Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Coffee and Cases if you are a new listener and welcome back to Coffee and Cases to our weekly listeners. Regardless of whether you are new to our podcast or regular, I am so excited to be with you again this week. I want to take a moment to show you some gratitude. You have been so amazing in sharing our podcast with your friends. We now have, this is very exciting,
Speaker: a growing group of listeners in Australia as well. So whether you are one of our global listeners in Australia, Sweden, the UK, Canada, Ireland, Romania, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Spain, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, Portugal, or the Philippines, or you are one of our listeners here in the US, Maggie and I are so thankful for you for your support.
Speaker: and for you to continue to spread the word about our podcast to others so that we can continue to bring back into the public consciousness these cases which might not get covered as often in the media. Please continue to share suggestions for cases as well. Here in a couple of weeks I'll be covering a listener suggestion. Maggie and I just love hearing from you. Whether it's those suggestions that I just mentioned, ratings obviously,
Speaker: or even a simple hello on Facebook. Keep them coming. I do want to let you know, though, if you are new to Coffee and Cases, that our podcast has changed slightly as our world is adjusting to a global pandemic. While we are being asked to keep our distance from others, to stay inside when possible, and to not gather in large groups,
Speaker: We ask that you bear with us as our podcast has changed a little as well. Maggie and I are currently working on getting back together for our episodes, possibly as soon as next week or the week after. I'm super excited about that. Please bear with us in the meantime. We say it every week and Maggie and I really do mean it. We care about you. Stay together, united in the human spirit, even if not physically, and stay safe now.
Speaker: onto this week's episode. I always try to see something amazing in every day. For example, last night as Rodney and I were driving home, we stopped just to admire how beautiful the sky looked at sunset. The mingling pink hues were enough to just make me feel awe for the day I had just lived.
Speaker: Other days it's the act of kindness from a stranger helping to pick up an item I dropped or the giggle of a baby, tasting buttercream frosting on a cupcake, or finding the papermate flair ink pen I thought I had lost. A lot of people think I'm naive because small things make me happy.
Speaker: I like to think that it's one of the most mature aspects of my personality. To me, it's an ability to control my attitude when so much about life is out of our control.
Speaker: However, at the same time, I will admit I haven't faced tragedy in my life like others have. I mean, I have faced loss and I've seen horrible things. I have seen a child's life taken by a fireworks explosion right in front of me. My elementary school burnt down to the ground during the school day when I was in third grade.
Speaker: I lost my grandmother five years ago, a loss that still affects me to this day. But I've never experienced the loss of a family member in the way that many of our families from our cases have. I'm sure that that kind of loss is haunting because there's no closure.
Speaker: In most cases, there's not talk of how he or she lived a long life and it was their time to go. Instead, life has been taken too soon. The family member is just missing or the body is found, but the perpetrator is not. There's little to no justice in most of the cases Maggie and I cover. And we think that
Speaker: Perhaps even more upsetting than the loss is the fading memory for the public that justice still needs to be served. Details become hazy, the world moves on, even though the family cannot.
Speaker: Today's episode is one such case, one in which there are suspects, but no arrests, one that left a grieving mother, one with curious circumstances that have yet to be explained, and one that left a one -year -old daughter motherless. This is the story of Candace Hiltz.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Welcome to coffee and cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Alison Williams. And my name is Maggie Damron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement.
Speaker: so justice and closure can be brought to these families. With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because, as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
Speaker: I am not going to go through the whole spiel of asking for ratings this week like I do every week. You guys know the deal. When we get to 150 iTunes ratings, we will do a bonus episode. What I do want to remind you of is to make sure to follow us on social media.
Speaker: Coffee and Cases podcast on Facebook or at Coffee Cases podcast on Instagram. And again, as always, keep listening each week to know when our bonus episode will air. Give us a shout. Maggie and I would love to hear from you. Now, let's get into our show. Before I begin to tell you about Candace Hiltz,
Speaker: I need to tell you a little bit about her brother James. Candace's mother Dolores Hiltz has noted that one of her sons, James, had a phobia of people. At times, even of his own mother and his nine siblings.
Speaker: James's phobia was so debilitating that he would sometimes camp in the woods behind the family home so he could be alone. James didn't trust many people and had battled this phobia for a while. However, on August 10th, 2006, a deputy from Colorado's Fremont County Sheriff's Department came knocking at the Hilt's household asking questions about James's whereabouts.
Speaker: The deputy was specifically accusing James of trespassing. Now, while James was not at the home when the deputy came by on the 10th to ask questions, Dolores, James' mom, and Candace, James' sister, were present.
Speaker: No account I researched said exactly what words passed between the deputy who had come to the home and Candace, but we do know that Candace became upset by something that the deputy accused James of or his tone, his demeanor, his stance, something set Candace off.
Speaker: Now, Candace was not someone who would back down to an officer if she thought the officer were in the wrong. Candace was the kind of girl who was goal -driven. She was seen as a prodigy. According to one source I found, she was completing calculus problems at age 11. At age 17?
Speaker: When most are a junior or senior in high school, she was a junior in college at Brigham Young University and had just been accepted into Stanford Law School.
Speaker: And even though she was a teen mom and had been contemplating taking a break from school to spend more time with her daughter Paige, who had been born with hydrocephaly, a condition of fluid around the brain and was not expected to live long, that did not discourage Candace from continuing to keep an eagle -eyed focus on her lifelong goal of becoming a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker: Her sense of right and wrong was keen, and she was one who would fight tooth and nail to maintain what she saw as just and to protect those who she felt were underserved. So, when she felt the deputy who came to her home was acting in some way untoward, she stood up to him and told him to leave.
Speaker: The deputy, according to Dolores Hiltz, threatened to arrest Candace if she continued to berate him. When the deputy threatened the arrest, Candace then accused the deputy of taking bribe money from local drug lords. Fortunately, the argument ended before any arrests were actually made. Instead, Dolores reported that the deputy stormed off.
Speaker: However, three days later on August 13th, more trouble came for the Hiltz family. The family went out searching for the family dog who had not come when called. The family finally did find the dog, but the dog was tied to a tree with a rope.
Speaker: had been murdered with either an axe or a small hatchet. The Hiltz family was devastated, obviously. Who could possibly be capable of doing this? And why would they want to? Was someone trying to send a message? So two days later, on August 15, 2006,
Speaker: When Dolores Hiltz needed to leave the home to run several errands, most reports note that she had been extremely hesitant to do so. She left Candace and Candace's one -year -old daughter Paige home as she made her way to town.
Speaker: Here, Sleuthhounds, there are two different accounts of events that I read in one account. While she was out, Dolores became even more worried about having left Candace and Paige home alone. And given the circumstances, especially of the past few days, she asked a male family friend to go and check on Candace and Paige. When he entered the home, he heard Paige crying in the crib but couldn't find Candace.
Speaker: He decided to take Paige over to a neighbor's house until Dolores returned from her errands. In the other account, it was Dolores herself who came into the home when she returned a short three hours later from her errands who heard 11 -month -old Paige crying in her crib.
Speaker: Even something as small as not knowing where Candace was made Dolores worry with Paige's condition. Candace spoiled her little girl. She would not be letting Paige scream and cry alone in her crib. I can't imagine
Speaker: The images that must have been going through Dolores' mind as she called out for Candace, the way she had only days earlier, called out for the missing family dog. Again, that frantic feeling of knowing that you should be able to find someone or something, but not being able to. Sadly, the results of her search on August 15th wasn't much different from that other search days earlier.
Speaker: On the floor were puddles of blood and drag marks. When those marks were followed, Candace's body was found, wrapped in a green comforter and stuffed under her bed. The discovery was gruesome. When the comforter was opened, Dolores saw Candace's brutalized body.
Speaker: She had been shot at least seven times and so violently that she was nearly beheaded.
Speaker: Her autopsy revealed that she had been shot, it seems, by two or three different assailants because the bullets had entered her from both the front and the back and she had been shot by two or three different weapons as well. Five of the shots were small caliber gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Another was a close range medium caliber wound to the left chest.
Speaker: and the final was a gunshot wound to the face. The autopsy noted that, quote, the paths of the bullets were steeply downward, back to front and left to right. Later, when the autopsy was released, Candace's mother argued that it seemed as though due to the trajectory of the bullets that Candace was executed.
Speaker: While the autopsy does not indicate in which order the shots were dealt, blood spatter analysis seems to indicate that Candace was shot from the front and back simultaneously. Immediately, police were called and dispatched to the Hiltz's Copper Gulch home. When deputies arrived, however, Dolores was not happy to see the same detective
Speaker: with whom Candace had just days earlier gotten into a verbal altercation. That officer, Deputy Dodd, was in charge of this crime scene for Candace Hiltz's murder. According to most every account I read, the investigation was not thorough, as one would hope, and was plagued by mistake after mistake. To begin, the crime scene was not sealed,
Speaker: was not protected from contamination. People were allowed to come in and out of the home. Much of what would even to someone like me seem like items that should be collected as evidence like a bullet casing that was found in Page's crib and even the green comforter in which Candace had been wrapped were left behind.
Speaker: Finally, for what seemed much too quickly to have been the result of a complete and thorough investigation, Candace's own brother James was named as the primary suspect in her murder.
Speaker: Now, Sleuthhounds, the first thing that I notice is that while the autopsy noted that there would have been multiple assailants, only one person, her brother, was named as a suspect. So there's an inconsistency there. Dolores Hiltz asked the following very perceptive questions, quote, how can one man shoot at the same time from two different directions? How could a totally broken man
Speaker: not leave any evidence," end quote. Secondly, I think about how Candace's brother James didn't trust anyone. Dolores argued that not only would James not have done something like this to his sister ever, he would also have never done such a heinous act alongside someone else. He didn't even at times trust his own family.
Speaker: However, since James was nowhere to be found after the murder, the police, it seemed, took that as a sign of guilt and began a three -day manhunt for James.
Speaker: When they finally discovered James's whereabouts, they notably found no guns in his possession. Also interestingly, when he was found, James was slapped with breaking and entering charges, but not charged with the death of his sister. According to an article by Tracy Harmon in the Pueblo Chieftain, James also surrendered to police without incident.
Speaker: When at trial for the charges, James was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to the Colorado Mental Health Institute.
Speaker: After they had captured James, the sheriff's department still didn't close the investigation though. Sheriff James Beaker stated the following, quote, this is an ongoing investigation. There are some more people we want to talk with. We cannot close our minds to any possibility until we have absolute proof. We are looking at everything we need to look at, end quote.
Speaker: Despite those statements, Sleuthhounds, not much further information came to light. In fact, for years, things were at a standstill. No new evidence was discovered. No new leads were followed. Instead, there was just a back and forth of comments between the Hiltz family and the Fremont County Sheriff's Department. Then, in 2016,
Speaker: was finally a break in the case. Again, the name, Candace Hiltz, filled the newspaper articles over 10 years after her murder. A man by the name of Rick Ratsliff of Canyon City, Colorado purchased a storage unit that had gone to auction in December of 2016 for non -payment
Speaker: Now, I don't know about you, Sleuthhounds, but I've watched the television show Storage Wars, where there's this excitement surrounding the purchase of a storage unit that has been, you know, closed, I guess, or locked because of nonpayment.
Speaker: And once purchased, you purchase it with the doors closed. You don't even know what's in it. You're now the proud owner of whatever happens to be inside. And sometimes there are family heirlooms or items that can be sold for lots of profit or there could be nothing but junk. It could honestly be an empty unit. But I'm sure the last thing that someone would expect though with the purchase of a storage unit is something newsworthy.
Speaker: And that's exactly what Rick Rassliff discovered. After he purchased the storage unit for $50, he opened it and was shocked to find envelopes marked, literally, evidence. He also found a bloody rope, two bloody socks, and a small axe. All of these were evidence from Candace Hiltz's murder.
Speaker: The previous owner of the storage unit? The same detective, Detective Dodd, with whom Candace had gotten into an argument and who had been in charge of the investigation into Candace's murder. But why would police evidence be in a personal storage shed?
Speaker: That was the very question on everyone's mind as I'm sure it is yours as well. Stories began to spread among locals, accusations, theories of police cover -ups or of involvement themselves. Deputy Dodd was placed on administrative leave and decided to retire a few months later.
Speaker: A few months after the discovery, however, former Lieutenant Robert Dodd was brought up, according to an article by Tracy Harmon, on charges of misdemeanor criminal possession of an identification document, misdemeanor abuse of public records, and two petty counts of second -degree official misconduct. Now, Sleuthhounds, I honestly don't know what to do with this information. I like to think
Speaker: As I read these cases, how I would classify information, what would stand out to me, how I would handle things, where I think guilt should be laid. Maggie and I are very hesitant though to make accusations that those far more familiar with cases than we are have not made. And former Lieutenant Robert Dodd was never charged with Candace Hiltz's death, nor even named as a person of interest. I bring up his name solely because
Speaker: of the charges laid against him for having in his personal possession items that were related to an ongoing investigation. Now, while theories often target him with involvement, I have to say the fact that evidence linked to Candace Hiltz's murder was found in his personal storage unit for which he had not paid
Speaker: almost makes me take that as evidence that he wasn't involved, that it wasn't intentional. And I say this because I would imagine that a storage unit holding evidence that would somehow prove me complicit in illegal activity, well that would probably be the first bill that I would pay, not one that I would forget about or let go to auction and be discovered by a stranger.
Speaker: A second detail that seems to me to say that while he may have mishandled evidence, he was not guilty of involvement in what happened to Candace was that Dodd chose to go to trial as opposed to taking a plea deal.
Speaker: At the same time, however, Candace's mom and another sibling feel that dogs should be facing felony charges as opposed to misdemeanor charges. After all, had this evidence been properly processed, had it been fully collected, perhaps there would have been closure by this point. Now, however, any evidence found in the storage unit had been further contaminated since it had not been properly stored.
Speaker: One of those charges of abuse of public record related to logged evidence in Candace Hiltz's case, Dodd had made it look like he had logged items into evidence when he had not. For example, Dodd listed an oxygen tank, one not in police custody, but one which was found in Dodd's personal storage shed, an oxygen tank, which could have been one used by Candace's daughter, Paige, at the time of the murder,
Speaker: now an item for which the significance is not known. Ratzlev, who bought the unit, said he contacted police and that after Sheriff Beaker appeared and saw the storage shed, that he asked Ratzlev to keep quiet about the contents. And Mr. Ratzlev said that when he returned to the shed soon after, all of the items that had been in the shed were now gone.
Speaker: This information did not look good for Dodd, nor for any dissuasion of the conspiracy theories circulating about police involvement. Perhaps even more condemning findings soon followed, though.
Speaker: In May of 2017, close to five months following the discovery of the storage shed, more evidence potentially linked to Candace's case was found in the Phantom Landfill near Penrose, Colorado. Per an account given by Robert Orton, a worker at the landfill, the evidence found had come from a dumpster that had been placed at former Lieutenant Dodd's residence.
Speaker: In the landfill were videotapes with interviews with crime victims, a tackle box labeled FCSO Crime Scene Unit Forensic Lights, lots of paperwork like crime reports going back over a decade.
Speaker: Another charge Dodd faced was for improperly preserving evidence that could have contained potential DNA that might have been used then or in the future for testing purposes. Reason enough that Candace's family would feel both discouraged and outraged. At least I know that I, as a parent, would feel that way.
Speaker: Yet another charge was for Dodd having in his possession, the government issued identification for yet another person who could have been linked to Candace's death, someone who had been living in Candace's neighborhood and also camping near her home when she was murdered. Dodd's lawyer at trial argued that Dodd had not intentionally lied about information logged into evidence, but had merely made mistakes.
Speaker: He stated the following, quote, what possible motive did he have for hauling this stuff around for nine years? At any time he could have dumped it and gotten rid of it and no one would have known. He should have known better and was careless, but that doesn't make him a criminal, end quote.
Speaker: In a recorded interview, Dodd himself argued, quote, if there was some malicious intent, why would I put it in storage? Dodd said during the taped interview, I was trying to be thorough. I swear to God, nothing more than that. End quote.
Speaker: During the trial, another piece of evidence that initially seemed to support a police conspiracy was given a very logical explanation, the clearing out of the storage shed. Sheriff Beaker told jurors that he called an outside, unbiased investigator about potential mishandling of evidence since, as a member of the same department as Dodd, he was too close to the case.
Speaker: Beaker testified that Rick Ratcliffe, the owner of the storage shed now, had given Beaker permission to take items from the shed and had even encouraged it, saying that the items found there, quote, creeped him out. It was then they began cataloging it for the Dodd case, not for the Candace Hiltz case.
Speaker: Despite Dodd's lawyer's explanations concerning the evidence, the jury, after deliberating only two and a half hours, found former Lieutenant Dodd guilty of three of the four charges, abuse of public record, and two counts of official misconduct. But he was found innocent of his possession of the man's identification.
Speaker: Many thought that Dodd's sentence of 15 days in jail and a $1 ,000 fine was too little for the severe mishandling of evidence, which only continued to feed into the theories of police cover -up, as evidenced by those who also argue other stains
Speaker: plaguing the Fremont County Sheriff's Department of the death of an inmate, John Patrick Walter, who died in a cell after a psychotic break following being cut off from his prescribed medication. The autopsy in that case showed broken ribs and internal bleeding, which Walter's family argued was proof of excessive force.
Speaker: Then there was also the case of missing special agent Gene Fish. Fish's family at the time hired two very famous and very effective private investigators, David Spencer and Lou Smit.
Speaker: The two detectives who were hired by the family concluded that there was more than enough evidence for a grand jury to indict a suspect in Gene Fish's case, and yet the Fremont County Sheriff's Office never did. Never even issued a search warrant for the Fish property until two years after Gene Fish disappeared.
Speaker: It seems, with continued accusations of mishandling of evidence and of investigations, it makes sense that that be the initial thought in Candace Hiltz's case as well. Unfortunately, that's all I have to share with you, Sleuthhounds.
Speaker: Much of the evidence in the case, as well as the 911 transcript, have yet to be released to the public since Candace Hiltz's case is still considered an open investigation. Candace Hiltz's sister -in -law, Heather Hiltz, was interviewed in an article by Sarah Mattett in which she acknowledged that the discovery of all this evidence in the storage locker had reopened the wound felt by the whole family.
Speaker: It made the wishful thinking return that Candace would have gotten the six additional years of young Paige's life. She had died at the age of seven from her health conditions to continue to spoil her little girl.
Speaker: Candace was taken too soon, and it seems potentially with premeditation. While the wounds themselves seem almost a crime of passion, could the dog have been killed so that it wouldn't interfere in the murder days later? And if it were not planned, why wait until Dolores was gone from the home?
Speaker: While the evidence found at the landfill does not appear now to be in any way related to Candace's case, for her family it is further proof of mishandling of cases like Candace's.
Speaker: And that must be a hard position to be in. You want to trust that law enforcement will do everything to help find justice. And it hurts to feel that that might not be done in the case of your own child or sister or brother or best friend.
Speaker: According to an article by Tracy Harmon in November of 2019, the Hiltz family opened an account called the Candace Hiltz Investigation Fund so that the family can afford to hire a private investigator themselves to further examine the case.
Speaker: I wanted to let you guys know, Sleuthhounds, that donations can be made at any branch of the Pueblo Bank and Trust. For Candace's mother, Dolores, quote, that's the only way we are going to get any answers, end quote.
Speaker: especially for someone like Candace, someone so concerned with her innate belief in what is right, so concerned with making the abstract concept of justice into a tangible reality, and someone so concerned with speaking for those without representation now, it's finally time for someone to speak up for Candace to help her
Speaker: rest peacefully with justice finally served.
Speaker: Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail .com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
Speaker: Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.
