BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — The man law enforcement officials say is responsible for the long-unsolved death of 15-year-old Danielle Houchins at a popular fishing access site a few miles south of Belgrade nearly 28 years ago has been identified.

Investigators, family members and other sources with direct knowledge of the details of the case told Montana Free Press that cutting-edge forensic DNA genome sequencing and forensic genetic genealogy recently led authorities to the man they say killed Houchins: 55-year-old Paul Nathaniel Hutchinson, of Dillon.

Gallatin County Sheriff Dan Springer confirmed that at a Thursday press conference in Bozeman that was streamed live on the department’s Facebook page.

According to Springer, Hutchinson died by suicide on July 24, 10 hours after Gallatin County investigators approached him outside his office in Beaverhead County to interview him about Houchins’ death. Days later, DNA collected from Hutchinson after his death matched DNA evidence collected from Houchins’ body, providing what Springer described as “100% confirmation” that Hutchinson was the killer.

Hutchinson, who authorities say was previously unknown to law enforcement, was a longtime fisheries biologist for the Bureau of Land Management based in the agency’s Dillon Field Office. An avid outdoorsman and family man with a 22-year marriage and two adult children, Hutchinson had been living beneath law enforcement’s radar about 100 miles southwest of the crime scene until new forensic DNA technology and a West Virginia-based genetic genealogist connected him to Houchins.

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Springer said authorities recently notified Hutchinson’s family of their findings.

“I feel sorrow for the Hutchinson family,” Springer said in an interview with MTFP. “They were unaware, of course, and in many ways they are also victims of this man.”

Investigators and the victim’s sister told MTFP they believe Hutchinson had no relationship with Houchins. Hutchinson was enrolled at Montana State University in Bozeman around the time of Houchins’ death, according to investigators. They said he likely encountered Houchins, who was believed to be alone at the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access Site at the time, by chance. The attack, which investigators and relatives of the victim said involved a sexual assault, may have been a “crime of opportunity,” according to investigators.

On Saturday, Sept. 21, 1996, Danni Houchins asked her mom for permission to drive to the Cameron Bridge Fishing Access site to blow off some steam after a family argument.

She was wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She had a knee brace on her left knee due to an injury sustained while dancing with friends at a street dance weeks earlier.

When she didn’t return after she was expected home, her mom and a friend went looking for her. They found her unlocked truck in the parking lot of the popular recreation area, and nearby they found her water bottle and her car keys. For two hours they frantically searched for Danni. Around 5 p.m., they called the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office.

Soon after, Gallatin County Search and Rescue and volunteer searchers arrived at the scene and the search continued until dark, when it became dangerous to have people walking around in the wooded, marshy area.

Two brothers who lived nearby and were familiar with the area continued the search at the urging of one of their children, who was friends with Houchins’ sister. After about 45 minutes of searching, one of the brothers spotted Houchins’ lifeless body. She was lying face down in a shallow pool of water.

A state medical examiner later determined that Houchins had drowned, and listed the manner of death as “unknown.”

Springer, who joined the department five days before Houchins’ death, said the case has always haunted him and many people in his department.

“People have picked it up and tried to run with it to where they could, and things have gotten cold over time,” Springer said. “In 2019 the case was reopened by the sheriff’s office, and some more DNA test attempts were made, and then in 2021 I became the sheriff, and … I just felt that we needed some fresh eyes on this. Someone with different experience, different knowledge base, and with fresh eyes.”

In March 2023, Springer and Sheriff’s Department Captain Eric Paulson met over lunch with Tom Elfmont, a former Los Angeles Police Department captain who now runs a global security firm and lives full-time near Bozeman, to discuss the case. Paulson had heard about Elfmont through a mutual connection.

“He was interested and was sworn in as a special service deputy with all the authority and resources he needed to solve this one,” Springer said.

According to Elfmont, who spoke with MTFP extensively over the past week to provide detailed information about his investigation into Houchins’ death, he and another investigator interviewed Hutchinson for nearly two hours on July 23. Elfmont said they approached Hutchinson outside the BLM office in Dillon as he and two others unloaded a pickup.

“I said, ‘Paul, I’m with the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office, and I’d like to speak to you a little bit.’” Elfmont said in a recent interview. “He turned white.”

REEXAMINING THE CASE

Stephanie Houchins, now Mollet, was 12 years old when her big sister Danni, as she was known to family and friends, was found dead on Sept. 21, 1996.

Stephanie, now 39 and living in Washington state, began calling the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office and asking officials to re-open her sister’s case in 2019. Stephanie said in an interview Monday that the physical evidence always pointed to Danni having been murdered, despite the fact that the state medical examiner and Gallatin County coroner in 1996 listed the cause of her sister’s death as “drowning” and the manner of death as “unknown.”

“The community was really rocked. No one could understand what had happened,” Mollet recalled. “I always knew in my heart that it couldn’t have been an accident.”

Mollet said Danni’s death was the single most impactful event of her life, and that the trauma of it shaped her.

“I’ve had a lifetime of nightmares about losing someone and how people were just going to be taken away from me, people I love. I’ll wake up sobbing in the middle of the night,” Mollet said. “I’ve had to resolve my trauma. I’ve had to do therapy and figure out how to live a life and then come back and fight for her.”

In 2019, Sheriff’s Captain Matt Boxmeyer began reinvestigating the Houchins case. According to Mollet, Boxmeyer reached out to Danni’s family in February 2020 to see how the family felt about it, knowing that the investigation would reopen old wounds.

“One of the real pieces of sensitivity I had, and my family had, walking into the reinvestigation of Danni’s case, was the sheer fact that while we thought law enforcement was on our side, they lied to us in 1996, and they withheld information from us,” Mollet said. “That led to a significant feeling of distrust with the sheriff’s department.”

Mollet said she learned from Elfmont more than a month ago that he had identified a person of interest using new DNA and genetic sequencing technology and forensic genetic genealogy.

Four rootless arm hairs found on Houchins’ body and preserved in the evidence file contained enough genetic material that a California-based forensic genome sequencing lab was able to create a detailed genetic profile that was passed on to a genetic genealogist in West Virginia.

Forensic genetic genealogy involves examining genetic genealogy databases for clues about the origin of an unidentified DNA sample and then using traditional genealogical methods to build out a family tree that eventually leads investigators to an individual or small group of related individuals who could be suspects.

After months of research, the genealogist traced the family tree to what they determined to be the most likely person of interest: Hutchinson.

“Tom and Sheriff Springer were very good about following through on their promise with us that they would be communicative and update us along the way,” Mollet said.

Mollet said when Elfmont and Springer informed her of Hutchinson’s death and that the subsequent DNA evidence confirmed that his DNA matched the evidence found on Danni’s body, she felt a sense of relief.

“I guess I was relieved that it wasn’t someone who was close to my family,” Mollet said. “It wasn’t someone where we’d not only have to deal with everything that goes along with solving your sister’s homicide case, but also that feeling of betrayal if it was (Danni’s) friend or a family friend or community member.”

ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION CRITICIZED

Friends, family and some current and former sheriff’s deputies and investigators say the case should have been classified and investigated as a murder from the beginning.

“What my parents took away from the law enforcement investigation was, ‘well, it could have just been an accident,’” Mollet said.

An autopsy conducted on Sept. 23, 1996, revealed Houchins had no alcohol or drugs in her system. The medical examiner found “muddy material” in the stomach and upper and lower airways of the 5-foot-5-inch, 130-pound teenager. There was a recent laceration in her vagina. Her watch, gold with an elastic band, was pulled partway over her hand — as if she had been dragged by that arm, one former investigator suggested. The medical examiner noted that her clothing “appear(ed) to be properly positioned, except for the bra (positioned above the breasts) and panties (left lateral lower edge rolled over the top).”

Gale Dale, the state medical examiner at the time, concluded Houchins died by drowning.

“Until such time additional information indicates otherwise, the manner of death is undetermined,” Dale wrote in his report.

The next day, then-Gallatin County Sheriff Bill Slaughter told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that the lack of cuts or bruises was worth noting.

“I think we’ve got to be prepared for the fact that this may have been an accidental drowning,” Slaughter said at the time.

In August 2023, based on Elfmont’s reexamination of the evidence and the discovery of semen on Houchins’ underwear, Springer changed the official manner of death from “undetermined” to “homicide.”

Two former sheriff’s office officials with direct ties to the case also criticized Slaughter’s office’s initial investigation into the case, saying department leadership and lead investigators at the time were too quick to dismiss the death as an accident or hint at the possibility of suicide.

Then-Deputy Keith Farquhar was among the first sheriff’s deputies to arrive on the scene when Danni was first reported missing, and he was the second officer to return to the scene after two men who volunteered to continue searching after dark discovered her body around 9:30 p.m. Farquhar, now a veterinarian living in Helena, was involved in the investigation for the first few weeks before returning to patrol duty.

“I never felt like that was being pursued in the manner of, ‘somebody killed this girl, and we need to find them,’” Farquhar said.

Farquhar said Slaughter appeared too eager to accept the notion that Danni’s death was an accident, or maybe self-inflicted, or that the cause was otherwise impossible to determine.

“His attitude, from everything I saw, was, ‘We just want this over with,’” Farquhar said. “I don’t know what his motivation was, but you shouldn’t give up on a homicide of a 15-year-old girl. It just seemed wrong to me to say, ’Oh, well, it’s undetermined. And then for subsequent sheriffs to just not pursue it as well. It was really unsatisfactory to me.”

Farquhar, who joined the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy in 1989, resigned on Dec. 31, 1996, three months after Danni’s death.

“I have thought about Danni at least every two or three days for the last 28 years, Farquhar said.

Former sheriff’s detective Cindy Botek is even more pointed in her critique. Botek, who began her career in law enforcement as a Gallatin County sheriff’s deputy just days before Danni was found dead, said investigating the death as a homicide never appeared to be a priority for department leadership.

“People drown all the time,” Botek said. “And what’s in their body? There’s water in their lungs. Right? That’s what you find. What did we find in Danielle? A stomach full of mud. That doesn’t happen in a drowning. Who swallows mud?”

Botek started reinvestigating the case around 2006 after joining the detective unit. She said when she tried to chase new leads in the case, she received pushback from her bosses and was stonewalled by former investigators who had worked on the case.

“This case always bothered me because I was a couple days on the job when it happened, and I’m like, ‘somebody fucking killed her,’” Botek recalled. “Where was the pressure? Where was the pressure to find a murderer?”

Slaughter said he understands the frustrations of outsiders who may not have known what was being done by investigators working the case, but he denies deprioritizing or “giving up” on Houchins’ death.

“We never talked about anything but a homicide,” Slaughter said. “It was a tough case to investigate as far as the scene goes. It was kind of located in a swamp, which doesn’t help you.”

Slaughter said detectives on the case worked diligently for years to try to identify a suspect, despite some public proclamations that the death could have been an accident. Slaughter said he, too, was frustrated that the coroner and state forensic examiner listed the manner of death as “unknown.” Slaughter said the manner of death wasn’t his call to make, but that detectives pursued the case as a homicide.

“We can tell you the manner of death because we all felt like she was a strong young woman,” Slaughter said. “She didn’t fall in four inches of water or three inches of water in a swamp and drown. She just didn’t. I mean, all she had to do was roll over on her back, right? We were all frustrated about that call, that it wasn’t a homicide. It seems to me it was pretty obviously homicide, and we told the parents that.”

Mollet disputes Slaughter’s claim that sheriff’s investigators informed the family that the case was investigated as a homicide.

“If they were behind the scenes treating it as a homicide … that’s not what they portrayed to my family,” Mollet said. “What they portrayed was, ‘well we don’t know, but it really just could have been an accident. You know, she had that knee brace and she kind of just tripped and fell.’”

Mollet, Farquhar and Botek said one thing they hope comes from this case is that the authorities responsible for investigating Danni’s death in 1996 be held accountable for what they described as “failing Danni.”

“Accountability to me is not necessarily about the individual, but it’s about the institution and making the institution better so it doesn’t fail other victims of rape and murder,” Mollet said.

Springer said he’s pleased the case has finally been solved, though he wishes it had happened much sooner. However, without the new DNA technology and advancements in genetic genealogy, he said, it might not have been possible at all.

“I think in any investigation, there’s always going to be something you wish you’d done differently, but by the same token, this was solved by technology that was nowhere even near available at the time,” Springer said. “It’s saddening that it took 28 years, but we got to where we needed to get. We know who murdered Danni, and that’s the goal. So I feel the pursuit of justice won in this case.”

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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.