Cary Hartmann: Ogden City Rapist, Sheree Warren, and Return to Prison

Cary Hartmann is a convicted serial rapist and former Ogden, Utah reserve police officer who was sentenced in 1987 for a string of sexual assaults in Weber County and who remains the primary suspect in the 1985 disappearance of his then-girlfriend, Sheree Warren. He served 32 years in prison, was paroled in March 2020, and was returned to custody in 2024 after violating the terms of his release.¹

What He Was Convicted Of

In September 1987, a Weber County jury found Hartmann guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of aggravated burglary tied to a May 16, 1986 attack on a woman identified in court records as C.B. According to the Utah Supreme Court’s later opinion, Hartmann entered C.B.’s home, claimed to have a gun, and threatened to kill her children if she resisted.² On November 2, 1987, Second District Judge David Roth sentenced him to concurrent terms of fifteen years to life on each sexual assault count and five years to life on the burglary count.³

Hartmann also pleaded guilty to a separate rape from October 1986 as part of a plea bargain that dropped charges tied to three other attacks. He received a concurrent five-years-to-life sentence on that count.³ The Utah Supreme Court affirmed his jury conviction on November 15, 1989.²

How Ogden Police Caught Him

In October 1986, an informant identified Hartmann to Ogden detective Chris Zimmerman as a suspect in a series of unsolved sexual assaults. Zimmerman placed a pen register on Hartmann’s home phone and logged roughly 1,900 calls over several weeks. The surveillance surfaced a pattern: some of the rape victims had received strange “lingerie survey” phone calls before being attacked. One victim later identified Hartmann by recognizing his voice on an intercom at The Galleon, a bar where he tended bar.⁴

On May 5, 1987, Zimmerman interviewed Hartmann at Ogden police headquarters and administered a polygraph, which Hartmann failed. Police simultaneously searched his condominium. He failed a second polygraph three days later and was arrested on suspicion of rape. Released on bond, he was rearrested on May 12 after Weber County authorities filed formal felony charges tied to four separate sexual assault allegations.⁴

Because Hartmann was a reserve officer with friendships inside the Ogden Police Department, detectives kept the investigation into him “off the books” to prevent his contacts from tipping him off.⁴

The Sheree Warren Disappearance

Sheree Warren, 25, was last seen the evening of October 2, 1985, leaving her job at the Utah Employees Credit Union in Salt Lake City.⁵ She was dating Hartmann at the time. Six weeks later, her maroon Toyota Corolla turned up in the back parking lot of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Investigators believed the car had been wiped of fingerprints.⁶

Suspicion turned toward Hartmann after his 1987 arrest on the sexual assault charges. During searches of his condominium, detectives found a gray suede jacket that Sheree’s mother identified as the one her daughter had been wearing the day she disappeared. They also recovered a file in his cabinet containing notes and newspaper clippings about Warren’s disappearance.⁷

Two women who had lived above Hartmann’s basement apartment gave damaging statements. Mary Courney told police she heard Sheree knocking at Hartmann’s side door on an October night in 1985, heard her crying, and heard a confrontation followed by a “loud thump” and then silence. Courney said she later left a note on Hartmann’s door asking about Sheree. When police searched his condo on May 14, 1987, they recovered a handwritten note matching the one Courney described.⁴

Investigators also placed Hartmann near Causey Reservoir, roughly 20 miles east of Ogden, in the days after Sheree vanished. An elk hunting guide reported seeing him trespassing on private property near the reservoir on October 6, 1985. Friends of Hartmann owned property in an area called Causey Estates and had loaned him a gate key that autumn. Hartmann denied these connections in a 2005 interview.¹

Informant Accounts

Two incarcerated informants claimed Hartmann discussed Warren’s fate in prison. David Westmoreland, a convicted murderer, wrote a 1998 letter to Utah’s Second District Court alleging Hartmann told him that “the dumb cops could not find the body” and that Warren was buried near a flower garden behind an I-80 rest area in Echo Canyon. Westmoreland’s credibility was thin; he had previously claimed to be the hijacker D.B. Cooper, a claim the FBI discounted.⁸

A second informant, identified in FBI records only as “Charlie,” told agents that Hartmann described arguing with Sheree at his apartment, incapacitating her with a pill, strangling her, burying her body “near a boulder and a pine tree,” then driving her car to Las Vegas and flying home under a false name.⁹

Why No Charges Have Been Filed

The Weber County Attorney’s Office declined to file homicide charges in the late 1980s because investigators could not locate Warren’s remains.¹⁰ Multiple searches of the mountainous terrain east of Ogden have come up empty, including a 2001 cadaver dog search and a 2004 helicopter flyover between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs.

The Cold podcast, hosted by journalist Dave Cawley, devoted its third season to the case and identified an anomalous rock pile on a ridge southeast of Causey Reservoir. On August 23, 2023, Roy City police, Weber Metro CSI, and the Weber County Sheriff’s Office excavated the site, sifting soil through mesh to a depth of about two and a half feet. They found no human remains or evidence tied to the case, only a few unrelated .22-caliber shell casings.¹¹¹² Lead detective John Frawley said afterward, “We keep going. If there’s a place to dig, we’re going to dig.”

Warren’s disappearance remains an open cold case. Hartmann has never been charged in connection with it.¹³

Parole in 2020 and Return to Prison in 2024

Hartmann served 32 years before being released on parole in March 2020. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole had ordered him to complete a final session in a sex offender treatment program before release.¹⁴

In April 2024, his parole agent Brandon Adair arrested him for violating the conditions of his release. A review of Hartmann’s phone, prompted by allegations that he had been stalking and harassing a woman named Kate Bell, uncovered pornography, which Utah sex offenders on parole are prohibited from possessing or viewing. Investigators could not definitively link Hartmann’s phone to an alleged obscene call to Bell, but the pornography finding was enough to send him back.¹⁵

At an October 7, 2024 hearing, Hartmann, then 76, admitted the violation and told the board, “I watched pornography. It was the biggest mistake I ever made.” The board did not issue a ruling on his custody status at that hearing and retains the authority to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life. It has described him as a “substantial threat.”¹⁶

1
KSL TV. Police to Investigate Possible Mountain Gravesite in 1985 Cold Case
2
vLex. State v. Hartmann, 783 P.2d 544
3
Deseret News. Reduce Rapists Term, His Attorney Asks
4
The Cold Podcast. The Supper Club
5
Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. Sheree L. Warren
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KTAR. Cold: The Search for Answers Behind Utah Woman Sheree Warrens Disappearance
7
The Cold Podcast. Fool Me Once
8
The Cold Podcast. Lying Liars
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The Cold Podcast. Lying Liars Full Transcript
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KSL News Radio. Cold: The Search for Sheree Warrens Remains, Part 1
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Fox 13 Now. Nothing Found at Suspicious Site During 1985 Cold Case Investigation, Roy Police Say
12
The Cold Podcast. Bonus: The Causey Search
13
Weber County. Cold Cases – Sheree Warren
14
ABC4. The Justice Files: Serial Rapist Claims to Be a Changed Man, Seeks Parole
15
KSL TV. A Utah Womans Story: Meeting Convicted Sex Offender as Parole Board Decides if He Stays in Custody
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KSL. Parole Board Calls Ogden Sex Offender a Substantial Threat After He Allegedly Stalked Woman