On a summer night in June of 1973, 7-year-old Susie Jaeger, a White female, was on a cross-country camping trip with her family. They had set up camp at Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana. Susie and her older sister settled into their tent for the night, but when her sister awoke hours later, she discovered a large hole slashed in the side of the tent and Susie was gone.
The family's idyllic vacation turned into a nightmare, sparking a massive search and a perplexing investigation that would haunt the family and law enforcement for years.
The initial search for Susie yielded no leads, and the Jaeger family eventually returned to their home in Michigan, left to wait for any news about their daughter. The case grew cold, a painful silence for the family. A year after her disappearance, the silence was broken by a chilling phone call to the Jaeger home from a man who claimed to be the kidnapper. This was the first of several calls, in which the man would taunt the family and the FBI. During one of these calls, Susie's mother, Marietta, bravely engaged the man in a long conversation, gathering invaluable clues for investigators.
The investigation eventually zeroed in on a local man named David Meirhofer. Initially, there was not enough evidence to arrest him, and he was even released after questioning. However, the FBI was pioneering a new technique at the time: criminal profiling. The profile developed by agents pointed towards Meirhofer. The persistent efforts of the investigators and the crucial information from the phone calls, including a voice match, finally led to his arrest in August 1974.
Following his arrest, a search of Meirhofer's property uncovered gruesome evidence linking him to other crimes. Faced with the evidence against him, David Meirhofer confessed to the abduction and murder of Susie Jaeger. He admitted to taking her to a remote ranch, where he killed her. In a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, he also confessed to the murders of three other people: 19-year-old Sandra Smallegan, and two boys, one of whom was a 12-year-old Boy Scout killed at the same state park in 1968. Four hours after his confession, before he could be tried for his crimes, David Meirhofer was found dead in his jail cell, having taken his own life.
