The Utah Family Christmas Killers: You better watch out, you better not cry | The Case of the Tiede Family | UNSEEN

Okay. December 22, 1990, Oakley, Utah, these two men are currently invading the holiday cabin of the Tida family. One of the gift city unwraps is a photo album and he opens the photo album and he looks into the camera and he says, "Hey Tida." And no, it's pretty clear. He had his eye on that young lady. After invading nine houses, killing and kidnapping multiple people, he says, "My girls have been kidnapped." The infamous Utah Christmas massacre. He started to pray out loud or to stop for the nightmare to end. Finally, ends here. Not that that's going to solve anything and bring anyone back, but at least he's not going to be able to do that to another family. An apt, traumatized, and held hostage, 20-year-old Leneita was forced to watch home invaders kill her entire family right in front of her eyes. I remember thinking, "Okay, my dad's dead, my mother's dead, my grams gone." She knew she was running out of time. She had to find the courage to not only save herself, but also her little sister. If I got these men out of the cabin and into the car, my sister would be safe. And the frigid winter of Summit County, Utah, loving sisters Lene and Trisha are looking forward to spending the holidays with their families. It was just my mom's favorite place on earth to be. She loved getting away from Texas, being able to be in snow-covered white Christmas. That was our family dream we looked forward to that every year to be able to spend our Christmas vacation together in the mountains with our family. The extreme cold may sound like a detriment to most people, but to them, that was the main appeal. The winter time was frigid, very cold, very deep snow, we'd have to snowball to get to the cabin, but it was the adventure of itself. But on the 21st of December 1990, the elements unleashed themselves into a massive snow storm after the family momentarily left the cabin. The plan for that Christmas was to be able to have my gramps come and spend a holiday with us. We had gone down to Salt Lake City from the cabin to pick up my gramps and they're ended up a big snow storm coming in. The next morning, the weather finally came back to normal, so the family packed up their snowmobiles and left for the cabin. Lene, her mother, and her grandmother went ahead while her father and sister stayed behind, as they needed to do some Christmas shopping before heading out. As we got up to the cabin, I made my way up the stairs, opened the door, and next thing I knew there was a man pointing a revolver at me. Unbeknownst to Lene and the Titus, a duo of dangerous criminals had been stalking them for days since their arrival at the cabin. At that time, there was a halfway house in Salt Lake City as coloring street, and they had actually met at the halfway house. The two men are Vaughn Taylor, a self-proclaimed devil worshiper and Edward Deli, a convicted arsonist, both well known by the Salt Lake City Police. Taylor's family owned a cabin in Beaver Springs, so he was familiar with that area. I think they originally went up there to just party and have fun. But the sergeant couldn't have been any more wrong. After the Titus family left the day prior, the pair invaded the cabin, opened their Christmas presence, ate their food, and sacked the place. But weirdly enough, they hadn't stolen anything. The truth was, they had an even worse plan in mind. Tell me to get in here and sit down and shut up. I was in state of shock, I think I was in disbelief. But this was only the beginning of her ordeal, as Lene realized in horror that the man wasn't alone in the house. A second man comes out with thick glasses behind the bedroom pointing another big black gun at me. They both immediately started asking me who was with me. I said, "My mother and my handicapped grandmother." The first man, Vaughan Taylor, immediately started to scream orders at his accomplice. "Get them now!" I noticed that they had opened our Christmas presence. There were larger gun like deer rifles. There was food that had been opened, you know, you could tell they had been in the cabin and living in the cabin, you know, overnight, waiting for us to return. As Deli came back with her mother and grandmother, Lene helplessly watched as he threw them on the ground. With the little hope she had left, she began to pray, "God, please don't want to die." And the man with the fuzzy hair told me to shut up that it wouldn't work, use a devil or shipper. Afterward, Lene's mother tried to reason with them. On the other side of the room, Lene got tied up by Deli, holding her up at gunpoint. She had no other choice, but to look. "Okay." At my mom, and she started to say, "What should I, what can I give you, what do you want?" And in the same split second, the shooting continued. I look over to my shoulder and see my grandmother fall, you just can't even fathom that it's like your life's a movie, almost just like you're watching a horror movie. Back in Oakley, Trisha, Lene's younger sister and their father, Rolf, are stopping at the snowmobile repair shop before finally heading back to the cabin, unaware of the horror that awaits them. "When I was at the repair shop with my father, he was at the checkout counter and all of a sudden, a horrible feeling came over me like someone just punched me in the chest and I said, "Dad, something's wrong." Following Trisha's gut feeling, Rolf tried to call the cabin. So he got the phone and picked it up and called the cabin. And the phone actually didn't ring. I remember it made Taylor angry, that one point he went over and he ripped the phone off the wall. And the line was just dead, so immediately Dad and I left and went straight there. After she heard the phone ringing, Lene knew that Trisha and Rolf were on their way to the cabin. In a panic, she tried to convince her attackers to leave. "And they said, "No, we can't, I can't leave you here. There's too many fingerprints." "Yeah." "We got to burn it down and then I was in fear because I knew my dad and my sister were going to be coming." She then tried to convince the men to leave with her and hope that by running away before they arrive, maybe she could save them. "Who knows what's going to happen to me, but I have to get out of here because my dad and my sister are coming or something horrible is going to happen to them." After the men moved the bodies onto the patio, they headed toward the garage. Immediately as we got to the garage, the noise of the snowmobiles started to make its way up the driveway, the other man ordered them in at gunpoint to come into the garage. The first thing Lene noticed was the total look of shock on her little sister's face. Trisha was only 16 at the time, but quickly understood that this is what the horrible feeling she had experienced earlier was all about. "We saw one guy with his arm around my sister's neck and a gun to her back and the other one that jumped out with the ski mask had a gun drawn on us." Under all the flustered delings of Taylor and Deli, Rolf calmly tried to reason with them in the same way his late wife did when she first met them. "I was a dad when she'd give him some money, give him the cash. Slowly my dad ends up to snobass and reached in and was billfolded and threw it on the ground. As soon as he did that, the one guy said, "No, shoot him." Trisha is referring to Deli, Taylor's henchman, who was clearly starting to have second thoughts after the double murder he helped carry out. "And Deli, in the gun at my father, he pulled the hammer back and could visibly see him start to shake and hesitate as he had the gun drawn down on my dad. My dad kind of had his hand out holding me back and getting close to him." At that moment, his only goal was to protect his daughters, no matter the cost. "And Deli did not shoot, Vaughn took his gun out and aimed at my father, but hit my dad in the head." Rolf, face down on the ground, was still moving slightly, Vaughn Taylor didn't hesitate, went right over him and shot him in the head a second time, point blank, as everyone in the garage watched in horror. "I knew that my dad was dead." He then proceeded with the original plan, setting the place on fire and kidnapping the two girls. "I remember Vaughn went back into the garage, pour gasoline all throughout the cabin. And he lit a match and caught it on fire and said, 'We have to get out of here before this place blows.'" But before we continue, we'd like to thank today's sponsor, Aura Frames. 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This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at Checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Thanks for supporting Unseen, and thanks again to Aura Frames for sponsoring this episode. Now back to LaNay and Trisha Storen. Something truly incredible happened as Taylor and Deli were leaving with the two girls on the family snowmobiles, after being shot in the head twice and then being set on fire, Rolf Tita miraculously woke up in the garage. He knew that his daughters is with these guys and they're leaving. He went in to the shower, got in the shower, put himself out. After walking out of the shower, Rolf made a grim discovery. Following the trail of blood leading out to the patio, he recognized his wife and mother-in-law. Without a second thought, he ran back to the burning garage. On the snowmobile, the injuries he suffered heavily impaired his vision, and in the immediacy of the situation, he only left with a blood soaked t-shirt and a worn out pair of jeans. Needless to say, he was on the brink of death, either by blood loss, hypothermia, or an accident, as he was almost driving blind at this point. And he's bleeding himself, and he left a horrendous kind of trail. As the attackers forced them to drive the snowmobiles outside of the wood, LaNay and Trisha were clueless about the fact that their father was right behind them in pursuit. I remember having on the snowmobile right thinking, okay, my dad's dead, my mother's dead, my grams, gone. I'm the oldest in the family, and now I have this huge responsibility to take care of my little sister. Trisha, positioned in the front, was scheming a plan of her own. Just like LaNay did earlier, she thought by sacrificing herself, maybe she could save her sister. As we were driving, I was in front, and my sister was behind me, and I thought, all I have to do is go fast and turn and throw this guy into a tree. And I remember, I can't do this, I can't leave my sister. Just before reaching Rolf's car, they crossed paths with a familiar face. Rolf's brother, Uncle Randy, standing right there by the trail. Randy needs to know something is wrong. We've got to clue him in. We've got to give him a look without tipping these guys off that we knew him. While trying to stay as calm as possible, Trisha unlocked her dad's car while Randy was approaching them from afar. So we began loading up and immediately LaNay and I just looked at each other and we knew we had a hurry. We had a hurry because if these guys knew, the uncle Randy was there and we knew him, then they would probably kill him as well. But Randy was worried for his nieces, so he began running and screaming toward them, closing in on Rolf's car. And I put my hand up again, stop, stop, stop. And I remember as he waved to us, I put my hands up against the heaters as if I was trying to warm myself. And I looked at Randy and I gave him a very, very stoic look that something was wrong. And Taylor yelled at me, put your hands down. Said I'm not putting my hands down. I could just see it in their faces looking to the window. They're, you know, they're not waving to me. They're not reacting to me. I know something's wrong. In the car, Trisha and LaNay are held under duress by Taylor and Deli as they're driving off on the road, trying to get away. But Trisha knows that if she could buy her uncle some time, the situation could shift in their favor. We've got to stop this car. We've got to stop proceeding because my uncle just saw us. At some point he's going to clue in that those girls went somewhere they shouldn't have gone. So we've got to slow down the situation. So immediately I say I have to go the restroom. I have to go the restroom. I have to pee. And as we're driving down, they said okay, but if you do anything, anything funny at all, consider sister dead. This may sound superfluous, but this is exactly what Randy needed because immediately after they took off in the car, someone else arrived. I didn't know what to think until I could see and get a feel that it was my brother. You would never recognize him, you know, no coat, no gloves, been shot in the face and it's just totally swollen, but I knew it was him. He did say my girls have been kidnapped. My wife has been shot. Reaction mode at that point, I said come on, I put him in the back there as fast as I could to get down the canyon to get health. But there was something unusual about Randy. He was one of the rare people to possess a cell phone in 1990. I had a goal. I had a task to do here. I had something I needed to do. Get 911, get the girls and get him on a life flight. But sadly, the technology wasn't as reliable as it is today. All the way down the canyon, I kept calling 911 911 911 and for four miles it did not kick in. But with multiple lives on the line, the adrenaline rush pushed him to drive like he never did before. I actually was going down the canyon fast enough and I caught up to him within four or five miles. It was a very hard moment pulling up to the back knowing what's going on here. He felt powerless as his brother was dying in the back seat and his nieces were so close, yet unattainable. But he didn't let this feeling discourage him as he closed in on them and tried to look through their windows in an attempt to know more about the situation. Back at the station, some at County Police Captain Joe Offert is in charge. And in only a few minutes, he got the entire force on Taylor's tail. Right after Randy called our dispatcher, a brief description of what was occurring, looking for vehicles in that area to respond and our deputy was able to turn on that vehicle. And that's where the pursuit started. The ice-covered roads proved difficult to maneuver for the panic Taylor, giving the girls their first glimpse of hope since they got into the car. But it ended up being short-lived as they almost forgot their reason they had been taken at all. To Taylor and Deli, they were only bargaining chips to be used against the police. Another cop started proceeding towards us. At that point, both men knew something's going on. Everything just started happening so fast and I was scared to have to death. I think we're going over 100 miles an hour. Next thing we know is several cop cars behind us in pursuit. They kept going up the side of the ravine for a while, increasing the distance between them and the police. But this didn't calm down Taylor, who was still driving over 100 miles per hour on the edge of the canyon. We drive and we eventually come to a turn. The roads are slick. It's winter time. He slides and hits the side of this other gas station. Quickly all the cops around the car and draw down on us. He reaches and grabs the gun and goes, "Get back, get back." And I'll shoot him. I got hostage. Get back. And so the cops move their cars back and he pulls back and proceeds to go down this dugway. That's ravine. Soon enough, in a tight turn, he started to lose control again, hitting the guardrail repeatedly until the car simply flipped down the ravine. And then next thing I knew the car was spinning out of control and I could feel it free falling. I like a roller coaster ride and all I could see is sky. It seemed like forever that car was dropping and then it hit the ground and it's boom. After a few minutes of silence, all four of them regained their senses. The sounds of the sirens began to get louder as offered in the police surrounded the car wreck. Taylor actually said, "Okay, we made this pact. We're caught. We are do not want to go back to jail." And he pulled his gun and he turned back and he said, "You know, I'm going to kill us now." And Dele was like, "No, this is Dele jumped out." The second Dele got out, he ducked behind the car door and started shooting at the opposing officers. Taylor soon followed, hunting rifle in hand. As the bullet stormed inside the car, Trisha leaned toward Lene and a desperate attempt to talk to her big sister one last time, before what she thought would be their demise. I reached back, my left hand between the seats and I grabbed my sister's hand and held it tight. She'd been hit as I heard the bullets come into the car and pierced into the leather of the seat where we were sitting. I felt the grip of her hand loosened. "It's a Lene, Lene." She grabbed my hand again and said, "I'm here, sis." After a moment, the police outgunned Dele and Taylor, with only a few bullets left, they stopped shooting and fell to their knees. "When the suspect realized he was taking fire, he dropped his weapon and surrendered. Both of them at that point were taken into custody without instinct." After the arrest, officers took the girls back to the hospital. Once they got there, the first person they saw was Randy. His clothes drenched in blood but boasting a smile on his face. "We just run into each other's arms and they didn't know that they thought their dad was dead. They watched their dad get shot. So they thought he was dead and I go, you're dead to life. We have just hugged each other. That was one of the best hugs I ever had." Even today, Lene is having a difficult time explaining how she felt when she learned about her father's survival. "I was just a miracle. My dad survived. My dad had a million reasons to still live to still keep going and my dad wasn't going to give up. When he believed in me and he believed in my sister." and he fought, and he did not let those men take away his daughters, and he fought, and he's my biggest hero. Randy's a hero too. Randy saved my father's life. Soon after that, Rolf and the girls finally got reunited. I had bandages all around his head, but just such a sigh relief that I could knew it was my dad. I saw his beautiful blue eyes and instantly just a huge sense of relief. I'm just hugging and saying it's all going to be okay. Rolf eventually made a full recovery, and together with Laney and Trisha, formed a united front of witnesses against Taylor and Deli during their trial, trapping them into a corner. At where Deli was convicted of secondary murder, two counts, and is still in prison. Taylor actually made the determination that it would be in his best interest to plead guilty to two counts of capital murder, and they carried the death penalty. I think it helps that we feel some justice has been served, not that that's going to solve anything and bring anyone back, but at least he's not going to be able to do that to another family. In the end, even though nothing will ever bring back what was lost, they both became survivors. I think for being affected at a 20-year-old is such horrific things in my life. It caused me to grow up sooner to know that what is real is love and kindness in our lives, and togetherness and joy. I just knew that that wasn't any other option. Survivors is who we are. Survivors is who we are today. Survivors are who we choose to continue to be. They tried to take everything from them, but they couldn't ever take their memories together as a family. Today, they rebuilt the cabin and still use it as a family getaway during the holidays, proving that even if you've faced trauma in your life, you can still come out stronger. When we go back to the cabin today, there definitely is moments that I remember certain situations when we have so many wonderful memories there that far outshadow the tragedy that happened. It helps me to relive and to tell the story of my legacy and my mom and grandson's dad, because I know what they had to bring was taken away too soon, but that I can share and carry on through my light and love and showing that peace and forgiveness is a true way that we can live in this world. Almost 20 years after the tragedy, Rolf died of natural causes. Before that, he stood by both of his daughter's sides for most of their adult life and was a loving father and grandfather.