The show “Till Death Do Us Part: Blood is Thicker Than Water” on Investigation Discovery is all about the murder of Heather DeWild in Edgewater, Colorado, in July 2003.
The episode is about how hard it was to find the people who did the wrongdoing and how long it took for justice to be done. If you’re curious about who did it and where they are now, we’ve got you covered. Then, shall we get started?
How Did Heather DeWild Die?
David “Dave” Springer, a retired Denver police officer, and Carole Springer gave birth to Heather Jean Springer DeWild on April 21, 1973. She had two sisters named Rebecca and Jennifer, and they said that she was a fun-loving and kind person. She got married to Daniel “Dan” Donald DeWild, and they had two kids together: Jacob and Hannah. But by 2003, things had gone bad in their relationship, and she wanted a divorce. On July 22, Dan went to her parents’ house in Arvada, Colorado, with flowers to try to save the relationship for the last time. But Heather, who was 20 at the time, said no.
Heather had to go to Edgewater, Colorado, on July 24, 2003, to sign a check and get her health insurance cards from her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Even though her mother told her not to, she decided to go over and take the kids with her to avoid a fight. But when she didn’t come back, Carole called Dan to see how her daughter was doing. Dan told her that she had left the kids with him while she went shopping.
Heather’s parents knew something was wrong, so Carole drove over to pick up Heather and her brother. Heather was very protective of her kids and would never leave them alone, especially with someone with whom she had fought for custody. Carole found out that her daughter’s car had been stolen, but that she had left all of her cash and credit cards at home. Heather’s parents told the police that she was missing, so they went looking for her.
Curtis Johnson, a road worker, was moving dirt on a canyon road off westbound U.S. Highway 6 in Clear Creek Canyon on September 4, 2003. He found Heather’s body in a shallow grave. She had been dead for a long time. The body was wrapped in trash bags, and duct tape was used to cover her face. She was wearing the same clothes she was last seen wearing. The body had broken down so much that the medical examiner couldn’t figure out what killed the person. But they found that her facial bones and skull were broken in many places, and it was suggested that she might have died from being choked.
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Who took Heather DeWild’s life?
Investigators started looking into Heather DeWild’s husband, Dan, long before her body was found. They also found out that Dan had a twin brother named David Norman DeWild who lived in Dan’s house with his ex-girlfriend, Mary Roseanne. When they found out that David had taken his car 15 miles away to get fixed, even though he was a trained mechanic like his brother, they became suspicious. The detectives thought that they had planned to get rid of Heather together.
The police went to Dan’s house, but they didn’t find any signs of a crime. Six days later, they went back with a search warrant. A trained cadaver dog found the smell of a dead body in David’s car, but everything had been cleaned up, so there was no evidence. The next day, David shocked everyone by getting married to Mary. Later, the police found out that he did it quickly to stop her from testifying against him in court, just in case.
On August 4, 2003, police found Heather’s white Sentra in the parking lot of an apartment building in Wheat Ridge. The people who live there said that the car had been there for a few days. The detectives found nothing in the car because it had been cleaned so well that there was no sign that Heather had ever been in it. A month later, Heather’s body, which had been dead for a long time, was also found, and it was recorded as a murder. The trash bags that were used to wrap the body were of the same general class as the ones from Dan’s house.
But none of these things directly linked Dan to the murder. They were all just hints. Even a DNA test wouldn’t help because Dan and David are identical twins and it would be impossible to tell if the DNA was from Dan or David. In the end, the case went cold until 2009, when new investigators found new evidence. They found a sex tape of Dan voluntarily tying up Heather. The knots on the tape looked like the knots on her dead body. They also found that Dan had set up an online dating profile before Heather’s body was found in which he said he was a widower.
Investigators also talked to Dan’s neighbor, Rick Kensington, who said, “He (Dan) was upset about the divorce. He said Heather was ruining his life and taking everything. He said he didn’t like having to pay child support. But the most convincing evidence was from a person who said they saw Dan, David, and Mary in the early morning at the same place where Heather’s body was later found.
All three were arrested on December 14, 2011, on one count of first-degree murder and one count of plotting to kill. But they might not have been found guilty if David, who was 41 at the time, hadn’t turned on his brother. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in August 2012, which was several months before the murder trial. David admitted that he helped his brother kill Heather because he didn’t want to have to pay child support and lose full-time custody of the kids.
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What is Dan DeWild doing now?
David took a deal where the murder charges were dropped and he only pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree murder in exchange for testifying against Dan in the November 2012 trial. But Dan pleaded not guilty and said he didn’t know anything about Heather’s death. His lawyer said that David was the one who killed Heather. Dan was found guilty of plotting to kill someone in the first degree, but the jury could not agree on whether he had actually killed someone in the first degree.
The trial ended in a mistrial, but Dan didn’t want to go to a second trial and risk getting a life sentence. The 50-year-old man took a deal and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in February 2013. He was sentenced to 74 years in prison, which he is still doing at the Colorado State Penitentiary. According to his prison file, he will be able to get out of jail in May 2045.
Back in December, we told you about a break in the case of Heather DeWild’s murder in 2003. She disappeared two days before her divorce from Daniel DeWild was to be finalized. In this case, murder charges were brought against Daniel, his twin brother David, and David’s wife, Roseanne. Now, months before Daniel is set to go to trial, David has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy.
The timing of his change suggests that David may have decided to give evidence against his twin. Pam Russell, a spokeswoman for Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey, can’t say anything because Daniel and Roseanne’s trials are still going on. Roseanne’s pretrial conference is set for August 20. But she did tell us about the case at the end of last year.
Russell said at that time that “”After a rush of activity around the time of the crime, the case went a little bit cold.”
Then, when Scott became the District Attorney in 2005, Heather’s parents contacted him. Scott felt compelled to move forward with the investigation and promised them that he would solve the case and give Heather justice.”
As we’ve reported, DeWild was last seen when she met Daniel at a McDonald’s to “talk about a check he had received in both of their names and to pick up health insurance forms for their two young children,” as Daniel’s father told the Associated Press shortly after she went missing on July 24, 2003. Even though no body had been found yet, the Jeffco DA’s office was considering asking a grand jury to look into the case within days.
Then, in September, Heather’s badly rotting body was found in a shallow grave near westbound Highway 6. She was still wearing the same clothes she was last seen wearing. The body was in trash bags that were taped together, and a rope was tied loosely around her neck and wrists.
Here are some things you should know about twins: Even before they are born, they start to get close. As kids grow up, they often come up with their own secret languages that only they can understand. Many people say that twins have a strong psychic connection. This connection is so strong that if one twin is in a car accident on the other side of the country, the other twin will know. Twins have one of the strongest, most unbreakable, and most mysterious relationships between people. Even their DNA is the same. Most of the time, being a twin is a rare and even desirable gift.
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