Speaker 1: Wait, the Lucky Land Slots. You can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 2: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 2: weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 2: while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 2: just these cash prizes add up quick, So I suggest
Speaker 2: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 2: start getting lucky.
Speaker 3: Play for free at lucky landslots dot com. Are you
Speaker 3: feeling lucky?
Speaker 1: No purchase necessary void, We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: Terms and conditions apply.
Speaker 3: See website for details.
Speaker 2: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 2: gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 1: my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 3: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes? You do? In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 1: Really yes, excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win and tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You can get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 1: Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? No,
Speaker 1: we're just necessary ONID. We're gona be my Law eighteen
Speaker 1: plus terms conditions playing What's Everything deils. Judy was born Hello.
Speaker 1: Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com. It's my little escape.
Speaker 1: Now Judy is the life of the party. Oh baby,
Speaker 1: Mama is bringing home the bacon who take it easy, Judy.
Speaker 1: The Chumba life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino
Speaker 1: dot com and play over one hundred casino style games.
Speaker 1: Join today and play for free for your chance to
Speaker 1: redeem some serious prices. Jump chumpacasino dot com. Nover's necessary
Speaker 1: poly We're promitted by mom et plus turns and condition
Speaker 1: to ply see What's every Details Radio.
Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 4: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shot
Speaker 4: looking an infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder
Speaker 4: with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. Nancy Fister, heir to Buttermilk Mountain, the world
Speaker 5: renowned sight of the Winter ex Games, was Aspen Royalty,
Speaker 5: its ambassador to the world. She lived among the rich
Speaker 5: and famous. She partied with hunter s Thompson dated Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 5: had a joint baby shower with Goldie Hawn and globe
Speaker 5: trotted with Angelica Houston. She was also a philanthropist admired
Speaker 5: for her generosity, but behind the warm facade, she could
Speaker 5: be selfish, manipulative, and careless. Fister enjoyed bragging about her
Speaker 5: wealth and celebrity connections, but those closest to her, like
Speaker 5: Kathy Carpenter, Fister's personal assistant, drinking companion on one occasion,
Speaker 5: lover knew better. In two thousand and thirteen, after a
Speaker 5: long fall from grace, doctor William Styler and his wife
Speaker 5: Nancy relocated to Aspen to reinvent themselves. They'd lived the
Speaker 5: high life before a misguided lawsuit left them near poverty,
Speaker 5: and Nancy Fister was their answered prayer. She took them in,
Speaker 5: gave them a place to live, and allowed them to
Speaker 5: launch their new spa business. Everything seemed perfect until Fister
Speaker 5: turned on them, making increasingly irrational demands and threatening to
Speaker 5: throw them out on the street. When Nancy was found
Speaker 5: beaten to death in her own home. The Stylers and
Speaker 5: Carpenter were all under suspicion for the gruesome murder, but
Speaker 5: in this close knit, wealthy town set on keeping its
Speaker 5: reputation in secrets safe from the public eye, the police
Speaker 5: struggled to solve the mystery of what really happened. The
Speaker 5: book they were featuring Thece Evening his Shadow on the Mountain,
Speaker 5: Nancy Fister, doctor William Styler, and the Murder of Aspen's
Speaker 5: Golden Girl, with my special guests, journalists and authors Stephen
Speaker 5: and Joyce Singular. Welcome back to the programme and think
Speaker 5: thank you very much for agreeing in this interview. Joyce
Speaker 5: and Steven Singular.
Speaker 3: Hi, thank you for having us again.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Let's jump right into this incredible
Speaker 5: story and tell us a little bit. As you know,
Speaker 5: you're very, very familiar with Colorado and all things Colorado.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about Aspen, what Asmen is really like.
Speaker 5: And as you do in the book, you give a
Speaker 5: little brief history of this interesting place and also where
Speaker 5: the wealthy play and live and have been for many years.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit about Asmen as you
Speaker 5: do in the book, Stephen Joyce.
Speaker 3: Well, Asmen is really unique to Colorado. It's on the
Speaker 3: western slope of Colorado, of the mountains, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of like the Beverly Hills of Colorado. I guess you
Speaker 3: could say it's very, very wealthy. When you go in town,
Speaker 3: you go by the all the private jets that are
Speaker 3: lined up that take the celebrities and politicians in and out,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of an insular community. There's no place
Speaker 3: quite like it. And in the seventies, I'll start there, Steve,
Speaker 3: if you want to, you know, jump in earlier than that.
Speaker 3: But in the seventies it was you know, like a
Speaker 3: lot of mountain towns and a lot of resorts, full
Speaker 3: of a lot of partying, and you know, just kind
Speaker 3: of a crazy place. Hunter S. Thompson was living there.
Speaker 3: He ran for I think it was mayor the town.
Speaker 3: There was a high profile crime that occurred there in
Speaker 3: the seventies. Spider Savage, who was on the World Cup
Speaker 3: Circuit Racer ski racer, was living with Claudine Lange, who
Speaker 3: was married to Eddie Williams at one time, and she
Speaker 3: shot him. She shot Spider Savage and killed him, and
Speaker 3: a similar thing happened in that case as with this
Speaker 3: Fister case. The case she got a month I think
Speaker 3: in probation, and the town was quick to close ranks
Speaker 3: like they did with the fist case as well. It
Speaker 3: was sort of it was bad for publicity, it was
Speaker 3: bad for their image, and the whole thing was resolved
Speaker 3: very quickly and sort of mysteriously, and we were surprised
Speaker 3: to see that this happened again with this particular case. Steve,
Speaker 3: do you want to add anything to that.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah. They Aston was a real boom town back
Speaker 6: the end of the nineteenth century due to the discovery
Speaker 6: of minerals. It was a very it was somewhat wealthy
Speaker 6: back then, and then all of that went away. The
Speaker 6: silver market crashed and Assen became almost a ghost town
Speaker 6: with about three or four hundred people in it in
Speaker 6: the first part of the twentieth century. And then when
Speaker 6: World War II came, they started training in the mountains
Speaker 6: up there, and some of the really enterprising people who
Speaker 6: were involved in that said this, we could turn this
Speaker 6: into a ski resort, you know, if we just had
Speaker 6: the money. They had three different mountains that are all
Speaker 6: spectacular for skiing, and eventually those came into being. One
Speaker 6: of them was Buttermilk Mountain, which does figure into this story,
Speaker 6: and so that put Aspen on the map as a
Speaker 6: ski as an international ski resort and destination. Then they
Speaker 6: brought in this music festival in the summer, which brought
Speaker 6: in musicians and other people from all over the world,
Speaker 6: very high profile, very prestigious. Then they brought in this
Speaker 6: Aspen Ideas Festival to bring in you know, like a
Speaker 6: thank tank for the whole world. They have branches all
Speaker 6: over the world as a matter of fact. So that
Speaker 6: was sort of the foundation for Aspen. And when those
Speaker 6: things were in place, then it sort of turned into
Speaker 6: a party town. And Nancy Fister's mother and father were
Speaker 6: a part of the generation that really built Aspen, came
Speaker 6: wealthy as a result of building the ski resort on
Speaker 6: Buttermilk Mountain and were you know, real hard working of
Speaker 6: serious folks. That represents our of the first generation of Aspenites.
Speaker 6: And then their daughter represents the party time that was
Speaker 6: just about to erupt his choice talked about in the
Speaker 6: late sixties and seventies. And no one represented the old
Speaker 6: esp And more than her parents, who are very accomplished people.
Speaker 6: And no one represented the party more than Nancy.
Speaker 3: And in many instances with families like this, the first
Speaker 3: generation that creates the wealth have a different work ethic
Speaker 3: than the second generation that you know, our trust funders
Speaker 3: basically many a time and don't have the same work ethic,
Speaker 3: and that's sort of what happened with Nancy Fister.
Speaker 6: And her parents were very aware of this. They had
Speaker 6: three daughters. The daughters notoriously did not get along, Suzanne,
Speaker 6: Christina and Nancy. And it was I mean, it was
Speaker 6: an open secret that the three daughters did not like
Speaker 6: each other and quarreled a lot. So when the parents died,
Speaker 6: or before they died, they set up a system where
Speaker 6: money was distributed, but not in a very lavish way,
Speaker 6: especially not for Aspen. And that becomes a real integral
Speaker 6: part of this story as it unfolds. They didn't want
Speaker 6: their children to just you know, blow all this money
Speaker 6: as quickly as they could, which is something else that
Speaker 6: a lot of wealthy people do. So that we'll figure
Speaker 6: in as this story goes along.
Speaker 5: You talk about how Nancy and her sister Suzanne and
Speaker 5: Christina were raised by parents basically they were more interested
Speaker 5: in other things rather than parenty. It wasn't their priority.
Speaker 5: But Nancy grew up differently than Christine and Suzanne, or
Speaker 5: became a different person. So as we'll say a little
Speaker 5: bit later in life, what did the other two sisters
Speaker 5: gravitate towards them become and what was Nancy left? What
Speaker 5: was Nancy referred to as out of the three anyway.
Speaker 6: Well, the other two were more serious types, I believe
Speaker 6: one word for a while in real estate and another
Speaker 6: had like a jewelry or a collection. Christina made a
Speaker 6: point of wanting to sort of get away from the family.
Speaker 6: She said, I'm the fister that you know nobody knows.
Speaker 6: So she eventually moved to Denver and just wanted to
Speaker 6: completely distance herself, not just from the family, but especially
Speaker 6: from her sister Nancy. Suzanne lived fairly near Nancy all
Speaker 6: of her life, but they really did not get along well.
Speaker 3: Suzanne basically lived across the road from Nancy and they
Speaker 3: never really talked.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Nancy was this real outdoor loving you know,
Speaker 6: horseback riding, fishing.
Speaker 3: She fancied herself a philanthropist. Yeah, and she wore many hats.
Speaker 3: You know. She would portray herself as a producer or
Speaker 3: someone that worked for the Ellen show, Ellen degenera show.
Speaker 3: Sometimes she made up these titles to impress people.
Speaker 6: Right. She was very open and friendly and to a
Speaker 6: degree that you know, goes beyond what most people would
Speaker 6: think of of those words. There's an anecdote in the
Speaker 6: book where this guy, this journalist, comes to town and
Speaker 6: he's in asking. He doesn't really know anybody. He's standing
Speaker 6: in the middle of town in this mall. It's in
Speaker 6: the off season. There are any people there, and he
Speaker 6: sees this blonde woman. She was attractive, and he sees
Speaker 6: her and he sort of stares at her, and she's
Speaker 6: eating Chinese food, you know, with chopsticks out of this
Speaker 6: little box, and she just comes over to him and
Speaker 6: puts a bider of rice in his mouth. This is
Speaker 6: like his welcome to ask. I mean, that's you know,
Speaker 6: not something most people would do. So when people would
Speaker 6: go around the world, as you know Aspen, as many
Speaker 6: world travelers, they would say, you know, we're from Aspen,
Speaker 6: and the first question would be do you know Nancy Fister?
Speaker 6: Because she behaved that way all over the world.
Speaker 5: Right, you talk about all the in the book, you
Speaker 5: talk about all the celebrities that she encounters in the
Speaker 5: We mentioned in the introduction about the joint baby shower
Speaker 5: with Goldie Hahn and Globe trotting with all these movie stars.
Speaker 5: But when we talk about twenty and twelve, twenty and thirteen,
Speaker 5: and then later twenty fourteen when this story really occurs.
Speaker 5: You talk about how the luster had gone off her
Speaker 5: reputation and things were different for Nancy. So tell us
Speaker 5: what things had how things had changed for Nancy Fister
Speaker 5: in Aspen.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say this, by now, she was getting older.
Speaker 3: You know, she was in her fifties, late fifties, and
Speaker 3: many of her friends of her same age had already
Speaker 3: started raising families, you know, several decades earlier, and she didn't.
Speaker 3: She's kind of stayed the party girl a little too
Speaker 3: long at the party and so she really was sort
Speaker 3: of kind of just at loose ends whereas other people.
Speaker 3: And she had really had quite a drinking problem by
Speaker 3: this time too, and so yeah, a lot of her
Speaker 3: friends had already moved on, and you can imagine someone
Speaker 3: that was, you know, the party girl of the seventies,
Speaker 3: but now it's twenty fourteen, and it just didn't really
Speaker 3: play out that well, and it was sort of it
Speaker 3: was kind of sad and tragic. You know, she was
Speaker 3: sort of a she had devolved in sort of a
Speaker 3: tragic figure around town.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she would show up places that we have a
Speaker 6: story in the book, you know, where the sheriff was
Speaker 6: making a speech and she shows up drunk in the
Speaker 6: famous hotel and Aspen and interrupts him repeatedly and embarrasses him.
Speaker 6: And it wasn't the first time this happened. You know, she,
Speaker 6: as Joyce said, she this drinking problem got more pronounced
Speaker 6: and as she aged, and as that happened, you know,
Speaker 6: her friends were no longer these a list celebrity people.
Speaker 6: But she was sort of going down the social chain
Speaker 6: to find people to really hang out with. And that's
Speaker 6: how she came across and met and got involved with
Speaker 6: one of the key figures in this case, Kathy Carpenter,
Speaker 6: who worked at the local Alpine Bank as a teller.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us about the circumstances that they do meet,
Speaker 5: because it's very interesting, like you say, this a lister
Speaker 5: than now rubbing elbows with this other person. So tell
Speaker 5: us the circumstances in which they do meet and then
Speaker 5: strike up a friendship and more.
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 6: Well, Nancy banked at Alpine Bank and she went in there.
Speaker 6: You know, she was always very friendly. She was great
Speaker 6: at beginnings, let's put it like that, not so great
Speaker 6: at middles and endings, but she's Kathy waited on her
Speaker 6: and they struck up a conversation and Nancy went into
Speaker 6: the bank quite often and always talked to her, and
Speaker 6: she said she wanted to be her personal assistant at
Speaker 6: the bank. And then she called her one day and said,
Speaker 6: I would like you to work for me, you know,
Speaker 6: I would like you to be my personal assistant and
Speaker 6: work with me full time. And Kathy sort of famously said,
Speaker 6: you can't afford me because she had benefits and all
Speaker 6: of that, so she didn't do that, but they became
Speaker 6: progressively closer where Kathy would go up to her house
Speaker 6: and spend time and drink with her and you know,
Speaker 6: watch her.
Speaker 3: Dog, and she kind of afforded. She kind of brought
Speaker 3: Carpenter into a different social strata, right, and that was
Speaker 3: appealing to Carpenter.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, Kathy was you know, somewhat insecure, and here
Speaker 6: she was, you know, hanging out with Aspen Royalty, you know,
Speaker 6: going up to Buttermilk.
Speaker 3: Mountain, going to parties with her, up to her.
Speaker 6: House and hanging out with her, and you know, some
Speaker 6: of the time it was fun. On the other hand,
Speaker 6: they crashed bitterly at times, and that's a part of
Speaker 6: the story. The police had to come out a couple
Speaker 6: of times Nancy's house separate them and all of that.
Speaker 6: So she tended to have volatile relationships with both women
Speaker 6: and men.
Speaker 5: Can you explain, as you do in the book about
Speaker 5: the situation with the trust fund limits that the parents
Speaker 5: had imposed so that the daughters wouldn't squander everything, but
Speaker 5: also how it affected and Or and in addition to
Speaker 5: her personality that apparently was like you say, very good beginnings,
Speaker 5: but not so once you got to nowhere. So what
Speaker 5: did Kathy experience and see in those regards and tell
Speaker 5: us about those limits with the money or resources.
Speaker 6: Well, we were spent a lot of time talking to
Speaker 6: a private investigator named David Olmstead, who was ultimately working
Speaker 6: for one of the defendants in the case after this crime.
Speaker 6: And he told us again another great quote for the book,
Speaker 6: that when the parents Nancy Fister's parents, before they had died,
Speaker 6: they had set it up with a local lawyer named
Speaker 6: Andy Hecht who was in the latroom of Garfield, and
Speaker 6: hecked that he would control all of the money in
Speaker 6: their estate and that he would basically dole it out
Speaker 6: to the sisters on a monthly basis. We were told
Speaker 6: that she got seven thousand dollars a month. Now, that's
Speaker 6: not a lot of money in Aspen, and she chafed
Speaker 6: against this horribly. She didn't think it was enough money
Speaker 6: to live on. She made a point of going out
Speaker 6: to dinner with people and maybe saying she would take
Speaker 6: them out. And then when the bill came, you know,
Speaker 6: she was nowhere to be seen. So she had major
Speaker 6: issues around money and she couldn't really get more money
Speaker 6: out of that, out of Andy hecked. So this sets
Speaker 6: up a conflict right there from the beginning.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about the increasingly the responsibilities that Kathy
Speaker 5: Carpenter is given by Nancy Fister, and then Nancy Fister
Speaker 5: has an idea to change her life up somewhat, and
Speaker 5: it's discussed with Kathy Carpenter and including these new responsibilities
Speaker 5: or the increasing responsibilities that are given to her. Tell
Speaker 5: us what she does become. We alluded that she's some
Speaker 5: sort of assistant, and what's the idea of about the
Speaker 5: rental of the home? Tell us about some of these
Speaker 5: things that she is responsible for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as they grew closer, Nancy, Nancy would take her
Speaker 6: places on vacation. For example, they went to Hawaii together,
Speaker 6: but she would have Nancy liked to go away in
Speaker 6: the cold weather.
Speaker 3: So she had some injuries, some old injuries that you know,
Speaker 3: that were achy, and so she would travel to the
Speaker 3: to the warm climates in the winter. And which you
Speaker 3: should have said was that Nancy got a dog named Gabe,
Speaker 3: and then Kathy Carpenter had to start helping watch this
Speaker 3: dog because Nancy was not very responsible. So you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of it started. A lot of these things
Speaker 3: started falling on Kathy Carpenter's shoulders. And I think it
Speaker 3: was in the fall of twenty thirteen that she had
Speaker 3: made plans to go to Australia. There was somebody that
Speaker 3: she was dating there or was interested in, and and
Speaker 3: that's when she had decided to put her house up
Speaker 3: for rental.
Speaker 6: And she was known for making very casual agreements with renters.
Speaker 6: She didn't like a paper trail or anything like that.
Speaker 6: She'd just make a verbal agreement and then she'd say
Speaker 6: to Kathy, well, you take care of this. You get
Speaker 6: the money from them, you put the money in my account,
Speaker 6: and you handle all these transactions, because you know, you're
Speaker 6: at the bank and that's where it's done, and so
Speaker 6: that becomes, you know, a big part of the story
Speaker 6: that's about to happen.
Speaker 5: What we didn't talk about, and I apologize, is that
Speaker 5: also we should talk about Nancy's daughter, Juliana and the
Speaker 5: situation in terms of her parenting. Tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about that as we just backtrack a bit, as
Speaker 5: this will be important later.
Speaker 6: Go ahead and do it well.
Speaker 3: As Nancy was getting you know, as she was getting old.
Speaker 3: I guess she was probably in her thirties when she
Speaker 3: had a daughter named Juliana by a Argentinian polo player
Speaker 3: and who I think relinquished all rights to Juliana. She
Speaker 3: just she basically needed someone to father a child. She
Speaker 3: decided she wanted a child. But basically Juliana was brought
Speaker 3: up mostly by people in the Woody Creek area. Would
Speaker 3: you say, Steve like the Stranahans, And Stranahan is a
Speaker 3: name that some people might recognize as the liquor people.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they make urban and he's sort of well known
Speaker 6: for other things, George Stranahan. But you know, Nancy's parents,
Speaker 6: as you already said, Dan, weren't known for parenting, weren't
Speaker 6: known for their parenting skills. Some people kind of called
Speaker 6: her award of the community. And Juliana was raised very
Speaker 6: much the same way. And Nancy would have a whim
Speaker 6: she said, I want to fly to France, I want
Speaker 6: to watch a tennis match in French or France, or
Speaker 6: I want to go to Africa and do something. She
Speaker 6: would just take off and and the child would be
Speaker 6: left behind with whoever was there to take care of her.
Speaker 6: That created a lot of conflict between Nancy and her mother.
Speaker 6: And again it was just sort of characteristic of her
Speaker 6: to do exactly what she wanted to do when she
Speaker 6: wanted to do it.
Speaker 5: Now you also talk about the relationship interestingly, and this
Speaker 5: is important, very very important later that you have a
Speaker 5: former sheriff, if I'm not correct, Bob brought us and
Speaker 5: the current one at that time was dissolvable, was his
Speaker 5: he was brought us was before dissolvable. So tell us
Speaker 5: how close a relationship both of these men had, and
Speaker 5: also the relationship they both had with Nancy Fister.
Speaker 6: Well, it was there were days, you know, back in
Speaker 6: the seventies the Joyce alluded to when things were much
Speaker 6: looser and Aspen there wasn't as much wealth as there
Speaker 6: is now. There are now fifty of the world's billionaires
Speaker 6: now live in Aspens, so it's really a bit of
Speaker 6: a different game. But but DeSalvo told us that, you know,
Speaker 6: back in the days when Hunter Thompson was partying at
Speaker 6: al Creek Farm every night, you know, he should go
Speaker 6: out there and get in a poker game with him
Speaker 6: and play and all of that. And that was the
Speaker 6: world that Nancy was really moving in. I mean, she
Speaker 6: was in regular at the Hunter Thompson parties where Jack
Speaker 6: Nicholson would show up or other famous people she was
Speaker 6: very close to that brought us first and then to DeSalvo.
Speaker 6: She called him Joey and she called brought us I
Speaker 6: think Boo Boo, and she was just you know, it
Speaker 6: was a very tight knit community. They were all you know,
Speaker 6: brought us a sort of known for you know, his
Speaker 6: drug usage before he became the sheriff, and it was
Speaker 6: a pretty loose environment and she fit into that perfect.
Speaker 3: And it's pretty It's not that big of a town,
Speaker 3: you know, and when when winter is over, it gets
Speaker 3: smaller because everybody descends on it like they do with
Speaker 3: a lot of ski towns, and it gets you know,
Speaker 3: the population grows, but then in the summer it shrinks again, right.
Speaker 6: And there were there are only sixty six hundred people
Speaker 6: who live there as permanent residence, so it really is small.
Speaker 6: But there are things in the book that talk about
Speaker 6: like if you're the sheriff of you know, Pitkin County
Speaker 6: where Asping is you, you kind of learned to protect
Speaker 6: rich people's children. And she sort of had that relationship
Speaker 6: with them. You know, if something she might have, you know,
Speaker 6: been drinking and driving or something like that, they might
Speaker 6: protect her to keep her out of trouble. So the
Speaker 6: town sort of you know, closed ranks around her in
Speaker 6: a way to protect her and her daughter when she
Speaker 6: was when they were younger. And then that's interesting how
Speaker 6: that plays out once the crime occurs.
Speaker 5: Now, Jose, could you tell us about doctor w. William
Speaker 5: Styler and his wife Nancy and just tell us a
Speaker 5: little about their background.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, they both were in the medical profession. I
Speaker 3: believe Nancy Styler was a nurse at the time or
Speaker 3: nurse anesthetist, correct Steve, and that's where she met William
Speaker 3: Styler And that was here in Colorado, and he was
Speaker 3: an antithesiologist or he was on his way up in
Speaker 3: medical school at the time, you know, going up the ranks.
Speaker 3: They met, they got married. He eventually became chief of
Speaker 3: anesthesiology at a big hospital here in Denver, Saint Joseph's,
Speaker 3: and he was very, very successful, and she began she's
Speaker 3: stopped being a nurse, but she went on to begin
Speaker 3: a prize winning lily pad cultivator. She'd go to South
Speaker 3: America and she cultivated these huge lily pads that they
Speaker 3: had in their garden that would be they would be
Speaker 3: so big a small child could actually stand on one
Speaker 3: of them, you know, and hold its weight. So that
Speaker 3: became her passion and he supported her in that. But
Speaker 3: so they were very well to do, and then eventually
Speaker 3: he started well, actually what happened is he had an accident.
Speaker 3: It's kind of unclear because we went through all the
Speaker 3: medical records, we could find court records, and it's always
Speaker 3: kind of vague what happened to him. He had some
Speaker 3: sort of accident, maybe in his backyard set for X
Speaker 3: Steve here in southern Denver, which was more like Littleton
Speaker 3: or Inglewood, which is a suburb of south of Denver,
Speaker 3: and he became incapacitated. He could not do his job
Speaker 3: as well anymore, and he couldn't stand on his feet,
Speaker 3: and he couldn't. He just became worse and worse than
Speaker 3: weaker and weaker, so and maybe and he began he
Speaker 3: sued the group that he was in. I think they
Speaker 3: fired him. There was a software company that he helped
Speaker 3: Deville up right, and so there was some kind of
Speaker 3: conflict about the software that with the antithesiology group that
Speaker 3: he belonged to, and they eventually parted ways and he
Speaker 3: had to retire early, and he began his health just
Speaker 3: went started going downhill. Now, all the medical bills that
Speaker 3: they had and other things that happened to him started,
Speaker 3: they started to lose their wealth. Go ahead and jump in, Steve,
Speaker 3: if you remember something that I don't.
Speaker 6: They's sort of a three prong thing. What Joyce said
Speaker 6: was that, you know, the medical bills hit them, and
Speaker 6: then he, you know, he decides to sue this antithesiology
Speaker 6: group because he felt they didn't pay him. They actually
Speaker 6: offered him a pretty good settlement of one hundred and
Speaker 6: thirty five thousand dollars. I think it would have been
Speaker 6: a good idea to take that, but he said, no,
Speaker 6: I'm going to fight this in court and I'm going
Speaker 6: to win. He hires a lawyer who charges him six
Speaker 6: hundred and ten thousand dollars to represent him, which everybody
Speaker 6: felt was a whole lot of money exorbitant. And then
Speaker 6: this is occurring around the time of the two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight crash in the American economy, when you know,
Speaker 6: they had money invested like so many and so they
Speaker 6: were quite well off. I think their house was a
Speaker 6: little detail that sort of factors in, but I think
Speaker 6: it was like sixty four hundred square feet with these
Speaker 6: ponds in the backyard, with these lilies that Joyce was
Speaker 6: talking about, a really beautiful place.
Speaker 3: And then he got in an accident. Remember he got
Speaker 3: in an accident. That didn't help anything because that was
Speaker 3: even more money that they lost. So they had to
Speaker 3: sell their house, they had to move out, they had
Speaker 3: to downsize, they had to go to different locations where
Speaker 3: they were renting. But you know, just struggling. And so
Speaker 3: Nancy Styler decided, who had also had a background as
Speaker 3: an esthetician, you know, somebody that does botox and applies
Speaker 3: falfylashes and to women, and she had this idea to
Speaker 3: go up to ASP and you know, maybe have like
Speaker 3: a mobile like RV type of thing where you could,
Speaker 3: you know, go and provide these services to the wealthy
Speaker 3: women up in Aspen and they could reinvent themselves up there.
Speaker 3: So they decided to head up to Aspen and look
Speaker 3: for a place. And that's where they saw the ad
Speaker 3: in the Aspen Times that Nancy Fister had put in
Speaker 3: looking for someone to rent her house, which is a
Speaker 3: really nice house at a multi level house with a
Speaker 3: greenhouse in the in the back facing south and that
Speaker 3: was really attractive to them, and especially to Nancy Styler
Speaker 3: because she wanted you know, she was an avid gardener.
Speaker 3: And that's how they met.
Speaker 6: She also thought something Joyce pointed out that you know,
Speaker 6: if women didn't want to be seen getting botox, you
Speaker 6: know in downtown Aspen, you could this is a few
Speaker 6: miles out of town. I mean they might go there
Speaker 6: and have more privacy for this kind of word getting done.
Speaker 6: So Nancy Fister said, yes, move in. You can use
Speaker 6: my house to start your spa on all these services.
Speaker 6: And they thought and.
Speaker 3: Matthew Fister there was talk that maybe she would even
Speaker 3: invest in their business. Right she started building up. You know,
Speaker 3: they met and you know, she came to the door
Speaker 3: in her bathrobe with a glass of champagne, and they
Speaker 3: were kind of taken aback because they're more conservative, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of the coming together of two
Speaker 3: very different types of people. But they were you know,
Speaker 3: it looked like everything looked golden about the situation. She
Speaker 3: looked gold and she was so friendly and nice, and
Speaker 3: they'd been beaten down and this just looked like a
Speaker 3: perfect opportunity. She was going to be gone, They could
Speaker 3: rent the house for the winter and they could do
Speaker 3: their business out of their house, and they just, you know,
Speaker 3: they jumped on it.
Speaker 6: And the good Williams lasted about two weeks. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 6: Nancy Fisher was planning on leaving. I think it was
Speaker 6: like the third week of November that all this happened
Speaker 6: that Joyce talked about in October twenty thirteen. They saw
Speaker 6: the ad they get together, this is the Savior, and
Speaker 6: then they realized that in a short order that that
Speaker 6: Nancy Fisterer had a drinking problem, and that every day
Speaker 6: she would you know, start drinking around noon, or she'd
Speaker 6: leave the house and go somewhere and drink, and she'd
Speaker 6: come back and often in a pretty nasty mood, and
Speaker 6: she started, you know, ordering them around, especially Nancy Styler.
Speaker 6: And again you know here they are. This guy had
Speaker 6: been the head of antaphysiology in a major metropolitan hospital.
Speaker 6: Nancy Styler had a big reputation in this area of
Speaker 6: Botany and they were not prepared for the kind of
Speaker 6: stuff that was coming.
Speaker 5: What was their relationship with Kathy Carpenter at that time.
Speaker 6: They only got to know her a little bit during
Speaker 6: that period right there. But then Nancy Fister did leave.
Speaker 6: She did have her plans to go away to Australia
Speaker 6: for four to six months. It was she was always
Speaker 6: a little bit vague on timeline. So what happened was
Speaker 6: that that she told Kathy Carpenter, you know, these people
Speaker 6: will watch the dog Monday through Friday.
Speaker 3: Well, and see that was news to the to the
Speaker 3: stylers day. That wasn't part of the deal. So all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, here's the woman going to Australia. Oh
Speaker 3: and by the way, now you're going to take care
Speaker 3: of my you know, large standard poodle. So little by little,
Speaker 3: these things started, you know, grading at them. Oh, now
Speaker 3: we have to take care of a big dog, you know,
Speaker 3: And this wasn't part of the agreement. So that threw
Speaker 3: Kathy Carpenter more into the equation. Now, because maybe if
Speaker 3: if that dog hadn't been involved, then Kathy Carpenter would
Speaker 3: have just collected the rent the rent every month and
Speaker 3: not really had much to do with it. But because
Speaker 3: of the dog, she was thrown into their life more
Speaker 3: and more.
Speaker 6: And Kathy would come up and you know, they would
Speaker 6: have a drink and they would talk about someone who
Speaker 6: was gradually, you know, sort of a common enemy. I mean,
Speaker 6: Kathy it had serious conflict with Nancy up to this point.
Speaker 6: I mean, there was there's a story in the in
Speaker 6: the book where they get into a major fracas in
Speaker 6: Glenwood Springs and you know it's they almost end up
Speaker 6: in jail and they're fighting and all of those things.
Speaker 6: So she had her own history and then the Stylers
Speaker 6: are gradually understanding this is not you know, a perfect marriage,
Speaker 6: and they start complaining and they're drinking and and Nancy
Speaker 6: Styler starts doing some work on Kathy you know, hair
Speaker 6: and maybe.
Speaker 3: Well mostly eyelashes, eyelashes and like, yeah, aesthetic things.
Speaker 6: Right, So there's you know, they're thrown together and they
Speaker 6: start talking about all.
Speaker 3: Sorts of things truly.
Speaker 6: So the stylers, I mean they really did not have
Speaker 6: much money at all. I mean they were virtually broke
Speaker 6: by well.
Speaker 3: And then what was the rent that they were paying
Speaker 3: every month, I mean it was significant.
Speaker 6: Six They did six significant dollars to come to sort
Speaker 6: of move in, and then they were going to pay
Speaker 6: six thousand more. That was in November, like at the
Speaker 6: end of December. And so then one of the first
Speaker 6: things that happened was that the water system broke down
Speaker 6: in the house and Nancy go Fister got all upset
Speaker 6: about that. But that meant Nancy Styler couldn't start her
Speaker 6: spa business, and just one thing after another sort of
Speaker 6: started to go wrong. So where the story gets more
Speaker 6: intriguing is that they did manage to come up with
Speaker 6: six thousand dollars, and then they managed to come up
Speaker 6: with another six thousand dollars and they gave it to
Speaker 6: Kathy Carpenter again who worked at the bank and who
Speaker 6: had sort of a safety deposit box for Nancy Fister,
Speaker 6: and Nancy Fister started to blow up because she didn't
Speaker 6: get that six thousand dollars. So this is the first
Speaker 6: like major crack in the relationship. So the question becomes
Speaker 6: right there, you know, where did that six thousand dollars go.
Speaker 6: You have somebody in Australia demanding the money, you have
Speaker 6: somebody in Aspen saying they paid the money, and you
Speaker 6: have somebody at the local bank in the middle of
Speaker 6: all that. So then Nancy Styler turned really Nancy Fister
Speaker 6: turned really nasty on them very quickly. It all degenerated.
Speaker 6: She said, you need to move out. I need to
Speaker 6: find other renters. And it starts to unwind from there.
Speaker 5: You talk about that, it's instead of the six months,
Speaker 5: she's going to cut her vacation short and come back
Speaker 5: and deal with this, which seems to a lot of
Speaker 5: people later and maybe even at the time, is sort
Speaker 5: of an overreaction to this. So what does Kathy Carpenter
Speaker 5: in preparation for that? And what do the Stylers do
Speaker 5: in response to this being tossed out, even though they've
Speaker 5: spent the money. What do they do in response to this?
Speaker 6: Well, they they tried to communicate with her lawyer. She
Speaker 6: had a lawyer there named John Beattie, and they were
Speaker 6: they were just in a state of shock. I mean
Speaker 6: they were like, we just moved into November. We did
Speaker 6: everything she did.
Speaker 3: And they didn't know what they were going to do.
Speaker 3: They were they were desperate, correct.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And so you know, first of all, doctor Styler
Speaker 6: sort of blows up at the lawyer, blows up at
Speaker 6: Nancy Fister. Thenny, you know, Back's office says, you know,
Speaker 6: let's let's work this out. You know, we gave you
Speaker 6: the money, we've we've kept our agreement, and you know,
Speaker 6: let's see if we can work through this. Nancy Fister
Speaker 6: just she was once she turned on you. I mean
Speaker 6: she was she was very nasty and so again and
Speaker 6: whatever Kathy Carpenter was doing or had done, she basically
Speaker 6: kept herself. So just more or less arbitrarily. It's the
Speaker 6: middle of February. Now she's only been gone three months,
Speaker 6: and she says, I'm coming home. I'm going to fly
Speaker 6: home on February twenty second. Get those people out of there.
Speaker 6: They have to be gone when I get back, and
Speaker 6: they have to have their stuff out of my place.
Speaker 6: And Joyce, you remember like the things they had in there,
Speaker 6: I mean it was a lot of major.
Speaker 3: Oh they had thousands of dollars worth of you know,
Speaker 3: her special facial laser machines and things that she had
Speaker 3: bought I mean worth I think hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 3: dollars that they had invested for this startup business that
Speaker 3: they were going to.
Speaker 6: They had to bring it all up from Denver, they
Speaker 6: had to move it into the house. They had to
Speaker 6: try to set up their business. You know. And these
Speaker 6: people are in their mid sixties. They were not young people,
Speaker 6: and they were they had fallen a long way from grace.
Speaker 6: They were in a state of shock. But they they
Speaker 6: realized that they needed to get out, that this was
Speaker 6: a serious situation. And Nancy was Nancy Fister was in
Speaker 6: fact on a plane coming back.
Speaker 3: And it was and it was, and it was really
Speaker 3: it was unfortunate that Nancy Fister kept playing sort of
Speaker 3: a cat and mouse type of game with them. I mean,
Speaker 3: she put she started pushing them and pushing them and
Speaker 3: calling them names and you know, like you you you
Speaker 3: belong in the trailer court down down the road, and
Speaker 3: just really saying these ugly things to attack their ego.
Speaker 3: And it's sort of like to me, I always looked
Speaker 3: at it like a cautionary tale. You don't know when
Speaker 3: you're in traffic, if the person that's cutting you off.
Speaker 3: You know, you shouldn't say something to him or make
Speaker 3: some sort of you know, gesture at them, because you
Speaker 3: just never know who you're going, who you're up again
Speaker 3: in a situation like that, And that's sort of what
Speaker 3: happened here. The Stylers didn't really know who she was,
Speaker 3: and they didn't know and Fisher didn't know who they were,
Speaker 3: and William Styler also had a very bad temper. So
Speaker 3: you have these two people with really bad tempers and
Speaker 3: it was a perfect storm coming together of strangers that
Speaker 3: crossed each other's paths that you know, ended up in murder.
Speaker 6: And as to go back to the earlier part of
Speaker 6: the story, Nancy Fister really needed that six thousand dollars
Speaker 6: in money. I mean, she was always talking about how
Speaker 6: wealthy she was and how wealthier family was. It absolutely
Speaker 6: wasn't true. So when that six thousand dollars doesn't show
Speaker 6: up at the end of December early January, it really
Speaker 6: threw her over the edge because she needed all the
Speaker 6: money she could get her hands on. So, as Joey said,
Speaker 6: neither you know, they fell in love real quickly with
Speaker 6: each other, and they had no idea who they were doing.
Speaker 6: She didn't understand that the stylers had spent about a
Speaker 6: decade just losing all of their money, all of their prestige,
Speaker 6: and their home. So it was a volatile situation.
Speaker 1: Judy was boring.
Speaker 6: Hello.
Speaker 1: Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
Speaker 6: It's my little escape.
Speaker 1: Now Judy's the life of the party. Oh baby mama
Speaker 1: is bringing home the bacon. WHOA, Take it easy, Judy.
Speaker 1: The Chumba life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino
Speaker 1: dot com and play over one hundred casino style games.
Speaker 1: Join today and play for free for your chance to
Speaker 1: redeem some serious prices. Jump chumpacasino dot com. Noe's necessary?
Speaker 1: Where premitted my mom? He lost terms and condition to blaye?
Speaker 1: What every details.
Speaker 5: Now tell us about the two days or three days
Speaker 5: in question here the February the third week of February here,
Speaker 5: and what happens regarding these players, these stylers and Karen
Speaker 5: pardon me, Kathy Carpenter, And then what was going on
Speaker 5: in terms of you write in the book that there
Speaker 5: was something else going on that might have precipitated Nancy
Speaker 5: coming back from Australia. So another reason other than just
Speaker 5: to kick somebody out of this rental. So tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Well, again, money sort of being the underlying issue of
Speaker 6: a lot of things here. But nobody could understand was
Speaker 6: fly Nancy Fister would drop everything, fly back from Australia
Speaker 6: and you know, to kick these people out. As the
Speaker 6: number of people told us, it costs as much to
Speaker 6: come back and do all that as just to have
Speaker 6: her lawyer evict them, which would have been as much
Speaker 6: a much cleaner thing. So, as I said earlier, we
Speaker 6: talked to this private investigator who ultimately would be representing
Speaker 6: Nancy Styler after her arrest, and he said that what
Speaker 6: nobody's talking about is that there was a land sale
Speaker 6: plan right around that time from the Buttermilk Mountain estate.
Speaker 6: Every now and then they would raise money by selling
Speaker 6: off a piece of that of those properties, and it
Speaker 6: was not a small amount of money. So the story,
Speaker 6: the narrative of the murder really starts on February twenty second,
Speaker 6: and we'll talk about more of what happens in between.
Speaker 6: But Nancy Fister is found dead on February twenty six,
Speaker 6: four days later, and two days after that, this massive
Speaker 6: sale of land goes through for four point five million dollars.
Speaker 6: None of that money was going to go to Nancy Fister,
Speaker 6: and there was speculation that she was upset about that,
Speaker 6: that she wanted to be involved in that, and that
Speaker 6: that may have been another motivation for coming home again.
Speaker 6: Implies conflict with her sisters over the sale of the land,
Speaker 6: over the money, and all of those issues were in play. Also,
Speaker 6: generally speaking, when somebody is a part of the real
Speaker 6: estate transaction like that and they get murdered, you wouldn't
Speaker 6: carry out the sale two days later. But in this
Speaker 6: particular case, it was carried out. All the money transactions
Speaker 6: went through, and so this raised all kinds of questions
Speaker 6: about was she really coming back over a dispute over
Speaker 6: a few thousand dollars in rent or was she coming
Speaker 6: back over millions and millions of dollars in this land sale.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about that, of course that Kathy Carpenter
Speaker 5: makes this nine to one one call, But first there
Speaker 5: is nazis just missing from people on the most I
Speaker 5: think the Tuesday. So take us back to those days
Speaker 5: and some of the people that all are noticing that
Speaker 5: she's not around people that would normally speak to her,
Speaker 5: interact with her, tell us what happens.
Speaker 6: Okay, So she flies back on the evening of the
Speaker 6: twenty second, which is a Saturday, and she insists that
Speaker 6: Kathy Carpenter spend the night with her, and then Sunday comes.
Speaker 6: Kathy was actually in AA and Alcoholics Anonymous. She goes
Speaker 6: to a meeting and her advisor there says, you know,
Speaker 6: there's something really off with this woman.
Speaker 3: Let me just preface this by saying very quickly, and
Speaker 3: then please continue Steve that Now by this time, Nancy
Speaker 3: Styler is going around town and saying in public, boy,
Speaker 3: I really wish that someone would just kill that Nancy Fister,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, coming out insane thing, that blatant
Speaker 3: of a thing. Okay, yeah, right, that's okay, that's important.
Speaker 6: Okay. She had said this to several people. She effectively said,
Speaker 6: you know, she'd be in a better office.
Speaker 3: And William Styler was going to the local jewelry store
Speaker 3: to try to pawn Nancy's Nancy Styler his wife's wedding
Speaker 3: ring and wedding bands. They were desperate for money, and
Speaker 3: he said to the man as he was leaving, well,
Speaker 3: because the man said, I can't give you very much
Speaker 3: for this, Well, I guess I should just kill myself.
Speaker 6: Then, and to go back to what Joyce said about
Speaker 6: sort of a cat and mouse game. So that was
Speaker 6: Saturday night. On Sunday, Nancy Fister's back at her home
Speaker 6: work with Kathy, and she writes down on a piece
Speaker 6: of paper that Kathy is going to meet William Styler
Speaker 6: later in the day. They're going to exchange cars, and
Speaker 6: she's going Kathy has to tell him that he owes
Speaker 6: Nancy Fister fourteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: And they were exchanging cars because Kathy had a bigger
Speaker 3: car and they were going to a little station wagon, right,
Speaker 3: and they were going to borrow her car to start
Speaker 3: moving things out of the house.
Speaker 6: So here they are, you know, trying to accommodate, trying
Speaker 6: to get out of that house as quickly as possible.
Speaker 6: Not an easy thing to do, middle of winter, and
Speaker 6: they're moving their stuff out, and then Caffy meets them
Speaker 6: and hands a piece of paper and says, you owe
Speaker 6: her fourteen thousand dollars and she's not going to release
Speaker 6: your equipment back to you until you give her that money.
Speaker 6: They were virtually broke.
Speaker 3: The equipment that was worth over one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so this was a profound you know, slapping the
Speaker 6: face to them. And of course doctor Styler said, you know,
Speaker 6: he blew up, I'm not going to give her a penny.
Speaker 6: Blah blah blah. He went back and he told his
Speaker 6: wife they were staying in a cheap motel in Basalt,
Speaker 6: which is about twenty miles down the road from Aspen,
Speaker 6: And of course she blew up, causing her to say
Speaker 6: some of the things she did. But doctor Styler talked about,
Speaker 6: you know, fighting off depression for a long time during
Speaker 6: all their troubles. But now if the story kind of turned,
Speaker 6: and he said, my wife was depressed and I didn't
Speaker 6: want her to know suffer anymore. And that becomes important
Speaker 6: with the story that he tells. So that's Sunday. Monday
Speaker 6: comes and they he at eight thirty in the morning.
Speaker 6: He was going to get a van so they could
Speaker 6: continue their moving out. But he goes and the van
Speaker 6: place is not open until ten or ten thirty, so
Speaker 6: he does something else. Now, as far as we know,
Speaker 6: I mean, that's all we know for a long time.
Speaker 6: In other words, they're trying to move out, he's trying
Speaker 6: to get a van, his wife is at the motel,
Speaker 6: so they can't do too much moving that day. They
Speaker 6: eventually go back to the house and Nancy Styler, Nancy Fister,
Speaker 6: is nowhere around. They can't find her. They call her name,
Speaker 6: she's nowhere about, so they think she just took off
Speaker 6: again because that was sort of what she did. So
Speaker 6: they move as much as they can. On Monday, they
Speaker 6: move as much as they can. On Tuesday, they go
Speaker 6: back to the house. They can't find her, they don't
Speaker 6: know where she is. And then Wednesday comes and again
Speaker 6: the exact same pattern. She's not in the house. The
Speaker 6: dog is there, the dog's bowl is empty, there's some
Speaker 6: messes around the house, but she's nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 6: So they leave. They're officially moved out now by midday Wednesday,
Speaker 6: which is the twenty sixth, and Nancy Styler contacts Kathy,
Speaker 6: and Kathy's going to go up to the house and
Speaker 6: she's going to do whatever she does up there, I
Speaker 6: think take care of the dog at that point, because
Speaker 6: the dog needs some attention. So she goes to the
Speaker 6: house and she.
Speaker 3: Goes up and goes up the stairs. She goes up
Speaker 3: the stairs to where Nancy's bedroom is because you have
Speaker 3: to go up a couple of flights of stairs.
Speaker 6: Very important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there was wasn't there a note on the
Speaker 3: door to that said, oh, please don't bother me. I'm sleeping,
Speaker 3: you know, signed Nancy Fister. And she had knocked. I mean,
Speaker 3: she had jet lags. She'd come back from Australia, and
Speaker 3: she was known to take quite a cocktail of medications
Speaker 3: along with her, you know, her usual prosecco or champagne
Speaker 3: to wash it down with. So everybody just assumed she
Speaker 3: was out cold sleeping.
Speaker 6: But she's not. But she's not in the bed. And
Speaker 6: Kathy Harpender goes in the room and she looks around
Speaker 6: the bedroom and the bed is made, and that's like
Speaker 6: the first light that goes off in and she said,
Speaker 6: Nancy Pister never made a bed in her life. Other
Speaker 6: people made the bit for her. So something here doesn't
Speaker 6: quite add up. She looks around, there's no Nancy Fister.
Speaker 6: She looks at the headboard on the bed and she
Speaker 6: sees something that could be blood. She's not, she's not
Speaker 6: quite sure, but she looks around. She goes to the
Speaker 6: closet in the bedroom and she doesn't have the key.
Speaker 6: The key had been. She had put the key in
Speaker 6: the door the last time she was there Sunday or Monday,
Speaker 6: and the key's gone, and that's like the second thing
Speaker 6: that's really abnormal. So she has to go back downtown
Speaker 6: to ask and get perfective key and come back and
Speaker 6: she opens that closet door and she sees this bundle
Speaker 6: of something in the in the closet, there's blankets, there's
Speaker 6: plastic material, there's you know, something wrapped inside of all
Speaker 6: of this material, and so she totally freaks out. It's
Speaker 6: very debatable what she saw when she looks in the closet.
Speaker 6: This is a big part of the story. And it's
Speaker 6: also debatable what she saw on that headboard. She goes
Speaker 6: halfway down the mountain.
Speaker 3: Well, she said she saw hair.
Speaker 6: Right, She said she either saw a headboard with blood
Speaker 6: on it or a forehead, yeah, with blood on it.
Speaker 6: And the nine one one call that she then makes
Speaker 6: is somewhat confusing because if she saw the woman's forehead
Speaker 6: or her blonde hair wrapped in all that stuff, that
Speaker 6: was physically impossible. The body was entirely covered up, and
Speaker 6: she would have had to have seen the body before
Speaker 6: it went into that rapp.
Speaker 3: Or she could have unwrapped it and looked. But why
Speaker 3: did she say? Why didn't she just say I looked
Speaker 3: under it? But she never said that. She never said
Speaker 3: I uncovered what was under the plastic bags, you know,
Speaker 3: and saw She was adamant that she just looked in
Speaker 3: and saw this hair.
Speaker 6: So this is pivotal, right, So it doesn't you know,
Speaker 6: they're inconsistencies at best in her story. She goes down
Speaker 6: the mountain, calls nine one one. One of the officer
Speaker 6: shows up and notes that she's been drinking. Now she
Speaker 6: was as you were calling AA two or three days earlier.
Speaker 6: Apparently she had had something to drink that might have
Speaker 6: confused her. So they She goes basically to the police
Speaker 6: station that night and tells them about all the conflict
Speaker 6: between Nancy Fister and the stylers. And at about five
Speaker 6: o'clock the next morning, there's a knock on the door
Speaker 6: at the motel room and Bassault and the police take
Speaker 6: the stylers into custody, and they are apparently totally in
Speaker 6: shock at that point.
Speaker 5: You talk about that they take the direction from Kathy
Speaker 5: Carpenter and look at the stylers and start investigating. But
Speaker 5: you have a very very interesting character. And an investigator
Speaker 5: of Private Eye named we mentioned you mentioned before, David Olmstead,
Speaker 5: that comes in once they are charged. How does Kathy
Speaker 5: Carpenter become to be one of the three charged in.
Speaker 6: This Well, the stylers are quickly taken into custody and
Speaker 6: they don't implicate Kathy Carpenter. But the transcription, as I recall,
Speaker 6: the nine one one call does refer to Kathy Carpenter
Speaker 6: talking about the forehead. So if that happened, then her
Speaker 6: story just doesn't hold up. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 6: There's another contradiction in your story as well. She tells
Speaker 6: the police that that night when she drove up to
Speaker 6: Fister's house, the first time she saw the Stylers leaving,
Speaker 6: that was not the truth Styler's Joyce. You remember where
Speaker 6: Nancy Styler was at that time. She was in Glenwood
Speaker 6: Springs getting an eyelash extension.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's.
Speaker 6: Another real basic inconsistency. So they grilled her for about
Speaker 6: twenty or twenty two hours straight. Two detectives in particular,
Speaker 6: and ultimately, you know, felt that her comment about the
Speaker 6: blood seeing the blood was enough of an inconsistency to
Speaker 6: arrest her. So by the middle of March, which is
Speaker 6: about two weeks to little more than that, after the
Speaker 6: body is found, you now have three people in custody,
Speaker 6: doctor and Nancy Styler and Kathy Carpenter, and they're going
Speaker 6: to be charged not only with first degree murder, but
Speaker 6: with conspiracy, you know, to commit this murder, meaning that
Speaker 6: somehow all of them came together, planned this thing and
Speaker 6: carried it out to get rid of Nancy Fister. This case,
Speaker 6: when you look at it on the surface, that is
Speaker 6: something I was really struck by, seems rather simple. The
Speaker 6: more you know about it, the more complex it becomes.
Speaker 5: Yes, I mentioned David Olmsted and his ideas that were
Speaker 5: met with resistance from the lawyers that he was supposed
Speaker 5: to be working with. Ideally, and you talk about also
Speaker 5: the idea or the issue of mister Striker Styler's health.
Speaker 5: What did he find and what was basically the issue
Speaker 5: that was at hand with regarding his health.
Speaker 3: Well, he was not able to do a lot of
Speaker 3: physical things, you know, he was you know, somebody had
Speaker 3: said that they saw him at the post office and
Speaker 3: he was barely able to you know, to walk, or
Speaker 3: to put to lift or several people around town had
Speaker 3: said that he was he looked in very bad shape.
Speaker 3: And Nancy Styler, his wife, was robust and she did
Speaker 3: all the heavy lifting, and she was the one that
Speaker 3: was really you know, taking care of the two of them,
Speaker 3: at least physically right.
Speaker 6: He would talk about, you know, barely being able to
Speaker 6: move around at all. So there were there were two
Speaker 6: different staircases in the Fist house that you would have
Speaker 6: to negotiate, you know, into the house and up to
Speaker 6: the bedroom to go there and kill somebody. If you're
Speaker 6: doing that, then you would have to turn over the mattress.
Speaker 6: It turns out that the mattress had been flipped over
Speaker 6: and there was blood under it, and then you would
Speaker 6: have to figure out how to wrap a body. All
Speaker 6: people in law enforcements say that dead bodies, you know,
Speaker 6: feel heavier than any live body, so it's very hard
Speaker 6: to move them and to wrap them up and to
Speaker 6: do all those things. And from the beginning, the idea
Speaker 6: was there was no way in the world doctor Styler
Speaker 6: could have done this, or at least done it by himself.
Speaker 6: So that was part of the belief system that there
Speaker 6: had to be at least two or three people involved
Speaker 6: here in carrying out the crime.
Speaker 5: We also didn't mention the condition of the body of
Speaker 5: Nancy Fister. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well, she had numerous head wounds. She had been struck
Speaker 3: by a hammer several times in the head, and so, yeah,
Speaker 3: she was not in good shape when they found her.
Speaker 3: I mean, she was pretty badly mutilated.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she was beaten to death. That was the cause
Speaker 6: of death. So that again there was this general belief
Speaker 6: that this sixty five year old, incapacitated man could never
Speaker 6: have done this kind of thing on his own.
Speaker 5: Right now, in the investigation, of course, they execute search warrants,
Speaker 5: and again, as you mentioned, it looks like a very
Speaker 5: simple case, except as if further you go into this,
Speaker 5: you have more and more questions and doubts, and serious
Speaker 5: doubts at that tell us about what the police find,
Speaker 5: and is very interestingly how incriminating some of this evidence is.
Speaker 5: Tell us about what they find incriminating the stylers and
Speaker 5: especially mister Styler.
Speaker 6: They I believe it was on Friday, the twenty eighth
Speaker 6: of February, So the body's found on the twenty sixth,
Speaker 6: The stylers are taken into custody the next day, and
Speaker 6: on the twenty eighth, there's a unisp worker and Salt
Speaker 6: again about twenty miles from asking where the Styling's are staying.
Speaker 6: And it's his job to pick up the trash from
Speaker 6: these dumpsters at the end of the week. So he's
Speaker 6: and he doesn't like it if people put, you know,
Speaker 6: sort of personal items in there. He finds a bag
Speaker 6: and they're a plastic trash bag and he opens it
Speaker 6: and he's been reading about the case of Nancy Fister
Speaker 6: who was just murdered, found murdered in Aspen. And some
Speaker 6: of her things are things identifying her, well, things with
Speaker 6: her name on it, medicine bottles, things, and then there's
Speaker 6: a hammer in there with what appeared to be blood
Speaker 6: flakes on it, and a car registration for doctor Styler.
Speaker 6: And in addition to that, as I said earlier, when
Speaker 6: Kathy Carpenter goes up in the closet the first time,
Speaker 6: there's no key in there, twenty feet from the Styler's
Speaker 6: hotel room. The key is found, so.
Speaker 3: In plain view almost yeah.
Speaker 6: So again it kind of raises the question here the
Speaker 6: stylers have, you know, have been very bright people all
Speaker 6: their lives, successful for the most part, Why would you
Speaker 6: leave the key identifying you with a murder twenty feet
Speaker 6: from your motel room, or was it planted by someone
Speaker 6: planet Kathy Carpenter had a therapist who worked in Basalt
Speaker 6: and she would go over there, and so it raised
Speaker 6: questions did she put some of this evidence there?
Speaker 5: You also talk about him. We won't have enough time
Speaker 5: to go into all of this twist and turns that
Speaker 5: happened in this but a surprise happens eight days before
Speaker 5: the preliminary regarding Nancy.
Speaker 6: Styler.
Speaker 5: What happens and why?
Speaker 6: Well, the question was like when Joyce and I went
Speaker 6: up for some of the early hearings in this very
Speaker 6: small Aspen courtroom, because they don't.
Speaker 3: You know, they're the same one that Ted Bundy jumped
Speaker 3: out the second floor window to escape, you know, years
Speaker 3: earlier when he was on the run.
Speaker 6: Right, And so you had, you know, you had three defendants,
Speaker 6: all of their lawyers, and several prosecutors, and you were
Speaker 6: trying to fit all of this this jigsaw puzzle together.
Speaker 6: If there's a conspiracy, who did what, who planned it,
Speaker 6: and all of that, and you really nobody had any
Speaker 6: idea of what actually happened in this crime. And so
Speaker 6: the preliminary hearing was set for I think June sixteenth,
Speaker 6: and we were all waiting, you know, well, the prosecution
Speaker 6: is going to present their case. We'll find out what happened.
Speaker 6: And on June ninth they were actually going to hold
Speaker 6: this hearing, but one of the key detectives in the
Speaker 6: case wanted to go on vacation, so they postponed it.
Speaker 6: If that hearing had come off, the whole case probably
Speaker 6: would have turned out differently. But for some reason, seven
Speaker 6: days later, doctor Styler decides to call the authorities and say,
Speaker 6: these two women had nothing to do with this. I
Speaker 6: did it all on my own, and they're totally innocent,
Speaker 6: and I'm totally guilty. So the question immediately becomes they
Speaker 6: were all in custody in jail now for about one
Speaker 6: hundred days, So was he actually telling the truth or
Speaker 6: was he just trying to get his wife out of jail, because,
Speaker 6: as Joyce said earlier, he had been talking about suicide,
Speaker 6: his health was apparently failing. What was his motive?
Speaker 5: It's very interesting what David Olmsted has to say or
Speaker 5: some of the questions that he what is his take
Speaker 5: on a lot of this.
Speaker 6: Well, the really intriguing part of it, as crime writers,
Speaker 6: is forensic. You know, people who are so interested in
Speaker 6: forensics and evidence and all of that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: If it's the story that doctor Styler will now tell
Speaker 6: the police at great length, is that, Yes, he got
Speaker 6: up on that Monday morning, February twenty fourth, he went
Speaker 6: to pick up the truck. The place is closed, so
Speaker 6: he decided to drive up to up to Nancy Fister's
Speaker 6: home and confront her about the fourteen thousand dollars she'd
Speaker 6: ask for them from them the day earlier. He gets
Speaker 6: up there, the door's open, which again some people thought
Speaker 6: it was locked. But and he goes into the house
Speaker 6: and he calls her name and he doesn't get an answer.
Speaker 6: And this is his story. And he goes up the stairs.
Speaker 6: He goes upstairs into the house. He goes up the
Speaker 6: stairs to the bedroom. He finds are sleeping. As Joyce
Speaker 6: said earlier, she was known to take pills and drink,
Speaker 6: so she slept soundly. He sees her sleeping and he
Speaker 6: just sort of has one of these absolutely cathartic moments.
Speaker 6: He just says, I can end all my problems right here.
Speaker 6: He goes down the stairs and again think about what
Speaker 6: we've been saying, this is a guy who couldn't hardly
Speaker 6: walk and.
Speaker 3: Was in a wheelchair at all of the earrings.
Speaker 6: Exactly, and who was seen crawling across his cell on
Speaker 6: his hands and knees to emphasize to his jailers that
Speaker 6: he couldn't walk. So he goes, he goes. He remembers
Speaker 6: it from living in the house that there's a hammer there.
Speaker 6: So he goes down and he gets the hammer, and
Speaker 6: he stands over her and he looks and he just
Speaker 6: apparently loses it. Starts, you know, bashing her head in, and.
Speaker 3: Since he was a doctor, he knew exactly what part
Speaker 3: of the head to hit exactly.
Speaker 6: Then you know, she's bleeding, right, So what are you
Speaker 6: going to do now? So he pulls the blanket off
Speaker 6: the bed with her on it. Then he needs to
Speaker 6: figure out a way to tie her up, so he
Speaker 6: goes down the stairs again. He gets some cord and
Speaker 6: some things that he can wrap her in. Then he
Speaker 6: needs bags to cover up the body, and so then
Speaker 6: he goes back down again. So there are at least
Speaker 6: three to four trips to do this, in addition to
Speaker 6: being strong enough to beat her to death. In addition
Speaker 6: to getting her off the bed, the mattress, all of
Speaker 6: those things, and getting her into the closet with no
Speaker 6: blood on the floor or anything like that. So this
Speaker 6: is the story that he tells, and there's only one
Speaker 6: or two major problems with it, and that is that
Speaker 6: several people would then tell the authorities as they were
Speaker 6: interviewed that they received message is from Nancy Fister from
Speaker 6: a time perspective well after the story that doctor Styler
Speaker 6: tells about killing him.
Speaker 3: Or that Nancy Styler's cell phone kinged up of a
Speaker 3: tower close to Nancy Fister's house about the same time
Speaker 3: that William Styler was up there committing the crime exactly.
Speaker 6: Right, so which implies, of course that his wife was
Speaker 6: there with him, helping him. So there are major inconsistencies
Speaker 6: in the timeline from what we were able to assemble
Speaker 6: in writing the book. And what becomes important about all
Speaker 6: of that is that the legal system heard doctor Styler's story,
Speaker 6: didn't care one wit for the contradictions of the inconsistencies,
Speaker 6: and said, Okay, we got our man case closed. They
Speaker 6: turned to him and loose that was that. They just
Speaker 6: like Joyce said earlier about the flat in laun Jay case,
Speaker 6: they could not wait to have this done and to
Speaker 6: put it behind them, and whatever the truth was would
Speaker 6: just have to take care of itself.
Speaker 5: I know the answer, But tell us why that is
Speaker 5: so important to the media and to the town of
Speaker 5: Aspen itself. Why is it that they had to control
Speaker 5: this narrative and why do they want this watered down?
Speaker 5: Easy to swallow explanation.
Speaker 3: Well, part of it was because if it had gone
Speaker 3: to trial, a lot of Nancy Fister's dirty laundry would
Speaker 3: have been aired, you know, and the Fister family was
Speaker 3: quite prominent, and of these land sales and her behavior
Speaker 3: and a lot of these things would have come out
Speaker 3: in court and it would have not have been comfortable
Speaker 3: for the family, the remaining family, or for her daughter,
Speaker 3: or for her sisters, or for others in town, you know.
Speaker 3: And this is where there's more questions than answers. This land,
Speaker 3: these land dealings, these these real estate sales, all these things.
Speaker 3: These are still ongoing now right now, there's still lawsuits
Speaker 3: going on. There's much more to this story than that
Speaker 3: it didn't end with him, you know, committing saying that
Speaker 3: he committed the crime by himself.
Speaker 6: The story continues, right and that last hearing where he
Speaker 6: stands up and confesses and said, I did. It is
Speaker 6: occurring right at the most probably the most prominent moment
Speaker 6: for Aspen, which is the Aspen Food and Wine Festival
Speaker 6: that occurs like on the first day of and then and.
Speaker 3: Then numerous other festivals happening all summer long are now
Speaker 3: going to start up, you know.
Speaker 6: And so you have all these prominent, you know, rich
Speaker 6: people coming in and then you have this very ugly
Speaker 6: murder sitting right next to it. And we interviewed the
Speaker 6: sheriff about it, and it was the most famous line
Speaker 6: in the book. Maybe We asked him, well, you know,
Speaker 6: do you really think this happened, or you know, how
Speaker 6: do you think it happened? And he said, doctor Styler
Speaker 6: consess and it works for me.
Speaker 3: But you know, i'd like to say that after there's
Speaker 3: so much more to the story, and I wish we
Speaker 3: could tell, you know, just we could talk for hours
Speaker 3: about it. But we're going up to Asppen next week
Speaker 3: because CNBC has decided to make an hour long talk
Speaker 3: about it, and hopefully they'll cover some of the information
Speaker 3: that was not covered in the date line or the
Speaker 3: different you know, the major that all three major networks
Speaker 3: did shows on this crime. It was so interesting and
Speaker 3: hopefully CNBC will do something more and kind of dig
Speaker 3: a little bit deeper into some of the things that
Speaker 3: have happened since the you know, the death of William Styler.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so what what happened was was that the women
Speaker 6: were released and doctor Styler had a million dollar insurance
Speaker 6: policy on it self for his wife and about I
Speaker 6: think it was about a year after the case was resolved,
Speaker 6: he was in prison in Colorado. He hung himself in
Speaker 6: his cell and died, and the money went to Nancy Stylers.
Speaker 6: So again it raises all these questions that he plan
Speaker 6: all of this out, you know, take the fall for
Speaker 6: the crime, then kill himself, then give the money to
Speaker 6: his wife. All he talked about during his confession, or
Speaker 6: what he mainly talked about, was finding a way to relieve, relive,
Speaker 6: leave his wife's stress. And was this his plan all
Speaker 6: along to be able to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely a compelling argument for sir certain. I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much Steven and Joyce singular
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about Shadow on the Mountain.
Speaker 5: For those that might want to take a look at
Speaker 5: other work, give a website, Facebook page, any of that
Speaker 5: for contact, Yeah, go ahead, join.
Speaker 3: Us, yeah at www dot stevensingular dot com Stephen with
Speaker 3: a pH is. We always update that. As to wide
Speaker 3: appearances and television shows and any kind of breaking news
Speaker 3: with you know, what's going on with in our world,
Speaker 3: we always update that. So yeah, please please come and
Speaker 3: give our website a look and you can see all
Speaker 3: the other books and things that we've been involved with.
Speaker 5: And the best of luck too as well with the
Speaker 5: upcoming documentary and so hope to see that in the future.
Speaker 3: So thank you very much, thank you, thanks for having us.
Speaker 5: Thank you, it's always a pleasure. Joyce and Steven Singular.
Speaker 5: You have a great evening. Thank you very much, thank you.
Speaker 3: Good nights.