Two women shot while asleep in their home – one miraculously survives to tell her story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened during the 911 call?
911, what's your emergency?
It's my next-door neighbor. She says somebody shot her roommate.
We need an ambulance.
Okay.
The woman you hear in the background on the 911 call is Audrea Butler. She lives in this house with her two roommates, Lauren DeWise and Ashley Van Hamert.
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Chapter 2: Who were the victims in the shooting?
Adria Butler wasn't home when the crime occurred, but she came home that morning and found her two roommates shot. She ran over to a neighbor's house, notified the neighbor, and a neighbor called 911 on her behalf. She said her roommate Ashley is the one that's still alive.
OK. And she is still alive?
She said she is, yeah.
OK. All right, I've got the paramedics on the way. I've got the police on the way, OK? Just let her know that help is on the way.
Officer Jared Robinson from the Belgrade Police Department was the first officer to arrive.
Yeah, I just don't know what I got. I'm just pulling up on scene. What's going on? I just came in and I saw that my back door had been broken in, so I went to the back and I could see footsteps in the snow. Okay, so you don't know if there's somebody else in the house? I don't think so, but I don't know.
Okay. She's unsure if there's still any shooter inside the house, so I'm going to wait for 206 to get here before we get to her. Copy. 206, 219, you got an ETA? I'm on Idaho. I'll be there shortly. Copy.
What do we know? Sergeant Dave Keene, also with Belgrade BD, arrives just moments later. Ma'am, I need you inside the building, okay? Okay. Hi there, how you doing? Good. Good, sir. How are you?
Good, good.
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Chapter 3: What did the police find at the crime scene?
Thank you for your help. Yeah, you bet, Dewey. We cleared everything out. So we're just going to back everybody up until the detectives get here.
With the crime scene secure, detectives are able to begin their investigation into what happened to Lauren and Ashley.
From that first initial appearance, it didn't appear that it was a burglary. There were no open drawers. The place wasn't ransacked. There wasn't stuff strewn about. We got tracks out in the back. The door from the back's been broken open. There was a sign of a break-in. Yeah, the screen door on the back had been kicked in. It was very clear that obviously they had gotten in through the backyard.
There's a gate, but it's not open, but it's unlatched. They went through a gate, went around the back, and gained entry through a sliding glass door in the back. You could see that there were tracks leading around the side of the house.
Ms. Butler had indicated early on that those were not made by either her or any of the ladies in the household. So those were of significant interest to law enforcement.
Let's start going around that way. Yep. We'll document all that pink tape.
Chief Dustin Lensing trudged with me through the snow to demonstrate the low-tech tactic police use to gather highly valuable evidence. You had vital evidence right there in the snow, but you're racing against the clock?
Yeah. Unfortunately, sometimes in Montana, weather conditions can change rather rapidly. In this case, we knew the snow was going to be melting, so we documented everything initially with photography.
I see some red paint in some of the crime scene photos. Is that some sort of high-tech forensic tool?
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Chapter 4: How did the investigation unfold?
Both Ashley and Lauren had been shot in the head. For Lauren it was fatal and Ashley miraculously survived. As we later learned, she had been moving around in the room. And so as a result of that, there was blood everywhere.
Detectives find no fingerprint or DNA evidence, but they do find shell casings, nine of them in all.
There were four shell casings in Lauren's bedroom and five shell casings in Ashley's bedroom. They were from a .22. There were two distinct brands of ammunition used, the Winchester X-22, and the Aguila brand .22 caliber. So we had mixed ammunition in there. So are we looking at two weapons, or are we looking at somebody who loaded their gun with mixed ammunition?
While investigators piece together clues at the scene, Audria Butler is interviewed at police headquarters.
I'm going to tell you right now, this is not my best moment. No, don't worry about it. I'm doing my best right now. We'll get through it. Audie Butler owns the house, and to help cover some of the bills, got a roommate. That first roommate was Ashley Van Heemert. She also recently started this friendship with Lauren DeWise, and Lauren was having some marital problems with her husband.
Paul DeWise was Lauren's estranged husband at the time. And Paul and Lauren met when they were both teachers down in Florida. Paul was married to his wife Maria at the time that he and Lauren had first met. And when that marriage kind of started falling apart, then that's when he and Lauren got together.
When he was married to Maria, he had two children, Natalie and Joe.
Lauren really cared about Joe and Natalie as if they were her own kids.
The couple has their own child, Jennifer. And shortly after she's born, the DeWises sell everything. They get an RV, and they set off to see the country.
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Chapter 5: What were the relationships of the victims?
One of the only times that he expressed leaving that night was to go get beer. I went and got a six-pack of beer around midnight at Town Pump. Which Town Pump? On Main Street. One of the things that we were fairly quickly able to identify was which gas station he went to. A detective went and pulled that video very quickly, and we did find Paul on video going to that town pump and buying beer.
It did match up in terms of the timeline that he gave when he would have gone to the store.
No.
He adamantly denied being at Lauren's house that night. I'm going to be completely honest with you right now, I'm not completely comfortable with where we're at in this interview. I don't think you're in a good spot. Of course, I understand. And I know I'm the prime suspect.
Authorities are talking to Paul's teenaged children, Joe and Natalie. And what they say surprises even veteran detectives.
Was your dad home with you guys the whole time on Saturday? The final season of The Handmaid's Tale has arrived. This is the beginning of the end. And the revolution. What's happening? Rebellion. Has begun. How many bodies are you going to throw in the fire? When is enough enough? When there's no one left to fight. Where is June Osborne? Rise up and fight for your freedom.
The Hulu original series, The Handmaid's Tale. New episodes Tuesdays, only on Hulu. Hello, it's Robin Roberts here. Hey guys, it's George Stephanopoulos here. Hey everybody, it's Michael Strahan here. Wake up with Good Morning America.
Robin, George, Michael, GMA. America's favorite number one morning show. The morning's first breaking news. Exclusive interviews. What everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA.
Good Morning America.
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Chapter 6: What evidence did the police gather?
I mean, I had walked her out to her car, and her husband jumped me. The police came, and I told them what happened, and they asked if I wanted to press charges, and I said no. And that was really the end of it, as far as I knew.
I think Mr. Rolsted's a little concerned because he is in a romantic relationship with another lady at the time.
You know, I got to ask you, and I want you to be 100% honest with me. Yep. Did you and Lauren ever do anything physically together? No, we did not. Did you guys ever kiss? No.
I don't know that he's entirely straightforward with law enforcement about the nature of his relationship with Lauren, but it's ultimately determined that this was a one-time situation where they met in the parking lot and had a kiss, and that was the end of that encounter.
Investigators determined that Kevin had nothing to do with the shooting.
Kevin actually had a fiance over in Billings at the time and was furniture shopping with her the morning after the homicide was found.
In his police interview, Paul also claimed Lauren had a relationship with a man named Brian Ruddick.
So we had to see if maybe there was some sort of love triangle gone wrong or anything like that that could have led to Lauren's death. I am calling about Lauren. Hello? It is my understanding that you guys were involved in some sort of a relationship. Is that correct? Yes. We started talking and...
Brian admits that he and Lauren enjoyed each other's company, but he says their relationship was primarily an emotional one and not physical. Additionally, he had an alibi for the time of the murder.
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Chapter 7: How did Ashley survive the attack?
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Joe was not charged with any crime. In another interview a month later, he provides more horrifying details.
And he flips on the light and this woman says, who are you? And then he yells, who the f*** are you? And then shoots her. I just hear shots. Okay.
Joe says his father then goes into Lauren's bedroom.
Okay. Once they were back in Bozeman, they went to the town pump and got the beer and then started disposing of evidence. We searched trash cans. We searched ditches. We tried to retrace whatever possible routes we thought that Paul might have gone. The amount of man hours that went into searching.
Just when they're ready to give up hope, they catch a break. The one that didn't get away. A Montana outdoors woman is out here fishing on this frozen pond, and you'd never guess what crucial clue she reels in. A lake in Montana, great spot for skating and ice fishing. All right, there we go.
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Chapter 8: What was the aftermath of the shooting?
What's up? Welcome to New York! until it all came crashing down. Federal investigators raiding two homes owned by hip-hop mogul Sean Diddy Combs.
I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an ABC News legal contributor. As Diddy heads to trial, we trace his remarkable rise and fall, and what could be next. Listen to Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a call from and paid for by an inmate at Gallatin County Detention Center.
About a month after his arrest, Paul DeWise calls his daughter Natalie from jail.
He made a phone call to Natalie trying to convince her to tell Joe to take the fall for the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. tells his 17-year-old daughter to convince her 15-year-old brother to confess to the homicide of his stepmother. And it's all on the jail call. Okay, good. Now, DeWise's 19-year-old daughter also took the stand.
At the trial, Natalie tells the jury about that phone call.
That was a damaging piece of evidence. It painted Paul in an unlikable light, I think. It did hurt our case. I didn't even know if we were going to call Natalie at trial. We had her subpoenaed, but we didn't know if we were actually going to call her because it was kind of a loose cannon in terms of what she was going to say.
For almost two years after the murder, Natalie had backed her dad's alibi that he was home with her and Joe when Lauren and Ashley were shot.
But that all changed about a month before trial. Natalie, will you give me your full name, please? Natalie DeWise. She ended up confessing to knowing that her dad had killed Lauren, that she had stayed at home with Jennifer, and that when he came home, he told her everything that he had done. He says he's done something bad.
Just stay calm. You don't have anything to worry about. I need your cooperation with this. I took Joe to go kill Lauren.
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