Cary Hartmann: Rape Convictions, Sheree Warren Case, and Prison Return

Cary Hartmann is a convicted serial rapist and former Ogden, Utah, reserve police officer who was sentenced to prison in 1987 for sexually assaulting multiple women and remains the primary suspect in the unsolved 1985 disappearance of his then-girlfriend, Sheree Warren. He was paroled in 2020 after serving 32 years and returned to prison in 2024 for a parole violation.¹²

The Rape Convictions

In October 1986, an informant pointed Ogden police detective Chris Zimmerman toward Hartmann as a suspect in a string of unsolved sexual assaults in Weber County. Zimmerman set up a pen register on Hartmann’s home phone and logged roughly 1,900 calls over several weeks. Some victims had received odd “lingerie survey” calls before being attacked, and one woman later identified Hartmann by recognizing his voice over an intercom at The Galleon, a bar where he worked as a bartender.³

On May 5, 1987, Zimmerman interviewed Hartmann at Ogden police headquarters and administered a polygraph, which Hartmann failed. Officers executed a search warrant at his condominium the same day. Three days later Hartmann failed a second polygraph and was arrested on suspicion of rape. He was released on bond the next day and re-arrested on May 12, when Weber County authorities filed formal felony charges tied to four separate sexual assault allegations.³

In September 1987, a jury convicted Hartmann of two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of aggravated burglary for a May 16, 1986, attack on a woman identified in court records as C.B. The Utah Supreme Court later described the facts: Hartmann entered C.B.’s home, claimed to have a gun, and threatened to kill her children if she resisted before forcing her to submit to sexual acts.⁴ On November 2, 1987, Second District Judge David Roth sentenced him to concurrent terms of fifteen years to life on each aggravated sexual assault count and five years to life on the aggravated burglary count.⁵

Hartmann then pleaded guilty to a separate rape from October 1986 under a plea bargain that led prosecutors to drop charges on three other attacks. He received a five-year-to-life sentence to run concurrently with his existing terms.⁵

On November 15, 1989, the Utah Supreme Court affirmed Hartmann’s jury conviction, holding that a verbal threat of death or serious bodily injury during a rape or forcible sodomy satisfies Utah’s aggravated sexual assault statute. Justice Durham wrote the opinion, joined by Chief Justice Hall and Justice Howe.⁴

Prime Suspect in the Sheree Warren Case

Sheree Warren, a 25-year-old mother from Roy, Utah, was last seen on the evening of October 2, 1985, leaving her job at the Utah Employees Credit Union in Salt Lake City.⁶ She was supposed to meet her estranged husband, Charles “Chuck” Warren, at a car dealership to swap custody of their three-year-old son. At the time of her disappearance, Hartmann was her boyfriend.

Six weeks later, Sheree’s maroon Toyota Corolla turned up in a back parking lot at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Las Vegas detectives found no evidence of foul play, but the car appeared to have been wiped of fingerprints, and investigators believed whoever abandoned it “knew what they were doing.”⁷ Airline timetables from October 1985 showed someone could drive the car to Las Vegas overnight, abandon it near the airport, and fly back to Salt Lake City before Sheree was reported missing.⁸

Roy police initially suspected Charles Warren, who had been in heated disputes with Sheree over alimony and child support and who refused a polygraph.⁹ He was never arrested or charged and died in October 2022.¹ Attention shifted to Hartmann after his May 1987 arrest.

What Investigators Found

During searches of Hartmann’s condominium, detectives recovered a gray suede jacket that Sheree’s mother identified as the one her daughter wore the day she disappeared.¹⁰ They also found a file cabinet containing notes and newspaper clippings about Warren’s disappearance.³

Mary Courney, who lived in an apartment above Hartmann’s basement unit on 7th Street in Ogden, told police she heard Sheree knocking at Hartmann’s side door one October night in 1985, heard her crying as she walked down to the basement, and heard a confrontation followed by a loud thump and then silence.³ Courney said she later left a note on Hartmann’s door asking about Sheree after reading about the disappearance. Police recovered a handwritten note matching her description during a second search on May 14, 1987.

The Causey Reservoir Lead

Investigators have long suspected Sheree’s remains may lie somewhere near Causey Reservoir, about 20 miles east of Ogden. An elk hunting guide reported seeing Hartmann trespassing on private property near the reservoir on October 6, 1985, four days after Sheree vanished. Detectives learned that friends of Hartmann owned property in an area called Causey Estates and had loaned him a gate key in the autumn of 1985. Hartmann denied these connections in a 2005 interview.¹

Multiple searches of the terrain east of Ogden over the decades, including a 2001 cadaver dog search and a 2004 helicopter flyover between Causey and Lost Creek Reservoirs, produced nothing.⁹¹¹¹²

Informant Statements

Two incarcerated informants said Hartmann had discussed Warren’s fate in prison. David Westmoreland, a convicted murderer at the Iron County Correctional Facility, wrote to Utah’s Second District Court in 1998 claiming Hartmann said he had not been charged because “the dumb cops could not find the body” and told police that Warren was buried near a flower garden behind an I-80 rest area in Echo Canyon.¹³ Roy police captain Jack Bell checked the site and found nothing. Westmoreland’s credibility was questionable; he had previously claimed to be the hijacker D.B. Cooper, a claim the FBI investigated and discounted.

A second informant, identified in FBI records only as “Charlie,” said 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 that night and flying home under a false name.¹⁴ Despite these accounts, the Weber County Attorney’s Office declined to file charges in the late 1980s because investigators could not locate Warren’s remains.⁹

Hartmann’s Denials

Weber County investigator Shane Minor took over the cold case in 1998 and made Hartmann his focus. On October 26, 2005, Minor and Detective Sergeant Mike Elliott interviewed Hartmann at the San Juan County Jail. Hartmann said he had “absolutely” nothing to do with Sheree’s disappearance, described their relationship as “fantastic” with no arguments, and said he was at work at NICE Corporation until 9 p.m. the night she vanished, then at a bar called Sebastians with a friend. He tried to redirect suspicion to Charles Warren. At a parole hearing, board member Kent Jones told Hartmann he did not find the denials “entirely honest” and warned him that investigators had “a lot more on you than what you think.”¹⁰

Hartmann’s reserve-officer status complicated the investigation. He kept friendships inside the Ogden City Police Department, and detectives had to keep their work on him “off the books” so his contacts would not tip him off.³

Parole in 2020 and Return to Prison in 2024

Hartmann served 32 years before being released on parole in March 2020. Before release, the Board of Pardons and Parole had ordered him to complete a final session in a sex offender treatment program.¹⁵

In April 2024, parole agent Brandon Adair arrested Hartmann for violating his release conditions. A review of his phone, prompted by an investigation into allegations that he had been stalking and harassing a woman named Kate Bell, turned up pornography, which Utah sex offenders are prohibited from possessing or viewing while on parole. Investigators could not definitively link Hartmann’s phone to an alleged obscene call to Bell, but the pornography alone was enough to send him back to prison.²

At an October 7, 2024, hearing, Hartmann, then 76, admitted the violation. “I watched pornography,” he told the board. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made.” The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole did not rule on his custody status at that hearing and retains the authority to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.² The parole board has described him as a “substantial threat.”¹⁶

Where the Warren Case Stands

Sheree Warren’s disappearance remains an active cold case. No charges have ever been filed against Hartmann or anyone else.¹⁷ Lead detective John Frawley said after the 2023 Causey excavation: “We keep going. If there’s a place to dig, we’re going to dig. If there’s a place to search, we’re going to search. And we’re just not going to stop.”¹²

1
KSL TV. Police to Investigate Possible Mountain Gravesite in 1985 Cold Case
2
KSL TV. A Utah Womans Story: Meeting Convicted Sex Offender as Parole Board Decides if He Stays in Custody
3
The Cold Podcast. The Supper Club
4
vLex. State v. Hartmann, 783 P.2d 544
5
Deseret News. Reduce Rapists Term, His Attorney Asks
6
Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. Sheree L. Warren
7
KTAR. Cold: The Search for Answers Behind Utah Woman Sheree Warrens Disappearance
8
KSL TV. Cold Podcast Uncovers New Clues About Discovery of Missing Utah Womans Car in Las Vegas
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KSL News Radio. Cold: The Search for Sheree Warrens Remains, Part 1
10
The Cold Podcast. Fool Me Once
11
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
The Cold Podcast. Lying Liars
14
The Cold Podcast. Lying Liars Full Transcript
15
ABC4. The Justice Files: Serial Rapist Claims to Be a Changed Man, Seeks Parole
16
KSL. Parole Board Calls Ogden Sex Offender a Substantial Threat After He Allegedly Stalked Woman
17
Weber County. Cold Cases – Sheree Warren