True Crime Campfire - Lightning Strikes Twice: The Crimes of Harold Henthorn

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

The philosopher and all-round barrel of laughs Albert Camus wrote, “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” Like any good philosophical quote, you can interpret it in a few ways. To not worry overly much about other people’s opinion of you can be a healthy lesson to learn, for example. But the main character in this week’s case would have a different interpretation—nothing and no-one mattered except his own grasping need for money and control, a need that would tear into pieces the lives of everyone around him. Join us for the story of a serial black widower--a man whose charm and pious Christian exterior hid a devious, murderous heart. Free shipping and 365-day returns from Quince: https://quince.com/happycamperSources:Black Widower by Michael FleemanRolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/black-widower-how-one-man-allegedly-murdered-two-wives-199999/Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-10th-circuit/1868895.htmlFollow 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/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome 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. The philosopher and all-around barrel of laughs, Albert Camus, wrote, To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. Like any good, philosophical quote, you can interpret it in a few ways. To not worry overly much about other people's opinion of you can be a healthy lesson to learn, for example. But the main character in this

week's case would have a different interpretation. Nothing and no one mattered except his own grasping need for money and control, a need that would tear into pieces the lives of everyone around him. This is Lightning Strikes Twice, the Crimes of Harold Henthorn. So, campers, for this one, we're in the wild and beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park, just a little west of Estes Park, Colorado. Saturday, September 29th, 2012 was a beautiful fall afternoon, with the golden leaves of the aspens mixing with the green of the pines. Harold and Tony Henthorne visiting the National Park for their 12th wedding anniversary. They were staying at the Stanley, the fancy and supposedly haunted hotel that inspired Stephen King's The Shining, and had plans

for a nice steakhouse dinner later that evening. Harold had set the trip up as a surprise for his wife, calling her assistance at the clinic where she worked as an ophthalmologist and having them enter fake appointments in her schedule for the previous day, so when he whisked her off into the mountains, it was completely out of the blue. Romantic. Now, if you're going to a National Park, you're going to want to get out into nature, and Harold and Tony went for an afternoon hike on the Deer Mountain Trail. A National Park Service notice at the entrance ranked the trail as moderate difficulty, three miles up to the summit, then three miles back down.

It wound through the woods, sometimes with the land falling precipitously away on one side, with occasional rocks and tree roots sitting across the trail. Nothing an average person couldn't handle and enjoy, but you'd most likely be breathing pretty hard when you got to the top. Tony, though, it had several knee surgeries the result of a high school basketball injury, so this moderately challenging hike was an odd choice. But it was what Harold wanted, and Harold usually got what he wanted. The trail itself is perfectly safe, but Harold and Tony Henthorne spontaneously went off the trail, walking through the steep sloped woods to a rocky outcrop where they had lunch and enjoyed the view.

then they went even farther, to the top of a cliff where they posed for pictures. There's one of Tony holding binoculars up to her eyes and looking out over the spectacular mountain landscape. It was the last picture that would ever be taken of her while she was alive, because moments later, she was plunging down through the thin mountain air, crashing through pine tree branches, and finally smashing onto the hard rocks far below. A little before 6 p.m., Harold Henthorne, called 911, sounding urgent, but not panicked. The operator put him through to the park service, and Harold told them Tony had fallen about

30 feet and had a bad head injury, but was still alive, with a steady pulse and low heart rate. He hadn't actually seen her fall, he said, because he'd been messing with his camera. He gave them a description of their location and demanded a helicopter come to evacuate Tony, but the wooded terrain was much too uneven to risk that. The park service has rangers trained to run the trails with first aid gear, and they were already suiting up to go. It was dark by the time Ranger Mark Ferdy reached Harold and Tony, guided by the light of a small moss fire Harold had started. He'd gotten there just about as quickly as was possible, but it wasn't quick enough. Tony Henthorne was dead. When somebody dies unexpectedly,

it can often take a while to get any kind of clear picture about what happened, but it's fair to say that almost from the get-go, everybody involved in trying to rescue Tony Henthorn had a bad feeling about Harold. When a police officer tried to talk him through CPR and give him the precise timing of the compressions and breaths, he just talked over her a bunch, then said he had to hang up to save the battery on his cell phone. What future calls could he possibly make that were more important than trying to save his injured wife's life? And as Ranger Farrity had approached, moving carefully down the rocky slope, he saw Harold before Harold saw him. Harold was just sitting across from Tony's still form and a small clearing at the base of the

cliff, just kind of staring off into space. But as soon as he spotted Farity, he scuttled over to Tony and started giving her frantic chest compressions. Harold told Faradie he'd been trying to revive Tony for hours. Fairty was an experienced ranger, and National Parks got a lot of visitors. He'd been on the scene at more medical emergencies than he liked to remember. Tony was wearing deep red lipstick. If Harold had been giving her as much CPR as he claimed, it should have been smudged, and some should have gotten on his face. Neither was the case.

More Rangers arrived. It was pitch dark by then, too dark to carry Tony's body out of there. A few Rangers were given the grim job of staying with her overnight to protect her body from predators, while Ranger Farity walked Harold back to the trailhead and drove him to the visitor's center. Instead of saving his cell phone's battery like he said he was going to do, Harold had been calling his friends. A couple of them were waiting to drive him the two hours back to Highlands Ranch, the Denver suburb where he and Tony lived with their little girl, Haley.

He gave the park service permission to impound his Jeep until he could come back to get it. The next day, Ranger Farity went back up the trail to get a better look at Tony and where she'd fallen. She'd fallen much farther than Harold had told the operator. He'd said 30 feet, but it was really closer to 100. She'd been moving fast enough to break at least one big pine branch on her way down before smashing into the sharp granite rocks at the bottom. Harold had put a blanket over Tony's legs and a fleece over her torso and had wrapped a white t-shirt around her injured head.

The shirt was soaked with blood and removing it revealed an awful head wound. Tony's blonde hair was stained pink by blood. After photos were taken of the scene, Rangers lifted Tony's body onto a gurney and started the long trek to get her off the mountain. The next day, Faradie drove down to Highlands Ranch to talk to Harold again. Faradie's first impression of Harold had been one of suspicion, and the second one was really weird. Before answering any questions, Harold insisted that the ranger come into his study and watch a slideshow on his computer, pictures of Harold and Tony with their daughter Haley. That was strange.

Had Harold put this together as soon as he'd gotten home? Harold was oddly calm as he answered the ranger's questions. It was less than 48 hours since his wife had died in his arms after suffering a horrific injury. But for all the emotion he showed, Harold could have been talking about something that happened years ago. No crack in his voice, no tears. According to Harold, when he and Tony were on the cliffside, they'd been passing the camera back and forth to take pictures of each other. As Tony was telling Harold where to stand, he'd gotten a text from their babysitter,

telling him Haley's soccer team had won their game 5 to 0. As he looked at his phone, Harold saw a blur of motion from the corner of his eye, and when he looked up, Tony was gone. He saw her lying still on the rocks below and climbed down the rocky slope as fast as he could. Still, it took him 45 minutes to get down there. Tony was unconscious but breathing, Harold said. Harold said he'd pulled her off the rocks into the clearing nearby, so she could be on a flat surface when he started CPR.

Then he'd called 911. Faradie asked if Tony's life was insured. It was, Harold had told him, for $1.5 million. It would go into a trust for Haley. Harold, of course, was the trustee. But Harold's calm demeanor finally showed cracks when Ranger Faradie showed him a map he'd found in the glove compartment of Harold's Jeep.

It was a standard park service map of the National Park, showing trails and campsites and whatnot, the kind they hand out at the park's entrance stations. This one had been marked with a pink highlighter pen. There was a circle around Nikki's Steakhouse, the restaurant in Estes Park, where Harold and Tony had made reservations for dinner after their hike. The Deer Mountain Trail was similarly highlighted. This certainly looked like somebody had highlighted where they'd intended to go on a visit to the park, although Harold had just told Ferdy that Deer Mountain was a spontaneous choice he and Tony.

he had made. And a little way off the trail, right where Tony had fallen to her death, was a pink X. Uh, huh, that's odd. When Faradie asked Harold what that X meant, he looked like somebody just punched him in the gut. He stammered and flushed and said, he just didn't know. Finally, he said, oh, uh, that map must have had nothing to do with the trip that we just took. It must have been from a different visit altogether. Come on, dude. Was that other trip an exact duplicate of this one? Same restaurant, same trail, and that didn't come any closer to answering Faradie's question. Even if it was from another trip, why is the exact location of your wife's death marked with an X? A dead woman's spouse literally having a map where X marks the spot

is obviously about the most incriminating evidence you can get, but Harold managed to make it even worse for himself. He told Faradie he'd been looking at a text on his phone when Tony fell, but he'd told the emergency operator he'd been fussing with his camera. He said it had taken him 45 minutes to get down to Tony at the bottom of the cliff, but Farity had taken exactly the same route in the nighttime dark of the woods, and it had taken him less than 10. Why had Harold waited till he was at the bottom of the cliff to call 911? And it would turn out that the babysitter had indeed sent a text about Little Haley's soccer game, but she'd sent it after Harold had already called 911.

Harold's story stank like an Alaskan salmon left out in the sun, and if he'd ever had hopes of making a good impression with the people who were going to investigate Tony's death, he'd blown it. Hard. And Harold usually worked hard to make a good first impression. He certainly had with Tony. Tony Bertolet was born in 1962 in Jackson, Miss. Mississippi, between an older and a younger brother and a well-to-do family full of high achievers.

Her dad was a geologist in the oil industry, and younger brother Todd followed in his footsteps. Tony and her older brother Barry both went into medicine, with Tony graduating magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi med school. But the siblings chose very different specialties. Barry was a cardiologist, which is a field that can offer big rewards, but take a heavy toll. Tony watched him work long hours, always on call. And just because of the nature of the work, a lot of patients die. Tony didn't want that. She wanted a 9 to 5 work life, especially because she hoped to start a family.

So she opted for a career as an ophthalmologist. She married her college boyfriend, but that ended in a divorce that apparently upset Tony so badly that for years she just gave up on dating and relationships altogether. But then in the late 90s, she dipped in the late 90s. toe into the then-fresh waters of internet dating. Specifically, the placid lagoon of Christianmingle.com. It was there that a good-looking guy with a nice smile caught her attention. He was six feet tall with a body type he described as toned. Now, I don't know how current the picture that he used was,

but like a lot of people in their 40s, myself included, toned was getting ever smaller in the rearview mirror of Harold and Thorne's life, okay? It's about 20 years in the rearview mirror of mine. Shut up. You're hot. Harold was a deacon in his church. He liked contemporary Christian music and going to the movies. His favorite movies, he said, were sleepless in Seattle and Sabrina. Dude, come on, it's 1999. You're not actually going to go straight to hell for watching The Matrix or the Sixth Sense, okay? I mean, maybe Patch Adams. I can't help you there. Am I a die-hard romance? Am I a die-hard Or what? Harold wrote on his profile.

As you can probably tell, Harold liked to lay it on a little thick. Okay. Dating profiles are an art, Harold. You've got to brag about your accomplishments without making it seem like you're bragging. And I know online dating was new at the time. But I feel like if he like said that shit at dinner, like on a blind date or something, that would also be a red flag. Oh, yeah. Yeah. he dreamed of walking hand in hand through tropical surf he wrote then some casual as well as elegant dining which i guess means somewhere that's pricey but you don't have to be scared of the waiters hmm so mcdonalds yeah denies maybe after that he and his special lady would dance the night away i'm an outgoing fun caring sincere growing man of god one who is very young at heart is especially

passionate about life has a great sense of humor and who communicates well, he wrote on his profile. I'm also usually described as being tall, dark, athletic, and attractive. Really? Harold, who usually describes you that way? Our nurse is putting it in your chart when you weigh in at the doctor's office. I can't believe he forgot to mention his absolutely staggering humility in addition to all this other stuff. Like the very young at heart is so, like, it just means he's got like arrested development and you're going to have to be his mom. That's what it is. It actually, to me, it reads like a romance scammer's profile, which is really funny. Yeah. I think both. Porcalinos dos. Like I said, here in good old cynical 2024, I think most people would react to a profile like that

with either an eye roll or a barf or in our case, both. But in, in In 1999, the unspoken rules about how you present yourself online were still kind of loosey-goosey, and although she'd been married, Tony was relatively inexperienced when it came to just dating. Harold managed to sprinkle in just enough self-deprecating stuff to avoid 100% dushiness, and besides straining his shoulder, patting himself on the back, he seemed to have a pretty solid life. He was a widower with a nice house and a dog, and he made a comfortable living and a job he just described as executive and managerial. Yeah, nice and vague.

It's like, uh, business things. I work with spreadsheets. Right. Harold and Tony had been internet dating for maybe a month and a half by the time he flew down to Mississippi to meet her parents on New Year's Eve of 1999. It was the first her mom and dad had heard of Harold and then they heard more. The two of them were planning to get married and move back to Harold's place in Denver. That was kind of startling, kind of out of left field, but overall, Tony's parents took it well.

For one thing, Tony was 37 and Harold was 44. If they'd ever had a parental relationship veto, it had expired years ago. Also, Tony's folks didn't really have room to talk about moving a relationship along too fast. They'd gotten married just six months after they met, and they were still happy together. Plus, they liked Harold. He was friendly and polite. He held out their chairs for them when they all went to dinner. Like we said, my dude liked to lay it on thick. Tony's brothers were a little more skeptical. Harold's intense friendliness was a bit much for them, but it's not like they got any really nasty vibes from him. He just wasn't the kind of guy they'd choose to hang out with. Yeah, I relate to this because I was always really skeptical about one of my good friends' ex-wife.

because she came on really strong, like aggressively friendly. She'd get like right in your face. Oh, like you were the most important person in the world. Try and just really hard to impress. And it gave me just an icky feeling from day one. And it turned out she was a dumpster fire in human form. So I was right. Yeah.

I had a friend introduced me to her on again, off again, sociopath boyfriend on a hike. And the whole time, he specifically walked next to me. We were in a group and he chose to walk next to me, just sharing funny, read embarrassing. stories about her, trying to, like, gain my favor, and it did not work. And shockingly, they did not last. Yeah.

Harold told Tony's family that he was a widower, but that was all they heard about his first marriage. I mean, obviously, they weren't going to press him for the grisly details right at the dinner table. He told them he made a good living as a fundraiser for churches and charities, and that he was going to build Tony a million-dollar house when they moved up to Denver. as the September wedding got closer though Harold started to show his ass a little for one thing he tried to insist that his name come first in the wedding announcement

which as Emily Post will tell you is not the way it's supposed to be the bride's name comes first and and he wanted Tony to be identified as Ms. rather than doctor okay the first one was pathetic enough but I'm out on this one what the fuck man

It's like, oh, does the doctor in front of your fiance's name make you feel threatened, bless its heart. What a chode. You should be proud that your wife's a doctor. What the hell is wrong with you? You're set for life, dude. She has a high-paying, like one of the highest-paying doctor jobs. And she's home at five every day. Are you kidding?

And the fact that he asked is so pathetic. Like, are you not embarrassed? Like, how do you spit it so that it's, like, her fault? You know what I mean? Because you know he did. He was like, I just don't want people to look down on me. And it's like, well, who's going to look down on you for marrying a hot doctor wife, you moron? Unbelievable.

And my name is to come first. What that hell? Like, it doesn't even come first alphabetically, dude. Bertilay Henthorn. Like, you just aren't going to win this one. No, there's no logical reason aside from his teeny tiny ego. It seemed like he wanted this wedding to be the Harold Hendthorn show, and Tony was just a supporting cast member. He wanted her to be an NPC at her own wedding, where traditionally, you know, in straight marriages at least, the bride is the star.

I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. But Tony's mom stuck to her guns on the announcement, and Harold had to suffer his least favorite thing. Not getting his way. Another wedding tradition is that the groom or the groom's family pay for the rehearsal dinner. Because he was out of town before the ceremony, Harold asked Tony's brother, Todd, to set it up. I'll write you a check, he said. The dinner was at a swanky country club with a band and a caterer, and afterward, Todd didn't see so much as a glimpse of Harold's checkbook.

He didn't want to stir up trouble with his new brother-in-law, so he just kept his mouth shut and ate the cost. Gross. And late on the night before the wedding, with Tony and her mom scrambling with last-minute arrangements and Tony packing for her honeymoon, Harold came over because he needed some shirts ironed, and presumably his testicles would shrivel to the size of peanuts if he dared to touch an iron himself. Tony ended up crying in the bathroom. Her mom told her she could still call the whole thing off, which is not a great sign right there. And let me tell you, I'm sure there are exceptions to this, so don't come for me. But, But this is coming from a gal who's seen a lot of friends' divorces over the years, okay?

I am of that age. I've seen a lot of divorces. If you're freaking the feck out and people are telling you, you can still call it off the night before your wedding, that's a red flag. Okay? It does not bode well. You can, in fact, call it off, and you probably should. And, like, I get. I can see why people don't.

Sure. It's embarrassing. But ultimately, people will talk about it for, like, a week and then forget all about it. And now, nowadays, you can go viral on TikTok and win the breakup by making your ex like a wanker. So win-win. And I just think that it's a brave thing to do. Like if somebody I knew did that, I would be like, oh, you're, yes, good, good call. Because you know that it has to involve so much soul searching to get to that point.

So good for you, you know. Someone I know did do that. And aside from wanting the tea, I was like, good for her, you know? Because I knew, I knew that it was bad. So I was like, good. I'm glad. I just wanted to know what happened. It's a hard thing to do.

And it's a brave thing to do. So the embarrassment will not be as bad as you think. Get the hell out of there. Nope. Because almost everybody that I know who's ever gotten divorced has said that they had that feeling, like as they were getting ready to walk down the aisle or, you know, they knew they shouldn't be doing it. And they just couldn't bear the thought of calling it off.

And then lo and behold, divorce. You know. Just do it. But, of course, the wedding went ahead, and after a Hawaiian honeymoon, Tony moved up to Denver with Harold. For a couple of years, she still came back to Mississippi a lot. She had a thriving practice there, and she wanted to make sure it went to somebody who would look after the staff and patients. After that was all wrapped up, Tony was in Denver full-time, got a job, and in 2005, she and Harold had a daughter, Haley. Tony was 43 by now, and although she'd always wanted kids, she'd started to think it wasn't going to happen.

It was a difficult C-section birth. Tony's mom told author Michael Fleeman, whose book Black Widower was one of our main sources for this case, that Harold came out afterward bragging so much that you'd thought he'd delivered the damn baby himself. When Tony's parents went in to see their daughter and her new baby, they saw little Haley grab a stethoscope. Aw, she's going to be a doctor like her mama, Tony's mom joked.

Harold glared at her and said she will not be a doctor. nice. So that was weird. After Haley was born, Tony's family expected she would work less. Harold, after all, was a successful man, allegedly, and Tony's 4% stake in the family oil business gave her a dividend of at least a couple thousand dollars every month. Damn, must be nice. But Tony was not only working full time, she started taking on-call shifts in a nearby hospital to make even more money. Her family got the impression that Harold's work was just going through a temporary lull, but they didn't get any details. Tony wasn't the kind of person to complain to other people about her marriage or about anything, really. In high school, she'd been a star basketball player, and one time

she'd injured her knee pretty bad. She hadn't wanted anybody at home to know she was hurt, so when she got there, she'd just smiled at her parents and forced herself to walk without a limp, until she got up to her room and fell onto her bed crying because it hurts so bad. Harold is of a type pretty common in true crime, somebody who thinks of himself as real smart but who is in fact kind of a dumbass. That's a kind of person who, if they're lucky enough to land a brilliant accomplished partner like Tony, will immediately start pecking away at her confidence. I guess because that's easier for them than facing up to the fact that they're not, in fact,

the planet's preeminent super genius. or that a girl might be smarter than them. Oh, calamity. He's also the type that just assumes he's surrounded by idiots all the time. Everybody's a dumbass but me. Like every Thursday, Harold would supposedly go off on business trips, and he would tell the babysitter he had to catch, say, a 9 a.m. flight. And then he would chat and putter around and finally leave for his 9 a.m. flight at about 9.30. Presumably not thinking that the babysitter would know.

notice? But she did, of course, and she thought what most people would, that Harold was probably screwing around behind Tony's back. But no, apparently a lot of the time he'd just go to the Panera bread down the road and sit in a booth all day, just dicking around on his laptop, probably ordering like one coffee all day and not leaving shit in the tip jar. A little later on, these business trips took him up to Rocky Mountain National Park. In the months leading up to Tony's death, he went there multiple times. Investigators would become convinced these were scouting trips to pinpoint a suitably dangerous location to end Tony's life, and that when he found it, Harold helpfully marked it on his map with a big pink X. Harold was a control freak. Almost the

only time Tony could be alone, without him constantly at her shoulder, was when she was at work, And not always even then. Harold would invite himself to staff meetings and offer his exalted opinion on how things should be run. And just to be clear, the henthorns did not have any kind of ownership stake in this practice. Tony just worked there. Can you imagine your partner just showing up at a work meeting and telling your colleagues all the things they're doing wrong? Unbelievable. And of course, everybody she worked with thought he was a twat.

Oh, of course. Yeah. And you know the water cooler gossip was scalding. And I'm sure she was embarrassed, like, ugh, a nightmare. It's just, it's so cringe. Like, I'm, I'm really tense right now just thinking about it. I can't. He didn't even want Tony spending time alone with their daughter, Haley, and would always be looking over Tony's shoulder.

She started looking forward to Herald's mysterious overnight business trips because it was the only time she was able to read and sing to Haley by herself. Oh, man. Soon, Tony's family started hearing from her less and less. When they called, Harold would always answer and say he'd ask Tony to call them back, but she never did. If they did speak to Tony, Harold would put the phone on speaker so he could be part of the conversation too. When her mom asked Tony why she didn't call home anymore, she said, well, nobody has called me. When Tony's mom told Harold that she knew Tony's brothers had tried to call her, Harold just grinned like a little kid caught stealing cookies. He had not, of course, been telling Tony that her family.

family had been calling for her, leaving her to think that they didn't care about her. Oh, my God. That's like one of the number one abuse tactics, by the way. Oh, that's what I was just thinking. That's abuser playbook, page one. Isolate. When her family were able to talk to Tony, she seemed less than she had been. Like her volume was turned down.

They didn't hear much about what went on in her life. For example, it wasn't until three weeks after the fact that they found out Harold had killed Tony by accident at their lakefront cabin. This was in May 2011, about 18 months before Tony's death. She and Harold, along with six-year-old Haley, had gone up to their cabin in the beautiful little mountain town of Grand Lake. Harold had called Tony to come out, and when she did, she saw something on the ground and bent to pick it up.

As she bent over, a heavy wooden beam smashed into her neck. According to the Harold, he'd been up on a ladder fixing the roof, and when Tony had stepped out, the beam just came loose and fell. Or possibly, he'd been making repairs on the deck and flung a loose plank out into the grass. His story changed, depending on who he was telling it to. If Tony hadn't happened to bend over, the heavy wooden beam would have hit her directly on the head instead of her neck. As it was, she fell to the ground, her whole body in awful pain. Everything numb except for a tingling in her fingers. The doctors at the little hospital down the, the road in Granby, thought Tony's back might have been broken and transferred her to a Denver

hospital. As it happened, nothing was broken, but Tony had painful nerve damage and tingling for months. In December that year, Tony was down in Mississippi without Harold, a rare opportunity for her parents to talk to her without him always around. Tony's mom was pretty blunt. She didn't think what happened at the cabin was an accident, and she told Tony she shouldn't go anywhere with Harold alone. If Tony disagreed with you or thought you were being ridiculous, she'd tell you so, but this time she just looked at her mom without saying anything. She'd be dead within a year. When her parents heard the news, her dad said, without thinking about it at all, he pushed her. Tony's parents and brothers arrived in Denver two days after her death and heralded nothing

to dissuade their growing suspicions. He was more upset about being investigated by the U.S. Park Service than about his wife dying horribly, having just learned that they were not ruling out homicide. I just want to get on with my life and they're bothering me right now, he told Tony's parents. Again, this was two days after she died. Bothering. Super inconvenient when he wants to flounce around and eat Panera, broccoli cheddar soup and a bread bowl and pretend he had, you know, more accomplishments than just like hanging out all the time. Harold didn't seem to comprehend human grief, like, at all. A little later, he'd tell a family friend, I miss my best friend.

I have to do the laundry and I have to do the grocery shopping. Cool, dude. Way to keep that human mask on. Real genius over here. Her family wanted to fly Tony's body down to Mississippi for burial. Harold insisted she'd be cremated as soon as possible. How many times have we seen that? They always want the body cremated. so you can't do any forensic testing.

After the viewing of the body, he made them watch a memorial slide show he'd made with as many pictures of himself as there were of Tony. Harold was distraught at his wife's funeral, but anybody who spoke to him soon realized this was because he was stewing about being under investigation. In particular, the fact that federal authorities were handling the investigation, because Tony had died in a national park.

Yeah, you didn't think that through, didn't you? National Park? Feds, dumbass. Harold would have much preferred some small-town yokel police department. If it had occurred 50 yards away, we wouldn't be in this situation, he told Tony's family at the funeral. The family headed back to Mississippi the next day, but not before telling the coroner they had deep suspicions about Harold's involvement in Tony's death. The police and federal authorities were already plenty suspicious and only got more so. Harold, remember, said that Tony's life was insured for $1.5 million, payable to a trust for Haley. That had been true when they'd set up the policy, but in April, five months before Tony's death, Harold had changed the beneficiary to himself.

And he'd neglected to mention two other policies on Tony's life, both also for $1.5 million and both with Harold as the beneficiary. The first was taken out in 2001. not long after they were married, and the second in 2005. There were no similar policies on Harold's life, and no indication that Tony had any idea these additional policies even existed. It sure looked like Harold had started thinking about a windfall from Tony's death soon after they got together, maybe even before.

And then there were the letters, emails, and phone calls the authorities got when Tony's death made a splash in the news, all on a similar theme. that this was not the only wife of Harold Henthorne, who had died in mysterious circumstances. Sandra Lynn Rochelle grew up in Potomac, Maryland, a bright pretty redhead who loved the theater in ballet. She studied social work at James Madison University in Virginia, and it was there she met a brawny Virginia dude named Harold Henthorne. They got married in 1982, with Harold planning every part of the wedding himself, then moved to Denver where Harold had a job lined up as a geologist with Chevron. And this seems to have been an actual real job, the only one in Harold's entire life. Lynn got a job as a social worker. Her family really liked Harold,

seeing him as someone who would protect Lynn. Lynn was universally liked. She was one of those people who was always trying to encourage and help people, but without being annoying about it. She was just a bright light. She was also kind of a frady cat, and growing up her siblings had delighted in scaring her to make her shriek. She was careful. She wasn't the type to take risks. As far as anyone knew, Harold and Lynn had a great marriage. Then on May 6, 1995, they went for a drive into the mountains. In the late evening, on their way back home, Harold pulled over to change attire. A little after 10 p.m., an elderly guy named Van Hayes answered a knock at his door. He didn't get many visitors at his remote house. There was a woman and two men there. She was Patricia Montoya,

she said, and the men were her husband and his brother. There had been an accident about a quarter mile down the road and they needed to call 911. Somebody was badly hurt. Hayes made the call and then followed the Montoya's Jeep down the road. A Jeep Cherokee was parked in a gravel turnout beside the road, one front tire missing. A woman lay on the gravel, a jacket draped over her torso. A man crouched down beside her, a hand on her neck as if he were feeling for a pulse. Harold's story was that he and Lynn had been driving along the winding curves of Highway 67, when he thought one of the front tires started to feel mushy. He pulled into the turnout to change it.

The jack that came with the Jeep wasn't working, so he used a flimsyer boat jack he happened to have in the vehicle instead. He'd raised the car and taken off the tire with Lynn holding the flash. Or Lynn had changed the tire while Harold held the flashlight. That part shifted in Harold's story, depending on who he's talking to. He'd taken the tire and tossed it into the back of the jeep, but it bounced out and the vehicle rocked and fell off the jack. He heard Lynn scream out, Harold! He hurried to the front of the car and found his wife crushed under the exposed brake rotor of the right front wheel.

It had fallen right onto the middle of her back. He assumed she'd been crawling under the Jeep to retrieve some lug nuts that had bounced and rolled there by accident. He'd waved down the Montoya's, and they'd used yet another boatjack Harold had to lift the car off of Lynn, then pulled her out in case the car fell again. Patricia's husband asked for Harold's jacket to put over Lynn to keep her warm, but Harold's paced back and forth as if he hadn't heard. The Montoya's covered Lynn in their own jackets, and the guys, noticing she didn't seem to be breathing, started CPR. Harold got mad. Don't touch her, he yelled. Leave her alone. Wow. Other worried motorists stopped to try and help,

but there wasn't much they could do. Before long, they heard the approaching sirens of the ambulance and everybody cheered. Everybody, except Harold, that is. Patricia Antoya remembered that he looked scared. Before the authorities arrived, the Montoya split. They'd spent most of the night drinking and playing horseshoes and really shouldn't have been on the road at all. Patricia left her fleece jacket over Lynn to help keep her warm, though. The EMTs were there before the police and discovered Lynn appeared to have no pulse or respiration. They started CPR. A medical helicopter landed to transport her to Swedish hospital in the Denver Metro.

A police officer would drive Harold there. When she arrived at the ER, Lynn was unconscious and unresponsive. with no pulse and no blood pressure. Her entire torso was bruised purple and her chest was partially flattened. Right from the start, the doctors doubted she would survive. She died in surgery shortly after 1 a.m. Almost everyone who had anything to do with the incident

thought it was suspicious as hell, but the official investigation was cursory at best. There was a lot they could have investigated if they'd wanted to. Was the sturdy jack that came with the Jeep action? broken, as Harold claimed. Would Lynn have been able to yell out Harold if a four-ton Jeep had just landed on her back? That's a good question. If the flat tire had bounced out when Harold chucked it into the back of the cheap, why were it and the spare both in there when the police arrived? Would a dropped lug nut bounce and roll under the Jeep on the gravel surface of the

turnout? Why was there a bootprint on the right front fender? Right about where somebody would kick if they wanted to shove it off a flimsy jack. Oh, that's creepy. Despite all these unanswered questions, the official report concluded. This case has been investigated and it has been determined that this death was an accident and no criminal charges will be filed. It's really a chilling thought how many deaths get shrugged off because small police departments just don't want to go to the trouble.

If they looked just a little deeper, they'd have found plenty of motive for murder. Harold and Lynn had $300,000 life insurance policies on each other, which Harold told investigators about. Just like with Tony, though, he neglected to mention two other policies he'd taken out on Lynn's life, each for $150,000, one of which was only payable if her death was an accident involving a car. So Lynn's death was worth $600,000 to Harold, about $1.2 million today. It was this payout that let Harold play the wealthy executive when he met Tony a few years later. Yep. Yeah, he never had his business boy job. He was just living on these proceeds of the first wife he killed. It's so creepy. In my opinion, anyway, he killed her. Unlike with Tony, Lynn's family had no suspicions at all about Harold. They rallied around and gave him all the love and support they could. He remained a part of their first.

family, and he introduced Tony to all of them after they were married. He was especially close with Grace Rochelle, who was married to Lynn's brother Kevin. In 2009, Grace and Kevin separated, and Grace was struggling. She'd always been kind of sheltered, and her life had mainly involved raising horses and homeschooling her kids. Suddenly, alone and overwhelmed, she often asked Harold for help. Telling people how to live their lives was just about Harold's favorite thing in the whole world, and he was all in. He helped Grace out financially, too. She viewed him as a helpful Big Brother, and when he suggested she get life insurance to make sure her kids were protected, she went along, and he set everything up. But Harold's Big Brother Act was starting

to wear thin. He'd berate her if she didn't call him often enough, and get real pissy if Grace didn't follow his advice to the letter. She pulled the plug on the life insurance and got a different policy on her own. At least, that's what she thought it happened, right up till two federal agents came knocking on her door shortly after Tony's death. With all the communication between her and Harold, Grace thought they were checking whether there was any romantic involvement between them. There never had been, although it seems likely Harold would have jumped at the chance. Not long after her divorce, she and Harold had been out on the lake with their kids, and Grace had been wearing a cute sundress. Harold looked her up and down. Harold looked her up and down.

and said, dang, Kevin sure was a fool. Like we said, Grace was kind of sheltered, and she just thought, oh, he's just trying to build up my confidence. In fact, the agents wanted to talk to her about an insurance policy they'd uncovered on her life for $400,000, with Harold Hentthorne as the beneficiary. With that news, some of the things that had happened in the months before Tony's death took on a chilling aspect. Harold had really ramped up the visits between his family and Grace's, in particular trying to get Grace's daughters and Haley to spend as much time together as possible. Was Harold aiming for Grace to be wife number three? He already had a hefty payout in place just in case, you know, lightning struck three times in the same place, and Grace should have an unfortunate lethal accident, just like Lynn and Tony had. It seemed horribly plausible. Grace says,

I'd have never married the guy, but he already had the policy owner. She definitely wasn't safe. After Tony's death, the new coroner in Douglas County, where Lynn had been injured, took a look at the file on the incident and did not like what she saw. She engaged an investigator to look at the case with fresh eyes and then changed the official verdict on Lynn's death from accidental to undetermined. A new investigation tried its damned us to recreate Harold's version of Lynn's death. Same make of Jeep, same boat jack holding it up, and they checked a tire into the back in as many different ways as they could. None knocked the car off the jack. They also discovered Harold had been telling increasingly bizarre stories about Lynn's death to

various different people. This was his signature, like he would always tell everybody a different story, which is just so dumb, and he thinks he's so friggin smart. You are a dumbass, sir. So dumb. so he would tell all these different stories to different people she'd been bending over to get something out of the back of the jeep when the hatchback fell and broke her neck or a lug nut shot out from the wheel as she changed the tire and went through her lung which is something i don't think has any basis in the laws of physics whatsoever yeah the acme laws of physics maybe like how is that going to happen that's just dumb dude that's ridiculous a rod from the jack exploded out and went through her heart The medical helicopter lost pressure and her lung collapsed. He told his Sunday school class that Lynn had died of cancer and that the chemotherapy had killed their unborn child. Harold wouldn't be charged for Lynn's death,

which you sometimes see with killers with more than one distinct crime. Prosecutors want to keep a fresh charge in their back pocket to avoid double jeopardy. But he was, of course, arrested in charge with Tony's murder, and the judge ruled that evidence from Lynn's death could be used at trial, as well as the injury Tony had suffered at the cabin, which is actually surprising because it's really hard to get prior bad acts in. Usually they'll throw that stuff out, but in this case, the judge allowed Lynn's death in as evidence. Harold was held without bail after it came out that he just transferred half a million dollars

into his brother's business bank account. Harold insisted this was just a normal investment, but before he made his deposit, the account had just $10,000 in it. That sure looked like running away money. The prosecution argued that the similarities between the deaths of Lynn and Tony were too great to be coincidental. Two wives that Harold had secretly taken out large life insurance policies on, two wives who seemingly died in bizarre accidents with no witnesses around except Harold. The fact that Harold skated on Lynn's death was practically an invitation for him to try again. In fact, I think Harold was planning on killing Tony right from the start.

He went prowling on Christian Mingle for a woman with solid earning potential, right as his insurance money from Lynn's death was starting to dwindle. In many ways, Harold is an absolute buffoon, a vain, big-mouthed idiot with one of the Rocky's most punchable faces. Oh, man, yeah. Oh, so punchable. But at his heart, he's ice cold. A man who can live with a woman for years, have a child with her, and then kill her without pause or regret, as long as the payday is big enough. Yep. And I don't think it's coincidence that he killed Tony just a couple years after Grace, who was young and pretty, got divorced.

She was definitely next on the list. He really thought he could get away with murder for a second time. And who knows, if he hadn't killed Tony in a national park, and his camera. was investigated by a small town police department, he might have actually gotten away with it. But the feds don't mess around. They sure don't. Harold's defense

was basically, boy, this guy sure is unlucky, right? I mean, they didn't have much else to work with, okay? He was found guilty and sentenced to life in the high security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Tony's parents

established an ophthalmology endowment to the University of Mississippi in her honor. Oh. Little Haley, of course, had a tough time through all of this, first losing her mom and then living alone with Harold, as he badmouthed Tony's family and even Tony herself, telling Haley her mom had died because she was clumsy. Oh, my God.

Before Harold was arrested, but when everyone suspected he was a murderer, Haley was isolated and bullied at school because Harold insisted on showing up and freaking everybody out until the school finally banned him from the property. And then her dad went to prison forever. Haley became the ward of her uncle Barry, Tony's older brother, and moved to Mississippi. As far as we can tell, she's 19 or 20, and in college now, studying atomic engineering, so obviously she got her mom's intelligence. Yeah, and I'm sure Tony would be so proud of her, too. You know, you've got to be a special kind of trash to marry somebody specifically to murder them.

And then to do it in the way Harold did, Tony was scary. of heights, and he picked a murder method that would guarantee she'd spend her last moments in absolute terror. He needs to never see daylight again. And this makes me feel just ever so slightly better. Harold was addicted to control, okay? He was always breathing down Tony's neck, trying to dictate the way she did things, trying to dictate the way her coworkers did things, trying to tell her how to mother her baby and clean the house and brush her teeth, everything and anything. Well, now, Mr. Henthorn is in a setting where he'll never have control of his own life again. And for somebody like him, that's the best punishment I can think of.

So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Ashley, Gabrielle, Andrea, Rebecca, Dayton, Christina and Sam. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode, add free, at least a day early,

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