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Today we’re stepping into a crisp September morning in 1996, in the rugged landscape of Belgrade, Montana. Fifteen-year-old Danielle ‘Danni’ Houchins hopped into her Chevy pickup for a solo drive to clear her head & sadly, she never came back. That night, her lifeless body was found face-down in the muddy shallows of a place she knew like the back of her hand. Authorities called it an accident, a tragic slip into the swamp, but her family and friends never bought it. For nearly three decades, they fought for answers, clinging to the belief that Danni’s death was no mishap. Today, we unravel her story—a tale of a vibrant girl lost, a family’s relentless quest, and a truth that waited 28 years to surface, only to end with a killer’s final escape.
Back in 1996, residents within Montana could legally obtain their driver’s license at age fifteen so when Danni got into an argument with her family on the morning of Saturday, September 21, 1996, she decided to take a drive in her Chevy pickup truck to cool off by herself out in nature. She set out at 11 am wearing blue jeans, a gray sweatshirt & a brace on her left knee from a recent injury while she was dancing with friends.
As time went by & Danni hadn’t come home, her mom & a friend headed out to look for her & found her truck parked at the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access area. The car was unlocked & her keys & water bottle were located on a nearby path, but there was no sign of Danni.
Now concerned, the Houchins family called on the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office at 5 pm & authorities ultimately called the search off as night fell. However, Danni’s friends & loved ones refused to stop searching for her & since they knew the marshy, heavily wooded area well, they continued on in the darkness of night.
Tragically, as two local brothers made their way down a path that was illuminated by the beams of their flashlights, they found Danni’s lifeless body within the dense muddy woods, face-down in a shallow pool of muddy water.
Deputy Keith Farquhar was the first officer to the scene & immediately doubted that the teen’s death was an accident since it was unlikely that a 15-year-old who grew up in the mountains would have died in a small amount of water. Danni was a classic Montana girl who loved to hike, fish & ski.
Soon word of Danni’s unexpected death spread like wildfire among the residents of the small town of Belgrade & within the halls of Belgrade High School as residents & students speculated what happened to Danni. Many worried there could be a murderer on the loose.
Danni was a beloved member of the community who was known for her silly, witty sense of humor. She was a smart girl who loved science & always wanted to understand the way the world worked. She was also exceptionally close to her younger sister, Stephanie, who’d always looked up to her big sister, the two enjoying the beauty of their home state of Montana.
The Houchins family were stunned when two days after Danni’s death, on September 23, authorities released the partial findings from her autopsy, which had been conducted by state medical examiner Gary Dale. Her manner of death was listed as undetermined while her cause of death was drowning. The sheriff told the media that there were no cuts or bruises located on Danni’s body or any other indications to suggest foul play. Her family found this utterly absurd & did not believe that Danni, a skilled outdoorswoman, had tripped & drowned.
However, at the time, the Houchins family hadn’t been told that the coroner had determined that Danni, who had been 5’5” & 130# at the time of her death, had inhaled both mud & water into her airways & there actually were bruises & cuts on her body. Even more shocking, there were also signs of sexual assault as the medical examiner noted a recent vaginal laceration. Her gold watch with an elastic band had been pulled part way over her hand which indicated that she’d likely been dragged by that arm. The medical examiner noted in his report that Danni’s clothing had been properly positioned when her body was found, although her bra had been pulled up & over her breasts while her underwear was found with the left edge rolled over the top.
According to the sheriff at the time, Bill Slaughter, it’s common that the details of a case be withheld while investigators look into potential suspects. But as 2023 rolled around, 27 years after Danni’s death, it was clear that the lead investigators at the time had been too quick to dismiss her death as an accident & even hinted at the possibility of suicide.
Meanwhile, Deputy Keith Farquhar, who at the time was a young patrolman, was assigned to work on the case alongside detectives. With this, he went on to speak with Danni’s doctor who informed him that had Danni truly fallen after accidentally tripping, there was nothing that would have physically prevented her from simply rolling over & up out of the mud & water. At the time of her death, Danni had been a strong teenager who was unlikely to have drowned in three to four inches of water. The Houchins family had been informed that there were no other signs of injury to her body that suggested she’d been knocked unconscious thus leading her to drown in the shallow amount of water.
When Keith presented this report to his fellow investigators, he indicated that he was basically ridiculed by the sheriff who said, What the f**k does the doctor know? As years went by & light was eventually shown on Danni’s case, the sheriff denied these allegations & accused Keith of spreading lies for the simple fact that he was a disgruntled employee.
Fully disgusted by the situation, Keith, who had been with Gallatin County since 1989, went on to resign from the sheriff’s office on December 31, 1996, only three months after Danni’s death & eventually went on to work as a veterinarian in Helena. Throughout the three weeks that Keith assisted with the investigation, he never believed that Danni’s case was being pursued as a potential homicide & felt that Slaughter only wanted to quickly accept that her death had been accidental or even self-inflicted.
Despite stepping away from the force, Keith continued to think about Danni’s case on a near daily basis for the next 28 years.
Meanwhile, Danni’s family were forced to wade through the grief of navigating through life without her as they tried to accept what they had been told, that her death was nothing more than a freak accident.
As months turned into years, a hole remained in Stephanie’s life as she had only been 12-years-old when she suddenly lost her role model & was now tasked to find her way through life with her sister no longer at her side.
In 2020, 24 years after Danni’s death, Matt Boxmeyer was a detective sergeant with Gallatin County who took an interest in Danni’s case when he realized that her family had been given very little information in the wake of her untimely, suspicious death. Boxmeyer could see that they’d been told that she’d fallen down & drowned in what was labeled an accident.
According to Boxmeyer, he was also finding out that there had been several efforts over the years to have evidence analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab, but no usable DNA profile ever came back. With this, he decided to take a fresh look at the case starting at square one.
Meanwhile, beginning in 2019, Stephanie, who at that point was 39-years-old & living in Washington state, had been contacting the department in hopes of speaking with someone about her sister’s case with the goal that it could be reopened. She always believed fully in her heart that her sister’s death had not been an accident & as she grew into adulthood, she made a vow to find her sister’s truth. After the passage of so many years, she was met with a bombshell. When the Houchins family spoke with Boxmeyer, he informed them that it was his full belief that Danni’s manner of death was homicide.
Now with this information, Stephanie demanded not only her sister’s autopsy report, but also crime scene photos, furious that so much time had gone by without answers. She felt strongly that law enforcement had lied to her family & allowed her sister’s murder to go unsolved.
Now with the reports in hand, Stephanie was able to see that rather than drowning in water, Danni’s head had been forced down into the mud since the medical examiner had not only located mud all the way down into her lungs, but also her stomach, something that is not at all characteristic in a drowning.
There was also bruising located on the back of Danni’s neck that supported the idea that her head had been held down forcefully. Even more damning, there were vaginal injuries & semen located in her underwear as well as proof that she had fought back & scratched her attacker.
After two & a half decades the Houchins family were stunned to learn that 15-year-old Danni had likely been raped when throughout all of those years, they were forced to convince themselves that she’d drowned in a freak accident since that’s what investigators at the time had insisted. With this new information, Stephanie felt ill, unable to catch her breath.
Now in 2021, newly appointed Sheriff Dan Springer assured the Houchins family that solving Danni’s murder would be top priority. Back in 1996 Springer had been a rookie deputy who only started five days before Danni’s body was found. He reached out to Stephanie & made a promise that he wouldn’t stop until they had answers in this case.
Springer contacted a man named Tom Elfmont for assistance who agreed to help with the case after he learned the details. Elfmont was a former Los Angeles PD captain who was now running a global security firm, living in Bozeman. When Elfmont learned the details of Danni’s case, he was sickened by the fact that a wonderful teenager died in this manner & there had been no justice.
By mid-2023, Elfmont was out of retirement & back to working full-time on Danni’s case with an unwavering determination to bring her & her family answers. Like Springer, Elfmont also made a promise to Stephanie that her sister’s case would be solved.
After the passage of so much time, it was a tremendous relief to the family that Danni’s case was finally receiving the attention & dedication it had always deserved. Elfmont worked the case on a daily basis, combing over all of the evidence & compiling a list of potential suspects. The old case file previously tested the clothing Danni had worn on the day she died & he wanted to be sure that the DNA got tested. He was in contact with the Montana State Crime Lab to ensure their newest technology could be used to retest the semen found on Danni’s underwear.
Finally, results came back with a partial DNA profile, but there were no matches in the FBI’s CODIS database. Like in other recent cases, Elfmont was not going to be deterred & turned his attention to genetic genealogy & the assistance of investigative genealogist, CeCe Moore.
In the time that Moore had been working with law enforcement since 2018, she’d helped solve over 325 cases using DNA samples to build a family tree from popular genealogy websites that allow cold cases to be solved. In order to solve Danni’s case, she would need a special type of DNA profile & unfortunately, there was not enough DNA from the semen.
With this, evidence would need to be combed over from scratch retesting remaining biological evidence using more advanced technology. Four male arm hairs had been found on Danni & for 27 years, they had been perfectly preserved. Because the strands lacked an attached root, thus skin cells, they never previously yielded any usable DNA. Elfmont connected with Astrea Forensics, an advanced private lab that is able to extract DNA from previously unattainable genetic matter.
Two of the four hairs that were tested produced nothing usable so all of the hope was placed on the last two strands of hair. After they were examined, investigators were thrilled to learn that the very last hair gave them a profile.
Elfmont was granted permission from a judge to compare this sample among samples within popular genealogy databases where people voluntarily submit their DNA for ancestry purposes.
By spring 2024, CeCe Moore was able to identify the great grandparents on both sides of the suspect’s family tree. With this, she turned her focus onto a couple who had a lot of children, including three sons, all of whom lived in New Hampshire. Moore poured over their pasts in order to try to find the link between the family & Montana, combing through their social media pages. When she reached the family’s youngest son’s Facebook page, she noticed a post that indicated he’d moved to Bozeman, Montana on July 1, 1996, three months before Danni was murdered.
By May 1, 2024, Moore felt confident that the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place so she reached out to the detectives to let them know that she likely just found Danni’s killer. Soon, the Houchins family was notified that not only had they identified this man, but he was still alive & they were actively building a case against him.
The suspect’s name was Paul Hutchinson, a married father of two now adult children, a man who was well respected among his fishing & hunting community. He’d been working for the Bureau of Land Management in Dillon, Montana for 22 years as a fisheries biologist. He was very well versed within the outdoors & with bow hunting, rifle hunting, fishing & trapping.
In September 1996, Hutchinson was 27-years-old & had relocated to Bozeman after he served in the Marine Corps to attend Montana State University, only thirteen miles away from where Danni’s body had been found. He had no criminal record & had lived a quiet life since 1996 with his wife, daughter & son, living two hours away from the Houchins family.
During his time at Montana State, Hutchinson was enrolled in the work-study program that allowed him to work for the Fish & Wildlife Service which would have placed him in the waterways within the Belgrade area, the very area where Danni had gone out on a hike the day she was murdered.
There was no connection between Hutchinson & Danni so when their paths crossed that day, they were strangers to one another. Because the man was so involved in fishing & hunting as well as his high-profile government job, he was very much known within the community.
Stephanie’s childhood friend, Rachelle Schrute, who is an expert hunter & former Yellowstone park guide, incidentally happened to know Hutchinson. She considered him a trusted mentor since they’d first met in the early 2000s & always viewed the man as very calm, quiet & unremarkable. She wouldn’t hesitate to invite him on a hunting & camping trip & the two had spent much time together alone in the wilderness & she never once questioned his integrity.
Rachelle hadn’t seen Hutchinson in years, but they maintained contact through social media & she was able to see his travels & hunting expeditions.
After CeCe Moore passed Paul Hutchinson’s information along to Tom Elfmont, he was now tasked with obtaining the man’s DNA in order to make an arrest. Montana law allowed Elfmont to conditionally interact with Hutchinson; they had to be in a public area where the man could walk away on his own will.
On Tuesday, July 23, 2024, Elmont & another detective made their way to Hutchinson’s office at the Bureau of Land Management in Dillon with a body camera recording. As the man climbed down from his pickup truck, Elfmont approached him & said hello. Their goal was to keep the interaction casual to avoid suspicion on Hutchinson’s end. The men explained that they were with the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office & they were hoping to speak with him about issues along the rivers of Southwest Montana.
As they stood outside chatting, the day was oppressively hot with temperatures hanging just below 100 degrees. With this, Hutchinson gladly invited the men inside his office to continue their conversation. Because of the invitation, they didn’t have to read him his Miranda rights.
Once inside, Hutchinson guided the men into a small conference room & as soon as they mentioned the name Danni Houchins, they could immediately sense the man’s nerves as he broke into a sweat. He said he needed to leave for a moment in order to help a coworker & when he came back, they showed Huthinson photos of four women that died; one in an Idaho river, two in Yellowstone & the final photo was of Danni.
From here, Elfmont’s partner, Court Depweg, led the conversation. He explained to Hutchinson that Danielle Houchins was found deceased off of the Gallatin River at Cameron Bridge Access. He confirmed that he was aware of the area & had trapped there before near Jackrabbit Lane. He indicated that he didn’t recall ever seeing Danni there & denied knowing a thing about her death.
When Hutchinson was informed that they had a suspect’s DNA, he was asked if there was any possibility he had been at the location where her body was found. He denied trapping in that location anytime during September 1996. As the conversation ended, Hutchinson asked the detectives if there was anything they wanted to ask him while they were there & seemed surprised that he hadn’t been arrested on the spot.
After speaking with Hutchinson for nearly two hours, the detectives left & instructed a surveillance team to follow Hutchinson & immediately noted the man driving in a highly erratic manner.
After Stephanie was updated about the interaction, she began to mentally prepare herself for what she & her family would be facing in terms of a trial & the idea of coming face-to-face. That all changed only twelve hours later.
However, she would come to find that this would never happen as Elfmont’s next phone call was to inform Stephanie that Paul Hutchinson had committed suicide the very next day. After he went home & retrieved a 38-caliber derringer pistol he drove to a remote area, called the Beaverhead County Sheriff’s dispatch line at 4:17 am & explained that he needed help before hanging up. By the time they made their way to his location, he was dead at age 55 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
After his death, Hutchinson’s DNA was checked against evidence from Danni’s body, including the semen from her underwear which proved that detectives had found the correct man.
When Stephanie was given the opportunity to speak with reporters, she voiced her appreciation to Tom Elfmont & Dan Springer for sticking to their words. And then she released 28 years of frustration & anger toward the sheriff that bold-faced lied to her family, who failed them & more importantly, failed Danni.
Danni had been a 15-year-old girl who went out into her happy place of nature to blow off some steam when she came upon a monster in the wilderness in what has been described as a crime of opportunity. The man, whom she’d never met before, sexually assaulted her & then violently held her face down into the mud & water as she thrashed & tried desperately to fight him off. Despite the violence she was subjected to, only days after her death, her family was told that she’d likely just tripped & accidentally drowned in the shallow waters & meanwhile, her killer was given the freedom to live 28 years. He was allowed to do everything that Danni had been robbed of; he met his wife, had his career, had two children, the luxury of traveling & doing the thing he loved the most, spending time out in the wilderness.
According to former Sheriff Bill Slaughter, who is now retired, he denies any allegations that he lied to Danni’s family despite the fact that he told the local newspaper in 1996 that there was no sign of foul play.
After all of the pieces came together to paint the picture of what happened to Danni on that September Saturday in 1996, Stephanie went back to the scene of the crime where her sister’s life had been taken. She could only imagine the horrors of what her sister’s last moments entailed & how scared she must have been as she desperately tried to gasp for breath as a monster held her face down into the muddy water, the moment when she realized that she was going to die.
Now Tom Elmont is left to wonder if Paul Hutchinson is responsible for any other unsolved cases & suspects that there are other victims out there. The fact that a stranger incidentally came upon a 15-year-old girl & raped & murdered her without hesitation, what are the odds that he did nothing violent in the following 28 years?
In the days after Hutchinson’s death, a notice was posted to Legacy.com to indicate that an obituary would be forthcoming. On the same day Springer announced the news that DNA evidence proved he had been Danni’s killer, his obituary was briefly posted. However, it was soon replaced by a message from his wife that read:
We are absolutely heartbroken to learn this news & our hearts go out to the Houchins family. It is good to know that they will at last be able to find the closure that they deserve. Our own family was reeling from dealing with Paul’s suicide. In 24 years of marriage there was never any hint that something like this could be lurking in the background. Paul was an exceptional husband & father. This latest news makes our grieving so much more complicated. We would appreciate being given the space to process & come to terms with this development as we mourn.
Stephanie is now making it her mission to create changes within Montana law enforcement so that future cases like Danni’s don’t fall by the wayside. The Houchins family went on to spread half of Danni’s ashes on the tallest mountain top on the Bridge Range, Sacagawea Peak. After her sister’s case was solved, Stephanie headed back to the banks of the Gallatin River where she spoke to her sister & spread the last of her ashes.
For nearly three decades Stephanie tried to get someone to pay attention to her sister’s case, to convince them of what a phenomenal girl she had been & that her life mattered & she deserved answers & justice. Dani’s case highlights the importance of investigators relentlessly pursuing justice by exhausting all means necessary to bring closure to a victim & their loved ones.
References:
- CBS News: How did Montana teen Danni Houchins die? Her family’s decades-long search for the truth
- Independent: Cops finally crack mystery of Montana 15-year-old’s 1996 murder. But hours after he’s grilled, her killer turns up dead
- People: Man who raped, killed Montana girl in 1996 is ID’d after 28 years – and he died by suicide after being questioned
- CBS News: Alone with a killer in the Montana wilderness
- Montana Free Press: Gallatin County sheriff says 28-year-old cold case solved
- Huff Post: Cold case suspect accused of killing teen in 1996 dies by suicide after police interview
- YouTube: It’s About Danni – 48 Hours
- MTFP: Wife of deceased suspect in cold case murder speaks out
