♪
Narrator: Up next, she answers a knock at her door
and pays with her life.[ Gunshot ]
Marshall: There was a ton of blood.
I was very, very upset about the entire situation.
Narrator: No one knows why this victim has been targeted for death.
It didn't look like this was a random act.
Narrator: The only solid evidence?
A couple of shell casings.
They recovered two fired 9 millimeter cartridge cases.
Narrator: Is this enough to solve a murder?
The answer comes years later,
after a seemingly unrelated road rage incident
a hundred miles away.
I was shocked.
I didn't know that this type of technology existed.
ATF Agent Butler calls me and tells me
that they have a positive hit on our cartridge.
I couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic.
♪
Narrator: Close to the border of the United States and Canada,
the town of Hope, Idaho, was the ideal place
for Daryl and Shirley Ramey to raise their family.
The marriage, that ultimately resulted in two children,
two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren,
was an old-school romance that came about completely by chance.
Oh, she was a good-looking gal. [ Laughs ] She...
I was working up at Bonners Ferry at the time,
and a friend there was working with me.
He says, "Hey, I know where we can go to a dance."
And that's where I met my wife, was out there.
And I courted her for about nine months before we got married.
Narrator: In this area, guns are nearly as commonplace as cars.
Most locals get familiar with gun safety
practically from birth, and incidents
of gun violence are few and far between.
It doesn't hurt that the population density--
about 25 people per square mile--
is among the lowest in the country.
Most of the patrol areas that we cover are in dirt roads.
Very rural.
You get directions by going towards the end of the road,
and there's a big cedar tree with a "Y,"
and you may turn right and go to down this road or that road.
Narrator: After happy and successful careers,
Daryl and Shirley settled into a well-deserved retirement.
On the afternoon of April 5, 2017, Daryl went into town
to play cards with old friends at the local senior center.
I asked her what she wanted to do for dinner that night,
Being Friday night,
a lot of times, we went out, and she said,
"Well, why don't you bring home a bacon cheeseburger?"
So after cards, I went over to the restaurant
and bought the bacon cheeseburger and come home.
Narrator: Daryl got back about 5:00.
As he walked up to the house,
he saw a sliding glass door was wide open.
He wondered why.
It was cold outside.
As he stepped into the house, he got the answer.
Ramey: When I come home, she was laying there on the floor.
She was laying in a pool of blood,
and I just said, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
Narrator: Police and paramedics arrive to find a murder
not often seen in rural Idaho.
Shirley Ramey had been shot twice
at nearly point-blank range.
There was no forced entry.
At first glance, it appeared nothing
had been stolen from the house.
It was a murder with no apparent motive.
After all, who could possibly have a reason
to carry out an execution-style hit
on a 78-year-old great-grandmother?
Marshall: It was very, very strange.
Shirley was an elderly lady.
She was well-liked in the community.
It didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Daryl: We didn't have any enemies, especially Shirley.
She didn't have anybody that she didn't like, you know,
and it's the same way with me.
I don't have any enemies, and I couldn't figure out who it was.
Narrator: Neither could law enforcement.
This murder had no apparent motive,
no eyewitnesses, and very little evidence.
♪
Narrator: As the shock of Shirley Ramey's murder
rippled across her rural Idaho community,
homicide investigators were faced with a crime scene
nearly devoid of useful information.
The crime scene appeared to be very neat, orderly.
It did not have the appearance
that there had been a rummaging through,
as you oftentimes would see in a home invasion,
a burglary, a robbery.
There was nothing that was astray.
Narrator: The only thing apparently missing from the house
was an old hunting rifle, a .308 caliber.
And this definitely was not the murder weapon.
Analysts knew this because
about the only solid information at the scene
were two shell casings found just feet from Shirley's body.
Those shell casings were both 9mm,
semi-auto shell casings with an "RP" stamped on them,
Remington Peters.
They had primer strikes
that we recognized consistent with Glock.
Most guns use a round firing pin.
A Glock uses more of a triangular-shaped firing pin.
Narrator: As for the killer being someone Shirley knew,
given the lack of forced entry and the absence of a struggle,
that seemed possible, even likely.
But her husband, Daryl, with a solid alibi,
was immediately written off as a potential suspect.
In fact, the Rameys were well-known
to local law enforcement for all of the right reasons
and none of the wrong ones.
I knew Shirley and Daryl personally,
as we attended community events in Hope and East Hope.
Narrator: Another clue leading investigators
to believe Shirley might have known her killer
was the remote location of her house.
Marshall: The Rameys lived on Trestle Creek Road.
It's only accessible for part of the year by automobile.
A lot of the winter and into the spring,
it is snowmobile only.
So there are very few residences up that road.
Daryl: There are not a lot of people live up there.
We live right in a canyon.
Not a lot of property to develop in there.
Narrator: The area saw so little human traffic
that some fresh shoe prints at the scene
became crucial evidence.
We have more than four seasons here in North Idaho,
and one of them is mud season.
And so, we did identify footprints.
It looked like it was a set of tennis shoes,
but the ground was too moist
and unable for us to do any castings.
Narrator: The prints led to a camping trailer
about a half-mile from the Ramey's house.
There was a vagrant living in a small trailer house below me.
Marshall: He was living in kind of a rudimentary trailer
without, you know, electricity and plumbing
and creature comforts.
He's not unusual in the sense that people here in North Idaho
can tend to be living off the grid.
They live in a manner that perhaps other people
in other parts of the country don't really understand.
Narrator: This person-- Daryl Ramey said he'd never met him--
was identified as 41 year-old Nathan Utt.
Nathan Utt had a lot of brush-ins with the law.
He suffered from schizophrenia, and he had a record of stalking,
of sort of harassing people.
Narrator: Nathan Utt, who was hearing-impaired,
wasn't at his trailer.
But someone had been there recently.
And that someone had apparently fired a gun.
Wheeler: We noticed that there were bullet holes
that were caused from a gun shooting from the outside in.
And all of the holes were identified
from coming and being shot from the roadway.
Narrator: Trajectory analysis and standard ballistic tests
showed these bullet holes were fresh
from right around the time Shirley Ramey was shot.
We found two more shell casings
that matched the 9mm "RP" head stamp
alongside the road,
consistent with a location
that could have caused the two bullet holes
in Nathan Utt's trailer.
Narrator: So where was Nathan Utt?
And was he a killer?
Or possibly a victim himself?
♪
Narrator: When Nathan Utt emerged as a potential suspect
in the murder of Shirley Ramey,
detectives learned he had no prior contact
with the Ramey family.
And although he didn't own a gun, he had access to one.
Wheeler: We had talked to some of his friends,
and they had said that he was present
when some of his friends had come over to his trailer
and were shooting a 9mm.
Narrator: Now detectives got a surprise.
They were contacted by Nathan Utt's brother,
who told them a shocking story.
Stella: Nathan was talking about killing people,
or in an animated gesturing.
Again, because Nathan is deaf,
communication is done through, largely, a combination
of sign language and verbiage.
But Nathan had been in a bar talking about killing two people
or shooting several people.
Narrator: This was not some rumor that got blown out of proportion.
Nathan Utt's threatening conversation with his brother
was caught on camera.
Marshall: There was a tape from the restaurant.
The investigators were actually able to secure that tape.
And from the tape, it was clear Nathan Utt
was making wild arm gestures.
It was clear that his brother's statement
was verified by the tape.
Wheeler: He made the motion of "bang, bang"
during that conversation.
And we had some real concerns that may implicate him
of following through with those threats
and maybe being responsible
for shooting and killing Shirley Ramey.
Reporter: Investigators in Bonner County are looking for this man,
41-year-old Nathan Lane Utt.
He's considered to be armed and dangerous
and wanted for murder of an elderly woman in Sandpoint.
Narrator: Media all over the Pacific Northwest
was given Nathan Utt's description.
He was soon located on a commuter train.
Stella: The U.S. Marshals were able to find Mr. Utt
and ultimately arrest him
as he was returning to Idaho
from Portland, Oregon, on Amtrak.
Narrator: Nathan Utt told investigators he was returning home
after checking himself in
to a mental-health facility in Oregon.
He said he had nothing to do with Shirley Ramey's murder
and could prove it.
Numerous people had seen him during the time she was shot.
His threat to kill someone was just idle talk.
I was extremely surprised that Mr. Utt had a valid alibi.
I certainly believed that he had committed this homicide.
And within an hour of him giving that interview to investigators,
I was able to get him out of jail.
Narrator: Soon, the story of this bizarre unsolved murder
came to the attention of ATF Agent James Butler,
who thought the ATF could help.
ATF is not in the business of investigating homicides,
but what we can do is provide other assistance
to law enforcement agencies to assist with their cases.
Narrator: In 2020,
nearly 8 in 10 of the murders committed in America
involved a firearm.
All those guns and the bullets used in them
are a rich source of evidence.
The ATF's National Integrated Ballistic Information Network,
or NIBIN, uses a machine called BrassTrax
to take three-dimensional scans
of the millions of brass cartridge casings
recovered from crime scenes
or from confiscated weapons that were later test-fired.
Those images allow investigators to compare markings
on vast numbers of cartridge cases
with extraordinary speed.
Butler: Within 24 to 48 hours of a shooting scene,
they have the ability to
recover cartridge cases from a shooting scene
and identify whether the firearm
that fired those recently recovered cartridge cases
has left any other cartridge cases
that were acquired into NIBIN.
Narrator: The casings from the murder of Shirley Ramey were entered.
To the consternation of investigators,
there were no matches.
But that didn't mean the search was over.
In fact, in a roundabout way,
this search uncovered the surprise connection
that ultimately solved the mystery
of who shot Shirley Ramey.
I was ecstatic.
This is the first real lead that we've had
during the entire case,
and it just got better from there.
♪
Narrator: To find out who killed Shirley Ramey,
detectives wanted to locate the murder weapon,
a Glock 9mm handgun.
But all they had were shell casings
found near Shirley's body.
The ATF's NIBIN system, which tracks shell casings recovered
from crime scenes, turned up no matches.
So ATF Agent James Butler took a chance.
He reached out to regional law enforcement with a question--
Did anyone have a Glock 9mm used in a crime
that had not yet been test-fired?
I would continually ask that
if you have a 9mm in your custody,
can we test-fire that so that we can place that into NIBIN?
I didn't get any more specific than that.
And that went on for numerous months.
Narrator: It turned out that police in Lincoln County, Montana,
about 100 miles from Shirley Ramey's unsolved murder
in Idaho,
had a Glock 9mm in their evidence vault.
And now investigators in Idaho
got an incredible bit of information
about that gun and about their unsolved murder.
That gun had been picked up
several hours before we even knew we had a homicide.
Narrator: This Glock 9mm belonged to a 57-year-old woman
named Judith Carpenter.
She used that gun to threaten a couple
during a road-rage incident in the town of Libby, Montana.
The authorities were called, and the Libby Police Department
arrested Judy Carpenter for aggravated assault.
Narrator: This happened just hours after Shirley Ramey's murder.
On the afternoon of this road-rage incident,
responding officer Sergeant Bo Pitman
found more than a Glock 9mm on Judith Carpenter.
She also had a .308-caliber hunting rifle in her car.
Pitman wanted to know,
why was this woman packing so much firepower?
She told me that while she was traveling down Highway 200,
she pulled off to urinate.
And when she'd pulled off the road,
she found the rifle on the side of the road.
Narrator: This didn't make a lot of sense.
Judith Carpenter was brought in for questioning.
Judith Carpenter was highly paranoid.
You could also mix in some confusion
when she was trying to explain her whereabouts
over the last couple of days.
I thought she was deliberately being dishonest with me.
Narrator: In a bizarre turn of events,
this interrogation about Judith Carpenter's road-rage incident
happened on the very afternoon of Shirley Ramey's murder.
But detectives on Shirley's case
didn't see this tape until two years later.
Huh?
[ Imitates car engine revving ]
Pitman: Following my interview, I concluded
that she did commit the crime of assault with a weapon,
but she also had mental health issues.
So I had her booked into our jail.
And I also requested a mental-health evaluation
to be conducted.
Narrator: Judith Carpenter spent several court-appointed weeks
being treated for mental health issues
and was ultimately released.
But her Glock 9mm remained in custody.
At the time, there was no reason for police in Montana
to make a connection between Judith's road-rage incident
and a murder in Idaho.
But now, a possible connection had been made.
Could Judith Carpenter be a killer?
Could the gun she was carrying tell the story?
That would turn out to be the linchpin of this case.
The 9mm Glock was test-fired and put into NIBIN,
and, lo and behold, it came back as the gun
that was utilized in the Shirley Ramey case.
I was so excited.
It was a total match to the gun
that was used in the Ramey homicide.
How all this ended up in murder
is a story that defies explanation.
Investigators say it appears that Judith Carpenter,
in the midst of a full-blown mental crisis,
had been driving hundreds of miles
and simply had to go to the bathroom.
She knocked on the door of Shirley Ramey's house,
which just happened to be the first one she came upon.
Shirley, faced with a visibly unwell stranger,
who might have had a gun in her hand,
refused to let Judith Carpenter in.
Judith responded by fatally shooting Shirley.
While going through the house,
Judith saw the Rameys' ...308-caliber rifle and stole it.
As she was driving away, for reasons no one can explain,
she fired two shots into Nathan Utt's trailer.
Four hours later, she was arrested in Montana
for using her Glock 9mm in a road-rage incident
and was eventually exposed as Shirley Ramey's killer.
To this day, Judith Carpenter
claims no memory of what happened.
In 2021, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder
and got 15 years to life in prison.
Daryl: I was at the sentencing.
I told her that...
[ Clears throat ]
...I didn't really have any ill feelings toward her
and I hope that, you know, the Lord will come
and take care of her body and her mind.
[ Clears throat ]
This was-- I hope it does happen someday.
And I hope to take care of me, too.
The Lord has been good to me.
Narrator: Investigators freely admit that the killer in this case
almost walked free.
But new forensic technology and an old-fashioned commitment
to leaving no stone unturned
combined to tell the bizarre story
of what happened to Shirley Ramey
that April afternoon.
Stella: To me, this case is an excellent example
of what can happen when multiple agencies come together,
work together, and each fulfill their duties flawlessly.
We were able to take those two shell casings,
and we were able to link them to the murderer of Shirley Ramey.
Marshall: The forensic evidence in this case was essential.
Without the forensic evidence, without the gun being test-fired
and put in the NIBIN system in Montana,
this case would not be solved today.
♪