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Mike Danton on the ice in 2003.
Credit: Dave Sandford/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- NHL player Mike Danton pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a 2004 murder-for-hire plot and served over five years in prison
- Investigation Discovery’s Game Day Murders revisits Danton’s case, one of the NHL’s most shocking scandals
- The alleged plot involved a college athlete unknowingly connecting Danton with an undercover police dispatcher
Every hockey player dreams of leaving his mark in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. For Mike Danton, that dream became one of the most surreal chapters in NHL history.
On April 15, 2004, the St. Louis Blues forward scored a playoff goal against the San Jose Sharks in what would become the final game of his season. Hours later, after the Blues were eliminated from Stanley Cup contention, the FBI arrested Danton in connection with a murder-for-hire plot, sending shockwaves through the hockey world and abruptly changing the course of his career.
More than two decades later, Investigation Discovery’s Game Day Murders revisits the extraordinary case, including the uncanny twist that one of the men in the crowd that night watching Danton light the lamp would soon become part of the investigation.
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Mike Danton in 2003.
Credit: Dave Sandford/Getty
Hosted by veteran sportscaster Lindsay Czarniak and executive produced by Shaquille O’Neal, Game Day Murders explores six headline-making cases where sports and violent crime collide. The second episode, “Ice Cold Conspiracy,” which premiered Monday, Aug. 3, revisits Danton’s story and one of the most startling scandals in NHL history.
“During the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Mike Danton is trying to orchestrate a murder,” Czarniak, 48, says in the episode. “In the long-storied history of the NHL, there has never been a story as shocking. This story of Mike Danton is as scandalous a crime story in professional sports I have ever heard.”
Retired FBI Special Agent John Jimenez is one participant in the case who is interviewed in “Ice Cold Conspiracy.” “In April 2004, I happened to be at the playoff game when Mike Danton scored a goal,” he says. “It was such a beautiful goal. I would have never imagined within the next 72 hours I would be involved in a case investigating him.”
He adds, “This case was definitely the strangest case I’ve ever worked on.”
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Lindsay Czarniak in ‘Game Day Murders’
The episode traces Danton’s rise from one of Canada’s top young hockey prospects to an NHL enforcer known for his physical style of play. It also examines his difficult upbringing and complicated relationships with both his estranged father and his controversial mentor and agent, David Frost, who began recruiting Danton when he was 16 years old.
One detail the docuseries makes clear is that Danton was never convicted of murder. He instead pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with a 2004 murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors said the intended target was Frost, while Danton later claimed the real target was his estranged father.
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According to prosecutors, the alleged plot unfolded while the Blues were on the road for their playoff series against the Sharks. Authorities alleged that 19-year-old Katie Wolfmeyer, a junior college volleyball player at St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley, connected Danton with a supposed hitman.
That man, however, was Justin Levi Jones, a police dispatcher in Columbia, Ill., who immediately alerted law enforcement. Jones later worked with the FBI while investigators built their case.
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Mike Danton during the 2004 NHL season.
Credit: Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty
For those who covered the sport, the timing of the alleged plot made the case all the more staggering.
“If you’re Mike Danton, and your entire life is about nothing more than making the NHL, then there is nothing more precious than the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Like, that is the Holy Grail,” says Toronto Sun sports columnist Steve Simmons in the episode. “In the middle of all of this, he’s making a phone call to have someone murdered.”
Simmons, 69, also recalls just how highly regarded Danton was before his career unraveled.
“By the time he was 16 years old, Mike was one of the best hockey players in Toronto,” he says.
Danton was charged with conspiracy to use interstate-commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison before being released on parole in 2009. Danton, now 45, was not interviewed for the docuseries.
Wolfmeyer, who faced two federal charges stemming from the alleged plot, was acquitted on both counts after standing trial.
The Mike Danton episode, “Ice Cold Conspiracy,” is now streaming on Investigation Discovery. New Game Day Murders episodes air weekly on ID and episodes are available to stream on HBO Max.
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