Toni Henthorn’s 2012 trip to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park was meant to celebrate her and her husband’s 12th wedding anniversary. It ended with her lying dead at the bottom of a remote cliff, and the subsequent investigation exposed decades of deception by her husband Harold.
The couple met online, lived just outside Denver, and Toni’s career as an ophthalmologist and Harold’s work as a fundraiser made it seem that they had a happy, stable home life prior to her sudden death.
A new “20/20” episode, “Mountain of Lies,” airing Friday, Feb. 28, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu, examines the case.
Their daughter Haley was only 7 at the time, but remembers her mother fondly.
“She was amazing,” Haley Bertolet, who uses her mother’s maiden name, exclusively told Eva Pilgrim, co-anchor, GMA3 and ABC News, in her first interview since that dark day. “She was so intelligent, and so wise and eloquent.”
Harold told authorities that Toni accidentally slipped and fell to her death off a 160-foot cliff in the park, which put the case in the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.
Photos on Toni’s camera and Harold’s phone helped investigators piece together her final hours up on that mountain, according to Beth Shott, a since-retired special agent with the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB). She noted that there were multiple shots of Harold standing at the edge of a dangerous cliff.
“Our theory was that he was trying to lure her to stand where he is,” she told “20/20.” “That he’s saying, ‘Look honey, this is safe. You can stand here.'”
Investigators said they spotted several inconsistencies in Harold’s story, and took a closer look at his relationship with Toni. A nanny for the family told them Toni and Harold slept in separate rooms, and that Harold took occasional business trips.
“He would go on these trips, but he wouldn’t have luggage, and then he would just kind of show up the next day,” Shott said. “And the nanny was wondering if Harold was having an affair. He seemed to have a secret life. ”
They also struggled to find tangible evidence of his fundraising work, which didn’t have an online presence.
“On his business cards Harold had ‘CFR’ — certified fundraiser. And there is actually an agency that issues that certification,” Shott said. “So, I contacted that agency and they indicated, ‘No, we have no idea who he is and no, he’s not a certified fundraiser.’ Oh my gosh, he doesn’t even have a business.”
Their investigation into Harold’s tax returns revealed that he had made virtually no money for two decades.
“He had posed for almost 20 years as somebody he’s not, and worked really hard at it,” Shott said.
Local authorities and journalists also received 17 anonymous letters highlighting the fact that Harold’s first wife, Lynn Henthorn, died under unusual circumstances in 1995. According to Harold, she was crushed under their car while he was making a roadside tire change. Authorities deemed it to have been an accident, but when Toni also died, family, friends and investigators found the similarities striking.
“Remote locations. Odd places. Why were they there in the first place?” Shott said. “Harold was not injured in any way in either of these incidents, but his spouse was killed.”
Harold maintains that he did not kill either of his wives.
After Lynn’s death, Harold remained in contact with her sister-in-law, Grace Rishell, and Grace’s four daughters. That didn’t change after Harold married Toni. Rishell said he was particularly helpful after her divorce from Lynn’s brother in 2010 , which she said left her with no savings.
“Harold really began to step it up, he’s giving me all this mentoring budget advice,” Rishell said. “And he says ‘Toni and I really, we just want to help you.'”
Harold got Rishell a life insurance policy as a gift and told her it would list her daughters as the beneficiaries, she said.
“At first, the insurance policy seemed like a gracious gift that I could accept,” she said. “Because it was for my girls.”
However, she also said that Harold became angry when she decided to move to Texas, and not Colorado where he and Toni lived.
“I saw him as being very controlling at a whole new level,” she said. “And so, I called his broker and I said, ‘I am NOT going through with this policy. No way, I’m done.'”
Despite this, investigators said they later determined that Harold never canceled this policy, informing Rishell that Harold had gone through with the policy after all.
“The policy had Harold Henthorn as the primary beneficiary,” Shott said. “Her daughters weren’t mentioned at all. And the policy was $400,000.”
According to investigators, it wasn’t just Rishell’s insurance payout that was set up to benefit Harold — they said he took out insurance policies on his wives as well. They discovered that he received $600,000 after Lynn died.
Investigators said Harold took out three $1.5 million policies on Toni during their 12 years of marriage.
“So we’re seeing this pattern of building up her net worth, so to speak, if she were to die,” Shott said.
After Toni’s death, their daughter Haley said Harold tried to control her reaction after telling her about what happened.
“He sat me down and he told me that she had ‘lost consciousness forever,’ is how he put it to me. And I just remember that moment was horrible,” Haley told “20/20.” “And right after, he didn’t want me to cry about it. He told me not to cry. He told me that people would be watching.”
According to Haley, that controlling behavior continued at home. She said she had to get his permission before she got a snack or played with her toys.
“I couldn’t leave my room, and he had a baby monitor in my room watching me,” she told “20/20.” “And so, he would know if I woke up and he would know if I came downstairs to get anything before he said it was allowable.”
Two years after Toni’s death, federal authorities had enough evidence to arrest Harold for her murder. The Bertolets said Harold had isolated 9-year-old Haley from the rest of her family at that point, which worried investigators.
“Our primary concern, when we arrested Harold, was that he might create some sort of hostage or dangerous situation with Haley if he knew his freedom was at risk,” Jonny Grusing, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, told “20/20.”
At a bond hearing the following week, a judge denied Harold bail, declaring him a “substantial flight risk” since he still had access to a large amount of money that included Toni’s assets.
In 2015, a jury found Harold guilty of murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“What I think had a big impact on the jurors was having about two or three park rangers talk them through how difficult it was to get up there, and then how dangerous it was to be there,” Grusing said.
Harold was not charged in connection with Lynn’s death, which is considered closed, according to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
With Harold in prison, Haley was adopted by her mother’s brother Barry and his wife Paula.
“When Haley came to us, she was almost afraid to do anything without permission,” Paula Bertolet told “20/20.” “I think she was hungry for a loving parent.”
Despite that, Haley told “20/20” that she forgives her father.
“Not for his sake, but for mine,” she said. “So that I know that I’m freed from him, from his control, that I’m my own person and that I’m grounded to do whatever I want to do outside of his control.”
She hopes that her story can inspire others who go through traumatic times.
“And I want them to know that regardless of what they’ve been through, there’s always a way out of the darkness,” she said.
