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OGDEN — A Weber County woman urged the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on Monday not to release convicted sex offender Cary Hartmann for a second time.
"He is a predator," Kate Bell said.
Bell described first meeting Hartmann, 76, at the Vasa Fitness on 12th Street and Washington Boulevard in early 2021. She initially thought Hartmann was a kind, older man in need of friendship, but their interactions soon took an unwelcome turn.
"He would say sexual things to me, as far as, 'You are so sexy. You are so pretty. You're going to someday get hurt because of your prettiness,'" Bell said.
Hartmann's comments even grew threatening over time, Bell said, making her feel unsafe.
"He said that Satan had visited him the night before and that I was going to get hurt and that I needed to watch my back," Bell said.
Bell attempted to distance herself from Hartmann, but she said he was persistent and repeatedly asked her for her phone number. When she refused, Hartmann allegedly showed up at the retail store where she worked and asked to speak with her. Bell wasn't there, and Hartmann allegedly became upset.
On another day, a man called the store and asked to speak with Bell by name. The caller, who refused to give his name, asked Bell if the mannequins in the store window were for sale. She said no.
"Then he went on to the underwear that the mannequin may be wearing, or what I was wearing, personally. And I just hung up," Bell said, in an interview with KSL-TV.
COLD contacts Hartmann
KSL's COLD podcast contacted Hartmann on May 5, 2021, in an effort to interview him about the unsolved disappearance of his girlfriend, Sheree Warren, on Oct. 2, 1985. Hartmann declined.
Hartmann reportedly approached Bell at the gym a day or so later and told her his name would soon be appearing in the news because he had a troubling past, including having spent more than 30 years in prison on convictions of sexual assault and rape.
"I started googling and searching and I was so distraught," Bell said.
Bell and her husband spoke to a neighbor who worked for the Utah Highway Patrol. That trooper contacted Ogden police, who in turn connected Bell with an investigator from the Weber County Attorney's Office named Steve Haney.
Haney was, at that time, investigating Hartmann in connection with the Warren cold case. He went to speak with Bell, and during that interview asked if she had received any strange phone calls. Haney wasn't surprised when Bell said yes, because Haney knew Hartmann had a history of making obscene calls.
Hartmann's criminal history
Previous reporting by COLD revealed Hartmann's first arrest occurred in the summer of 1971, after he made threatening phone calls to a Huntsville woman. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and served a sentence of 6 months probation.
Hartmann went on to serve as a reserve officer in the ranks of the Ogden Police Department from 1980 to 1983. Only a few years later, in 1987, Ogden detectives arrested Hartmann on suspicion of rape. They believed Hartmann stalked and assaulted numerous women inside their own homes.
Several of the alleged victims in those cases told police they'd received obscene phone calls from a man who claimed to be conducting a survey about lingerie shortly before they were attacked.
Hartmann stood trial in one of those cases and was convicted by a jury of aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of rape in another case, also a first-degree felony. The convictions carried a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
Hartmann made repeat appearances before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole during his three decades in custody. At first, he denied any responsibility for the crime that sent him to prison but later admitted to it and other criminal offenses.
During a 2019 parole board hearing, Hartmann said he turned to pornography when he felt low and "that led to cruising for women and choosing women to make victims." The parole board released Hartmann from prison 6 months later.
Hartmann met Bell at the gym about a year after that.
Google Voice number
Haney suspected the man who'd made the anonymous call to Bell might be Hartmann. He attempted to confirm this by retrieving phone records for Bell's workplace. Haney told KSL he found a call listed on the date and time Bell described.
"It was a Google Voice number," Haney said. "It's an app that you can download to your phone, and then you can make phone numbers through that app which will assign you a random phone number with an out-of-state prefix."
Haney said Google Voice numbers were largely untraceable at the time in 2021.
Utah Adult Probation and Parole, the agency responsible for supervising Hartmann while he was out of prison, obtained a search warrant for Hartmann's phone in early 2024. An investigator allegedly found evidence showing the Google Voice app had been downloaded and deleted multiple times. However, investigators were never able to definitively link Hartmann's phone with the obscene call to Bell.
"Cary's a chameleon," Haney said. "He is the ultimate conman."
