This story previously aired on June 14, 2014. It was updated on July 20, 2024.
Produced by Lisa Freed
Dave Springer drives the same route he did on July 24, 2003 — the day the retired Denver cop was in a frantic search for his own daughter.
“This is basically the route I took, in the evening to come over here and look for her,” Springer tells “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty as they drive. “And I was looking between the houses.”
“When you were just driving around, what were you hoping you’d see?” Moriarty asked.
“Well … maybe I would see my daughter’s car moving, see her somewhere,” he replied.
Heather DeWild, 30, thought she’d be safe going to her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, in Edgewater, Colorado … if she took along her two children, Jacob and Hannah. She planned to just stop by to pick up insurance cards for the kids and sign a check.
“I told her not to go there,” Springer said. “And I didn’t think she would. But she did.”
And then she vanished.
“As you’re driving around, do you have a sinking feeling?” Moriarty asked Springer.
“Yeah, I … really had a bad, bad feeling about it,” he replied.
Springer says, he’d been worried what his son-in-law, Dan DeWild, might do as the final divorce approached.
“Basically he wanted to keep things under control, his control, and that was slipping away from him and I think it just seemed like he was getting more and more desperate, more and more hostile,” he told Moriarty.
So when Heather didn’t return after going to Dan’s house, her anxious mother, Carol Springer, thought the worst and called Dan.
“He told me she went shopping, and I says, ‘Well, that’s not true.’ That’s what I told him. I says, “No. That’s not true.”
“We knew immediately that was a lie,” Dave Springer told Moriarty. Why? “‘Cause she, before she left the house … She didn’t take any money with her or credit card.”
“And he said she went shopping?” Moriarty said. “How much sense did that make to you?
“Well it didn’t make any sense,” Springer replied.
And Heather would never leave her children behind, even with their dad, says her sister, Rebecca Barger.
“There’s no way she would leave without her kids. No way,” Barger said. “I just instantly knew – he did something to her.”
“You were sure it was Dan,” Moriarty noted. Barger nodded yes.
Heather’s mother rushed over to Dan’s house pick up her grandchildren.
“And what was going through your mind at that point?” Moriarty asked.
“Let me get the kids and be gone. I wanted to get outta there,” Carole replied.
The kids, only 3 and 5 years old, couldn’t say where their mother had gone. Local police stopped at Dan’s house and looked around, but didn’t find anything suspicious. But Heather’s father, the veteran cop was convinced something terrible had happened.
The next morning, Mark Crider, a detective with the Denver Police Department, was pulled in to assist the Edgewater Police. Heather was now officially a missing person.
“Dave was obviously — extremely concerned,” Crider said. “It was — a little unusual because it was a Denver police officer’s daughter who was missing. … And that … does personalize it a little.”
Crider learned that after a rocky six- year marriage, Heather and Dan DeWild were just days from finalizing their divorce.
“I had learned that the divorce was getting a little nasty,” said Crider.
And that Dan was upset when Heather was awarded temporary custody of Jacob and Hannah and he was ordered to pay child support.
“He was very angry over that. Because he thought he was gonna lose his home. He couldn’t pay all his bills,” said Springer.
That’s when Dan’s identical twin brother David came to the rescue by moving in, along with his girlfriend, Roseanne, to help Dan pay the bills.
Born a minute-and-a-half apart, Dan and David were inseparable — even working as mechanics for the transit authority.
So the first stop for Crider was the DeWild’s house. Heather’s husband, Dan, answered the door.
“Quickly into our conversation he mentioned that he had an attorney, which I thought was a little odd,” Crider explained standing outside the DeWild house. “… and his attorney told him, that he shouldn’t talk to the police. … What lights in my mind is, ‘Well, why do you have an attorney? This is a missing persons. We’re trying to help you find your wife.'”
And when David DeWild pulled into the driveway, Dan made sure his twin brother didn’t talk to the police either.
“Dan walks over as if to physically grab his brother. And as he’s walking over, he’s yelling for him not to talk, he doesn’t have to talk – to get inside,” Crider explained. “I’m thinking now we don’t have a missing person, we have a murder.”
But without the DeWilds’ cooperation, Crider couldn’t search their house. By the time police got a warrant, Heather had been missing for six days.
Inside the home, Crider said there was no sign of a murder weapon, blood or any sign that Heather had been there or killed there. But investigators soon learned that David was taking his suburban 15 miles away to be repaired.
“Why? Here he’s — he’s a mechanic … his brother’s a mechanic,” Crider said. “Did it pique my interest? Absolutely.”
Investigators wanted to check out the vehicle. They were looking for “some form of decomposing human scent,” said Deputy Sheriff Al Nelson. “In other words, had there been a body in there.”
Nelson and his dogs searched the Suburban.
“They hit on the rear, and I believe it would be the driver’s side rear door area,” said Nelson.
“And that’s the first hint that maybe Heather’s body had been in there,” Moriarty noted.
“Something had been in there, right,” Nelson affirmed.
Crider’s next step was to confront David DeWild.
“We said, ‘Da– there’s a decomposing body in your vehicle.’ And he talked around things and he talked around things. And at one point we put it to him directly and said, ‘Did you kill Heather?'” Crider said. “His head’s kinda down. He’s a little emotional. He says he needs to talk to an attorney. And he walked into his house.”
Crider now believed that both brothers had killed Heather. What convinced him even more, was when one day later, David suddenly married his longtime girlfriend, Roseanne.
“Suddenly, you know, Dave says to you, ‘Let’s get married,'” Moriarty commented to Roseanne. “Doesn’t that seem strange?”
“At the time, it didn’t,” she replied. “You know I had been hounding him … And then Heather went missing and it wasn’t a happy time so we didn’t do that and so I griped a lot you know … And then all of a sudden, you know, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s go get married then.’ So it — it didn’t — it didn’t seem strange at all, no.”
“It never occurred to you he might be thinking, ‘Well, she won’t be able to talk to the cops, she won’t be able to testify against me if I marry her,'” Moriarty asked Roseanne.
“No, I — I don’t know the law,” she replied.
Two weeks after Heather disappeared, her car was found at an apartment complex five miles from the DeWild home. But there was no sign of Heather.
Crime lab investigators searched the white, four-door Nissan Sentra, but found nothing helpful inside.
“Each and every hour it’s out in the environment, in the elements we lose a little bit more evidence,” said Crider.
“When the car was found, did that make things worse?” Moriarty asked Springer.
“Worse, yeah. That was a major breakdown for me. Right there,” he replied.
Asked why, Springer said, “You knew at that point for sure she was gone.”
One month later, Curtis Johnson was moving dirt on a canyon road when he uncovered Heather’s body.
“Basically the body would have been on that side right there,” Johnson pointed towards a mound of dirt. “This is where the body would have been setting.”
Her death was ruled a homicide. But her body was so decomposed, the cause of death was undetermined. And investigators still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest either of the brothers.
“I mean — and let’s be honest, detective — it really does look like they’re gonna get away with this,” said Moriarty.
“Oh, absolutely,” Crider agreed.
A NEW LOOK AT THE CASE
The Springer family couldn’t understand why police were dragging their feet in arresting the primary suspect in Heather’s death: her husband, Dan DeWild.
“The police were saying that they were doing what they could. They were looking into it,” Heather’s sister, Rebecca Barger said. “After a while, you just think … is anything ever gonna happen?”
“Here you are a member of the Denver Police Department. But, how much were you allowed to know about the investigation into your – ” Moriarty asked Dave Springer.
“Absolutely nothing,” Heather’s father replied. “… at times, I would think, ‘Well, they’re really not doing anything.’ They’re just telling me they’re doing something and they’re just letting it slide.”
“You do start to lose hope. But you try to stay in there. I did,” said Carole Springer.
Their prayers were answered in 2005, nearly two years after Heather’s murder, when Scott Storey became Jefferson County’s new district attorney.
“They just poured their hearts out about how frustrated they were. How they yearned for justice for Heather,” said Storey, who promised to reopen the investigation.
“When you made that promise did you realize what you were getting yourself into? Did you have any idea?” Moriarty asked Storey.
“Not entirely,” he replied.
Storey assembled a task force and put investigator Russ Boatright in charge.
“What was it that drove you, drove all of you, to try to get this case solved?” Moriarty asked Boatright.
“Just at first blush, I think you knew what — what the case was. And it just — it seemed solvable. It seemed like it was right there at your fingertips,” he replied.
Investigators combed through 1,500 pages of reports and retested all the forensic evidence with no luck.
“I don’t even know how many times we went back through things and double checked things,” Boatright said. “We had no DNA. We really had no physical evidence.”
Not that DNA would have helped. Remember, Dan and Dave DeWild are identical twins.
“They could have the same DNA,” Storey explained.
“So if we had found, you know, one of the DeWilds’ hairs in that car, that was not going to be the smoking gun piece of evidence,” added Boatright.
Along with the brothers, the prosecution team was also convinced that Roseanne, who was living in the house, had to be involved.
“We really believed that — that she had to know what went on. She couldn’t just be in that house … she just couldn’t be totally ignorant of what — what happened,” said Storey.
There was that suspiciously timed marriage to David.
“It was the day after David is confronted on the front porch and told that the cadaver dog hit on — on his Suburban,” said Boatright.
And what Russ Boatright says Roseanne told others was the real reason they tied the knot.
“She had made the statement — she had to marry him so she couldn’t testify against him. And I really — I don’t know what else that means other than what it sounds like it means,” said Boatright.
“I mean, it sounds incriminating,” Moriarty noted. “Yes,” Boatright agreed.
Incriminating or not, investigators still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest any of the DeWilds. As the years passed, David Springer’s frustration and anger grew.
“I would be screaming angry at times,” he told Moriarty.
After pleadings from the family, in 2009 — six years after Heather was murdered — Russ Boatright was assigned to the case full time.
“And that really was the turning point,” said Storey.
The files would grow to 30,000 pages, filling more than 15 boxes, as Boatright and his team methodically built a circumstantial case piece by piece.
Clearly, the killer or killers had been careful. Heather’s car was so clean, there was no evidence that she had ever been in it.
“We didn’t find any evidence of Heather’s DNA being present inside or outside the vehicle. Nor did we find any fingerprints — or anything else to indicate that — that Heather used that vehicle,” Boatright explained.
What he did have was a DVD copy of a videotape police recovered from the residence — a sex tape that Dan and Heather made years earlier, showing Dan’s fascination with bondage and ropes.
“What we end up seeing in this videotape — are images of Daniel tying Heather up in a very similar manner to how she was found,” said Boatright.
And there was another discovery.
“What we have here is Daniel’s — dating profile from an online dating service,” Boatright told Moriarty. “… he described himself as a widow/widower.”
The trouble is Heather’s body had not been found yet.
“What did that say?” Moriarty asked Boatright.
“Well, that said he probably knew he was a widower at that point,” he replied.
While the pieces of the puzzle clearly pointed at the DeWilds, prosecutor Robert Weiner, who had been assigned to the case, still couldn’t answer some important questions.
“We didn’t know how she died. And you know, the autopsy report didn’t say how she died. We don’t know–” said Weiner.
“You don’t even know where she died,” Moriarty noted.
“No,” said Weiner.
“You don’t know exactly who killed her,” said Moriarty.
“We didn’t,” said Weiner.
But when Weiner took what evidence he had to a grand jury, he got an indictment.
Jefferson County DAs office
On Dec. 14, 2011, more than eight years after Heather’s body was found on that canyon road, Dan, David and Roseanne DeWild were finally arrested for her murder.
“You still have — a pretty weak case,” Moriarty pointed out. “I mean, you have enough to indict these three. But now you’ve got to prove these three.”
“Right,” Weiner said. “And that was kinda my — my thought is, ‘Now the work begins.'”
Dan’s attorneys, Tom Ward and Fran Simonete, were feeling very confident as they prepared for trial.
“Was there any physical evidence that tied Dan to the death of his wife?” Moriarty asked Ward.
“Not a shred. None,” he replied.
Until they were hit with a bombshell.
“And how did that change the case for the two of you?” Moriarty asked.
“It completely flipped it upside down,” said Ward.
THE BOMBSHELL
As prosecutors prepared for trial, District Attorney Scott Storey worried about their purely circumstantial case.
“In today’s world–with … the ‘CSI’ shows and those kinds of shows … jurors want more than just circumstantial evidence,” Storey explained.
Their best hope was to somehow get one of the DeWilds to turn on the others. Investigators say it was just a matter of finding the weakest link.
“Did you think Roseanne was going to turn against her husband and her brother-in-law?” Moriarty asked investigator Russ Boatright.
“I thought there was a possibility Roseanne would,” he replied.
“And did she?” Moriarty asked.
“No,” said Boatright.
Instead, in a stunning turn of events, it was Roseanne’s husband, David, who suddenly broke down. Nine years after Heather was killed, David DeWild admitted that he hid her body after his twin brother, Dan, killed her.
“I just fell to pieces,” said Roseanne. She claims that until that moment, she never guessed the two brothers were involved in Heather’s death.
“It’s hard to explain my feeling — denial. No. … it’s not true,” she told Moriarty, shaking her head. “But it was true.”
With David finally ready to talk, it fell to Russ Boatright to uncover all the details.
According to David, Dan began planning Heather’s death in April 2003, after he was ordered to pay child support.
“And that’s when I started to realize that this was actually a well thought out plan,” said Boatright.
“Why would David go through with this and help his brother?” Moriarty asked.
“I think David — describes it as, ‘I’m tryin’ to talk him out of it most of the time,'” Boatright replied. “But he said when — Daniel told him, ‘Look, I’m doin’ this with you or without you,’ he said at that point he made a decision to help his brother. … He said he knew if his brother did this on his own he would get caught.”
On Aug. 4, 2012, a clean shaven David DeWild agreed to take investigators back to the scene of the crime — the DeWild’s garage — to show exactly where and how Heather was killed. It was all videotaped.
“You could tell it impacted him, you could tell he was upset going back in there again,” said Boatright.
A warning: some of what David tells Boatright is disturbing.
According to the plan, Heather and the kids arrived at noon on July 24, 2003. As Dan went to meet them, David says he tried to stop his brother.
David DeWild on video: And I – I stop him right when he’s walking up — and I’m in his way — and I say, “Dan, don’t f—–‘ do this.” … but he was very calm.
As the children played in the house, Heather followed husband Dan into the garage. Prosecutor Robert Weiner believes Dan lured her there with a promise to return the sex tape the couple had made.
“He knew he had to use something to get her into that garage. And that was that tape. ‘Cause she wanted that tape back,” he explained.
David DeWild on video: The door opens. Heather walks through. And she says, “What did you want to show me out here?” And my brother walks through, closes the door, grabs her by, like both shoulders, throws her down hard and she … It just hit her like – like Pearl Harbor. She didn’t know what’s gonna happen. … And … she goes to get up like this. And she looks at me and I look at her.
At that moment, David could have stopped Heather’s murder, but he didn’t.
“She knew something was going to happen, was about to happen and kind of looked to him to say, you know, ‘Help me here.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do a thing to help her,'” said Boatright.
David DeWild on video: And he takes a mallet off the counter and it’s – she’s trying to get back up. Boom. Whacks. She drops.
He tosses the hammer down. He takes his noose, puts it around her neck.
Dan then hanged Heather from the rafters.
David DeWild on video: I guess cinches it up. Comes over and pulls on the rope.
“My jaw dropped. ‘Are you kidding me?'” Weiner said. “At that point, he began to stage her body by — tying her and making it attempt to look like it was — some type of bondage sex act gone bad. … Daniel proceeds to place her body in trash bags.”
As Heather’s children continued to play elsewhere in the house, David abandoned Heather’s car at the apartment complex parking lot.
By the time David returned, Dan had already placed his wife’s body in the back of the Suburban.
David DeWild on video: I just — just make sure she’s not breathing or anything, you know? I just — I put my hand on her I — is what I remember.
As David tells it, the brothers were bound by their terrible secret and he revealed how he and Dan managed to erase all evidence of Heather’s brutal murder.
“They were watching crime shows — the “CSI”-type shows, any — any crime shows that they could watch and learn,” Weiner explained. “So they double-gloved. They had two sets of gloves on, ’cause they didn’t wanna leave any trace evidence. They didn’t wanna leave blood.”
And Heather’s body might never have been found if David had made it to a pre-planned burial site. Instead, transmission problems with his Suburban forced him to hide her along that canyon road where Curtis Johnson discovered her.
The prosecution believed they finally knew how Heather had been killed, but could they trust David?
“I mean David’s lied for nine years,” Boatright told Moriarty. “He is a liar. And he’s certainly capable of lying.”
So before they gave him a deal, David had to pass a polygraph.
“He passed on the issues as far as killing Heather,” said Boatright.
“But were there some areas that he failed or were…” Moriarty pointed out.
“… he had some issues on some other questions,” Boatright said. “Primarily the involvement of others.”
“On the issue of Roseanne?”
“Yes,” said the investigator.
But Roseanne will not go on trial after all. Although prosecutors maintain she was not part of any deal, after spending more than eight months in jail, all charges against her were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Asked if he has any regret about putting Roseanne in jail for eight months, Story told Moriarty, “Oh, no. … I was – very — confident that — after the fact that she had some knowledge and that — very likely she had some participation of one degree or another. We just couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It’s hard to believe that a woman who was in the house when Heather was killed and was married to one of the killers would know nothing or see nothing, but that’s exactly what Roseanne says.
“Roseanne, did you have anything to do with Heather’s death — and her disappearance,” Moriarty asked.
“I did not,” she replied. “I did not. I had nothin’ to do with it. I didn’t know anything.”
“Do you think there are still some people who think you do?” Moriarty asked.
“I’m sure,” Roseanne replied.
As they head to trial, the prosecution is counting on David to convict his twin brother.
“I mean, it’s kinda like dancing with the devil,” said Storey.
“In this situation, you know, we, I guess, had agreed to make a deal, you know, with the devil’s twin,” said Boatright.
JUSTICE FOR HEATHER DEWILD?
Nine-and-a-half years after Heather DeWild was murdered, her husband, Dan, finally goes on trial at the Jefferson County courthouse.
“There was a kind of tension in the air that I’ve never felt in a courtroom before,” said defense attorney Tom Ward.
There are no cameras allowed, but the courtroom is packed.
“I was worried. I didn’t know what I was gonna find out,” said Carole Springer.
The state’s most important witness, David DeWild, is about to testify against his identical twin brother. Without forensic evidence, the whole case rides on David.
“I watched him come in. And I was– holding my fingers and crossing my toes and -” said Prosecutor Robert Weiner.
“I mean, you saw him look at his brother,” Moriarty commented.
“Yeah,” said Weiner.
“And you’re wondering, ‘Oh, my gosh. Will he lose his nerve?'” Moriarty asked.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Weiner said. “And then I asked him, ‘Who killed Heather?'”
“And what did David say?” Moriarty asked.
“He pointed to his brother,” said Weiner.
David tells the court that it was his twin brother who killed Heather in the garage and that he just went along with it. But Dan’s defense attorneys claims his client is completely innocent — that Dan never knew where Heather went after she left his house on July 24, 2003.
“She didn’t say exactly where she was going. He expected her back in a couple of hours. And she never came back and he didn’t know what happened to her,” Tom Ward explained. “The story Dan told was always consistent. It never changed.”
In fact, Dan’s defense is that it’s David who killed Heather. Just look at David’s actions that day.
“David, by his own admission — is responsible for getting rid of the car. He’s responsible for getting rid of the body,” Weiner said. “All of those things are very hard to believe that someone would do if they weren’t the perpetrator.”
But why would David kill his brother’s wife?
“David DeWild — says that he always felt that Heather was attracted to him. …that there was a possibility that after Dan and Heather’s divorce was final that he and Heather would be able to get together,” Ward said. “There’s no other evidence of any of this besides — what David DeWild says about it, so I question whether he had some sort of an obsession with Heather.”
“And he killed her because she wouldn’t respond to him?” Moriarty asked.
“It’s possible,” said Ward.
But prosecutor Weiner says that’s absurd.
“I don’t think there’s any way David could’ve done it by himself. And looking at the dynamics, it became pretty clear that — David was set up by Daniel,” he told Moriarty. “Daniel’s the controlling one. …David wasn’t gonna lose his house. Daniel was losing his house. David had absolutely no motive, none whatsoever, to — to kill Heather.”
What’s more, says Weiner, why would a man who got away with a murder for almost a decade suddenly tell investigators a story where he implicates himself?
“He throws himself under the bus more than anyone else does,” Weiner continued. “He could’ve very easily fashioned a story that made this look like an accident.”
But defense attorney Tom Ward claims David turned against his brother because he got a great plea deal: instead of life, he got just 12 years.
“He was able to give a statement that completely pinned the entire murder on his brother, Dan. And at the same time, completely exonerated his wife, Roseanne, whose case was dismissed,” he said.
What’s more, Ward says, it’s David who has a history of violence. He was married once before and attacked his wife.
“David at one point — tried to choke his wife and had his hands around her neck until she passed out and said, ‘Next time I’ll kill you, bitch,'” said Ward.
The jury won’t hear the most shocking claim that David makes against his twin brother: that Dan proposed they team up to kill each other’s ex-wives. In Dan’s mind, committing murder was better than paying child support.
“I was shocked when David told me that. I thought, ‘You have got to be kidding me,'” investigator Russ Boatright said. “Apparently Daniel, according to David, had worked the whole thing out in his head.”
The judge rules that information is just too prejudicial.
Instead, it’s left to prosecutor Weiner, in his closing, to remind the jury which twin he’s convinced was pulling the strings. “Dan DeWild is a cool, calculated killer,” he said.
On Friday, Nov. 16, 2012, after a two-week trial, the case goes to the jury.
“One of the first things we did was take kind of a straw poll,” Scott, a juror, told Moriarty. “There were six people who voted that they weren’t sure. And six people who thought straight away he was guilty.”
“As time goes, I’m getting more and more nervous,” said Carole Springer.
“Are you worried that the jury is just going to not know who actually killed Heather?” Moriarty asked.
“Yes, that occurred to me in the courtroom, that it’s gonna be a problem, and it was,” Dave Springer replied.
THE FATE OF DAN DEWILD
On the second day of deliberations, the vote is now 10 guilty, two not sure.
“The two jurors … came back and they were completely shut down,” Vicki, a juror, told Moriarty. “They said … ‘we don’t think that there’s enough evidence.'”
The holdouts wouldn’t talk to “48 Hours”, but the other jurors say it all comes down to David DeWild’s credibility. Did he downplay his own involvement in Heather’s murder to get a plea deal and get his wife, Roseanne, out of prison?
“They felt that David had too much to gain,” Vicki explained. “… so David could have done it. And I think the point that the other 10 of us arrived at was it didn’t matter at that point in time because they were both involved.”
“I think they must have felt like they needed to know exactly what happened … and they had to have a piece of direct evidence of that happening and the rest of us didn’t,” juror Chris said.
“It wasn’t their job to connect the dots,” said Vicki.
“The prosecutors had to do it for them,” said Scott.
“I was incredibly frustrated, because I had committed to think for myself.,” Vicki said. “I felt that they didn’t do their duty.”
The jurors are able to agree on two lesser charges. They all believe that Dan DeWild planned to kill his wife and that he helped cover up the crime, but they’re hopelessly deadlocked on whether Dan is the twin who murdered Heather.
Asked how heated the deliberations got, Darren, a juror, told Erin Moriarty, “I walked out … and I said, ‘If you guys are truly done, then we need to go back and tell him that we’re done.'”
“How did you all feel when you went into the courtroom?” Moriarty asked.
“I was angry,” Vicki replied. Scott was “discouraged.”
Dan DeWild is convicted only of conspiracy and accessory to murder, but jurors failed to convict him of first-degree murder.
“What was your reaction?” Moriarty asked District Attorney Scott Storey.
“We’re doing it again,” he replied.
“Oh, right away?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said.
Despite Dan being convicted on two counts and being sent to prison, Heather’s parents say they were “pretty disappointed” in the verdict.
“… he’ll get out. And that’s a problem,” Dave Springer said.
“You want him to go away for life,” Moriarty commented.
“Right,” Springer replied. “Well, we’ve been fightin’ this long. We’ll keep fightin’.”
The plan is to retry Dan DeWild on first-degree murder, but just one month later — fearful of ending up in prison with no chance of parole, he takes a deal and pleads guilty to second-degree murder.
On Feb. 28, 2013, Dan Dewild is back in Judge Christopher Munch’s courtroom for sentencing. This time cameras are allowed.
Dan DeWild comes as close as he ever has to admitting he killed his wife:
“I pled guilty to knowingly causing the death of another person…” he addressed the court.
He also agrees not to appeal.
Judge Munch has nothing kind to say abut the father who destroyed so many lives, including the children he claims to love.
“He killed their mother. He did it brutally, and then he lied about it for years,” Judge Munch told the court.
“I’d just like to say that Daniel … destroyed the life of his children. He destroyed the life of his own family members. All for unnecessary greed and ego that accomplished nothing,” Dave Springer address the court.
Not in the courtroom are the children. Jacob and Hannah are now teenagers living with their grandparents, who are raising them the way they think their daughter would.
“Do you sometimes think about how much she missed out on with her kids?” Moriarty asked the Springers.
“Of course. Yeah. All the time. I’m– I always think, you know, how proud she’d be,” Dave Springer replied.
After almost a decade, Heather’s family wonders if they’ll finally hear from the man who caused so much heartache.
Dan DeWild has a chance to apologize, much like his twin brother did in the same courtroom weeks earlier.
“I feel horrible about the pain. All I can say is I’m sorry,” David DeWild told the court at his sentencing. “I’m just sorry for all the pain I’ve caused.”
Judge Munch: You have the right to say anything you want me to consider, Now if you don’t want to say anything you don’t have to. …Is it true that you do not want to exercise that right?
Dan DeWild: That’s true.
“Daniel never did. Never did,” investigator Russ Boatright said of Dan offering an apology. “It would have taken nothing at sentencing just to turn to the Springer family and just say ‘I’m sorry.’ But it’s just not in Daniel’s character to do that.”
Asked if he thinks Daniel feels any remorse, Boatright said, “No.”
In fact, David DeWild told Boatright he believes Dan enjoyed inflicting pain on Heather’s family.
“… that he thought Daniel went to bed every night knowing that Dave Springer thought he killed his daughter and couldn’t prove it. And he said, ‘Daniel, I know, got satisfaction from that,'” said Boatright.
Judge Munch sentences Dan DeWild to 74 years in prison.
“I’m glad he got the length of sentence he did. And he deserved more, but that’s it,” said Scott Storey.
It has taken Storey eight years — his entire two terms as district attorney — to get justice for Heather. Was it worth it?
“Yes, absolutely worth it,” he told Moriarty. “… many times- – politicians can’t — can’t fulfill their promises. This is one … promise that was kept.”
But the question remains: just how close did Dan DeWild come to getting away with murder?
“If David had not testified, if he had not turned on his brother, could you have convicted Dan?” Moriarty asked the jurors.
“Based on the evidence we saw? … without that, I don’t know that I could have,” said Scott.
“I don’t think any jury would have probably found him guilty,” said Vicki.
“Those two men would have gotten away with murder,” Moriarty pointed out.
“Probably,” said Vicki.
“Probably, yeah,” Scott agreed.
The identical twins have been separated, housed in different prisons.
David DeWild will be eligible for parole in three years.
