PINNACLE LAKE: Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden
It’s no secret that nature is one of the things people love most about the Pacific Northwest. And the outdoors are supposed to be a peaceful place, where you can go to clear your head and escape from the real world. So when two avid hikers, who spent a lot of their time outdoors, were seemingly executed on a trail in 2006, it was a harsh reality check for people here in Washington State. And it was a complete nightmare for the victims’ family. On this episode of Washed Away, I’m covering the unsolved murders of mother and daughter, Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden.
Sources for this episode include: KOMO, WTA, The Seattle Times, The LA Times, and The Everett Herald. Stats on “stranger murder” came from OJP and UCR.
Thanks to David for getting coffee with me and answering my questions. And thanks to Josh from True Crime Bullshit for sharing his insight and research about Israel Keyes.
People with tips are encouraged to call the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 425-388-3845
Above you can see David’s latest ad that’s currently running in The Everett Herald.
Transcript-
Ashley: It’s no secret that nature is one of the things people love most about the Pacific Northwest. And the outdoors are supposed to be a peaceful place, where you can go to clear your head and escape from the real world. So when two avid hikers, who spent a lot of their time outdoors, were seemingly executed on a trail in 2006, it was a harsh reality check for people here in Washington State. And it was a complete nightmare for the victims’ family. On this episode of Washed Away, I’m covering the unsolved murders of mother and daughter, Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden.
David: I mean typically people say the longer it goes on, the harder they are to solve. You know, sometimes people say these things are usually solved, that's what the cops told me, when somebody gets Jesus or they break up with their boyfriend.
Ashley: For this episode I’ll be talking to David Stodden, husband of Mary and father of Susanna. I had been trying to interview David for months but our schedules just never aligned, so when he called me on a Wednesday afternoon and asked to meet for coffee, I jumped at the chance. I was out running errands and wasn’t able to run home and get my recorder - so this audio is from my iPhone - and we’re outside, at a coffee shop, so you’ll hear some background sounds. My apologies… but it’s so important to me that I talk to someone close to the case for each episode and I think the audio challenges are worth it.
David: They were both really fantastic people and very high performers. Mary was a school librarian and just really had a brilliant brain. Uh, she was really a leader in the school librarian community, um, and, uh, Susanna, she was a 27 year old educator who had just gotten back from a trip in Nepal and was excited. She just gotten a job, at a, private school to be an environmental educator. Um, and she was an avid hiker. She hiked by herself sometimes. Uh, but, um, just a real, kind of a Buddha like person, a person that just made you comfortable to be around her. Um, but they both were people that worked really hard to serve their community every day of their life. Sounds like they had a lot of, a lot of friends, a lot of coworkers that really cared about them. Yeah. Yeah. They really both of them. I mean, I don't think anybody didn't like, didn't like either one of them at all. So, and they still do have a lot of people care about them.
Ashley: Mary was 56 years old, she was a wife of 28 years, a mother of 3 daughters, and a librarian for one of Seattle’s Elementary Schools. Her daughter Susanna was only 27 years old and was ready to start work as a teaching intern after graduating from Western Washington University. The entire Stodden family are very active, outdoorsy people that love to hike and it wasn’t unusual for Mary and Susanna to spend time in nature, either out for a hike together or solo. On July 11th 2006, the two women set out for the day planning to hike Mount Pilchuck, but for some reason changed their minds and headed for nearby Pinnacle Lake instead. The Pinnacle Lake trail is located in Snohomish County, just east of Granite Falls. Alltrails.com describes the 4 mile hike as moderate, but most reviews warn of the rough road leading up to the trailhead, apparently it’s 6 miles long and filled with deep potholes. Why did Mary and Susanna change their hike location? Because of possible snow or.. something else? We may never know for sure… but we do know that they arrived at the trailhead, parked their 1997 purple Dodge Caravan, and started their hike to the lake. Mary and Susanna were last seen alive around 10am that morning.
David: Was that a hike that Mary and Susanna had done before? I don’t think so. I don't know if we, you know, we hiked a lot as a family, but I don't know if we ever went up there. I don't really think so. And I'm not quite sure why. And then we're supposed to go somewhere else that day. Right. They were going to go to Mount Pilchuck. Yeah. And as they were headed out the door, it snowed a lot that year. And I know I just told Mary, well, maybe you don't want to go to Pilchuck. Maybe do you have your snow shoes or something? So they changed their mind in route. And I know Susanna had the hiking book, so they must have just picked something else out of say Northwest hike book. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.
Ashley: David had spent that day working on a house near Green Lake, he’s a contractor. When he got home at 5:30pm that evening, he was surprised that Mary wasn’t back yet. She had left early that morning. David was training for a big cycling trip and had planned to bike with a friend that night. He assumed by the time he got back, surely Mary would be there. Or ya know - he’d hear from her. When David got back from his bike ride that night, he was really worried. Mary still wasn’t home and she wasn’t answering her phone. So he tried Susanna, but had no luck there either. That’s when David called the police. By 10pm he was ready to go to Mount Pilchuck and search for the women himself, but by then detectives had arrived to break the news. Mary and Susanna had been killed. Some initial reports talked about a possible animal attack… I guess it took a little while to determine how they had died, but eventually the truth came out. They’d been shot in the head with a small caliber handgun. No attempt was made to hide their bodies, but conflicting reports mention them possibly being posed. While no sexual assault has been reported, the women were found with some of their clothes removed.
David: Medium or hard hike? Actually it’s not that far but there's, there's, there's not really good trails. So that makes it kind of hard. And there's a pretty big, a couple of pitches that you have to kind of crawl on your hands and knees. Oh wow. Or, or, you know, you have to use your hands because it's, it's real steep and there's not a good trail. And is there a lot of roots, but I've gone up there with 50 different people and they all make it, cause it isn't that far, you know, it's like a couple miles maybe. Okay. And there's a, there's a little lake in about a half mile that fishermen still go to, but there's not, I mean, people still do hike up there because it's kind of a back way to get up to Mount Pilchuck, but they haven't kept the road up the last five years. So it's really, you know, there's brushing going in more and more huge potholes. You almost need a four wheel drive to get up there. Is it a popular hiking place? Like crowded? No. I mean the day that Mary and Susanna were there, there were maybe two or three or four or five other parties on the trail that day, which isn't no, it's not much, it's six miles up a gravel road. That's a big problem. I mean, because a lot of people don't want to put their cars through that. Um, and it was not a, you're not on a mountain top. You're at a couple of lakes in a Cirque, you know? So I mean, it's a beautiful place, but um, I say it's not real…. fewer people who are there now, it used to be, when I went up there, there was always a couple of cars the last couple of times there. And they never, um, like the amount of cars that were in that parking lot. Like they were five or six that day. I think they had… I don't know if they had pictures of them, but yeah. I mean, two, at least two or three different parties have called me up, who said they were up there that day. And one guy who actually a couple and, and a woman, uh, they followed Mary and Susanna up the road. And then they passed em when they were hiking up and they were going up around the backside of pilchuck. And they're the ones that actually thought they might've heard gunshots. They thought it might've been thunder. Right. And they came back down and saw their bodies.
Ashley: Like you heard David just mention, other hikers on the trail that day don’t recall hearing gunshots, but at least a couple people heard what sounded like thunder. Or at least what they thought was thunder at the time. At 2:30 pm, a hiker called 911 after they had discovered the bodies of Mary and Susanna up the trail. This was just before the couple found them as well. And there’s nowhere else to go on that trail, you go up and come down the exact same way. So it’s not hard to imagine that whoever killed these women passed other hikers on the way back to the trailhead and parking lot. And it makes me think: Who would kill people knowing they had to hike 2 miles back to their car and then slowly and carefully drive 6 miles down a gravel road to get away? Or did their killer escape into the woods somehow? People wondered if perhaps Mary and Susanna met someone at a gas station that followed them or maybe they encountered someone at the trailhead besides the couple. These women have been described by everyone as caring and giving and wonderful, so it would be extremely out of character for them to get into any kind of confrontation with a stranger. Mary and Susanna’s backpacks were reportedly left untouched, so robbery doesn’t seem to have been a motive. So then, was the killer just waiting along the trail then… for whoever happened to walk by… with the sole purpose of killing someone that day. It’s a terrifying thought and one that was all too real for other hikers that just happened to be in the area.
Ashley: A few days after news broke of the murders on Pinnacle Lake trail, a witness… who I’m assuming is part of the couple that David mentioned, came forward by posting on the nwhikers.net forum. Where at the time speculation was running rampant. Here’s what they had to say:
“I have not spoken of this to anyone except the authorities, but the genuine concern on this thread prompts me to speak up. I don't want to jeopardize the investigation by saying too much, but I am having a hard time keeping clammed up.
My wife and I were the last normal people to see Mary and Susanna alive. They and we arrived at the trailhead at the same time and we had a pleasant conversation with them before we headed up the trail. They were reading the board at the trailhead as we headed up and presumably they soon followed. They seemed like exceptionally nice people and if we had had the same itinerary, we may have hiked with them...which haunts me because then I wonder if this would have happened if we had been a group of four instead of just two women. But we were heading up the East Ridge scramble route on Pilchuck and they were just going to the lake and we needed to move fast because we already were getting a late start. So we took off and did not see them alive again.
On our way up, we saw no illegal activity going on, nor any other people. On our way down, we came upon the scene. I cannot describe it because again, authorities haven't released any info and I am not at liberty to reveal what they have chosen to hold back. But I will say this: we heard no gunshots at any time even though we were never more than a couple crow-fly miles away from the scene; and the bodies were NOT in a fetal position, despite some reports to that effect. I can say no more about that.
I can also say that we have never spent a more terrifying half-hour than our hike back to the trailhead. We had one ice ax between us which I held at the ready the entire time, not knowing if we would be attacked by a killer still lurking in the area. At the time we did not know that the scene had already been discovered and reported by someone else. We did not know Mary or Susanna before we met them at the trailhead, but we feel a horrible sense of loss that someone we met going out for a pleasant day hike had that happen to them just a couple hours later.” end quote
David: It was in a very difficult place. And so there were no witnesses and probably it was one person. So there's not a, I mean that person's probably connected to somebody, but, uh, maybe he hasn't told anybody. And you think with the passage of time, maybe someone knows something, might be willing to come forward. That's always a possibility that top people die too. Yeah, no, 15 years is quite a while. So, um, although I think the person who did this was probably in their twenties or thirties or forties, and it wasn't the older person. Because of having to like climb up the hill? Yeah. Any normal person wouldn't do that.
Ashley: David and his two other daughters went hiking together in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, which isn’t too far from Pinnacle Lake… just a few days after Mary and Susanna were murdered. They didn’t want to feel like victims and they didn’t want to fear something that was so special to them, being outdoors. Some people found this suspicious… which I think is ridiculous. Everyone grieves differently. But David in particular was seen as a suspect at the time. He’s taken three polygraph tests over the years. The first two were early on in the investigation and were both inconclusive, the third one was taken in 2018 - and David passed. It was then that the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office finally cleared him as a suspect. Meaning David spent 12 years on a possible suspect list for the murders of his wife and daughter.
Ashley: I was curious if there had been anything since 2018. Cause that was kind of when it was when the case was like last in the news a lot after you took that third polygraph…
David: I haven't heard anything. I was building s house is a time for, like I said, been doing that for the last couple of years. I guess I've saved up a little money and I'm going to spend it to try to solve this, help solve it.
Ashley: During that time, David grew understandably frustrated with the absence of progress in his loved ones’ case. And he has been known to run ads in a local paper: the Everett Herald asking for tips, that’s what he meant by what he wants to do with the money he’s saved up. Bring back the ads. And he has. The most recent one reads: Failure in Snohomish County. 15 years ago, Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden were shot in the head with a small caliber handgun while hiking Pinnacle Lake Trail. There have been no charges, no arrests, no convictions…
For the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, this is obviously a hard case to solve… which is why I think they looked at David for so long - because if this truly was a completely random murder, then unless someone comes forward with info that they heard or saw or unless the killer confesses - there’s really nowhere to go with the investigation. I asked David if there’s DNA in this case that can be tested, but he wasn’t sure. According to some data from The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, less than 10% of murders are committed by strangers. At least that was the case for the year 2017. And that same year only 62% of murders in the United States were solved, which means 38% went unsolved and the number of unsolved violent crimes in this country aka cold cases continues to go up every year. The last estimate was something like 250,000 unsolved murders across the US alone. So, where do we go from here? Well another suspect that was looked at for killing Mary and Susanna was actually a serial killer - Israel Keyes.
Josh: My name's Josh Hallmark, and I am the host of true crime bullshit which is a serialized podcast that explores serial killer Israel keyes and is investigating his unknown and unnamed victims.
Ashley: Since Josh has been researching Israel Keyes for years, I figured he would be the perfect person to talk to about whether or not Keyes could be connected to Mary and Susanna’s murders. If you’re not familiar with Israel Keyes, he killed at least 11 strangers between 1998 and his arrest in 2012. He lived in Washington State for awhile and at least 4 of his victims are thought to be from the area. Sadly, there have been very few answers for his victims’ families because he took his own life in jail shortly after he was caught. So I had emailed you about this Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden case, which is a mother and daughter who were shot on a hiking trail in Washington in 2006. And you mentioned you were familiar with it and that your listeners actually submit that case to you quite a bit asking if, uh, keyes could be involved.
Josh: Yeah, it comes up a lot. I would say. Um, you know, there's a handful of cases that I get asked about on a weekly basis and this is one of them, um, which makes sense because they're in the same area, uh, at the same time. And it actually comes up in the FBI files. Uh, so I FOIA’ed this case years ago and, uh, the, the case files, I think are over 4,000 pages in it, the FBI, along with local law enforcement agencies across the country evaluate plausible victims. Um, and the Cooper stodden case is one such case. And I think you have to approach it from two different angles. One like could feasibly keyes be responsible and then would keyes be responsible? So the could is logistically that day is a strange day for him. He has a, he rented a car that day.
Josh: Um, but no one knows from where he rented it, how many miles he put on it, or when he returned it, they just know that he got a, um, he had a transaction for a rental car through Hertz on that day. They do know three hours before the girls went hiking. He had multiple phone pings and transactions in Neah bay, which is if you are not from Washington and you look at a map, it's going to feel very close. But driving from Neah bay to this area is a trek, uh, because you're crossing ferries or driving around a mountain range, I think, but last time I calculated it, it was like four and a half or five hours. So that makes it a little challenging, but not impossible. However, two hours, um, after they were noticed to be missing, he has more transactions and more cell phone pings in Neah bay, which again closes the window of possibility to almost being impossible for him.
Josh: Um, so there's that what I'm more compelled by is the could or would keyes have done this crime. He was a sexually motivated serial killer. And he told the FBI and the little evidence we do have seems to corroborate this, that he liked to strangle his victims. He was, he wanted the personal intimacy. He wanted the control. Um, it was also part of the rape. Usually for him is strangling them to a point of passing out and then waiting for them to wake up and doing it over and over and over again. And he told the FBI, he only shot one victim and it was Bill Courier. And he shot him because he had lost control of him. So neither Mary nor Susanna were. There's no signs, they were sexually assaulted. They were both shot. And, um, they were both left essentially on the trail.
Josh: I know they were somewhat off the trail, but they were quite visible. Only one of keyes’ victims has ever been recovered. And it's because keyes led the FBI to where her remains were. He was quite good at hiding bodies, uh, even a few other victims where he tried to lead the FBI to where they were. They have not been recovered. So I think the combination of them being shot and not strangled there being no signs of a sexual assault along with the fact that their bodies were left fairly out in the open, um, does not seem like a crime keyes would have committed. And then when you combine that with it being not impossible, but quite close to being impossible for him to have actually committed the crime, I just don't think he's a reasonable suspect. And all that said, um, neither do the FBI. Uh, they had a long talk with local law enforcement. They looked into it pretty extensively and both agencies agreed that this probably wasn't a Keyes crime.
Ashley: The FBI ruled out Keyes as a suspect in 2013 and while it’s all but certain that he did kill a couple of people in Washington State, it’s highly unlikely that he killed Mary and Susanna. Which is both a relief and somewhat a disappointment… because a serial killer is exactly the kind of person you would expect who would shoot two women on a hiking trail in broad daylight… and if he had done it, this case would be solved. But now we know another killer was lurking around Washington State at the same time. Obviously we still don’t know who that person was, but someone out there has to know something.
Is there anything that I can do, that the media can do, or the public can do? Like my listeners? Like how can we help you?
David: Try to get people to come forward with information. Just like more eyes and Ears on? I think so. Uh, that's the only thing I can think. I mean, I still do believe there are people that have information about this other than the killer who haven't really been afraid to come forward, or it's quite likely too, people have information that they don't know. They have. That's been the hard part. I know I've driven up there like for the last 30 years, and there's always people pretty much year round fishing in the river and they, and they, when a car drives by, they almost always turn it look. So there's at least a 50% chance somebody was fishing that day and saw the car driver. Right. And maybe the car was driving fast, you know, probably maybe there was like 20 cars while they were there fishing. I, you know, I tried to get the cops to look, reach out for that information, but they wouldn't ever do it. So, so there's information like that. And it's been quite a while. Um, but there, I do believe there are people out there that have information.
Ashley: If you have any tips about who killed Mary Cooper and Susanna Stodden on July 11, 2006 while they were hiking the Lake Pinnacle Trail, please call the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 425-388-3845. The women drove a dark purple Dodge Caravan that would have been parked at the trailhead that day. If you went hiking, fishing, or camping in that area in July 2006 and have any photos or videos with possible clues - like maybe a license plate or someone you don’t recognize standing in the background… please report it. Other witnesses could be out there and not even know they have crucial information that could help this case. Again the phone number you should call is 425-388-3845.
Over a thousand people attended the memorial of Mary and Susanna. Trees were planted in their name, donations were made in their honor, and if you ever hike the Pinnacle Lake Trail you’ll probably see a plaque with their names on it. They’re remembered fondly by all who knew them and even by those of us who didn’t.
Ashley: Washed away as a cosmic Bigfoot production, you can find show notes for each episode at washedawaypodcast.com. That includes photos, transcripts, sources, and more. follow the show on Instagram and Twitter @washedawaypod. And please remember to subscribe or follow washed away wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like my work, please leave a five-star rating or review, or just tell a friend about the podcast. I really appreciate it. I'm Ashley Smith, the host, producer, and everything else at this podcast. And I can't thank you enough for listening. I wish I could say that I'll have another episode ready for you very soon, but it's going to be a while until the next one. Hopefully early 2022, I'll have some very exciting news and a lot more episodes for you to listen to.
