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Colorado Trumpet Player Stabbed, Lit on Fire and Wrapped in Plastic, Before One Suspect Turns Up Dead
After a smoldering body found in a canyon was discovered to be that of trumpet player Scott Sessions, investigators put a pair of suspects under surveillance, until one was found fatally shot.
When Colorado trumpet player Scott Sessions didn’t show up for a gig on February 10, 2020, his bandmates knew something wasn’t right.
The 53-year-old, who supplemented his income by painting houses, was passionate about music.
“His trumpet was his life,” Sessions' half-sister Allison Weldon recalled in “The Last Weekend” episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
What his family and bandmates didn’t know at the time of that missed performance was that earlier that day, a snow plow driver stumbled onto a smoldering body high up on Poudre Canyon, a few hours away from Sessions' home in Greeley, Colorado.
There was no identification on the body — which had been lit on fire, wrapped in plastic and had a clear knife wound to the neck — leaving investigators baffled by the horrific discovery in the remote wilderness.
It wasn’t until Sessions' father, Stanley Sessions, reported him missing to the police the next day that authorities were able to positively identify the victim as the beloved musician, launching a murder investigation that took unexpected twists and turns and ended with another shocking murder.
Who was Scott Sessions?
Sessions was adopted by his parents as a baby and grew up in a loving home that eventually expanded to include a younger brother.
When Sessions was 25 years old, he went in search of his biological mother and learned he had a half-sister living in Kansas.
“I got a call from Scott and he said, ‘Hey sis, I guess I’m your brother,’ and we just automatically clicked,” Weldon recalled.
Music had been a constant force in Sessions' life. In his 50s, the talented trumpet player spent nights playing with several local groups, including the Elvis Presley cover band, The Elvis Experience.
“It was an honor to have him in the band,” Elvis impersonator George Gray told Dateline.
How did Scott Sessions know Heather Frank?
It was during one of his late-night band gigs, shortly before his death, that Sessions met Heather Frank, a bubbly waitress at Doug’s Diner in Loveland, Colorado. The two hit it off.
Frank was just getting out of a relationship and was eager to start a new romance.
“It looked as if it was a budding relationship,” said Justin Atwood, an investigator with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.
On February 8, 2020, according to Sessions' Facebook messaging history, he and Frank had planned to meet up at her house.
“Wanna come over?” Frank messaged at 5:13 p.m.
“Sure, I just need to hop in the shower... Sound groovy??” Sessions wrote back.
A short time later, Sessions messaged again, saying that he was on his way, adding three smiley face emojis to the note.
“Warning: I smell pretty good,” he joked.
That same night, Frank sent one final message at 7:59 p.m., writing, “Hey where you at...?”
It was unclear whether the pair had ever connected, but just two days later, Sessions' body was found burning near the canyon.
"Everybody loved Scott"
“I thought, 'Who would murder Scott? Who would murder him?'" Sessions' half-sister Weldon said of the grisly discovery. "Everybody loved Scott. It broke my heart that he lay up there in the cold, and to burn him afterwards, you know, like it wasn’t good enough that they did what they did.”
After identifying Sessions as the victim, authorities first took a look at his ex-girlfriend, who said she still “loved him” very much despite a somewhat volatile relationship.
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The pair split up about a year earlier, after Sessions threw a coffee mug during a heated argument and ended up getting arrested for domestic violence. They ended their romantic relationship at the time, but remained friends. Sessions had even left her a friendly voicemail message on February 7, 2020, telling her he hoped that she had a “great day.”
She said she never called him back and that she hadn’t heard from him again.
The search for Scott Sessions' killer
Shortly after his death, Sessions' vehicle was found abandoned in a grocery store parking lot. Investigators would later uncover surveillance footage that showed someone, who appeared to be a male, dropping the car off in the lot the day after Sessions' body was discovered. The man then headed out of the lot on foot.
Along with the messages exchanged between Frank and Sessions on the last day he was seen alive, investigators learned that Frank lived near that same grocery store parking lot. They also learned that she had recently split with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Kevin Eastman.
To add to their growing suspicions that Eastman and Frank may have had something to do with Sessions' death, they found surveillance video that showed Eastman’s vehicle heading down the road the morning of February 9, 2020, near the canyon, before returning three hours later caked in the same red mud found on the road where Sessions' body was found.
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Investigators would also later learn that Frank texted her boss at 3:21 a.m. that morning to say that she wouldn’t be coming into work that day because she’d been “throwing up” all night.
But instead of paying the pair a visit, investigators decided to put Frank and Eastman under surveillance as they gathered more evidence and secretly installed surveillance cameras across the street from Frank’s townhome. They also placed tracking devices on both of their vehicles.
“There was a lot more work that we needed to do before we had that conversation,” Atwood said.
Heather Frank and Kevin Eastman head to a farm together
Frank's home was under surveillance when Lt. Donnie Robbins saw on the live camera feed that Frank and Eastman were leaving in his vehicle. Using GPS data on Eastman's vehicle, Robbins followed the couple to a farm in Weld County, about 45 minutes away.
“When I drove by, it was dark enough all I could see is the lights on in the house and an exterior garage, but I couldn’t see Eastman’s car, couldn’t see anything. It was too dark,” Robbins recalled.
He decided to head home for the night and after working five days straight, the other investigators on the case took the night off too so that they could catch up on some much-needed sleep.
But the next morning, they were shocked to discover through GPS data that throughout the night, Eastman’s car had been driving through the countryside, making multiple stops along the way.
“That’s very unusual behavior and the first thing that I thought was, we’re losing evidence in our homicide,” Atwood said.
Robbins headed back out to the farm and saw Eastman standing by a burn pile. When Eastman left the farm to refill cans at a nearby gas station, Robbins knew he had to act before anymore evidence was destroyed. He arrested Eastman.
Heather Frank goes missing
At the station, Eastman insisted he knew nothing about Sessions' death and claimed to know nothing about the whereabouts of Frank, who was now missing. Eastman described Frank as the love of his life.
During the strange interview, Eastman claimed to be getting sick, grabbing a nearby trashcan and shoving his face inside. He later got down on his knees during a break in the questioning and prayed out loud for investigators to “get to the bottom of this case.”
What happened to Heather Frank?
The investigation into Sessions' murder went in a shocking new direction when Atwood learned in the middle of Eastman's interrogation that Frank’s body had been discovered under some lumber on the farm. She had been shot twice.
“It was like I got hit by a wrecking ball,” Atwood said of the development.
Eastman — who had a history of being emotionally and physically violent to Frank — was arrested and charged with two counts of murder.
Authorities believe he posed as Frank on Facebook to lure Sessions to her home the night he was killed, then hid behind the door and sliced his throat as the trumpeter came inside, in what authorities described as a “jealous rage.”
They believe that Frank, who suffered years of abuse, was also at the home that night and helped in the aftermath of the crime, but they consider her another victim of Eastman’s violence.
Atwood believes Eastman later turned on his one-time love because he didn’t want her to turn him into the police and felt that if “she’s not going to be with me, she’s not going to be with anybody else.”
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Where is Kevin Eastman now?
Eastman was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 2022 and sentenced to life behind bars.
Atwood is still haunted by the sheriff’s office's decision not to bring the couple in for questioning sooner, which may have possibly spared Frank’s life.
“We didn’t make the decision to murder Heather Frank. That was a decision that Kevin Eastman made, but it sits with me day in and day out,” he said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that decision and what could we have done differently.”
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Not long after the grisly murders, The Elvis Experience held a memorial concert for Sessions and Frank. The musician’s beloved trumpet sat alone on a stool in his honor.
“I just miss him,” Weldon said.
To learn more about this case, watch “The Last Weekend” episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. Season 14, airing Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. on Oxygen.
