2025-05-02 23:52:52

---

It was a dangerous love triangle marked by betrayal, passion, wealth and intrigue – all of it set against the ominous, overcast beauty of the mountainous Pacific Northwest. One man was a well-regarded dog trainer to the stars, the other was a security consultant and firearms enthusiast, and the woman at the center of the case was a lithe blonde heiress who insists to this day she was nothing but a victim when the fallout of her relationships descended into murder. There’s never been any doubt that Linda Opdycke's security guard boyfriend, Michiel Oakes, fatally shot her ex-husband, canine expert Mark Stover, in Washington State in 2009. Oakes admitted to the crime at a trial. But the events leading up to that killing remain murky. When the judge handed down Oakes’ sentence of 26 and a half years, he said, ‘[I have] more questions now than I did when we picked a jury.’ A new podcast - produced by 48 Hours+ called Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, The Heiress and The Bodyguard - is attempting to explore the missing pieces more than 15 years after the murder. ‘To be able to tell a story with this detail, I think listeners will be fascinated as we go on this rollercoaster ride,' Peter Van Sant, the host of Trained to Kill, told the Daily Mail. 'It’s just an extraordinary journey.’ The veteran correspondent first heard about the murder in his childhood stomping grounds of Anacortes, Washington, when he got the heads-up from one of his best friends who lives about 10 miles away. The call came not long after Stover vanished in October 2009. ‘He called me up and said, “You’re not going to believe this,”' Van Sant recalled. He described the region as a ‘place of peace and tranquility and remarkable physical beauty.’ ‘Here was this horrible, horrible murder case… that stunned not only the people of Anacortes but the people of the state of Washington.’ Stover, 57, was last heard from on Oct. 27, 2009, two years after his divorce from Opdycke. His body still has not been found. In 2008, before his disappearance, the dog trainer was convicted of stalking his ex-wife. While some close to Opdycke thought the stalking had subsided, the new couple believed Stover just started trailing Oakes instead. Oakes admitted to killing Stover out of self defense. However, a jury didn't believe his story. In October 2010, after more than three days of deliberations, Oakes was convicted on charges of premeditated first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 26 and a half years in prison and has been there ever since. But many have questioned whether Oakes acted alone – specifically zeroing in on Opdycke and her father as possible co-conspirators. They were never charged and always denied involvement. An evolving romance It all began in the early 1990s, when wealthy socialite Opdycke – the daughter of Washington tycoon Wally Opdycke – looked for a dog trainer in the phonebook. She found Stover, a trainer for the pooches of the stars. In fact, he’d built such a reputation as a dog whisperer that his clients included some of the state’s wealthiest residents: Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki. ‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ Mimi Howard, one of Stover's clients, told the Seattle Times two months before the murder trial. ‘It was like he spoke dog.’ His talents didn’t immediately impress Opdycke, however, who told Van Sant during a 2010 interview for CBS's 48 Hours that she found Stover ‘arrogant’ and he ‘actually rubbed me the wrong way initially. ‘Yet he seemed also to know a fair amount about dogs, so I thought, “Let’s try this out.”’ The new podcast includes audio clips of the interview with Opdycke, quotes from Stover's sister, Van Sant's pre-trial conversations with Oakes and snippets of threatening voicemails left by the murder victim. Van Sant told the Daily Mail that, in the more than 10 years it's been since he covered the case for the 48 Hours show, he's 'always wanted to do, in a way, the movie version... which is what this [podcast] is. 'We have so much material we were never able to get to - so much detail and inside information. The podcast is, journalistically, for me... just a treasure.' Despite her first impressions and the fact that she was 12 years younger than Stover, Opdycke told Van Sant she was quickly drawn in by the trainer's ‘incredibly bright,’ ‘eccentric,’ ‘charismatic’ and ‘very witty’ personality. He asked her on a fishing date and they bonded over their love of the outdoors. They soon became not only a couple but business partners as well. The couple opened a dog training enterprise on a private Washington Island owned by Opdycke’s family. By 2002, the business was raking in millions, and the pair decided to tie the knot, marrying in Las Vegas. In the years after the wedding, Opdycke claims Stover’s behavior became increasingly erratic. She told Van Sant she had learned ‘Mark was really somebody different than I had thought he was.' ‘He was in rages and he had tantrums all the time, everyday – and it was very, very difficult to live with. I saw him becoming more aggressive with people, for example, on the property.’ Much of the difficulty stemmed from the trainer’s preoccupation with finances, she said. ‘The last few years of being in a relationship with him was incredibly difficult,’ she continued. ‘The more the business began making money, the more obsessed he became with money… I would buy maybe a $5 item at the grocery store and he would be in a rage about it. 'For example, an avocado - that was too much money [and] really upset him.’ She told Stover she was leaving him in 2005. ‘He went just sheer white,’ Opdycke told Van Sant. ‘His eyes went just crazy. He clenched his hands and fists and he was just in a shaking rage. ‘He says, “You’ve got war! I’m not going to grant this to you. You’ve got a big fight on your hands.”’ From love to obsession Opdycke left Stover living on her family’s island and moved to the other side of the state, putting a mountain range between the two of them as Stover’s behavior escalated. He left her frightening and threatening voicemails which Van Sant plays on the podcast. Stover can be heard growling, ‘This is war… this is g****n war. You’ve wrecked my life enough.’ ‘He was driving all over the state to try to find me,’ she continued. ‘I probably had 50 or 100 calls on any given day. ‘He told me that he would hunt me down and he was going to ruin my life.’ Stover started turning up in her new town 150 miles away and even in her house. She believed he was also surveilling her bedroom as Stover was able to accurately recount details of a romantic encounter she’d shared with his former best man. ‘If she wanted to hurt him and really knock his feet out from under him,’ says Stover’s sister, Vicky Simmons, then the relationship with his best man ‘could be about the worst thing she could choose to do.' Stover finally granted her a divorce in 2007. Throughout the process, she said he remained hostile and oddly fixated on getting back photos from their wedding. Linda was arming herself, undergoing self-defense training and consulting police. Officers initially didn't have enough evidence to arrest Stover for stalking, but a neighbor eventually caught him stealing her trash. He was arrested and convicted of stalking in 2008, but sentenced to just one year of probation – though, he had to surrender all of his guns. (Stover, Oakes and Opdycke were all avid hunters, each with their own arsenals.) His family believes that, at that point, he gave up on Opdycke. There were no more reported stalking incidents. An 'unlikely romance' rocks the boat But Opdycke and her new boyfriend, Oakes, believed the dog trainer was actually refocusing on Oakes instead. The pair had met when the heiress, still allegedly fearing for her life from Stover, hired Oakes to conduct a security analysis of her home. He was several inches shorter than her and divorced with four children - it was an ‘unlikely romance,’ Oakes later said. But Opdycke said he was ‘somebody that honestly I have been waiting my whole life [for].’ Stover’s friends and family say the trainer had also moved on to a new relationship, but Opdycke and her new love claim he’d begun stalking Oakes. Oakes later claimed Stover repeatedly approached him and threatened his children, demanding wedding photos and even following the couple to Montana. During that time, an anonymous phone call warned police that Stover was armed and transporting drugs. When he was pulled over while driving locally in Skagit County, Washington, cops found small amounts of weed and cocaine in the car. Stover insisted he was innocent and hired a private investigator, who told Van Sant ‘that he suspected Linda and/or her father were out to get him. ‘He told me he “would not be surprised if they want to have me killed,”’ Leigh Hearon, a private investigator, said. Stover’s fears were not unfounded. What happened to Mark Stover? Employees of Stover’s dog training facility went to his home on Oct. 28, 2009. They saw that his attack dog had been shot in the face, and the property was bloodied. It wasn’t long before Oakes was arrested - he was pulled over for trespassing near the scene of the crime after two women reported spotting what looked like a body being transported between two vehicles. But officers never checked the back of Oakes’ car. According to officials, Oakes made purchases at a nearby Walmart on the day of Stover’s disappearance - he bought rope and wrist weights. Oakes testified at his own trial. He reenacted the killing and claimed it was out of self defense. He wrestled his lawyer, showing jurors how he shot Stover with his own gun after Stover shot him first. Oakes, however, had been wearing a bulletproof vest. Oakes told detectives and a jury that he didn’t immediately call police because he feared no one would believe his story. He claimed at trial that he’d dumped Stover’s body at the end of a dock about a mile from the victim’s house – though that area was searched and there was no sign of the victim. Prosecutors scrutinized Opdycke when she took the stand, seemingly insinuating she’d been involved. She reiterated that she had ‘no liability’ in the case, and Oakes told Van Sant, too, that the murder had been ‘about my children and me and Mark Stover… He started a gun fight, and I won.’ Oakes lost the case and his appeal in 2015. His supporters had mounted a detailed online defense of the father of four through FreeOakes.com, arguing that ‘Michiel’s decisions reveal nothing but a man cornered by the malicious attacks of another, striving only for the peace and safety of his family. In a certain light, these decision may cast question on Michiel’s reasoning, but these questions fall far short of the standards for criminal conviction.’ The site explained that Oakes wore bulletproof gear to all meetings with Stover, that his Walmart purchases had been part of a backup getaway plan if attacked by the trainer and that his weird behavior after the murder resulted from ‘an acute stress reaction, a result of narrowly surviving the attempt on his life.’ Van Sant says he believes many questions will remain ‘unanswered, unless there is a discovery, somehow, of remains.’ He hopes his podcast might leave someone ‘inspired to finally put their hand up or pick up the phone and make a call. ‘I believe there are others out there who have more detail than I do,’ he tells the Daily Mail.