Murder of Nancy Pfister

Nancy Merle Pfister was born July 4, 1956, in Orofino, Idaho, and raised in Basalt, Colorado, where her father had founded the Buttermilk Ski Resort. She was widely known in the Aspen area as a "small-town socialite" and had raised two children as a single mother in a log home built by her father in 1991. Shortly before her death, Pfister rented part of the home to Trey Styler, a retired doctor, and his wife Nancy Styler, in order to help pay her mortgage.

On the evening of February 26, 2014, Pfister's friend Kathy Carpenter grew concerned after Pfister missed work and did not return calls. Carpenter drove to Pfister's secluded home on Buttermilk Mountain and, using a skeleton key, opened a locked closet in the master bedroom, where she discovered Pfister's body. Pfister had been beaten with a hammer and struck with an ax; the medical examiner determined she died of blunt force trauma to the head and exsanguination, with no defensive wounds, suggesting she was attacked while asleep. Investigators found the mattress had been flipped to conceal a large pool of blood beneath it.

Investigators focused on the Stylers after learning of a rent dispute: the couple had stopped paying rent over unaddressed maintenance issues, and Pfister had begun evicting them. Both Stylers denied involvement when questioned, and Trey Styler failed a polygraph, but police lacked sufficient evidence to charge them at the time. A break came when a city worker in Basalt found a bloody hammer, pill bottles bearing Pfister's name, and a vehicle registration for the Stylers' Jaguar in a public trash bin behind the motel where the couple was staying; a key to the closet where Pfister's body was found was also located outside their motel room. The Stylers were arrested on March 3, 2014.

Investigators later theorized that Kathy Carpenter may have assisted in the crime, based on her 911 call and statements she made about the crime scene, and she was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Carpenter maintained her innocence throughout.

In October 2014, both Trey and Nancy Styler were charged with Pfister's murder. Shortly afterward, Trey Styler confessed, describing in detail how he beat Pfister with a hammer and then struck her with an ax after entering her home to confront her over her treatment of his wife regarding the rental dispute. As part of a plea agreement, charges against Nancy Styler and Kathy Carpenter were dropped, and Trey Styler pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, receiving a life sentence later commuted to 20 years.

On August 6, 2015, Trey Styler was found dead in his cell at Arrowhead Correctional Facility in Cañon City, Colorado; an autopsy concluded he died by suicide. He was 67. In 2015, Nancy Styler published a memoir about the case that drew criticism from Pfister's family and local officials, including then-Pitkin County Sheriff Brad Gibson.