True Crime Campfire - Blood Brothers: The Murder of Heather DeWild

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Here are some facts about identical twins: They start to bond with each other before they’re even born. As they grow up, they often develop their own secret languages, comprehensible only to them. Many report a deep psychic bond, so strong that if one twin gets into a car crash on the other side of the country, the other twin will somehow know. The bond between twins is one of the strongest, most unbreakable, most mysterious connections in the human experience. They even share the same DNA. In most cases, the twin bond is a rare, even enviable blessing. But there can be such a thing as too much closeness, where the thread between twins becomes more like a strangling vine, binding them together so tightly that neither one can escape. Sources:https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00RXLA3QA/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s3https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heather-dewild-will-her-killer-get-away-with-murder/https://kdvr.com/news/daniel-dewild-sentenced-to-75-years-in-killing-of-estranged-wife/https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/judge-sentences-daniel-dewild-to-74-years-behind-bars/https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/i/cbslocal/wp-content/uploads/sites/15909806/2011/12/final-dewild-indictment.pdfFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Here are some facts about identical twins. They start to bond with each other before they're even born. as they grow up they often develop their own secret languages comprehensible only to them many report a deep psychic bond so strong that if one twin gets into a car crash on the other side of the country the other twin will somehow know the bond between twins is one of the strongest most unbreakable most mysterious connections in the human experience they even share the same DNA in most cases the twin bond is a rare even enviable blessing but there can be such a thing as two much closeness, where the thread between twins becomes more like a strangling vine, binding

them together so tightly that neither one can escape. This is Blood Brothers, the murder of Heather DeWild. So, Campers, for this case we are in Edgewater Colorado, a suburb of Denver with a small town kind of feel. But we're actually going to start the story a little to the west, with a grisly discovery in the wild spaces of Clear Creek Canyon Park on a warm sunny day, September 4, 2003. Roadworker Curtis Johnson was out on a canyon road moving dirt with his excavator. He'd made a big pile at the side of the road, and as he dumped one more load of dirt onto the pile, something caught his eye. It was a big black trash bag,

bulging at the sides. The only way it could have gotten mixed up with all this dirt was if somebody had buried it. That was weird enough for him to get out of the excavator to take a closer look, and when he got close, he saw something that made his heart leap into his throat. A human leg, sticking partially out of the garbage bag. Curtis had uncovered a body, which somebody had buried in a shallow grave. So, of course, the poor guy freaked out and made a panic he called to 911. Investigators got there fast and quickly determined that the body was that of a woman.

They also found details that made the hairs on the backs of their neck stand up. Strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth, and her hands and neck were bound with rope, very neatly bound, with precisely tied knots. It seemed likely that whoever had done this, it wasn't the first time they'd tied somebody up. It didn't take investigators long to identify who this unfortunate soul was. this was a grown woman, but only four feet nine inches tall, and that matched the description of Heather DeWild, a 30-year-old who'd been reported missing from Edgewater six weeks before.

Within a day or two, dental records confirmed it, and investigators got to work. Why had somebody wanted to kill her? And why had she been bound so strangely? Heather was in the process of divorcing her husband, Daniel DeWild. So, of course, the detective's first move was to take a good long look at him. when a woman is murdered the husband or boyfriend is almost always the first place they look and if divorce is involved they're going to look even harder so who was this guy well for one thing

daniel was one of a pair of identical twins coming into the world just a few minutes ahead of his brother david and although they were carbon copies at the start daniel grew a little taller and stronger than david he also had the more dominant personality the one who was always deciding what the boys would do where they would go, very much assuming the mantle of older brother. Dude, your greater life experience is shorter than the average Led Zeppelin song, maybe dial it backish-coach with the big man-in-charge nonsense. Although, as we'll see, that big man-in-charge nonsense would stay with Daniel for the rest of his life. Daniel and David were close.

Identical twins usually are, of course, but these boys spent even more time together than most. It was just them and their car mechanic dad for a good chunk of their childhood, and their dad had to work hard, so the boys were left alone a lot of the time to look after themselves. Welcome to child care in the 70s and 80s folks. So their main family was each other. They learned to trust and rely on each other above anybody else. When they graduated high school, the boys followed in their dad's footsteps and found work as mechanics. Together, always working in the same places, side by side, monkey wrenches in hand. And monkey wrenches weren't the only things they like to keep in their hands. Throughout their teenagers,

years, Daniel and David had both developed an interest in porn, intense enough that you could probably call it an addiction. And this is pre-internet, y'all, so we're talking stacks of VHS tapes and giant, probably sticky piles of magazines. Oh, so sticky. Sorry. Oh, no. Now, David, the younger twin, had, I guess, pretty vanilla tastes, but his brother Daniel, still eager to be the big man in charge, liked kinky stuff. Lots of magazines and movies. of women being tied up and gagged. In the early 90s, one of David's friends decided to set him up with somebody, a cute, outgoing girl named Heather Springer.

But as it turned out, David couldn't go on the date. He ended up with a scheduling conflict, so at the last minute he asked his twin, Daniel, if he'd be willing to go in his place, just so Heather wouldn't get stood up. And the rest, as they say, is history. Heather was a great catch, pretty, funny, smart. Daniel was smitten from minute one.

Anyway, their courtship moved pretty fast. Heather was 18, Daniel was 19, and he was her first real boyfriend. Sometimes she'd sneak out to meet up with him and get in trouble with her mom and dad. But overall, they were happy for her, that she'd found somebody who made her laugh. And although their relationship was a little bit tumultuous, Heather wasn't about to go anywhere. As her dad later told investigation discovery, Heather was a beautiful girl, but she was always insecure about her height, and she hadn't dated much before Daniel. Her sister Jennifer later said, I don't think she saw herself the way the rest of the world saw her. She was really beautiful.

Maybe she was afraid if she left him, she wouldn't meet anyone she liked better, which is absurd because holy shit could this girl have done better. like just so much better. And no dis on short girls, or those who like them, obviously. But it makes sense to me that a control freak like Daniel would go for a girl over a foot shorter than he was. Like, dude was so, so desperate to be the big man. And, okay, side note, I have to say this. I do not hate short people as some campers have insinuated, okay?

I think it's funny when someone is. so insecure about something immutable about themselves that they take it out on other people that don't have that problem like me like just go to therapy because I'm not short that's not going to change some of my best friends are shorties Whitney's short my mom is a short lady so don't send me any more hate mail about me saying manlit okie-doke jeez Louise it was like one thing relax it was at least two okay and it hurt my feelings She doesn't hate short people. I don't.

God. She likes ruffling our hair. I do. I can rest my cheek on your head when we hug. It's very nice. Daniel and Heather were pretty much joined at the hip after that first date, and they used to hang out a lot with twin brother David and his girlfriend, high school sweetheart, Vicky Weiss. And in 1992, little brother David, was the first to get married. Things started off with a white picket fence kind of vibe, but that didn't last long.

Deeply shocking. I know, I know. I mean, getting married when you're 20 always works out perfectly, right? And yes, we know that sometimes it actually does. Y'all don't have to email us about that either. If you're the exception, that's awesome. We love that for you. Basically, if you're not an asshole, we're not making fun of you, okay?

That's what you need to get across here. All right. It's not you. It's these assholes. Exactly. The normal stresses of a brand new marriage between two people barely out of high school were bad enough. But worse than that, David apparently still wanted to give Daniel the lion's share of his free time, which had to chat Vicky's ass. And not only that, but here's another shocker.

A porn addiction is probably not something your new wife is going to enjoy. So there was a lot of sniping back and forth and bitching in both directions. But things really blew up one night when Vicky. He found a phone sex bill for $200. She was furious, and no wonder, I mean, in addition to the ick factor, these were blue-collar folks with two young kids. Money was already tight, and now David goes and blows $200, jerking off to the audio stylings of some bored, single mom in Albuquerque.

Yeah, bad move, dude. I hadn't ex-addicted to phone sex when I was a lot younger, by the way. And one time he got hold of my credit card, like right around Christmas, by the way, ran up like $500 worth over a three or four day period. So I can vividly imagine what Vicky was feeling here. So Vicky confronted him about it, both the phone sex itself and the $200, and David snapped. He grabbed her by the throat, shoving her onto the floor, and choking her so hard she almost passed out. And then, as he stood over her, rage just blasting out of him like flames, David spat out, next time I'll kill you, bitch. Wow. What a prince, huh? Unfortunately for

Vicky, that was the end of their four-year marriage. She scooped up the kids and hauled ass to South Dakota, and she did not look back. Good for her. A right as David's divorce from Vicky was going through in 1997, Daniel and Heather got married. Heather was already pregnant with their first child, a little boy they'd named Jacob. The wedding was lovely on a beautiful sunny day, and Heather and Daniel both seemed over the moon. They moved to the suburbs and Edgewater, and when Jacob came along months later, Daniel seemed thrilled to be a dad. He was the fun parent, according to the their daughter. She told ID, I saw my dad as extremely fun, no rules. Everything was just a blast with him. That's great for the kids, of course, because who wants rules when you're that age, but it can be

damn hard on the parent who has to play the heavy all the time. I mean, somebody has to, or you've just got a house full of chaos. And chaos is pretty much exactly where Daniel's no rules attitude tended to land him. Daniel, along with twin David, of course, had a good job servicing buses for RTD, the local public transit agency. By the way, how flippin weird is it that these two insist on working every job together? Like, did they have a joint resume? Did they tell potential employers we're a packaged deal? It's just creepy to me. It's like those couples who share a Facebook profile. There's such a thing as too much togetherness, y'all. Well, okay, first of all, it's exactly like the interview montage from stepbrothers. That's what I think about every time I think about this case

is walking in and matching tuxedos into like professional offices. It just makes me laugh. But also, side note, when couples share a Facebook profile, it means one of them cheated. I don't make the rules. That's what it means. Yeah, for sure. So they had a good gig, but Daniel wasn't content just working on buses. He wanted to make big money at his dream job, which was selling radio-controlled cars.

Now, his thinking here seems to have been, I like radio-controlled cars, therefore everyone must also like and want to buy them, and a convenient radio-controlled car store would make big, big bucks. Bless his heart for optimism, but, dude, R.C. Cars have been around for decades. If there was that kind of market for him, there'd be like R.C. Cars are Us stores in every town. You know, but whatever, this was his dream. I'm not here to be Whitney Dream Killer. My problem is that in order to start this new venture, he drained the retirement and emergency savings he and Heather had been putting away for years, which, oh my God. Like, I just had a hot flash just thinking about that.

And of course, contrary to expectations, the RC car money didn't just start rolling in and Dan's new business crashed and burned, which did not help with the money problems he and Heather were already having. And the money woes, as they always do, added a lot of strain to the marriage. One sore point was the kids' education. They were in a private parochial school, and Daniel didn't think they should spend the money for that. They should spend it on RC cars instead. He wanted him to switch to a public school, but Heather was a devout Catholic,

and she was dead set against it. She wanted her kids in parochial school, and Dan had promised her they could go there, now here he was trying to go back on it. And then there were also some problems in the bedroom. Daniel still had his bondage fetishes, and no shade on him for that. Plenty of people do,

Heather was not into it. She played along to make Dan happy, but she really didn't enjoy it. For a lot of their sexual encounters, Heather was tied up and feeling humiliated, a feeling that must have only gotten worse when Daniel pressured her into recording sex tapes with his video camera. Oi. Again, great if you're both into it, but if your kink requires you to make your partner miserable, that is not so great. And Heather was getting increasingly more unhappy as the marriage went on,

while Dan got increasingly angry and hostile. Yeah, what's the BDSM mantra, safe, sane, and consensual? Yeah. Just throwing that out there. Heather's parents told her she should get out of the marriage, but Heather, the good Catholic girl, was determined to stick it out, both because she thought divorce was wrong and for the kids, because, you know, staying in an unhappy home with their shitty dad is just super for them.

And I've literally never met anyone that was glad their parents stayed together, by the way. all my friends with divorced parents were like, thank fuck that's over. Now I get two Christmases and I don't have to deal with my parents being douchebags to one another. But when Daniel decided to save money by taking the kids off the insurance policy he had through his work, Heather was done. Her kids were everything to her and Daniel could not have made it clearer that he valued dollar bills more than them. That was it. Heather filed for divorce, took the kids, and moved back. back in with her parents. And Daniel, insecure, controlling dweeb that he is, did not take this

well. How dare she make a decision about her life by herself? And because, like many control freaks, he was obsessed with money, the prospect of having to pay alimony and child support just wound him up even tighter. He was furious. He worried his money problems meant he was going to lose his house. Luckily for him, twin brother David had at least a partial solution. He and his new girlfriend, Roseanne, would move in with Daniel and help him out with the house payments. But even without the prospect of financial catastrophe, Daniel was still ragey at the thought of having to give Heather one thin dimes worth of his money. Daniel stued for months. Then he came up with a solution to his problems.

One, he shared with his brother David. He was going to kill Heather, and he wanted David to help. Well, obviously, I mean, these guys can't do anything by themselves. I'm surprised they don't need each other to help to take a pee. So if one of them is going to do something this dumb, I'm sure the other one will be there too. Twin David initially laughed it off. Yeah, yeah, right, bro. You're going to kill your wife, and I'm going to help you.

He thought Daniel was just blowing off steam, didn't think he was serious. Nobody ever seems to take it seriously when their friend says, Hey, I'm about to kill somebody. Nope. Y'all, take it seriously. I am begging you. Please do. But Daniel kept after his brother, pestering him day after day like an annoying little kid, asking for ice cream.

Finally, he said, look, I am going to do this. Now, are you going to help me or not? Guilt tripped him to the extreme, like, I've always been there for you. now I need you to be there for me, which is just wild. But David, trained since child, had to be Daniel's submissive sidekick, eventually gave in and said, okay, okay, he'd do it. He would help Daniel kill his wife. Peer pressure, folks.

Not even once. The boys did their homework. And by homework, I mean, they binge-watched CSI and took notes on how not to get caught. For example, they learned they should. double up their plastic gloves because one pair could still leave a print and they should try at all cost to avoid leaving any blood

evidence. I can just hear any actual CSIs out there rolling their eyes. Yes, fellas. All anybody needs to commit a flawless murder is a couple DVD box sets of one of the most hilariously inaccurate shows on TV. Hugh Horatio whipping off his sunglasses for the camera. This is

going to work out great. Yeah, so fun fact, my mom used to sell used books and one time she sold a book to the writer's room of CSI and it was a gay space porn romance

so that's I mean that's the kind of stuff they were watching to study for their murder it was research I'm sure a writer a writer's room that needed a book for research about spacemen

having gay sex I don't know. Let's all try and figure out which episode that was. You know it was CSI Miami. Like, you know it was. I don't know. I'm not sure. It was it was right. It was either before or right when Miami premiered. It was like that long ago. So campers, if you know what episode and you can you can tell me which one, I'd be happy. But one of the main things they took from their TV crash course in murder was that they needed to dispose of the body somewhere. It probably wouldn't be found. The longer it sat undisturbed, the harder it would be to get evidence from it, which means they did not watch bones. Yeah, well, that much is probably true. So they practiced, took a couple of shovels out into the mountains and dug a grave.

When it was done, they tossed in a pillow as a stand-in for Heather's body and covered it up with dirt. And this, it seems, was Daniel's way of really tying his brother into committing this crime, of making it real, a thing they were actually going to do instead of just talking about it and watching TV. So now, with their heads full of capital K knowledge, these identical dipshits were ready to go. Daniel just had to say the word. But instead, the fucking weirdo decided to call an audible,

and suddenly he made a hard 180, from plotting to kill Heather to trying desperately to win her back. Took a syrupy card and a big old bouquet of flowers to Heather's parents' house and rang the doorbell. Perfectly natural and normal, right? Hey, I've spent months fantasizing about ways to murder you, but now I think maybe we can make this work. Aw, I think these two crazy kids are going to make it. Jesus, Jones. Chicks, man. You either want to off them or love bomb them.

So Heather, good for her, basically gave him the bum's rush and told him to get out. She was done with him. She was moving on with her life. And that was pretty much it. Back to Plan A. The fact that it was this easy for Daniel to shift gears back to murder really shows how sincere he was about trying to win her back, right? He just didn't want her to go through with the divorce because it was going to cost him money. So two days before the divorce was set to be finalized,

Dan called Heather and told her he had a check she needed to co-sign and some health care cards for the kids she needed to pick up. Heather agreed to come over, and just as a precaution, she brought the kids. She knew Daniel was a lot less likely to show his temper around them. Heather's dad, who was a retired Denver cop, by the way, told her she shouldn't go. He'd been getting increasingly worried about Daniel, who'd been acting edgier and more hostile as the divorce dragged on.

But Heather told him it would be okay, and she went over there anyway. As she and the kids piled out of the car, Daniel met them in the driveway. He sent the kids into the house, but held Heather back. He had something for her in the garage, he said. You know those sex tapes you never wanted me to make? Well, you can have them. Destroy him if you want to. It's okay. It must have seemed like a little olive branch.

Either that or it seemed immediately suspicious, but it was probably exactly the right lure to get Heather into that garage. She'd always hated those damn tapes, and I'm sure she hated him double now that they were getting divorced. That is not the kind of thing you want a vindictive ex-husband to have hanging over you. And, I mean, it seems reasonable that he'd want to hand them over in the garage, i.e. not in front of the kids, right? So whatever her feelings were at that moment, either relief or maybe a tiny alarm bell

chiming at the back of her mind, Heather followed Daniel into the garage. Ten minutes later, Daniel was in his house, telling the kids to wave out the window to mom as her car disappeared down the street. Then he took them out to eat at McDonald's, making a point of keeping the receipt that showed exactly what time he was there. Hours later, Heather's mom was getting worried. Her daughter had never come back from Daniels. She called him, and Daniel said Heather hadn't stayed long. She'd left pretty much immediately to go shopping while he went out to lunch with the kids. This struck Heather's mom as all wrong.

Heather had only just started a new job and didn't have money to spend. And even if she had, she hadn't taken any money or credit cards with her. And she wouldn't just leave the kids like that. Feeling a little sick to her stomach, her mom went over to Daniels and picked her grandkids up. And a little later, she and her husband called the police. Officers paid Daniel a visit that evening. He was cooperative. Let them in, to look around at the house, answered their questions.

They saw no signs of a struggle and no sign of Heather. Daniel didn't have any scratches or bruises or anything on him that they could see. And, hey, he conveniently had that receipt showing the time he was at McDonald's. So there was nothing overtly suspicious. And because Heather was a grown woman who so far had not been missing even a whole day, that was pretty much it for the moment. But the next day, when there was still no word from her, police started a missing person's investigation, which is actually pretty quick for a missing

adult. I'm guessing Edgewater PD jumped on this one fast because Heather's dad was a Denver cop. Yeah, I mean, it shouldn't matter, but you know it does. Yeah. Heather's folks were sure something terrible had happened to her, and they were sure Daniel was behind it. There was no way she would just leave her kids with him and go shopping. No way. He was lying. Investigators headed over to Daniel's house where he met them out front and told them he'd hired an attorney and wasn't interested in talking. And when Brother David pulled into the driveway, Daniel grabbed him as soon as he was out of his car, yelling at him to get in the house and not say a word to the cops. Yeah, way to stay off the radar there, my dudes. Why don't you just get matching t-shirts

that say, I'm involved in crimes. Ask me how. The twins clearly share one brain cell between the two of them, and half the time it's dedicated to making sure their outfits match. This little scene also clued the investigators into the fact that twin brother David might be a chatty Kathy, and Daniel was worried about what he might say. So they paid David a visit at his job at a time when Daniel wasn't around, and he did not disappoint. For starters, he said he'd also been wondering whether Dan might be behind Heather's disappearance. But then he said Dan probably would have told him if he were. Then he offered up an alternative explanation. Maybe Heather had been carjacked. She was so little, you know, she would be an easy

target, which is ridiculous. For one thing, Edgewater, Colorado was not a carjacking kind of town. And I don't think carjackers are just hanging around besides stop signs in broad daylight, picking out targets based on height. No, no, not her man. She's two and a half inches too tall. She'll be harder to shove into the trunk. Jesus. Brother David was like a frog on a hot plate

during the whole conversation. Talking so fast they could hardly understand him. The investigators antennae were already twitching and they twitched even harder when David offhandedly mentioned that his truck had a bad transmission. So he'd taken it to an auto repair shop outside town. Now remember, David and Daniel were professional mechanics, just like their dad.

This is a dude who probably knew more about cars than most people by the time he was 12. Why would he take his truck for expensive transmission work 15 miles away when he could easily fix it himself? Ooh, little slip up there, Davy. Probably realizing he'd run his mouth too much, David soon shut down the interview, but he'd done enough to keep the investigators' attention focused on the twins, and a week later, they came back with a search warrant for the house. They removed a few possibly evidentiary things, like, for example, Daniel and Heather's sex tapes, but found nothing especially incriminating. Not in the house, anyway.

A cadaver dog, who I'm sure was a very good boy, started barking and scratching in the back of David's truck, clearly signaling a hit. Looked like twin bro's truck had been used to transport a body. The investigators confronted David with this, but by now he'd finally smartened up enough to keep his mouth shut. It was his turn with the brain cell. Right. And David wasn't just concerned about his own mouth. For a while, his girlfriend, Roseanne, had been pushing for them to get married, which David didn't want to do. Until now, the day after police confronted him, when all of a sudden he popped the question. Now, why was he suddenly coming over all romantic? The investigators figured they knew why. Because now that they were married, Roseanne and David had spousal privilege, meaning it would be extremely tough for detectives to get anything useful out of Roseanne. Ugh Be still my beating heart

Ladies This is proof that if he wanted to He would Yeah He wanted her to keep Her goddamn mouth shut So he proposed to lessen the legal pressure Nicholas Sparks couldn't write

A more romantic scene That's the kind of thing you tell the grandkids about It's like So kids, that's how I met your mother So Though, by now, police were confident that the DeWild twins were behind Heather's disappearance, possibly with Roseanne's help, but they weren't even close to having enough to arrest any one of them. A hit from a cadaver dog just isn't enough.

They needed solid physical evidence, and they thought they had a big break, when about a week after executing the search warrant, they discovered Heather's white Nissan Centra, abandoned in the parking lot of an apartment complex about five miles from Daniel's house. But the car was infuriatingly, suspiciously clean. someone had gone to great lengths to remove any possible evidence from it. The damn thing was clean enough to have just come off the assembly line. No hairs, no fingerprints, not even Heather's.

So, despite finding her car, investigators were no closer to solving her disappearance. And then, six weeks after she'd gone missing, we come back around to where we started this story, with a highway worker finding Heather's bound and gagged body inside a trash bag and a shallow grave. And at that point, as her devastated family began the long, lonely process of grieving her loss and her kids faced a lifetime without their mama, Heather's case changed from missing person to homicide. Now, you would think that finding the body would really

move that case forward, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Heather's body had decomposed to a degree that made it impossible for them to determine a cause of death. She'd been shallowly buried for weeks in a summer where most days were in the 90s, so as frustrating as it was, it wasn't really a surprise. And although police continued to investigate for weeks and months, no further evidence came up, and the twins were both keeping their mouths shut. The case went cold, and it wouldn't heat up again for eight long years. And then, in 2011, the DA's office re-examined Heather's case. And, you know, you see this a lot with cold cases, that all that really takes to get a moving is for somebody to just try, you know, just to take a good look at the case with some fresh eyes, which is

frustrating. It's like, why would you wait eight years to do that? But I guess it's not like most DA's offices have a ton of free time on their hands, and new cases tend to take precedence over the old ones. It sucks. Anyway, as part of their work, these new investigators took a look at the evidence removed from Daniel DeWild's house eight years ago, including the sex tapes he'd made with Heather. And in one of those tapes, they got a good clear look at the knots Daniel liked to use to tie up Heather. They looked just like the knots they'd found on our body. Now, if you're into something and you do it a lot, you're going to have your own particular

methods. If bondage is an actual fetish to you, as it was to Daniel, you're going to be very particular about how you tie somebody up. It's kind of ritualized part of the whole experience. How likely was it that Heather would happen to be killed by someone who tied knots just like Daniel did, unless it was Daniel who killed her? They also uncovered records of a profile Daniel had put up on a dating site where he described himself as a widower. Thing was, he had put this profile up after Heather went missing, but before her body had been found when she was still officially a missing person.

So how do you know you're a widower, Dan? Oopsie. What did I tell you? A single brain cell bouncing around their skulls like a screensaver. You like that old Pong name. Sorry. That's a better metaphor because they're just passing it back and forth. Yep. It's Pong. It's Pong.

And they uncovered another solid piece of evidence. Cell phone records that showed twin brother David calling both Daniel and Roseanne right after Heather went missing, with his location close to where Heather's abandoned car had been found. So investigators had enough evidence to convince them that both DeWild brothers had worked together to kill Heather, but they were still dubious about whether they had enough to convince a jury. You can get a conviction on circumstantial evidence, but it's harder in a murder case, and what they had wasn't super strong. But the DeWild boys didn't know that. Investigators knew what they really needed was a confession, for one of the twins to spill the beans. And that, of course, meant they had to get one twin to turn on the other.

Not an easy task for tweedle dweeb and tweedledoof. Daniel and David had been the biggest part of each other's lives since birth, since before that. Always way more loyal to each other than anybody else. But they figured now was the time to try. So in December 2011, Daniel and David de Wilde were finally arrested for Heather's murder, along with David's wife, Roseanne. You've got to think that this was always on their minds, every day for eight years. Oh, yeah. Is this the day they come from me? And eventually, yeah, it was.

Their first strategy was to try and crack Roseanne, get her to turn on her husband and brother-in-law, spill whatever secrets David had tried to stifle by marrying her. They figured he'd told her everything, but no dice. the course of a long interrogation, Roseanne didn't crack. They would have to go after the brothers. Police kept the twins separate, hoping that without one reinforcing the other, one of them might break. And they knew which one was more likely to do so. David, the younger brother by minutes, always the follower, always taking the submissive role to Daniel's forceful personality. Daniel was the one with a motive, and investigators guessed that he was the one who actually killed

her that potentially gave them an in with David. Daniel was the real bad guy. What happened was his fault, not David's. So they played up the evidence they had, making David believe his conviction was a slam dunk. And then they offered him a deal. If he told them the truth about what happened, he'd get 12 years. If not, he'd be looking at life in prison. This was pretty much a bluff. The investigators didn't think they had enough evidence to convict, remember. And if David was going to save his own skin, he'd have to turn on his twin, his other self, the most important person in his life. So they weren't super optimistic going in. But much to everybody's surprise, David took the bait. And he had one hell of a story to tell. That morning, when Heather had come over to Daniel's

house, David had been waiting in the garage. He watched hidden from sight as Heather came in with Daniel close behind her. As soon as they were inside, Daniel closed the door behind them and grabbed her by both shoulders, throwing her down on the concrete floor. Heather, remember, was just four foot nine and weighed less than a hundred pounds. She was easy to overpower.

The sudden fall stund her, and she struggled to get up. And then she caught sight of David. And if she hadn't realized what was happening before, my guess is this was when it dawned on Heather that she was in bad trouble. As she locked eyes with her husband's twins, still struggling to get to her feet, Daniel picked up a mallet from a work counter and hit her hard in the face. Heather dropped back to the ground, out cold. Now, as we know, the twins had prepared

for this. They'd already set up a rope and pulley over one of the beams in the garage with a noose at one end of the rope. And now that they had her unconscious, Daniel put the noose around Heather's neck and tightened it, then pulled on the other end of the rope, lifting Heather up to hang by her neck until she was dead, all while their kids were playing inside. I really hope she stayed unconscious. Bless her heart. After lowering Heather's body back to the floor, Daniel bound her wrists and neck with rope and covered her face with a duct tape mask.

According to Brother David, the thinking behind this was that if the cops ever found the body, they would think Heather was the victim of some kind of bondage sex gone wrong or maybe a fetishistic serial killer, which you might have overdosed on CSI. there, fellas, police are always going to look at the spouse, especially when they're in the middle of a divorce. And as this usually happens when killers try to get cute, all you accomplished with this little stunt was to give him more evidence against you. Although, honestly, I suspect this was more about Daniel taking his last chance to humiliate her. He knew how much she hated that stuff. Oh, absolutely. One last little fuck you to the woman who had the

audacity to leave him. Mm-hmm. So after the murder, Brother David drove Heather's car to an apartment complex a few miles away and ditched it. And then, while Daniel took his kids to McDonald's, David came back to the house and moved Heather's body into the back of his truck to take her to the burial site. The original site the brothers had planned on using was way out in the wilderness where she really might never have been found. But David's truck was having transmission issues, so he had to ditch the original plan and dispose of Heather's body just a few miles outside the city. So David's story fit perfectly with all the circumstantial evidence the investigators had. Plus, he passed a polygraph. Well, he passed it on questions directly about Heather's murder

anyway, flunked it miserably on all the questions about Roseanne's involvement. But although prosecutors felt sure that Roseanne knew all about Heather's murder after the fact and were reasonably sure she might have been involved in the planning of the murder, they didn't have any way to prove it without David's testimony. So infuriatingly, they had to drop all the charge charges against her. And she's like interviewed in that 48 hours, you just want to, it is so infuriating. She's like, well, I didn't. And she's just very, like, pissy and like obviously annoyed to be there and to be, you know, for somebody's daring to ask her questions about, she's just, oh, I just want to, er. Roseanne would later claim that David's confession was a complete shock to her. And if you believe that big pile of bullshit, then I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. But Roseanne or no Roseanne, the prosecutors were ready to take Daniel to trial.

With twin David's testimony, the prosecution could make a solid case to the jury. Unless that is, the jury bought the defense's argument that David was the more likely suspect. It was his truck the body'd been in, after all, and he was the one with the history of violence against his ex-wife, Vicky. But that theory just didn't hang together. Yeah, I mean, Daniel was the one with the motive. Heather was killed just two days before their expensive divorce was due to be finalized. And Daniel was the not freak, not David. He was clearly the one who bound Heather's body, just like David said.

And it was Daniel who had enticed Heather over to the house and taken her into the garage. And then what? Just watched his brother unexpectedly kill her and then took the kids to lunch? Yeah. It was nonsense. David's version of events fit the evidence and made sense. The version put forward by Daniel's defense team did neither of those two things. But would the jury buy it?

Well, kind of. They found Daniel da Wilde guilty of conspiracy and accessory to murder, but they deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge. Two members of the jury apparently wondered if David was just covering for himself and Roseanne. Yeah, these two apparently had a much higher bar for reasonable doubt than the other 10 people in there. It's a shame. Dudes, juries can be real stupid about this kind of thing. I mean, look at the Casey Anthony trial or all the people in the Year of Our Lord

2022 where the True Crime Campfire series on Scott motherfucking Peterson is out, that they think he's an innocent baby. Like, I know we bag on prosecutors a lot, but that is why prosecutors have to be sure before they prosecute. Some people hear reasonable doubt and would accept aliens did it as reason. reasonable. That's right. They forget the reasonable part, definitely. It's not no doubt. It's reasonable doubt. Heather's family was, of course, devastated, but fortunately they wouldn't have to be for long. Most likely, recognizing that they'd gotten real, real lucky, and the prosecution

was fully intending to try him again on that first-degree murder charge. A month later, Daniel's defense team got him to accept a deal, and he pled guilty to second-degree murder. He did not get off lightly on the sentencing, though. In February 2013, a judge gave him 74 years. He was 42 years old at that point, and he's very likely to die in prison. Now, the scary thing about this case is that this matching set of doorknobs very nearly got away with murder, despite the body being found, despite police being confident they were behind the crime from pretty much day one. Oh yeah, if they hadn't been able to get David to crack, if they hadn't been able to lever open that tiny little crack of resentment that

probably been bubbling away and tweel dorks desiccated little heart all along then these smug dip shits might still be walking free instead of rotting behind bars where they belong. So, that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now,

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