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Getaway Season 2025 Episode 39
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00:00:00She was a horse girl.
00:00:01Well, he was just, he was a cowboy.
00:00:04You never, ever thought that something like this would touch your life.
00:00:07That somebody would break into your home and kill you.
00:00:11My sister was stabbed.
00:00:13Tim was stabbed.
00:00:14It was pretty much gut-wrenching devastation.
00:00:18The major scene took place inside the house.
00:00:21What did you see when you got in there?
00:00:22A lot of blood.
00:00:24Probably the worst scene in my entire career.
00:00:26There were some strange goings on before this occurred.
00:00:29Tim's truck was blown up, is that right?
00:00:30There was an explosion and all of a sudden it was burning.
00:00:33He had gotten at least one threatening letter.
00:00:37The letter scared me.
00:00:38I just said, you need to be careful.
00:00:41There were a lot of suspects, a lot of people who might have done it.
00:00:45I thought, that's insane.
00:00:47There's been a mistake.
00:00:48In my heart, I know he did not do this.
00:00:51He's an innocent man.
00:00:5330 years without an answer.
00:00:54And then finally there is one.
00:00:55It's pretty tough to talk about.
00:00:57I mean, murder is shocking, but this?
00:01:01Two deaths, three decades, one shattering twist.
00:01:06Murder at the farmhouse.
00:01:08I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
00:01:10Here's Keith Morrison with Raising the Dead.
00:01:22The morning was gray and solemn.
00:01:32It was Friday, the 13th of June, 2025.
00:01:37We are present at Oakwood Cemetery in the city of Wyoiga.
00:01:41This is the official recording for the court-ordered exhumation.
00:01:48They knew, every one of them knew, it could all turn on this moment, raising the dead to
00:01:55solve the murders.
00:01:57Evidence doesn't lie.
00:01:58Was the man in the grave, the killer?
00:02:03Did you hear that he had made statements about getting away with murder?
00:02:07I did.
00:02:09Or would he, now long dead, point to someone else?
00:02:14He's not a man.
00:02:15He is a monster.
00:02:16It all started on another Friday in tiny Wyoiga, Wisconsin.
00:02:26That was March 20, 1992.
00:02:30Tana Togstad and her boyfriend, Tim Mumbrew, were heading for a night out at a bar.
00:02:35Tim's sister, Tina.
00:02:37Their plans were they were going to go watch a band called Sweetwater.
00:02:42Are you coming?
00:02:42This is Tana's brother, Rick.
00:02:44They were up there dancing and stuff.
00:02:47They liked to have a noisy good time.
00:02:49Oh yeah, yeah they did.
00:02:50Yeah, Tana and Tim, they enjoyed having fun, yes.
00:02:54And why not?
00:02:55She was 23, he 34, and their love was still new, exuberant.
00:03:01They were on a double date with their friend Jill and her boyfriend.
00:03:06It was elbow to elbow.
00:03:08Tim and Tana started dancing country swing, which takes up a lot of room.
00:03:14And it's a very fast-moving dance.
00:03:17Not everyone loved that, as Jill could see, even if Tana didn't.
00:03:23I said, it might be a good idea for us to leave.
00:03:26I expected an argument, but she's like, yeah, I think I'm ready to go, too.
00:03:31You don't forget certain moments.
00:03:35Even now, Jill recalls it fresh, like a wound.
00:03:41She gave me a hug, which was odd.
00:03:45We weren't real, you know, physically affectionate at all.
00:03:49And then she said, you know, will you come over to my house tomorrow morning?
00:03:54When Saturday broke, Jill saw that it had snowed overnight.
00:03:58She didn't feel like going to see Tana.
00:04:01I talked myself out of going over there.
00:04:05We did that often, you know, I guess broke commitments.
00:04:09And I thought maybe she would call me later in the day and say, hey, are you going with us tonight?
00:04:14But I never heard from her.
00:04:16All day that Saturday, no one heard from Tana.
00:04:20And no one heard from Tim.
00:04:22Which was unusual, given Tana's family lived right next door.
00:04:27And then the following day, Sunday, they couldn't help but notice Tana and Tim's trucks hadn't moved.
00:04:32And Tana hadn't fed her horse.
00:04:35And so, they walked over to her farmhouse.
00:04:39Went inside.
00:04:39What they saw could not be erased or undone.
00:04:45I was the detective on call for the weekend.
00:04:48And my weekend was winding down.
00:04:50It was mid-afternoon when Al Crager, then a newly promoted police detective, got the call.
00:04:57Go to Tana's farmhouse.
00:05:01They just said there were people deceased.
00:05:04And I was to head over there.
00:05:06The chief deputy was en route.
00:05:08Oh boy, a big deal here.
00:05:10Yes.
00:05:11When I got to the scene, everything was roped off with the do not cross sheriff line.
00:05:17Another detective took him inside the house.
00:05:20What did you see when you got in there?
00:05:21A lot of blood.
00:05:23Then he takes me to the bedroom and that was like there was a war in that room.
00:05:31Tim's body was on the floor.
00:05:33Could you tell what had been done to him?
00:05:35He had a lot of blood on his chest.
00:05:37He'd been in a hell of a fight, was stabbed 27 times, his throat cut.
00:05:43Tana's body lay on the bed.
00:05:46Totally exposed, with no clothes.
00:05:49And then she had one single piercing to the heart area in the chest.
00:05:54Man.
00:05:55Had you ever seen such a thing before?
00:05:57Never.
00:05:58Never.
00:05:58In fact, that was probably the worst scene I've ever seen in my entire career of 41 years.
00:06:05Not even Tana's little dog, Scruffy, was spared.
00:06:09Scruffy, we believe, was stabbed out by the front door.
00:06:13Did it seem to you like it was done by one person or more than one person?
00:06:17That was tossed back and forth.
00:06:19Could it be one?
00:06:20Could one possibly do that?
00:06:22Whoever entered took him by surprise.
00:06:25And was very, very angry.
00:06:27Yes.
00:06:28Inside the farmhouse, crime lab techs went about the dismal work as best it could be done in 1992.
00:06:35Blood was collected from various spots.
00:06:39There was semen collected on Tana, so we believe she was sexually assaulted.
00:06:45They lifted what fingerprints they could, though perhaps surprising, given that chaotic scene,
00:06:50they didn't get any useful matches.
00:06:53But there was this.
00:06:55The door was taken because we had a bloody palm print.
00:06:59They collected anything that they thought might help in the future in case this case didn't get solved immediately.
00:07:08Just as well, because it did not get solved immediately.
00:07:13Neighbor-eyed neighbor with suspicion.
00:07:16Are we next?
00:07:17As the families lived and relived their pain.
00:07:21Never giving up on justice.
00:07:23I don't give up.
00:07:25No matter what.
00:07:26They were sure they knew who did it.
00:07:29Guilty as hell.
00:07:31He knows that he did it.
00:07:33The evidence was overwhelming.
00:07:35And they were sure they knew who didn't do it.
00:07:38It's not possible.
00:07:39I was just in disbelief.
00:07:41There's just no way.
00:07:42No way.
00:07:44But of course, that's why we have juries, isn't it?
00:07:48I said, he'll either be found guilty by the 12 in the jury or by God.
00:07:53That Sunday in March, 1992, amateurs monitoring the crackle of police radios picked up the news that Tana and Tim had been stabbed to death.
00:08:19Neighbors lit up the phone lines as they tried to reach the couple's families.
00:08:22Get home as soon as you can.
00:08:25I said, well, what happened?
00:08:27Tana's brother, Rick, was out getting farm supplies when his wife called the store to find him.
00:08:32Just in a panic.
00:08:35She said, Tana's dead.
00:08:37Tim's dead.
00:08:38What happens inside you when, you know, in your stomach and your heart?
00:08:42The pain and the anger and, oh, I guess I was completely distraught.
00:08:50Tana's friend, Jill, who, remember, had planned to see Tana again hours after they'd all left the bar on Friday night, was working when she got the news from her mom.
00:09:00At first, I thought, well, this has to be some kind of mistake.
00:09:05And I didn't, I was just in shock.
00:09:10Tim's sister, Tina, had been expecting him to visit that weekend.
00:09:14I can't even explain how horrific it is to have something that savagely, brutally horrific happen.
00:09:24She called her brother, Todd.
00:09:27And the phone rang.
00:09:31And it was Tina.
00:09:36She told me they both had been stabbed to death.
00:09:40Meanwhile, Tana's family told investigators about some strange noises they heard from their place just a few yards away, night of the murders.
00:09:48Tana's sister heard a dog barking in the middle of the night.
00:09:51She got up to explore and see what was going on.
00:09:54And she looked out this window right over here.
00:09:57She saw a pickup truck leaving the residence, and it sped off very fast.
00:10:02That was after 4 a.m. on Saturday.
00:10:05The detective figured it could have been the murderer, or murderers, getting away.
00:10:10But why would anyone want to murder this young couple, both from local farming families?
00:10:16Tim, remember, was 34, Tana just 23.
00:10:20She was just...
00:10:21She was a goofball.
00:10:22She was an absolute goofball.
00:10:25And captivating, said friends Michelle and Tammy from the minute they met her in high school.
00:10:30It was her smile.
00:10:32And it would just light her face up.
00:10:34And you would just see, just behind the eyes, this little bit of trouble.
00:10:38She loved horses, but also dogs and cats and cowboy culture.
00:10:45We got along really good. It was just her love of life and her fun personality.
00:10:51Fun, even when getting busted by the cops.
00:10:54We ended up getting underage drinking, but not Tana, because she told the cop that she wasn't feeling all that great.
00:11:01And she's like, sucker.
00:11:01You got it, you got it, not me.
00:11:03And I'm like, really?
00:11:05When her father died, Tana moved into his farmhouse.
00:11:10To pay the bills, this being Wisconsin, she worked at a local cheese factory.
00:11:16Boys?
00:11:17Her friends said she was cautious, didn't put up with any BS.
00:11:20For her, I think her knight in shining armor would be a cowboy.
00:11:26And around Halloween of 1991, she found him.
00:11:30Tall, slender, great smile, attractive looking man.
00:11:36If you saw him standing someplace, you would think he came in on a horse.
00:11:40Her cowboy, Tim.
00:11:41All of our family have been rodeo people.
00:11:46We were all really close.
00:11:48Tim's friends, Carol and Mark.
00:11:50He was good to everybody.
00:11:52Easy going, good with the kids.
00:11:55Tim was the protector when his sister, Tina, was 12 years old.
00:11:59We were hunting, and I had fallen through the ice.
00:12:03And it was up to my neck, and he was the first one up there to run up to me and grab my gun and pull me out of that.
00:12:09After a stint in the U.S. Navy, back home, Tim got a job doing maintenance at the local iron foundry.
00:12:17But his passion was rodeo.
00:12:20He would protect the kids by being the clown to distract the bulls so that the bulls wouldn't hurt the kids.
00:12:28It was thanks to Tina that Tim first laid eyes on Tana.
00:12:32He had been looking through Tina's photos.
00:12:34A picture of Tana was in those pictures, because Tana was at my baby's shower.
00:12:41And he saw her, and he's like, who is she? I need to meet her.
00:12:46Awkward.
00:12:47Tim was still married to his second wife, Colleen.
00:12:50They had a four-year-old son, so Tina said maybe not a good idea.
00:12:55But Tim didn't listen.
00:12:57And anyway, he and Colleen were getting a divorce.
00:12:59It was weeks away from being finalized.
00:13:02Tim, when he set his mind to doing something, he was going to do it.
00:13:07So Tim and Tana became an item.
00:13:10They rode horses, they went dancing, they fell hard for each other, said Tim's brother-in-law, Mike.
00:13:16He was in love with her.
00:13:19Devoted, apparently, until his last breath.
00:13:23He did everything he could until he couldn't do nothing else.
00:13:26And it was to protect her and to keep her safe.
00:13:29But why them, of all people?
00:13:33Neither Tana nor Tim seemed to have any enemies.
00:13:37There was no obvious motive.
00:13:39Not from the crime scene, anyway.
00:13:41Was there any sign of robbery?
00:13:43Not that we could tell.
00:13:45Once the family was allowed to go in there, once the scene was released,
00:13:49they couldn't pinpoint anything that was taken.
00:13:51So somebody just walked in on the middle of the night as they were in bed?
00:13:55Yes.
00:13:55In a town like Waiwiga, with fewer than 2,000 people, somebody had to know something.
00:14:04Tana's brother Rick was sure of it.
00:14:07Regina, a little town.
00:14:08Well, a little town, as they say.
00:14:11Everybody knows everybody and everybody's business.
00:14:14Way back at the beginning, soon after that awful Saturday in 1992,
00:14:22investigators already had some solid leads.
00:14:25They knew who they needed to talk to.
00:14:28He had a temper.
00:14:30And he was into knives.
00:14:33Investigators were pretty sure of it.
00:14:52They'd soon figure out who killed Tim and Tana.
00:14:55Did the sheriff tell you that he thought it could be solved fairly quickly?
00:14:58I think they did think it was going to be solved very quickly.
00:15:01As Detective Crager interviewed family and friends,
00:15:06he learned that there had been signs, terrible signs,
00:15:09that something bad was coming.
00:15:11Scary stuff.
00:15:13About two months before the murders,
00:15:15Tim's truck was parked in the driveway.
00:15:18Then we heard just the most horrific boom you could imagine.
00:15:26Something exploded underneath the hood,
00:15:29and his truck caught on fire.
00:15:30And his whole entire truck was engulfed in flames,
00:15:36and it was 20 feet in the air.
00:15:38Everything that he had from his home was in the back of that truck.
00:15:43And he was in the back of the truck throwing things off.
00:15:47They were all yelling at him to get out of there.
00:15:49And it just burned up.
00:15:51Of course, they called the police right away.
00:15:54They couldn't find out if there was something put in there to detonate or what.
00:15:59Nobody knew why or how or who did it.
00:16:01Right.
00:16:01Correct.
00:16:03Then, poison pen letters arrived.
00:16:07About a month before the murders,
00:16:08one warned Tana that Tim was a jealous, violent man and that he was using her.
00:16:15Another warned Tim that Tana was sleeping around.
00:16:18The final threat came just days before the murders.
00:16:22A message scrawled on a bathroom wall at the foundry where Tim worked.
00:16:28Tim Mambo must die on Friday or something like that.
00:16:32And Friday was the day it happened, right?
00:16:34Friday night into Saturday morning, yes.
00:16:36Did you get the sense from these incidents that somebody was targeting?
00:16:40At least Tim and maybe both of them.
00:16:43Yes.
00:16:44But who?
00:16:46I suspected everybody.
00:16:48Anybody that looked at me cross ways.
00:16:50And one obvious man to suspect was a guy known as Scooter.
00:16:55Scooter was Tana's ex-boyfriend.
00:16:58What did you know about Scooter?
00:17:00He had a temper.
00:17:01Uh-huh.
00:17:02And he was into knives.
00:17:05Tana's family and friends had stories about Scooter.
00:17:09He could be scary, they told the detective.
00:17:12And violent, too.
00:17:14This is where Scooter punched the wall.
00:17:16This is where Scooter kicked the wall in or broke the door or whatever.
00:17:21He threw a beer bottle through the back window of his truck,
00:17:24and she was sitting in the passenger side.
00:17:27It came through the window and just ruptured the window.
00:17:29I don't know if she got hit by the bottle.
00:17:30But I went to see Tana the day after,
00:17:32and she was still picking glass out of her hair.
00:17:36Thing was, investigators learned Scooter was determined that Tana couldn't leave him.
00:17:41He did not take the breakup well.
00:17:43He'd threatened her.
00:17:44If I can't have her, nobody will.
00:17:46So we just assumed it was him that he finally did it.
00:17:49He was a good suspect.
00:17:50Yes, he was.
00:17:52He had nobody that could give him an alibi.
00:17:54I interviewed him many times.
00:17:56I was convinced he was our guy.
00:18:00But relationships.
00:18:02If Tana's ex was getting the third degree, so was Tim's.
00:18:06In fact, Crager discovered that Tim's not-quite-ex-wife, Colleen,
00:18:11was the one who'd written those menacing letters to both Tana and Tim.
00:18:15Was it obvious right at the get-go that it was Colleen?
00:18:19Yes.
00:18:20The divorce was especially bitter because Tim, who'd moved in with his sister Tina,
00:18:25wanted more access to their four-year-old son, according to family.
00:18:29The divorce that he was going through was the most wicked divorce thing I'd ever seen and heard.
00:18:37I needed to remove my baby daughter from the house because of what was being said on both ends of the phone.
00:18:47Did you question Colleen?
00:18:48Yes.
00:18:49But she was a very small, petite gal, and there was no way that she could do this.
00:18:55If she wanted it done, she would have to find somebody to do it for her.
00:19:01So was it a murder for hire?
00:19:05Certainly there was a motive.
00:19:06Possible one, anyway.
00:19:08There was a $100,000 life insurance policy.
00:19:11That had to make you think a time or two?
00:19:13Or three or four.
00:19:15They couldn't find the murder weapon, the knife,
00:19:18but they had two viable suspects,
00:19:21and they didn't stop there.
00:19:23They widened the search and rounded up men who lived in the area
00:19:27who were known in the past to have been violent.
00:19:30One of them was a guy who worked at the foundry, where Tim worked,
00:19:34and also lived close to Tana's farmhouse.
00:19:37His name was Jeff Teal.
00:19:40He was capable of doing it.
00:19:41He had a record.
00:19:43He carried a knife, but his threats usually were with a gun.
00:19:46Jeez.
00:19:47Nice fella.
00:19:48Yes.
00:19:49A fella investigators learned who liked a drop or two of the hard stuff.
00:19:55If you ran into him in a bar or someplace where he's having a bunch of liquid fight,
00:20:01you just stayed away from him.
00:20:03He just always carried a knife and he'd come off as a very mean hombre.
00:20:09I just remember a lot of talk about violence with him, domestic abuse.
00:20:15Kind of the guy you would think, we gotta look at him for sure.
00:20:17Well, they did.
00:20:19They did look at him for sure.
00:20:22What might his motive have been?
00:20:24Investigators found out that Jeff Teal had stolen some wire from the foundry.
00:20:29And Tim had turned him in.
00:20:31What did you think about him as a possible suspect?
00:20:34With his background and his build and strength,
00:20:37he was certainly a person that we had to go after.
00:20:41Tim and Tyna, such a bright young couple, were gone.
00:21:01The whole county seemed in mourning as their families laid them to rest.
00:21:06All I remember is I could still see her laying there.
00:21:11And the rest of the whole thing was just, I don't remember any of it, really.
00:21:18I was in shock.
00:21:19Tana's mom let out such a guttural.
00:21:23It sounded like an animal.
00:21:24It was, it was devastating.
00:21:27She screamed, oh my Tana, why my Tana?
00:21:30And that was the worst thing.
00:21:33It was pretty much gut-wrenching devastation.
00:21:36It was like, oh, you don't even know the amount of pain that's involved.
00:21:43In a separate ceremony, Tim was honored as any cowboy would hope to be.
00:21:49There was a team of black horses that was the escort out to the cemetery.
00:21:56And they were the capes and like you'd see like in the old movies or something like that.
00:22:00So it was like the old west type of thing.
00:22:04Tim's brother-in-law, Mike, remembers how investigators roamed through the mourners.
00:22:09They videotaped the whole thing.
00:22:11And I understood why.
00:22:12I mean, most times a person does something like this,
00:22:15they may come back and act like nothing's wrong just to see.
00:22:20Did it help?
00:22:22Not much, apparently.
00:22:24This wouldn't be quick and easy after all.
00:22:27But every day, the investigators chipped away at their leads
00:22:31and one by one, their list of potential suspects narrowed.
00:22:35This was 1992, remember?
00:22:37It was two years before the O.J. Simpson case made DNA a household word.
00:22:42Back then, Detective Crager and the others could only compare blood types.
00:22:46But that simple test was enough to rule out their very first person of interest,
00:22:52Tana's ex-boyfriend, Scooter.
00:22:54He did not match.
00:22:55So then I left him alone and moved on.
00:22:58Moved on to Tim's ex, Colleen.
00:23:01The investigators brought her in again and again,
00:23:05trying to suss out whether she hired someone to kill Tim for the insurance money.
00:23:09That was looked at very hard.
00:23:11In fact, I think we even held that up for a while, the payment of it,
00:23:15until we were totally convinced that she probably didn't have anything to do with it.
00:23:22Eventually, investigators would rule her out.
00:23:25But they kept looking at Jeff Teal, that known-to-be-violent character from the foundry.
00:23:33He had left town three years after the murders in 1995,
00:23:37but the next year, in 1996, they got a sample of Teal's blood.
00:23:43That's around the time DNA was becoming an evidence gold standard.
00:23:47They ran a test with Teal's blood.
00:23:49And investigators concluded Teal was not the killer either.
00:23:56Well, they kept at it, but there were no arrests, no new suspects.
00:24:01Then, in 2008, Mike Sasse took over the case.
00:24:05Sasse, one of the original deputies of the crime scene,
00:24:08was by 2008 an agent with the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, the DCI.
00:24:15Myself and my partner started to methodically go piece by piece by piece through this investigation,
00:24:21organizing it into the modern-day age.
00:24:25They dug all the way back to the first days of the investigation,
00:24:29looking for leads that, back in 1992, didn't look like leads.
00:24:34It was granular sort of work.
00:24:35And it seemed to pay off when, in 2012, they found something, or rather, someone,
00:24:44and they pounced on it.
00:24:47I get to a name of Glendon Gauker.
00:24:50Glendon Gauker was one of the men they'd looked at back in 1992.
00:24:56Glendon Gauker then worked for a man named Lane Shields,
00:24:59and he ran a Western store at the time.
00:25:02Why was that an issue?
00:25:04Tim and Tana bought their cowboy gear in that store, so a kind of connection.
00:25:09Anyway, back in 1992, they interviewed Gauker multiple times,
00:25:13strapped him into a polygraph at one point.
00:25:16Nothing came of it then.
00:25:19But now?
00:25:19I literally go to Google, and I looked at my partner, and I said,
00:25:25is it Glendon C. Gauker?
00:25:27He said, yeah.
00:25:28Why?
00:25:29I said, because he's in Oklahoma, and he's in custody for a homicide he committed in Oklahoma in 2010.
00:25:35Yeah.
00:25:36And it was a brutal murder.
00:25:38The case was splayed across the Internet.
00:25:40In September of 2010, a 19-year-old man named Ethan Walton drove out with his girlfriend
00:25:46to meet with Gauker at his home outside of Prague, Oklahoma.
00:25:51Gauker lived in a trailer home down a dead-end road.
00:25:54Ethan thought he was there to sell Gauker some land.
00:25:57There was a property deal that was fictitiously put together by Gauker.
00:26:03Instead?
00:26:03Gauker kills him and puts him in 55-gallon drums.
00:26:09He calls the girlfriend into the shed.
00:26:14She comes in, and he sexually assaults her.
00:26:18She's naked and literally gets herself free.
00:26:23She squeezed through a window to escape,
00:26:25then ran for dear life through a field to the nearest neighbor's place and made it.
00:26:29Gauker, in hot pursuit, shooting off his gun before the police caught up to them.
00:26:34And now, Gauker was facing the death penalty for killing the boyfriend.
00:26:39As this hits warp speed, like, we might be onto something here.
00:26:43We now have somebody that's in custody for the same situation.
00:26:48Yeah.
00:26:48That's involved in our case and was a suspect back in 1992.
00:26:52Yeah.
00:26:52It marries up very similar to Timontano.
00:26:56It sounds to me like this guy fits the profile of a psychosexual serial assaulter, if not killer.
00:27:02Correct.
00:27:03You think you got something here?
00:27:04Yeah, we think we got something.
00:27:05Absolutely we do.
00:27:06After the murders, a certain terror descended on Wapaka County, Wisconsin.
00:27:27This was a safe community.
00:27:28Tannen never locked her doors.
00:27:30And for the longest time, I went through, oh my gosh, is it something that, did they go after Tannen and now maybe Michelle's next or I'm next?
00:27:39Yeah.
00:27:39Yeah, that was a definite fear.
00:27:42Yeah.
00:27:43As long as the case went unsolved, that fear lingered.
00:27:46Now, Agent Sassy and his unit had revived a person of interest, Glendon Galker.
00:27:53As they dug into his time in Wapaka County, they discovered police had interviewed him even before Tim and Tannen's murders for another crime back in 1990.
00:28:05Glendon Galker had been a person of interest in a rape in the village of Iola, which is 20, 30 miles from this location.
00:28:14Just your sort of guy who would do this?
00:28:17Yes.
00:28:18He's a guy with a violent demeanor.
00:28:20He was never caught for the rape.
00:28:23Back in 1990, in the days before common use of DNA testing, investigators simply didn't have sufficient evidence to charge him.
00:28:32And the case went cold.
00:28:34But now, Glendon Galker was in jail in Oklahoma, charged with rape and capital murder, and Oklahoma had his DNA.
00:28:44And it matched.
00:28:45No question, Glendon Galker was the rapist.
00:28:49So, maybe Glendon Galker killed Tim and Tannen, too.
00:28:54Kind of want to talk to him.
00:28:55Right.
00:28:55And Glendon Galker agreed to cooperate, but with one very big condition.
00:29:01The death penalty he was facing, it'd have to make that go away.
00:29:06And after some wrangling, they made a deal.
00:29:09So, we go down and we confront him, and I said, I know you did this.
00:29:14You were involved in the Togstead-Mumbru case.
00:29:17And he starts shaking.
00:29:19He just literally starts shaking.
00:29:21I didn't do anything.
00:29:22He swore he did not murder Tim and Tannen.
00:29:26So, who did?
00:29:29Galker pointed the finger at this man, Lane Shields, his former boss at that western shop that Tim and Tannen frequented.
00:29:38Galker listed off all sorts of crimes he said he'd committed at Lane's behest.
00:29:43Anywhere from arson to burying bodies.
00:29:47Galker told them Shields had asked him to murder Tim and Tannen.
00:29:51He asked me, he said, we're going to kill two of them.
00:29:55He said, I don't want them shot.
00:29:56He said, I want them, quote, slaughtered my cattle.
00:30:00It freaked me out.
00:30:01He insisted he refused the job.
00:30:03And Galker said after the murders, Lane admitted he was responsible.
00:30:09I asked him directly, did you do it?
00:30:11He said, I brought somebody in.
00:30:12When you said no, he said, I brought somebody in from the outside to do it.
00:30:15Galker offered to take a polygraph to back up his claims.
00:30:20They conducted it the very next day.
00:30:22Regarding the two victims, did you stab either one of them?
00:30:25Oh.
00:30:26He fails questions about did he kill Tannen Togstead and Tim Umbrough.
00:30:32So what was true and what wasn't?
00:30:36The investigators headed back to Wisconsin to try to run down Galker's account.
00:30:40They got nowhere.
00:30:42And so they returned to Oklahoma.
00:30:44There was some inconsistencies last time.
00:30:46And this time, Galker told them a different story.
00:30:50There's only one thing that I haven't told you.
00:30:53He admitted he was at Tannen's farmhouse the night of the murders.
00:30:56But he said he didn't stab anybody.
00:31:00He was just the driver.
00:31:01And you're saying you never went in that house?
00:31:03No.
00:31:04I certainly drove.
00:31:07I was not in the house.
00:31:08I was never in that house.
00:31:10You don't find anything for me in that house.
00:31:14It was Lane who went into the farmhouse, he said.
00:31:18Was that guy Lane had hired?
00:31:20I drove him and this guy out there that night.
00:31:26The night of the homicide.
00:31:29I drove.
00:31:30All right.
00:31:31That's all I did.
00:31:33Who's the other guy?
00:31:36He brought him from outside.
00:31:38Lane and the unknown third person, who he said was an Irish guy, committed the homicide.
00:31:44Tell me what's said when they walk out.
00:31:46I didn't say anything.
00:31:48Bulls***.
00:31:49Are you kidding me?
00:31:50No.
00:31:51I'm telling you, the guy that Lane brought, this guy, this is a scary guy.
00:31:56The guy scared me.
00:31:58This guy was a predator.
00:32:02What did you make of his story?
00:32:04Well, obviously the hair stood up on my neck.
00:32:07But could they believe him?
00:32:10The Truth and Glendon Gauker were not well acquainted at all.
00:32:15That was obvious.
00:32:17So.
00:32:18Are our chips all in on this poker table?
00:32:20Absolutely not.
00:32:21I mean, he is a con man.
00:32:22But a lot was riding on this.
00:32:25If there was even a chance his Lane Shield story was true, it had to be resolved one way or the other.
00:32:32Just maybe this admitted murderer, this slippery liar, would help them finally catch their killer.
00:32:39Murderer, rapist, admitted career criminal, Glendon Gauker, was hardly the sort of man any investigator could take at his word.
00:33:02Certainly not Mike Sasse or his partners.
00:33:05It helped, mind you, that Gauker came clean and pleaded guilty.
00:33:09To that whole other murder in Oklahoma.
00:33:12But his story claiming that his former boss, Lane Shields, was responsible for the Tim and Tana murders.
00:33:19Well, it might be true.
00:33:21But they couldn't know without learning more about Lane Shields.
00:33:25And then they caught a break.
00:33:27We were able to actually draft and go up on a state Title III wiretap on Lane Shields.
00:33:33This has only been done maybe a few times in Wisconsin.
00:33:36You wouldn't be able to get one unless it was a pretty good case.
00:33:39Correct.
00:33:40How to get Lane talking about the murders?
00:33:44Well, get everyone else talking.
00:33:45We beefed the media out of Green Bay and Madison and we put billboards up near the crime scene out on our major highways around there.
00:33:57If you know any information who killed Tim and Tana, their pictures were on the billboards.
00:34:02Please call.
00:34:04Now, the thinking went.
00:34:06A nervous Lane would want to make sure the men with him at the murder would keep their mouths shut.
00:34:11So they set up a phone call.
00:34:13Gauker to Shields.
00:34:15And of course, unbeknownst to Shields, they listened to every word.
00:34:19Full of, what?
00:34:20Hope?
00:34:21Expectation?
00:34:22Instead, what they got was the nasty, deflating feeling of having been had.
00:34:29They're not saying what you thought they'd say.
00:34:31Right.
00:34:32What we were led to believe they were going to say.
00:34:35Lane didn't sound worried or threatening or indicate any involvement at all.
00:34:39It was just worthless chit-chat.
00:34:42So what did they say?
00:34:43There were no confessions.
00:34:44There were no admissions.
00:34:46There were no, they're coming after me now.
00:34:48We didn't get what we were looking for.
00:34:51This wasn't the chatter of guilty individuals.
00:34:53Correct.
00:34:54That you were hearing.
00:34:54Right.
00:34:55Yeah.
00:34:56As for the rest of the so-called evidence Gauker had provided?
00:35:00We pulled out every investigative, high-end investigative technique that we could.
00:35:05And we didn't get anything that corroborated what Gauker was telling us.
00:35:11If that didn't put Gauker's account to rest, this did.
00:35:15They searched Lane Shields' property.
00:35:18You come in here to trash my house?
00:35:19They interviewed Lane.
00:35:21He was angry, sure, but more than willing to talk.
00:35:25I gave you everything when you were here.
00:35:27We've talked back.
00:35:28I agree.
00:35:29To the investigators, the hard-as-nails Lane came off as upfront, even honest.
00:35:35I should have an evidentiary hearing on these people that are putting heat on me because it's
00:35:40not true.
00:35:41I run a business here.
00:35:42So when he told them he was innocent, they believed him.
00:35:47Hard as they tried, investigators could find nothing incriminating.
00:35:52Agent Sassy walked away knowing Lane was not their guy.
00:35:55As for Gauker, they'd had enough of him.
00:35:59Was there ever at any point in the conversations you had with him when you said, Glendon, you're
00:36:05full of it?
00:36:06Yes.
00:36:06And that was it.
00:36:07All that time and money they'd spent on Gauker and his story, their deal to allow him to avoid
00:36:13the death penalty for his own crimes in Oklahoma.
00:36:17It was all for naught.
00:36:19They wanted so badly to solve the Tim and Tana murders, and Glendon Gauker had simply played
00:36:25them.
00:36:28For more than two and a half decades, Tim and Tana's families were in the dark about the
00:36:34ups and downs of the investigation.
00:36:36There were no arrests, no resolutions.
00:36:40It never got easier.
00:36:42It was really stressful.
00:36:44It's very stressful.
00:36:45Rick Todd said I didn't blame the investigators.
00:36:48He knew how hard they were working.
00:36:50Still, always seems like right around the anniversary, you know, the newspapers and local TV stations
00:36:57and everybody wanted to know what's going on.
00:37:00And, you know, and then I'd get all nerved up and I'd be hard to live with and I'd be just,
00:37:06you know, wanting this thing solved and it wasn't getting done fast enough.
00:37:10Tim's older sister, Tina.
00:37:13There's no closure, you know, and I watched my family suffer from so much unforgiveness
00:37:20and hurt and that hurt would turn into anger and distrust.
00:37:26I mean, many of us didn't know who might be over our shoulder or why or because there
00:37:34was no answers.
00:37:362018.
00:37:38Detective Captain Nick Traeger of the Wapaka County Sheriff's Office had taken over the
00:37:42case.
00:37:43By then, the world of DNA evidence had opened up like a flower and Traeger wanted to try
00:37:48something new, familial DNA.
00:37:52That is the now widely accepted method of finding unidentified suspects by searching for their
00:37:58family members in DNA databases and then using family trees to narrow it down.
00:38:03Basically means, OK, not this person, but maybe somebody related to this person.
00:38:08Correct.
00:38:09In the same genetic, you know, line.
00:38:11Yeah, so that was the thought process.
00:38:15They submitted that semen found on Tana's body to criminal databases and got back nothing.
00:38:23They were out of new methods to find their killer, out of names.
00:38:27They were rudderless.
00:38:29And then a surprise.
00:38:32It was April 2022.
00:38:34A woman called investigators.
00:38:36She was a child at the time of the murder, she said, but she thought she knew who did
00:38:42it, a credible suspect, a suspect she knew all about.
00:38:4730 years after the crime, she was still carrying this around and she wanted to do something about
00:38:51it.
00:38:51Correct.
00:38:52She believed, she told them, that her DNA could finally identify the man who murdered
00:38:58Tim and Tana.
00:38:59And who was that person?
00:39:01So she turned on her profile and it was like the Christmas tree lit up.
00:39:08Really?
00:39:08Yes.
00:39:24Murder cast its dreadful damage wide and for a long, long time.
00:39:29Through the years, Tim and Tana's families never stopped looking for answers.
00:39:35What is it about you, your personality, that made you push so hard for all these decades
00:39:39to try to solve this?
00:39:40Well, I don't give up.
00:39:44Maybe it's just as well Rick didn't get to know what he was up against as he vowed to get
00:39:50justice for his sister.
00:39:52I just don't stop.
00:39:54I won't stop.
00:39:55I will not stop.
00:39:57We prayed a lot that somebody would come forth and somebody wouldn't be able to live with
00:40:03themselves.
00:40:04Three decades after those brutal stabbings in Wayoigo, Wisconsin, the families seemed to
00:40:10get their wish.
00:40:11When a woman called investigators in 2022, her name was Heather.
00:40:16She told the investigators she had heard about those murders when she was just a little girl.
00:40:21And ever since, she'd had this awful feeling that her father had something to do with it.
00:40:28And this got investigators' attention because her father was Jeff Teal.
00:40:35Remember him?
00:40:36Teal, the known violent offender, was one of the original suspects.
00:40:41But why did Heather wait so long?
00:40:45Well, it turned out she didn't.
00:40:47She told investigators the same thing way back in 2010 when Agent Mike Sasse had the case.
00:40:55Do you remember Heather Teal coming forward?
00:40:58Yes.
00:40:58What did she have to say?
00:40:59She was emotional.
00:41:00She says, I think my dad had something to do with this.
00:41:04And I knew that he was ruled out.
00:41:07That's because three years after the murders, back in 1995, Jeff Teal got into an armed standoff
00:41:15with law enforcement and then escaped and skipped town.
00:41:19It didn't end well.
00:41:20He dies by suicide, I believe, in the state of Washington.
00:41:24It's how investigators were able to get his DNA.
00:41:27The sheriff's department and detectives at that point in time are sent his clothing of
00:41:32when he died.
00:41:33That was blood on the shirt, is that correct?
00:41:35Yes.
00:41:36And that is sent in to a private lab and he is compared to the semen left at the crime
00:41:42scene and he's not a match.
00:41:45In other words, the DNA on his shirt said he didn't do it and he was cleared.
00:41:51Jeff Teal was buried near his home in Wisconsin and the suspicion about his involvement in the
00:41:56case was buried with him.
00:41:59But Heather Teal was so sure her father was behind the murders.
00:42:03Thirty years after the crime, she was still carrying this around and she wanted to do
00:42:07something about it.
00:42:07Correct.
00:42:09So Captain Traeger and his partner went to see Heather and her mom, Marie.
00:42:14You've always believed he's involved in this.
00:42:16What made you believe that?
00:42:18Because he did it and then said, it's funny how you can get away with murder these days.
00:42:21Jeff even saying to Marie, I've gotten away with murder.
00:42:26And his ultimate dream was to kill somebody.
00:42:29He used to tell me that all the time.
00:42:31Did you believe him?
00:42:32Oh yeah.
00:42:33He's had a gun in front of my face that if I ever called the cops on him, he's going to
00:42:36use it.
00:42:37A lot of childhood memories.
00:42:39My biggest memory of my dad is his obsession with knives too.
00:42:44Sitting in his chair, his rock recliner, sharpening his knives.
00:42:47On top of all that, they said, Jeff made it pretty obvious how he felt about Tana.
00:42:53He was obsessed with Tana.
00:42:54How do you know that?
00:42:56I had heard, and I can't remember who I had heard it from, if it was Tana herself, Jeff
00:43:01wanted to date Tana.
00:43:03Tana wanted nothing to do with Jeff.
00:43:05I always would think back when I heard that she was murdered or whatever, that, okay, Jeff
00:43:11doesn't live far from her, wanted to date her.
00:43:13She wanted nothing to do with him and how he always said he wanted to kill somebody.
00:43:18And remember, Tana's dog, Scruffy, was stabbed to death too, apparently trying to protect
00:43:22him and Tana.
00:43:23Well, Marie told investigators Jeff had a history of killing dogs, two of them right in their
00:43:29neighborhood.
00:43:29They were two huge dogs.
00:43:31I mean, they were really, really big.
00:43:33And Jeff shot them both.
00:43:34I saw him shoot them and kill them.
00:43:36He picked them up and he threw them in the back of his truck.
00:43:39Hold on.
00:43:39You saw Jeff shoot whose dogs?
00:43:41They were neighbors' dogs.
00:43:44But DNA doesn't lie, and DNA cleared Jeff's deal.
00:43:49Just to be thorough, they did a cheek swab anyway of Heather.
00:43:53So we collected her DNA, which she gave along with her mom, and I guess there was really
00:44:01no intent other than to, I guess, kind of have it because Jeff was eliminated.
00:44:06Then, just as they were getting ready to leave, Heather offered investigators something else.
00:44:13I'm on Ancestry, too.
00:44:16She had explained that she does the genealogy as well.
00:44:20She told investigators she'd been working on her family tree on Ancestry.com and offered
00:44:26them access to her account.
00:44:28The FBI had been helping with the investigation and got to work.
00:44:33And the FBI agent had reached out to Heather to turn the feature on where law enforcement
00:44:41can view your profile.
00:44:43So she turned on her profile, and it was like the Christmas tree lit up.
00:44:51Really?
00:44:52Heather was right.
00:44:56There was a connection with her father.
00:44:58But here came the twist, and it was a big one.
00:45:03So the FBI agent said, we are very close in the family, but it's not Jeff Thiel.
00:45:11After 30 years of waiting, investigators finally had a DNA match and a new name.
00:45:19Was this their man?
00:45:22Summer of 2022, 30 years after the murders of Tim Mumbreau and Tana Tugstead, investigators
00:45:45finally had a new suspect.
00:45:48Genetic genealogy pointed to Heather Thiel's first cousin and Jeff Thiel's nephew, a man
00:45:55named Tony Hayes.
00:45:58Nobody had ever heard of Tony Hayes in the case file.
00:46:01So we started looking into, you know, where does Tony Hayes live?
00:46:06Who is he?
00:46:07And realized that he lives less than two miles from the original crime scene.
00:46:12Like a lot of men in town, Tony worked at the Iron Foundry.
00:46:16But unlike his uncle Jeff Thiel, he had no criminal record.
00:46:21Just unbelievable.
00:46:22He's been there his entire life, and he's a nobody.
00:46:27Hiding in plain sight?
00:46:29Correct.
00:46:29So we spent several weeks following Tony, and it was the same thing almost every day.
00:46:37He went to work at the foundry, and he went home, and he worked around the farm.
00:46:42What to do?
00:46:43Get the man's DNA.
00:46:45So they rifled through his garbage, but nothing.
00:46:49So we had to get creative.
00:46:51Yeah, I would think.
00:46:52I mean, because you're chasing him around looking for him to drop.
00:46:54Yeah, throw something out the windows.
00:46:56Yeah.
00:46:57They noticed that Tony's car was missing its front license plate.
00:47:01So they came up with a plan.
00:47:03Let's write him a warning for no front plates, and have him touch a brand new pen,
00:47:10and then we'll send the pen down to see if he's a match.
00:47:13Clever idea, but it would involve you kind of conducting this ruse traffic stop, right?
00:47:18That's what we did.
00:47:19Hi, I'm Trooper Pullman with the State Patrol.
00:47:21I stopped you for no front plate on the vehicle today.
00:47:22I'm just going to ask that you sign to acknowledge that you received a warning.
00:47:26I've got a pen right there for you as well.
00:47:28They sent the pen with Tony's DNA to the lab, and it was a match.
00:47:35Wow.
00:47:36What was that moment like?
00:47:38It was unbelievable.
00:47:39I've never felt so joyous in my life.
00:47:41And yet, nothing about him looked like a killer.
00:47:46He was just a regular guy, a father of four, with no criminal record of any kind.
00:47:52Not even a hint of any impropriety.
00:47:55He lived quietly on the same farm his family had owned for decades.
00:48:00We spent a lot of time goofing off at the farm and with our grandparents.
00:48:06Tony's sister, Cherry Hayes Gust.
00:48:08But as we got older, he was my defender.
00:48:11I always looked up to him.
00:48:12Jody Lynn Morgan met and rode the school bus with Tony when they were just five years old.
00:48:19He's the gentle giant.
00:48:20As long as I've known him, always, always has been.
00:48:23So they grew up liking each other and then loving each other.
00:48:28They lived together for about two years, had two kids, before deciding to go their separate ways.
00:48:34And then a couple of years after that, Tony went on to marry Tracy.
00:48:39How'd you meet him?
00:48:40We both liked to fish, so we met in a bait shop.
00:48:47Yeah, that was his thing, right?
00:48:49How'd he be in fishing?
00:48:50Yep.
00:48:50Both of ours.
00:48:52Yep.
00:48:53Tony and Tracy had two kids of their own and, eventually, grandchildren.
00:48:57The couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in June of 2022.
00:49:04And two months later, investigators went to the iron foundry, found Tony, and asked to speak with him.
00:49:11So he came in very nonchalant.
00:49:15It was low-key.
00:49:16Hi, Tony.
00:49:17Hey.
00:49:18We introduced ourselves.
00:49:19We asked just kind of some basic background questions of him, who he was, where he lives, some work history.
00:49:26He knew Tim and Tana personally?
00:49:29He said he had never met Tim.
00:49:31He knew of Tana only because they lived in the same town.
00:49:36Interesting.
00:49:37Did he wonder why you were talking to him about this, all these years later?
00:49:41He questioned why we were talking to him.
00:49:43We explained that his name had come up in the investigation.
00:49:47Now, investigators asked him directly.
00:49:50Did you have any involvement whatsoever in this incident?
00:49:57In what incident?
00:49:58The incident with Tim and Tana.
00:50:00No.
00:50:00No.
00:50:01We asked if he'd be willing to give his cheek swabs and fingerprints to us, and he agreed to.
00:50:09Tony also agreed to take a polygraph.
00:50:11So, investigators took him down to the sheriff's station, performed a cheek swab, and had him take that polygraph.
00:50:17And then, they placed him in an interview room.
00:50:21I'm sure you want to know how you did.
00:50:22Yep.
00:50:22Okay.
00:50:23You did not pass.
00:50:25Okay?
00:50:26It was very clear when it came to the questions regarding Tim and Tana's death that you are lying.
00:50:32You continue to deny and lie, and we will show you the evidence that we have.
00:50:38It's not going to look good for you.
00:50:40Does that make sense?
00:50:42Oh, it makes sense.
00:50:45I don't believe that I could have done something like that.
00:50:51Okay.
00:50:51And did he actually fail it?
00:50:53Yes.
00:50:54So, they confronted Tony and explained that he was the match to the semen of the DNA that was left at the crime scene.
00:51:04Your semen that was found on her body at the murder scene.
00:51:09I still won't buy it.
00:51:10It doesn't matter if you buy it, Tony.
00:51:12I get it.
00:51:13I get it.
00:51:14You need to explain it.
00:51:15And what I found interesting was he never said, hang on, guys, you're talking to the wrong person.
00:51:22That's not me.
00:51:23He just kind of sat there and was like, I don't understand.
00:51:27Did he ever say anything that would suggest that maybe he did remember doing something?
00:51:32So, Tony took a long time to kind of get going.
00:51:37But once he did get going?
00:51:40It's going to sound stupid, but I never knew I did it.
00:51:45I never knew I did it.
00:52:15Imagine what he called clicks or blurbs from the night of the murders, memories of some sort.
00:52:23Over the years, little by little, you know, I'd see a little click here and there, but that I was wondering if I had something to do with it.
00:52:35But I'll tell you straight up, and I'm not lying.
00:52:38I don't believe that I would do that.
00:52:41But then he recalled going on a binger that night and ending up at Tana's house.
00:52:46I remember the house.
00:52:48I remember the...
00:52:49You remembered that house?
00:52:50Yeah.
00:52:50Yeah.
00:52:51Remember the steps.
00:52:53I remembered a, like a barbell or something like that.
00:52:57Which, when you look at the crime scene photos, there's a dumbbell in the bedroom.
00:53:02What's another blurb?
00:53:06I remember walking down the road.
00:53:09I got into my truck and drove home.
00:53:14Could that be the truck Tana's sister saw driving away late that night?
00:53:18But even as his memories seemed to incriminate him, Tony remained adamant he could not have done this.
00:53:26I don't remember nothing about hurting any people.
00:53:30Investigators pressed him for a possible motive.
00:53:34You were never attracted to Tana when you saw her?
00:53:37No.
00:53:39Never wanted to date her?
00:53:40Never jealous of some guys that were dating her?
00:53:43No.
00:53:44Tony was dating Jody at the time and denied any attraction to Tana.
00:53:50But then he started describing what sounded like a motive of sorts.
00:53:56It happened when Tony was just seven years old.
00:53:59His dad had been racing snowmobiles with Tana's dad and another friend.
00:54:03And suddenly the belt on Tony's dad's snowmobile blew and he was hit by the snowmobile coming up behind him.
00:54:09He killed my dad instantly.
00:54:11The third guy coming up ran that guy over.
00:54:17It was a horrible accident.
00:54:19Only Tana's dad survived, though he died a few years later.
00:54:24His father's death, said Tony, resurfaced 14 years after the fact on the night of the murders.
00:54:30I was drunk and all I could think about was that accident.
00:54:37I didn't go there to hurt anybody.
00:54:40I didn't.
00:54:42But I honestly can tell you that I don't know what started, what happened, what started it all.
00:54:50What took you so long in this room to tell us the story about your dad and the snowmobile and Tana's dad being involved?
00:55:02Because I didn't want it to sound like I had this planned, because I didn't.
00:55:08Planned or not, investigators felt they had enough.
00:55:11It's 1.39, Tony.
00:55:15I have to place you under arrest for the homicide of Tana Togstead.
00:55:19Yeah.
00:55:20And Tim, I'll move.
00:55:21Yes.
00:55:21Okay.
00:55:23Investigators were convinced they finally had their man.
00:55:29Tony's family was blindsided.
00:55:31Our youngest son messaged me in the afternoon and said that the cops were at our house.
00:55:40And I couldn't even drive down my road that I live on, because I had it all blocked off.
00:55:48Did you, Tracy, have to somehow deal with that question that you might be, you know, married to and living with,
00:55:56a man who had done a very, very, very terrible thing all those years ago?
00:56:00No.
00:56:01Not even when they got the DNA comparison with the semen that they found in their body?
00:56:06In my heart, I know he did not do this.
00:56:09There is no possible way he could have ever done something like that.
00:56:13So, no.
00:56:15The investigators talked to Jody, too, of course.
00:56:18Well, the first thing I said was, no, you have the wrong guy.
00:56:26You have the wrong guy.
00:56:27Back in 1992, Jody and Tony had only just moved in together.
00:56:33And, yes, the murder happened nearby.
00:56:35But did you notice any changes in Tony's behavior after that?
00:56:40No.
00:56:40No.
00:56:41No, nothing.
00:56:42Nothing at all.
00:56:43But then, landing with a sickening thud, that DNA.
00:56:48And Tony placing himself at Tana's house, remembering that barbell, the snowmobile accident.
00:56:56Why do you think those things came out of his mouth, and what do you think it all meant?
00:57:00He didn't say any of those things until he had proclaimed his innocence a hundred times and was shown pictures and videos.
00:57:10They repeatedly told him he must have done it.
00:57:14He did it.
00:57:15He did it.
00:57:15They kept coming down harder on him.
00:57:18Tony's family knew they needed help, and they turned to defense attorneys John Birdsall and Nicole Muller.
00:57:24Usually, when we get contacted, we get contacted by maybe one family member.
00:57:29Yeah.
00:57:29And the interesting thing was is that everybody believed in Tony Hayes' innocence so much, all his family, all his friends, that we had a conference call for people that wanted to help him financially to hire us.
00:57:43On that conference call, there were 55 people, and right there, before I even met Tony, I was like, there's something going on here.
00:57:53There's something wrong with this picture.
00:57:55Bert Zoll and Muller got to work that summer of 2022, trying to get their heads around 30 years of records they received from the prosecution.
00:58:03It took months.
00:58:05It was almost as if they just brought a truck with a bunch of boxes and dumped it out on the front lawn and said, there you go, work it out.
00:58:12And in the middle of all that working out, they read about the sheer depravity of the crimes.
00:58:19This is not somebody who just got drunk and had a bad night, like the interrogators tried to suggest to Tony.
00:58:27Something else was going on here.
00:58:29Which, it seemed to them, fit those other suspects.
00:58:33Remember?
00:58:34The suspects we've told you about.
00:58:36Basically, there was three there.
00:58:38Three?
00:58:39Three.
00:58:39Yeah.
00:58:40Yeah.
00:58:41Glendon Goker, Lane Shields, and Jeffrey Teal.
00:58:44But remember, all three had been pretty thoroughly investigated and all of them were cleared.
00:58:49In Teal's case, by his own DNA, which excluded him back in 1996.
00:58:55But 26 years later, thanks to familiar DNA technology, it identified his nephew, Tony Hayes, as the likely killer.
00:59:04So now, pre-trial, a legal skirmish began.
00:59:08Defense versus prosecution.
00:59:11The defense wanted to claim Jeff Teal was not excluded from all the blood evidence of the crime scene.
00:59:17And because of that, remained a potential suspect.
00:59:20Wapaka County DA Kat Turner objected.
00:59:24Jeff Teal seems like an obvious suspect to go after.
00:59:26He was dead, he was a bad guy.
00:59:28So, he had already been excluded in 1996.
00:59:34The judge sided with the defense.
00:59:37So, investigators decided...
00:59:40Let's show for a third time that he's been eliminated, and that way the defense can't use Jeff Teal as the person who committed these crimes.
00:59:51But testing Jeff Teal's DNA wasn't easy.
00:59:55He was six feet under.
00:59:58Which brings us back to that gloomy day in the cemetery.
01:00:02So, we asked the court to allow us to exhume Jeff Teal.
01:00:06We did.
01:00:08The man in this casket had kept his secrets to himself for almost 30 years, but Jeff Teal was about to give one up.
01:00:29We rushed the testing, the DNA analyst worked on nothing but that until he had the analysis complete, and again, excluded Jeff Teal from all of the blood evidence that was available.
01:00:45All of the other evidence prosecutors said pointed straight at Tony Hayes, who was due to stand trial for murder in just two weeks.
01:00:54But when the prosecution revealed the new evidence, Tony's attorneys argued they didn't have time to prepare a response, and the judge agreed with the defense.
01:01:04He ruled that if the trial went ahead, the prosecution could not tell the jury about any DNA evidence involving Jeff Teal.
01:01:13Did you think that was a good decision?
01:01:15No, I did not, and we very, very, very, very strongly argued to the court that it was inappropriate because everyone in the room, with the exception of the jury, knew that Jeff Teal had been excluded as a potential contributor to any of the biological evidence.
01:01:35Tough luck, said the defense.
01:01:37They had years to do this, and they were trying to act like they were the victims, and even the judges, like, that's really, he used the word twice, disingenuous.
01:01:47For the prosecutors and Tana and Tim's families, it meant an agonizing choice, go to trial with a weaker case, as they saw it, or set a new trial date, who knew when, with a stronger case.
01:02:01In the end, they decided to go for it.
01:02:04Tana's friend, Jill.
01:02:06They said, the case is strong enough, we will go forward.
01:02:11And so, on July 17th, 2025, it began.
01:02:14Please be seated.
01:02:16One of the biggest trials in Wapaka County history.
01:02:19Finally, a jury could deliver justice, said Tana's friends and family.
01:02:25What was the most important thing in your mind that they had against him?
01:02:28Well, the confession was huge to me.
01:02:31I mean, it was just like, wow, it's on tape.
01:02:34There was things that he said that, unless you did it, you don't make that kind of stuff up.
01:02:42No, he wouldn't know.
01:02:43Did you feel a kind of weight on you as you're trying to bring this case to a successful conclusion?
01:02:50Absolutely.
01:02:51This is a small, small town, and you want, as the prosecutor, to get justice for those people who you care about.
01:03:04For three decades, this crime went unsolved.
01:03:09Assistant Attorney General Amy Otani opened for the state.
01:03:13For three decades, the person that committed these crimes believed he would never get caught.
01:03:19Otani told the jury that Tony Hayes stabbed Tana and Tim in the early morning hours of March 21st, 1992.
01:03:28And, she said, the prosecution had the receipts.
01:03:31So, what ties Tony Hayes to this crime?
01:03:34His semen on Tana's body?
01:03:36His handprint in blood on Tana's door?
01:03:39His own memories of killing Tim and Tana?
01:03:44The handprint evidence first, found on the door, for years a bloody emblem of this case.
01:03:52A forensic analyst for the state crime lab testified she was able to make a match to Tony Hayes.
01:03:59Item ABFRD2 was identified to the left palm of Tony Garrett Hayes.
01:04:06ABFRD3 was identified to the left palm of Tony Garrett Hayes.
01:04:14How confident can you be in a handprint?
01:04:16I believe they're reliable.
01:04:18However, I would not feel confident if that was the only evidence.
01:04:25It wasn't.
01:04:27Remember that male DNA on Tana's body?
01:04:31Over 30 years, it had been seriously depleted by repeated testing.
01:04:35But, new testing methods require very few cells.
01:04:39So, when the analysts retested the DNA for investigation, they used the minuscule amounts that remained.
01:04:47But, were you confident there was enough, even at that level, that they could get an accurate result?
01:04:54From speaking with our genetics DNA analysts, I was confident.
01:04:59It's a principle of DNA testing that there cannot be 100% certainty.
01:05:04So, the prosecutors called it DNA analyst with the Wisconsin State Crime Lab, who had worked out an exact probability to show it most certainly was Tony Hayes' DNA.
01:05:18The random match probability, the profile would not be less common than 1 in 234 quintillion.
01:05:26Okay.
01:05:27And that's 2, 3, 4, followed by 18 zeros, right?
01:05:31Correct.
01:05:33In other words, the likelihood of the DNA on Tana's body being from anyone other than Tony Hayes was astronomically small.
01:05:40But, perhaps the most compelling evidence came from Tony Hayes himself during that marathon interrogation.
01:05:47I remember getting into the scuffle.
01:05:52You're in a scuffle with who?
01:05:54With Tim.
01:05:55Would you call it a confession?
01:05:57I would call it an admission.
01:05:59Uh huh.
01:06:00I don't know that he confessed to everything, but he did acknowledge remembering committing the crime.
01:06:10Prosecutors played that interview for jurors, all five plus hours of it.
01:06:15They heard Tony recall fragments from that night.
01:06:18Whatever happened that him and I started tussling.
01:06:25I'm pretty sure she was the one that said, what the f**k?
01:06:28And that's when I hit her.
01:06:30Okay.
01:06:31And then I was, you know, fighting with Tim.
01:06:36Tim.
01:06:37Mm-hmm.
01:06:38And then you go back to her.
01:06:41I must have.
01:06:42He said that he recalled some details of the order that Tim and Tana were killed in.
01:06:51And he said he remembered a knife.
01:06:53There was a knife.
01:06:54I remember having a hold of his arm and we tussled.
01:07:00And then I had the knife.
01:07:05He said he remembered trying to have sex with her.
01:07:08I had sex with her.
01:07:10What made you?
01:07:11Okay.
01:07:12I'm sorry.
01:07:13Keep going.
01:07:14I had to have stabbed her.
01:07:17And this, as the interview was ending.
01:07:20I remember thinking, holy f**k, what did I do?
01:07:27In the end, the prosecutors told the jurors it was the weight of all the evidence that pointed
01:07:33to Tony Hayes.
01:07:34Despite living a seemingly law-abiding life for 30 years, he remembered and he knew what
01:07:41he was hiding.
01:07:42He knew what he had done.
01:07:45I'm confident you'll find him guilty.
01:07:49Not so fast, said the defense.
01:07:52The prosecution had it all wrong.
01:07:55When they lie and manipulate to get someone to make a statement, that is not discovering
01:08:01the truth, that's planting it.
01:08:19Tracy Hayes dealt with the trial just as she had dealt with the years of heartache since
01:08:23her husband's arrest in 2022.
01:08:26She took it day by day, going to court, sitting right behind her husband, stoic and silent.
01:08:36We were told we couldn't talk to him.
01:08:38I couldn't give him a hug.
01:08:40Couldn't tell him I love him.
01:08:43Anything.
01:08:44What'd you do?
01:08:45I knew he was there.
01:08:46He knew I was right behind him.
01:08:48And she listened intently to defense attorney John Birdsall.
01:08:52What kind of a sick, twisted, psychopathic person would commit a crime like this?
01:09:05Not gentle Tony Hayes.
01:09:07The state had the wrong man, he declared, thanks to a deeply flawed investigation.
01:09:13You're going to see the utterly botched crime scene collection of both fingerprints and
01:09:21DNA, and blood for that matter.
01:09:23And it's like once you have a compromised crime scene.
01:09:26How do you trust anything from that scene?
01:09:28It's just not possible.
01:09:30That door, for instance, with handprint evidence on it?
01:09:33Other prints were on it as well.
01:09:35Prints that should never have been there, said Birdsall.
01:09:39One of the detectives, the main detectives, fingerprints on it.
01:09:43Fingerprints on the palm print or just on the door?
01:09:45On the door.
01:09:46What's more, the defense insisted, no one could be certain any of the prints on the
01:09:51door actually belonged to Tony.
01:09:53The problem is that it's subjective.
01:09:56And I'm not even going to call it a subjective science, because it's not a science.
01:09:59But the whole point at trial, the analyst, she had to admit she couldn't be 100% sure.
01:10:04And the DNA from the crime scene?
01:10:07Utterly unreliable, the defense attorneys argued.
01:10:10It's quality undone by repeated testing and decades of storage.
01:10:14And so they said the state was driven to extreme measures, examining DNA residue in tubes and
01:10:20spin baskets.
01:10:22So they're just retesting their old equipment, basically.
01:10:25As well, the defense alleged the state's analyst had added data to the DNA profile developed
01:10:32from the crime scene.
01:10:34Those were used to compare to Tony, correct?
01:10:37Correct.
01:10:38We saw the DNA profile was an engineered profile.
01:10:44And when you are engineering facts, you're not finding the truth.
01:10:49The analyst denied engineering facts.
01:10:52On redirect, he testified that he updated the DNA profile to reflect new standards.
01:10:58So you didn't add anything?
01:11:00Injection.
01:11:01Right?
01:11:02Injection rule.
01:11:03Correct.
01:11:04But the defense attorneys reserved their greatest outrage for that hours-long interrogation.
01:11:10They argued that any admissions from Tony Hayes were false, pried out of a frightened
01:11:17man by investigators using a controversial interrogation procedure called the read technique, which
01:11:23critics say uses manipulation and pressure tactics.
01:11:29You can't just keep saying, I don't want to remember this.
01:11:32I don't want this to be true.
01:11:33That stuff's got to go.
01:11:35Now it's got to be, I did it, and now I've got to come up with the answers.
01:11:39There's a lot of people who are waiting for your explanation.
01:11:42I don't have one.
01:11:46I don't.
01:11:48And when Hayes insisted he did not commit the murders, the investigators kept at him,
01:11:53told him they knew what happened that night.
01:11:55We are telling you, and this is true, your semen was on her body, okay?
01:12:02Mm-hmm.
01:12:03So, regardless of whether you're the kind of guy that could ever do that, regardless
01:12:07of the guy who doesn't want to believe he did that, when I say, Jay says, you did that,
01:12:15no dispute, how do you feel with that?
01:12:18Well, I sure wish that I remembered it.
01:12:22As for those fragments of memory he'd told them about, those were flashbacks, investigators
01:12:28said, to a nightmare he'd been trying to suppress for decades.
01:12:31You know you stabbed her through the chest when you were having sex with her, or right
01:12:37after.
01:12:38You see it, but you don't want to say it.
01:12:41Those are the facts.
01:12:42Yeah.
01:12:43And we can see that from the semen.
01:12:48The defense called an expert in false confessions to the stand.
01:12:52He believed what they said, that he was, there was no question that he was there, that it
01:12:58was his semen, so now he had to figure out how that could have happened.
01:13:02Dr. David Thompson testified that when he evaluated Tony Hayes, he found him to be suggestible,
01:13:10vulnerable to the investigator's tactics.
01:13:13When you look at those personality characteristics, and then you look at the investigator's tendency
01:13:20to provide suggestive questions to him, that combination I think is very significant.
01:13:26When they lie and manipulate to get someone to make a statement, that is not discovering
01:13:33the truth, that's planting it.
01:13:35Well, but you know, he's a grown man, he's not some kid.
01:13:39No, there's no, there's no buts about it.
01:13:41Okay?
01:13:42Uh huh.
01:13:43But the defense attorneys weren't done.
01:13:46Instead, they put a different man on trial.
01:13:49Jeff Thiel.
01:13:51Remember, the judge had ruled the jury could not hear the prosecution's DNA evidence, which
01:13:56they said excluded Thiel as a suspect.
01:13:59And now the defense went after Thiel hard.
01:14:02They called his ex-wife, Marie Stanchik, to testify to his bad character.
01:14:07I do.
01:14:08Did he ever physically hit you?
01:14:10Yes.
01:14:11I was pregnant with Heather then, and we were on our way to Hamas classes.
01:14:15And he hit me in the mouth, and I got a fat lip.
01:14:18And then, just months after Tana and Tim were murdered, this.
01:14:23He had held a gun in my face and said he was going to use it on me.
01:14:27And she told law enforcement, Jeff Thiel told me that he was going to kill me and get away
01:14:33with it, just like the Togstead-Mumbrew homicide.
01:14:38They told jurors Jeff Thiel had reason to murder Tim and Tana.
01:14:43Tim had reported Thiel for a theft to the foundry, and Tana had rejected his advances.
01:14:49So we have direct connection and direct motive to both the victims.
01:14:54How did it go down on that long-ago night?
01:14:58The defense leaned on the tale told by convicted criminal Glendon Gowker that he, Gowker, drove
01:15:05two men to Tana's house that night, and one of them, an Irish-looking guy, the guy the
01:15:11defense decided was Jeff Thiel.
01:15:13Surely there was more than enough reasonable doubt, the defense told jurors, to find Tony
01:15:18Hayes not guilty of the murders.
01:15:21If you pause or hesitate when considering all of the manipulation, mistakes, cover-ups, lying
01:15:32that you heard in this trial that I didn't make up, if that makes you pause or hesitate, you
01:15:41know your duty.
01:15:43Now, it was the jury's turn.
01:15:51In August, 2025, a jury of 12 at the Wapaka County Courthouse went out to decide if Tony
01:16:06Hayes murdered Tana and Tim.
01:16:09Tim's sister, Tina, leaned on her faith.
01:16:12We walked around that courthouse seven times praying.
01:16:16I was praying for God's justice.
01:16:21Tana's brother, Rick, on his 33-year journey for justice, was trying to stay calm.
01:16:28When they went out, were you feeling relatively confident, at least?
01:16:31I felt as though we were going to get a good verdict.
01:16:35Even though the defense had persuaded the judge to throw out all the DNA evidence clearing
01:16:40alternate suspect Jeff Teal, so the jury never got to hear about it, Tim's family remained
01:16:47upbeat.
01:16:48I was feeling real confident, because I thought the prosecution did an amazing job.
01:16:54We thought for sure we had a slam dunk.
01:16:57Jurors would later reveal that when their deliberations began, six jurors believed Tony
01:17:02Hayes was guilty, and six not guilty.
01:17:05It was extremely hard to know that his life was in somebody else's hands.
01:17:11Tony's family and friends were all too aware that a guilty verdict had to be unanimous.
01:17:17Was I confident when they went in?
01:17:19You can't be confident.
01:17:21I'm confident that he's not the guy, but it's not me, it's them.
01:17:30Of course you're worried and you're scared, but I feel like it had been proven.
01:17:36But then the days went by, right, one after the other.
01:17:39It meant that they were really looking this over.
01:17:44Among Tana and Tim's family members and friends, anxiety was setting in.
01:17:50I was more and more nervous the longer the jury stayed out.
01:17:54You could hear those guys arguing in the room, the jury.
01:17:57And you could tell they were arguing about something, but we didn't know what.
01:18:01On Monday, August 11th, 2025, day four of deliberations, the moment of truth was at hand.
01:18:10The jury came back, and the judge read its verdict.
01:18:15We, the jury, find the defendant, Tony Garrett Hayes, not guilty.
01:18:24When they came back and they said, not guilty, that was beautiful.
01:18:30Tony's friends, Joe, Jason, and Liz.
01:18:34I cried. Tears of joy.
01:18:40They got it right.
01:18:41Seeing God the jury, yeah.
01:18:43I was just thinking of Tony, right?
01:18:45I can't imagine what he'd been through, you know, during that three years of being put in that position, right?
01:18:51Tony's wife, Tracy, would get her husband back.
01:18:56What was it like to give him a big hug when he finally came out of there?
01:19:01It was awesome to take him home to our children.
01:19:06And he got to see his grandpa.
01:19:09His grandpa said that was the best day of his life.
01:19:13Of course, it was a different reaction on the other side of the courtroom.
01:19:19What was that like when the judge read the verdict?
01:19:22I couldn't believe he even said it.
01:19:24What?
01:19:25It's just like, wow.
01:19:28My heart just dropped.
01:19:30My stomach turned.
01:19:32A complete shock that 12 people could be that deceived.
01:19:37Took you outside of your body almost.
01:19:40Pure rage.
01:19:42I couldn't breathe.
01:19:45Today, Tony is back home with his family.
01:19:48Breathing the clean air of Guayawiga's farmland.
01:19:51Feeding his cows.
01:19:54He's a free man.
01:19:57His wife, Tracy, feels free too.
01:20:00So what now?
01:20:02Just live day by day.
01:20:04We'll see what happens.
01:20:07See where God takes us.
01:20:09How are you and Tony adjusting to this?
01:20:12Good.
01:20:14He finally gets the sunshine and the fresh air.
01:20:18Have you gone fishing lately?
01:20:20No.
01:20:21Not yet.
01:20:24We will though.
01:20:26He owes me that.
01:20:28On the advice of his attorney, Tony himself did not speak with us.
01:20:33His criminal case is over.
01:20:35Hard to accept for Tim and Tana's family members and friends.
01:20:39Most people on that jury let out a man that butchered two people.
01:20:45And he is now walking around, gonna have family time, play with his grandkids.
01:20:52Tana never got to have a kid.
01:20:54Tana never had a life.
01:20:55It's a hard pill to swallow.
01:20:57Yeah.
01:20:58Was he found innocent?
01:20:59He was found not guilty.
01:21:01Tana's brother, Rick, who lives just three miles from Tony, filed a civil wrongful death
01:21:08lawsuit against him.
01:21:10Said it isn't about financial gain.
01:21:13I don't want his house and I don't want his retirement.
01:21:16Acknowledgement is what I want.
01:21:19It's gonna be expensive, that acknowledgement.
01:21:24Rick set up a GoFundMe page.
01:21:27And meantime, the crime against Tana and Tim remains officially unsolved.
01:21:34Even though investigators and prosecutors believe they know the answer.
01:21:38Nothing to do about it now.
01:21:40You gonna be able to get used to it?
01:21:43Live with it?
01:21:44I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.
01:21:46Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing.
01:21:49That was a piece of wisdom right there.
01:21:52As Tana and Tim's families and friends try to make peace with the outcome, they take some
01:21:58comfort from their memories of the vibrant young couple, taken far too soon, who lived
01:22:05long enough to find each other and fall in love.
01:22:12That's all for now.
01:22:13I'm Lester Holt.
01:22:15Thanks for joining us.
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1:06:35
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1:07:15
1:29:04
46:10
2:25:30
44:15
2:28:32
2:11:57
1:21:35
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