Colorado man pushes wife off cliff, exposing years of lies.
Toni Henthorn died after falling in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012.
Toni Henthorn’s 2012 trip to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park was meant to celebrate her and her husband Harold’s 12th anniversary. Instead, it ended with her tragic death at the base of a remote cliff, leading to an investigation that uncovered years of lies by her husband.
The couple, who met online and lived near Denver, appeared to have a perfect life, with Toni working as an ophthalmologist and Harold as a fundraiser. However, Toni’s sudden death revealed a dark truth.
A new “20/20” episode, Mountain of Lies, airs Friday, Feb. 28, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streams on Hulu the following day. Their daughter Haley, then 7, still remembers her mother with love.
“She was amazing,” Haley Bertolet, who uses her mother’s maiden name, shared exclusively with Eva Pilgrim, co-anchor of GMA3 and ABC News, during her first interview since that tragic day. “She was so intelligent, so wise, and so eloquent.”
Harold claimed that Toni accidentally slipped and fell off a 160-foot cliff in the park, which led the case to be handled by the National Park Service.
Photos on Toni’s camera and Harold’s phone helped investigators reconstruct her final moments on the mountain, according to Beth Shott, a retired special agent with the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB). She pointed out multiple images of Harold standing at the edge of a perilous cliff.
“Our theory was that he was trying to coax her into standing where he was,” she explained to 20/20. “He was probably saying, ‘Look honey, this is safe. You can stand here.’
Investigators noticed several inconsistencies in Harold’s story and began to scrutinize his relationship with Toni. A family nanny revealed that Toni and Harold slept in separate rooms, and that Harold would sometimes take business trips without luggage, only to return the next day.
“He would go on these trips but show up the next day without luggage,” Shott explained. “The nanny suspected Harold might be having an affair. It seemed like he was leading a secret life.”
They also struggled to find any concrete evidence of Harold’s fundraising career, as there was no online presence tied to his work.
“Harold’s business cards listed ‘CFR’—certified fundraiser,” Shott explained. “There’s an agency that grants that certification, so I reached out to them, and they told me, ‘We’ve never heard of him, and no, he’s not a certified fundraiser.’ It turns out he didn’t even have a business.”
Further investigation into Harold’s tax returns revealed that he had earned almost no income for two decades.
“He had been pretending to be someone he wasn’t for nearly 20 years, and he worked hard to maintain that façade,” Shott said.
Local authorities and journalists also received 17 anonymous letters drawing attention to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Harold’s first wife, Lynn Henthorn, in 1995. Harold claimed she was crushed by their car while he was changing a tire on the roadside. Although authorities ruled it an accident, the similarities to Toni’s death raised concerns among family, friends, and investigators.
“Remote locations. Strange places. Why were they even there?” Shott said. “Harold wasn’t injured in either incident, but both times, his wife died.”
Harold insists he did not kill either of his wives.
After Lynn’s death, Harold kept in touch with her sister-in-law, Grace Rishell, and her four daughters. His relationship with them continued after he married Toni. Rishell recalled how Harold stepped in after her 2010 divorce from Lynn’s brother, when she was left without savings.
“Harold really started to help me out, giving me all this financial advice,” Rishell said. “He said, ‘Toni and I really want to help you.'”
Harold even arranged a life insurance policy for Rishell as a gift, telling her it would name her daughters as beneficiaries.
“At first, the insurance policy seemed like a kind gesture that I could accept,” she said. “Because it was for my girls.”
However, she explained that Harold grew angry when she decided to move to Texas instead of Colorado, where he and Toni lived.
“I saw a whole new level of control from him,” she said. “So, I called his broker and said, ‘I’m not going through with this policy. No way, I’m done.'”
Despite her decision, investigators later found that Harold never canceled the policy, and Rishell was told he had gone ahead with it after all.
“The policy listed Harold Henthorn as the primary beneficiary,” Shott said. “Her daughters weren’t named at all, and the policy was for $400,000.”
Investigators later revealed that Harold had also taken out insurance policies on his wives, ultimately receiving $600,000 after Lynn’s death.
Investigators revealed that Harold took out three $1.5 million insurance policies on Toni throughout their 12 years of marriage.
“We’re seeing this pattern of increasing her net worth, so to speak, in case she were to die,” Shott said.
After Toni’s death, their daughter Haley recalled how Harold tried to control her reaction when he broke the news.
“He sat me down and told me she had ‘lost consciousness forever,’ as he put it. I just remember that moment being horrible,” Haley told 20/20. “Immediately after, he told me not to cry. He said people would be watching.”
Haley said that controlling behavior continued at home, where she had to ask Harold for permission to have a snack or play with her toys.
“I couldn’t leave my room, and he had a baby monitor in there watching me,” she told 20/20. “He would know if I woke up or if I came downstairs to get anything before he said it was allowed.”
Two years after Toni’s death, federal authorities gathered enough evidence to arrest Harold for her murder. The Bertolets expressed concern that Harold had isolated 9-year-old Haley from the rest of her family, which alarmed investigators.
“Our main concern when we arrested Harold was that he might create a dangerous situation with Haley if he realized 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, labeling him a “substantial flight risk” due to his access to a large sum of money, including Toni’s assets.
In 2015, a jury found Harold guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“What I believe made a big impact on the jurors was hearing from two or three park rangers about how difficult and dangerous it was to get to the location,” Grusing explained.
Harold was not charged in connection with Lynn’s death, which is considered closed by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
After Harold was imprisoned, 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 shared with 20/20. “I think she was longing for a loving parent.”
Despite this, Haley told 20/20 that she forgives her father.
“Not for his sake, but for mine,” she said. “So I know I’m free from him and his control, that I can be my own person, and I’m grounded to do whatever I want outside of his influence.”
She hopes her story can inspire others facing traumatic experiences.
“I want them to know that no matter what they’ve been through, there’s always a way out of the darkness,” she said.
