Mark Stover trained the dogs of the rich and famous. When Linda Opdycke, the daughter of a multi-millionaire, hired him to train her new attack dog, they started combining business and pleasure. Their partnership lasted for more than a decade before disputes between the two ripped their lives apart. Get early, ad-free access to episodes of Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard by subscribing to 48 Hours Plus on Apple Podcasts. The series is widely available everywhere else you get your podcasts. Subscribe to 48 Hours+: https://apple.co/4aEgENo 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 the morning Mark Stover went missing?
I remember being woken up early in the morning by a hellacious barking.
It was 2009, three days before Halloween, a time when the boundaries between the living and the dead become blurred. Stephanie Poore said the dogs next door were going crazy.
And they were upset and it was loud.
What did you think to yourself when you were lying in bed listening to that?
Um, something was going on over there and I wanted to get some more sleep and I was going to have words with Mark.
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Chapter 2: Who was Mark Stover and why was he called the Dog Whisperer?
Mark was Mark Stover, Stephanie's next door neighbor and her boss. Stephanie was a dog trainer at Mark's facility in Anacortes, Washington, an island community about 80 miles north of Seattle. He had built a successful business working with the dogs of the rich and famous and had earned the nickname the Dog Whisperer of the Pacific Northwest. That morning, Stephanie made her short commute to work.
She assumed Mark had already left to meet a client in Seattle.
And I'm on the phone leaving a message with him and he's in the driveway. The car is in the driveway, parked up by the house. And I'm thinking, wow, that's weird because he really, he's probably going to be, you know, a little antsy because he would have rather been gone by now.
Mark had a reputation as a bit of a pit bull, intimidating and impatient.
I saw who I thought was Mark. going into the house, coming out of the house, putting stuff in the back of the hatch.
What made you think it was Mark?
Because it was his hat and his jacket. He opened the door to the car, looked at the front windshield, grabbed something off the front, and then just tore, like literally tore down the driveway.
Then Stephanie went up to the house to the bathroom. As she walked up the driveway, she saw tire marks from the car and some spots of blood on the gravel. Stephanie assumed that the blood belonged to Ding, Mark's guard dog. Ding recently had surgery.
I explained it away that Ding must have ripped her stitches out, out here.
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Chapter 3: What was Mark Stover's early life like and how did he get into dog training?
She said it smelled horrible. But one day, they went for a drive.
And instead of taking the Porsche or the BMW, he takes me in the dog. And he said he didn't want his neighbors to know how rich he was.
But Mark didn't start out rich at all. In fact, just the opposite. And his upbringing was far from easy.
We went through, our family went through a series of losses early in our childhood. Just seemed to be one after another.
This is Victoria again, Mark's sister. They grew up in the Seattle area in the 1950s and 1960s.
My father died when I was six months old and Mark was 18 months old. Then shortly after that, a half-brother was killed in a car wreck. It was caused by my other half-brother, which was sad. And then mother remarried. And shortly after she remarried, my sister died of pneumonia. She was nine.
Their mother's second marriage also then fell apart.
And so she remarried again, and he was an alcoholic. Life at home was tough.
Mark struggled in school. According to Victoria, the family didn't know how to help him.
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Chapter 4: How did Mark Stover become a famous dog trainer to the rich and famous?
You know, he was incredibly bright, eccentric, had a lot of similar interests that I did.
Linda grew up camping, fishing, and hunting. They connected over a love for nature and the open air. What started purely as business turned personal, and they set out to build a relationship and a successful company at the same time. They were coming together despite being from two different worlds. While Mark's family had struggled, Linda Updike was the daughter of a millionaire.
I grew up with my family doing a lot of camping. On Whidbey Island we have a small beach cabin up there and I grew up saltwater fishing, salmon fishing. I was born in California and then moved when I was very young to Bellevue, Washington. I went to junior high and high school there.
I was very involved in horseback riding and competed doing Grand Prix jumping and that was really my passion and where I spent my time in my youth.
How good were you at this horse jumping?
Well, it probably depends on who you'd ask.
And tell me also about your father. He's a famous man in the state of Washington, a very successful man in the state of Washington.
Yes, he started with, came from very middle class background and went to University of Washington and then really became involved in a lot of different businesses, one of them being Chateau Saint-Michel, developing that.
That's a very famous winery in Washington, Seoul. all over the world.
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Chapter 5: Who is Linda Opdycke and how did she meet Mark Stover?
Their house was at the end of a long, narrow driveway that felt like you were almost entering Jurassic Park. The sprawling property, filled with wildflowers, hills, and beaches, made it seem otherworldly. Business started booming. Over time, Island Dog Adventures turned into a million-dollar operation.
Linda said that despite their success, Mark started to become obsessed with money, tightly controlling her spending.
For example, an avocado that was too much money really upset him. I remember another time I was... Excuse me.
You guys have a million-dollar business. He's upset that you bought an avocado.
Yes, yes.
And you're serious?
I'm absolutely serious, yes. He would be in a rage that I spent too much money and it was an inappropriate expenditure on things.
Most of their attention was going to the business and not each other.
And we were working, you know, seven days a week, 15-hour days, and there was really not any time for personal relationships.
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Chapter 6: What was the nature of Mark and Linda's relationship and partnership?
Chapter 7: What were the initial signs of trouble on the day of Mark's disappearance?
I remember being woken up early in the morning by a hellacious barking.
It was 2009, three days before Halloween, a time when the boundaries between the living and the dead become blurred. Stephanie Poore said the dogs next door were going crazy.
And they were upset and it was loud.
What did you think to yourself when you were lying in bed listening to that?
Um, something was going on over there and I wanted to get some more sleep and I was going to have words with Mark.
Mark was Mark Stover, Stephanie's next door neighbor and her boss. Stephanie was a dog trainer at Mark's facility in Anacortes, Washington, an island community about 80 miles north of Seattle. He had built a successful business working with the dogs of the rich and famous and had earned the nickname the Dog Whisperer of the Pacific Northwest. That morning, Stephanie made her short commute to work.
She assumed Mark had already left to meet a client in Seattle.
And I'm on the phone leaving a message with him and he's in the driveway. The car is in the driveway, parked up by the house. And I'm thinking, wow, that's weird because he really, he's probably going to be, you know, a little antsy because he would have rather been gone by now.
Mark had a reputation as a bit of a pit bull, intimidating and impatient.
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Chapter 8: What challenges did the investigation face in uncovering the truth?
I go hiking, swimming, and fishing for Dungeness crabs, and have always considered the small harbor towns here my gateway into tranquility and peace. That's why I was stunned when 48 Hours first got word about this murder. And then I learned that at the center of it all was a celebrity dog trainer.
Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes and the dog trainer to the stars.
That's Victoria Simmons, Mark Stover's younger sister. She said some of Mark's clients included Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, longtime Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and Seattle mariner Ichiro Suzuki.
I believe he came to love all dogs, and no pedigree or fabulous pedigree didn't matter to him. He saw value in all of them and potential in all of them.
Mark offered private training lessons. He could teach basic obedience, but his wealthiest clients wanted him to train their pets to become protection dogs. This is audio from a video of Mark training a dog. He's standing in what looks like a gravel driveway, wearing a dark raincoat and his trademark brown hat with a round brim.
Show me the motion again with the stick.
A handler releases the dog. The dog sprints and bites hard enough to lock onto Mark's leg, which is covered in padding. And a tug of war ensues between the growling dog and Mark. Mark commands the dog to stand down. Right away, the dog lays on the ground looking straight ahead and awaits the next command.
I just thought he was so incredibly interesting.
His niece Julia, Victoria's daughter, said Mark sometimes expressed his love for dogs in eccentric ways.
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