In the small, quiet town of Guffey, Colorado, a shocking act of violence shattered the community's sense of peace. On January 3, 2001, the bodies of 60-year-old Carl Eugene Dutcher, his wife JoAnna, and their 15-year-old grandson, Anthony 'Tony' Dutcher, were discovered in what would unfold as a grim and bizarre triple homicide.
The investigation began when one of the Dutcher's sons, unable to contact his parents, alerted the authorities.
Deputies arriving at the Dutcher's rural home found a horrific scene. Carl and JoAnna had been shot multiple times with an assault rifle. A search for their grandson, Tony, led investigators to a makeshift campsite, or 'fort,' on a hill overlooking the home. There, they found Tony's body inside a sleeping bag; his throat had been brutally slashed.
The initial investigation was slow, with law enforcement struggling to find a motive for such a vicious crime. The Dutcher's were described by neighbors as nice people, and the reason for the killings remained elusive. A breakthrough in the two-month-long investigation came when investigators re-interviewed Isaac Grimes, a 15-year-old friend of Tony's. Inconsistencies in his alibi and a small, unsettling detail from a previous interview led them to press him further.
Under renewed questioning, Grimes confessed to his role in the murders. He admitted to killing Tony Dutcher and implicated 17-year-old Jonathan Matheny in the deaths of Carl and JoAnna Dutcher. The motive, as it emerged, was tied to a small, secretive group of students from Palmer High School in Colorado Springs. The killings were allegedly a test of loyalty ordered by the group's charismatic leader, Simon Ewing Sue, who was out of the country at the time.
Jonathan Edward Matheny and Isaac Robin McCain Grimes were charged as adults with first-degree murder. Isaac Grimes pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a 60-year prison sentence. Simon Ewing Sue, the mastermind behind the slayings, was sentenced to 53 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder and organized crime. Jonathan Matheny also faced first-degree murder charges.
