon in the house? No, there was not. Any blood? No, there was not. Any sign that Heather had been in there or been killed in there? No, there was no sign of that at all.
But investigators soon learned that David was taking his Suburban 15 miles away to be repaired. He's a mechanic. His brother's a mechanic. Did it pique my interest? Absolutely. Investigators wanted to check out the vehicle. What were you looking for? Some form of decomposing human scent. In other words, had there been a body in there.
Deputy Sheriff Al Nelson and his dogs searched the suburban. They hit on the rear end. I believe it would be the driver's side rear door area. And that's the first thing that maybe Heather's body had been in there. Something had been in there, right. Crider's next step was to confront David DeWild. We said, hey, there's a decomposing body in your vehicle.
And he talked around things, he talked around things, and at one point we put it to him directly and said, "Did you kill Heather?" His head's kind of down, he's a little emotional. He says he needs to talk to an attorney, and he walked into his house.
Kreider now believed that both brothers had killed Heather. And what convinced him even more was when one day later, David suddenly married his longtime girlfriend, Roseanne. Suddenly, you know, Dave says to you, "Let's get married." Doesn't that seem strange? It, um, at the time it didn't, really, it didn't, because I'd been hounding him, and then Heather went missing, and it wasn't a happy time, so, you know, we didn't do that.
So I griped a lot. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, well, let's go get married then. So it didn't seem strange at all to me. It never occurred to you he might be thinking, well, she won't be able to talk to the cops, she won't be able to testify against me if I marry her? No, I don't know the law. We're looking at the rear of a white four-door car.
Nissan Sentra. Two weeks after Heather disappeared, her car was found in this apartment complex, just five miles from the DeWilde home, but no Heather. Inside the rear back seat, there are two baby car seats. Crime Lab investigators searched the Nissan, but found nothing helpful. Each and every hour it's out in the environment, in the elements, we lose a little bit more evidence.
When the car was found, did that make things worse? It was, yeah. That was a major breakdown for me right there. You knew at that point for sure she was gone.
One month later, Curtis Johnson was moving dirt on this canyon road. This is identical to what I was doing that day. When he uncovered Heather's body. Basically, the body would have been on that side right there. This is where the body would have been sitting.
Heather had been wrapped in trash bags. There was tape on her face. Her hands and neck were bound with rope. Her death was ruled a homicide, but her body was so decomposed, the cause of death was undetermined. And investigators still didn't have enough evidence to arrest either of the brothers. And let's be honest, Detective, it really does look like they're going to get away with this. Oh, absolutely.
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After a while, you just think, is anything ever going to happen? The Springer family couldn't understand why the police were dragging their feet in arresting the primary suspect in Heather's death, her husband, Dan DeWilde. Here you are, a member of the Denver Police Department. How much were you allowed to know about the investigation? Absolutely nothing.
At times I would think, well, they're really not doing anything. They're just telling me they're doing something and they're just letting it slide. You do start to lose hope, but you try to stay in there. I did.
Their prayers were answered in 2005, nearly two years after Heather's murder, when Scott Story became Jefferson County's new district attorney. SCOTT STORY: They just poured their hearts out about how frustrated they were, how they yearned for justice for Heather. STACEY KING: Story promised to reopen the investigation. When you made that promise, did you realize what you were getting yourself into? Did you have any idea? SCOTT STORY: Not entirely.
He assembled a task force and put investigator Russ Boatwright in charge. What was it that drove you, drove all of you, to try to get this case solved? Just at first blush, I think you knew what the case was. And it just seemed solvable. It seemed like it was right there at your fingertips. But after combing through 1,500 pages of reports...
And retesting all the forensic evidence. I don't even know how many times we went back through things and double-checked things. We had no DNA. We really had no physical evidence. Not that DNA would have helped. Remember, Dan and Dave are identical twins. They could have the same DNA. So if we had found one of the DeWild's hairs in that car, that was not going to be the smoking gun piece of evidence.
Along with the brothers, the prosecution team was also convinced that Roseanne, who was living in the house, had to be involved. We really believed that she had to know what went on. She couldn't just be in that house. She just couldn't be totally ignorant of what happened. There was that suspiciously timed marriage to David.
It was the day after David is confronted on the front porch and told that the cadaver dog hit on his Suburban. And what Russ Boatwright says Roseanne told others was the real reason they tied the knot. She had made the statement she had to marry him so she couldn't testify against him. And I really, I don't know what else that means other than what it sounds like it means. I mean, it sounds incriminating. Yes.
Incriminating or not, investigators still didn't have enough evidence to arrest any of the DeWilds. And as the years passed, David Springer's frustration grew. How angry were you? Very angry. I would be screaming angry at times. After pleadings from the family, in 2009, six years after Heather was murdered, Russ Boatwright was assigned to the case full time.
And that really was the turning point. The file would grow to 30,000 pages, filling more than 15 boxes, as Boatwright and his team methodically built a circumstantial case, piece by piece. But clearly, the killer or killers had been careful.
How would you describe how this car was found? It was clean at the time. Heather's car was so clean, there was no evidence that she had ever been in it. We didn't find any evidence of Heather's DNA being present inside or outside the vehicle, nor did we find any fingerprints or anything else to indicate that Heather used that vehicle. What he did have was this. This DVD is a copy.
of a videotape that we recovered from the residence. A sex tape that Dan and Heather made years earlier, showing Dan's fascination with bondage and ropes. What we end up seeing in this videotape are images of Daniel tying Heather up in a very similar manner to how she was found. And this discovery.
What we have here is Daniel's dating profile from an online dating service. He described himself as a widow widower. The trouble is, Heather's body had not been found yet. What did that say? Well, that said, he probably knew he was a widower at that point.
While the pieces of the puzzle clearly pointed at the DeWilds, prosecutor Robert Weiner still couldn't answer some important questions. We didn't know how she died. And, you know, the autopsy report didn't say how she died. You don't even know where she died? No. You don't know exactly who killed her? We didn't.
But when Weiner took what evidence he had to a grand jury, he got an indictment. And so on December 14th, 2011, more than eight years after Heather's body was found on that canyon road, Dan, David, and Roseanne DeWilde were finally arrested for her murder.
You still have a pretty weak case. Yeah. I mean, you have enough to indict these three, but now you gotta prove these three. Right. And that was kind of my thought is now the work begins. Dan's attorneys, Tom Ward and Fran Simonette, were feeling very confident as they prepared for trial. Was there any physical evidence that tied Dan to the death of his wife? Not a shred.
None. Until they were hit with a bombshell. And how did that change the case for the two of you? It completely flipped it upside down. As prosecutors prepared for trial, District Attorney Scott Story worried about their purely circumstantial case. In today's world...
with, like the CSI shows and those kinds of shows. Jurors want more than just circumstantial evidence. Their best hope? To somehow get one of the DeWilds to turn on the others. Investigators say it was just a matter of finding the weakest link. Did you think Roseanne was going to turn against her husband and her brother-in-law? I thought there was a possibility Roseanne would. And did she? No.
Instead, in a stunning turn of events, it was Roseanne's husband David who suddenly broke down. Nine years after Heather was killed, David DeWilde admitted that he hit her body after his twin brother Dan killed her.
I just fell to pieces. Roseanne claims that until that moment, she never guessed the two brothers were involved in Heather's death. It's hard to explain my feeling. Denial. No. It's not true, but it was true. With David finally ready to talk, it fell to Russ Boatwright to uncover all the details.
According to David, Dan began planning Heather's death in April of 2003 after he was ordered to pay child support. And that's when I started to realize that this was actually a well-thought-out plan. But why would David go through with this and help his brother? I think David describes it as, I'm trying to talk him out of it most of the time, but he said when Daniel told him, look, I'm doing this with you or without you,
He said at that point he made a decision to help his brother. He said he knew if his brother did this on his own, he would get caught. I'm Investigator Boatwright. Today's date is August 4, 2012. Present is David DeWilde. He's going to walk through what occurred during the time that Heather was murdered. A clean-shaven David DeWilde agreed to take investigators back to the scene of the crime, the DeWilde's garage.
to show exactly where and how Heather was killed. You could tell it impacted him. You could tell he was upset going back in there again. A warning: some of what David is about to tell is disturbing to hear. We're going to jump ahead to the point where you're waiting for Heather's arrival. Okay. Okay. According to the plan, Heather and the kids arrived at noon on July 24, 2003.
As Dan went to meet them, David says he tried to stop his brother. And I stopped him right when he was walking up. And I'm in his way and I say, "Dan, don't do this." But he was very calm. As the children played in the house, Heather followed her husband Dan into the garage. Prosecutor Robert Weiner believes Dan lured her there with a promise to return the sex tape the couple had made.
He knew he had to use something to get her into that garage, and that was that tape, because she wanted that tape back. The door opens, Heather walks through, and she says, "What did you want to show me out here?" And my brother walks through, closes the door, grabs her by both shoulders, throws her down hard, and she just hit her like pearl hard where she didn't know that was going to happen. And then she goes to get up like this, and she looks at me,
And I looked at her. At that moment, David could have stopped Heather's murder, but he didn't. She knew something was going to happen, was just about to happen, and kind of looked to him to say, you know, help me here. And he said, I didn't do anything. I didn't do a thing to help her. He takes a mallet off the counter, and she's trying to get back up. Whack her.
He tosses a hammer down. He takes his noose, puts it around her neck. Dan then hanged Heather from the rafters. I guess cinches it up, comes over and pulls on the rope. My jaw dropped. Are you kidding me?
At that point, he began to stage her body by tying her and making it look like it was a bond sex act gone bad. Daniel proceeds to place her body in trash bags. As Heather's children continue to play elsewhere in the house, David abandoned Heather's car at the apartment complex parking lot. By the time David returned, Dan had already placed his wife's body in the back of the Suburban.
As David tells it, the brothers were bound by their terrible secret. And he revealed how he and Dan managed to erase all evidence of Heather's brutal murder. They were watching crime shows, the CSI type shows, any crime shows that they could watch and learn.
So they double-gloved. They had two sets of gloves on because they didn't want to leave any trace evidence. They didn't want to leave blood. I'd say it was a single strike to the head. Explains the lack of spatter at the scene. First hits free. Killer knew what he was doing. And Heather's body might never have been found if David had made it to a pre-planned burial site. Instead, transmission problems with his Suburban forced him to hide her along that canyon road where Curtis Johnson discovered her.
The prosecution believed they finally knew how Heather had been killed. But could they trust David? I mean, David's lied for nine years. He's a liar. He is a liar, and he's certainly capable of lying. So before they gave him a deal, David had to pass a polygraph. How did he do? He passed on the issues as far as killing Heather.
But were there some areas that he failed or that were in... He had some issues on some other questions, primarily the involvement of others. On the issue of Roseanne? Yes.
But Roseanne will not go on trial after all. Although prosecutors maintain she was not part of any deal, after spending more than eight months in jail, all charges against her were dismissed for lack of evidence. Do you have any regret about putting her in jail for eight months?
Oh, no. I was very confident that after the fact that she had some knowledge and that very likely she had some participation of one degree or another. We just couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt. It's hard to believe that a woman who was in the house when Heather was killed and was married to one of the killers...
would know nothing, see nothing. But that's exactly what Roseanne says. Roseanne, did you have anything to do with Heather's death and her disappearance? I did not. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't know anything. You think there's still some people who think you do? I'm sure. As they head to trial, the prosecution is counting on David to convict his twin brother. I mean, it's kind of like dancing with the devil.
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There was a kind of tension in the air that I've never felt in a courtroom before. There are no cameras allowed, but the courtroom is packed. I was worried. I didn't know what I was going to find out. The state's most important witness, David DeWilde, is about to testify against his identical twin brother. Without forensic evidence, the whole case rides on David. I watched him come in, and I was...
holding my fingers and crossing my toes and... Prosecutor Robert Weiner. You saw him look at his brother? Yeah. And you're wondering, "Oh, my gosh. Will he lose his nerve?" That's exactly what I was thinking. And then I asked him who killed Heather. And what did David say? He pointed to his brother.
David tells the court that it was his twin brother who killed his wife in the garage and that he just went along with it. But Dan's defense attorney claims his client is completely innocent, that Dan never knew where Heather went after she left his house on July 24, 2003. She didn't say exactly where she was going. He expected her back in a couple of hours, and she never came back, and he didn't know what happened to her.
The story Dan told was always consistent. It never changed. In fact, Dan's defense is that it's David who killed Heather. Just look at David's actions that day. David, by his own admission, is responsible for getting rid of the car. He's responsible for getting rid of the body. All of those things are very hard to believe that someone would do if they weren't the perpetrator.
But why would David kill his brother's wife? David DeWilde says that he always felt that Heather was attracted to him. That there was a possibility that after Dan and Heather's divorce was final, that he and Heather would be able to get together. There's no other evidence of any of this besides what David DeWilde says about it. So I question whether he had some sort of an obsession with Heather.
And he killed her because she wouldn't respond to him. It's possible. But prosecutor Weiner says that's absurd. I don't think there's any way David could have done it by himself. In looking at the dynamics, it became pretty clear that David was set up by Daniel. Daniel is the controlling one.
David wasn't going to lose his house. Daniel was losing his house. David had absolutely no motive, none whatsoever, to kill Heather. What's more, says Weiner, why would a man who got away with the murder for almost a decade suddenly tell investigators a story where he implicates himself? He throws himself under the bus more than anybody else does. He could have very easily fashioned a story that made this look like an accident.
But defense attorney Tom Ward claims David turned against his brother Dan because he got a great plea deal. Instead of life, he got just 12 years. He was able to give a statement that completely pinned the entire murder on his brother Dan and at the same time completely exonerated his wife Roseanne, whose case was dismissed.
What's more, Ward says, it's David who has a history of violence. He was married once before and attacked his wife. David at one point tried to choke his wife and had his hands around her neck until she passed out and said, "Next time I'll kill you, bitch." The jury won't hear the most shocking claim David makes against his twin brother. He says that Dan proposed teaming up to kill each other's ex-wives.
that in Dan's mind, committing murder beats paying child support. I was shocked when David told me that. I thought, "You have got to be kidding me." Apparently Daniel, according to David, had worked the whole thing out in his head. The judge rules that information is just too prejudicial.
Instead, it's left to Prosecutor Weiner in his closing to remind the jury which twin he's convinced was pulling the strings. Dan DeWild is a cool, calculated killer.
On Friday, November 16, 2012, after a two-week trial, the case goes to the jury. One of the first things we did was take kind of a straw poll. There were six people who voted that they weren't sure and six people who thought straight away he was guilty. As time goes, I'm getting more and more nervous. Are you worried that the jury is just going to not know who actually killed Heather? Yes, that occurred to me in the courtroom. That it's going to be a problem.
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On the second day of deliberations, the vote is now 10 guilty, 2 not sure. The two jurors came back and they were completely shut down. They said, "We don't think that there's enough evidence." The holdouts wouldn't talk to us, but the others say it all comes down to David DeWild's credibility.
Did he downplay his own involvement in Heather's murder to get a plea deal and get his wife, Roseanne, out of prison? They felt that David had too much to gain, so David could have done it. And I think the point that the other ten of us had arrived at was it didn't matter at that point in time because they were both involved.
I think they must have felt like they needed to know exactly what happened and they had to have a piece of direct evidence of that happening. Yeah. And the rest of us didn't. It wasn't their job to connect the dots. The prosecutors had to do it for them. I was incredibly frustrated because I had committed to think for myself and I felt that they didn't do their duty.
The jurors are able to agree on two lesser charges. They all believe that Dan DeWilde planned to kill his wife and that he helped cover up the crime. But they're hopelessly deadlocked on whether Dan is the twin who murdered Heather. Darren, how heated did it get? I walked out and I said, "If you guys are truly done, then we need to go back and tell them that we're done." How did you all feel when you went into the courtroom? I was angry.
Scourged. Dan DeWilde is convicted only of conspiracy, an accessory to murder. Jurors failed to convict him of first-degree murder. What was your reaction? We're doing it again. Oh, right away? Oh, absolutely. What were you feeling? Pretty disappointed. Yeah. He was convicted on two counts. He's going to prison for a while. Yeah, but he'll get out, and that's the problem.
You want him to go away for life. Right. We've been fighting this long. We'll keep fighting. The plan is to retry Dan DeWilde on first-degree murder. But just one month later, fearful of ending up in prison with no chance of parole, Dan takes a deal and pleads guilty to second-degree murder.
On February 28, 2013, Dan DeWild is back in Judge Christopher Munch's courtroom. Let's call Kepa v. Daniel DeWild. This time, cameras are allowed. Today we're here for sentencing. Dan DeWild comes as close as he ever has to admitting he killed his wife. I pled guilty to knowingly causing the death of another person. He also agrees not to appeal.
You're giving up the right to appeal. You understand? Judge Munch has nothing kind to say about the father who destroyed so many lives, including the children he claims to love. He killed their mother. He did it brutally. And then he lied about it for years. I'd just like to say that Daniel destroyed the life of his children. He destroyed the life of his own family members.
all for unnecessary greed and ego that accomplished nothing. Come on, you guys! Not in the courtroom are the children. Jacob and Hannah are now teenagers living with their grandparents who are raising them the way they think their daughter would. Do you sometimes think about how much she missed out on with her kids? Of course. Of course, yeah, all the time. I always think, you know, how proud she'd be
After almost a decade, Heather's family wonders if they'll finally hear from the man who caused so much heartache. You have the right to say anything you want me to consider. Now, if you don't want to say anything, you don't have to. Dan DeWille has a chance to apologize, much like his twin brother did in the same courtroom weeks earlier. You know, David did apologize to the Springers. I feel horrible about the pain. All I can say is I'm sorry. I'm just sorry for all the pain it would cost.
Daniel never did. Never did. Is it true that you do not want to exercise that right? That's true. It would have taken nothing for Daniel at sentencing just to turn to the Springer family and just say, "I'm sorry." It's just not in Daniel's character to do that. Do you think Daniel feels any remorse? No.
In fact, David DeWilde told investigator Russ Boatwright he believes Dan enjoyed inflicting pain on Heather's family. He thought Daniel went to bed every night knowing that Dave Springer thought he killed his daughter and couldn't prove it. And he said, "Daniel, I know got satisfaction from that."
The defendant then is remanded to be delivered to the Department of Corrections to serve his sentence. Judge Munch sentences Dan DeWilde to 74 years in prison. I'm glad he got the length of sentence he did, and he deserved more, but that's it.
It has taken Scott Story eight years, his entire two terms as district attorney, to get justice for Heather. Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely worth it. Many times, politicians can't fulfill their promises. This is one promise that was kept.
But the question remains, just how close did Dan DeWild come to getting away with murder? If David had not testified, if he had not turned on his brother, could you have convicted Dan? Based on the evidence we saw, without that, I don't know that I could have. I don't think any jury would have probably found him guilty. Those two men would have gotten away with murder. Probably. Probably, yeah. Dan DeWild remains in a Colorado prison.
David DeWild was released on parole in 2020. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.
CBS Saturday. 48 Hours brings you back-to-back episodes all summer long. There truly are people out there who are just plain evil. This week, explore two cases where homes were turned into murder scenes. Something went terribly, terribly wrong. Heidi was struck in the back as she was trying to flee towards the kitchen.
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