Original subtitles

This is a story

from a midwestern American town

of five high school friends

with a common love caught on tape.

Music was everything for me in high school,

everything else was just kind of a blur.

But an attack in the woods...

In a split second, it went into a fight for your life.

...reveals a horror lurking in their midst.

I think it's scary that people like this are out there,

and you don't necessarily know who they are.

Shenandoah since last I've seen you

shenandoah away, you rolling river river

tis seven years since last I've seen you

shenandoah, rolling river away

Hartford, Wisconsin, 2011,

spring concert

for the Hartford union high school choir.

Cross the wide Missouri

in high school, I was all about choir.

We had a final concert every year,

and we would put together a medley of different songs.

It was just amazing.

We would just focus so much energy.

Shenandoah,

only the most talented kids get into concert choir.

Shenandoah I did everything in my power

to be in the top choir every year

that it was available to me.

This is the highlight of their year.

And the audience is filled with proud parents.

Music was everything for me in high school.

Everything else was just kind of a blur.

But these angelic voices harbor a dark secret.

Five friends brought together by a common love of music.

But in just two years,

one of these kids will turn out to be a killer,

a killer caught on camera,

footage that has never been seen before in public

until now.

Like Moriah, Jessie blodgett

is a member of the concert choir.

She's also a talented songwriter.

With the love

I met Jessie singing.

One of the first times that I met her,

we were walking through the hallway

of all the different practice rooms

in our high school, and we heard her singing.

We heard you outside, you were incredible.

She had all this talent that I could

as far as I was concerned,

I could never even dream of having that much talent.

Moriah. Jessie, hi.

Hi.

Jessie, when she was interested in something,

she would put 110% into it.

Jessie always has to have a cause.

No, I don't.

Is it Dan? No, it's... hi. Hello, Dan.

See? Ooh, what delights...

Dan was a very similar personality to that.

He loved to debate, which is, I think,

why they were such good friends

because when they hung out,

it was like debate central.

Stop it.

I'm not doing anything. Stop it.

Dan and Jessie had a lot in common.

He was very similar to Jessie

in that he loved music, and he loved acting.

I'm too late to stop

afraid to love cause someone loves the draws

like Jessie, Dan dreams of a musical career

you were my life you were my the world

how we can disregard Dan and Jessie,

when they got together, they worked on music.

They were able to record and put their ideas together.

Dan is also in a band...

The angry pillows.

Dan, he's the lead man.

He played lead guitar. He sang.

Here they come here they come

doesn't matter, though

we actually wrote a lot of our own music.

Dan wrote a lot of it.

Dan was, always really entertaining,

I'd say.

He's he's a great character.

I always kind of, gravitated towards him.

Man.

Yourself. Go and you go

angry pillows!

Wah!

Get a nice one.

That a nice one? Yeah.

A nice one. Yeah.

As well as his band, Dan has another great love.

Her name is Allison.

Allison was a soprano in the choir.

Zooming? No.

Hello. Hey.

Hey. You all right? Yes.

Once he and Allison started dating, it was them.

They were always together.

They always were pretty much glued to each other.

By myself 'cause you're always with Dan.

Okay, I'm not always with him.

Allison was always very bubbly, very bright.

She was a very fun person.

She was always really happy.

Another Hartford union high school musician

is Jessie's friend Ian nytes.

Jessie was like my best, female friend

throughout, high school.

That fairytale thing like before, which I liked.

We did like music together.

We like to I liked to write, and she liked to sing.

So we kind of made, like, a a good pair.

I referred to her as my muse.

We, we hung out at coffee shops

and just really talked.

Like, playing.

I just thought it would be, like, we could set up,

like, a mini stage, like, maybe in...

I mean, I'm sure we have all that.

Hey, freak. Hey.

Hey, Daniel. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Dan was, like, I guess he could kind of give across,

like, a vibe of being, you know,

thinking himself as superior.

He was really popular and well liked,

but I feel like he might have put himself on a pedestal.

It's the summer of 2012

and graduation day for Hartford union high.

As usual, the school choir is at the heart of it all.

May the road rise to meet you

and best friends Dan and Jessie sing by side by side.

Until we meet again may god hold you

in the palm of his hand

after graduation, the friends go their separate ways.

Dan heads off to university of wisconsinstevens point

with Allison.

Jessie marita blodgett.

Whoo! Whoohoo!

And Jessie auditions for a music course

at the university of wisconsinmilwaukee.

Wo so you want to do your name

and introduce your pieces. Okay.

Well, my name is Jessie blodgett.

She makes her father proud.

You can just see how pleased she is

but how humble she is with herself

and how confident she is and how much she loves singing.

She has a beautiful voice, and she just kills it.

Jessie's dad isn't the only one who's impressed.

Wo lovely, lovely. So nice.

Her audition is a success.

So those two plates to table two.

Table two, yeah. Table two.

Fantastic. Okay.

Whilst at college, Jessie works as a waitress.

And halfway through freshman year,

she gets a big surprise.

She came home one day, and she said, "Dan's home."

Shut up! My god!

What are you doing here?

I'm like, "what do you mean Dan's home?"

"Well, he dropped out of college."

I'm like, "Dan dropped out of college?

He's a straighta he's the smartest kid in school.

What do you mean he dropped out of college?"

It's fine. It's totally fine.

It it wasn't for me.

What are you gonna do? You just gonna bum around?

I've got a job. I've got a job.

You've got a job? I've got a job in a factory.

He decided to come home to Hartford,

go back to living with his parents

and try to reassess his life and figure out what he

what he really wanted to do with it.

But 12 miles away from Hartford,

events are unfolding that will change everything.

Remy, wait.

July 12, 2013,

Melissa Richards, a young, almost 21 year old woman

decides to go to richfield park

to walk her dog.

She could never have foreseen that anything bad would happen.

She's not a part

of the Hartford high school friends group,

but her story is about to become part of their story.

Clausing.

It's July 12th,

and Washington county, Wisconsin's, sheriff's office

get an unusual phone call.

We had a call of a female...

When was this?

...who was attacked in a park in richfield

by someone with a knife.

And what was reported was a stranger attack,

which are very few and far between

for our jurisdiction location.

Paging dr.Stateman, Dr. Stateman please.

Obviously, Melissa was still scared, in shock.

The second night I started talking to her,

I knew that this was real, and this was valid,

and that this was serious.

I went to I went to the park to walk my dog.

She was going back to the car

to get her dog a drink of water.

Um, she noticed him out of the corner of his eye,

sitting in his Van.

And then, she heard something.

She said she was walking towards her car,

and she heard the footsteps behind her.

And she turned around, he was running.

In a split second,

it went from a leisurely summer day

with your dog to a fight for your life.

Aah!

During the struggle,

she was actually able to take the knife away from him.

Aah!

Detectives are shocked

by this random, impulsive attack.

I believe that he was attempting to abduct her.

He didn't disguise himself.

Why?

My guess because he didn't think that there would be

a witness in the end.

Melissa escapes with some deep cuts

on her hand and her leg.

It is as unsettling as it is random.

A wouldbe killer on the loose in this small, midwestern town.

As the annual summer parade takes place in Hartford,

the community struggles to come to terms

with news of the attack.

Hartford is smalltown Wisconsin.

It's a workingclass community.

There's really no crime in Hartford.

It was very unsettling to the community.

So, guys, check US out on Facebook under tab,

"the angry pillows."

Check out our YouTube channel.

We'll hopefully be playing a show,

coming up at rocky music medium.

Watch for an event.

This is the last song we're playing, a brandnew one.

It's called "walk it off."

Dan still loves his music

just like in high school.

It was a lot of fun.

We, um, had a lot of fun onstage,

running around and...

Seeing Dan, he was just got really into it.

You know, he threw out all the moves.

Another choke and broken con

now, walk it off

just all the classic frontman.

He was really great.

Because, tonight, we're gonna dance through it all

thank you.

Getting back into his music

also brings Dan even closer to best friend, Jessie.

Kind of messing around with it last week.

Dan came over probably once a week or so

in the couple months after he dropped out of college.

He he liked to write songs,

and Jessie liked to write songs.

We all change and face our

um, Dan just, out of the blue,

reached out and and pulled her in for a kiss.

It's for you Dan, what the hell?

Sorry. What the hell?

I'm I'm sorry.

Like, what did you just do?

I don't know.

It made her it made her mad.

We didn't think it was that big of a deal.

Come back, I'm sorry. What do you mean "come back"?

You've got a girlfriend.

I know.

Meanwhile, police are still trying to figure out

who attacked Melissa Richards.

Shortly after her ordeal

and still bandaged from the attack,

Melissa talks police through what happened on video.

I had been in phone contact with Melissa,

and we planned to do the reenactment.

She described the vehicle.

She wasn't able to get the plate number,

but she said it was a dodge caravan,

dark Navy blue.

She was able to describe the attacker.

She was able to describe his age, his shirt.

We're looking for someone who's, 18 to 22 years old.

We're looking for a person who drives,

early 2000s dodge caravan.

Although the festivities continue,

this rural community

has been deeply affected by the strange attack.

It could have been so much worse.

Nobody knew who did it,

and everybody was a suspect.

And so people were were truly in fear,

and they they were wondering,

like, "who's going to be attacked next?"

It's July 2013,

and police have turned to the public

for help with the attack on Melissa Richards.

Reporter: Melissa Richards says she took her dog, Remy,

for a walk in a Washington county park

and ended up wrestling with a stranger.

The police were trying to solicit the help

of the community to figure out who attacked Melissa.

They put out a press release,

and there was some news coverage.

Detective Walsh and I said, "okay.

Be prepared this weekend and to come in at any time

because hopefully, we'll get a tip," right?

Nothing. Crickets.

There was nothing for days.

After his rebuff from Jessie, Dan bartelt

spends more and more time with girlfriend, Allison.

Hello.

Hey. Hi.

How's it going? It's not, like,...

I've only got, like, 13 pages.

That's good.

And she allows Dan

to pursue another passion, writing.

Dan absolutely loved to write, loved to read as well.

But he just would get any any thought that he had

on a page and expand it.

He just loved to write, and he was very good at it.

He had been writing a novel.

It was called "red is red."

And he had been working on this since high school.

So he was clearly drawing from characters in his life

to put in this book, at least to some degree.

There was a character named Jessica in it.

And there was a character named Dee.

I'm getting a bit stuck, though.

Can I help?

He was a very eloquent writer.

Um, he knew how to make a story, um, make it seem

like you were actually in the story and involved.

And that's what any good writer will do.

It's over a year since Dan, Jessie,

Moriah, and Ian graduated from Hartford union high school.

Jessie is looking forward

to going back to music college in the fall.

Welcome, monsieur, sit yourself down

and Dan is still as passionate about musical theater

as he was in high school.

There's a video of him doing his

his part, and it's great.

Master of the house turning up the charm

he was able to make it funny, um, in a way

that I don't think anyone else would have been able to.

Makes a little still

customers appreciate a...

You know, he was always very good at that

and just making everything

he did seem very believable and lovable and likable.

Everybody, raise a glass whoo! Whoo!

Soon, Jessie also gets a big role

in a local show.

Let's not get too close too close.

It's your stage debut.

Shut up.

Jesse was the Fiddler in "Fiddler on the roof."

It was her first, um, participation

in the community theater.

Don't can you just look at me without the camera?

So nervous.

Okay, okay. Breathe.

They performed Friday night,

Saturday night, and sunday afternoon.

Really not helping.

So much worse. Okay.

Is my makeup okay? Yeah.

I didn't smudge it? No. No, no, no.

It's the sunday afternoon performance,

and the house is packed.

You better not put this on Facebook, okay?

Okay. Wish me luck.

Wo good luck. Good luck. Good luck.

And then, they had a latenight cast party

to celebrate their opening weekend,

three performances in a row.

And they they had a great time.

And she came home late that night.

After days of frustration,

Washington county detectives finally get a break

in the Melissa Richards case.

The first big break that we got

was from a deputy, Andy myer.

Hey, Joel.

When deputy myer hears about the dodge caravan,

it rings a bell.

You know, I saw a Navy blue Van out there...

He saw a car matching that description

parked in the same parking lot

where the attack happened just two weeks earlier.

He had remembered that he had run a plate

of a same vehicle

matching the description some time ago,

but he didn't know exactly when.

Well, go, go.

If I'm not here when you come back, give me a call.

Jessie, I'm gonna leave breakfast on the table.

At 8:15, joy blodgett left the house to go to work.

Call me if you need anything.

And she left the home.

Joy blodgett leaves for work.

Her 19 year old daughter, Jessie,

is asleep in her bedroom.

Joy came home for lunch.

Jessie?

The house was quiet.

She assumed Jessie was sleeping in

from the latenight cast party at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Jessie?

Do you want some lunch?

Hey, baby girl. It's lunch time.

Well, now that we opened the play,

you can clear your room.

What's wrong with you?

What are you doing?

Jessie?

She reached out to wake her up.

And when she touched her, she was cold.

Jessie was cold. And she rolled her over.

Wake up, Jessie!

Jessie!

Jessie was blue.

Come on, baby girl. Come on.

We were dispatched to a residence on wayside drive

in Hartford

for an unresponsive female who was found in bed.

But the medical teams are too late.

19 year old Jessie blodgett is pronounced dead

at the scene.

Joy broke down crying and couldn't talk for a while.

And I said, "honey,

is she, is she gone?"

And no more words.

So can you remember what time you left work?

I began my interview with Jessie's mom...

How do you know it was 8:30?

...to get a timeline

of when she had last seen Jessie and go from there.

It was so quiet.

I opened the the bedroom door and...

One of the things joy saw was a Mark on Jessie's neck,

and she also saw marks on her wrists.

I'd say it became pretty evident,

relatively quickly that this was a homicide,

not that she had done something to hurt herself.

Jessie blodgett's hands had been tied.

It was duct tape that had been used

to bind her hands and and her feet.

And obviously, there were cords and ropes,

and these were used also to strangle her.

It was a very violent murder.

What I remember was the overwhelming silence

and emptiness.

All of a sudden, I saw some figures

far away down on the road

beyond the apple trees.

It was Jessie's friends.

They started to come.

Didn't care what the right thing

or the wrong thing was to do.

They just came.

And they came for US,

and they came for her.

12 miles from the blodgett home,

Washington county sheriffs

have just found out who owns the car

that Melissa Richard's attacker drove.

The police have this license plate,

and it runs back to Melvin and Laura bartelts.

They don't know who these people are.

You know, they're not on the radar screen at all.

But they own this dodge blue caravan

that was in the the park where Melissa was attacked.

Hi, Mrs. Bartelt?

Obviously, we're excited about this, right?

This is, detective Walsh.

And we meet Mr. and Mrs. Bartelt.

And I tell them identify who I'm I'm with.

Dodge caravan. Um, yeah, we do.

Mr. and Mrs. Bartelt didn't fit our profile

of an 18 to 22yearold person.

They realize pretty quickly

that the father doesn't fit the physical description

because of his age.

It's one of those, "well, okay.

Well, let's see who's who's associated with the bartelts."

And that's when we found out

that that they had a son by the name of Daniel.

Right now, Dan bartelt

is at the blodgett house mourning with Jessie's family

and friends.

Their entire living room was covered with people

just, like, sitting against the wall.

Everyone is crying.

Dan stood up and gave me a hug,

and I sat with him on the fireplace

and held his hand and,

um, just cried on his shoulder.

Dan got a phone call.

He let go of my hand and said that he had to take it.

I called Daniel.

Hello, Daniel? Hi.

My name's detective clausing. I identified who I was.

And I said I needed to speak with him

in reference to an incident.

And he said, "okay."

And I asked him if he would be willing to meet me

at the slinger police department.

And he said he would. Um, well, where are you

whereabouts are you? I said, "where are you at?"

He said that he was at the blodgett vigil.

I said, "really?"

He's at the vigil.

He's at the blodgett girl vigil.

That's a shocking moment for any investigator.

I mean, you're investigating one crime,

which is bad enough as it is.

And suddenly, your key suspect,

you realize he's standing in the home

of this highprofile homicide victim.

But for now, the Washington county detectives

are only interested in the Melissa Richards case.

And they think they have their man.

But could this allamerican choir boy

really be the same vicious figure

who tried to knife Melissa Richards?

They're about to find out.

I introduce myself to Daniel. I shake his hand.

And we start interviewing him about everything.

You're trying to size up the person

that you're talking to

to see if they're telling you the truth.

Whenever Daniel would talk to me, detective Walsh

would be looking down and looking around.

We're looking for injuries, right?

This was a knife attack.

We're looking for, lacerations, cuts, bruises.

We did see a cut on his thumb.

I had asked him about the cut.

And he said that he had sustained this cut

while pushing a cart at work.

And we talked more about his work.

In actual fact,

Dan wasn't working at a factory at all.

He had conceived this elaborate lie.

He actually had no job.

He never had a job at this factory.

He was spending his days, you know, at local parks,

reading novels,

writing his book, writing songs.

So now we have him in a lie.

And police are about to find out

this isn't the only thing Dan bartelt

has been lying about.

Now, I spoke with several

of Jessie blodgett's friends tonight.

They tell me she had no enemies.

And they are trying to understand

how this could have happened to her.

It's the day after the horrific murder

of 19 year old Jessie blodgett.

In Washington county, Wisconsin, Dan bartelt is being interviewed

about the attack on Melissa Richards

a few days before Jessie's murder.

Though we started our

I would say our interrogation.

Talking to him about telling the truth,

coming clean on things.

Finally, he admitted to

to being in the park and attacking her.

Detective Walsh, we were talking about this,

he said, "this guy is bad."

Very intelligent, very smart,

but there was just something about him

that the hair on the back of your neck stood

stood up when you were talking with him.

It was interesting because we said,

"where were you at?"

He said that he was at the blodgett vigil.

Where were you at tonight?

A house in, Hartford,

Jessie blodgett's house.

Jessie who? Blodgett.

There's one thing wrong

with what Dan bartelt just said.

He said that she was raped and murdered.

Well, at that point in time,

nobody knew she was sexually assaulted.

We knew that she was murdered.

But nobody knew that she was sexually assaulted.

So this is information that only the person

that had done this would have known.

Someone raped and murdered her.

Then the investigation started, right?

For the blodgett homicide.

The day after Dan's arrest

for the attack on Melissa Richards,

detective thickens questions him about Jessie blodgett.

Could this straighta student really be involved

with the murder of his best friend?

He denied having any contact with Jessie that day.

He actually advised US

that he had been there for an extended period of time

reading a book until he finally went home.

Detectives head straight to woodlawn park

and retrieve the security tapes.

And at 10:30 on the morning of Jessie's murder,

they spot Daniel well after the time she was killed.

We did place him in the park.

It didn't give an alibi.

Instead, it leads to a discovery

that seals the case.

The police went through all of the trash bins.

They found this cereal box

that contained all of these tools of death,

the cords, bloody gloves.

The police ended up with a mountain

of forensic evidence,

which is incredibly convincing

that Dan bartelt killed Jessie blodgett.

Call state versus Daniel bartelt.

On August 11, 2014,

a little more than a year

after Jessie blodgett was murdered,

Dan bartelt went on trial for her murder.

And when it's Dan's turn to talk,

he looks the family members,

the parents of this friend that he's known for years,

looks them right in the eye and he denies killing her.

This jumpsuit that I'm wearing,

shackles that I'm put in don't make me guilty.

But the jury doesn't agree.

We the jury find the defendant, Daniel bartelt,

guilty of firstdegree intentional homicide.

He sits in his car and he smokes a swisher

he asked himself is he going to miss her

this was a wholesome, sort of allamerican type boy

who loved music, was in the school choir,

was in a band, kind of a typical kid.

But Dan bartelt has a dark side.

He had a lot of time on his hands

for his mind to run wild.

Um, we started looking into things like his computer

that we had seized.

He was writing about bondage scenes in his novel,

"red is red," that he'd been working on bit by bit

since high school.

And there were certain themes in this book of violence.

He had been looking at serialkiller wikis,

looking at how many people they had killed

and how they had been killed.

Dan's fantasy world, if you will,

was growing increasingly dark

and tinged with elements of violence.

Then, one day,

Dan decides to turn those dark thoughts into action.

He had a fantasy.

He wanted to know what it was to kill someone.

But why choose his best friend?

Dan has never confessed,

and Jessie's family must live without knowing

why their daughter was killed.

I mean, there was this loose motive

that he maybe he had made a pass at her that she rejected.

But there was really no great conflict between them,

so that you have this young man,

who appears to have attacked these two young women,

murdering one of them just because he he wanted to.

Know you've shown me

you know, it doesn't make any sense to me

because he had been such a genuine person,

how could he be able to do something like that,

you know? It was mindblowing.

Just just one day

honestly, I think Dan isn't so different

from all of US.

Dan is a normal person, in my opinion,

who allowed himself to go down a dark path

and act out dark choices.

La, la, la, la la, la, la

la, la, la la, la

Jessie's legacy project

is called "the love is greater than hate project."

And our mission is to end violence against women...

I swear to you

as if we ever stop living this

and to elevate love over hate in this world.

And if we ever see the beauty

that it could be

"I'm in this world to change this world,"

and she meant it.

Her life was just blossoming.

Just she saw her path,

and she started to walk through the door.

And then it was over.

Singing this song for you

there is nothing I wouldn't do

I'll be there I'll be here for you