Pfister Nancy - Shadow on the mountain : Nancy Pfister, Dr. William Styler, and the murder of Aspens golden girl

Stephen Singular has published twenty books, many of them about high-profile crimes and their impact on society. You can sign up for email updates here.

Joyce Singular is an author of two books and a collaborator on a number of titles with her husband, adding a female perspective on the nature of crime. They live in Denver, Colorado. You can sign up for email updates here.

Visit Stephen and Joyces Web site at www.stephensingular.com or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Several people who were critical in the making of this book wish to remain anonymous, so they will. Two others we can name are Michael Cleverly, who provided a lot of insight into Aspen and Nancy Pfister, and Nancys friend Teresa Wyatt. Cleverly was particularly good in speaking about the evolution of Aspen since the 1970s and Teresa, among many other things, generously provided us with a number of photos for the book. We want to thank our agent, Mel Berger of WME Entertainment, for connecting us with Charlie Spicer and April Osborn at St. Martins Press. We enjoy any opportunity to work with Charlie, and April was the hands-on guide through the editorial process for Shadow on the Mountain . Her care made this a better book. Finally, wed like to thank Aspen itself for being a character in our story. Theres no place like it.

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Presumed Guilty

The Rise and Rise of David Geffen

Power to Burn

Legacy of Deception

Charmed to Death

Sweet Evil

Notre Dames Greatest Coaches

A Killing in the Family

Talked to Death

Within a few hours, an overwrought Kathy Carpenter would tell the police that on this warmish late February evening in 2014 shed driven up to Nancy Pfisters home above Aspen, Colorado. A trust-funder and world traveler in her mid-fifties, Pfister was often gone for months at a time, exploring a distant continent or visiting friends in Hawaii, Thailand, Nepal, the Caribbean, or India. After seven years of a volatile relationship with Kathy and an on-again, off-again business arrangement, Nancy had come to rely on her, leaving her in charge of the house when away. As a teller at Alpine Bank, Carpenter deposited cash or checks for Nancy and watched Gabe, Pfisters eight-month-old black labradoodle. Some people thought the women were lovers, but others said Nancy was only interested in men.

Set back a hundred yards or so from West Buttermilk Road, the heiresss secluded residence was encircled by snowfall and thick stands of aspen, their limbs bare in the lingering dead of winter. When Kathy reached the driveway, she turned right and followed a long strip of gravel down to the property. In darkness she opened the front door and stepped inside, scanning the main floor and seeing Gabe, who was always excited by her arrival. Wagging his hindquarters and nodding his head, he came toward her and nestled against her leg. Kathy breathed in the powerful stench of the dogs mess, scattered around the house, even though one of the windows was open and letting in chilly air. Why hadnt someone bothered to clean this up?

She moved past Gabe and on past a rarely used billiard table, going upstairs to the master bedroom, with its large walk-in closet filled with clothes, shoes, and Tibetan prayer flagsa space that Nancy called her special closet. Glancing around, Kathy noticed that the bed was neatly made, the first thing that struck her as odd. Nancy had never made a bed in her life, leaving such details to other people.

Lifting the bedcover, Kathy saw no sheets on the mattressanother oddityand the mattress itself was slightly askew. Raising her eyes, she spotted a red smear of what looked like blood on the headboard. She instinctively moved toward the closet, ten feet away from the foot of the bed. A few days earlier, shed slipped a key into the closet door for Nancy, who was coming home after an extended stay in Australia. Attached to the key was an oval tag with Owners Closet written across it; both the key and tag were gone. Kathy looked in her purse for the backup key she kept on a lanyardshed had a duplicate made last December when Nancy had insisted she change the lock on the closet doorbut she hadnt brought it with her.

She pulled out her cell phone and called her mother, Chris, and then a friend of Nancys, Patty Stranahan, telling both the same thing: the house felt weird.

Kathy brought Gabe outside with her and loaded him into her Subaru and took West Buttermilk Road down into Aspen to her small apartment on Main Street, housing provided to her by Alpine Bank. This arrangement had become commonplace in town because service people like Kathy couldnt afford to live there without assistance. Aspen and environs had Americas most expensive real estate, with the 2014 median listing price for houses or condos standing at roughly $4.5 million. One local residence, the 24,000-square-foot Peak House, rented for $20,000 a day. In 1991, His Royal Highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the exSaudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, had built a vacation getaway in Aspens Starwood neighborhood. Sixteen years later, the prince listed it for $135 million, the nations highest-priced private residence. When Bandar was accused of financing the property through $1 billion in bribes hed received from a British defense company that sold fighter jets to the Saudis, a judge froze his U.S. assets and he had to make do with his other $20 billion worth of investments. The investigation was ultimately dropped.

Nancy Pfisters relatively modest three-bedroom home was just over 4,000 square feet and had a market value of slightly more than $4 million. She didnt own the house, but she didnt rent or lease it, either. The paper on the property was held by NMP Residence Trust, located within the Aspen law firm of Garfield & Hecht, which for decades had handled the Pfisters financial affairs. When people spoke of the creation of modern Aspen, they usually brought up Nancys parents, Art and Betty Pfister. In 1958, Art was a founding partner of the Buttermilk Ski Area, lately made famous by Shaun The Flying Tomato White at the Winter X Games, and by the Special Olympics. Art eventually sold his share of the mountain to the Aspen Skiing Company and his other holdings were developed into the Maroon Creek Golf and Tennis Club. In the past few years, both Art and Betty had died, leaving behind the family fortune and three daughters: Suzanne, who lived across the road from Nancy, and Christina, whod moved to Denver.

Nancy was by far the most adventurous and unconventional. When Aspenites went abroad and told the natives where they were from, they regularly heard, Do you know Nancy Pfister? The Colorado blonde hadnt merely visited their countries, but had made an immediate and lasting impression. Her curiosity, her utter spontaneity, her hunger for new experiences, and her sunburst smile were all hard to forget. She had friends in the Far East, in South America, and across Europe. She watched the French Open in Paris with Roman Polanski and flew to Africa with Anjelica Huston. Some called her Aspens Ambassador to the World or Aspens Welcome Wagon or Aspens Golden Girl. There were people who called her much less flattering thingsbut only after theyd gotten to know her and seen the darker parts of her personality.