Nancy Merle Pfister was an American woman who was found murdered on February 26, 2014, in a walk-in closet of her secluded home in the Rocky Mountains.
Styler claimed he killed Pfister as "punishment" for adding an interest rate to the couple's rent after they refused to pay for over three months.
The Stylers had stopped paying rent after living with Pfister for 2 months, due to minor broken utilities in the home that she refused to fix.
Nancy was the daughter of Art Pfister, who made a fortune when he turned his family cattle ranch into the Buttermilk Ski Resort in 1958.
Her mother, Betty Haas Pfister, was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II, who in later years flew a helicopter, which she was notoriously known for parking in the family's driveway.
In their youth, Nancy and her two sisters met John F. Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Cher and Michael Douglas when they vacationed at her parents' ski resort.
She continued to help run the family business which, at the time, played a major role in the local tourism industry.
Shortly before the time of her death, she rented a portion of the house to retired doctor Trey Styler and his wife Nancy as a way to help pay off her mortgage.
After learning that Nancy had not shown up for her job as a tour guide for two days, Carpenter drove to Pfister's secluded log home on the north slope of Buttermilk Mountain.
Police immediately became suspicious when they received information that Pfister and her then 16-year-old son had abruptly returned home early from vacation a week prior to her murder.
Kathy Carpenter told them that she had picked the two up from the airport, driven them home, and was asked by Pfister if she could stay at the house over the weekend.
Carpenter left a note on the door for guests, saying that Pfister was sleeping, and to call her to see if she was awake enough to talk before entering the house.
Things became even more strange on Wednesday when Pfister's roommates Trey and Nancy Styler called Kathy Carpenter to tell her that they had recently moved out.
Carpenter drove over to care for Pfister's dog and decided to check on her later that night, then she found Nancy's body in the closet.
Shortly afterward, they zeroed in on Trey and Nancy Styler, the couple who had been renting her house as there were no signs of forced entry.
In 1986, they moved to a large house in Valley Center, Kansas, which they had built together, and became world-renowned for their shared hobby of growing the Victoria water lily.
The Stylers purchased matching Harley-Davidson motorcycles sometime in the early 1990s and began making frequent trips to the Aspen area around the same time.
[1] In the summer of 2013, the couple sold their Kansas home, rented 2 storage units in Northglenn, Colorado, and began temporarily staying with friends in the Denver area.
The dispute stemmed from Pfister's refusal to fix minor broken utilities in the home, including a leaky faucet as well as various power outlets that no longer worked.
Nancy Pfister was unhappy, but told her friends and family she did not feel it was right to evict the couple during the Christmas holiday season.
The Stylers paid Pfister a total of $6000 during their stay, which she kept in a safe deposit box at the same bank where Kathy Carpenter was employed.
Another important piece of evidence came when investigators discovered the owner's key to the closet in which Nancy Pfister's body was found outside the Stylers' hotel room.
Shortly afterward, investigators developed a theory that Kathy Carpenter had helped the two commit the crime based upon the way she made her 911 call,[3] which supposedly contained 39 "indicators of guilt," and multiple statements Carpenter allegedly made to investigators describing items she had seen at the crime scene that seemed impossible to have been observed.
He had taken a plea bargain: Confess and plead guilty to first degree murder, and both his wife Nancy and Kathy Carpenter would be released.
He told police that he quietly made his way to the bedroom, and while he watched Nancy Pfister sleep, all the rage that had built inside him, from the time his health began to decline, spilled out of him all at once.
"[5] Styler describes Pfister as having borderline personality disorder and seems to glorify her husband (one chapter is titled "Trey to the Rescue"), all while maintaining she knew nothing about the murder.
Styler accused Pitkin County investigators of mishandling evidence, a point about which Carpenter's attorney strongly agreed, and "having it out for her from the beginning."
Pitkin County Sheriff Brad Gibson said about the book "Throwing those kinds of stones at a woman who's been the victim of a murder is a horrible thing to do.