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Today’s episode brings us to eastern Montana, a quiet place where a young mother of four’s disappearance shattered the community. In 2008, Susan Marie “Susie” Casey was a 34-year-old mother of four who was described as fun, outgoing & vibrant. After a night out with friends on Friday, April 11, 2008, she seemingly vanished. When her two eldest children woke up on Saturday morning, they realized that their mom hadn’t come home from her night out. Despite their ongoing calls, they were unable to get through & with each missed call, their worry only grew. Since Susie was such a responsive, attentive mom, this was absolutely unlike her.
Susie was born on January 3, 1974 in Wolf Point, Montana as the youngest of six children to parents Jack & Marlene Limesand. Growing up in Circle, Montana, she had a love of horseback riding & rodeos. After she graduated from high school in 1992, she moved about 3 ½ hours away from home to attend Billings Business College in Billings, Montana. Upon her graduation in 1993, she worked in a nursing home for five years before relocating to Glendive, Montana where she was only 45 minutes away from her family.
Susie was the type of girl who was an exceptionally hard worker & had no issues getting dirty. She could often be found shoveling manure or fixing a fence & according to her family & friends, she was fun & feisty.
While Susie was in college in Billings, she met a man named Walter “Marty” Larson & it wasn’t long before she realized she was pregnant. After they got married, their daughter, Marya was born, followed by their son, Shay. After five years of marriage, Susie & Marty divorced in 1998 & Susie got custody of the children while & meanwhile, Marty Larson left town.
While Susie was living in Glendive, she worked as a medical transcriptionist at the local medical center & her son & daughter were absolutely everything to her. Very soon after her divorce, she met a rancher in Glendive named Ted Casey, a rugged man who was fourteen years her senior. They connected over their shared love of horses & since Ted was older, Susie’s friends & family felt he would be someone she could settle down with & provide more stability in her life.
After Susie & Ted were married in 1998, they had two daughters together, Kyana & Charlee. Ted also viewed Marya & Shay as his own & they called him dad. However, Susie soon realized that being a stay-at-home mom might not be meant for her when she found herself growing restless. It wasn’t long before the couple began having issues in their marriage that seemed to be based on their different personalities & expectations of each other. Susie told her sister-in-law, Valerie, that Ted expected her to be home at 10 pm while she wanted to be out having fun.
One night when Ted & Susie were out at a bar having a few drinks, things reached a boiling point when the couple got into an argument & Ted suddenly dumped a beer over his wife’s head & slapped her across the face. Ted was arrested for this incident & ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault. It was also the official end of their decade’s long marriage.
After Susie moved out of their home with her four children in the spring of 2008, they settled into the Ponderosa Apartments in downtown Glendive. Soon, she was back to enjoying her life, having fun with friends & going out. This was when she met & began dating a new man.
On the night of Friday, April 11, 2008, Susie’s oldest two children, 14-year-old Marya & 12-year-old Shay, were at their apartment for the night while her two youngest daughters were spending time with their father, Ted. When she stopped by to see her sister-in-law, Valerie noticed that Susie was a little more dressed up than what was typical for her & she seemed to have taken extra care with her makeup. Valerie could only assume that she had a date planned that night.
Susie met up with friends at a bar that night who later indicated that she headed out at 11 pm. It was the following day when Marya & Shay realized that their mom wasn’t home & began to worry. Despite the fact that Susie was someone who did like to go out & have fun with her friends, she always came home after a night out. When 14-year-old Marya continued to call her mom, only to reach her voicemail each time, she decided to call her grandparents when she was convinced that something must be wrong.
Susie’s sister, Carleen, thought that maybe Marya & Shay had misunderstood their mom’s plans & wondered if maybe she had come home, but left earlier that morning before the kids were up. However, when she continued to be unreachable by phone, that idea was quickly forgotten.
Valerie, who was married to Susie’s brother, Rusty, had called her sister-in-law earlier that morning to invite her on a shopping outing before she was made aware that Susie was missing. As with Marya, she also wasn’t able to reach her. Since this was before the alarm bells had rung, Valerie went out shopping by herself, thinking nothing of it. When Rusty called her later in the day to tell her that they were unable to find Susie, she immediately began calling her, leaving her voice messages & begging her to get in touch with them.
Valerie also began calling Susie’s friends in an attempt to retrace her last known steps from the night before & eventually tracked down the friends she had been out with at the bar. They explained that she’d left at 11 pm to have a date with her new boyfriend, someone that Valerie didn’t know.
Since she knew that Susie’s two younger daughters were with Ted, Valerie jumped in her car & headed there, thinking that maybe when Susie went to pick up 6-year-old Kyana & 8-year-old Charlee, they’d gotten into an argument. However, when she pulled up to Ted’s house, she immediately saw that Susie’s car wasn’t there & the house was dark.
Feeling uneasy, she called Rusty & asked him to pick her up so they could drive over to Susie’s apartment together. When they arrived, they walked around & saw no indication to suggest that Susie had left there abruptly. Everything appeared as if she planned to come back home as she always did after her Friday nights out.
Since Susie’s family & friends always joked that her phone was attached to her, the fact that she wasn’t answering or returning the slew of phone calls was highly out of character for her. But in the meantime, Valerie was determined to figure out who her sister-in-law’s new boyfriend was & it wasn’t long before she learned that his name was Brad Holzer.
Brad lived only five minutes away from Susie’s apartment so she drove over to talk to him. When she explained that they were all unable to find her & were growing exceptionally concerned, Brad himself was very confused as he assured Valerie that he’d dropped Susie off at her apartment at 5 am that morning.
Learning this information, Rusty & Valerie decided to go to the police since they knew in their hearts that something was seriously wrong. Since the town of Glendive is so small, the police were already aware of Susie’s history & the abuse she suffered at the hands of Ted six months earlier.
Officers started their investigation at Susie’s apartment where her oldest kids, Marya & Shay, last saw their mom, as well as where Brad indicated he’d dropped her off at 5 am. Inside the apartment, there was no sign of a struggle, but they did find some concerning evidence outside. The Ponderosa apartments were situated in downtown Glendive just off of a main road & in the alcove of a doorway of the building next to Susie’s, they noticed a footprint in the dust.
This footprint stood out to officers since that entrance was no longer in use, but it looked like it had been made very recently. As they walked around the perimeter of the building, they noticed a drag mark in the alleyway as if something heavy had been recently pulled along the ground. Other than the footprint & the drag marks, there was no other sign of obvious foul play, such as blood.
Investigators, like Susie’s family, believed that something terrible must have happened to her based on the fact that Brad indicated he had dropped her off at 5 am, yet her children said she hadn’t come home & no one was able to reach her.
Investigators were aware that Ted & Susie had been separated since the time he assaulted her in the bar, but they were still legally married. When they contacted Ted, he told them that he was out of town, but he would be back the following day & he’d come by the station.
After Valerie & Rusty spoke with officers about Susie’s date with Brad Holzer the night before, they tracked him down & asked him to come to the station for a statement since he was the last known person to have seen her. Detectives soon learned that Brad was married, but he told them that although he & his wife still lived together, they were planning to separate.
Brad maintained that he had dropped Susie off at the Ponderosa Apartments at 5 am on Saturday morning, but it appeared she never made it inside.
Brad & Susie met three weeks before she vanished on St. Patrick’s Day 2008 when they were both out celebrating the holiday at a local bar. He recognized her immediately since they briefly dated when Susie was 16 & he was 19, until they ultimately drifted apart. After they reconnected that night, Susie & Brad became inseparable moving forward.
Investigators wanted Brad to tell them exactly what went on that night from the moment he picked Susie up until the moment he dropped her off. He explained that he picked her up at 11 pm on Friday night & they drove to the Yellowstone River where they spent the night talking & kissing. When he drove her back to her apartment & pulled away at 5 am, he said he saw her through his rearview mirror & she was at least halfway to the front door, maybe only 20 steps away.
This was the last time anyone saw Susie alive.
According to Brad, when he got back to his house at about 5:30 am, he went straight to bed. He told officers that he heard his wife come home at about 6 am from a date of her own, something that police confirmed with her as being accurate. Detectives went on to speak with Brad & his wife separately a few more times to confirm that all of their facts lined up & their stories never changed, something that suggested that neither of them had anything to do with Susie’s disappearance.
There was one detail about Brad’s story that seemed strange to investigators. He told them that earlier on Friday, before he met up with Susie, he got a strange email from a sender named Denise Johnson, someone he didn’t know. The email read, How is your girlfriend? And how does your wife feel?
Brad’s wife told investigators that she’d also gotten a strange phone call during the week of Susie’s disappearance. An unknown female asked if they could leave a message for Brad & went on to say, Tell him to stop messing around with married women.
When Ted came back into town & stopped by the police station, he told investigators that on the Saturday morning of Susie’s disappearance, he’d gotten up at about 5 am & taken their daughters to his brother’s house at about 5:45 am. On the way back, he said he passed Susie’s apartment since it was on his way to town hall where he was meeting someone for work. After his meeting, he said he drove out of town to a rodeo, something he had planned.
Ted told investigators that he last saw Susie at about 7 pm on Friday night when she dropped the girls off with him. As they continued to press him, he admitted to calling her later that evening after he received a strange phone call. He told detectives that an unknown man called him at about 9 pm & asked what he thought about his wife dating Brad Holzer.
Ted fully admitted that he was upset by the idea that his wife had moved on so he called Susie to confront her. She told him that although they were still legally married, she was not cheating on him since they were separated. When the call ended, he said they were both angry.
Police were left to wonder if this was a case of a love triangle gone wrong, but if so, who was responsible for whatever happened to Susie? There was no proof or evidence to link either Brad or Ted to her disappearance despite the fact that they were each near her apartment on Saturday morning at 5 am. Brad had gotten a strange email that day while Ted had gotten the phone call.
After speaking with Brad’s wife as well as Ted’s brother, both of their stories checked out & their alibis seemed solid.
Investigators realized that there was an ATM with a working camera only a couple of doors away from Susie’s apartment. Since it was still dark when Susie climbed out of Brad’s truck on Saturday morning, the footage was grainy, but it proved that both Brad & Ted’s statements had been true. Brad’s truck could be seen pulling in right about 5 am & about twenty minutes later, Susie climbed out at 5:19 am. As she crossed the street, Brad’s truck could be seen pulling away. When Ted’s car came into view, it drove right past the building at 5:52 am without stopping, going in the direction of town hall, just as he said.
Investigators found themselves back at square one while Susie’s loved ones were distraught with each passing day that ended without knowing where she was or what happened to her. Each time the phone rang, they assumed it was investigators calling with terrible news. According to her family, out of everything that Susie loved, her children were her greatest love. Now her four children were left in limbo, waiting to hear where their mom was or what happened to her.
Her family waited an agonizing month to hear any news as to her whereabouts & when news did come, it was tragic. Susie’s body was found floating in the Yellowstone River about 28 miles upstream from her home in Glendive. Investigators saw that she was wearing the shirt that Brad described during his interview as well as no bra & only one shoe, just as he’d indicated she’d been wearing when she climbed out of his truck.
According to the autopsy, based on the lack of water found in her lungs, Susie was already deceased by the time her body entered the river. Because her hyoid bone was broken, it was determined that she had been manually strangled & then dumped into the river.
Susie’s missing person investigation immediately became a homicide investigation & Montana’s Department of Criminal Investigation stepped in to assist. Detectives retraced her last known movements on the day that she vanished & Brad Holzer was brought back in for questioning. He explained that they’d been out of touch for two decades & they’d only reconnected three weeks before Susie vanished. Ted was brought back in as well, but both men maintained their original stories.
Since Susie had been strangled, a very personal way to take a person’s life, detectives were sure that they were missing an important detail, but it was a matter of figuring out what that might be.
Meanwhile, Susie’s family laid her to rest in May 2008 as detectives took their investigation back to the beginning.
They began to pay closer attention to Susie’s phone since her family members indicated that she always had her phone with her. As they poured over her phone records, they confirmed that Ted had briefly called her just as he said he had. They also learned that he called her after she went missing & left her an angry voicemail.
On Friday night when Susie had gone out with her friends, she’d received dozens of calls from a number that Susie’s family & friends didn’t recognize. The calls began while she was still at the bar with her friends & continued through her date with Brad. They could see that she answered some of these calls, but as they came through more & more frequently, she stopped answering & sent them straight to voicemail.
Since Marya had the password for her mom’s voicemail, Rusty & Valerie were able to play Susie’s voicemail messages while they were with investigators. The same male voice left message after message throughout the night that Susie had been out, each one getting more desperate than the next. The caller wanted her to let him know that she was okay. The messages became more incessant as the hours went by to the point that they were absolutely obsessive. Over the course of less than four hours, this man had left a total of 22 voicemail messages.
They soon learned that the person responsible for all these messages was Susie’s first husband, Marty Larson. It turned out that after nearly a decade with zero contact, Susie had reconnected with Marty after her marriage with Ted fell apart.
In 2007, one year earlier, Marya tracked down her biological father, Marty Larson, on Facebook & they were able to reconnect. This also opened the line of communication between Marty & Susie & despite the fact that he lived three hours away in Billings, they often talked & had even met up in person. This was something that Susie’s parents were aware of, something they weren’t happy about, but they weren’t sure about how serious their relationship may have gotten.
As they were able to access her voicemails, they came to find that Marty’s voicemails began fairly normal as he asked Susie to call him back. He said he was worried that he hadn’t heard from her. However, as they continued on, they became increasingly desperate both in tone as well as in his language. During one message, he told her that if she didn’t call him back by 1 am, he would make the three hour drive to her apartment, saying, I don’t know what to do. You won’t answer me.
Marty’s voice had a clear edge of anger to it as he continued to call Susie multiple times each hour. His phone was initially traced to a tower in Billings, but after 1 am, it began to ping along a highway that led straight to Glendive.
Police began to learn more about Susie’s history with Marty & learned that when they met during college, their relationship progressed very quickly after she realized she was pregnant. When their marriage ended, Susie quickly moved on to Ted & Marty had actually shown up to their home with a shotgun. Thankfully, no one was harmed, but Marty was convicted of criminal trespass & was given a lifetime restraining order for no contact with Susie or Ted ever again.
In the ten years that passed after this incident, Marty had stayed away & had no contact with Susie or the kids. He didn’t pay child support & made no effort to contact either Marya or Shay, which is why investigators had never considered him a suspect in Susie’s case before they heard the voicemails & Marya made mention of the fact they’d reconnected.
During the 22 phone calls he placed to Susie on the night & morning she vanished, his phone proved that he had been standing near her apartment at 5 am when Brad dropped her off.
When he was brought into the station, he confirmed what Marya had told investigators, that despite the fact that he & Susie had lost touch for ten years, they’d rekindled their romance over the previous year & were looking forward to getting remarried. When investigators later searched his apartment, they found a list in the garbage for what appeared to be plans for a Las Vegas wedding.
He told investigators that when they reconnected the previous year, they had immediately fallen for one another again & he believed they would get back together. When he was asked to remove his shirt, investigators noted scratches to his back.
He said that Susie told him she planned to go out that Friday night with friends for a few drinks. He claimed that he called her so many times that night because he worried she’d over-do it, potentially get a DUI or not make it home safely. He said he left Billings at about 1:30 am because he wanted to drive over to Glendive to be sure Susie had made it home safely. He said he arrived at about 4:30-4:45 am & cell phone pings confirmed he pulled up just before 4:30 am.
He parked around the corner, walked to her apartment & saw her car parked outside which suggested she was home. He approached her apartment door, knocked softly because he knew her room was near the front door & hoped it would wake her rather than the kids. However, there was no answer so he went outside & continued to call & text her. When she never responded, he decided to leave, having no interaction with her at all.
The location where Marty said he parked that night was incidentally, exactly where the drag marks had been seen. Video from a nearby bank depicted Marty’s car pulling at 5:45 am, about 26 minutes after Susie was seen climbing out of Brad’s car. Since he was likely standing out in front of her apartment, he would have seen Brad & Susie inside his truck together.
While he was being questioned, investigators searched his mini van & noted that it had been extensively cleaned on both the interior as well as the exterior. According to a forensic team, the interior of the van had been cleaned with bleach that matched an empty bottle of cleaner that was found in the garbage can of his apartment. When he was asked why it was so clean, he indicated that on his way to Glendive, he’d hit a dead deer that had been laying in the road.
When lab reports came back, it confirmed that the blood & tissue under the van had come from an animal. Meanwhile, evidence from inside the van was too degraded for a DNA match.
Investigators felt certain that Marty was responsible for Susie’s murder, but because they didn’t yet have enough evidence, they were unable to make an arrest. After his interrogations, Marty incidentally moved from Montana to Arizona.
After Susie went missing, her children were separated; her two younger daughters, Kyana & Charlee, went to live with Ted while the eldest two, Marya & Shay, were living with their aunt & uncle, Valerie & Rusty, who had a newborn of their own.
Rusty was growing impatient with the lack of progress in the investigation & the fact that no arrests had been made & at this point in time, the family were told that both Ted & Marty were suspects. According to Val, Rusty was consumed with her sister’s death & wanted to get justice in whatever way it took; he would kill Marty himself if he had to. Sadly, the stress of it all caused his marriage with Valerie to suffer & the two divorced. On November 5, 2011, he tragically took his own life at only 32-years-old, leaving behind his parents, his ex-wife, a young son as well as Marya & Shay. He was laid to rest right next to his sister at a small cemetery in Circle.
One year later, a new county attorney was elected in Glendive, Olivia Rieger, who wanted Susie’s family to get justice. In February 2012, nearly four years after her murder, Marty Larson was arrested outside his apartment while he was on his way to work in Phoenix, Arizona. He was charged with Susie’s murder & extradited to Montana where his bail was denied. He remained behind bars awaiting trial while he maintained that he had no idea what happened to Susie.
Before Susie’s family could celebrate justice being served, they faced yet another tragedy when her eldest child, 18-year-old Marya, died in a tragic car accident on May 19, 2012. She was one day from graduating from Circle High School when authorities believe she fell asleep at the wheel, veered into a ditch & rolled her car. There were no skid marks at the scene. Marya now rests beside her mother & her uncle.
The trial began in April 2013, five years after Susie’s murder & when Marty Larson entered the courtroom, everyone was stunned to see that he’d lost nearly 80#. He remained firm that he was an innocent man. The prosecution painted a picture of a jealous man who saw the woman he planned to remarry with another man & snapped. Cell phone records proved that he’d driven to Glendive & had been in the location of her apartment when Brad dropped her off at 5 am. His van had been heavily saturated with bleach & Susie’s hair was caught up in the plastic molding.
Although Marty denied being responsible, iInvestigators learned that the strange email Brad had received from Denise Johnson on the morning of Susie’s murder had come from Marty’s computer. When investigators first went to his house, they found him in the process of erasing things from his hard drive.
According to phone records, the last time Susie spoke with Marty on her night out was at 9:51 pm. After this call, Susie called Marya & asked her how to block a number. When she stopped answering his calls, he decided to leave Billings for Glendive. Investigators believe that when he left, it’s unlikely that he planned to murder her & likely only wanted to confront her.
Marty said that when he arrived at the Ponderosa Apartments, he parked along the side of the building. Footage from the nearby bank depicted him pulling up to her apartment at 4:27 am before Brad & Susie had gotten back. While he waited, he stood in the alcove of the nearby building, the spot where investigators found the footprint in the dust. At 4:52 am, Brad & Susie pulled up & at 5:19 am, Susie got out of Brad’s car, only steps from her apartment. The prosecution believed that when Marty confronted Susie, she likely told him that they were done & she wasn’t going to end her relationship with Brad.
When he realized he was losing Susie, the prosecution theorized he began to strangle Susie, who, based on the scratch marks to Marty’s back, fought with all of her might. He dragged her body across the alley, leaving drag marks next to the dumpster. Footage from the bank depicted a figure walking back to his minivan at 5:38 am & the silver van driving away minutes later after he placed her body in his van.
Video from a gas station 78 miles away depicted Marty stopping at 8:15 am; he wore a white t-shirt & black shoes, something investigators were never able to find. According to cell phone data, he was back in Billings at 10:29 am. He called Susie for the first in five hours & left a voicemail that was in stark contrast to the slew of messages he’d previously left. He sounded pleasant & cheerful, he called her sweetie & asked her to call him back in a sing-song voice. This tone made no sense, as according to his version of events, he still hadn’t seen nor heard from Susie so his tone should have been only that much more desperate.
The defense argued that the prosecution’s theory was simply speculation & suggested that maybe Brad or Ted were responsible for her death. Since Ted was still the beneficiary of her life insurance, he would financially gain from her death. However, Ted had used the insurance money to cover Susie’s funeral expenses & distributed the remaining money between the four children, taking none for himself.
Although Marty had extensively cleaned his mini van, there was a single hair found in the back where investigators theorize he would have put a body that was a match to Susie.
When Marty testified, he maintained that although he had driven to Susie’s apartment on the morning she vanished, he left without ever seeing her. This was something that hadn’t made sense after he’d just driven six hours round trip in the middle of the night & would have no doubt have seen Brad & Susie kissing in his truck since their timing overlapped.
After a six day trial & only three hours of deliberation, the jury returned with their verdict in April 2015 & found Marty Larson guilty for Susie’s murder. He was given a 100 year sentence for her murder plus ten years for tampering with evidence. However, he will be eligible for parole in 2042 after 30 years when he’s in his 70s.
Susie’s story is a heartbreaking reminder that life can change in an instant. She was a devoted mother, a beloved daughter, friend, sister & aunt. Her disappearance & tragic murder devastated not only her family, but also the small town of Glendive, Montana. If you or someone you know is in an unsafe relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit thehotline.org.
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