The high-profile murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister inside her family home in February 2014 is covered by NBC’s “Dateline: While She Was Sleeping.” The accused murderers, who were eventually freed after agreeing to a plea deal, said the investigation had gone wrong, but the prosecution insisted they had picked the right suspects. However, over ten years after the murder, there are still a few unanswered questions. Who was Nancy Pfister and how did she pass away, then? Here is what we know about the case in case you wish to learn more!
How Did Nancy Pfister Die?
On July 4, 1956, Nancy Merie Pfister was born in Orofino, Clearwater County, Idaho, to parents Arthur “Art” Oral Pfister and Elizabeth Haas Pfister. Her father, Art, was well-known in Aspen and amassed wealth in 1958 when he converted the family cattle property into the Buttermilk Ski Resort. The Pfister family was regarded as “royals” by the community because of how well-known their ski resort made Aspen.
Betty Haas Pfister, Nancy’s mother, was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II, and she possessed similar admirable attributes. In her senior years, she reportedly piloted a helicopter and parked it in the driveway of the family. When celebrities visited their parents’ ski resort as guests, Nancy and her two sisters had the opportunity to meet John F. Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michael Douglas.
At the age of 20, Nancy left Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and went back to her home in Colorado. She kept working in the family firm, which at the time was quite important to the regional tourism sector. When she was 29 years old, she gave birth to a son, and ten years later, an unmarried daughter named Juliana. In a log cabin her father had built for her in 1991, Nancy raised her kids by herself. She also belonged to the PTA for the Roaring Fork School District.
George Stranahan, a native of the Roaring Fork Valley, reminisced about Nancy and said, “Nancy was the senior adventurer of the globe. She was an adventurer in all aspects of her life: in relationships, in travel, in social causes. David Koffend, a former flame of Nancy’s in high school, recalled, “She was like — a tornado — she was always doing stuff.” Juliana, meanwhile, said, “She genuinely loved people. She was a natural in social situations. Artist Michael Cleverly, one of Nancy’s closest friends, once stated, “If you came into town, you would end up meeting Nancy Pfister.”
When Kathy Carpenter moved to Aspen, she was a single mother who was employed as a bank teller. Nancy, an affluent socialite, took her to art galleries, sushi restaurants, and champagne tasting events, and they quickly became friends. Either you adore Nancy or you detest her, Kathy said. I admired her. There was a certain quality about her. Nancy anticipated Kathy to take on a job similar to that of a personal assistant even as she assisted Kathy in moving up the social scale. Kathy argued, however, that Nancy “cared deeply” for her and never paid her for doing the duties.
When Kathy went to check on Nancy on February 26, 2014, she discovered Nancy’s body there. The body of Nancy, who had reportedly been bludgeoned, was discovered in her bedroom; it had been wrapped in plastic waste bags, bound with an electrical cable and concealed behind sheets in the closet. “Whoever did this really did this in an extremely horrible way,” Mark Seal exclaimed. I refer to her sleeping in her bed. Could you imagine, I mean?” Almost no blood was discovered inside the room, according to the case’s primary investigator Andrea Bryan, “except for a small smear on the headboard.”
Who Killed Nancy Pfister?
When Kathy mentioned on the programme that she hadn’t seen Nancy in three days, the police investigated the frantic woman and discovered that Nancy and the Stylers had a long-running beef. The programme claimed that Nancy had recently grown weary of the infamous Rocky Mountain winters and would flee to a warm location. She decided to rent her house in order to collect money for her planned trip to Australia in the winter of 2013, as she had restricted access to the family fortune. Nancy Styler and her husband Trey responded to the job posting as The Stylers.
Trey was a retired anesthesiologist, and Nancy was a well-known lily pad expert. The elderly couple wanted to move from Denver to Aspen to start over and recreate their once-fantastic life that had fallen on hard times. They accrued an estimated $500,000 in debt when Trey had a severe neurological disease and was unable to play. Nancy, who had also attended medical school, consequently made the decision to work. She explained, “So last year we went back, and we both got trained in Botox and laser.”
In October 2013, the elderly couple responded to Pfister’s rental ad with the intention of moving to Aspen and opening a spa. Pfister, according to Nancy, was very excited about the “idea of having a spa” and instructed them to set it up in her home with “the concierges from the hotels” bringing them customers. Three months’ worth of rent, or $12,000, was to be paid up front by the Stylers to Nancy Pfister. Nancy claimed they instantly provided her $6,000 and indicated they will finish the balance of the payment in a few weeks. She claimed that when Pfister acquired the funds, their dynamic shifted.
Before we handed her the money, Nancy allegedly treated her as an equal, according to Nancy. I felt like a slave when we paid her the money. Nobody has ever treated me so terribly in my life. They gave Kathy the remaining funds in December after she claimed to have placed them in Pfister’s safe. Pfister claimed they returned three months early to evict them abruptly and never paid her the money, saying “awful things” about them on Facebook. She claimed they had thousands of dollars’ worth of confiscated spa equipment in her garage and owing her $14,000 in back utilities and repairs to her home.
The Stylers were taken into custody as soon as the police learned about the altercation. The day of the murder, the prosecution claims, they were present at the Pfister home, and Nancy called Kathy after noticing a bad odour. Officers found Pfister’s other personal belongings and the murder weapon—an old hammer with blood on it—in a trash can close to the motel where the Stylers were staying. Four days later, they were detained and charged with first-degree murder.
Investigators quickly came up with a supposition based on Kathy’s 911 call that she had assisted the Stylers in carrying out the murder. Three weeks later, she was detained and charged with first-degree murder. In order to secure the freedom of his wife and Kathy, Trey pleaded guilty to first-degree murder less than two weeks before the preliminary hearing. His life sentence—which was eventually reduced to 20 years—was given to him. The 67-year-old committed suicide on August 6, 2015, in his cell at the Arrowhead Correctional Facility in Caon City, Colorado.
