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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shot looking an infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. Nancy Fister, heir to Buttermilk Mountain, the world renowned sight of the Winter ex Games, was Aspen Royalty, its ambassador to the world. She lived among the rich and famous. She partied with hunter s Thompson dated Jack Nicholson, had a joint baby shower with Goldie Hawn and globe trotted with Angelica Houston. She was also a philanthropist admired for her generosity, but behind the warm facade, she could
be selfish, manipulative, and careless. Fister enjoyed bragging about her wealth and celebrity connections, but those closest to her, like Kathy Carpenter, Fister's personal assistant, drinking companion on one occasion, lover knew better. In two thousand and thirteen, after a long fall from grace, doctor William Styler and his wife Nancy relocated to Aspen to reinvent themselves. They'd lived the high life before a misguided lawsuit left them near poverty,
and Nancy Fister was their answered prayer. She took them in, gave them a place to live, and allowed them to launch their new spa business. Everything seemed perfect until Fister turned on them, making increasingly irrational demands and threatening to throw them out on the street. When Nancy was found
beaten to death in her own home. The Stylers and Carpenter were all under suspicion for the gruesome murder, but in this close knit, wealthy town set on keeping its reputation in secrets safe from the public eye, the police struggled to solve the mystery of what really happened. The book they were featuring Thece Evening his Shadow on the Mountain, Nancy Fister, doctor William Styler, and the Murder of Aspen's Golden Girl, with my special guests, journalists and authors Stephen
and Joyce Singular. Welcome back to the programme and think thank you very much for agreeing in this interview. Joyce and Steven Singular.
Hi, thank you for having us again.
Thank you very much. Let's jump right into this incredible story and tell us a little bit. As you know, you're very, very familiar with Colorado and all things Colorado. So let's talk about Aspen, what Asmen is really like. And as you do in the book, you give a little brief history of this interesting place and also where the wealthy play and live and have been for many years. So tell us a little bit about Asmen as you do in the book, Stephen Joyce.
Well, Asmen is really unique to Colorado. It's on the western slope of Colorado, of the mountains, and it's sort of like the Beverly Hills of Colorado. I guess you could say it's very, very wealthy. When you go in town, you go by the all the private jets that are lined up that take the celebrities and politicians in and out, and it's sort of an insular community. There's no place quite like it. And in the seventies, I'll start there, Steve, if you want to, you know, jump in earlier than that.
But in the seventies it was you know, like a lot of mountain towns and a lot of resorts, full of a lot of partying, and you know, just kind of a crazy place. Hunter S. Thompson was living there. He ran for I think it was mayor the town. There was a high profile crime that occurred there in the seventies. Spider Savage, who was on the World Cup Circuit Racer ski racer, was living with Claudine Lange, who was married to Eddie Williams at one time, and she
shot him. She shot Spider Savage and killed him, and a similar thing happened in that case as with this Fister case. The case she got a month I think in probation, and the town was quick to close ranks like they did with the fist case as well. It was sort of it was bad for publicity, it was bad for their image, and the whole thing was resolved very quickly and sort of mysteriously, and we were surprised
to see that this happened again with this particular case. Steve, do you want to add anything to that.
Yeah. Yeah. They Aston was a real boom town back the end of the nineteenth century due to the discovery of minerals. It was a very it was somewhat wealthy back then, and then all of that went away. The silver market crashed and Assen became almost a ghost town with about three or four hundred people in it in
the first part of the twentieth century. And then when World War II came, they started training in the mountains up there, and some of the really enterprising people who were involved in that said this, we could turn this into a ski resort, you know, if we just had the money. They had three different mountains that are all spectacular for skiing, and eventually those came into being. One of them was Buttermilk Mountain, which does figure into this story, and so that put Aspen on the map as a
ski as an international ski resort and destination. Then they brought in this music festival in the summer, which brought in musicians and other people from all over the world, very high profile, very prestigious. Then they brought in this Aspen Ideas Festival to bring in you know, like a thank tank for the whole world. They have branches all over the world as a matter of fact. So that was sort of the foundation for Aspen. And when those things were in place, then it sort of turned into
a party town. And Nancy Fister's mother and father were a part of the generation that really built Aspen, came wealthy as a result of building the ski resort on Buttermilk Mountain and were you know, real hard working of serious folks. That represents our of the first generation of Aspenites. And then their daughter represents the party time that was just about to erupt his choice talked about in the
late sixties and seventies. And no one represented the old esp And more than her parents, who are very accomplished people. And no one represented the party more than Nancy.
And in many instances with families like this, the first generation that creates the wealth have a different work ethic than the second generation that you know, our trust funders basically many a time and don't have the same work ethic, and that's sort of what happened with Nancy Fister.
And her parents were very aware of this. They had three daughters. The daughters notoriously did not get along, Suzanne, Christina and Nancy. And it was I mean, it was an open secret that the three daughters did not like each other and quarreled a lot. So when the parents died, or before they died, they set up a system where money was distributed, but not in a very lavish way, especially not for Aspen. And that becomes a real integral
part of this story as it unfolds. They didn't want their children to just you know, blow all this money as quickly as they could, which is something else that a lot of wealthy people do. So that we'll figure in as this story goes along.
You talk about how Nancy and her sister Suzanne and Christina were raised by parents basically they were more interested in other things rather than parenty. It wasn't their priority. But Nancy grew up differently than Christine and Suzanne, or became a different person. So as we'll say a little bit later in life, what did the other two sisters gravitate towards them become and what was Nancy left? What was Nancy referred to as out of the three anyway.
Well, the other two were more serious types, I believe one word for a while in real estate and another had like a jewelry or a collection. Christina made a point of wanting to sort of get away from the family. She said, I'm the fister that you know nobody knows. So she eventually moved to Denver and just wanted to completely distance herself, not just from the family, but especially from her sister Nancy. Suzanne lived fairly near Nancy all of her life, but they really did not get along well.
Suzanne basically lived across the road from Nancy and they never really talked.
Yeah, and Nancy was this real outdoor loving you know, horseback riding, fishing.
She fancied herself a philanthropist. Yeah, and she wore many hats. You know. She would portray herself as a producer or someone that worked for the Ellen show, Ellen degenera show. Sometimes she made up these titles to impress people.
Right. She was very open and friendly and to a degree that you know, goes beyond what most people would think of of those words. There's an anecdote in the book where this guy, this journalist, comes to town and he's in asking. He doesn't really know anybody. He's standing in the middle of town in this mall. It's in the off season. There are any people there, and he
sees this blonde woman. She was attractive, and he sees her and he sort of stares at her, and she's eating Chinese food, you know, with chopsticks out of this little box, and she just comes over to him and puts a bider of rice in his mouth. This is like his welcome to ask. I mean, that's you know,
not something most people would do. So when people would go around the world, as you know Aspen, as many world travelers, they would say, you know, we're from Aspen, and the first question would be do you know Nancy Fister? Because she behaved that way all over the world.
Right, you talk about all the in the book, you talk about all the celebrities that she encounters in the We mentioned in the introduction about the joint baby shower with Goldie Hahn and Globe trotting with all these movie stars. But when we talk about twenty and twelve, twenty and thirteen, and then later twenty fourteen when this story really occurs. You talk about how the luster had gone off her
reputation and things were different for Nancy. So tell us what things had how things had changed for Nancy Fister in Aspen.
Well, I'll say this, by now, she was getting older. You know, she was in her fifties, late fifties, and many of her friends of her same age had already started raising families, you know, several decades earlier, and she didn't. She's kind of stayed the party girl a little too long at the party and so she really was sort of kind of just at loose ends whereas other people.
And she had really had quite a drinking problem by this time too, and so yeah, a lot of her friends had already moved on, and you can imagine someone that was, you know, the party girl of the seventies, but now it's twenty fourteen, and it just didn't really play out that well, and it was sort of it was kind of sad and tragic. You know, she was sort of a she had devolved in sort of a tragic figure around town.
Yeah, she would show up places that we have a story in the book, you know, where the sheriff was making a speech and she shows up drunk in the famous hotel and Aspen and interrupts him repeatedly and embarrasses him. And it wasn't the first time this happened. You know, she, as Joyce said, she this drinking problem got more pronounced and as she aged, and as that happened, you know, her friends were no longer these a list celebrity people. But she was sort of going down the social chain
to find people to really hang out with. And that's how she came across and met and got involved with one of the key figures in this case, Kathy Carpenter, who worked at the local Alpine Bank as a teller.
Now, tell us about the circumstances that they do meet, because it's very interesting, like you say, this a lister than now rubbing elbows with this other person. So tell us the circumstances in which they do meet and then strike up a friendship and more.
Go ahead.
Well, Nancy banked at Alpine Bank and she went in there. You know, she was always very friendly. She was great at beginnings, let's put it like that, not so great at middles and endings, but she's Kathy waited on her and they struck up a conversation and Nancy went into the bank quite often and always talked to her, and she said she wanted to be her personal assistant at
the bank. And then she called her one day and said, I would like you to work for me, you know, I would like you to be my personal assistant and work with me full time. And Kathy sort of famously said, you can't afford me because she had benefits and all of that, so she didn't do that, but they became progressively closer where Kathy would go up to her house and spend time and drink with her and you know, watch her.
Dog, and she kind of afforded. She kind of brought Carpenter into a different social strata, right, and that was appealing to Carpenter.
Yeah. Yeah, Kathy was you know, somewhat insecure, and here she was, you know, hanging out with Aspen Royalty, you know, going up to Buttermilk.
Mountain, going to parties with her, up to her.
House and hanging out with her, and you know, some of the time it was fun. On the other hand, they crashed bitterly at times, and that's a part of the story. The police had to come out a couple of times Nancy's house separate them and all of that. So she tended to have volatile relationships with both women and men.
Can you explain, as you do in the book about the situation with the trust fund limits that the parents had imposed so that the daughters wouldn't squander everything, but also how it affected and Or and in addition to her personality that apparently was like you say, very good beginnings, but not so once you got to nowhere. So what did Kathy experience and see in those regards and tell us about those limits with the money or resources.
Well, we were spent a lot of time talking to a private investigator named David Olmstead, who was ultimately working for one of the defendants in the case after this crime. And he told us again another great quote for the book, that when the parents Nancy Fister's parents, before they had died, they had set it up with a local lawyer named Andy Hecht who was in the latroom of Garfield, and hecked that he would control all of the money in their estate and that he would basically dole it out
to the sisters on a monthly basis. We were told that she got seven thousand dollars a month. Now, that's not a lot of money in Aspen, and she chafed against this horribly. She didn't think it was enough money to live on. She made a point of going out to dinner with people and maybe saying she would take them out. And then when the bill came, you know, she was nowhere to be seen. So she had major issues around money and she couldn't really get more money
out of that, out of Andy hecked. So this sets up a conflict right there from the beginning.
Now you talk about the increasingly the responsibilities that Kathy Carpenter is given by Nancy Fister, and then Nancy Fister has an idea to change her life up somewhat, and it's discussed with Kathy Carpenter and including these new responsibilities or the increasing responsibilities that are given to her. Tell us what she does become. We alluded that she's some sort of assistant, and what's the idea of about the
rental of the home? Tell us about some of these things that she is responsible for.
Yeah, as they grew closer, Nancy, Nancy would take her places on vacation. For example, they went to Hawaii together, but she would have Nancy liked to go away in the cold weather.
So she had some injuries, some old injuries that you know, that were achy, and so she would travel to the to the warm climates in the winter. And which you should have said was that Nancy got a dog named Gabe, and then Kathy Carpenter had to start helping watch this dog because Nancy was not very responsible. So you know, a lot of it started. A lot of these things started falling on Kathy Carpenter's shoulders. And I think it was in the fall of twenty thirteen that she had
made plans to go to Australia. There was somebody that she was dating there or was interested in, and and that's when she had decided to put her house up for rental.
And she was known for making very casual agreements with renters. She didn't like a paper trail or anything like that. She'd just make a verbal agreement and then she'd say to Kathy, well, you take care of this. You get the money from them, you put the money in my account, and you handle all these transactions, because you know, you're at the bank and that's where it's done, and so that becomes, you know, a big part of the story that's about to happen.
What we didn't talk about, and I apologize, is that also we should talk about Nancy's daughter, Juliana and the situation in terms of her parenting. Tell us a little bit about that as we just backtrack a bit, as this will be important later.
Go ahead and do it well.
As Nancy was getting you know, as she was getting old. I guess she was probably in her thirties when she had a daughter named Juliana by a Argentinian polo player and who I think relinquished all rights to Juliana. She just she basically needed someone to father a child. She decided she wanted a child. But basically Juliana was brought
up mostly by people in the Woody Creek area. Would you say, Steve like the Stranahans, And Stranahan is a name that some people might recognize as the liquor people.
Yeah, they make urban and he's sort of well known for other things, George Stranahan. But you know, Nancy's parents, as you already said, Dan, weren't known for parenting, weren't known for their parenting skills. Some people kind of called her award of the community. And Juliana was raised very much the same way. And Nancy would have a whim she said, I want to fly to France, I want to watch a tennis match in French or France, or
I want to go to Africa and do something. She would just take off and and the child would be left behind with whoever was there to take care of her. That created a lot of conflict between Nancy and her mother. And again it was just sort of characteristic of her to do exactly what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it.
Now you also talk about the relationship interestingly, and this is important, very very important later that you have a former sheriff, if I'm not correct, Bob brought us and the current one at that time was dissolvable, was his he was brought us was before dissolvable. So tell us how close a relationship both of these men had, and also the relationship they both had with Nancy Fister.
Well, it was there were days, you know, back in the seventies the Joyce alluded to when things were much looser and Aspen there wasn't as much wealth as there is now. There are now fifty of the world's billionaires now live in Aspens, so it's really a bit of a different game. But but DeSalvo told us that, you know, back in the days when Hunter Thompson was partying at al Creek Farm every night, you know, he should go out there and get in a poker game with him
and play and all of that. And that was the world that Nancy was really moving in. I mean, she was in regular at the Hunter Thompson parties where Jack Nicholson would show up or other famous people she was very close to that brought us first and then to DeSalvo. She called him Joey and she called brought us I think Boo Boo, and she was just you know, it
was a very tight knit community. They were all you know, brought us a sort of known for you know, his drug usage before he became the sheriff, and it was a pretty loose environment and she fit into that perfect.
And it's pretty It's not that big of a town, you know, and when when winter is over, it gets smaller because everybody descends on it like they do with a lot of ski towns, and it gets you know, the population grows, but then in the summer it shrinks again, right.
And there were there are only sixty six hundred people who live there as permanent residence, so it really is small. But there are things in the book that talk about like if you're the sheriff of you know, Pitkin County where Asping is you, you kind of learned to protect rich people's children. And she sort of had that relationship with them. You know, if something she might have, you know, been drinking and driving or something like that, they might
protect her to keep her out of trouble. So the town sort of you know, closed ranks around her in a way to protect her and her daughter when she was when they were younger. And then that's interesting how that plays out once the crime occurs.
Now, Jose, could you tell us about doctor w. William Styler and his wife Nancy and just tell us a little about their background.
Okay, Well, they both were in the medical profession. I believe Nancy Styler was a nurse at the time or nurse anesthetist, correct Steve, and that's where she met William Styler And that was here in Colorado, and he was an antithesiologist or he was on his way up in medical school at the time, you know, going up the ranks.
They met, they got married. He eventually became chief of anesthesiology at a big hospital here in Denver, Saint Joseph's, and he was very, very successful, and she began she's stopped being a nurse, but she went on to begin a prize winning lily pad cultivator. She'd go to South America and she cultivated these huge lily pads that they had in their garden that would be they would be so big a small child could actually stand on one of them, you know, and hold its weight. So that
became her passion and he supported her in that. But so they were very well to do, and then eventually he started well, actually what happened is he had an accident. It's kind of unclear because we went through all the medical records, we could find court records, and it's always kind of vague what happened to him. He had some sort of accident, maybe in his backyard set for X Steve here in southern Denver, which was more like Littleton or Inglewood, which is a suburb of south of Denver,
and he became incapacitated. He could not do his job as well anymore, and he couldn't stand on his feet, and he couldn't. He just became worse and worse than weaker and weaker, so and maybe and he began he sued the group that he was in. I think they
fired him. There was a software company that he helped Deville up right, and so there was some kind of conflict about the software that with the antithesiology group that he belonged to, and they eventually parted ways and he had to retire early, and he began his health just went started going downhill. Now, all the medical bills that they had and other things that happened to him started, they started to lose their wealth. Go ahead and jump in, Steve, if you remember something that I don't.
They's sort of a three prong thing. What Joyce said was that, you know, the medical bills hit them, and then he, you know, he decides to sue this antithesiology group because he felt they didn't pay him. They actually offered him a pretty good settlement of one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. I think it would have been a good idea to take that, but he said, no, I'm going to fight this in court and I'm going
to win. He hires a lawyer who charges him six hundred and ten thousand dollars to represent him, which everybody felt was a whole lot of money exorbitant. And then this is occurring around the time of the two thousand and eight crash in the American economy, when you know, they had money invested like so many and so they
were quite well off. I think their house was a little detail that sort of factors in, but I think it was like sixty four hundred square feet with these ponds in the backyard, with these lilies that Joyce was talking about, a really beautiful place.
And then he got in an accident. Remember he got in an accident. That didn't help anything because that was even more money that they lost. So they had to sell their house, they had to move out, they had to downsize, they had to go to different locations where
they were renting. But you know, just struggling. And so Nancy Styler decided, who had also had a background as an esthetician, you know, somebody that does botox and applies falfylashes and to women, and she had this idea to go up to ASP and you know, maybe have like a mobile like RV type of thing where you could, you know, go and provide these services to the wealthy women up in Aspen and they could reinvent themselves up there. So they decided to head up to Aspen and look
for a place. And that's where they saw the ad in the Aspen Times that Nancy Fister had put in looking for someone to rent her house, which is a really nice house at a multi level house with a greenhouse in the in the back facing south and that was really attractive to them, and especially to Nancy Styler because she wanted you know, she was an avid gardener. And that's how they met.
She also thought something Joyce pointed out that you know, if women didn't want to be seen getting botox, you know in downtown Aspen, you could this is a few miles out of town. I mean they might go there and have more privacy for this kind of word getting done. So Nancy Fister said, yes, move in. You can use my house to start your spa on all these services. And they thought and.
Matthew Fister there was talk that maybe she would even invest in their business. Right she started building up. You know, they met and you know, she came to the door in her bathrobe with a glass of champagne, and they were kind of taken aback because they're more conservative, and you know, it's kind of the coming together of two very different types of people. But they were you know,
it looked like everything looked golden about the situation. She looked gold and she was so friendly and nice, and they'd been beaten down and this just looked like a perfect opportunity. She was going to be gone, They could rent the house for the winter and they could do their business out of their house, and they just, you know, they jumped on it.
And the good Williams lasted about two weeks. Yeah, Yeah, Nancy Fisher was planning on leaving. I think it was like the third week of November that all this happened
that Joyce talked about in October twenty thirteen. They saw the ad they get together, this is the Savior, and then they realized that in a short order that that Nancy Fisterer had a drinking problem, and that every day she would you know, start drinking around noon, or she'd leave the house and go somewhere and drink, and she'd come back and often in a pretty nasty mood, and she started, you know, ordering them around, especially Nancy Styler.
And again you know here they are. This guy had been the head of antaphysiology in a major metropolitan hospital. Nancy Styler had a big reputation in this area of Botany and they were not prepared for the kind of stuff that was coming.
What was their relationship with Kathy Carpenter at that time.
They only got to know her a little bit during that period right there. But then Nancy Fister did leave. She did have her plans to go away to Australia for four to six months. It was she was always a little bit vague on timeline. So what happened was that that she told Kathy Carpenter, you know, these people will watch the dog Monday through Friday.
Well, and see that was news to the to the stylers day. That wasn't part of the deal. So all of a sudden, here's the woman going to Australia. Oh and by the way, now you're going to take care of my you know, large standard poodle. So little by little, these things started, you know, grading at them. Oh, now we have to take care of a big dog, you know, And this wasn't part of the agreement. So that threw
Kathy Carpenter more into the equation. Now, because maybe if if that dog hadn't been involved, then Kathy Carpenter would have just collected the rent the rent every month and not really had much to do with it. But because of the dog, she was thrown into their life more and more.
And Kathy would come up and you know, they would have a drink and they would talk about someone who was gradually, you know, sort of a common enemy. I mean, Kathy it had serious conflict with Nancy up to this point. I mean, there was there's a story in the in the book where they get into a major fracas in Glenwood Springs and you know it's they almost end up in jail and they're fighting and all of those things.
So she had her own history and then the Stylers are gradually understanding this is not you know, a perfect marriage, and they start complaining and they're drinking and and Nancy Styler starts doing some work on Kathy you know, hair and maybe.
Well mostly eyelashes, eyelashes and like, yeah, aesthetic things.
Right, So there's you know, they're thrown together and they start talking about all.
Sorts of things truly.
So the stylers, I mean they really did not have much money at all. I mean they were virtually broke by well.
And then what was the rent that they were paying every month, I mean it was significant.
Six They did six significant dollars to come to sort of move in, and then they were going to pay six thousand more. That was in November, like at the end of December. And so then one of the first things that happened was that the water system broke down in the house and Nancy go Fister got all upset about that. But that meant Nancy Styler couldn't start her spa business, and just one thing after another sort of
started to go wrong. So where the story gets more intriguing is that they did manage to come up with six thousand dollars, and then they managed to come up with another six thousand dollars and they gave it to Kathy Carpenter again who worked at the bank and who had sort of a safety deposit box for Nancy Fister, and Nancy Fister started to blow up because she didn't get that six thousand dollars. So this is the first
like major crack in the relationship. So the question becomes right there, you know, where did that six thousand dollars go. You have somebody in Australia demanding the money, you have somebody in Aspen saying they paid the money, and you have somebody at the local bank in the middle of all that. So then Nancy Styler turned really Nancy Fister turned really nasty on them very quickly. It all degenerated. She said, you need to move out. I need to
find other renters. And it starts to unwind from there.
You talk about that, it's instead of the six months, she's going to cut her vacation short and come back and deal with this, which seems to a lot of people later and maybe even at the time, is sort of an overreaction to this. So what does Kathy Carpenter in preparation for that? And what do the Stylers do in response to this being tossed out, even though they've spent the money. What do they do in response to this?
Well, they they tried to communicate with her lawyer. She had a lawyer there named John Beattie, and they were they were just in a state of shock. I mean they were like, we just moved into November. We did everything she did.
And they didn't know what they were going to do. They were they were desperate, correct.
Yeah, And so you know, first of all, doctor Styler sort of blows up at the lawyer, blows up at Nancy Fister. Thenny, you know, Back's office says, you know, let's let's work this out. You know, we gave you the money, we've we've kept our agreement, and you know, let's see if we can work through this. Nancy Fister just she was once she turned on you. I mean she was she was very nasty and so again and whatever Kathy Carpenter was doing or had done, she basically
kept herself. So just more or less arbitrarily. It's the middle of February. Now she's only been gone three months, and she says, I'm coming home. I'm going to fly home on February twenty second. Get those people out of there. They have to be gone when I get back, and they have to have their stuff out of my place. And Joyce, you remember like the things they had in there, I mean it was a lot of major.
Oh they had thousands of dollars worth of you know, her special facial laser machines and things that she had bought I mean worth I think hundreds of thousands of dollars that they had invested for this startup business that they were going to.
They had to bring it all up from Denver, they had to move it into the house. They had to try to set up their business. You know. And these people are in their mid sixties. They were not young people, and they were they had fallen a long way from grace. They were in a state of shock. But they they realized that they needed to get out, that this was a serious situation. And Nancy was Nancy Fister was in fact on a plane coming back.
And it was and it was, and it was really it was unfortunate that Nancy Fister kept playing sort of a cat and mouse type of game with them. I mean, she put she started pushing them and pushing them and calling them names and you know, like you you you belong in the trailer court down down the road, and just really saying these ugly things to attack their ego. And it's sort of like to me, I always looked
at it like a cautionary tale. You don't know when you're in traffic, if the person that's cutting you off. You know, you shouldn't say something to him or make some sort of you know, gesture at them, because you just never know who you're going, who you're up again in a situation like that, And that's sort of what happened here. The Stylers didn't really know who she was, and they didn't know and Fisher didn't know who they were,
and William Styler also had a very bad temper. So you have these two people with really bad tempers and it was a perfect storm coming together of strangers that crossed each other's paths that you know, ended up in murder.
And as to go back to the earlier part of the story, Nancy Fister really needed that six thousand dollars in money. I mean, she was always talking about how wealthy she was and how wealthier family was. It absolutely wasn't true. So when that six thousand dollars doesn't show up at the end of December early January, it really threw her over the edge because she needed all the
money she could get her hands on. So, as Joey said, neither you know, they fell in love real quickly with each other, and they had no idea who they were doing. She didn't understand that the stylers had spent about a decade just losing all of their money, all of their prestige, and their home. So it was a volatile situation.
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Now tell us about the two days or three days in question here the February the third week of February here, and what happens regarding these players, these stylers and Karen pardon me, Kathy Carpenter, And then what was going on in terms of you write in the book that there was something else going on that might have precipitated Nancy coming back from Australia. So another reason other than just to kick somebody out of this rental. So tell us a little bit about that.
Well, again, money sort of being the underlying issue of a lot of things here. But nobody could understand was fly Nancy Fister would drop everything, fly back from Australia and you know, to kick these people out. As the number of people told us, it costs as much to come back and do all that as just to have her lawyer evict them, which would have been as much
a much cleaner thing. So, as I said earlier, we talked to this private investigator who ultimately would be representing Nancy Styler after her arrest, and he said that what nobody's talking about is that there was a land sale plan right around that time from the Buttermilk Mountain estate. Every now and then they would raise money by selling off a piece of that of those properties, and it
was not a small amount of money. So the story, the narrative of the murder really starts on February twenty second, and we'll talk about more of what happens in between. But Nancy Fister is found dead on February twenty six, four days later, and two days after that, this massive sale of land goes through for four point five million dollars.
None of that money was going to go to Nancy Fister, and there was speculation that she was upset about that, that she wanted to be involved in that, and that that may have been another motivation for coming home again. Implies conflict with her sisters over the sale of the land, over the money, and all of those issues were in play. Also, generally speaking, when somebody is a part of the real estate transaction like that and they get murdered, you wouldn't
carry out the sale two days later. But in this particular case, it was carried out. All the money transactions went through, and so this raised all kinds of questions about was she really coming back over a dispute over a few thousand dollars in rent or was she coming back over millions and millions of dollars in this land sale.
Now you talk about that, of course that Kathy Carpenter makes this nine to one one call, But first there is nazis just missing from people on the most I think the Tuesday. So take us back to those days and some of the people that all are noticing that she's not around people that would normally speak to her, interact with her, tell us what happens.
Okay, So she flies back on the evening of the twenty second, which is a Saturday, and she insists that Kathy Carpenter spend the night with her, and then Sunday comes. Kathy was actually in AA and Alcoholics Anonymous. She goes to a meeting and her advisor there says, you know, there's something really off with this woman.
Let me just preface this by saying very quickly, and then please continue Steve that Now by this time, Nancy Styler is going around town and saying in public, boy, I really wish that someone would just kill that Nancy Fister, you know, I mean, coming out insane thing, that blatant of a thing. Okay, yeah, right, that's okay, that's important.
Okay. She had said this to several people. She effectively said, you know, she'd be in a better office.
And William Styler was going to the local jewelry store to try to pawn Nancy's Nancy Styler his wife's wedding ring and wedding bands. They were desperate for money, and he said to the man as he was leaving, well, because the man said, I can't give you very much for this, Well, I guess I should just kill myself.
Then, and to go back to what Joyce said about sort of a cat and mouse game. So that was Saturday night. On Sunday, Nancy Fister's back at her home work with Kathy, and she writes down on a piece of paper that Kathy is going to meet William Styler later in the day. They're going to exchange cars, and she's going Kathy has to tell him that he owes Nancy Fister fourteen thousand dollars.
And they were exchanging cars because Kathy had a bigger car and they were going to a little station wagon, right, and they were going to borrow her car to start moving things out of the house.
So here they are, you know, trying to accommodate, trying to get out of that house as quickly as possible. Not an easy thing to do, middle of winter, and they're moving their stuff out, and then Caffy meets them and hands a piece of paper and says, you owe her fourteen thousand dollars and she's not going to release your equipment back to you until you give her that money. They were virtually broke.
The equipment that was worth over one hundred thousand dollars.
Yeah, so this was a profound you know, slapping the face to them. And of course doctor Styler said, you know, he blew up, I'm not going to give her a penny. Blah blah blah. He went back and he told his wife they were staying in a cheap motel in Basalt, which is about twenty miles down the road from Aspen, And of course she blew up, causing her to say some of the things she did. But doctor Styler talked about, you know, fighting off depression for a long time during
all their troubles. But now if the story kind of turned, and he said, my wife was depressed and I didn't want her to know suffer anymore. And that becomes important with the story that he tells. So that's Sunday. Monday comes and they he at eight thirty in the morning. He was going to get a van so they could continue their moving out. But he goes and the van place is not open until ten or ten thirty, so he does something else. Now, as far as we know, I mean, that's all we know for a long time.
In other words, they're trying to move out, he's trying to get a van, his wife is at the motel, so they can't do too much moving that day. They eventually go back to the house and Nancy Styler, Nancy Fister, is nowhere around. They can't find her. They call her name, she's nowhere about, so they think she just took off again because that was sort of what she did. So they move as much as they can. On Monday, they move as much as they can. On Tuesday, they go
back to the house. They can't find her, they don't know where she is. And then Wednesday comes and again the exact same pattern. She's not in the house. The dog is there, the dog's bowl is empty, there's some messes around the house, but she's nowhere to be seen.
So they leave. They're officially moved out now by midday Wednesday, which is the twenty sixth, and Nancy Styler contacts Kathy, and Kathy's going to go up to the house and she's going to do whatever she does up there, I think take care of the dog at that point, because the dog needs some attention. So she goes to the house and she.
Goes up and goes up the stairs. She goes up the stairs to where Nancy's bedroom is because you have to go up a couple of flights of stairs.
Very important.
Yeah, And there was wasn't there a note on the door to that said, oh, please don't bother me. I'm sleeping, you know, signed Nancy Fister. And she had knocked. I mean, she had jet lags. She'd come back from Australia, and she was known to take quite a cocktail of medications along with her, you know, her usual prosecco or champagne to wash it down with. So everybody just assumed she was out cold sleeping.
But she's not. But she's not in the bed. And Kathy Harpender goes in the room and she looks around the bedroom and the bed is made, and that's like the first light that goes off in and she said, Nancy Pister never made a bed in her life. Other people made the bit for her. So something here doesn't quite add up. She looks around, there's no Nancy Fister. She looks at the headboard on the bed and she sees something that could be blood. She's not, she's not
quite sure, but she looks around. She goes to the closet in the bedroom and she doesn't have the key. The key had been. She had put the key in the door the last time she was there Sunday or Monday, and the key's gone, and that's like the second thing
that's really abnormal. So she has to go back downtown to ask and get perfective key and come back and she opens that closet door and she sees this bundle of something in the in the closet, there's blankets, there's plastic material, there's you know, something wrapped inside of all of this material, and so she totally freaks out. It's very debatable what she saw when she looks in the closet. This is a big part of the story. And it's
also debatable what she saw on that headboard. She goes halfway down the mountain.
Well, she said she saw hair.
Right, She said she either saw a headboard with blood on it or a forehead, yeah, with blood on it. And the nine one one call that she then makes is somewhat confusing because if she saw the woman's forehead or her blonde hair wrapped in all that stuff, that was physically impossible. The body was entirely covered up, and she would have had to have seen the body before it went into that rapp.
Or she could have unwrapped it and looked. But why did she say? Why didn't she just say I looked under it? But she never said that. She never said I uncovered what was under the plastic bags, you know, and saw She was adamant that she just looked in and saw this hair.
So this is pivotal, right, So it doesn't you know, they're inconsistencies at best in her story. She goes down the mountain, calls nine one one. One of the officer shows up and notes that she's been drinking. Now she was as you were calling AA two or three days earlier. Apparently she had had something to drink that might have confused her. So they She goes basically to the police station that night and tells them about all the conflict
between Nancy Fister and the stylers. And at about five o'clock the next morning, there's a knock on the door at the motel room and Bassault and the police take the stylers into custody, and they are apparently totally in shock at that point.
You talk about that they take the direction from Kathy Carpenter and look at the stylers and start investigating. But you have a very very interesting character. And an investigator of Private Eye named we mentioned you mentioned before, David Olmstead, that comes in once they are charged. How does Kathy Carpenter become to be one of the three charged in.
This Well, the stylers are quickly taken into custody and they don't implicate Kathy Carpenter. But the transcription, as I recall, the nine one one call does refer to Kathy Carpenter talking about the forehead. So if that happened, then her story just doesn't hold up. It just doesn't make sense. There's another contradiction in your story as well. She tells the police that that night when she drove up to Fister's house, the first time she saw the Stylers leaving,
that was not the truth Styler's Joyce. You remember where Nancy Styler was at that time. She was in Glenwood Springs getting an eyelash extension.
Yeah, So it's.
Another real basic inconsistency. So they grilled her for about twenty or twenty two hours straight. Two detectives in particular, and ultimately, you know, felt that her comment about the blood seeing the blood was enough of an inconsistency to
arrest her. So by the middle of March, which is about two weeks to little more than that, after the body is found, you now have three people in custody, doctor and Nancy Styler and Kathy Carpenter, and they're going to be charged not only with first degree murder, but with conspiracy, you know, to commit this murder, meaning that somehow all of them came together, planned this thing and carried it out to get rid of Nancy Fister. This case, when you look at it on the surface, that is
something I was really struck by, seems rather simple. The more you know about it, the more complex it becomes.
Yes, I mentioned David Olmsted and his ideas that were met with resistance from the lawyers that he was supposed to be working with. Ideally, and you talk about also the idea or the issue of mister Striker Styler's health. What did he find and what was basically the issue that was at hand with regarding his health.
Well, he was not able to do a lot of physical things, you know, he was you know, somebody had said that they saw him at the post office and he was barely able to you know, to walk, or to put to lift or several people around town had said that he was he looked in very bad shape. And Nancy Styler, his wife, was robust and she did all the heavy lifting, and she was the one that was really you know, taking care of the two of them, at least physically right.
He would talk about, you know, barely being able to move around at all. So there were there were two different staircases in the Fist house that you would have to negotiate, you know, into the house and up to the bedroom to go there and kill somebody. If you're doing that, then you would have to turn over the mattress. It turns out that the mattress had been flipped over and there was blood under it, and then you would
have to figure out how to wrap a body. All people in law enforcements say that dead bodies, you know, feel heavier than any live body, so it's very hard to move them and to wrap them up and to do all those things. And from the beginning, the idea was there was no way in the world doctor Styler could have done this, or at least done it by himself. So that was part of the belief system that there had to be at least two or three people involved here in carrying out the crime.
We also didn't mention the condition of the body of Nancy Fister. Tell us about that.
Well, she had numerous head wounds. She had been struck by a hammer several times in the head, and so, yeah, she was not in good shape when they found her. I mean, she was pretty badly mutilated.
Yeah, she was beaten to death. That was the cause of death. So that again there was this general belief that this sixty five year old, incapacitated man could never have done this kind of thing on his own.
Right now, in the investigation, of course, they execute search warrants, and again, as you mentioned, it looks like a very simple case, except as if further you go into this, you have more and more questions and doubts, and serious doubts at that tell us about what the police find, and is very interestingly how incriminating some of this evidence is. Tell us about what they find incriminating the stylers and especially mister Styler.
They I believe it was on Friday, the twenty eighth of February, So the body's found on the twenty sixth, The stylers are taken into custody the next day, and on the twenty eighth, there's a unisp worker and Salt again about twenty miles from asking where the Styling's are staying. And it's his job to pick up the trash from these dumpsters at the end of the week. So he's and he doesn't like it if people put, you know,
sort of personal items in there. He finds a bag and they're a plastic trash bag and he opens it and he's been reading about the case of Nancy Fister who was just murdered, found murdered in Aspen. And some of her things are things identifying her, well, things with her name on it, medicine bottles, things, and then there's a hammer in there with what appeared to be blood flakes on it, and a car registration for doctor Styler.
And in addition to that, as I said earlier, when Kathy Carpenter goes up in the closet the first time, there's no key in there, twenty feet from the Styler's hotel room. The key is found, so.
In plain view almost yeah.
So again it kind of raises the question here the stylers have, you know, have been very bright people all their lives, successful for the most part, Why would you leave the key identifying you with a murder twenty feet from your motel room, or was it planted by someone planet Kathy Carpenter had a therapist who worked in Basalt and she would go over there, and so it raised questions did she put some of this evidence there?
You also talk about him. We won't have enough time to go into all of this twist and turns that happened in this but a surprise happens eight days before the preliminary regarding Nancy.
Styler.
What happens and why?
Well, the question was like when Joyce and I went up for some of the early hearings in this very small Aspen courtroom, because they don't.
You know, they're the same one that Ted Bundy jumped out the second floor window to escape, you know, years earlier when he was on the run.
Right, And so you had, you know, you had three defendants, all of their lawyers, and several prosecutors, and you were trying to fit all of this this jigsaw puzzle together. If there's a conspiracy, who did what, who planned it, and all of that, and you really nobody had any idea of what actually happened in this crime. And so the preliminary hearing was set for I think June sixteenth, and we were all waiting, you know, well, the prosecution
is going to present their case. We'll find out what happened. And on June ninth they were actually going to hold this hearing, but one of the key detectives in the case wanted to go on vacation, so they postponed it. If that hearing had come off, the whole case probably would have turned out differently. But for some reason, seven days later, doctor Styler decides to call the authorities and say, these two women had nothing to do with this. I did it all on my own, and they're totally innocent,
and I'm totally guilty. So the question immediately becomes they were all in custody in jail now for about one hundred days, So was he actually telling the truth or was he just trying to get his wife out of jail, because, as Joyce said earlier, he had been talking about suicide, his health was apparently failing. What was his motive?
It's very interesting what David Olmsted has to say or some of the questions that he what is his take on a lot of this.
Well, the really intriguing part of it, as crime writers, is forensic. You know, people who are so interested in forensics and evidence and all of that sort of thing. If it's the story that doctor Styler will now tell the police at great length, is that, Yes, he got up on that Monday morning, February twenty fourth, he went to pick up the truck. The place is closed, so he decided to drive up to up to Nancy Fister's home and confront her about the fourteen thousand dollars she'd
ask for them from them the day earlier. He gets up there, the door's open, which again some people thought it was locked. But and he goes into the house and he calls her name and he doesn't get an answer. And this is his story. And he goes up the stairs. He goes upstairs into the house. He goes up the stairs to the bedroom. He finds are sleeping. As Joyce said earlier, she was known to take pills and drink,
so she slept soundly. He sees her sleeping and he just sort of has one of these absolutely cathartic moments. He just says, I can end all my problems right here. He goes down the stairs and again think about what we've been saying, this is a guy who couldn't hardly walk and.
Was in a wheelchair at all of the earrings.
Exactly, and who was seen crawling across his cell on his hands and knees to emphasize to his jailers that he couldn't walk. So he goes, he goes. He remembers it from living in the house that there's a hammer there. So he goes down and he gets the hammer, and he stands over her and he looks and he just apparently loses it. Starts, you know, bashing her head in, and.
Since he was a doctor, he knew exactly what part of the head to hit exactly.
Then you know, she's bleeding, right, So what are you going to do now? So he pulls the blanket off the bed with her on it. Then he needs to figure out a way to tie her up, so he goes down the stairs again. He gets some cord and some things that he can wrap her in. Then he needs bags to cover up the body, and so then he goes back down again. So there are at least three to four trips to do this, in addition to
being strong enough to beat her to death. In addition to getting her off the bed, the mattress, all of those things, and getting her into the closet with no
blood on the floor or anything like that. So this is the story that he tells, and there's only one or two major problems with it, and that is that several people would then tell the authorities as they were interviewed that they received message is from Nancy Fister from a time perspective well after the story that doctor Styler tells about killing him.
Or that Nancy Styler's cell phone kinged up of a tower close to Nancy Fister's house about the same time that William Styler was up there committing the crime exactly.
Right, so which implies, of course that his wife was there with him, helping him. So there are major inconsistencies in the timeline from what we were able to assemble in writing the book. And what becomes important about all of that is that the legal system heard doctor Styler's story, didn't care one wit for the contradictions of the inconsistencies, and said, Okay, we got our man case closed. They
turned to him and loose that was that. They just like Joyce said earlier about the flat in laun Jay case, they could not wait to have this done and to put it behind them, and whatever the truth was would just have to take care of itself.
I know the answer, But tell us why that is so important to the media and to the town of Aspen itself. Why is it that they had to control this narrative and why do they want this watered down? Easy to swallow explanation.
Well, part of it was because if it had gone to trial, a lot of Nancy Fister's dirty laundry would have been aired, you know, and the Fister family was quite prominent, and of these land sales and her behavior and a lot of these things would have come out in court and it would have not have been comfortable for the family, the remaining family, or for her daughter, or for her sisters, or for others in town, you know.
And this is where there's more questions than answers. This land, these land dealings, these these real estate sales, all these things. These are still ongoing now right now, there's still lawsuits going on. There's much more to this story than that it didn't end with him, you know, committing saying that he committed the crime by himself.
The story continues, right and that last hearing where he stands up and confesses and said, I did. It is occurring right at the most probably the most prominent moment for Aspen, which is the Aspen Food and Wine Festival that occurs like on the first day of and then and.
Then numerous other festivals happening all summer long are now going to start up, you know.
And so you have all these prominent, you know, rich people coming in and then you have this very ugly murder sitting right next to it. And we interviewed the sheriff about it, and it was the most famous line in the book. Maybe We asked him, well, you know, do you really think this happened, or you know, how do you think it happened? And he said, doctor Styler consess and it works for me.
But you know, i'd like to say that after there's so much more to the story, and I wish we could tell, you know, just we could talk for hours about it. But we're going up to Asppen next week because CNBC has decided to make an hour long talk about it, and hopefully they'll cover some of the information that was not covered in the date line or the different you know, the major that all three major networks
did shows on this crime. It was so interesting and hopefully CNBC will do something more and kind of dig a little bit deeper into some of the things that have happened since the you know, the death of William Styler.
Yeah, so what what happened was was that the women were released and doctor Styler had a million dollar insurance policy on it self for his wife and about I think it was about a year after the case was resolved, he was in prison in Colorado. He hung himself in his cell and died, and the money went to Nancy Stylers. So again it raises all these questions that he plan all of this out, you know, take the fall for the crime, then kill himself, then give the money to
his wife. All he talked about during his confession, or what he mainly talked about, was finding a way to relieve, relive, leave his wife's stress. And was this his plan all along to be able to do that.
Yeah, it's definitely a compelling argument for sir certain. I want to thank you very much Steven and Joyce singular for coming on and talking about Shadow on the Mountain. For those that might want to take a look at other work, give a website, Facebook page, any of that for contact, Yeah, go ahead, join.
Us, yeah at www dot stevensingular dot com Stephen with a pH is. We always update that. As to wide appearances and television shows and any kind of breaking news with you know, what's going on with in our world, we always update that. So yeah, please please come and give our website a look and you can see all the other books and things that we've been involved with.
And the best of luck too as well with the upcoming documentary and so hope to see that in the future.
So thank you very much, thank you, thanks for having us.
Thank you, it's always a pleasure. Joyce and Steven Singular. You have a great evening. Thank you very much, thank you.
Good nights.