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.
1958
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.
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.
1991
Pfister raised both of her children as a single mother in a log home her father had built for her in 1991.
Shortly before the time of her death, she rented a portion of the house to retired doctor Trey Styler and his wife Nancy as a way to help pay off her mortgage.
Pfister abruptly evicted the Stylers from her house, and refused to let the Stylers collect their belongings from the home after they failed to do so in a timely manner.
2011
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.
2014
Nancy Merle 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.
Styler claimed he killed Pfister as "punishment" for adding an interest rate to the couple's rent after they refused to pay for over three months.
The Stylers had stopped paying rent after living with Pfister for 2 months, due to minor broken utilities in the home that she refused to fix.
The case gained national notoriety and sparked many debates on renter's rights.
On the evening of Wednesday, February 26, 2014, Kathy Carpenter, a friend of Pfister, became concerned when Pfister had not returned her phone call from two days earlier.
After learning that Nancy had not shown up for her job as a tour guide for two days, Carpenter drove to Pfister's secluded log home on the north slope of Buttermilk Mountain.
However, there seemed to be no trace of the missing woman.
She later told police that as she entered the master bedroom, she noticed the bed in disarray, the comforter draped over the side, and the sheets pulled off one side of the mattress.
As she drew closer, she noticed a very small stain of blood spattered on the bed frame.
Carpenter found the bedroom closet locked.
Using a Skeleton key that Pfister had given her, she was able to unlock the door and discovered Nancy Pfister's lifeless body.
Carpenter immediately called 911, and investigators arrived to examine the body before taking it to the crime lab.
Nancy Pfister was still in her pajamas and had a large gash in her torso, where she had been struck with an ax.
The wounds to Nancy Pfister's face were later determined to have been caused by someone beating her with a hammer.
There were no defensive wounds on Nancy Pfister's body, which led the medical examiner to believe that Nancy had been beaten while she slept.
He determined that the cause of her death was due to blunt force trauma to the head and exsanguination.
Pfister's memorial service was held at Hotel Jerome, her favorite place in Aspen.
Hundreds of people came to the memorial.
Police immediately became suspicious when they received information that Pfister and her then 16-year-old son had abruptly returned home early from vacation a week prior to her murder.
Kathy Carpenter told them that she had picked the two up from the airport, driven them home, and was asked by Pfister if she could stay at the house over the weekend.
Almost immediately after arriving home, Nancy phoned her son’s father and arranged for her son to spend the weekend at his house.
