hiking guide who often works in rocky mountain national park is this path a path well-traveled? do a lot of people come down here it seems tricky. no. this path is way out of the way for any recreational hiker to be scouting about and having fun in the mountains. reporter: would you recommend somebody who is not an expert hiker or rock climber come down here definitely not. this is a place that s very loose, high classification of how we rate the terrain. this takes a lot of technical ability and sure footing this is definitely out of the way. reporter: what about a woman in her 50s with bad knees? absolutely not. reporter: investigators also looked closely at harold s story of what happened after toni fell remember, he said it took a long time to pick his way down the mountain to his bleeding wife s side and sure enough, nearly an hour elapsed between the last photos on toni s camera and harold s call to 911. 911, what s the address of the emergency?
kind of sad? that made me very sad, and that s when i really thought things are not right reporter: tammi says that even though toni seemed to adore her daughter haley, she often gave up mommy time, staying late at the office instead. we would be done. patients gone, staff gone. and she would still be on her computer but it wasn t work-related it was playing games and so we thought, that s so odd. why does she stick around the office we started to think that maybe she just didn t want to go home and maybe because of harold. reporter: if there was trouble in the marriage toni never said so directly not to friends, not even to family todd and rhonda worried maybe she was afraid to say too much i think he had held control over toni with haley, you know his parents heard conversation that they weren t meant to hear that he held, you know, divorce over her head. i ll divorce you.
reporter: toni s friends at work couldn t believe it either. i got a call from christy at our office and all she said is, tammi, toni fell reporter: what did you think when she said she fell i just said, is she okay? no, she died and i fell to my knees and my husband said, oh, my gosh, what s going on? and i said, dr. henthorn fell off a cliff. reporter: everyone was heartbroken for toni harold and, most of all, the henthorns 7-year-old daughter haley. i put myself on the mountain and at the moment that she probably knew, well, this is it, you know i know her thoughts were of haley. reporter: about 150 people die in national parks each year. in rocky mountain national park, the leading cause of death is falling. before i wrote this book, i didn t know that the national park had investigators
an investigator i said, that sounds worse than my sister s case reporter: and especially in light of toni s death, they wished lynn s case had been investigated more thoroughly the douglas county sheriff s office declined to speak with us but michael fleeman who has written a book about the henthorn cases says sheriff s detectives did investigate, at least initially. everything was progressing as if this was suspicious, and then all of a sudden the brakes were put on the investigation it was declared an accident and forgotten for nearly 20 years. reporter: detective charlie mccormick thinks the reason for that was the coroner s quick ruling that lynn s death was accidental if you re a policeman and you re trying to investigate a crime and all of a sudden the coroner, who really has jurisdiction over all, says it s an accident, you re a little bit cut off at the pass. two days after a death like this, to call it an accident, it s unfortunate
before they set out, harold took this photo of toni she s smiling, relaxed it doesn t look like she had any inkling that anything bad was to come harold told the ranger the ridge where they had lunch wasn t private enough so they climbed down these loose rocks looking for another spot at this point they were several hours into their hike with not much daylight left and not much time to keep a 7:00 p.m. dinner reservation. they ended up on a small, flat area with not a lot of wiggle room and steep drops all around. it s where this pictures was taken at 5:00 p.m. it s one of the last pictures on toni s camera. rangers believe toni fell from right here, 128 feet down. this is a spot that most people would be too nervous to approach without the proper safety gear, but harold said toni was trying to capture the perfect picture of some wild turkeys and apparently just got too close to the edge harold said by the time he scrambled down the mountain and