He was constantly talking, often bragging, and always had to be the center of attention. Harold was usually cheery, often irrepressibly so. B!” Harold would say, using the pet name he’d given Yvonne. He would put them on speakerphone and then do the majority of the talking, while Toni’s voice came in faint and distant, as if she were standing in another room. It just so happened that every time Bob or Yvonne called their daughter, Harold was the one to answer. Harold never said she wasn’t allowed, of course. Yet as soon as she moved to Colorado, Toni was no longer able to speak to her mother alone. It was Yvonne’s job as a surgical nurse – and the fact that she kept medical textbooks lying open around the house while Toni was growing up – that first inspired Toni to get her start in medicine. Stranger still was Harold’s behavior on phone calls.įor most of their lives, Toni and her mother Yvonne had been best friends. If the Bertolets wanted to see their daughter they had to get on a plane, a burden for two elderly parents even before both suffered mild strokes. Then came more subtle attempts to choke off any contact Toni might have with those who loved her.Įven though Harold had money, he refused to travel with Toni back to the South. Even though he said he could work from anywhere, he didn’t see a future in Mississippi, where Toni’s family, friends and nearly everyone else who was dear to her already lived. First he convinced her to move to Colorado. And despite her having all the trappings of happiness – a big house, a healthy child, a yearly Christmas card detailing everything that’d gone right for them – that never seemed to happen.īob and Yvonne watched as Harold slowly took control of Toni’s life.
That wasn’t really a concern for the Bertolets – Toni’s father, Bob, had grown wealthy by making smart bets on pieces of land that turned out to be full of oil. He had arrived with grand promises, including a claim that he was so rich that Toni would never have to work again. Unlucky in love, but a success just about everywhere else. At one time she had been assertive and confident – a former high school athlete with a deep commitment to God and an unwavering belief that she was put on Earth to help people heal. Over the course of those dozen years, Bob and Yvonne Bertolet watched their daughter change. They were out hiking when Toni lost her balance on a steep cliff in Rocky Mountain National Park on September 29th, 2012, bleeding out on the ground 130 feet below where she fell. After years of trying, the two managed to have a daughter, Haley. He was a wealthy fundraiser for hospitals and churches. The couple met online in late 1999 and got married only nine months later, both in a rush to have a child. Toni and Harold Henthorn were celebrating their 12th wedding anniversary the weekend when she died. “He pushed her,” said Toni’s father, Bob. When the friends and family of Toni Henthorn heard how she died, only one was able to put into words what so many others were thinking. And the only reason Weaver was even looking at this thin excuse for a file was that now that same husband was a widower once more. The only witness to the accident was her husband.
She was killed while trying to change a flat tire when the car she was underneath fell on top of her, thousands of pounds of metal pinning her to the ground. In 1995, long before Weaver ever stepped foot in Douglas County, a woman died on the side of a dark road on a cold night. It appeared instead to be a terrible accident. At first glance, it wasn’t even apparent that it was a case. The case now before Weaver was different, though.
He was careful and methodical and knew how to navigate the choppy waters of bureaucracy even when it came to the toughest cases. That saying served him well working sex crimes for most of a decade. “Do it carefully, not quickly,” was Weaver’s. Not long after that he found what a lot of good detectives manage to find: a mantra. Only a few years later he was surprised to find that the people who ran the county wanted him to work cases. After a few years sharpening his golf game Weaver got bored and applied for a job in Douglas, the county just to the south. When Weaver finally left the Air Force and asked her where she wanted to live, she chose Denver. Before becoming a detective he’d spent decades moving his wife from base to base.