Transcript of Unanswered Questions

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Women are the fastest growing force in podcasts. I'm Brittany Luce, and on the It's been a Minute podcast, I create a space for curious and culturally savvy listeners like you.

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Before we begin, just a trigger warning. The following episode contains references to graphic physical violence. Please listen with care.

We lost our matriarch work. I lost the love of my life.

When Victoria Heard found out her beloved mother, Claudia, and stepfather, Chip, had been killed, her whole world fell apart.

She was my world. She was the past and the future. And that's changed now.

She couldn't imagine someone stabbing Chip and Claudia dozens of times. But even when Victoria and her daughter, Sarah, arrived at the funeral home, they had no idea just how brutal the murders actually were. So as they planned the burial, Sarah and Victoria asked to see Claudia's body.

And we were very persistent about wanting to see her, really just having a clarification like, That is my grandmother that died. It's my mom that died. I need to know that. I don't want to just believe it because somebody told me. And we went to the funeral home, and the woman there, and she was like, You can't see her.

No one at the funeral home would explain why they couldn't see Claudia, who Sarah affectionately called Granza.

And the woman at the funeral home told us that they needed at least 24 hours before we can see Granza.

So they waited the 24 hours, and then finally were brought into the room with Claudia's body.

They called in a specialist from UC Davis.

I found out all this after the fact, to do a reconstruction on my mother.

She was beautiful when we saw her. She looked like herself.

It would be more than a year before they learned the full truth that Chip and Claudia had been stabbed a combined 128 times.

To this day, I am amazed. Knowing what I know now, she She looked like the grandsad I knew. She did. She did. They washed her hair. The makeup artist did amazing. Amazing. Her little hands, her little feet.

Victoria remembered that her mother, Claudia, had always said she didn't want a viewing when she died.

But I felt at the time that we, as a family, under the circumstances, needed to have that moment of closure with her. So it was close to the public, but it was just our family. And it was just a few of us. It was just a few of us chose to say goodbye that way. But I am grateful to that woman. They said they stayed up all night and put her back together.

Roughly two weeks after that small private viewing, the family held a memorial service to celebrate Chipp and Claudia's lives at the Unitarian Universalist Church. But even as the grieving family members were saying last goodbyes, they were also contending with another problem. Police were beginning to suspect that one of them might be the killer.

We would try and question them. We'd try and get information, but they were very tight-lipped.

They weren't saying anything. But they were looking at members of your own family.

Yeah, they were.

I'm 48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriardi. This is 15 Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders. Episode 2, Unanswered Questions.

Normally, if you have a crime that's committed with that much passion and anger, a lot of times it just happens. It's a crime of opportunity or an escalating argument, maybe. So in this case, we weren't finding much.

Davis Police Lieutenant Paul Dersha was assigned early on to the murder investigation of Claudia Moppen and Chip Northam. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation. The department only had about 100 employees total. And this was the first murder case the city of Davis had in nearly two years. What impact did it have on the officers, you and everyone else investigating? I heard it had an impact that there were officers who really even had to talk about it because it was such a horrific scene.

Yeah, it's not just the scene. I think it's the scene plus the loss when you're dealing with the family, that you could never replace that loss. And I think a lot of frustration because we weren't solving it right away. A lot of homicides we clear fairly quickly.

So I assume then if you see a scene that appears to be driven by rage, you look at members of the family.

Or people close to the victim in any way, shape, or form.

In most murder cases, officials start their investigation with people close to the victims, not necessarily as suspects, although it's a fact that most victims are killed by people they know. But in this case, police were trying to create a complete picture of the situation. They talked to all of Chip and Claudia's family members who lived in Davis. One was Chip's daughter, Mary Northup. Mary was as perplexed by the murders as the police were.

Well, First, you need to understand that I didn't know how gruesome the murder was.

So the police didn't tell you?

They told me they were stabbed. I got the death certificate where it said multiple stabbed death within minutes. So I knew that it wasn't good or easy.

Even though Chip and Claudia's window screen had been cut, police told Mary they thought the killer had a different point of entry.

I So had they left the slider open? Is that what the problem? Is that how he got in? And the police said, No, all the doors were locked from the inside. So we think it was somebody with a key. And I was like, No. I had a key to their place. But just since I lived in Davis, it was convenient. If they lost their keys, Mary could come let them in.

Mary thought the police had a theory that a person with a key cut a hole in the window screen to make it look like a break-in.

If you come up with that theory, then you have to look at family members or close friends that they might have shared a key with. I was very worried that they were going to just make an arrest of someone in the family because believe me, this was the talk of the town. I would go to the store and people could up to me and they would be crying and saying, We're not safe anymore. I know they're felt an urgent need to do something to try to solve this. You want in on a secret? All year, it's been Bro Podcast this and Bro Podcast that.

Here's what they're not telling you.

Women are the fastest growing force in podcasts. I'm Brittany Luce, and on the It's Been A Minute podcast, I create a space for curious and culturally savvy listeners like you.

Come and share a laugh with me and hundreds of thousands of other listeners as we dissect the biggest trends of the day.

Let's get smarter together. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast today. My name is Robert Northup, and Chip Northup was my father. I also knew Claudia very well. We all lived together in the same town, so I was close to both of them.

Mary's brother, Robert, also lived in Davis with his adult son, Tony. Tony Tony's brother Oliver lived nearby. At the time of the murders, Tony was 28, and Oliver was just a year older. I spoke to Robert and Oliver five years after that in 2018. The two sat next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. They were both soft-spoken and a bit hesitant in their answers. They looked somber and stoic. Oliver spoke gently about his relationship with his grandfather, the man he was actually named after.

Yeah, I was named after him. My mom chose that name. He was my grandfather, and he was probably the best grandfather I could have had.

Oliver and his brother, Tony, spent a lot of time with their grandfather, going on camping trips, eating dinner, and they grew close with Claudia after she joined their family.

She's very, very loving towards me and very caring. She treated me very nicely. I guess not necessarily like a step grandmother, more like her own grandson. Then some.

Oliver's dad, Robert, had been the first one to check on Chip and Claudia's house when they didn't show up to church. He only found out what really happened after receiving a call the morning after the murders.

So I just got in the news and I came back and I told Oliver, and he and I were both in the kitchen. We just started sobbing for a moment.

And what did you think?

My initial reaction, I didn't even go that far with it. I was just in disbelief that it... This can't be right. Somebody's got their facts right. This can't be what really happened because nobody would have done such a thing.

Robert remembered that soon after hearing the news, he and his sons were called into the police station. At first, Robert understood that this was all part of the usual procedure.

I wasn't surprised at all that it began. I thought, Okay, yeah, that makes sense. They have to look at every possibility. I kept thinking, Well, my father would want us to cooperate in every way. The sooner they realize it wasn't us, the sooner they can start looking in the right places.

They wanted to be as helpful as possible.

That first day was about eight hours of questioning. The next day was another six. It was just day after day, long hours of questioning.

But then, in addition to interrogating the family at length, Davis police began to scour Robert's home and belongings for evidence. There, they found something that made them suspicious. Now, it didn't help, did it, that you had just had the carpet cleaned?

So much was made of that. Not just had I just rented the carpet cleaner. Yeah, it was bad timing. I didn't anticipate that that would be the same weekend my father got murdered.

And what did they think when they heard you had just cleaned the carpet?

It looked like I was covering up and removing evidence.

Officers were having a hard time finding any evidence connected to the crime. So a newly cleaned carpet? That looked like one of their best clues. If Robert had committed the crime, police thought they might find blood in that carpet. Maybe it had seeped into the floor below, or maybe they'd find evidence that someone had tried to flush down the toilet. I mean, the search. Just tell me what the search did to your house.

Well, they did find some blood stains, and then they cut out the carpet. They took out some of the plumbing fixtures, looking for things that might have been put in the drain. And in the course of moving things around, they did some damage, and they also took out a little bit of flooring.

Investigators thought they had really found something until the blood turned out to be Robert's son, Tony's blood. Robert kept cooperating, hoping the police would finally be satisfied and leave them alone. But the suspicion and the questions seemed endless. You said that you would have expected that they look at your family for 24 hours, but it went longer. How much longer did it go?

Six weeks, seven.

It wasn't just Robert who was under suspicion. Police had their eyes on his two sons, Tony and Oliver. Here you had just lost your grandparents, and all of a sudden, the police are questioning you. How tough was that?

It wasn't a good experience.

That's Oliver, who went through hours of interrogation.

At one point, I think there was a good cop, bad cop routine or something. But I had volunteered. I agreed to help him out with the investigation.

Oliver had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. His brother, Tony, was a year younger. Tony had volunteered for the US Army and even served in the California Conservation Corps for a year. But Tony may have had his own struggles. Investigators had found a disturbing drawing. Drawing, an image of a man with a knife standing over two children in a bed. It had been drawn by Tony. Investigators zeroed in on the two brothers, but there was still no physical evidence connecting them to the murders, only circumstantial theories. Were you worried that as time went on and they didn't have any evidence, they didn't have any suspects that they might arrest one of your sons?

I was worried that possibly one of my sons could be arrested. I didn't think there was a slightest chance that he could ever be charged or indicted or certainly not convicted. Other members of my family became so concerned that they insisted on getting a criminal defense attorney for my younger son. This was weeks into the investigation after, well, we've already voluntarily cooperated with dozens. I'm not exaggerating, dozens of hours of questioning.

Oliver told me that the pressure on him and his brother wore them down. Were you scared?

Very nervous.

What was your fear? What was your fear at that point?

I was tired of it, and I didn't want to be blamed for something I didn't do. It was this horrifying.

And his father, Robert, shared those same fears.

I mostly fear that the suspicion would have never gone away. The case would have never been closed, and we would have remained the only real suspects.

Was there, did you feel that other people in the community were wondering? About your family? Did you feel it, Oliver? Did you feel like?

I was worried that people might have had the wrong idea about me.

And what does that feel like?

Alone.

The North natives began to feel they had to prove their innocence, not only to the police, but to everyone around them in the Davis community.

Our neighbors saw a dozen uniformed officers go in and do an eight-hour search, and they knew what it was related to, and what they must be suspects in this murder.

According to Robert, the investigation ended up costing his family tens of thousands of dollars. They had to replace the carpet, plumbing fixtures, and the flooring that was pulled up and taken as evidence. They lost work opportunities when their computers were seized. Insurance covered some of the costs, but not all. And it certainly didn't touch the emotional damages they suffered. You laugh about it now. But what was that really like to go through?

A nightmare.

Through it all, however, the family's faith in Oliver and Tony's innocence never wavered.

The only thing I can say is that the three of them, they're not violent. None of them.

To Mary, the police had it all wrong. There was no chance Robert or his sons would kill Chip and Claudia.

My father was always providing emotional support for all three of them. He's the last person they would have tried to kill.

Do you think that the police were listening to other members of the family saying that? When you told them that, when there's no way it could-They obviously didn't listen to me because I told them there isn't anybody in the family that would have done this.

There was nothing that would have warranted murder. There just wasn't. I was very angry because they took the members of the family that needed more emotional support. They put them under a great deal of pressure.

Mary broke it down plain and simple.

I don't mean to sound flippant, but my father was 87. But honestly, why wait and kill him at 87? He was just five years or so away from death anyway. You waited this long, wait a little longer, if it were a family member. I'm just speaking logically. It made no sense that at this point in time, a family member would kill him. There wasn't any money involved. There wasn't anything that my father would have given that day that he wouldn't still have later.

And the longer the investigation went on without any arrests, the more uneasy the family became.

It did create problems within the family. I don't know how much it was just the investigation, the difficulty of living in the town, waking up every day wondering, what's going to happen today. Is everybody still alive? That a thing.

What a horrible thing to go through.

I don't think we have a vocabulary that can really describe it. I think in this case, we were just stomped in it because how weird the murder scene was.

Lieutenant Paul Dershow and the rest of the Davis police had spent weeks investigating the case, but they had found nothing but weak circumstantial evidence and theories that weren't panning out. Maybe the family wasn't involved after all.

I think we all thought there was a possibility it was some throw kill, and there's this A suspect out there that's not connected to the victims, which was probably our worst fear, because at that point, how do you keep people safe if someone out there is like that?

So they decided to call in a specialized FBI team.

A crime such as this, that's more of an interior motive, where this person has a fantasy, that's the one that the profilers really can sink their teeth into.

Fbi Special Agent Chris Campion led the National National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Sacramento.

The way I like to explain it to people is if you ever watch the TV shows where the profilers from Quantico get off the plane and meet the agent in the field, that's me.

Special Agent Campion's team was 25 agents in total. They specialized in analysis of violent crimes and behavioral aspects of criminal investigations.

I would do the prep work. I would screen the cases. If we can help with the police or Sheriff's departments that are asking us for help, then we'll help them. But when it gets time for the profilers to be involved, then we would be the ones that would help package the case up and present it to the profilers in Quantico.

Through his experience, Special Agent Campion knew what details were important to share and showcase.

Some of the really outlandish factors here is the post-mortem cutting. You don't see that a lot. After the victim's already dead, for them, to be, the offender, to be cutting and experimenting, apparently, with the dead body. And then the placement of the objects. He placed, I think it was a phone, inside the wife and then glass inside the husband. That's weird.

I mean, had you ever run into anything like that before?

We had not run into that.

With Cambian's expertise, the FBI started started building out a profile as fast as they could with a few facts they had been given.

We thought we were looking for somebody who was probably between 20 and 30, probably a white male, probably lived close by or had some reason to be in the neighborhood. We thought that this person would have had some precursor crimes, that he would have had prior assault or at least a burglary or maybe even something much more minor, like a peeping or some a trespass case.

What were the factors that made you think it would be someone between 20 and 30, white male with a criminal history?

The profilers back at Quantico see thousands and thousands of cases. They've viewed offenders in prison. They have data sets that they collate, and it's not an exact science. I mean, we're talking about probabilities here.

Even after bringing in a special team, investigators were still unable to pin down a primary suspect. In the end, it wasn't the profile they had developed, but a surprise tip that pointed them in the direction they needed to go.

Davis, place emergency. Can this be anonymous?

Two months after Chip Northup and Claudia Moppen were murdered, the Davis police Police Department got a 911 call.

What are you reporting? Double homicide. The double homicide that happened in April this year. You have the suspect information? Yes, I know him. I knew he told me everything that happened, everything he did, all the little details.

That's next time on 15: Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders. This series was reported by me, Erin Moriardi. Alan Pang is our producer. Maura Walls is our story editor, and Jamie Benson is the senior producer. Megan Marcus is the vice President of podcast editorial for CBS. Special thanks to 48 Hours executive producer, Judy Tigard, along with 48 Hours producers, Judy Ryback, Stephanie Slipher, and Greg Fischer. From Goat Roadio, this podcast was written and produced by Kara Shillen, Max Johnston, Jay Venables, Isabel Kirby McGowan, Megan Nadolsky, and Ian Enright. Additional reporting and recording by Kara Shillen. Our executive producers at Goat Rodeo are Megan Nadolsky and Ian Enright. Original theme in music by Hans Del Chie, with additional music from Paramount. Final mix by Rebecca Seydel. Fender Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Kara Shillen. I'm Erin Moriardi. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to give it a rating and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. If you liked 15 Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders, check out the rest of our 48 Hours podcast by searching 48 Hours on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.

You want in on a secret? All year, it's been Bro Podcast this and Bro Podcast that.

Here's what they're not telling you.

Women are the fastest growing force in podcasts. I'm Brittany Luce, and on the It's Been A Minute podcast, I create a space for curious and culturally savvy listeners like you.

Come and share a laugh with me and hundreds of thousands of other listeners as we dissect the biggest trends of the day.

Let's get smarter together. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast today.