Toni Henthorn | Pushed to Death | Forensic Files

(dramatic music) (fateful music) - [Narrator] A fatal fall in the Rocky Mountains.
- [Harold Henthorn] My wife has fallen from a rock and she's in really critical condition.
- Toni had fallen from the top of a cliff face. It was 160 feet down. - [Narrator] A life cut short in the blink of an eye.
- Never in a million years did I ever think I would never see her again after that phone call.
- [Narrator] Was it simply tragic misfortune- - Harold claimed that Toni had fallen
in an absolute freak accident when they'd taken a spontaneous detour off the path on their hike.
- [Narrator] or murder? (soft intriguing music) (soft music) (birds chirping) - My name is Allison Talley.
I live in Jackson, Mississippi and Toni Bertolet-Henthorn was one of my best friends.
You always wanna surround yourself with people who lift you up and make you a better person,
and she was absolutely that person that makes you a better person in every aspect of your life.
- Toni grew up in nearby Natchez. Her parents owned a prosperous oil and gas business,
so Toni had quite a privileged upbringing alongside her two brothers. At school, Toni was always top of her class.
She loved athletics and she set her sights on a career in medicine. - Toni was the smartest, most intelligent, most beautiful,
wisest person I knew. She was an ophthalmologist and she used her gift of creativity
to be able to make people see better, and I loved that about her. She was really well liked, and had a lot of patients.
In 1999, she called me and she said, "I've met somebody." and she said that she had met him through a dating site.
When I met Harold in person for the first time, he was so handsome. He had on a nice suit, and he's so outgoing.
We loved him. We thought this is great. Because she was the opposite. She was an introvert, she was quiet.
That seemed like that would be a good fit for her. - At the time of their meeting, Harold was newly widowed.
He'd just lost his wife, Lynn five years earlier. He came across as a wealthy businessman.
He said he'd recently sold his diamond business and now he was retired and wanting to relax a little bit,
and had moved into a new venture, raising money for nonprofit organisations. He was excited about meeting someone like Toni,
starting a new life together and hopefully another happily ever after story. - It was a bit of a whirlwind.
It moved really, really quickly. Within a few weeks, they got engaged on Valentine's Day
exactly six weeks after they met for the first time, and the wheels really turned fast after that.
They were married in the September of the same year. It was just beautiful. It was picture perfect.
Very traditional. And we were so thrilled that she had met somebody that we thought would be her long lasting love,
and we were so excited about it. (gentle music) - [Narrator] After two years of happy marriage
in Toni's home state of Mississippi, they moved near to Harold's home city of Denver, Colorado
to begin the next chapter of their lives. - Toni has always wanted to be a mom, and in June of 2005, gave birth to a beautiful little girl
and that just, that changed her world. That was the most wonderful thing that had happened to her up to that point.
- [Narrator] Every year, Harold and Toni would celebrate the life they'd built together.
And in September, 2012, 12 years after their whirlwind marriage, Harold had something special planned.
- This year, he called me just to tell me that he has some grand plan. "This is the best anniversary ever."
That he was taking her on a hiking trip. He was gonna pick her up and sweep her away.
He would have her bags packed and then go to the Rocky Mountain National Park and just spend the weekend on a hike.
- This was their 12th wedding anniversary. So Harold had planned a special surprise trip.
He'd put a lot of effort into this, in fact. He'd told Toni's colleagues to clear her diary
and they'd got a babysitter as well for their seven-year-old daughter. So this was an extra special trip that he had planned.
- [Narrator] At the time, Valeria Spencer was Assistant US Attorney for the District of Colorado.
Her jurisdiction covered 64 counties across 100,000 square miles, including incidents on federal land
such as the Rocky Mountain National Park. - The Rocky Mountains range all the way from up in Canada
down to New Mexico. So they cover most of the Western United States, and specifically in Colorado,
about 50 miles away from where Toni and Harold Henthorn lived in the Denver metro area.
- The Rocky Mountain National Park is visited by millions of people and tourists.
Every year they go there to enjoy the vast landscapes and the beautiful wildlife.
There's of course, lots of safe paths for visitors to enjoy, but there's also a lot of dangerous mountain trails
around in the National Park too. This includes some narrow cliff edges with sheer drops of up to 300 feet,
looking down on rocky terrain and ravines. This is why even experienced hikers and walkers are advised to stick to the route.
- [Narrator] But on September 29th, 2012, Harold, a seasoned hiker, chose to take Toni on a challenging three mile route,
10,000 feet up Deer Mountain. (effervescent music) Setting off around 1:30 PM, they took photos along the way,
ending at a lunch spot where they enjoyed the incredible views. But as the sun began to set
on a perfect anniversary weekend, a frantic call was made. (fateful bell tolls) - [Dispatcher] 911 what's the address of the emergency?
- [Harold Henthorn] Hello, my name is Harold Henthorn. I'm in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
- [Dispatcher] Okay. - [Harold Henthorn] I need an Alpine Mountain Rescue team immediately.
- [Dispatcher] Okay, I'm gonna transfer you to the park. So hang on the line. (phone ringing) - Go ahead, sir.
- [Harold Henthorn] Thank you, my wife has fallen from a rock on the north summit of Deer Mountain
on the Deer Mountain Trail. And she's in really critical condition. - When Harold called 911 a little bit before 6:00 PM,
he gave them information about where he was, but it turns out that that information was incorrect,
and so it took park rangers longer to get to him than it might have otherwise. A park ranger went up immediately
with a pack full of medical supplies, not knowing exactly what he was getting to.
And for a few hours, tried to find Harold Henthorn and Toni Henthorn. It was very dark by then.
He was calling out to Harold, (whistle blowing) calling back to headquarters to try and triangulate more specifically where he was
and to have him start making noise so that he could hear him and be able to find him, which he eventually did.
But it was hours after the first 911 call. - [Narrator] When the park ranger eventually
arrived at the scene, the severity of the situation quickly became apparent. - Toni had fallen from the top of a cliff face.
(dramatic music) It was 160 feet down. She landed in some trees and they could tell that
because of the severity of the broken branches, and they could follow the blood trail from the tree,
then down some rocks to where she eventually lay. - [Narrator] Despite best efforts from
the park ranger to save her, Toni was pronounced dead at the scene. After 50-year-old Toni Henthorn's fatal fall
in the Rocky Mountains, the news of her tragic accident spread quickly to her family and friends.
- On the day of the accident, Harold notified Toni's brother, who is a surgeon, a physician,
that there had been a critical accident. Back then, they notified us. As soon as I found out about the accident,
there's nothing worse. Anybody that's experienced loss or trauma like that knows what a gut-wrenching experience it is,
and we stayed on the phone with them the rest of the evening until we found out that she had passed away.
(sombre music) It was an excruciating experience for everybody that night. It was just something that I hope
nobody ever has to go through. - [Narrator] While Toni's loved ones in Mississippi
processed the devastating news, park rangers followed standard procedure for all deadly falls in the National Park.
They initiated a fatality investigation, which would eventually be escalated to Assistant US Attorney Valeria Spencer.
- Well, there was a lot of odd things when the investigators went to the scene the next morning.
One of the things that was very odd was where Toni's body was. Her camera was found right next to her.
Now, she didn't fall right where she was laying, and so that seemed to be odd that her camera would be there.
As well, as she was out of her boots. And Harold had indicated that he had not removed the boots,
that they had fallen off during her fall down the cliff side. And the investigators in their experience
at the National Park, that's very odd for somebody to actually fall out of their hiking boots.
And so that seemed to be very unusual. And the placement of them, again, just seemed off to the investigators.
- So this is another odd thing that her hiking boot was found flung really far away,
yet her digital camera was found perfectly next to her body. There's some inconsistencies here,
that they raised questions over in terms of how she'd fallen. - [Narrator] Despite the peculiar placement
of Toni's camera and hiking boots, the scene still suggested an unfortunate fall.
But as part of their fatality investigation, park rangers proceeded to search Harold's vehicle.
- They searched the Jeep and they found a map of Rocky Mountain National Park, which is not unusual.
What was unusual is that the map was open, and there were some things written on it,
but there was a red X right in the area of Deer Mountain, not on the trail, but where Toni actually died.
(chilling music) - Alarm bells are now ringing, so it gets escalated to the investigative services branch of the National Park.
That's basically the FBI for this kind of jurisdiction. - So the obvious question
once we have the X marking the spot, as it were, is did Toni fall or was she pushed?
- [Narrator] But could a husband really bring himself to push his wife off a cliff to her death?
A tragic accident remained the strongest possibility, but the discovery of the map led investigators to drive
to Harold's house to question him further. - Harold claimed that Toni had fallen
in an absolute freak accident when they'd taken a spontaneous detour off the path on their hike.
- They walked at least a third of a mile to get to the spot that we call "the lunch spot,"
because we have photos where they're eating their meal. (intriguing music) It is a beautiful view.
You can really see a lot of the park there. It's quite lovely. And then they up walking over to the spot
that we then call "the cliff spot." That is the point at which we know Toni died.
- [Narrator] But getting to the cliff's edge involved walking on ground not normally favoured by the average hiker.
- You had to climb up all these really difficult terrains that would've even been tricky
for really experienced hikers. And Toni was known to have had three knee surgeries.
So it kind of suggests that would've been quite an extreme excursion for what was supposed to be
a nice, relaxing anniversary weekend trip. - He said this was a spontaneous hike.
They ended up where they ended up by surprise, by chance, and in fact, when you look at the X
and where it is on the map, it seems that Harold had planned it all along. So now we have two very different stories.
- [Narrator] Harold then changed the reason he gave for clambering across rocks to the cliff's edge.
- Harold gave several different stories. He started off by telling the ranger the next day
that they had seen some wild turkeys, and Toni wanted to get some photographs of that.
And the ranger was a little sceptical, and Harold picked up on that. We checked into that later
from one of the scientists in the park and said, there's no wild turkeys on that side of the park,
so X on that one. (branches crunching) So then Harold said, "Well, we saw some deer."
Which would not be unusual to see some deer, but not something that you would go down bouldering for
if you had some knee surgeries, as Toni did, to get some pictures of them. Then he says, "We wanted to hike down to another area
to have some romantic time." And when you see that area, it is inhospitable. It's very rocky, and there's absolutely no possible way
that there's anything going on there, romantic time or otherwise. - [Narrator] Investigators continued to keep an open mind
on whether it was an accident or something more sinister. Meanwhile, in Mississippi, Toni's friend Allison began
to reflect on a phone call Harold had made to her before Toni's death. - It was a really weird conversation,
especially since he was excited about telling me about the trip and then it just changed direction so many times,
excited at first, and then he went into down a rabbit hole of kind of critical, very critical of Toni and her family,
Toni and her job. He wished she would just quit her job and stay home full-time.
She doesn't spend enough time with her daughter. And I started getting that they were probably having marital problems
and that she's probably planning on leaving, and this was his last ditch attempt at saving the marriage
is what I honestly felt like. So it was a rollercoaster of emotions on that phone call.
It was very interesting and very not typical of a phone call with him. Never in a million years did I ever think
I would never see her again after that phone call. (pensive music) - [Narrator] When Allison met with Toni's family
the day after Toni's passing, she discovered they'd had similar experiences too.
- It was her parents, and people that were part of the immediate family, when we started saying, "Okay, well he called me Monday,"
and then somebody said, "Well, he called me Tuesday." We thought about it and all shared our stories
and they were all the same. (suspicious music) - [Narrator] Family and friends were also alarmed
by Harold's behaviour the day after Toni's passing. - After Toni died, we wanted to make contact with Harold,
and by the time we made our first contact within 24 hours, there was already a full website up
on the funeral home site, full website, full of pictures, a complete bio, a complete history with everything.
And we all felt like that was strange, especially since that website was more about Harold
than it was about Toni. So that was kind of a red flag right there. And then it went immediately into planning a funeral.
To be able to plan a funeral within a day of a death, there's no emotion attached to it.
Most people wouldn't even be able to write an obituary. - [Narrator] Within days,
the medical examiner released Toni's body. - From the fall, she had a massive head wound,
12 broken ribs, which then lacerated her liver, punctured her lungs, just caused massive internal injuries,
as well as the head wound. - [Narrator] At a funeral service five days after Toni's death,
her family were shocked to discover that as soon as Toni's body had been released,
Harold had quickly arranged for her to be cremated in secret, against their wishes.
- That was about the second or third thing in a series of events immediately after the death
that were, "Whoa, that's not right." (soft reflective music) About three weeks after the funeral in Colorado,
we had a memorial service here in Jackson where everybody came down, including a few friends,
and Harold and their daughter came down and we were all, you know, grieving and, you know, it was just an emotional event.
And we look over and Harold is, he's got his two or three friends from Colorado and they're shaking hands, joking around,
talking about playing golf and very detached from the situation. It was more like he was hosting a party
than being a part of his wife's final goodbye, because that was gonna be the last,
really the last tribute to her in public. And that is not normal at all. (intriguing music)
- [Narrator] By now, Valeria and her team were working with the FBI and park investigators,
piecing together the timeline of events, and they turned their attention to Harold's initial phone calls to the emergency services.
- [Harold Henthorn] My wife has fallen from a rock on the North Summit of Deer Mountain
and she's in really critical condition. - [Dispatcher] Is she conscious or breathing?
- [Harold Henthorn] No, she's not. She's not been conscious. - [Dispatcher] Do you know how to perform CPR?
- [Harold Henthorn] I do. I do. - During one of the calls, the operator was instructing Harold how to perform CPR.
Midway through that process, Harold blurted out that his phone was dying and that he needed to go, and he hung up.
But after Harold told the operator that his phone was dying, our records showed that he made over 20 phone calls
and 100 texts were sent. (suspicious music) It just told us that Harold was not being truthful about
what was happening that evening with Toni and made us question whether or not he was performing CPR at all.
- Harold had claimed to the authorities that he'd been giving Toni CPR for over an hour,
yet the coroner said there were no marks on her body, no fractures to her ribs or her chest,
and even her lipstick was perfectly intact. If you'd been giving someone CPR, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,
the body would not look this way. - [Narrator] Investigators also started to zero in on
Harold's claims about the immediate moments before Toni fell. - When Harold spoke to investigators
the day after Toni's death, he indicated that she was walking and he didn't really see her
when she fell over the cliff side. He indicated that in fact, that he was looking at his phone.
He had received a text from their babysitter indicating their daughter had won her soccer game.
And what Harold had said was that Toni had fallen and that it took him 45 minutes to get down.
- When someone's providing a lot of very specific details, it can also indicate that they've rehearsed the story,
at least internally because they're trying to add some legitimacy to that story.
But actually, it starts to indicate that there is an element of planning involved in the telling of that story.
- [Narrator] When the timeline of Harold's story was checked out, call records showed
that he received the text from the babysitter at 5:54 PM at the cliff edge, the exact same time he called 911
after getting down to the bottom of the cliff. - The timing just doesn't add up.
- [Narrator] So Valeria and her team decided to visit the site to find out more.
- We talked about that we needed to go up to the scene and see it ourselves to be able to really picture the different events
and how things happened. So Harold claimed that it took him 45 minutes from the top of the cliff
down to the point where Toni had fallen to. So when we were there, we hiked it in two different ways.
One is that we were a spouse who had just seen their spouse fall possibly to their death,
and the other way is just to hike it down carefully and safely. Neither one took more than 15 minutes.
(suspicious music) What we know later from the coroner is that Toni was dead within
about 45 minutes of the incident. And so we were thinking, the reason he said that
is he needed to build time into the timing so that by the time he called 911, Toni Henthorn was already dead.
(fateful music) - [Narrator] While visiting the scene, Valeria made another important discovery.
- What I wanna say about the cliff area that's very important to know is that the cliff actually is raised.
That is to say that you can't walk over it, you have to step over several feet to fall down the cliff,
so you have a natural barrier between you and falling down it. Our conclusion in looking at it
was that Toni had to have been pushed because she couldn't have fallen. - [Narrator] Harold Henthorn was now the prime suspect
in the murder of his wife, Toni, who investigators believed had been pushed to her death.
But with no witnesses and no murder weapon, investigators were going to find it hard
to prove Toni's death was nothing but an accident. - So people like to think that most murder cases
are found with a smoking gun in someone's hand and they're immediately arrested.
But in most cases, that's not what happens. What we had in Rocky Mountain National Park that day
was a woman who died, period. We don't know at that time if that was somebody who slipped and fell or somebody who was pushed.
And that takes some time to put a case together to prove that. - [Narrator] In a bid to find more evidence,
investigators turned their attention to the camera found by Toni's body. - Toni's camera had been broken in the fall,
but the memory card was still intact, and there was photos on there from Toni and Harold's time on Deer Mountain.
There are photos of Harold stood gripping the tree. In one of these photos, he's wearing a white T-shirt,
but 15 minutes later, he's in the same spot wearing a denim shirt. Toni's body was found directly under the tree
where they had that photo. Investigators began to wonder, was Harold luring her there?
Was he trying to show her that this was a safe place for her to come and have a photo?
And then, once he'd lured her there under the pretence of taking the photo, had he pushed her to her death?
But then that begs the question, why was Toni's camera found so close to her body?
Did Harold want investigators to find these photos of them looking like a happy couple,
so they would never suspect he could push his wife off a cliff? It's highly suspicious.
- [Narrator] Police continued to build their case by honing in on Harold's cell phone data.
- One of the things that people may not realise is their phone receives messages
and phone calls by pinging off a tower. And so we wanted to see where Harold's phone had been
during various periods of time, and we were able to trace his phone going up I 25,
which is the road from Harold's home, up to Rocky Mountain National Park, repeatedly over the weekends before Toni's death.
- So Harold told park rangers that he'd only visited the National Park once as a kind of scouting tryout before this anniversary trip,
but the phone records then showed eight or nine visits that he'd actually made to this location.
- By seeing the cell phone tower records and seeing his activity on his phone, we realised
that he was actually step by step planning this trip so that he could take the opportunity to murder his wife.
- [Narrator] The evidence against Harold was building, and unbeknownst to him, Toni's friends and family in Mississippi
were also assisting investigators in their case against him. - The FBI asked us to continue talking to Harold
and be completely non suspicious, that we're Team Harold, we're loyal, we're on your side.
We're here to help you out, but call us every time you talk to him and give us the information back.
We became his safe space. We became his trusted advisors on how to navigate this.
He would make comments, "Can you believe they'd think I could kill my wife?" Very non grieving, very non-emotional,
but very like, "I've made it this far, and then they're gonna try to convict me of something
or accuse me of something." It may seem like that's a hard thing to do, giving the information back to law enforcement,
but I'll tell you, it's not hard when someone killed your best friend. It's actually pretty easy.
- [Narrator] But to strengthen their case further, investigators needed a motive.
- Harold had indicated that Toni had one life insurance policy on her, a $1.5 million policy.
Within two days of Toni's death, and before her body had been released by the medical examiner, he was asking
for $1.5 million from one of the life insurance companies. - This is highly suspicious
because it suggests that he was more interested in financial gain than grieving a loved one.
Even more unusual when detectives started to dig around was that Toni didn't have just one life insurance policy,
she had four. - We know that Toni did not know of that because she had a life insurance policy with her work,
and indicated to them that she had no life insurance on her other than the policy that she drew at work.
She had, in fact, $4.5 million total, which would've made Harold a very wealthy man upon her death.
- This is really significant because not only is there now a large sum of money attached to Toni's passing,
but also Harold has lied to investigators yet again. - [Narrator] And they wanted to know
why Harold Henthorn, a supposedly wealthy and successful businessman in his own right,
needed this money. - Harold had told everyone that he had a successful business in fundraising
for nonprofits, for hospitals and churches, and that he was the primary breadwinner.
- [Narrator] Harold claimed to friends and associates that his fundraising consultancy had
as many as 90 employees. - What we found out from looking at various records and from a search warrant that was executed on the home
and looking through his records, is that Harold hadn't worked in about 20 years.
We found business cards that he had made pretending that he was doing this entrepreneurial business,
and the address for those business cards was actually his home, and he listed like Suite A
or Suite B, which was the basement. And so it was all a facade and none of it was true. (dramatic music)
- It's incredibly significant that Harold had this extreme longstanding deceit playing out in the background
when we are thinking about this potential murder case. That really strikes as someone who's very capable
of extreme manipulation and deceit and is potentially a very narcissistic individual,
- [Narrator] The truth about Harold's financial situation became even clearer when police analysed
the couple's shared banking accounts. - What we found from all of those was that
Toni never wrote a single check off of their bank account, that she was completely unaware
of their financial situation. That is, Harold took care of everything. There were no deposits whatsoever
from any business of Harold's because he didn't have one. So all the money came from Toni, from her business
and from oil and gas royalties that were through her family. - You can imagine someone like Harold
rationalising this behaviour because he spent years lying about who he is. He wants to project this image of this wealthy,
powerful man of stature. So you can just imagine that he's lived this life of a lie,
and he never wants the world to know who the real Harold is. - I actually think it's quite significant as well.
You know, Toni is a very smart, educated woman, and Harold was able to maintain these lies
and this level of deceit with her, and she didn't notice any red flags, and that I think is really indicative of
how good Harold was at masking his true identity. - [Narrator] But investigators were soon to discover
even more shocking information relating to Harold's past. - In the aftermath of Toni's death, a total of 17 warnings,
phone calls and letters were received by various sources relating to suspicions about Harold.
All these phone calls and warnings said the same thing, that Harold's first wife
had also died in suspicious circumstances, and it needed to be looked into. - Harold had been married before,
he had been married to Lynn Henthorn. They were married for a number of years. There are a lot of stories surrounding Lynn's death.
What we know is that Harold and Lynn had gone on a car ride that day, and they were in a remote area
of what's called Douglas County, that is south of the Denver area. - Harold and Lynn had been out for a nighttime drive
on a remote stretch of highway, and they'd stopped to change a tyre on their Jeep.
- According to Harold, who was the only witness, Lynn crawled under the car (nut pattering)
to retrieve a lug nut that had rolled under the car. He told two different versions.
One is that the jack just broke and the wheel well fell on Lynn. And the other one is that he tossed the flat
into the back of the truck, which then caused it to fall off of the jack, and that crushed Lynn.
- Lynn sadly died from those injuries as she was essentially crushed to death by the car.
- [Narrator] Lynn's tragic death was officially ruled as an accident by the coroner,
but one that ultimately proved lucrative for Harold. - Harold was able to receive over $600,000
in life insurance against Lynn's life. One of those policies had been taken out just months before Lynn's death.
- It turns out Harold had actually been living on that insurance payout from Lynn's death,
and that was what had enabled him to have this image of wealth and maintain his lifestyle.
- When you compare the death of these two women, Lynn and Toni two decades apart,
the circumstances are eerily similar. You have their partner, Harold, taking them on a trip in a remote place
when he is the only witness, yet claims to never have seen what happened. - One of the strange things after Lynn's death
was that Harold said to a friend that he didn't know how a grieving husband was supposed to act,
and that he was trying to figure that out how a grieving husband should behave after his wife has died.
- That comment from Harold, again, it speaks to somebody who wants to know, "How can I manipulate you?
How can I make you believe I'm a man in grief? How do I need to act to look the part?"
- Coupled with everything else we know about Harold and his levels of deception and masking,
this can be really significant for investigators because they might not only be looking
at someone capable of murder, but perhaps even multiple murders. - [Narrator] But there were even more
shocking revelations to come. Investigators found that Toni's fatal accident wasn't the first time
she had been injured in Harold's company. - Harold and Toni had a cabin in Granby,
which is a little remote town. They were up there and late at night, this is after 10:00 PM,
Harold was removing some wood from the back balcony. - He called Toni to come out to bring him something
or pick up something, and as soon as she got to a certain point on the deck, a beam fell, a big, large beam that would've killed anybody.
She had turned in a way that it missed hitting her in a vital spot that would've killed her,
but she was rushed to the local hospital there. - They both insist that there was
no domestic violence involved, that this was simply an accident. - But yet again, a woman that Harold is married to
has a freak accident in a remote location, and Harold is the only witness. - We had heard about the accident.
And my husband being in the medical field asked him about it, "Hey, is she okay?"
And Harold blew it off. He just kinda laughed. He said, "Yeah, I guess you heard I tried to kill Toni."
I didn't originally think that was anything to be suspicious of until everybody said wake up.
That was the first attempt to kill her. (fateful bell tolls) - [Narrator] Harold Henthorn was under investigation
for the murder of his wife, Toni, who was found dead at the bottom of a cliff in the Rocky Mountains.
The net was closing in on him, and he knew it. - During the investigation, towards the end,
Harold came over to the house. He seemed worried, he seemed drained. He was a different person.
He was not naive to the fact that this investigation had progressed to the point
where there were gonna be some serious charges on him for this. He said, "I do believe that I'm in trouble here.
They think I killed Lynn and they think I killed Toni too. I could never do that.
I loved them both. I would never, I'm not capable of that." And then we got into more of the details about,
about the job situation and financial situation. "Toni and I," he pitched it as Toni and he did this,
"made up a story about me working when I really don't work." But he said that they concocted the whole story
of him working because they didn't want her parents to think that she was not gonna be financially taken care of.
And I know for a fact that that is not true. That was not true. And I knew that I had been lied to again.
When Harold left that night, we were emotionally and physically drained. We had just seen the face
of a cold-blooded murderer in our home. (chilling music) - [Narrator] After an investigation spanning over two years,
the FBI were close to arresting Harold Henthorn for the murder of his wife. But just as they were preparing their case,
a critical situation emerged, forcing them to act quickly. - We were actually watching his financials,
and what we realised is that Harold was moving money and he had moved over $500,000 to his brother
who lived on the East Coast, far away from Colorado. And that's what brought us into action very quickly.
We felt that Harold was going to flee. - 7 News on top of a developing story all evening,
a Highlands Ranch man already being investigated for murdering his first wife, arrested today,
accused of murdering his second wife. - [Narrator] On November 6th, 2014, Harold was arrested
and charged with the first degree murder of Toni Henthorn. - I was sitting in a meeting at work
and I received a text message. "Harold's been arrested," and my mind, it was just a rush of emotions
of finally this has happened. Everybody has done their job. It was a great feeling to know
that he would be held accountable, but there also the possibility that he would not be convicted.
The FBI was very clear with us from the very beginning that this was going to be a difficult case.
- In September, 2015, three years after Toni's death, Harold's trial began. In this trial, there were no eyewitnesses.
There was no confession. So they were relying on convincing this jury on circumstantial evidence alone.
- Circumstantial evidence is often a very difficult thing to build, particularly a murder case off the back of.
But there have been very successful convictions worldwide based on circumstantial evidence alone.
- The theme of the case was greed. Harold had one compelling reason to kill Toni Henthorn,
is that she was worth more dead than she was alive. When we looked at the timing
of why Harold decided to kill Toni, it really came down to the fact that Toni opened her own bank account.
She was diverting the money from the oil and gas monies into that account, as well as her paycheck from work.
And she'd never done that before. And once she opened that account, Harold knew that his facade
of being a successful entrepreneur was coming to an end. That everyone would find out that, in fact,
he wasn't this person who was fundraising for nonprofits and the way he made himself look like such a big person
and a big businessman was all a front, and how was he going to live this lifestyle?
This wasn't gonna work anymore. (dramatic bell clangs) - Well, this is a case that's gained national attention.
A husband accused of pushing his wife to her death to collect on her insurance policies.
- The life insurance policies were really key, and the way in which Harold went about
getting those policies, that he lied to Toni, that she didn't know she had any of those policies.
So he had all this money waiting for him to make the decision about the timing of when he was going to, as we would like to say,
pull the trigger on it. And that's what he decided to do on their anniversary in September 29th, 2012,
was that he was going to get rid of her. - [Narrator] The prosecution team tried to persuade the jury
that Toni's fatal fall was no accident, but a calculated and cold-blooded act. - We also honed in on the fact that this was premeditated,
and we had the records to show from his cell phone every time he went up to Rocky Mountain National Park,
to show that this was not, again, a spontaneous thing. - [Narrator] The prosecution also highlighted
Harold's similar patterns of behaviour on previous occasions. - The judge ruled that the evidence
from the Lynn Henthorn death and from the beam incident at the Granby cabin could both come in at trial and be presented to the jury.
And this is really critical to our case. In order to prove the premeditation of the death of Toni,
we felt we needed to show that this wasn't the first time that he had done it. As we said to the court, and we said to the jury,
"If you win the lottery, it's a celebration. If you win it twice, it's an investigation."
And that's what we used with the fact that now Harold had two dead wives, both under what we painted as unusual circumstances.
The defence really focused on the fact that this was really a fall, and the fact that Lynn died was also a tragic accident.
And the two were completely unrelated. But Harold's defence team did not call any witnesses,
and Harold elected not to testify at the trial. So the case closed with the end of our witnesses.
- [Narrator] With the two week trial now over, the jury retired to begin deliberations.
- With each passing hour, you start to get a little more nervous that we have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt
to the satisfaction of all 12 jurors on each one of the elements of first degree murder.
So there's just so many places where you might trip up and where the jury might think
we just didn't have quite enough evidence. And so you just don't know. - I was on pins and needles all day,
checking my phone all day. It was a day that could not pass by fast enough because we literally had no idea how this was gonna end.
- [Narrator] After 10 hours of deliberations, the jury returned to give their verdict.
(gavel bangs) - The verdict was unanimous. It was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
as to the single count, first degree murder. So Harold Henthorn was found guilty
of first degree murder by the jury. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Harold's years of deceit
had finally been exposed. - As soon as the verdict was read, the courtroom went crazy.
I mean, people just really had so much pent up emotion and they just were finally able to release it.
The judge had the jury come back in and they celebrated with the family. We were in the courtroom for over an hour.
It was the time to finally have the emotional release, that someone had heard the story and the jurors believed it.
And so the jurors needed that release too. They wanted to come and be with the family
and say, "I saw you. I heard you." (news graphic whooshing) - Once the verdict was read,
an emotional exchange between Toni Henthorn's mom and a juror. Take a listen as what was said after the two hugged.
Take a listen. - I appreciated it very much. And she just said, "As one mom to another,
I feel your pain." - When I read the headline, "Found Guilty," I sat down and just,
it's like after such an intense day, being able to relax for the first time. We all in the room cried tears of joy and tears of sadness.
Sadness because we had lost our friend and our sister and our mother, and you know, happiness that this
would not happen to another person. - [Narrator] On December 8th, 2015, Harold Henthorn appeared in court for sentencing,
and it was a chance for Toni's loved ones to look Harold in the eye as they read out their victim impact statements.
- Toni's daughter elected not to come to court, and instead she had written a letter that the family read
to the court and to Harold to say that she no longer regarded him as her father,
and she would only refer to him in the future as Mr. Henthorn. (reflective music)
- The daughter's decision to refer to him only as Mr. Henthorn, moving forward goes to show the significant emotional damage
that this family have all experienced as a result of his actions. And further than that, it goes to show that despite the fact
that there is only circumstantial evidence, even those closest to Harold, to Toni and to Lynn
are all convinced by Harold's guilt. - [Narrator] The judge then delivered the news
that Toni's loved ones were waiting for. - Harold was sentenced to a life sentence
without any chance of parole. Harold will die in prison. Then it was just this great relief of we did it,
and it's over now. I think it was the toughest case that I have been a part of, and it was so rewarding to get the verdict that we did
and to get justice for Toni and for her daughter. It was really quite a result that I'm very proud of.
- [Narrator] Harold will spend the rest of his life behind bars for Toni's murder.
His first wife Lynn's cause of death has been changed from accidental to undetermined,
and the charge against Harold for her murder has been deferred until all appeals
against his life sentence has been exhausted. (poignant music) - You have two women here
who've died in such tragic, unimaginable circumstances where the last person that they've seen on earth
is this man, their husband, who was meant to protect them and keep them safe. But I really hope that, for Lynn's family,
who had a lot of unanswered questions and things were up in the air about what really happened to her,
that through this trial and the answers that we got about Toni, that they got that closure in the end.
- [Narrator] But for Toni's family, there was one final issue to resolve. - After the trial, Toni's daughter,
after going through the custody process, was placed with and adopted by Toni's brother
who has a loving family, very healthy, loving family. She's now in college, a college student, very smart,
and I'm very proud of that young lady. She's gonna be a world changer. I can already tell.
(poignant music) (dramatic music)

In 2012, Toni Henthorn is hiking in the Rocky Mountains with her husband, Harold, to celebrate their twelfth wedding anniversary. Tragedy strikes when she falls from a 160-foot cliff. Is it a terrible accident or something more sinister?

Pushed to Death tells the stories of people who tragically passed away after appearing to suffer a fatal fall in suspicious circumstances.

Brief Summary

Toni Henthorn's suspicious death leads to her husband Harold's arrest and conviction for murder after inconsistencies and financial motives are uncovered.

Key points

A Fatal Fall. Toni Henthorn falls 160 feet in the Rocky Mountains, leading to a tragic accident.
The Whirlwind Romance. Harold and Toni's quick engagement and marriage raise questions about their relationship.
Suspicious Circumstances. Investigators find oddities at the scene of Toni's fall, leading to deeper scrutiny.
Harold Henthorn Arrested. Harold Henthorn was arrested for the first-degree murder of his wife, Toni.
Guilty Verdict. Harold Henthorn was found guilty of first-degree murder by the jury.
Emotional Exchange After Verdict. An emotional moment between Toni Henthorn's mother and a juror after the verdict.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Never in a million years did I ever think.

Reflecting on the tragic loss of Toni

0:24WatchOct 1, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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