Jury hung on murder charge; DeWild guilty of conspiracy in wife death
GOLDEN — A family's decade of waiting for justice in the murder of Heather DeWild ended Monday evening with mixed results for the man accused of killing her.
In a split verdict, Jefferson County jurors found estranged husband Daniel DeWild guilty of plotting to kill his wife and helping with the crime, but they hung on whether he committed first-degree murder himself.
The bizarre cold case involved his twin brother, a key state witness who said the pair planned the murder for months in the midst of a contentious divorce and that Daniel DeWild hanged his estranged wife to death from a rafter in his Edgewater garage.
Listening to those details in court brought back a decade-old agony, said sister Rebecca Barger, who teared up briefly as she discussed the verdict.
"It makes her suffering real. But it's better to know the truth than not to know," Barger said. "We're just so thankful for all the (people) who put their whole life into this case."
Daniel DeWild, convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and accessory to murder, could face a combined 54 years in prison when he's sentenced.
District Court Judge Christopher Munch set a new trial date for Jan. 8, and the state must now decide whether it will re-try the murder case. Both Barger and her father said they would like another trial.
Jurors peppered the court with questions and requests to review evidence all afternoon before finally telling Munch Monday evening that after a little more than a day of deliberations, they knew they wouldn't reach agreement on the murder count.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Bob Weiner declined to say why the panel could not agree but said there were no surprises when he spoke with them after the verdict.
From the beginning it was a complicated tale, with each side pointing the finger at a different brother.
Twin David DeWild testified that while Daniel killed Heather DeWild, he disposed of her body in a shallow grave and got rid of her car and the murder weapon so his brother could establish an alibi.
With little physical evidence, much of the state's case pivoted on the word of David DeWild, who has pleaded guilty to accessory to murder and faces a minimum of 10 years in prison.
Defense attorneys Tom Ward and Fran Simonet argued that it was actually David DeWild who killed Heather and then fabricated a story to get himself and his wife — for a time implicated in the murder — out of jail.
Charges against David DeWild's wife, Roseanne De- Wild, were dropped in October, though prosecutors say it was not part of a plea deal.
After the verdict returned, Roseanne DeWild expressed shock that her brother-in-law wasn't convicted of murder.
"He needs to pay for what he did," she said. "He's guilty of it."
Heather DeWild was 30, the mother of two young children and just a week away from finalizing her divorce when she was killed the afternoon of July 24, 2003.
Her family always suspected Daniel DeWild, even as he remained in their lives because of the children they had together, said David Springer, Heather DeWild's father.
"I went a lot of years with very little hope at all," Springer said. "I find it a little bit disappointing but not totally. We weren't sure there would be any help at all."
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 , jfender@denverpost.com or twitter.com/oh_fender
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