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Speaker 1: This episode contains discussion of crimes involving sexual violence and murder. It also deals with suicide. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, caller text nine to eight eight to reach the suicide and Crisis lifeline.
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Speaker 2: This is part two of our two part series on the murder of fifteen year old Danny Houchens. If you haven’t already, go back and listen to part one. It tells the story of how investigators cracked the thirty year old cold case and tried to bring a hunter and BLM biologist named Paul Hutchinson to justice. But they never got the chance to prosecute the case in court because after their initial interview, Paul drove to the outskirts of town and shot himself. Our story picks up there. Paul’s suicide was his final act of cowardice. He saved himself the pain of facing his family, friends, and co workers, not to mention Danny’s family. Meanwhile, his actions introduced a whole new level of pain and confusion to those who knew him and cared about him. Those people have been left to grapple with questions without the opportunity to ever have them answered. Paul’s immediate family declined to speak with us for this podcast, but his nephew, Zach Hutchinson reached out. Zach is the son of Paul’s older brother, and he knew Paul before he left.
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Speaker 3: For the Marine Corps.
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Speaker 2: That’s the detail of Paul’s life we’ll get to in a few minutes. Zach says he had many fond memories of hunting and fishing with his uncle, and he never saw the side of Paul that could rape and murder a fifteen year old.
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Speaker 4: It’s been really difficult because it’s kind of like when you find out your hero is a fraud.
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Speaker 5: This guy was like one.
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Speaker 4: Of the most pure versions of a role model that I had growing up my whole life, and then when this came out, I just felt like it was all a fraud. It’s not like something where I can just say there’s like an exac feel And I mean, I’ve been angry and I’ve been sad, and I’ve had a lot of remorse for what I have been or why this happened, and like, I’ve thought a lot about all of this stuff, and I have a lot of empathy for the victim’s family and everything they went through. I mean, it’s terrible to have our name associated with such a atrocity like this.
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Speaker 2: That association has made it difficult for Paul’s family, especially his wife and kids who live in Dylan. I’ve been told that their house has been vandalized and that threats forced them to call off Paul’s memorial service. Zach said he hasn’t heard from them since the news came out about Danny, but he understands the reaction from their community.
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Speaker 6: I think it’s a really natural thing for the public in general to need somebody to blame that still here so they get all of the anger and frustration that should have been directed towards Paul, and instead his kids and wife have to take.
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Speaker 5: The brunch of all that.
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Speaker 2: Christy Hutchinson, Paul’s wife, hasn’t spoken to the media, but she did leave a note on what used to be Paul’s obituary on the funeral home website. She said, quote, we are sly heartbroken to learn this news, and our hearts go out to the Houchen’s family. It is good to know that they will at last be able to find the closure that they deserve. Our own family was already reeling from dealing with Paul’s suicide in twenty four years of marriage. There was never any hint that something like this could be lurking in the background. Paul was an exceptional husband and father. This latest news makes our grieving so much more complicated. Of course, his family weren’t the only people to be confused and disturbed by Paul’s actions. We heard from many people who had hunted with Paul from all across the country. Some had hunted with him for years, while others had only gone out with him a few times. Many remembered that he was always happy to share hunting tips and tactics, and he was active on forums like hunt talk and various Facebook groups.
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Speaker 3: One hunter named.
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Speaker 2: Bryant Jones were called bumping into Paul while hunting elk in a remote area he thought no one else knew about. Bryant invited him to share his campsite, but Paul said he wanted to hunt alone. Bryant lives in the same county as Paul, and they saw each other again a few times after that. He said in an email quote, we always seem to share a commonality of elk and hunting, a sense of respect, knowing he had the same drive and passion for ELK that I did. And after all, we shared a secret hunting spot that neither of us were willing to share with just anyone. I guess you could say Paul was good at keeping secrets. Another hunter named Heath Smith described a kind of interaction we heard a lot during the course of this investigation. Heath met Paul on a Facebook group dedicated to turkey hunting.
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Speaker 5: I asked a question about some states, and he was super helpful. He reached out and said, Hey, you know, I hunt all over the country. I’m trying to kill a turkey in all forty nine states. I do hunt swaps. You know, where are you going? How can I help you? You know, I’ll point you in the right direction. Basically super nice.
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Speaker 2: Paul agreed to take Heath turkey hunting in Montana in the hopes that Heath would return the favor and host Paul in his home state of Illinois. Heith and his cousin traveled up to Montana in twenty twenty two, and they planned to hunt along the Yellowstone. At this point, he’d been messaging with Paul and calling him on the phone for almost two years, which is why he felt comfortable making this joke that in retrospect is not funny.
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Speaker 5: I actually remember on making a joke when we got in the truck, kind of hey, Paul, where our families are worried about us? You know, they think you might be a killer. Kind of joke. We all had a laugh and down the road we went.
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Speaker 2: Heith says they had a great time. They killed a few turkeys and agreed to host Paul in Illinois. The next spring, Heath got a camper from his cousin and they parked it in Heath’s driveway for Paul to sleep in. I asked, Heith, what you’re probably thinking looking back? Did Paul say or do anything that he now sees in a new light? He said their interactions with him were always positive, but at the same time I.
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Speaker 5: Could see there being another side of him, Like he was definitely an awkward dude. Like I said, my wife has the Spidey sense, you know, when he left, she definitely had the hebegbis And maybe we just were kind of blind to it. I don’t know.
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Speaker 2: This description of Paul as awkward or off putting was echoed by another hunter from the mid Atlantic region who swapped waterfowling trips with Paul. In the early twenty tens, he traveled up to Great Falls, Montana, and Paul was supposed to pick him up from the airport, but he never showed. Paul eventually showed up and they hunted with him for a few days, but then he vanished. This hunter says they woke up one morning and Paul wasn’t in his hotel room and his truck was gone. They tried calling him, but he never responded. This hunter also commented that to him, Paul’s anti social behavior was noticeable enough that he wasn’t surprised to learn about his crimes. Of course, not all socially awkward people are murderers, and everyone has a bad day or a bad week, but the fact that Paul traveled so much to hunt and had so much opportunity to be alone with people in the wilderness is obviously concerning. We also heard from several of Paul’s coworkers who spent time with them as part of their work for the Bureau of Land Management. These individuals would go out with Paul, often by themselves, into the mountains around Dylan to do fish population surveys. Using a method called electro shocking, where fish are stunned by an electric current and then can be collected in a net. When Tom Elfmott heard about this, he had a recommendation for BLM law enforcement.
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Speaker 7: I recommended to the BLM law enforcement that they go back and they interview female interns who worked for the BLM in the summers with him for the least the past five years to see if there was anything appropriate inappropriate that went on that he might have done, like hey, look, if you really want a full time job with BLM.
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Speaker 3: Know we’re out here in the middle of the woods, so you gotta do this or you gotta do that.
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Speaker 2: We spoke with two of these young women, both of whom you heard in the intro to Part one. Jordan Walker told us she went into the mountains with Paul and had a terrible time. She said he was impatient as she struggled to catch the electro shocked fish, and the experience made her decide to pursue something other than fishery science.
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Speaker 8: So when I went out there, I didn’t know what I was doing, and he was We were shocking fish that day, and I would have to grab him and put them in a bucket. Well, I couldn’t see all those little one inch brown ones in the muddy water, and so he was getting super super upset with me.
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Speaker 2: Nothing else happened that day, but Jordan was understandably upset when she heard about what Paul had done.
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Speaker 8: I was at a little spooked, for sure. I guess I’ve just kind of looked back on the day and I was like, man, anything could have happened to me. I had no clue where where I was or whatever, and I’m sure most people didn’t know exactly where we were. It would have been easy to get away with anything. Really.
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Speaker 2: Jordan wasn’t the only newbie to go into the mountains with Paul that summer. She told me that Paul’s usual partner had left the BLM unexpectedly, and so Paul needed people to come out and help him. According to Jordan, there was some discussion in the BLM office about why this man left.
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Speaker 8: I know some people were wondering what happened to the person that worked with him for ten years. Paul was saying some stuff afterwards, like you can’t tell people anything, and they were just kind of wondering what happened with him because I know you’d like that job.
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Speaker 2: We reached out to Paul’s work partner, but he declined to be interviewed for this podcast. This partner never came up in Tom’s interview with Paul, but he did mention having to work with new seasonal employees, so.
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Speaker 3: You train him up.
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Speaker 5: Is he kind of doing an internship?
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Speaker 8: Is that what it is?
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Speaker 9: No seasonal technician?
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Speaker 3: Well, they break him in just for certain times of the year or something.
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Speaker 9: Yeah, we got for the summer and there’s a young lady working with him and neither No, they didn’t know what they’re doing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Jordan was eighteen years old this summer. She spent that day with Paul. Another young woman who spoke to us anonymously due to fear of professional repercussions, described a much better experience with a fifty five year old man. This woman, who will call Molly, had never been electro fishing, but she says Paul was pleasant to be around, if a little reserved.
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Speaker 10: He had some embarrassing stories about my supervisor to tell, just as far as like teaching him how to snow machine and all that good stuff. And then the thing that we actually were able to talk about a whole bunch was his family and his kids.
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Speaker 2: The day was uneventful otherwise, and Molly was grateful to put electro fishing experience on her resume, but her good day with Paul made what he did to Danny even more confusing.
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Speaker 10: So there were two like really hard things for me initially, the first being how do I interact with coworkers in the future that I don’t know very well or even that I do know very well. Right, in these jobs, you go out for sometimes a week or so at a time in places with no service. You have to trust the people that you’re out there with. So like coming to terms with like not being afraid was something that I had to go through. And then the other thing that I had to think about a lot was like this idea of how do the actions of your mentors or the people who are teaching you things change your experience or does it change your experience?
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Speaker 5: Right?
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Speaker 10: So, like Paul is the one who taught me how to electrofish, and that was kind of huge for getting me to where I am today. And so just like, yeah, wrestling with that question of like does that change where I am? And like the path that got me here, you know, we.
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Speaker 2: Spoke with unofficial with knowledge of Paul’s case, who was also granted anonymity due to professional repercussions of talking to us. This person told us that there were a number of seasonal employees who worked with Paul but then never returned to the BLM. This person said the reason those seasonal workers didn’t return is because they were quote creeped out by him. At the same time, Paul’s coworkers never formally complained about him to the BLM. This could be exonerating or it could be suspicious. It’s easy to lodge a complaint with the agency, so officials were surprised to learn that no one had ever complained about Paul. We asked the BLM to confirm these details about Paul’s personnel record, but the agency declined to comment. After the break, we look to the future. Stephanie tells me about her fight to improve Montana’s law enforcement system. We hear from a forensic psychologist about whether Paul could have committed other crimes, and Steve Vernella gives us an inside look at how this story has impact did hunters and anglers in the Boseman area.
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Speaker 3: That’s next on Blood Trails Part six.
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Speaker 2: Moving forward, It’s been a little over a year since Paul killed himself on July twenty fourth, twenty twenty four, but this story is far from over. Stephanie has launched an advocacy campaign to address what she describes as serious flaws in Montana’s law enforcement capabilities. Here she is during a press conference shortly after the resolution.
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Speaker 3: Of the case.
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Speaker 11: Call and write to your legislators. Demand adequate funding for the Montana State Crime Lab. Demand a news system of peer review for law enforcement when a violent rape and murder happens in their jurisdiction. Demand a centralized database of cold cases in this state. We must demand better for victims of sexual assault and murder in Montana.
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Speaker 12: Thank you.
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Speaker 2: The Montana State Legislature has so far declined to increase funding for law enforcement or institute a cold case database, but Stephanie is currently raising money to found a volunteer case review committee with the Montana Peace Officers Association, and she’s gaining traction.
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Speaker 11: If victims families like me don’t fight for victims and families like who’s going to I’ll see through the accountability and justice for my sister. But the next phase for me is really figuring out how I try to make it better.
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Speaker 2: And Stephanie says she’s fighting for justice for her sister. She doesn’t just mean that figuratively on behalf of her sister’s estate. She told me she plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Paul Hutchinson’s estate.
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Speaker 11: What is really important to me going forward is that other rapists and murderers don’t think that the pathway of taking your own life is a viable pathway to dodge accountability for your violence and your crimes. So I’m going to see that accountability through.
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Speaker 2: I asked Stephanie what she would say to someone who would question the justice of suing the Hutchinson family when they’re not the ones who committed the crime.
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Speaker 11: I have certainly had people approach me with the sentiment that Paul Hutchinson’s family is a victim are victims too of what he did. And while that may be true, the victimization of Paul Hutchinson’s family is not my responsibility. The victimization of the Hutchins family and of Danielle Houchins is my responsibility. And at the end of the day, victims who have birthdays are less of a victim than victims who don’t.
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Speaker 2: Zach Hutchinson, Paul’s nephew, does believe Paul’s wife and kids were victims. At the same time, he understands why Stephanie and Danny’s family filed the lawsuit.
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Speaker 4: I think that’s a perfectly natural response to them, because again, it’s really difficult to have anger towards somebody that’s dead. It’s really difficult to have accountability to somebody who is unaccountable.
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Speaker 5: So I mean, I think that that’s a very natural reaction.
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Speaker 2: Of course, the biggest question, the one that we may never have a good answer to, is whether Danny was Paul Hutchinson’s only victim. Galaton County Sheriff Dan Springer told me that they’ve submitted Paul’s case profile to local, state, and federal databases. If they find Paul’s DNA on another victim or law enforcement in another jurisdiction see similarities between Danny’s death and other cold cases, they’ll be able to flag it. So far as far as Sheriff Springer knows, there haven’t been any connections made to other victims, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there to help me shed more light on this question, I reached out to doctor Jeff Kalshevsky. Doctor Koallshevski is a forensic psychologist with a doctorate from the University of Iowa. He’s basically spent his entire career talking to criminals. He worked in prisons for a long time doing psychological evaluations, and he spent the last quarter century in private practice doing the same thing in other criminal cases. If you’ve committed a crime and want to plead insanity, he’s the guy you have to convince that you’re not competent to stand trial. I asked doctor Kolshewsky whether, in his professional opinion, someone could rape and murder a fifteen year old girl and then go on to live a crime free life.
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Speaker 12: That’s a tough question, because, let me tell you, I’ve talked to people who’ve done terrible, egregious things like this. Kaikark And said they always fantasized about doing it, and then they did it, and the fantasy did not meet up to the reality, and then it became a proverbial skeleton in their closet, and then they were caught many years later. I think we don’t know enough about the case hat to really go in either direction.
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Speaker 2: Doctor Kolshevski never interviewed Paul and hasn’t seen the case file, so he didn’t want to speak definitively on this question. However, he does host a YouTube channel where he offers his opinion on high profile cases and criminals, and he was willing to give me his general thoughts based on his decades of experience interviewing inmates. One of the things that stood out to doctor Kolshewski was Paul’s military career when he served for four years in the Marine Corps.
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Speaker 12: I’d really be interested in what happened during his military career, you know, was there anything there were there any misconducts where was he stationed to Because I’ve had some cases where, unfortunately, if someone has a twisted sexual paraphilia or perversion, I’ve had cases where these guys were in the military and they were in third world countries where they could engage in some of that stuff without being caught, and then once they’re out of the military, that paraphilia is strong and they can’t really exercise that as easily here as they could say in a third world country. If that appetite is wetted and that parophilia becomes strong. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s just a matter of time before it comes out, and it could be an opportunity like what happened in this case.
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Speaker 2: I haven’t seen Paul’s military record myself, but Tom Elfmont was able to secure a copy. He told me Paul did basic training at Camp Le June in North Carolina and was stationed for a time in Alaska. Paul was in the infantry, but he never served in combat and didn’t get into any official trouble. Tom asked Paul about his military service during that initial interview.
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Speaker 7: You know, I liked it.
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Speaker 9: If they would have given me what I wanted, I would have relisted. I had I had fun. You look back, did you either want to deserve?
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Speaker 5: Yeah?
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Speaker 8: I did.
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Speaker 9: You know, so you look back at boot camp, and it’s one thing when you look back, that stuff was funny.
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Speaker 2: Yeah when you were there.
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Speaker 3: What you want to do?
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Speaker 9: I wanted to I wanted to go Security Forces, and you got to pick. There’s a hardship and then there’s what they called the gravy tour. I actually wanted two of the hardships I wanted. I spent six months in South America. I want to go back to South America. Yeah, they wouldn’t do it.
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Speaker 2: We don’t know why Paul was in South America or why he wanted to go back. We also can’t say for sure whether or not Paul’s time in the military had anything to do with his subsequent behavior. Zach Hutchinson believes his uncle’s time in the Marines may have changed him, but right now we don’t have any direct evidence that suggests it did. Doctor Karlschewski was also interested in Paul’s response to being confronted, probably for the very first time, about Danny.
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Speaker 12: One thing that was a bit surprising for me was a suicide, particularly with a guy who is a skilled and experienced outdoorsman. He could have tried to sort of make a run for it, and just that how upset he became after he saw that photo. If he was a serial killer, this is sort of odd to say he wasn’t really that good at it and didn’t have much of a stomach for it, because a lot of times with these experienced serial killers, when they’re presented and faced with the evidence or information about the victim, they don’t have an emotional reaction like that.
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Speaker 2: To say that Paul may not have been a serial killer is hardly exonerating, and doctor Kelshewsky pointed out that there have been serial killers who aren’t psychopaths who do feel empathy. It’s also true that no one really knows why Paul committed suicide. He may have done it because he was upset about Danny, or he may have had another reason. But if we’re trying to figure out whether Paul victimized other people, his decision to take his own life is another factor that doctor kel Schevsky would consider. I also pose this question to Tom, who knows Paul’s file better than anyone.
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Speaker 7: I would think that the propensity would be for him to have done other things. But he may have just committed rapes. He may have just done in decent exposure where he’s in the woods and some woman’s walking her dog along a canal or something. He could be responsible for other sex crimes, but the murder was probably because he panicked and Danny was trying to get away and he killed her.
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Speaker 2: Tom shared two pieces of information from his investigation that led him to believe in Paul’s propensity towards sexual crimes.
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Speaker 7: One of the telling things was I reached out to his fiance who lived with him in nineteen ninety six, and I asked her, did you ever recognize or see any abnormal or unus usual sexual behaviors.
00:23:02
Speaker 3: On his part?
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Speaker 7: And she declined to answer, and then just never called me back after that. And the other thing was after his funeral, his sister called his wife and it was then reported to the sheriff and Dylan that he made an advance on their ten year old his ten year old niece years and years ago in an attempt to molest her, and they never reported it to the police. So it’s still a mystery. But you know, if I got a phone call today from a small sheriff’s department in East Texas and they said, you know, we went through our files and in nineteen ninety five or eight or two thousand and one, we found a woman who was raped along a river, and we checked and we found out Paul had a turkey hunting license in tech just at that time.
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Speaker 3: It wouldn’t surprise me.
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Speaker 2: At all if there are any other victims out there. Doctor Kolshewski believes the fact pattern in those cases will be similar to what happened along the Gallatin River.
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Speaker 12: If the person is a serial killer and they develop a career as a killer. They tend to use similar methods. It may change over time, but similar methods. They tend to pick similar victims. They tend to pick similar settings. They do become a bit creatures a habit because one of the reinforcements they get from this act is kind of carrying out those habits and rituals. So looking for those kind of things will be important.
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Speaker 2: Part seven Close to home For us here at meat Eater, this story hits a little too close for comfort. The crime took place just outside of Bozeman, at a fishing access many of us have been to. The perpetrator worked for the Bureau of Land Manage, an agency that’s familiar to many of us and whose employees we know and interact with all the time. When we posted on Instagram that we were looking to speak with people who knew Paul, we received dozens of emails. We all run in the same circles, and so we’re trying to make sense of this along with other members of our community.
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Speaker 13: It just, all of a sudden just felt very central to our town, central to our communities, central to hunters and anglers that live in this area.
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Speaker 2: That’s me Eater founder Steve Ranella. He’s the one who first told me about this case and suggested that we cover it in an episode of Blood Trails. I sat down with him to talk about why the story jumped out of him and why he felt like we had a duty to try to understand and process what happened.
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Speaker 13: Me and Paul, you know, we came I came from Michigan, he came from New England. We moved to mont at the same time. We’re both interested in hunting, We’re both interested in fishing, We’re both fur trappers, hung out in the same places. I’ve been to this river access a ton of times where the murder took place. There are a ton of times I know it very well. I know the town very well, and so in that way, you know, there was like an alignment, like I could easily picture the enthusiasm of an outdoorsman moving out west at that time and what that felt like. So I understood it. Even though we didn’t know each other, we knew the same people. He worked for an agency where I have friends that work at the agency that I have professional collaborations with the agency. He worked on fisheries projects that it sounds so weird to say he worked on fisheries projects that I like benefited from I probably read and digested research he did. So it was like it was a very much a fishing story. It was an outdoor story. It was about a place that you know, I knew well, people I knew well, and so it felt to me like very like we had every right almost that we had a obligation to talk about this story.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hunting, I mean turned out to be a really big part of the story that I don’t think a lot of other outlets really touched on his travel for hunting and the concern that that, you know, brought to mind for investigators. He’s out there in the woods a lot alone in remote areas in other states. You mentioned the fishing access site. Could you describe that site.
00:27:23
Speaker 3: A little bit? We didn’t.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: We didn’t get into that a lot in the podcast. I mean, for me, it’s a little surprising because this happened apparently around like noon, like maybe late morning, early afternoon, and if you’re not from there or you’ve never been there, I think it’s maybe unusual or surprising that that could have happened in the middle of the day. Presumably there was there was noise, there was screaming. Could you just sort of paint a picture of what that area is like.
00:27:50
Speaker 13: Yeah, First off, point out that that area, like most areas in the Gallton Valley area, has changed tremendously over the years. I would have first been at that access site around the same time, you know, I would have started hanging out there. I moved to Bozeman in the year two thousand. I was living in Missoula starting in nineteen ninety six. But you know, there’s quite a number of river access sites they’re in. They tend to be around here in these big valley bottoms, you know, braided river channels.
00:28:21
Speaker 3: Lots of cottonwood, lots of brush.
00:28:24
Speaker 13: So even though they are around habitations, they might be very close to busy roads, there’s still a lot of solitude around them. The other thing about river access sites is Montana has great stream access law, So as long as you can access the river legally, you can go anywhere as long as you stay within the high water mark. So one of the great draws of river access sites is it gives you a legal point of entry into a river and then you can wade up and down wherever you want to go. If you pull into a river access site and you see a half dozen cars there, you might then use that river access site and go fish for an hour, not run into the people, because people disperse round there’s a lot of you know, there’s privacy in solitude to be had there. And even though it is near town, it’s closer to Belgrade, Montana than Bozeman proper. It’s totally plausible that midday a couple of people could be there and you could have a crime like this play out over fifteen minutes or twenty minutes or even an hour and have no witnesses to it, even though you probably listening to cars driving by on the bridge, And that would still be true today of most of the river access sites around here.
00:29:26
Speaker 3: There’s no part of that that’s surprising at all.
00:29:29
Speaker 2: As someone who you know, you go out, but you also go out with your family, with your wife and your kids. How do you deal with that possibility of someone being out there who doesn’t have a criminal record, isn’t a wanted killer, right, just stumbling upon the wrong person at the wrong time, with those vulnerable people that you might be with.
00:29:51
Speaker 13: Man, even knowing this, it’s not a thing we pay attention to as parents. We talk a lot about water safety. We taught our kids a swim a young age. We kind of brush up now and then in certain areas. We brush up now and then on the best protocol around in Grizzly Bear country. Spatial awareness, taking no to landmarks, to understand where you’re at, paying attention.
00:30:14
Speaker 3: To what’s going on.
00:30:14
Speaker 13: But we never ever talk about being attacked by a human being. And I have a lot of people who live with kids and raise families around here, and I’m telling you, in any conversations I have, it doesn’t come up. Yeah, it doesn’t come up.
00:30:32
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:30:32
Speaker 13: You know, people might joke right like, oh, you know, a guy in a van by the river kind of joke. But no, no, I would say in this community, like, being attacked by a human being is not a thing that takes up a lot of psychological space.
00:30:49
Speaker 3: But that’s again, that’s for me.
00:30:52
Speaker 13: If you’re if I was a woman in my teens or twenties hanging out and I like to go to river access sites by myself off the fish. To be honest with you, like I can’t get in. I don’t know what that experience is like, but I would think that you’d get a very different answer from them.
00:31:07
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I’m sure everyone in the Belgrade area was terrified in the months and years after this happened. I mean, a girl was murdered, they didn’t find the killer. Is he still out there? Will he do this again? Is it safe to be outside by yourself? It’s funny to terrorize the public and then go work for an agency that’s supposed to help facilitate outdoor recreation. You know, it’s more than a little ironic. I want to transition from the story itself to a little inside baseball on how we reported this case. One of the reasons we were able to connect with so many people who knew Paul is because you posted about it on your Instagram. Both of us had the opportunity to speak with a lot of people, many of whom eventually decided they didn’t want to participate. What was your experience like speaking with some of those individuals.
00:31:58
Speaker 13: Right when I graduated from high school, I had jury duty in Mousketon County, Michigan, and I remember it was a drug trial with a crack cocaine dealer and we came back with a guilty verdict, And at that time, that was a life sentence for the guy, and they hauled the defendant away and the judge, I remember.
00:32:21
Speaker 3: The guy’s name was Mike Cobbs. Judge Mike Cobbs.
00:32:25
Speaker 13: He asked all of us jurors to stay, and he said he wanted to speak with us. And then he went and told us all these all the non admissible evidence, so all the things they couldn’t bring up in trial because of double jeopardy, just that this whole bunch of sordid details about the defendant. His point was, if you ever feel bad about what you did sending him to jail, I want you to consider these things. I want you to know the truth of these things that we couldn’t present in the trial. And I thought about that often when we were looking at this story here, because man Jordan talked to I talked to a number of people who knew Paul who didn’t want us to share any information. People would decline to speak, and oftentimes people would speak and then tell you all these details but say, but I don’t want you to share that, like they don’t want investigators to know, they don’t want the family to know.
00:33:21
Speaker 3: Whatever.
00:33:21
Speaker 13: They would tell you to clear their conscious of things. But then say you couldn’t share it, and then putting a project like this together, it gets frustrating because there are details that we know about Paul that would illuminate this or shed light on this we’re not able to put out there. That’s frustrating. You know, you want to be like the judge who just is able to lay it all out, but you’re prevented to out of needing to honor anonymity.
00:33:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a trial, they have rules about what’s admissible, what’s not admissible, what can they talk about, what can they not And when you’re reporting a story, you also have rules. If people say something to you and then say I don’t want you to report that, and then you go and report it, you know, there can be some pretty negative consequences. So we have to abide by some of those rules, and sometimes it can be a little frustrating. And you know, some of the people, like you heard, you know you’ve heard in the episode, they wanted to talk to us, but only anonymously. And sometimes it sort of makes sense, like the they work in a similar field, they worry about professional repercussions. Some people, it seemed like, just didn’t want their name associated with this at all. Some people’s reasons are a bit more selfish, I think, and we also ran into that.
00:34:38
Speaker 3: As we explored the story.
00:34:39
Speaker 13: One of the things I kept coming back to again and again in my mind, this individual Paul, he loved a lot of the things I love. I love to hunt turkeys. Here’s this guy, he loved to hunt turkeys. I like trap and he liked trapping. I love to hunt man. I like listening to El Bugle. I like all this right and too. But I always wonder, even though I understand the joy of those things, I kept wondering, like, how could someone ever find or retain joy in those things knowing what they had done after he’d done it, having done what he did, after he did it, the only suitable thing to do is what he ultimately did, which was to kill himself. But the fact that you could live all those years.
00:35:25
Speaker 3: And like.
00:35:26
Speaker 13: Take pictures of yourself hunting turkeys and enjoy that kind of stuff, Like, how like what kind of depravity is in somebody that they could find joy in anything in life knowing that you had just out of some kind of blind rage or blind lust, like killed a teenage girl and walked away from her dead body it’s it’s like such an obvious thing to wonder, but I kept warning, like, what is in a person that they can then enjoy their life?
00:36:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and not just want to end it?
00:36:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, or enjoy their kids have kids that are about that age. And that’s one of the things that the investigators in their interview with Paul really kind of hammered him on that you have a daughter, right, how would you feel if this happened to her? And I don’t know if that’s what drove him to do what he did, but it’s hard to imagine that didn’t have any effect. But as you say, he lived his whole life with that. I don’t you know, why would it have an effect?
00:36:36
Speaker 9: Right?
00:36:36
Speaker 5: Then?
00:36:37
Speaker 3: Who knows?
00:36:38
Speaker 5: No?
00:36:40
Speaker 3: Who knows?
00:36:41
Speaker 2: It seems fitting to end this episode with a question. This case brought much needed closure to the Houchin’s family. They finally figured out who killed their daughter and sister, and the killer was, in some measure brought to justice. But we’ll never know why Paul did what he did or what he was thinking and feeling in the years after he murdered Danny. We can’t get inside his head, not that we’d really want to, but the person he presented to the world was inconsistent. Some people we spoke with said they weren’t surprised, they knew there was something off about that guy. Others really liked him and said they were shocked by what he’d done. But it’s this inconsistency that makes him ordinary, and in that way all the more terrifying.
00:37:29
Speaker 3: He wasn’t a villain from a superhero movie.
00:37:31
Speaker 2: With an evil laugh and an evil eye. And he wasn’t a genius con man who fooled everyone with his charming smile and winning ways. He was just a dude, a dude he might meet at the store or your kid’s soccer game, strike up a friendship, and go hunting with.
00:37:48
Speaker 3: We can’t suspect everyone.
00:37:49
Speaker 2: We don’t know of horrible crimes, but Paul’s story is a reminder that you never really know what kind of monster might be lurking just below the surface.
00:38:00
Speaker 3: Yes, thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails.
00:38:13
Speaker 2: If you’d like to see images related to this case, including images of Danny and hunting photos of Paul, head over to the meeater dot com slash blood Trails and click on the case file for this episode. If you have a tip, about this case or another case you think we should cover. Send us an email at blood Trails at the meeteater dot com. That’s b l o O D t R a I L S at the meeater dot com. See you next time, and stay safe out there.
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