It was late September 1996 when 15-year-old Danielle “Danni” Houchins was found dead in a swampy stretch of the Gallatin River near Belgrade, Montana. Her pickup had been located earlier; searchers returned to the woods and, in the dark, two family friends found her body.
At first, officials told the family the death could be an accidental drowning. Local sheriff’s statements and early media reports gave no indication of foul play. The family — avid outdoors people who found the idea that Danni, a competent mountain kid who fished, hiked and skied, would simply fall and drown in shallow mud — was baffled and devastated. Rumors raced through the small town; friends and classmates were frightened and confused.
Behind the scenes, the coroner’s initial findings were more complicated than the public was led to believe. Danni had inhaled water and mud; she had bruises, cuts and signs consistent with a possible sexual assault. There were vaginal injuries and semen on her underwear; subcutaneous bruising on the back of her neck suggested force had been used to hold her head down. A young deputy, Keith Farquhar, who was first on the scene and later assigned to work the case, pressed those concerns but said he was ridiculed by the sheriff at the time. Disillusioned, Farquhar left the sheriff’s office months later.
For decades the family lived with a hole where answers should have been. They tried to accept an accidental explanation, but they kept asking questions. Over the years, multiple attempts to get usable DNA from the evidence at the Montana State Crime Lab failed. The case lingered as unsolved and the family felt neglected and lied to about the scope of injuries.
More than two decades later, interest in the case was renewed. Detective Sergeant Matt Boxmeyer discovered the family had been given little information and that earlier testing had not produced usable profiles. By 2021 he told the family he believed Danni’s death was a homicide, prompting renewed effort to examine evidence and pursue modern testing.
Sheriff Dan Springer, who had been a rookie deputy when Danni died and later became sheriff, made the case a priority. He brought in Tom Elfmont, a retired LAPD captain and investigator known for persistence, to reexamine the file and evidence. Elfmont re-tested clothing and preserved items, and sought the latest DNA techniques.
The pivotal breakthrough came from private lab work and investigative genetic genealogy. Four male hairs found on Danni’s body had long been considered “rootless” and previously yielded no usable DNA. Elfmont connected with Astrea Forensics, a private lab using advanced methods, and after testing the last of those hairs, a full suspect DNA profile was recovered. With judicial approval, investigators turned to genetic genealogy expert CeCe Moore to identify the donor through public genealogy databases.
Moore built family trees from the partial profile and zeroed in on a lineage whose descendants led to a man who had moved to Bozeman in July 1996 — just weeks before Danni’s death in September. On May 1, 2024, investigators believed they had identified a suspect: Paul Hutchinson, then 27 at the time of the killing and later a married father working as a fisheries biologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Dillon, Montana. Hutchinson was known locally as an outdoorsman and respected in hunting and fishing circles; he had no criminal record.
Elfmont and a partner arranged to speak with Hutchinson on July 23, 2024, approaching him under the pretext of discussing fisheries. Their body‑cam recording shows Hutchinson invited them into his office and quickly became visibly nervous when shown photographs, including one of Danni, and when asked about access sites and the Cameron Bridge area where her body had been found. Hutchinson confirmed he had been to the area and showed distress; he denied knowing Danni or remembering the event and denied being there on the date in question.
Investigators followed him after the interview. Within 12 hours, Hutchinson was dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a remote location; he had called the sheriff’s dispatch asking for help. Subsequent DNA testing matched Hutchinson’s DNA to the semen found on Danni’s underwear. Authorities described the statistical likelihood of another man being the source as astronomically small.
For Danni’s sister, Stephanie Mollet, the revelation that a living man had been identified — and then died by suicide before facing charges — produced mixed emotions: relief that the truth was finally known, grief over the loss and anger at how the case had been handled for years. At a news conference she publicly accused past leaders of the sheriff’s office of lying to the family and betraying their trust. Sheriff Dan Springer, who reopened the investigation, acknowledged that earlier reports had been misleading and that the family had not been given the full truth.
Friends and community members who knew Hutchinson expressed shock and betrayal. One longtime acquaintance, who had considered him a mentor, said she felt gutted and outraged that someone she trusted could be responsible. Investigators said Hutchinson’s profile and activities made him a known presence on waterways near where Danni was killed, including work‑study roles and trapping or fishing access in the mid-1990s.
The case’s resolution raised other concerns: investigators and family members fear there may be other victims. Elfmont said he thinks that is possible. Mollet has pushed for reforms in how Montana funds and supervises law enforcement so other cases don’t fall by the wayside, and she continues to honor Danni’s memory. Years earlier the family had spread some of Danni’s ashes on Sacagawea Peak; in the wake of the case’s renewal Stephanie returned to the Gallatin River to scatter the last of her sister’s ashes.
For nearly 28 years Danni’s death had left a community and a family searching for answers. Advanced DNA testing, genetic genealogy and persistent investigative work ultimately identified a suspect and provided the family long-sought confirmation of what had happened the night a teenage girl’s life was violently taken.
