Murder of Nancy Pfister

The charges against Carpenter were dropped, but pending any future information investigators may learn, Carpenter can be charged in Pfister's murder. However, they have found no concrete evidence linking Carpenter to Nancy Pfister's death. Carpenter's possible involvement in the case has been widely disputed by friends and family of Nancy Pfister. Many believe that the police were suspicious of Kathy Carpenter due to intense media coverage in the aftermath of the murder. In 2015, Carpenter, along with Pfister's daughter, petitioned the city of Aspen, Colorado to have Nancy Pfister's name added to the shrine titled In Memory of Friends of Aspen in Snowmass Village, Colorado. The shrine honors Colorado natives and former Aspen residents, such as John Denver and Molly Brown. Her name was added in 2016.

In 2015, Nancy Styler came out with the book Guilt by Matrimony: A Memoir of Love, Madness, and the Murder of Nancy Pfister. The book was poorly received in Aspen, described by the Aspen Daily News as "jarring" and "a giant hate speech". Styler describes Pfister as having borderline personality disorder and seems to glorify her husband killing her (one chapter is titled "Trey to the Rescue"), all while maintaining she knew nothing about the murder. Styler accused Pitkin County investigators of mishandling evidence, a point about which Carpenter's attorney strongly agreed, and "having it out for her from the beginning".

Trey Styler pleaded guilty to first degree murder and received a life sentence, which was later commuted to 20 years. On August 6, 2015, Styler was found dead in his cell at Arrowhead Correctional Facility in Cañon City, Colorado. An autopsy later found he had committed suicide by choking after ingesting small pieces of plastic from a broken pen. He was 67 years old. Shortly before his apparent suicide, he began divorce proceedings against Nancy Styler. After his death, Nancy Styler filed for bankruptcy in Fall River, Massachusetts under her maiden name, Nancy Masson. Masson went on to collect over $1 million dollars from a life insurance policy taken out in 1985, when the couple were first married. There was no suicide clause written in the policy, meaning that the insurance company would still be liable given Trey Styler's cause of death. The bankruptcy filing temporarily protected the insurance payout from being seized by Masson's creditors. Masson is currently being investigated for Fraud and Tax evasion in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she has resided since 2016.

Nancy M. Pfister was an American woman who was found murdered on February 26, 2014 in a walk-in closet of her secluded home in the Rocky Mountains. She had been beaten in the head and chest with a hammer, ax, and lamp. Pfister has been described as having been a "small-town socialite" and was well known in her small community. In October 2014, Trey and Nancy Styler, Pfister's former roommates were charged with the crime. Shortly thereafter, Trey Styler confessed to her murder, and received life imprisonment in exchange for the charges against his wife to be dropped.

On the evening of Wednesday, February 26, 2014, Kathy Carpenter, a bank teller and close friend of Nancy Pfister, became concerned when Pfister had not returned her phone call from two days earlier.

A few days later, a Basalt city worker was picking through a public trash bin when he discovered a bloody hammer, pill bottles with Nancy Pfister's name printed on them, and a vehicle registration for Trey and Nancy Styler's Jaguar X-Type. The city worker immediately contacted police. Police discovered that the trash bin was behind the motel where the Stylers were staying. Another important piece of evidence came when investigators discovered the owner's key to the closet in which Nancy Pfister's body was found outside the Stylers' hotel room. The Stylers were arrested on March 3, 2014.

The Stylers, each nearly 10 years older than Pfister, had met several years prior in a hospital in Wichita, Kansas. Trey worked as a doctor and Nancy as an instructor. The couple were both said to have been incredibly smart, with genius-level IQs in the 115-130% range. Rey Styler, Trey Styler's older brother, later claimed that Trey and Nancy would "use their combined intelligence to manipulate certain situations". The Styler's were married in 1985 and had no children together, although Trey Styler had two daughters from a previous marriage. In 1986, they moved to a large house in Valley Center, Kansas, which they had built together, and became world-renowned for their shared hobby of growing the Victoria water lily. The Stylers purchased matching Harley-Davidson motorcycles sometime in the early 1990s and began making frequent trips to the Aspen area around the same time. In 2000, Trey became ill and had to stop practicing medicine, which put a financial strain on the couple. Kansas authorities had investigated the Stylers in the mid-2000s for Arson and Insurance fraud after both of their cars mysteriously exploded within a 3 year period. However, police were unable to make an arrest due to lack of evidence. In July 2005, Nancy Styler was arrested and charged with assault after allegedly beating a waitress at a Wichita-area restaurant. She was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay the victim's hospital bills. After they were near fatally poisoned by carbon monoxide, Nancy had the idea to permanently move to Colorado to open a spa and contacted Nancy Pfister to inquire about her real estate offer in the local paper. In the summer of 2013, the couple sold their Kansas home, rented 2 storage units in Northglenn, Colorado and began temporarily staying with friends in the Denver area. The Stylers moved into Nancy Pfister's home on September 24th, 2013.

Her mother Betty Haas Pfister was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II, who in later years flew a helicopter, which she was notoriously known for parking in the family's driveway. After her mother was diagnosed with dementia, Nancy became her primary caregiver until her death in 2011, 3 years prior to the murder. In their youth, Nancy and her two sisters met John F. Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Cher and Michael Douglas when they vacationed at her parents' ski resort. Pfister briefly was engaged to Douglas.

Pfister attended college at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, but dropped out and returned home to Colorado at age 20. She continued to help run the family business which, at the time, played a major role in the local tourism industry. At age 29 and never having been married, Nancy gave birth to her daughter Juliana. She later gave birth to a son at age 39. Pfister was a member of the Roaring Fork School District PTA. Pfister raised both of her children as a single mother in a log home her father had built for her in 1991.

Nancy Pfister was born on July 4, 1956 in Orofino, Idaho. She was raised in Basalt, Colorado, a suburb of Aspen, and attended Basalt High School. Nancy was the daughter of Art Pfister, who made a fortune when he turned his family cattle ranch into the Buttermilk Ski Resort in 1958.