Going West: True Crime - The Montana State Park Killer // 210

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

“Is this Susie’s Mom?”  “Yes it is.”  “Well I’m the guy that took her from you.” This was the type of taunting phone call received by the mother of a young girl kidnapped at their Montana campsite. The search for her abductor led the FBI to a vicious serial killer, and began the process of creating psychological profiles in order to catch predators. These are the cases of Susie Jaegar, Bernie Poelman, Sandra Smallegan, and Michael Raney, and the story of David Meirhofer, also known as the Montana State Park Killer. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Daily Chronicle: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/murder-victim-s-mother-speaks-out-against-death-penalty/article_438eed65-f33b-5fdf-981e-914482497c9d.html 2. Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202202/shadowman-fbis-earliest-psychological-profile 3. Yes: https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/beyond-prisons/opinion/2011/05/28/the-night-i-forgave-my-daughters-killer 4. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/69692383/susan-marie-jaeger 5. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/81428782/michael-edward-raney 6. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60029446/jacob-leslie-raney 7. Discovery Doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3nDUzdNv9c 8. 20/20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8llA5deDw4 9. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/204722081/elizabeth-anna-dykman 10. Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/50027711/bernard-louis-poelman 11. Daily News: https://www.newspapers.com/image/491920998/?terms=bernard%20poelman&match=1 12. Bozeman Daily Chronicle: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/personal-items-belonging-to-1974-murder-victim-found-in-manhattan/article_827a78e7-771e-5b0d-ac0e-cd46109941f2.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host T and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Welcome everybody back to Going West. Thank you for joining us today. We have a camping story today that is so cruel. Like just the way that the story is carried out and what the killer did in way of tormenting the victim's family via phone calls is wild. Yeah, I mean, it's really, really unsettling, especially thinking about the fact that it is now camping season. I know a lot of you guys are probably out there camping with your families. So this case really hits home for a lot of us. It does. So stay safe out there. Thank you for tuning in. And I did want to mention that we just released a brand new Patreon episode. This case is also crazy. It takes place in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the story

of 19-year-old Jill Bierman. And that one is also crazy because there's so many different suspects, there's a confession, there's this really suspicious guy, there's a conviction, but there's still some doubt. So I would love it if you guys would check that out and check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash going west podcast. We have almost 70 full length ad free bonus

episodes on true crime cases from all over the world that we will not cover on going west. Yeah, so please head over there. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash going west. You ready to go camping? I'm ready to go. All right guys, this is episode 210 of going West, so let's get into it! Is this Suzie's mom? Yes it is. Well I'm the guy who took her from you. This was the type of taunting phone call received by the mother of a young girl kidnapped at their Montana campsite. The search for her abductor led the FBI to a vicious serial killer and began the process

of creating psychological profiles in order to catch predators. These are the cases of Susie Yeager, Bernie Pullman, Sandra Smolligan, and Michael Rainey, and the story of David Meyerhofer, also known as the Montana State Park Killer. David Gail Meyerhofer was born on June 8, 1949 in Boseman, Montana. He was one of five children born to Clifford and Eleanor Meyerhofer, and when he was very young, they relocated to Manhattan, Montana, which is a quaint town of only about 1,000 people Around 25 minutes northwest of Bozeman. So they did not move far Growing up David was a boy scout who loved to hunt and fish and as a teenager He attended at Manhattan High School where he was known for being shy and withdrawn

Making him a bit of an outcast, and he was bullied by other students. This is not for anybody to feel bad for this man, but here's the story. Yeah, because he actually is an asshole. Yes. So he graduated in 1967, working odd jobs around Manhattan, Montana, before joining the Marines in the fall of 1968.

He then trained in San Diego before being deployed in the Vietnam War in 1969 and was later awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. Interestingly enough, David was remembered as a great soldier with high performance ratings and a high IQ. And again, that fact is not to take away from the terrible things that he would do after this, but definitely kind of fascinating to know.

In August of 1971, he returned to the US to serve at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, before being honorably discharged and returned to Manhattan, Montana. Back at home, he started working as a self-employed contractor, going wherever the work needed him. David also joined a local bowling league and was remembered by a fellow member as personable and talented, but also for having two sides, and for that, he really rubbed some people the wrong way. He took up volunteering as a boy scout leader, but some of this scouts his parents wound up

asking him to leave, claiming he paid too much attention to the younger members, and then it made them uncomfortable. Yeah, I can see why. So Tragedy rocked the small community of Manhattan in 1973 when a young girl vanished while vacationing in the area with her family, setting off a chain of events that would forever change not only the town, but the way we investigate crimes of this nature to this day. In June of 1973, the Yeager family of Farmington Hills, Michigan, was spending the month traveling

and camping across Montana. Bill Yeager worked in the automotive industry, and his wife Marietta was a stay-at-home mom. The Yeagers were a big group with 5 kids, 3 boys and 2 girls. Plus Bill and Marietta, and Marietta's parents, had joined them for the camping trip as well. They had rented a sizeable camper van for the occasion, stocked with motorbikes and all new camping equipment for the family. Susan Marie Yeager, who went by Susie, was the youngest of five children at seven years old, and it was her first family vacation. Susie's remembered as a happy, normal little girl. Her mom said that she was so loving that she would never leave the room without giving

her a hug or a kiss first, which is just so sweet. I know. On the evening of June 24, 1973, the family was finishing up a stay at Missouri Headwater State Park near 3 forks Montana, which is the official start to the Missouri River, and were the Jefferson, Gallatin, and Missouri Rivers converge. And the Yeagers were planning on leaving early the following morning for their next destination, meaning that this tragic night was set to be their last at this spot anyway.

Bob Marietta, her parents and their oldest son, slept in the van, while the four youngest siblings slept in sleeping bags in a tent just a few feet away. At 2am Susie's 12-year-old sister Heidi woke up needing to use the bathroom, but when she unzipped the second screen of the tent to walk outside, she claims that she felt uneasy, like someone was watching her. With that, she checked on her siblings and went back to bed. A couple hours later, at around 4am, she woke up again because she was cold, and looked up from her pillow to see that a gaping hole had been cut in the side of the tent, and

that her sister was missing. Heidi woke up her parents and grandparents who frantically searched around the campsite wondering if maybe Susie had just gotten up to go the bathroom. But then, her mother found the two stuffed animals that she always slept with dropped in the grass near the tent. So Bill drove to the nearest phone and called 911, and police were dispatched to the campground. Authorities were hesitant to believe that it was a kidnapping at first because it was so rare for this area, but they also admitted that this was not the first time that tragedy

had struck this exact campground. Now in the summer of 1968, 12-year-old Michael Rainey, the son of Bozeman Dr. Jacob Rainey and his wife Harriet, was stabbed in his tent while attending Boy Scout Camp at that very same campground. Jacob, a general practitioner and Harriet, a registered nurse, were high school sweethearts who often worked on patients together, eventually even teaming up on surgeries after Jacob completed his residency in orthopedic surgery. Along with Michael and their two other children, they moved from New Orleans to Montana, where Michael enrolled in Boy Scouts. On the first weekend of May, 1968, more than 200 boy scouts from around the state met

up at the Missouri Headwater State Park Campground for what should have been a fun weekend ahead. The night before Michael was stabbed, the boys roasted marshmallows by the campfire and told ghost stories as, you know, most boy scouts do when they're on a camping trip. At 5.30am the next morning, Sunday May 5th, his tentmate awoke to his sleeping bag soaked with blood, and Michael was lying beside him unconscious. Michael had been stabbed under his left arm and struck in the head after an unknown assailant had cut a hole in the side of the tent, just like with Susie. And Michael died in a Bozeman hospital without ever regaining consciousness. Police found no weapon, witnesses, motive, or even footprints.

And this is really scary because this was only five years before Susie was taken from her tent, and this sounds like a very similar story, except for, you know, Michael was killed in his tent and not taken out of it like Susie was, but oh my God, like that is so, so scary. Yeah, the similarities here are uncanny. I mean, really, like the holes in the side of the tent, that's such an interesting and unique way for two similar scenarios to occur like that.

Well, also because with Michael's case, there was 200 boy scouts. Like, that's a lot of people in a lot of different tents. So why was Michael targeted and nobody else was injured? That just, like, what? Yeah, it seems really strange that just one out of so many. So, five years after Michael was killed, police are back at the same campground with more historical parents

and even fewer answers. As they peered around the campground with more hysterical parents and even fewer answers. As they peered around the campground, police noticed that there were large footprints in the mud outside the Yeager's tent, and that they let away from the campsite, which so far was their only clue to Susie's whereabouts. What's really interesting to me is that police didn't initially think that this was an abduction because you clearly have a seven-year-old girl missing you have a clear hole cut in the side of a tent yeah I don't think a seven-year-old is cutting that hole in it in the tent no so I just I'm curious why they didn't

think that it was an abduction I would understand more if at first there was not that hole in the tent her stuffed animals were inside and then maybe they were like, oh, she probably had to go the bathroom and wandered off and got lost in the middle of the night. Totally make sense. But yeah, there was a hole in the tent. Obviously, that is a big red flag. But luckily, FBI agents joined the case right away, which as we discussed in Katie Janessa's case, can be pretty rare.

But not only did this case involve a child, Galatin County Police explained that the FBI get involved if the probability of interstate travel is highly likely, as many of us know, which they assumed it was because if she was taken, she could be anywhere. And what commenced was one of the largest searches in Montana State history, involving the National Guard, and utilizing helicopters, boats, ATVs, and dogs. Starting from the campsite and working outward, they combed abandoned mines and fields as usual, word spread, and hundreds of tips about Susie Porton.

With the campground being right off of I-90, the largest interstate highway in the country, police questioned many truckers who worked along that route, some of them even consenting to polygraph tests, but nothing turned up. One man implored them to question his neighbor, a 25-year-old in Manhattan, Montana, who was a contractor that he described as odd. Investigators questioned him at home, but found nothing out of the ordinary. And also, so we talked about this in our most recent episode on the Evansdale murders, but just how, like, if you're told that somebody in this area could have done something bad, right?

And just the fact that this guy came forward and said, hey, I have a really weird neighbor who I think could have been behind this. So that's what we talked about in the Evansdale murders about how that town is so small and how did nobody come forward and say, hey, my neighbor, you know, changed the color of his hair and sold his truck last week, you know what I mean? So the fact that this guy was like, yeah, I've got a bizarre neighbor and he could be behind it is like props to this man. Yeah, and it's definitely amazing when this turns out to be a good lead. And you know, having witnesses around

is definitely a good thing. But also, you know, sometimes these things can go awry and it's like, oh, well, I don't really like my neighbor. So I'm just gonna tell police that it could potentially be this person. But anyway, three days after Susie was taken, the Denver Colorado branch of the FBI received a very suspicious phone call. Someone had phoned in asking for $25,000 in ransom to be dropped off at a bus station in Denver and exchanged for Susie's

safe return. Now for reference, Denver is just over a 10 hour drive from where Susie went missing. But as we stated, it's possible that Susie was taken out of the state of Montana to anywhere else in the country. Right, so this could make sense, but as we also know in a lot of cases, there are fake phone calls, so is this real? Is it not real? We're gonna find out.

So a few days after this call came in, the man called again. This time to the home of Ron Brown, the Gallatin County Sheriff's Deputy. The caller this time asked for $50,000, double his original asking price, claiming that he still had Susie alive, and was even able to identify her by an abnormality on her fingernails. Basically, her index fingers had rounded, hump-like nails, a detail confirmed by her parents. So this was feeling like a pretty promising call, not someone playing a prank or someone just out for money when they didn't have Susie.

So detectives waited for the kidnapper to call back confirming details of the ransom exchange, but he never did. So off the bat it makes you wonder if this call was a prank, but how else would he know about Susie's fingernails? And I'm thinking maybe he got worried if he met up for the ransom money that they would catch him so he backed off, which seems to be the truth as we get to in a moment here. Meanwhile at the campground, investigators began dragging the river, looking for any evidence connecting them to Susie, and more specifically her body.

Susie's mom Marietta said that she made a commitment to her daughter to stay faithful in the search, so families spent more than a month at this campground in their efforts to find her. And while it was excruciating for them to leave the last place that they had seen Susie, eventually the kids had to go back to school and Bill had to go back to work, so the Yeager's drove home to Michigan and tried to resume, you know, somewhat of a normal life while the police worked to find Susie. At this point, investigators assumed that Susie had been murdered, but the family still

held out hope. Now, based on the two ransom calls thus far, police assumed the man would call again, so they placed a tracker on the Yeager's home phone to record the call when he did. And remember this is 1973, so they can track it, but the Yeagers would have to keep the kidnapper on the phone for a few minutes, as we discussed in episode 200 a few weeks ago. So in the meantime, they established a reward fund and circulated missing posters as far out as they could.

Maryetta says that she barely left home those first few months, just hoping a call would come in so that she could find Susie alive. But when she did leave, she had to make sure that someone was always in the house, in case Susie's chapter called again, which is so agonizing and just like a mind trick of its own. Yeah, like I have to be home every second of every day because I cannot miss this call. It's so cruel.

So one afternoon, when Marietta's son, our son's ride home fell through so from school, he didn't have a ride, so now Marietta had to go run out and get him. And as luck would have it, in those 10 simple minutes that she was gone, the kidnapper called again. Of course.

What are the chances? I know, it's so crazy. So I mean, like she was home waiting for months. And the first time she leaves the house alone, he calls. But luckily, Maryet as other son Danny was home, and he answered the phone and flipped on the recording device. The man told Danny that he couldn't give Susie over to them because the police and the FBI were involved and he knew he would get caught.

And then he hung up the phone. Authorities were able to trace this call and they discovered that it was placed at a pay phone at a diner in Wyoming, but the caller had left by the time police could get there. And unfortunately, no employees remembered seeing anyone or anything suspicious around that time. Damn that, because that would have been a great lead if they, if one of the employees had maybe witnessed somebody at the pay phone or something I know and just for those who don't know US geography

Wyoming is the state right next to Montana So police still assumed that Susie was dead and that the kidnapper was just tormenting the family Though they still put in the work to find the kidnapper But after this call Munch passed with no leads and no new calls. But, eight months later, tragedy struck the area yet again, when a 19-year-old woman disappeared from Manhattan, Montana, just 10 miles from the campground where Susie had vanished and Michael had been killed. Sandra made Dijkman small again, was born on June 15th, 1954,

to parents John and Elizabeth or Betty Dijkman. The couple had four sons along with their beloved only daughter Sandra. Sandra was married briefly, hence her married name of small again, but was now divorced and waitressed in a local coffee shop. She had lived her whole life in Gallatin County, and most recently was renting an apartment above a garage on Main Street right there in Manhattan. On Saturday, February 9, 1974, so just a couple months shy of one year after Susie was abducted, Sandra attended a basketball game with some friends in the evening and then returned home around midnight.

But when her parents later found her car gone and her apartment empty, they panicked and reported her missing, because by this point no one had seen her in days. The same team investigating Susie's disappearance took on on Sanders as well, and after a few days passed with no sign of her, Sheriff Deputy Ron Green, out looking for any clues that he could find, spotted a fresh set of tire tracks on a quiet dirt road usually left untouched, so obviously this is very suspicious to him. Now when he got out of the car, he noticed what looked like a piece of trash nearby, but upon further inspection, it turned out to be a pair of women's

underwear. Ron called for backup and investigators began to comb the area, which was near the abandoned Lockhart Ranch. There was a barn on the property with a front door nailed shut, which was definitely an eerie sign. When investigators prided open, they found a tarp and debris covering a car whose license plate had been removed. But even without it, they knew it was Sandra's white 1969 Ford Cortina just sitting in this barn. Police and volunteers scoured a 5 mile or 8 kilometer radius of the barn right away, and with that they turned up a 55 gallon water drum on the property.

Empty except for the remnants of a fire, but when police searched that, they found fragments of bone. Before the break, police had just found human remains on an abandoned property near Manhattan, Montana. They continued to search the property meticulously, eventually finding close to 1,800 bone fragments that have been chopped and burned. So these were sent off to the Smithsonian Institute for Identification, and some of the pieces found indicated they belonged to an adult female, aged 18-22, who was between 5 feet and 5 feet 4 inches tall, or between 1.5 and 1.6 meters tall. Then, dental records from teeth and jaw bones found amongst the fragments confirmed.

It was the remains of 19-year-old Sandra Smalligan, and the second batch of bones were found to be from a young girl between the ages of six and eight years old. Meanwhile, Manhattan resident David Meyerhoffer was eerily curious about the ongoing case. Local police claimed that David would join them at the local diner and ask pointed questions about the open cases, many of which they were not able to answer or discuss because hello, open investigation. I always think it's so strange when these idiots do this, like they're literally putting themselves into the investigation, but it's like you're gonna get caught

because you're talking to police, you're being a little too interested in these cases. I mean, you're going to the diner and sitting with them and asking them about it and you're considered an odd person anyway. Yeah. It's not a good look. So one of the detectives investigating found that people who, of course, are overly curious

about the crime are often involved and thought David's curiosity was highly suspicious. I mean, he was even volunteering to help in search, which on the outside could be a nice gesture, but police were not getting that vibe. Yeah. So one of the, which on the outside could be a nice gesture, but police were not getting that vibe. So one of the detectives on the case Pete Dunbar realized that having grown up in Manhattan Montana, David would be intimately familiar with the area, and may have known that the

best place to stash Sandra's remains was the abandoned lock heart ranch, which we discuss in a lot of other cases is a lot of killers will choose these areas that you would only know if you were a local and so it made sense that this guy was also a local and here's David a local and being an outdoorsy guy and a hunting and fishing a fish and auto fishing a fish and auto fishing a fish and auto he Fishing aficionado. Fishing aficionado. Fishing aficionado. He would likely also be familiar with the Horseshoe Hills, which both three forks, where the now infamous campground was located, and Manhattan, back to on two. Now further inspection yielded another curious clue. David had dated Sandra Smolligan, so obviously kind of interesting there, and investigators asked him to submit to a polygraph test, which he actually agreed to. In this test, he was also questioned about Susie Yeager's disappearance, but he denied knowing anything about either case.

Regarding Sandra, he claimed that they went out once and that she didn't want to see him again, and the polygraph detected no sign of a lie. They also gave him what's informally known as Truth Serum, a barbituic called Sodium Amitol and interviewed him again, but his answers didn't deviate at all. It was at this time that FBI agent Patrick Malaney stepped in to enact a new tool in their search. The emerging field of criminal profiling. He asked for all the information pertaining to Susie's case to create a profile of someone who might commit a crime like this.

He claimed that a military background and training were likely because of how quickly and quietly he would have to be to carry out the abductions, and the physical strength that it would have taken to carry a 55-pound or 24-kg 7-year-old who was likely fighting back. There was probably surveillance involved and Susie had not been an accident, but rather selected after having been spied on and then stealthily abducted. The kidnapper was probably a loner and a possible schizophrenic, who had trouble with the opposite sex.

It was someone who must have known the area very well as we mentioned earlier. David's name again came under suspicion, but local police assured the FBI that he had been interviewed and tested multiple times. But FBI agents countered that if he were a psychopath or a schizophrenic, he could have disassociated in order to beat the tests. Let's check in with the Yeagers in Michigan, who still had no answers in the case of their missing daughter and sister. It at this point has been eight months, or in the story, since Marietta had received

a call from the kidnapper, but the FBI warned her that one would probably be coming in soon, that people like him would celebrate the date of the kidnapping, as someone else might celebrate a birthday or an anniversary. Marietta claimed that because of her strong faith in God, she actually felt sorry for him and wanted to talk to him. And like clockwork, one year to the minute of Susie's abduction, her kidnapper called Marietta at the Yeager home in Michigan. While briefly on the phone, Marietta asked if they could have Susie back, and thus he hung

up. Unfortunately, this call was so short that it was impossible to trace, but he called back again a few minutes later. Wanting to keep him on the phone for as long as possible, Marietta gave him the lead and let him talk. He started by boasting that he would never get caught. He explained that he had heard Heidi checking on her sister Suzy that night in the tent, and he'd already known both girls by name.

He seemed to have this obsessive need to let Marietta know that he was planning on getting away with it. He told her that he and Susie had been traveling and that there was no need to worry about her daughter, that she was doing great, which is a horrible thing to even say, because like, I don't know, you're saying this to the mom, the mom's like, no, she's not having a great life with you,

she needs to be with me and the rest of her family. Yeah, this is a year later after you abducted her. He also claimed that Susie was sleeping nearby in his cabin, but that the Yeagers had lost their chance of ever seeing her again. Mariette told him that she had been praying for him and worrying about him, and this compassion changed the entire tone of the call. Her strength and kindness wore him down, and she began to take control of the call. Meanwhile her husband notified the FBI while she was on the phone to make sure that they

were tapping into the call and tracing it. Years later in an interview with Robin Roberts, Maryetta said that she lied to David about recording the call and felt terribly about it, and they actually spoke for over an hour. Mary had a stated on the phone quote, �You�re the only link that I have to her. I�ve waited all this time for you to call and to give me some reassurance that she�s alive and you say that she is and I�m grateful. But if you hang up, then I waited and I waited and I waited like I have for the last year.

I love her too and she's my daughter. Please don't hang up. Then, David began to audibly sob as he says goodbye and the line goes dead because yes, this is David. And despite being on the phone for so long, the FBI was unable to track the call. So of course, they don't know yet that it is David. This is the thing that pisses me off the most in this story is that she was on the phone for a fucking hour. And somehow they couldn't trace that call. And with her husband even informing them, hello, we have him on the phone, please trace this. This

is like the longest call you could have possibly had with somebody and I'm surprised that Marietta was able to keep him on the line for so long anyway. And they totally failed. Yeah. A month after that conversation, however, a rancher in Gallatin County called police complaining that someone had illegally tapped his telephone pole and made a long distance call to Michigan. The caller had gone into the telephone pole on the rancher's property, tapped the wires, and used that to call the Detroit area for one hour, which then showed up on this man's

bill. So he looked at his bill and he was like, why do I have a call to Michigan? And amazing that he reported this. Yes, so he claimed that there were also tire tracks near the same telephone pole that he did not recognize. So police asked for a list of people who knew the ranch well enough to have been able to do this. And on that list was none other than David Meyerhoffer, who ironically was this man's contractor.

So of course, investigators brought David in for questioning a third time. They had matched voice print analysis of his in-person interview with the anniversary call with Marietta that she had recorded. But David told them that he was unimpressed, saying he had relatives whose voices sound exactly like his, so police set up a test with some people that he claimed he sounded like. The each read portions of the fateful anniversary called transcript live to Marietta on the phone, and one of them was actually David.

She was able to pluck him out immediately and said unequivocally that it was him. Investigators told Marietta that women were David's Achilles heel, and that they believed a strong woman could push him over the edge. The only thing that could crack him would be Marietta coming back to Bozeman to meet with him face to face, and she agreed. David and Marietta met at his attorney's office with his attorney present, and she claimed that he seemed like a mentally ill man, and that something in the depths of her knew that this was her daughter's killer.

Frustratingly, David maintained his innocence. David's attorney eventually cut off the interaction, and Marietta was forced to return to Michigan empty-handed. But David was crumbling. Afterward, deputies put him under 24-hour surveillance, which they claim seemed to amuse him at first. Then on September 24, 1974, he escaped out of the back of his house. Authorities on lookout claim they saw him going in the front and they never saw him come out again. And

further inspection of the property proved he was gone. So they were like watching out in front of his house, not even thinking about the fact that he has a backdoor to his house, and he just dipped. Yeah, he just split. So while police searched frantically for their potential killer and kidnapper at large, a man who called himself Travis called Mary at a back home in Michigan. This is so stupid. It happened to be the anniversary of the very first call that they received where her son Danny answered the phone. It happened to be the anniversary of the very first call that they received where her son

Danny answered the phone. Travis claimed that he was Suzy's real captor and he was in Salt Lake City. Funny that this guy suddenly has a name now that David is making suspect. He's like, oh yeah, it's this guy Travis. So Travis even went so far as to play a recording of a little girl and claimed that it was Susie. But she had addressed Marietta as Mommy and Marietta knew that her daughter only ever called her Mama. When Marietta refused to address him as Travis and instead kept calling him David, he started to unravel. Yes, Marietta. She's like, you're a bitch. You are David.

Travis began to refer to things that only David would have known, things that he and Maryetta had discussed in their conversation on the anniversary of Susie's kidnapping. David became flustered and angry and eventually shouted, you'll never see your little girl again before hanging up the phone, so it seems like Mary had a really got to him. She told the FBI right away who assumed that he had kidnapped another little girl to pose as Susie. They were able to trace the call this time and placed it coming from a Salt Lake City

hotel room more than 400 miles or 640 kilometers from David's home in Manhattan. So he's like all over the map, like Montana, Wyoming, Michigan, or if he was in Michigan at all, Utah. I feel like he probably made this phone call from Salt Lake so that investigators would think, oh, well, now the calls are coming from somewhere else that isn't David's home. Right.

They're not stupid. So true. So when David returned home. Right. They're not stupid. So true. So when David returned home, police cornered him, searching his car and belongings. They found a stationery from the same Salt Lake City hotel that the call was placed from, with the name Travis written on it. Idiot. Obviously, this is a very serious case and this is horrible, but this guy is just so dumb that it's funny. Yeah, this is a very serious case and this is horrible, but this guy is just so dumb that it's funny.

Yeah, David's a dumbass. So in the new fangled psychological profiling that they were employing, FBI knew that a killer of this magnitude would likely hold on to trophies or souvenirs from his victims. This next part is definitely on the nauseating side, so if you're eating or you're squeamish, skip ahead 15 or so seconds. Okay, so when they searched David's home, they found packages of what he said were deer burgers that contained human tissue.

Written on the butcher paper that wrapped the package was SMDS, Sandra's initials. They also found a human hand with painted fingernails that belonged to Sandra. On September 29th, 1974, detectives finally had enough to arrest David Meyerhoffer for the murder of Sandra Smalligan and the potential abduction and murder of Susie Yeager. But when David called in his attorney, Douglas Dasinger, his attorney vowed that he was

innocent. But the police had seriously had enough of David's games at this point, so while Douglas was at David's property reading over the search warrant, an officer plopped Sandra's detached, frozen hand into the attorneys. The attorney fled, vomited, and came back demanding, I want David up and talking. That was quite a move.

Yeah, it was like a real officer. Oh, really, you think he's innocent? Here you go. Here is a hand from his freezer. So after a private meeting between the two, Douglas reportedly came back to the officers and said, what can you do for David? Which police countered with, what can he do for us? In order to avoid the death penalty, Douglas said his client was willing to admit to four murders. So let's discuss those victims now.

David killed his first victim when he was only 17 years old, and it had been a cold case in the area for almost a decade. Bernard Lewis Pullman, or Bernie, was born June 22nd, 1953 in Boseman, Montana. The son of Henry, a railroad laborer, volunteer firefighter, and World War II veteran, and his wife Martha. I'm sure Martha did many wonderful things in her life as well. The couple had a daughter and three sons, including Bernie.

On March 19, 1967, 13-year-old Bernie was climbing the Nixon Bridge near three forks on the West Gallatin River with a friend when he was shot out of nowhere and plunged into the river below. His body was recovered and an autopsy revealed that a single shot had pierced his heart and exited his body but police were never able to locate the bullet nor any motives, suspects, or clues. So he was like, hunted. Yeah, so this is really interesting just knowing what David went on to become.

Like he went on into the military, but he had already killed somebody at the age of 17 with a gun. Yeah. So David, a good shot, had fired a rifle at him from 150 yards away or 137 meters away and watched him fall into the water, which is so senseless, it's like a game to him. Yeah, he's just a bad person. So police said they couldn't explain Bernie's killing and that David knew and liked him, but the speculation is that

David was being bullied by Bernie's older brother and this was his way of seeking revenge. Wow. So the revenge is to kill your bully's brother. So David's next victim was Michael, the boy scout at the Missouri Headwaters campground. David claimed that he did it to get revenge on the Boy Scout troop who had ousted him. David said, quote, I went to the park where the Boy Scouts were camped and I was going to get somebody. I opened this tent and I saw a little boy and I couldn't force myself to take him,

I guess so I stabbed him in the back. His third victim was Susie Yeager. David had been in his pickup truck in the Horseshoe Hills overlooking the Yeager's campsite. He knew that she was the smallest one, and therefore, the easiest to pick off. He had taken her to Lockhart Ranch and molested her, but when she woke up and began to struggle and fight back, he had strangled and burned her, then scattered her remains around the abandoned ranch. So all those calls to her mom stating that she was still alive were nothing but cruel lies.

David's fourth and final victim was Sandra. As police discovered, she and David had once gone on a date, but she had refused his further advances telling her friends that he was too aggressive. He broke into her apartment at 2am on the morning of February 10th, 1974 and covered her face with duct tape, then placed her in her own car. While he was apparently retrieving belongings of hers, she suffocated, as he had accidentally covered her nose. He claimed that he didn't mean to kill her, stating, quote, �I jumped on her and choked her, and then tied her up and put a piece of tape around

her mouth. While I was putting some of her clothes and stuff in her car, she eventually died. She couldn't get any air through the tape. Yeah, I mean, maybe you shouldn't have done that? Yeah, it's almost like he's saying like, oh well, she accidentally died because her mouth and nose were covered. Dude, you fucking duct taped her. Like, where else is she supposed to breathe? Yeah.

He then drove her car to the barn on the Lockhart Ranch property, covered it up and removed the license plate. Burnt her body and discarded her remains among Susie's. And something I want to bring up again is that call we discussed earlier where a man had said that his neighbor, who was 25 years old and odd, could have potentially been behind Susie's kidnapping. And that neighbor was David Meyerhoffer. Yeah, it neighbor was David Meyerhoffer.

Yeah, it actually was David. Yeah, and that call came in probably at least months before Sandra was murdered. So obviously I get it. Police did their due diligence and they question David. And if they don't have any evidence on him, he can just deny it and they have to let him go. But it's so sad because if they had been able to finagle away to figure out that it was him, Sandra's life would have been spared.

Yeah, definitely. In 2005, so 31 years after her murder, construction workers found Sandra's wallet, driver's license, and notebook tucked away inside a wall in a garage on Main Street in Manhattan, Montana. At this point, her case was temporarily reopened to make sure that they had covered all their bases, and her items were returned to her mom Betty. According to police, David shrank with each confession. He was put in a holding cell in jail

after confessing and was placed on suicide watch. Even though prosecutors had promised they would not seek the death penalty. But just four hours after confessing to the murders, David hung himself in his cell with a towel. Good riddance. Well, yeah, but it's frustrating because it's like that's such an easy way off and now you get to get out of being in prison your whole life and there wasn't even a trial.

Absolutely. I mean, he's a coward for sure. And also, I guess I can see it from that side as well. Like, is it potential, is there a potential that he was responsible for other murders? Right. And they needed to investigate that. So I can see that, but yeah, I mean,

him not being in this world anymore is a good thing. I totally agree, and at least he did confess to four of them, including Susie, so it's not like he did that before confessing and there was no answers, so at least that, but also he's on suicide watch, and you let him have a towel, and he hangs himself, and that occurs without you stopping it. You know what I mean? Like's some suicide watch. But to explain that, a rookie deputy was on Nightwatch and he had not been notified not to leave anything in David's cell. But calls from the other prisoners

that he was hanging himself went on answered. So there appeared to be negligence. David's younger brother, Alain, is also a convicted felon and has served time for multiple child rape charges, but has refused to speak about his crimes and whether they are connected to David's. One small win that came from all this tragedy were the advancements in how the FBI profiles

potential reoccurring offenders. While David's crimes were ongoing in the early 1970s, the FBI was just starting to refine how they psychologically profiled criminals, and David was the first serial killer to be investigated employing this method, but it's now a common practice. For the five years that David served in Vietnam, there were no murders in Manhattan, Montana, I wonder why, and there have been none since. Four open cases were now closed, but the families were left with few answers.

Bill Yeager passed away just 14 years after Susie. Since then, Marietta has been speaking out about her experience of forgiving her daughter's murderer, and now advocates against the death penalty. She even traveled back to Montana again to meet with David's mother Eleanor and together they placed flowers on his grave. She said that they were able to grieve together as mothers who had lost their children. Maryetta is one strong-ass woman. Yeah, she really is.

So one investigator said, if we didn't have a mother courageous enough to confront the killer of her child, we never would have caught him. Susie's grave is also in Montana, and Marietta actually wound up meeting her second husband while visiting to see her daughter's grave. And we know that everybody has different thoughts pertaining to the death penalty, but this is what Maryetta had to say about it. She said, quote, I realize that to kill David and Suzy's name would not restore her life. It would only make another victim and another grieving family.

Victims' families have every right initially to feelings of revenge, but the laws of our land should not be based on bloodthirsty, gut-level, state-sanctioned killings. They should call us to hire moral principles more befitting our beloved victims. My work to abolish the death penalty is not what I had ever planned. Local churches invited me to share my spiritual journey. People would say that, if I could forgive someone who had done such a terrible deed, they now knew that they could forgive

the problem people in their own lives. Suzy's story has been a gift to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much for listening to this episode, and on Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. And I know we always say this, but we would love to hear your thoughts on this case we are on Instagram at Going West Podcast, where you can also see photos for this case and every other case, we're on Twitter at Going West Pod,

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