When 15-year-old Danni Houchins is found dead in a swamp, her family says they were led to believe she drowned. 24 years later, Danni’s sister learns the terrible truth. Peter Van Sant reports. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened to Danni Houchins?
Not a day since I was 12 years old have I not thought about my sister, Dani. That day in September of 1996, Dani disappeared. My name is Stephanie. Dani was my older sister. Dani was 15 years old, the kind of older sister that every little sister looks up to. Nice stuff.
My dad was sitting there, he's like, come on, let's try.
She was upset with my parents and needed some space to herself. Danielle had gone out to Cameron Bridge.
And she was familiar with this area?
Absolutely. Danny didn't return home. The mother grew deeply concerned. And so she and one of her friends drove out to Cameron Bridge to see what was going on. My mom and her friend walked around calling Danny's name and called the Sheriff's Department and reported her missing. And a search party was being pulled together.
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Chapter 2: How did Danni's family react to her disappearance?
Everybody's calling out her name. Yep. So if you were out here, you can hear them in the distance. Danny, Danny, right? Yep.
If she's out here, we just want her to come home. 730 to 8 started to get dark enough to where I called off the search.
Family friends came out after dark.
That was about 930 when the dispatcher called me and said they found her body.
How were you informed that Dani was gone?
I was at home. My dad came home and told my mom, and I could hear him telling her that Dani was gone. And she said, I know. They're going to look again in the morning. As soon as it's light, they'll be back out there looking for her. They're going to find her. They're going to find her. And he said, no, honey. They found her. She's gone.
She was strong and she was brave. And she was everything I looked up to being.
656 to the Fish and Game at Cameron Bridge. Go ahead.
Law enforcement didn't tell my family a lot in 1996.
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Chapter 3: What were the initial findings after Danni's body was discovered?
It was the end of September 1996, a Saturday night, a fishing area just outside of Bozeman, Montana, a place of tranquility until this night. A few miles up a rural highway near the small town of Belgrade, searchers discovered the body of 15-year-old Danny Houchens. What brought your sister, Danny, down to this area back on September 21, 1996?
That morning, we had kind of a family spat. Stephanie Mollett was Danny's little sister. And so she got 15-year-old mad about it and needed some space and some time, and she had her driver's license.
Now people wonder, how does a 15-year-old get a driver's license?
In the state of Montana in 1996, you actually got your driver's license at 15. She was a very proud driver.
She hops into her Chevy pickup truck. Why would she come to this place if she wanted to just kind of take a break? It's peaceful. After Danny's pickup truck was located, a sheriff's posse had searched this wilderness for Danny until it got too dark. But that same night, two brothers, friends of the Houchens family, refused to call it quits.
So they came down this very path at night with their flashlights. That's right. They went across this bridge, right? Somehow, in the dense, muddy woods, they found her body.
The body, I believe, Peter, was right in this area when she was found. Right in here? Yes.
Keith Farquhar, then a Gallatin County Sheriff's deputy, was the first officer on the scene. In the first hours after Danny was found, no one was really sure what had happened to her. Did this look like an accident scene or something else? Something entirely different.
There's nothing here. then or now that would suggest a 15-year-old girl should all of a sudden be face down in a small amount of water and mud and be dead. She's a mountain kid.
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Chapter 4: What were the controversies surrounding Danni's death investigation?
While Danny's family was awaiting an official cause of death, everyone, it seemed, from first responder Keith Farquhar to folks all over town, were speculating about what had happened.
Small town Montana, if you haven't heard a rumor by 10 o'clock in the morning, you're going to start one.
The rumor started flying of maybe it was a murder. And then we're all like, what?
And if it was a murder, who would want to end this young girl's life? And was there a killer on the loose?
It just was like this strange roller coaster of, did someone? Should we be worried as a community?
I think the rumor mill around Belgrade High School was ruthless.
There was so much other speculation. I remember thinking, man, what if? What if? It just caused fear.
I tried to be strong. Danny died on a Saturday, and I tried to go back to school on Monday.
I thought that if I was strong, then it'd be easier for my parents.
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Chapter 5: How did the investigation evolve over the years?
Until 24 years after Danny's death. Matt Boxmeyer was the detective sergeant with Gallatin County. He took an interest in Danny Houchins and her family.
I found out that they really hadn't been given much information back in 1996 regarding the investigation, which is not uncommon with investigations. You know, you don't openly talk about them with the family usually. They'd been told that she had fallen down and drowned and it was marked as accidental.
Boxmeyer also found out that there had been several efforts over the years to get evidence analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab. But after each attempt, nothing. No usable DNA profile ever came back. So he was starting from scratch. Meantime, Stephanie decided to turn up the pressure.
I had been calling the sheriff's department, trying to get someone to talk to me about Danny's case.
Finally, Boxmeier and his bosses made a decision. They deserved some answers. They told the family that Danny's death was no accident. I shared with them that I believe that it was a homicide. Homicide. Stephanie then demanded to read the autopsy and look at the crime scene photos.
I was so angry at the people who lied to my family and let my sister's murder go unsolved but uninvestigated for all of these years. I learned that rather than drowning on just water, Danny's head had been held down in the mud. She had mud all the way down into her lungs and into her stomach. There was subcutaneous bruising on the back of her neck. Someone had held her head down forcefully.
There was vaginal injuries. There was semen in her underwear. She had fought and scratched.
This is like a nuclear bomb going off emotionally, I would think, for this family and for you.
I remember asking them, so you mean to tell me that in fact my sister was raped? And they said, yes, we believe she was raped. I remember not being able to breathe. I remember feeling like I needed to puke.
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Chapter 6: What shocking truths were revealed about Danni's death?
I told Stephanie, I will solve this case, Stephanie. And she said, OK, I'm going to trust you.
And with Elfmont leading the way, he soon found a suspect.
Why do I know that name? Like, that sounds so familiar. But it took a little bit of time for it to go, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, my gosh. No way.
Did you ever think coming out here in the mountains outside Bozeman, Montana, that you'd be going back to work as a homicide investigator?
Never.
No, I never thought so. By mid-2023, retired LAPD Captain Tom Elfmont was back to working full-time, committed to finding Danny Houchin's killer.
The only reason I stayed in it was Danny.
For Danny's sister, Stephanie, Elfmont's refreshing dedication, professionalism, and enthusiasm was what the case had always needed. What does Tom do?
Tom got to work. Tom worked on Danny's case every day. He went through and reexamined all of the evidence.
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Chapter 7: Who is Tom Elfmont and what role did he play?
Since I started working with law enforcement in 2018, I've been able to help solve over 325 cases.
Moore is an expert at building out family trees from DNA samples using information from popular genealogy websites, bringing cold cases back to life. But to solve this case, Moore needed a special type of DNA profile. Problem was, they didn't have enough DNA from that semen.
We have to start from scratch, which means there has to be remaining biological evidence for us to go back and retest using more advanced technology.
Elfmont did have more evidence for retesting. Four male hairs that had been found on Dani, which had been perfectly preserved for 27 years. They had never yielded any usable DNA because they were rootless hairs without any skin cells.
But Elfmont asked around and connected with Astraea Forensics, a state-of-the-art private lab that's at the forefront of extracting DNA from previously unattainable genetic matter. As if there wasn't enough drama in this case, the first two hairs Astraea tested produced nothing usable. So the last two hairs are examined. Are they able to get a profile?
Yes. in the last hair. Oh, I was so excited.
It was a critical breakthrough. Elfmont got permission from a judge to compare this enhanced DNA profile to samples in popular genealogy databases, where people voluntarily submit their DNA profiles. By spring 2024, CeCe had what she needed to get to work.
I'm looking for patterns, commonalities, overlaps, eventually common ancestors.
Moore was able to identify the great-grandparents on both sides of the suspect's family tree. She then found one marriage that proved decisive.
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