Original subtitles

- I'm Holly Jo Samuelson.

On September 9, 2021, my family was held hostage.

[tense music]

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

This man walks in.

[dramatic music]

He's dripping in sweat, and he has a gun in his hand.

And he looked at me, and he said,

"I am in trouble.

I'm on the run, and I need a hostage."

♪ ♪

- We didn't know where the suspect was.

He literally could have been hiding anywhere.

- I walked in, and I heard my mom be like,

"It's okay, Pipes. It's okay."

- She then realized there's a man on the run,

and he's in her house.

And I just thought,

"I need to get her away from this man."

- [screams]

[gunshot, high-pitched ringing]

♪ ♪

[sirens wailing]

♪ ♪

[gentle music]

- My family, we've had quite the journey.

My husband, Chris, and I both grew up in--in Utah.

We ended up dating for a short time.

And he proposed, and we got married

six months... [laughs] Later, which is crazy.

And then our family started really quickly after that.

We have two beautiful daughters,

Piper and Presley,

and they are the love of my life.

- They're feisty.

Um, they're both Leos.

They know what they want, and they get after it.

Piper's always kinda taken care of Presley

'cause she's the older one.

In 2021, the girls were 20 and 16.

- We all live in Farmington, Utah.

I think the community's great.

I love having the mountains

and, like, all of the seasons.

And the people are super nice.

It's, like, a close-knit community.

- It's literally 15 minutes north of Salt Lak.

If you work in Salt Lake, or if you're anywhere near,

Farmington'd be a place you'd wanna live in for sure.

- All my friends' parents know each other's parents,

so it's kind of just, like, a fun, small-town kind of vibe.

Like, we would leave our doors unlocked every night.

I would sleep with my window wide open.

I was just used to feeling super safe.

- We never locked our doors.

We never worried about, you know,

what window was open, what door was unlocked.

- It was just a place where you felt so safe.

You didn't think twice about that.

And then in 2021, the unthinkable happened.

[siren wails]

[tense music]

- My name's Mike Sheldon.

I work for the Bountiful Police Department,

a neighboring jurisdiction

to where the Samuelsons live.

I'm a sergeant there.

I've been the team leader

for the South Davis Metro SWAT tactical team

for going on seven years now.

One of the greatest things about being a police officer

is that no day is ever the same.

On the night of the incident, our communications contacted me

over the radio, letting me know

that there was a vehicle pursuit

headed our way.

We needed to try to get into position

to deploy spikes or whatever other technology we needed to.

[siren wails]

- Our troopers actually

had successfully spiked the vehicle,

and the vehicle had crashed.

And the individual had run on foot.

- So we have probably between...

uh, 40 and 50 finished houses

that this individual could possibly get in.

He could get in a vacant house.

He could get in one of the houses

that were under construction.

He literally could have been hiding anywhere

in that 1.5-square-mile area.

[helicopter whirring]

- The evening of September 9th, it was pretty uneventful.

I take a sleeping pill at night.

And then I usually go to bed around midnight.

[gentle music]

- I was starting my first year of high school,

and it was super exciting.

And we actually had gone homecoming shopping

that day 'cause I had homecoming on the 11th.

Yeah, we just had a normal night,

and I just went to bed.

- Pipes--we call her Pipes--

we are insomniacs,

so we--I mean, I guess we go to bed in the morning.

[laughs] So.

♪ ♪

[ominous music]

I go up to my studio, loft studio,

where I can kinda chill out.

I remember just trying to decide what to watch,

and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

And as I look up--

and this visual is just so clear still to me...

[TV plays indistinctly] This man walks in the door.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

He's dripping in sweat, and he has a gun in his hand.

I was just in shock, and I just remember

looking at him and I said, "Please don't.

"Please don't kill me. I'm a mom."

And he looked at me and he said,

"I am in trouble.

"I'm on the run, and I need a place to go.

And I need a hostage."

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- I was just terrified, just absolutely--

it's hard to even explain

unless you've been in that situation

where it's just-- you almost feel numb.

His first idea was that he wanted to get in the car,

and he wanted me to drive him to Las Vegas.

And he wanted to have me as a hostage on the run.

To me, I know that, like, once you get in a car,

that's, like-- that's a scary thing.

So we sat in the car,

and he started getting really nervous and fidgety.

And--and that's when he was like, "Wait, wait, wait."

And he needed, I guess, things to cook his heroin?

♪ ♪

And so I think he figured out right away that,

okay, this car thing is not going to work

if he wants to use his drugs.

♪ ♪

So he ended up going back in the mudroom,

right inside of our garage.

I had my phone with me, and I was trying to think

of how I can call 911.

And I remember, like, reaching back to the light

and trying to flicker it to just do anything

to make some sort of sign, and I just couldn't.

He had that gun so close to me.

He told me he had two personalities.

One was his dark side.

One was his good side.

And that's what got him in all the trouble that he's been in

is that when the dark side took over,

it made him do really bad things.

I thought, "I am in trouble with this man."

[siren wails]

- We had no idea that there was

a hostage situation going on.

I wanted to first utilize a helicopter

before we pushed any bodies in.

Uh, the helicopter's equipped with infrared and fleer

and has the ability to see at night.

We didn't know where the suspect was.

Within a few minutes, we had 60 cops flooding that area.

So I knew that suspect was somewhere

within our containment area.

- If the helicopter doesn't find him

or the drones don't find him,

I want the best people in law enforcement.

- He started asking me who was where.

I told him, "Okay, my husband, Chris,

"is in the bedroom. He's sleeping.

"He takes a sleeping pill at night.

"When he does that, he does not hear a thing.

"He--he is out for the count.

"Piper might be coming here tonight,

but I don't know that."

And then I said, "I have my Presley downstairs sleeping.

"She is my very anxious child.

We do not want her involved in anything."

And as soon as I said, "She's my anxious child,"

he said, "Okay, we need to keep her out of the mix."

And that's when he wanted to start cooking his drugs.

[dark music]

♪ ♪

He was obviously just not mentally okay.

He told me that he was lost in the system of foster care.

No one ever loved him.

He was never enough,

and he just started talking about his life.

And then I could tell, after he would do

whatever he was doing with the heroin,

he started getting a little scarier.

♪ ♪

[garage door clangs]

And I hear the garage,

and my heart just absolutely sank

because I knew Piper was coming home.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

Piper coming in and out at, like, 3:00 in the morning

is not unusual.

- In my neighborhood, there was a ton of police.

And I actually got stopped by one of the cops

before pulling into my driveway,

and they were like, "There's a guy that we just,

"like, spiked on the freeway.

"He's just, like, somewhere in the area,

so we're just keeping an eye out."

I walked in, and I heard my mom be like,

"It's okay, Pipes. It's okay."

- She saw the gun in his hand, and she looked at me.

And she then realized there's a man on the run,

and he's in her house.

♪ ♪

[helicopters whirring]

- We heard helicopters.

And I was just thinking,

"Wow," like "This is real."

Was looking out the window. He was getting frantic.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

But then he needed to get his boost again.

- He, like, pulled out his heroin.

It was really scary.

He started saying kinda strange things about, like, women.

- He made a reference to rape.

I've never felt this before as a mom,

but something just switched

where there was no choice but for me to try to do something

when he was talking the way he was talking

and I didn't know what he was capable of doing to my kid.

And I just thought, "I need o get her away from this man."

I just watched him so carefully,

and he was sitting right next to me.

♪ ♪

He started nodding off.

And he--for the one moment of the entire night,

he didn't have the gun in his hand.

He kinda caught himself.

It was like, "Oh, I'm kinda nodding off here."

And Piper looked at me like she had the same idea,

and I was like,

"This is my job."

And he stood up.

[unsettling music]

♪ ♪

I grabbed the gun,

and I buckled the back of his knee.

And I shot at him.

[gunshot, high-pitched ringing]

I missed.

And I thought, "I have to hold on to this gun for dear life."

- [groans]

- He just started beating on my head

and beating on my arms.

And finally, he hit me so hard in the head

that I released the gun.

And he grabbed it...

[sighs] And aimed right at me.

And my first thought was, "He's going to kill me,

and I don't want Piper to see that."

I thought I was dead.

I thought my kids will not have a mom.

So I ran in the bathroom and used the door

to hopefully be a barrier for that bullet.

And then I heard a click...

[gun clicks] And the gun did not go off.

And I hear Piper out there saying,

"Please don't hurt my mom.

I love my mom just like you love your kids."

Because that night, he had told us that he had two kids.

It was like he just all of a sudden calmed down.

He looked at Piper, and he was like, "Okay, okay, okay."

So it took me a second to regain my composure.

I was just shaking like a leaf.

Thank goodness it didn't end up any other way.

Ethan is Piper's long-time boyfriend.

So he's basically-- he is like our kid.

I mean, we just call him our own.

- After all that happened,

Ethan started calling me, and my phone started buzzing.

[phone vibrating]

And he was like, "Who's this calling you?"

I was like, "That's my boyfriend."

And I started really panicking at this point.

- He wanted things to seem normal is what he kept saying.

He wanted her to pick up that phone.

- So immediately when I answer the phone,

I was like, "Hey, I don't feel very good.

Like, you don't need to come over if you don't want to."

- I immediately could tell that something was up.

I said, "You're over at your parents' house.

I'm gonna come over."

Closer to their house, I saw police everywhere.

And so I called her and I was like, "Hey, what's going on?

Do you know what's going on?"

I think she might have said that there's some guy

that they're trying to find, something like that.

I was like, "Oh, yeah. This is crazy."

You know, of course, not knowing what was going on

on the other side of the phone.

[ominous music]

- Helicopter comes, can't find him.

I know that I need to make a decision

on what my next move is.

I did call out the tactical teams.

- My name is Jared Tadehara.

I'm with the Salt Lake City SWAT team.

In September of 2021, I was a lead sniper.

The evening before the hostage rescue,

my team and I were on a high-hazard,

no-knock search warrant for metro gangs.

And we completed that warrant service,

and I actually drove past the incident, uh,

in Farmington on my way home.

I see their command post with all their police cars

and red and blues, and I said, "Man, I'm glad I am not there."

I got to go home for an hour, and then I was called out.

- In 2021, I was an assistant team leader

with the South Davis Metro SWAT team.

And Sergeant Sheldon called me, and I was woken up

to the phone call, and he said,

"I need you now. Just get here."

I knew the next most probable thing

was that he got into somebody's house,

and there could possibly be a hostage situation.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

- [muffled screaming]

- Around 4:00, I heard screaming.

Bear in mind that I had just taken this pill,

and I'm still, like, kinda out of it.

Then I heard more screaming.

[both screaming]

- So I was like, "Something's weird.

Something's going on."

I then started walking upstairs.

And as I walk in, there's some guy standing there.

And the first thing I see is, he's got a gun.

And so I kinda, like, looked at him,

and then I looked at Holly, and I--

she looked scared, like completely scared.

And so I looked at him, and I'm like,

"Who the [...] are you, and why are you in my [...] house?"

[suspenseful music]

- There's some guy, and he's got a gun.

He's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy, easy.

We don't need to get crazy."

And I'm like, "'Get crazy'? You're in my house with a gun.

Like, what are you doing here?"

So he's like, "You need to sit down."

♪ ♪

So I just sat there, and I was trying to process, you know.

It was kind of like you just got hit with a bat,

and you're just like, "I don't even know

what's happening right now."

- And then we heard the garage open,

and we were like, "Oh, Ethan's here."

- Opened up the garage, walked in,

and first thing I saw was a gun aiming right at my stomach.

♪ ♪

[breathes deeply] And...

[cries]

[clears throat]

seeing them lined up against the wall,

oh, that was-- it was so horrible.

It was so scary.

And the looks that they were giving me,

it was--it was just like-- it was insane.

♪ ♪

I remember being so concerned about Piper and Holly.

- He was talking about ending it for himself

in the bathroom.

He told us that he would never go back to jail.

He couldn't go back to jail.

That's when I really was scared.

- This guy had a gun right at us.

Didn't put it down.

And he was walking behind us.

We were all sitting on the couch,

and he would just walk behind us.

I was actually thinking, like,

"Are these the last thoughts that I'm gonna be thinking

before it just goes black?"

[dark music]

♪ ♪

- Many years ago--

- The entire time, he made us watch a movie.

He thought the cops were, like, scanning the house

with infrared cameras or whatever,

and so he's like, "I want all you guys

to be like you're sitting on a couch watching a movie."

Holly had told him that I had to go to work,

and then he's like, "You gotta get ready to go to work."

'Cause he thought that seemed normal.

First of all, I'm like, "I'm not leaving."

But he was insistent that I leave.

So I went in the bedroom, and he put Piper on a chair.

He used Pipes as, like, his little shield.

- He had the gun, like, to the back of my head,

and I could feel it-- like it was, like,

touching the back of my head.

And I was mostly in that moment really angry

because my dad is, like, a very protective person.

And to put him in that situation

where he can't do anything about it,

I was just like, "That is such a cruel, evil thing to do

to someone's parents."

- On the side of our bed--

and that's where all my clothes were.

So I reached down to grab 'em,

and I have a gun under the mattress.

She could tell what I was thinking

'cause she knew there was a gun there also.

And she just kind of looked at me like, "Don't."

It was intense, 'cause it was like,

"Do I try to shoot this guy? Do I do this?"

And I had this weird sorta, like,

calm feeling come over me.

I could feel it. Like, it was palpable.

I heard this sort of, like, voice just like,

"Don't do anything. Don't. Don't do it.

"Everything's gonna work out fine.

It's gonna be okay."

And that's the only way I walked out of there.

So as I'm getting in my car,

he's standing with his gun like this.

The door goes down, and that's the last thing I saw.

- We were actually really winding down.

We probably had about six to eight houses to clear.

- I see a vehicle leaving a residence

at the end of the cul-de-sac.

- As I was backing out, ten cops swarmed my car.

I said, "The guy you're looking for is in my [...] house.

He's in my house."

- That's when we know that we have the real deal.

- I got up like normal. [phone vibrates]

I actually got a text from my neighbor across the stree,

and she just said, "Hey, are you okay?"

And so that was my first feeling

of thinking maybe something was wrong.

And I kind of just tried to listen

to what I could hear upstair, and I heard footsteps.

And I walked up my stairs.

And then I saw a man that I didn't know

standing there with a gun, and his back was facing me.

It was probably the scariest thing I've ever felt--

the most fear I've ever felt.

He didn't see me, luckily, and I ran down my stairs.

- He heard, like, some movement.

And when he was like, "I thik your daughter's awake,

we need to go look down there."

And he was nervous that it ws either her being awake

or that police were starting to come into the house.

And I was terrified. I was literally terrified.

I was like, "If we see Presley, and we go into her room

"with some random man with a gun to the back of us,

she's going to lose her mind."

- He had Piper and Ethan, and I start looking around.

We went downstairs, and Piper and I looked at each other.

And we were just,

please let some--some sort of miracle happen again.

And we get to Presley's bedroom,

and the door's shut.

[tense music]

And we open the door...

♪ ♪

And see her window open.

[sighs] And the breeze is brushing through the curtains.

I looked at Piper, and we just had tears in our eyes.

We were like, "Oh, she got out."

[gentle music]

♪ ♪

When Joe saw that she was out,

Piper and I instantly said, "Oh, do you know what?

"She does this all the time. She sneaks out.

"She probably did that last night,

and we didn't even know it."

He was just easy to kind of fool in some ways.

- And I run out my bedroom window into my front yard.

[tense music]

It was pitch black.

And then I just felt someone grab me.

- I just felt someone grab me.

[suspenseful music]

And they just said, "We have your dad,

and we're gonna make sure everything ends up okay."

- The officers that were thee on scene took her.

It was identified as Presley.

[indistinct radio chatter]

And then she gave me the information

of what she had seen.

- We learned that the suspect, Joseph Manhard,

had committed multiple aggravated felonies

with a firearm,

fled from police, and had taken a family hostage.

He made multiple statements that he would not go back

to prison and he would not leave there alive.

If somebody tells me that they are not leaving

somewhere alive, I'm inclined to believe 'em.

Bad things were gonna happen.

- One of the guys said, "'Kay, we need you to leave

and go to the police station."

And then that's where we ended up waiting.

♪ ♪

- After Presley got out, the police started calling us

on all of our phones.

[phones ringing, vibrating]

At first, he wasn't having us answer the phone calls,

and so they started texting us.

[phones chiming, vibrating]

- So now Joe is really getting frantic.

He's getting scared.

- He was like, "I'm just gonna have Ethan deal with them."

- Ethan was the one that would talk to them.

And Joe would tell him exactly what to say.

You know, he'd say, "We're not in any trouble.

We're fine." You know, and--

and it just went back and forth.

- He just instantly kind of took a liking to Ethan.

Ethan has a very calm, calm energy.

He kind of wanted Ethan to take over

those conversations with the negotiators.

- We're getting a lot of different information

from the Samuelsons.

Luckily, a negotiator got Ethan on the phone

with the suspect away from him.

- Ethan was able to answer one of, like,

the most critical questions that they had asked us

on the call honestly without Joe hearing him.

- They asked me, "Are you free to leave?"

And I told them, "No."

- He said, "We are not free to leave.

This guy is going to hurt us."

- There was no moment of any sort of relief.

It was just...

what is going to happen next?

Joe actually ended up calling his brother

and talking to him.

And he said,

"I'm in big trouble. I'm in big trouble."

And we could hear his brother on the other side

saying, "Don't do anything, Joe.

Don't do anything. Please don't hurt them."

I think he knew that this was getting serious now.

- Our plan from the very beginning

was securing the hostages, and hopefully,

subduing the suspect.

We did get the information at that time

that the threat level had been raised to open authority.

Open authority is a command-level decision

that the criteria for the use of deadly force has been met.

In the simplest terms, somebody is posing a lethal threat,

I should find them and stop them from being

that lethal threat as soon as possible.

- So all the information that we had said

that he was on the east side of the house.

They could see him peeking through windows.

So we had initially deployed all of our resources, uh,

as far as our marksmen go, to the east side of the house.

- Officer Mackie and I set up.

I set him up on gun first,

and then I began studying pictures of the suspect--

everything from the shape of the face, to the eye color,

to how the nose looked, to facial hair.

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- Suspect says, "All right,

"I'm gonna bring everybody to the front door

to show you that-- that they're all okay."

- He opened that door...

and I was thinking, "As soon as that door opens,

"they're gonna be guys out there trying to work with him

to get him to come out."

It was just silent.

There was no one there.

- We could see a little bit of the east side of the home.

- Front door's on the west side.

- We were really sniper heavy on the east side,

and we didn't have the front door covered.

So that was a mistake on my part.

- Nobody could see the door.

We missed our opportunity.

There's no way he's gonna come back to that door.

- He's like, "Okay, no one's here to get me."

That door shut, and we just were in shock.

Because now what?

- We sprinted out of that hoe and down the street,

and we were able to make it over a fence.

And so we were able to see our front door

and still be fairly concealed.

- I look at the lead negotiator,

and I said, "He's gonna do that again.

And it'll be the last thing that he ever does."

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- The negotiators, they were asking us

to step downstairs and open the door.

And we had to talk him into it, you know.

- I tried to talk to him about, you know, you could--

you could make the right choice for your kids.

They could see you finally make a good choice.

If you walk out and surrender, you can start over.

You know, I was trying to work that way with him,

and he seemed to like that idea.

So when they made him come to the door for the second time,

he gave me a look that I will not ever forget--

like he knew his life was over.

But I did not ever even think

that what happened would happen.

[tense music]

- He opened the door. I was standing--

well, we were all standing right behind him.

- The front door opened.

I could see the family approaching

the threshold of the door.

Piper, she had her hands up, and she was crying.

Holly Jo was next to her, and she looked terrified.

Joseph Manhard had pulled himself up against the wall

and pulled the door into him,

and he was hiding behind the door.

Slowly, I see his head start to peek around the door,

and I knew immediately it was him.

Well, once I made the positive ID

and I knew the hostages weren't making any attempt

to cross the threshold, that they were not free to leave,

I made the decision to fire.

- And then... [gunshot]

- Just the loudest sound you could ever imagine.

- Boom, like, it happened in an instant.

- I felt good when I touched it off.

It was a good shot. I've trained for that shot.

It was well within my capabilities at that range.

I knew it was a good shot, but the door closed.

- We weren't sure if, in fact, the suspect was shot and hit,

or if the bullet missed,

and now he is inside going to kill our hostages.

[gunshot]

- I just remember coming out of the command post

and just pacing and pacing.

I need some confirmation that the Samuelsons are okay.

- I blacked out.

Came to just to see him folding and falling.

- And I just screamed.

- I was covered in his blood.

My mom was.

Ethan got hit with the shrapnel.

- I thought in that moment

that a piece of his skull or something hit me.

Holly was screaming, "They killed him.

They killed him."

- Then you hear this swarming--like,

this huge sound from everywhere in the house

of the SWAT guys coming in.

It was just chaos.

[indistinct screaming]

I can't even describe it. I was just terrified

and in shock and could barely hold myself up.

The SWAT guys grabbed us and just held us up.

All of a sudden, it's just slow motion,

and these guys are just embracing us.

And I just remember just looking up in the sky,

like, just thinking, "God, like, we did it.

Like, we made it."

[gentle music]

[helicopter whirring]

- Finally, over the radio somebody said,

"The hostages are secure."

♪ ♪

- The confirmation is great, and--and just--

just a flood of emotions happen.

- I just ran outside and was waiting to see them.

And I went to hug my sister 'cause

she just looked so...

♪ ♪

Like, scared and defeated.

- And they were just, like, all out in the front

with, like, open arms waiting for us to, like, hug them.

- It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

- You don't know what you're leaving your family to,

and you don't know how that's gonna turn out.

And to hear that everybody was safe,

I was just so, so grateful.

- I'm not a killer.

On one hand, I'm extremely proud.

I'm proud of my team. I'm proud of what I did.

Husband and wife get to stay together and experience,

you know, the joys of raising children.

For all those good things to happen,

I had to commit a terrible act of violence

on another human being.

- I got into this profession, I got into the SWAT team

to save people's lives, and we did that that night.

- My whole entire career was, like, for this moment.

All the years of training, all the sacrifice

and everything was for that--for them.

- You always wonder what you would do

in a situation like that.

In the end, I'm so grateful

because Piper and I saved each other.

After something like that happens,

your bond is just that much deeper.

We just don't take each other for granted at all.

♪ ♪

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