Speaker 1: Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
Speaker 1: not be suitable for all listeners. Summer twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I'm in Phoenix when I get a text from a
Speaker 1: law enforcement source.
Speaker 2: I received some photos of a hideout about one to
Speaker 2: two miles from where Fisher's dog was found. I'm sending
Speaker 2: them to you. The GPS coordinates are with the photos.
Speaker 1: This kind of lead makes me salivate, an excuse to
Speaker 1: leave the city, go to the mountains, hike in a forest,
Speaker 1: and search for a mysterious shack. Yes please, I open
Speaker 1: Google Maps, put in the coordinates, and soon we are
Speaker 1: sixteen miles north of where Mary Fisher's forerunner was found.
Speaker 1: Not as close as my source said, but still It's
Speaker 1: better than boiling in a concrete metropolis with one point
Speaker 1: seven million people during the hottest month in any American
Speaker 1: city in history. Our producer Chris, and I drive ninety
Speaker 1: miles north to paysin a mountain town of seventeen thousand.
Speaker 1: I need caffeine and sugar, so we stop at my
Speaker 1: favorite Arizona cafe, Common Grounds Coffee. I get an iced
Speaker 1: coffee and one of the best cinnamon rolls I've ever
Speaker 1: had passing paysin. We bump our way down dirt roads
Speaker 1: until my phone tells me we're close to the cryptic
Speaker 1: cabin about a mile away. Jittery with anticipation and from caffeine,
Speaker 1: we park exit and hike into the woods. We're in
Speaker 1: a Ponderosa pine forest, is partly cloudy and kaisobany's low eighties,
Speaker 1: very breezy and pretty. We're probably ten eleven twelve miles
Speaker 1: off any kind of paved road, and we're about to
Speaker 1: hike a mile to the coordinates that we have for
Speaker 1: this little shack or cabin that somebody found. There's all
Speaker 1: this equipment and old stuff in there, so I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the odds Robert Fisher was there? It's slow,
Speaker 1: but who knows? If I find a pistol with the
Speaker 1: right cereal number, some old winter green chewing tobacco tens,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll pay more attention to it. I don't think
Speaker 1: this will take as long as it seems. Famous last words,
Speaker 1: well wait, tutorial on the bear spray. So Chris and
Speaker 1: I went to Swarnego's story yesterday and bought Frontiersman Bear
Speaker 1: attack deterrent. Bare attacks on humans are rare, but in
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty three, right before our hike, a black
Speaker 1: bear killed a man as he drank coffee near Prescott, Arizona,
Speaker 1: dragging him seventy five feet down an embankment. And this
Speaker 1: isn't even the first time we've had to worry about bears.
Speaker 1: In season one, Missing in Alaska, while on a boat
Speaker 1: off the coast of a remote island searching for a
Speaker 1: missing plane, we spotted a brown bear on a nearby beach.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I take bear seriously. Oh my god, Chris,
Speaker 1: it's a bear. Just kidding. So we're kind of switched
Speaker 1: backing down this very steep embankment what looks like a
Speaker 1: dried out creek bed. It's getting thicker the woods, pine
Speaker 1: needles everywhere. It's pretty cloudy. Now it's cool, it's breezy,
Speaker 1: a little rock outcroppings.
Speaker 3: Okay, what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's eleven fifty one am on a Tuesday, and we're
Speaker 1: looking for some mysterious shock in the woods in Arizona.
Speaker 1: From iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three. I'm John Walzac and
Speaker 1: this is Missing in Arizona, the story of a man
Speaker 1: who disappeared after allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing
Speaker 1: up their suburban home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty
Speaker 1: three years later, I'm hunting Robert Fisher and I need
Speaker 1: your help. Robert Fisher is nowhere, everywhere, all at once.
Speaker 1: There are so many leads and sightings of him. They
Speaker 1: require their own episode. Some are intriguing, some are absurd.
Speaker 1: I want to lay them all out and let you
Speaker 1: decide what to make of them. So join me on
Speaker 1: a tour of the world, from a bunker in Scottsdale
Speaker 1: to a Walmart in Payson, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Australia, even
Speaker 1: a siting at FBI headquarters, until we find Fisher. He
Speaker 1: is every lead. He is the wilderness cabin burglar, the
Speaker 1: gold panning hermit, the mysterious man in the canyon. As
Speaker 1: you listen, think of how exhausting this has been for
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Thousands of leads, few investigators, strode in, fugitive,
Speaker 1: alive and dead.
Speaker 3: The nosy neighbor.
Speaker 1: The nosy neighbor is the woman who heard Robert and
Speaker 1: Mary fighting the night of April ninth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: She didn't respond to my email's calls, text the letters,
Speaker 1: and didn't answer the door when I showed up at
Speaker 1: her house in episode three, I shared emails her son
Speaker 1: sent me. I bleeped certain things and said I'd reveal
Speaker 1: them later. This is the first reveal a fascinating new lead.
Speaker 1: Here's what her son said. Day after the Fisher house
Speaker 1: blew up, she saw him, Robert Fisher, driving his wife's
Speaker 1: vehicle down Miller towards McDowell near the Fisher house.
Speaker 3: And turn east, which he never drove till that event.
Speaker 1: Robert rarely drove Mary's Forerunner.
Speaker 4: And told the cops about him and where he was heading,
Speaker 4: and was ignored.
Speaker 1: This is a bombshell claim. According to her son, the
Speaker 1: nosy neighbors saw Robert Fisher in Scottsdale a day after
Speaker 1: the murders. Unfortunately, I can't verify or to tunk it
Speaker 1: without speaking to her, and she doesn't want to talk.
Speaker 3: The bunker.
Speaker 1: On the morning of April twelfth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: two days after the house explodes, an employee of the Mesa,
Speaker 1: Arizona Fire Department finds an anonymous, handwritten letter left overnight
Speaker 1: between the locked doors of Station Number one.
Speaker 2: Robert Fisher, where the three family died in the fire.
Speaker 2: McDowell and Scottsdale Road. He has a trapdoor bomb shelter
Speaker 2: under his house. He may be over under his house.
Speaker 2: Look for three y three door under carpet.
Speaker 1: Good luck, police find no sign of a bunker under
Speaker 1: Fisher's house. Rye bar Let me introduce you now to
Speaker 1: Brianna Whitney, the true Crime Queen of Arizona. Brianna is
Speaker 1: a reporter for Arizona's Family, a group of three TV
Speaker 1: stations in Phoenix, and host of the popular podcast True
Speaker 1: Crime Arizona. In twenty twenty two, she made a documentary
Speaker 1: called Finding Robert Fisher. Brianna is skilled and tireless. Unlike
Speaker 1: so many people in this industry, each he does original research.
Speaker 1: We meet in Phoenix and hit it off. In your
Speaker 1: career covering crime in Arizona. Is there one case that
Speaker 1: sticks out as the greatest unsolved case in state history?
Speaker 1: Is it Robert Fisher?
Speaker 5: It's Robert Fisher. I can say that without a doubt.
Speaker 5: It is Robert Fisher. It is probably the most well
Speaker 5: known true crime case in Arizona. It just sticks with people.
Speaker 5: And I think for that reason that for one thing,
Speaker 5: people arizonans investigators, detectives, people involved. Nobody can agree on
Speaker 5: whether they believe he's dead or alive right now, Yes,
Speaker 5: no doubt, one hundred percent. This is the most notable,
Speaker 5: most intriguing, high profile missing person case that Arizona has.
Speaker 1: So there are five leads that you investigated that I
Speaker 1: just thought, well, Brianna did such a good job. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to duplicate her work, thank you. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the Rye bar lead, the infamous Rye bar lead.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know what Rye was when I started
Speaker 5: this investigation, because you could drive down the highway and
Speaker 5: you've already gone through it.
Speaker 1: Ray is a tiny town of thirty one people, an
Speaker 1: hour north of Scottsdale, just south of Payson. On April tenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, the day the Fisher House explodes,
Speaker 1: a man and woman enter a bar in Rye around
Speaker 1: six forty five pm. It's cold outside, nasty. The woman
Speaker 1: appears upset. She goes to the bathroom. The man orders
Speaker 1: a shot of Johnny Walker red whiskey. He pays cash
Speaker 1: about five dollars plus a one dollar tip. When the
Speaker 1: bartender realizes she forgot her cell phone in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: she goes to get it and sees the man's companion
Speaker 1: vomiting in a stall. The bartender snags her phone and
Speaker 1: returns to the bar. Moments later, the man's companion exits
Speaker 1: the bathroom. The man speaks to her briefly, then gets
Speaker 1: her club soda. The woman takes a tiny sip, then
Speaker 1: they leave. They're only in the bar for about ten minutes.
Speaker 1: The man is thirty eight or thirty nine, the bartender says,
Speaker 1: six feet tall, one hundred and ninety to two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: with crew cut hair, wearing a brown fedora style hat.
Speaker 1: The woman is twenty eight or twenty nine five two,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five to one hundred and thirty pounds,
Speaker 1: with brown eyes and long, straight black hair, in black
Speaker 1: pants and a black jacket. When the bartender sees a
Speaker 1: photo of Robert Fisher, she says, quote, that's the guy
Speaker 1: I saw. This is perhaps the most famous of all
Speaker 1: the Fisher case. Leads I don't buy it. The idea
Speaker 1: that Fisher successfully pulls off a triple murder, sets his
Speaker 1: home to explode, then just pops into a bar on
Speaker 1: the way out of town in a fedora is frankly absurd. Also,
Speaker 1: there's a part of this story that's never been reported.
Speaker 1: It supports my opinion. I found it in a police file.
Speaker 1: Around ten pm that night, three hours after the couple
Speaker 1: leaves the bar, the woman shows up at a house
Speaker 1: across the street, where a friend of the bartender lives.
Speaker 1: The woman asks to use a phone to call her
Speaker 1: brother in Payson. She says her boyfriend left her and
Speaker 1: drove away instead of her brother. She calls the Kila
Speaker 1: County sh Sheriff's office trying to get a ride home.
Speaker 1: It's unclear what they tell her. The woman departs on
Speaker 1: foot down a road carrying a blanket. The bartender's friend
Speaker 1: describes her as thirty five five two to five four,
Speaker 1: one hundred pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, in a black suit,
Speaker 1: jacket and black pants. If you believe this lead, you
Speaker 1: have to believe that a fedora wearing Robert Fisher left
Speaker 1: his girlfriend and Rye and she later called the police
Speaker 1: asking for a ride, but was never identified.
Speaker 3: The grocery stores.
Speaker 1: The problem with trying to find Robert Fisher is everyone
Speaker 1: looks like Robert Fisher. He's generic, no crazy tattoos, no eyepatch,
Speaker 1: a vanilla everyman. Right after the murders, a witness claims
Speaker 1: to see Fisher at a Walmart in Paysin.
Speaker 6: I went to Walmart and went through about ten hours
Speaker 6: of tape.
Speaker 1: Kila County Detective Brian Hay.
Speaker 6: After doing that, found out that their clocks were screwed
Speaker 6: up on their security cameras and that they hadn't place
Speaker 6: a tape. So I watched all that for nothing.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately another lead comes in. Scottsdale Police tell three
Speaker 1: TV that there.
Speaker 7: Has been an unconfirmed sighting of Fisher reportedly seen at
Speaker 7: this grocery store in.
Speaker 1: Patient Bashes, an Arizona grocery chain. Hevey goes to Bashes
Speaker 1: and watches security tapes. He sees a man who could
Speaker 1: be Fisher. Interestingly, the man is with someone.
Speaker 6: But whatever videos I saw were so miserable that they
Speaker 6: were basically useless.
Speaker 8: How detail so.
Speaker 6: Grainy that you couldn't make out any details whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you could have had Robert Fisher on
Speaker 1: film and it's so low quality.
Speaker 6: Or we could have had Deputy Rodney Kronk, who was
Speaker 6: identified as Robert Fisher on multiple occasions driving his Dodge
Speaker 6: truck or a County vehicle.
Speaker 8: It was almost a spot on match.
Speaker 6: Really, Yeah, and he was with Healer County. Yeah, what
Speaker 6: was that like for him? Well, we tease him quite
Speaker 6: a bit about it. The only thing he lacked was
Speaker 6: a gold tooth. Other he looked just like Robert Fisher.
Speaker 3: The tow truck driver.
Speaker 9: I got information that a tow truck driver possibly pulled
Speaker 9: Fisher out of a ditch.
Speaker 1: Scottsdale Detective TJ. Duran.
Speaker 9: The reason why he believed it was Fisher because it's
Speaker 9: the same truck that we eventually found, and he had
Speaker 9: a dog with him, So we believed that he was
Speaker 9: up on a rim area, probably driving around trying to
Speaker 9: stay out of sight.
Speaker 1: Do you remember specifically where that was.
Speaker 9: I believe it was up near Blue Ridge Reservoir, which
Speaker 9: is directly north of Payson.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the Arizona Republic says this lead is
Speaker 1: quote the last known confirmed sighting of Fisher. That's not true.
Speaker 1: It's never been confirmed. All we know is that a
Speaker 1: tow truck driver claims he pulled a man matching Fisher's
Speaker 1: description with a dog matching blue in an suv matching
Speaker 1: Mary's out of a ditch. What makes you think that
Speaker 1: lead in particular is a reliable lead? Since it came
Speaker 1: after all the publicity and the driver didn't speak up beforehand.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he just saw it at the
Speaker 4: time and was like whatever, But I mean he described
Speaker 4: Robert the dog the fore Runner.
Speaker 1: Former FBI agent Bob Caldwell.
Speaker 4: I mean, he didn't do a toe slip, so he
Speaker 4: didn't take notes and write down the vehicle and all
Speaker 4: he did was give him cash or thanking him for
Speaker 4: pulling him out.
Speaker 1: The tow truck driver claims this happened a few days
Speaker 1: after the murders, but he doesn't report it until after
Speaker 1: the fore Runner is located a week later.
Speaker 10: It is a long ways of ways from where Young
Speaker 10: and the car was found to where he was pulled.
Speaker 1: Out Scott Stale Lieutenant Hugh Lockerby, I.
Speaker 10: Can't discount it. He was documented early on in the
Speaker 10: investigation by you know, we had a deputy sheriff by
Speaker 10: the name of Gil Marino follow up on it for TJ.
Speaker 10: And that was documented in the report and the guy
Speaker 10: described a silver fore Runner at the dog in it
Speaker 10: and the guy said he's from the valley. Well, what
Speaker 10: doesn't make sense is when you look at what he
Speaker 10: told the sheriff deputy and then TJ. And TJ's report
Speaker 10: was after he pulled them out, comes out to eighty seven.
Speaker 10: The tow truck driver goes left, which would be back
Speaker 10: south on eighty seven, and the four un remixser right
Speaker 10: and goes north on eighty seven. Well, that's in the
Speaker 10: mountain areas up there. You don't get too young by
Speaker 10: just getting out a separate road. You'd have to take
Speaker 10: like I don't even know how you get there through
Speaker 10: forest roads. So if you take a right, you have
Speaker 10: to go all the way up to the forty to
Speaker 10: Winslow or Holebrook or whatever, and then come all the
Speaker 10: way back down the backside of the Mogian rint Tuesday.
Speaker 10: It would be so far around it take you hours
Speaker 10: and hours. Or you would have to have gone right
Speaker 10: like he did, like he described, and then after a
Speaker 10: little bit time you turn and come back down south
Speaker 10: because that's the quickest route. It just doesn't make any
Speaker 10: sense or why he went all the way up there
Speaker 10: and gets pulled out. Did he get like he doesn't
Speaker 10: want to get exposed?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 10: Did that really even happen?
Speaker 1: I don't think it did. Neither does HeLa County detective
Speaker 1: buying Haby.
Speaker 6: I've been to Blue Ridge hundreds of times. There's so
Speaker 6: many people in and out of Blue Ridge Reservoir Road
Speaker 6: that I suspect it if Robert was stuck in a
Speaker 6: ditch there or somebody else would have pulled him out
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 8: Day inside of a touch talk. Yeah, toe trucks are
Speaker 8: not going to go there without a call.
Speaker 1: They're not just going to be driving around. Did he
Speaker 1: tell you anything that wasn't public the tow truck driver.
Speaker 8: I don't think so.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 1: I'd love to speak to the driver to gauge his trustworthiness,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately guys dead. August twenty twenty three. Okay, so
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea, we're kind of on
Speaker 1: the side of a very steep embankment that goes down
Speaker 1: maybe what do you think that is? Like five hundred
Speaker 1: feet very slippery slope, very steep, lots of fallen trees,
Speaker 1: burn trees, rocks everywhere, very slippery. We have boots and
Speaker 1: not very safe hiking to the mystery cabin. We realized
Speaker 1: the terrain is much more severe than it appears on
Speaker 1: topo maps. This is at least a forty five degree anglia.
Speaker 1: I think more. Start to feel it on my old
Speaker 1: decrepit op it goes in rock. It's also getting darker
Speaker 1: and cloudier. It almost feels like a good storm. This
Speaker 1: area has a colorful history. In nineteen twenty seven, a
Speaker 1: plane carrying a lion crashed in a canyon twenty miles
Speaker 1: south of here. Yes, a lion, specifically Leo the Lion,
Speaker 1: the famous MGM mascot.
Speaker 8: There's still parts of the plane out.
Speaker 1: There, HeLa County detective Brian Havy.
Speaker 6: Anybody that's been in this area as long as I
Speaker 6: have have been to the side of the crash, let's
Speaker 6: left parts of the air plane that they never hauled
Speaker 6: out of there. I had a piece of a rear
Speaker 6: tail rudder for years and years and finally had disappeared
Speaker 6: or I gave it to somebody.
Speaker 1: Both Leo and the pilot survived. The pilot hiked out
Speaker 1: to get help. A week later, a group from pace
Speaker 1: and made it to the wrecked plane. Leo was still
Speaker 1: in his cage. They fed him a slaughtered calf. Do
Speaker 1: you remember from the topo map there's this and then
Speaker 1: over there it goes into a longer canyon, and I
Speaker 1: think it's like right where this hits that longer canyon.
Speaker 1: So I do think if we just cut kind of
Speaker 1: diagonal down. I think we should let me just put
Speaker 1: my phone away and let's just cut down.
Speaker 3: And then we're so close the baby blue truck.
Speaker 1: Around five pm on April nineteenth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: a tipster calls the police saying Robert Fisher is driving
Speaker 1: a baby blue Ford truck south towards Payson. Officers speed
Speaker 1: north but can't find it. They get a report that
Speaker 1: it exited onto a side road. An hour later, they
Speaker 1: call off the search. By chance, this is almost the
Speaker 1: exact moment that Greg the camper finds Mary's SUV in
Speaker 1: the woods, forty miles east of Payson. This lead was
Speaker 1: first reported by the Payson round up the Hitchhike. Four
Speaker 1: days later, after a hectic weekend in the wilderness, Detective T. J.
Speaker 1: Jurand returns to his desk in Scottsdale.
Speaker 9: When I came into work, I got a call and
Speaker 9: a woman and her husband. It was either two days
Speaker 9: or the day before we found that truck. They're driving
Speaker 9: south on Young Road from two sixty A top the rint.
Speaker 9: You go south on this forest road and that's your
Speaker 9: Young Road, and you start heading south towards Young. She
Speaker 9: says her and her husband were driving down the road
Speaker 9: and a guy is walking. Now she's in the passenger seat,
Speaker 9: so the guy's on the outside.
Speaker 3: Of the road.
Speaker 9: As they're driving down the road, this guy walks by
Speaker 9: him and you can't drive fast on that road because
Speaker 9: you'll slide everywhere. And her and her husband said, that's
Speaker 9: Robert Fisher. And I believe they saw him. I think
Speaker 9: he walked out of there.
Speaker 1: Did they say one that.
Speaker 9: Was I can't remember if they told me it was
Speaker 9: two days before, five days before. But when they saw
Speaker 9: the news and saw that the truck had been found, now,
Speaker 9: of course I was upset, thinking, why didn't you call
Speaker 9: us that day? Now that happens in everything you know,
Speaker 9: they might not have thought it was him.
Speaker 8: Was it him?
Speaker 1: How do you filter out people though that are just
Speaker 1: looking for attention?
Speaker 9: Just by talking to her on the phone, and I
Speaker 9: knew she was telling the truth. It was instinct. I
Speaker 9: could hear it in the inflection in her voice.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't Fisher have tried to stay off the road to
Speaker 1: the side, I mean, he got away to that point.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that
Speaker 1: he would be just strolling on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: After the crimes, knowing people are probably looking for him, right.
Speaker 9: Right, But you're up north, you're in the country. You're
Speaker 9: thinking that most people you see up there on the
Speaker 9: Rim area camping, how long they been camping? Had they
Speaker 9: even seen the news, had they even read a newspaper?
Speaker 9: So he still has some time.
Speaker 1: I respect Detective Duran, but we disagree on this lead.
Speaker 1: I'm very skeptical of it.
Speaker 3: The pawn shop.
Speaker 1: April twenty fifth, twelve twenty five PM. A man who
Speaker 1: looks like Robert Fisher enters a Phoenix pawn shop wearing
Speaker 1: green camo pants, a strike shirt, and military style boots
Speaker 1: that are scuffed but not muddy. He's scruffy and unshaven
Speaker 1: and appears to have been sleeping in his clothes. He
Speaker 1: browses the gun section, says nothing, then exits quickly after
Speaker 1: seeing a sign requiring photo ID. He drives east in
Speaker 1: a Toyota pickup truck plate two nine five FLb. The
Speaker 1: manager is eighty to ninety percent sure the guy was Fisher. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the shop security camera was off. Police check the bar
Speaker 1: next door. They find footage of the truck, but the
Speaker 1: angle is bad. They can't see the driver.
Speaker 3: The old Ford.
Speaker 1: Two days later, a friend of the Fisher sees a
Speaker 1: Robert lookalike driving an older Ford pickup truck in Scottsdale.
Speaker 1: She tells her husband, who calls the cops. I speak
Speaker 1: to him by phone. He doesn't want his name used.
Speaker 1: He and his wife knew the Fishers for sixteen years.
Speaker 1: They lived in the same apartment complex in Phoenix in
Speaker 1: the eighties. The wife gets a partial plate for sh
Speaker 1: Police find one hundred and seventy nine possible, none of
Speaker 1: the names ring a bell.
Speaker 3: Malicious Gap.
Speaker 1: On April twenty ninth, two people turkey hunting near Malicious
Speaker 1: Gap in the Tonto National Forest are sitting in camp
Speaker 1: taking a break reading when a man calls out from
Speaker 1: the woods. He emerges, bearded and dirty and tattered and
Speaker 1: torn camo clothes, carrying a sawed off shotgun. He asks
Speaker 1: for directions to Malicious Gap, where he claims he's meeting
Speaker 1: his brother. When he hears an ATV approaching, he gets nervous,
Speaker 1: says goodbye, and runs into the woods. The next day,
Speaker 1: the couple returns home to Montana. They don't report the
Speaker 1: sighting until July ninth, when police ask why they think
Speaker 1: it was Fisher. They say they saw a photo of
Speaker 1: him and quote knew it was the same man.
Speaker 3: Oak Flat.
Speaker 1: On May first, someone sees a Fisher look alike at
Speaker 1: the Oak Flat campground near Superior, Arizona. That's it, That's all.
Speaker 3: I have on that one the pyramids.
Speaker 1: On May second, a woman named Joyce Wilson calls the
Speaker 1: Scottsdale Police Department. Three years earlier, she says she and
Speaker 1: her husband were hiking in the Superstition Mountains forty miles
Speaker 1: east of Phoenix when they came across a remote campsite
Speaker 1: and a man who looked just like Robert Fisher. A
Speaker 1: year later, Joyce saw the man again in the distance.
Speaker 1: By the time she reached his campsite, he was gone. Instead,
Speaker 1: she found piles of rocks in the shape of pyramids
Speaker 1: all over the campsite. She saw bones and a fire pit.
Speaker 1: She took photos. Keep in mind this was before the murders,
Speaker 1: but Joyce believes the man was Fisher. She gives police
Speaker 1: directions to the campsite so they can search it. It's
Speaker 1: unclear if they do.
Speaker 3: Tortilla Flat.
Speaker 1: May third, the Arizona Republic headline false Fisher sightings tips
Speaker 1: surge across state quote Robert Fisher has become Arizona's version
Speaker 1: of Elvis, Spotted inconvenience stores and campgrounds all over the state.
Speaker 1: Someone sees him checking into a motel with bloody arms.
Speaker 1: Someone sees him building a rock wall on a remote road,
Speaker 1: sees him at a fortified campsite near Tortilla Flat, thirty
Speaker 1: miles east of Phoenix. That afternoon, Detective Durin flies over
Speaker 1: the area. No campsite, no fissure. In the next two decades,
Speaker 1: police are flooded with ten to twenty thousand leads. Only
Speaker 1: ten to twenty point one percent are deemed promising.
Speaker 3: June seventh, two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Around six fifty am, a man with a shaved head
Speaker 1: and sunglasses drives by Fisher's old house in a white
Speaker 1: extended cab pickup with temporary paper plates. A neighbor panics.
Speaker 1: She calls nine to one one Police investigate the lead.
Speaker 1: They don't think it's Fisher, probably a guy cruising around
Speaker 1: looking for a used car for sale, they say. Canada,
Speaker 1: February two thousand and four.
Speaker 7: Thousands of tips have come in over the years, and
Speaker 7: yesterday cops in White Rock, Canada, thought they may have
Speaker 7: nabbed the phantom fugitive at this home in British Columbia, Canada.
Speaker 5: Tip is Huge.
Speaker 1: Whitney, the host of True Crime Arizona.
Speaker 5: Investigator's got a tip that there was somebody that looked
Speaker 5: like Robert Fisher living in white Rock, Canada.
Speaker 1: White Rock, British Columbia, is a small city a mile
Speaker 1: and a half north of the US border. Here's what happens.
Speaker 1: A teenage boy with divorced parents thinks his mom's new
Speaker 1: boyfriend is strange. He and his dad start googling fugitives.
Speaker 1: They come across an image of Robert Fisher. He kind
Speaker 1: of looks like the mom's new boyfriend. So the boy
Speaker 1: and his dad call Canadian police and.
Speaker 5: They went in guns of blazing to this house, to
Speaker 5: the point where they showed up like a swat team
Speaker 5: with guns everything. And if you think it's Robert Fisher,
Speaker 5: then yeah, you're dealing with probably one of the most
Speaker 5: dangerous fugitives in the world. So you go in with
Speaker 5: all precautions. They took this man into custody. And what's
Speaker 5: interesting about this man is that he had a lot
Speaker 5: of characteristics that match Robert. When you look at Robert
Speaker 5: from the outside. He looks like the everyday man. There
Speaker 5: isn't anything that's super identifiable that you could say, yeah
Speaker 5: for share him. But there are a couple of things
Speaker 5: you don't really see that do match up. One of
Speaker 5: those is he was missing a tooth where he had
Speaker 5: I think had a crown. This guy in Canada had
Speaker 5: the same tooth missing. Robert had also undergone back surgery,
Speaker 5: so he had a backscar. This man also had a backscar.
Speaker 5: So those are things that are kind of odd to
Speaker 5: match up if you're not talking about the same person.
Speaker 5: So they bring this man into the police station, and
Speaker 5: this is where it gets kind of strange. Robert Fisher's
Speaker 5: longtime next door neighbor was living in Washington at the time.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the son of the nosy neighbor, the
Speaker 1: man who told me that his mom saw Robert in
Speaker 1: Scottsdale the day after the murders, the odd son. By
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, he's living in Seattle.
Speaker 5: They end up agreeing that they're going to bring this
Speaker 5: long time neighbor up to the police station and act
Speaker 5: like they're putting him through the custody protocols. And in
Speaker 5: the singing room is an everybody else who's being taken
Speaker 5: into custody, which would include this man that could or
Speaker 5: could not be Robert Fisher. And so I talked to
Speaker 5: the neighbor several times on the phone. He told me
Speaker 5: that when he got into the room, the man kind
Speaker 5: of did it like a survey of the room, you know,
Speaker 5: if you're looking at your new surroundings, and said that
Speaker 5: when the two of them locked eyes, that the man
Speaker 5: looked stunned. And the neighbor says, he is one hundred
Speaker 5: percent sure that's Robert Fisher. And he didn't live next
Speaker 5: to Robert for just a year. He lived next to
Speaker 5: him for like ten years, like it was a long
Speaker 5: time neighbor. So the neighbor told him, yeah, this is
Speaker 5: definitely Robert. But they took that man's fingerprints and not
Speaker 5: only did it not match Robert, but it matched some
Speaker 5: other person's identity, meaning there was no way that this
Speaker 5: could be Robert.
Speaker 1: Do you buy a chance to have a photo.
Speaker 5: Actually have a whole Robert Fisher album on my phone
Speaker 5: for you of everything that I took. So this is
Speaker 5: the man wow from Canada, huh, which I can see
Speaker 5: it for sure. However, I think the Mexico tip looks
Speaker 5: more similar.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 5: So this is the front, here's the back scar, wow,
Speaker 5: which you know is interesting. And here's the missing too.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: I definitely see he has a resemblance to him, for sure.
Speaker 1: Sergio and I, Brianna's cameraman.
Speaker 5: Thought that this looked like he could be Robert Fisher's brother.
Speaker 1: I see that. I see aspects of his face in
Speaker 1: this man, and when you combine that with the missing
Speaker 1: tooth and the backscar, I see it. But he's not
Speaker 1: somebody I see immediately having looked at every single photo
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher, and I think that's Robert Fisher.
Speaker 5: Agreed, that's why I feel. But when I was interviewing John.
Speaker 1: Heinzelman, the current detective.
Speaker 5: He was like, you know, this is something where you
Speaker 5: can't look at him and say yes, it's for sure him,
Speaker 5: or yes it's for sure not, and so you have
Speaker 5: to go through everything to fully identify whether it is
Speaker 5: or is it.
Speaker 7: There is an uncanny resemblance concerning the two individuals. But
Speaker 7: today disappointed Scott's Dell cop saying despite a strong physical resemblance,
Speaker 7: fingerprint test show that the man colored in Canada unfortunately
Speaker 7: is not their guy.
Speaker 1: People of course are asking you, well, could he have
Speaker 1: changed his fingerprints? Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: So fingerprinting is obviously a big part of forensics, and
Speaker 5: each individual person has their own set of unique fingerprints.
Speaker 5: You and I we don't have the same fingerprints as
Speaker 5: any other person in the world. And they still look
Speaker 5: at fingerprints almost like a tree trunk. So you know,
Speaker 5: when you're looking at tree trunks, you're counting how all
Speaker 5: the tree is by the rings in the stump or
Speaker 5: the trunk. That's similar to fingerprints. You're looking at whirls
Speaker 5: and arches and unique imprints that they give. So the
Speaker 5: only way you can change your finger tips or prints
Speaker 5: is to obliterate them or burn them off so that
Speaker 5: if your finger is pushed down it doesn't create an
Speaker 5: actual print. That's hard to do, or it'd have to
Speaker 5: cut your fingers off. There is no other way to
Speaker 5: alter your fingerprints. And with the Canada tip, it's not
Speaker 5: like that person didn't have a fingerprint. His unique fingerprint
Speaker 5: matched the identity of somebody else, So that's how you
Speaker 5: know for sure that it wasn't Robert Fisher.
Speaker 1: If you like this show, please download our first two seasons,
Speaker 1: Missing in Alaska and Missing on nine to eleven. For updates,
Speaker 1: visit meon thirty three dot com or follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at John waalzac Jo n Wa l Czak. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. So moving on to the Mexico lead.
Speaker 5: Mexico lead, that one was just like, oh crazy.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 5: So, because I had started this investigation when I first
Speaker 5: started Your Prime Arizona, I had made contact with the
Speaker 5: detectives in it, t J. Duran, Hu Lockerby, John Ainsman,
Speaker 5: and I really respect all the work that all three
Speaker 5: of them do, so they would give me a little
Speaker 5: bit more information than maybe was out there. And when
Speaker 5: I knew I was doing a documentary, I told him
Speaker 5: I wanted to go down certain leads, and I knew
Speaker 5: about the Canada one, that one was pretty well reported,
Speaker 5: but the Mexico tip was not. And they told me, well,
Speaker 5: there was this crazy Mexico tip with these pictures, Like
Speaker 5: what Mexico tip? What pictures? And when I interviewed Hugh Lockerby,
Speaker 5: he brought the pictures with him. So there was this
Speaker 5: man that was in a small Mexican town a little
Speaker 5: south of the border because it was on a Gulf
Speaker 5: town and this man had taken some pictures with tourists
Speaker 5: who were there visiting mom and daughter, maybe some other people.
Speaker 5: And because this wasn't too long after the Fisher family
Speaker 5: home explosion, his picture was everywhere. And so when this
Speaker 5: mom and daughter got home from their vacation, they were
Speaker 5: looking through their pictures and they saw they had taken
Speaker 5: pictures of this man. And then it's like something clicked
Speaker 5: and they said, oh my gosh, this looks like Robert Fisher.
Speaker 5: Maybe we should report this to the FBI, and they
Speaker 5: did so, Scottsdale Police FBI. They end up going down
Speaker 5: there finding this man and who I think worked in
Speaker 5: the area, all of that interviewed him and deemed that
Speaker 5: it was not Robert Fisher, that it was somebody who
Speaker 5: worked in the area. He did not match the prince
Speaker 5: and everything else. But these pictures are wild to the
Speaker 5: point that when investigators got the lead, they said, we
Speaker 5: need to get there right now. This is concerning because
Speaker 5: this is possibly truly Robert Fisher.
Speaker 1: Didn't Fisher's family say the same thing about the photos.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Robert Fisher's sister hadn't seen the pictures before
Speaker 5: we did our documentary and they were new, they hadn't
Speaker 5: been out there before. And she told me that when
Speaker 5: she saw the pictures, her heart stopped. She really thought
Speaker 5: that could have been her brother. And when we're talking
Speaker 5: family too, I mean, yeah, you're looking at these and
Speaker 5: the people closest to Robert thought this could have been him.
Speaker 5: That's a very credible tip. But obviously it wasn't. But yeah,
Speaker 5: to hear that his own sister, who saw those pictures
Speaker 5: for the first time, thought wow, this really could be
Speaker 5: my brother is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Can we look at those photos?
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the mom and daughter, so we have
Speaker 5: this guy. They're a little blurry, but some of them
Speaker 5: look better than others. Here's this one.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 5: I thought this was the best one.
Speaker 1: The mouth is similar, the face is similar. I definitely
Speaker 1: see the resemblance.
Speaker 3: One percent.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the bodego tip.
Speaker 5: Yeah, somebody had called in and said that they were
Speaker 5: taking pictures of themselves at a bodega.
Speaker 1: In Guatemala in two thousand and nine, just taking.
Speaker 5: A normal picture outside of bodega, and this man's captured
Speaker 5: in the background. And these people told investigators that when
Speaker 5: he saw himself in the background, he came up and said,
Speaker 5: get me out of this. I don't want to be
Speaker 5: in the your background. I don't want to be in
Speaker 5: your picture, which put these people on high alert, like, okay,
Speaker 5: no worries. We were just taking our own picture. We
Speaker 5: were trying to take a picture of anybody. So they
Speaker 5: found that very suspective when they got back. They also
Speaker 5: reported their pictures to the FBI. And so he's kind
Speaker 5: of in the background, this man and a couple of
Speaker 5: them looks kind of nondescript. That's a thing with that tip,
Speaker 5: We don't know. Could that have been Robert Fisher? Yeah,
Speaker 5: I could have, but there was never any confirmation. They
Speaker 5: never could find the person that was in the picture.
Speaker 1: So when you did this, you got a bunch of leads.
Speaker 1: One of the leads that you got was about a
Speaker 1: man who came out of the woods and attacked someone.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about that lead and your process
Speaker 1: and investigating it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was in the middle of recording of podcasts for
Speaker 5: a completely different story. So this is a long time
Speaker 5: homicide detective in the valley who's very experienced on very
Speaker 5: high profile cases, and I just mentioned to him that
Speaker 5: we were doing the Robert Fisher investigation, and he said, oh,
Speaker 5: my gosh, I have a tip. Said what he said, Yeah,
Speaker 5: so I used to own this house up in Sholo.
Speaker 1: Forty miles east of where police found Mary's forerunner.
Speaker 5: And this man that used to live there was attacked
Speaker 5: by a man that came out of the woods asking
Speaker 5: for money and food. And it was right around the
Speaker 5: time that Fisher disappeared. And I don't think they ever
Speaker 5: caught that person. And immediately my journalism senses are like wow,
Speaker 5: because especially with a case like this, you get so
Speaker 5: many tips that it's easy to say, oh, this is
Speaker 5: just not credible, or oh, there's nothing to that. But
Speaker 5: this is coming from somebody who investigations like this and
Speaker 5: had for a long time. So I'm thinking, wow, I've
Speaker 5: got to track this down. This is a crazy tip.
Speaker 5: So I tracked down the house. Then I went back
Speaker 5: looked at like the county assessor's website to figure out
Speaker 5: who owned it. Figured that part out he had since died,
Speaker 5: but it was easy to go back and find old information.
Speaker 5: So once I had his name, I figured, Okay, now
Speaker 5: I'm trying to figure out if there's a police report
Speaker 5: who took it. I believe it ended up being the
Speaker 5: Navajo County Sheriff's office, and I put in a Freedom
Speaker 5: of Information Act request which is known as a FOYA,
Speaker 5: to get the police report from that day. I got
Speaker 5: it back and it described this entire interaction. This guy
Speaker 5: comes out of the woods. He's asking the homeowner for money.
Speaker 5: The homeowner says he'll allow him to work around the
Speaker 5: house or work on his property for money. The guy
Speaker 5: says no and then ends up hitting him, and there's
Speaker 5: an assault that goes down, and then before officers can
Speaker 5: get there, the man is gone. They never found him.
Speaker 5: And that's what the report says, which is very Robert Fisher.
Speaker 5: And then it goes on to say the man's tall,
Speaker 5: slender that also could be Robert Fisher. It did say
Speaker 5: he was likely in his twenties, which would not have
Speaker 5: fit Robert, but you never really know what those things.
Speaker 5: There was quite a bit that did fit it. Where
Speaker 5: we were able to rule this tip out completely was
Speaker 5: the date this happened, I believe, eight months before the
Speaker 5: Fisher family home exploded. And that's how we were able
Speaker 5: to say, okay, no, this was not Robert. He had
Speaker 5: not disappeared at that point, and the detective just got
Speaker 5: the months off just a little bit, so we know
Speaker 5: that that's not Robert Finland.
Speaker 1: My mom called me Britney Fisher's teacher, Ms Honey.
Speaker 12: And she says, so they think they found Robert Fisher
Speaker 12: in Finland, and it was her Finish sources that thought
Speaker 12: that they had found it. It wasn't necessarily the FBI.
Speaker 12: It was rumor and mail going around in Finland, specifically Helsinki.
Speaker 12: And then my mom said, yeah, he would blend in
Speaker 12: there perfectly, but then he would have to learn Finish,
Speaker 12: so then he would stand out. So then we thought
Speaker 12: probably not, but who knows.
Speaker 1: Australia in late two thousand and one or early two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, a doctor who knew Fisher is on
Speaker 1: vacation in Australia when he sees a man who looks
Speaker 1: just like, yes, you guessed it Fisher. I contact the
Speaker 1: doctor but he never responds. Instead, I speak to a
Speaker 1: colleague who worked with both men. He requests ananimity.
Speaker 13: Because we all believe that he's still alive, and if
Speaker 13: he was capable of doing this to his family and
Speaker 13: he was truly trying to hide, and if he was
Speaker 13: starting to be pinned down or something like that, would
Speaker 13: he retaliated the people that gave inside information to how
Speaker 13: he could be found.
Speaker 3: There was that feary us.
Speaker 8: Definitely.
Speaker 1: We meet at a donut shop, which by chance started renovations. Today,
Speaker 1: of all days, it's loud cacaffeinists. We're at a tiny
Speaker 1: table in the corner as workers hammer and saw behind us.
Speaker 1: I expect to be buzzed at a cafe, but not
Speaker 1: like this. However, I don't want to scare off the source.
Speaker 1: And the donuts in Vietnamese iced coffee are great. Shout
Speaker 1: out to Bosa Donuts. So we proceed with the interview.
Speaker 13: What did he say he saw in Australia, Him and
Speaker 13: his wife and I think his kids. They were on
Speaker 13: vacation in Australia and they were in an open area.
Speaker 13: It was like an open marketplace, walkways and stuff like that,
Speaker 13: and he said, I saw this guy. We had eye contact.
Speaker 8: He goes, I know it was Robert Fisher.
Speaker 13: He goes, I immediately grabbed my family and we took
Speaker 13: off and we went in a building and called the police,
Speaker 13: and the police showed up.
Speaker 8: They explained the situation.
Speaker 13: The police actually contacted the FBI. The FBI helped the
Speaker 13: Australian police kind of put them in hiding, moved them
Speaker 13: out of their hotel room, put them in a different
Speaker 13: hotel room in hiding, and then they were down there
Speaker 13: and found the person and it was not him.
Speaker 1: Oof, probably the worst audio of any interview I have
Speaker 1: ever done. I'm sorry anyway, to make a long story short,
Speaker 1: the man in Australia was not Fisher.
Speaker 3: The medical magazine there.
Speaker 13: Was publication, a medical publication that I saw that they
Speaker 13: had taken a picture of a healthcare worker in a
Speaker 13: hospital in Canada, and that picture looked exactly like Robert Fisher.
Speaker 13: And I contacted the FBI about that, and they went
Speaker 13: up there and they found that person, interviewed him, determined
Speaker 13: he was not Robert Fisher.
Speaker 3: The sheepherder's cabin.
Speaker 1: Before the murders, this coworker told Robert about a secret
Speaker 1: spot in northern Arizona.
Speaker 3: There was like an old sheepherders cabin there.
Speaker 8: Can you tell me about that cabin?
Speaker 13: Was it abandoned, Yes, it had been abandoned for probably
Speaker 13: thirty forty years.
Speaker 3: It was very.
Speaker 13: Small, probably smaller than this little section that we're in. Yeah,
Speaker 13: very very tiny, but it was It was about ten
Speaker 13: fifteen miles north.
Speaker 1: Of Williams forty five miles south of the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 13: Today, you can't even get there. It's all cordoned off
Speaker 13: and private land and stuff like that. So but back
Speaker 13: then it was very I wouldn't say easy to get to.
Speaker 13: You had to kind of know where it was to
Speaker 13: get there, and a lot of people typically didn't go
Speaker 13: there unless it was like hunting season.
Speaker 3: People would you would see.
Speaker 13: More people at that time of year. But this happened
Speaker 13: in the spring, and hunting season in Arizona's mostly in
Speaker 13: the fall.
Speaker 1: So you've told the police about this span, Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you know if they want to go to truck?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they they didn't find anything there, the canyon man.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after Fisher vanishes, Scottsdale Detective TJ. Juran
Speaker 1: gets a call from a sheriff's deputy in Coconino County,
Speaker 1: north of Phoenix.
Speaker 9: And he said, Hey, I had an interesting incident occurred.
Speaker 9: They were doing a search and rescue in a canyon.
Speaker 9: So where Robert Fisher's truck was found. If you walk
Speaker 9: up Young Road to two sixty year now on.
Speaker 1: Top of the rim, the muggy on rem.
Speaker 9: Just west of that is a lake called Willow Springs Lake.
Speaker 9: Behind that lake, it's damned. Behind that dam is a canyon.
Speaker 9: At first, it starts out to be a small canyon,
Speaker 9: then it grows, and I've piked it a couple of time.
Speaker 9: They had a search and rescue and there were two
Speaker 9: incidents where they were on a cliff doing a rescue
Speaker 9: and he looked out over the canyon and he saw
Speaker 9: a man.
Speaker 8: Now wasn't Robert Fisher.
Speaker 9: Who knows, but he resembled them, And once he saw
Speaker 9: the search and rescues, he turned around and beat feet.
Speaker 9: Another incident occurred where in that canyon you can fish
Speaker 9: the stream there, and supposedly.
Speaker 8: A guy was down there.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he was fishing or hunting, and
Speaker 9: some guy approached him and got mad at him that
Speaker 9: he was in his area. So the guy got kind
Speaker 9: of creeped out and left. And then, of course, when
Speaker 9: somebody mentioned Robert Fisher and showed him a picture, he says,
Speaker 9: that looks like the guy that confronted me. Could it
Speaker 9: be possible he was up there for a little while
Speaker 9: before he left the area. Sure, it's possible, but I
Speaker 9: do not believe that he's living out in the country
Speaker 9: as a grizzly Adams. I'm just not buying it.
Speaker 3: The gold panning hermit.
Speaker 4: There was a guy, a hermit living up outside of Prescott.
Speaker 1: Former FBI agent Bob Caldwell.
Speaker 4: And he was panning for gold and they said he
Speaker 4: looked like Fisher. As soon as I got the call,
Speaker 4: I called some law enforcement up there that I know.
Speaker 4: They actually went out found the guy. He's living in
Speaker 4: a little lean to tent panning for gold.
Speaker 3: It wasn't Robert the Fossil Creek burdler.
Speaker 1: For many years police keep an eye on car and
Speaker 1: cabin break ins in the Arizona Wilderness. We had one
Speaker 1: guy that was doing burglaries once again. HeLa County Detective
Speaker 1: Brian Hay at.
Speaker 6: The Fossil Creek Trail had a camp up there, hidden in.
Speaker 1: The woods, eighteen miles northwest of Payson, and.
Speaker 6: It took us almost six months to find his little
Speaker 6: man cave out in the woods.
Speaker 1: This was sometime in the early two thousands.
Speaker 6: He had firearms and weapons and dan goods and stuff.
Speaker 1: They catched the burglar. It's not Robert.
Speaker 3: Fisher, the Utah mountain Man.
Speaker 1: From twenty seven to thirteen, A mysterious man breaks into
Speaker 1: dozens of cabins in the Utah Mountains. By winter, he
Speaker 1: steals supplies, defaces religious icons, and leaves little notes that,
Speaker 1: depending on his mood, are either menacing or polite. By summer,
Speaker 1: as hikers flood in, he hides in the woods with guns, radios, batteries,
Speaker 1: and dehydrated food. The longer he evades authorities, the more
Speaker 1: his legend grows. He morphs into a folk hero. In
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, he's caught on camera in Camo toating a
Speaker 1: rifle and shuffling around in purple snowshoes. He kind of
Speaker 1: looks like Robert Fisher. The FBI considers the possibility that
Speaker 1: he might be Fisher, but in twenty thirteen police catch him.
Speaker 1: His name is Troy James Knapp. My sources here were
Speaker 1: Outside magazine and the Associated Press.
Speaker 3: The Buddhist compound.
Speaker 1: Investigating this case. I repeatedly hear rumors linking Robert Fisher
Speaker 1: to a remote Buddhist compound. Specif that residence of the
Speaker 1: compound saw Fisher a week before the murders, not far
Speaker 1: from where police find Mary's suv, maybe stashing supplies or
Speaker 1: scoping out an escape route. Or that the Buddhist helped
Speaker 1: fisher flee, which is laughable. I picture robes of monks
Speaker 1: running through the woods with a gun toting conservative fugitive.
Speaker 1: It's absurd but intriguing, and I have to exhaust every
Speaker 1: lead before every lead exhausts me. So I search and
Speaker 1: search for months, no luck. Then I find Woody kleinb
Speaker 1: Thank you for playing Where in the world is Carmen
Speaker 1: San Diego with?
Speaker 9: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Woody is a lifelong resident of HeLa County and a
Speaker 1: member of the Board of Supervisors.
Speaker 11: Well, Heila County goes from about twenty eight hundred feet
Speaker 11: to over seven thousand feet pushing eight thousand feet, so
Speaker 11: you've got all the lower desert type country right up
Speaker 11: into the pines, so you got grasslands in between, and
Speaker 11: literally you can change climates in about two hours in
Speaker 11: Ina County. Is cool, but a lot of people do
Speaker 11: have that perspective that we're all desert. We're not. You know,
Speaker 11: winter times, we'll get snow down to the thirty five
Speaker 11: hundred four thousand foot mark, which puts snow on the
Speaker 11: sorrels in the desert. Even on the higher elevations. It's
Speaker 11: not uncommon to have two or three feet of snow.
Speaker 1: What he is, and I say this sincerely, thank God,
Speaker 1: familiar with the Buddhist compound. In fact, he now owns
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 11: I bought the cattle part of it. They had one
Speaker 11: hundred and fifty acres right there, and I had the cattle,
Speaker 11: and I had a camp and crailes right there next
Speaker 11: to them. So I was going through there quite a
Speaker 11: bit and talking to him and whatnot.
Speaker 1: You know the name of the ranch, by chance, it's
Speaker 1: the ellen Wood Ranch at ellen Wood.
Speaker 11: Yeah Ell INWD.
Speaker 1: The Ellenwood Ranch is fourteen miles west as the crow
Speaker 1: flies of where police find Mary's fore runner. It appears
Speaker 1: to have been owned in two thousand and one by
Speaker 1: a Brooklyn born woman whose followers believe she's a reincarnated
Speaker 1: seventeenth century saint who lived in a cave in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousands. What he takes three members of law
Speaker 1: enforcement to the compound to ask about Robert Fisher.
Speaker 11: We honestly didn't spend more than about fifteen minutes in
Speaker 11: there with those folks.
Speaker 4: I went to the Buddhist calling, I talked to those
Speaker 4: people there.
Speaker 1: Former FBI agent Bob Caldwell.
Speaker 8: He wasn't there.
Speaker 4: They never had contact with him at all. He's not
Speaker 4: the kind of person they would allow him there.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 8: I went over there as well.
Speaker 1: Kila County Detective Brian Haby. So you went and investigated
Speaker 1: o lead.
Speaker 6: What do you remember that virtually every male subject that
Speaker 6: was at the Buddhist camp fit Robert Fisher's description by
Speaker 6: their haircut, skin color, so on and so forth. So
Speaker 6: it could have been easily a mistaken identity, but they
Speaker 6: had seen nobody, and anybody that walks into the Buddhist
Speaker 6: camp is recognized and talked to, and so had he
Speaker 6: been there, they would have definitely known about it.
Speaker 3: Colorado.
Speaker 1: On October eleventh, twenty fourteen, police in Commerce City, Colorado,
Speaker 1: northeast of get a tip that Fisher is hiding in
Speaker 1: a local townhouse. When they respond, two men flee. One
Speaker 1: appears to reach for a weapon, so an officer shoots
Speaker 1: at him and missus. Police catch and fingerprint the men.
Speaker 1: Neither is Fisher. This lead was first reported by the
Speaker 1: Arizona Republic. The traffic stop sometime in the late twenty tens,
Speaker 1: we had.
Speaker 14: A traffic stop out in the West Valley.
Speaker 1: Scott Stale, Detective John Heinzelmann.
Speaker 14: By a Miracle County Sheriff's deputy where he made a
Speaker 14: traffic stop and he said, oh, this is him, and
Speaker 14: we rallied. I remember coming to this building from home, like,
Speaker 14: get in here right now. They've got him all to
Speaker 14: turn around to say, okay, it's not.
Speaker 3: The FBI encounter.
Speaker 1: While in Arizona, I interview a Fisher family friend who
Speaker 1: requests anonymity. A few years ago, while touring FBI headquarters
Speaker 1: in DC, she turned a corner and ran into Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher quote and I literally screamed. I mean, it was like, ah,
Speaker 1: and my husband and goes, look, we're at the FBI museum.
Speaker 1: You didn't think he'd be here, And I go, this
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. It was like a full size poster of him.
Speaker 1: It just freaked me out. Okay, yes that was a
Speaker 1: red herring. I'm sorry. It was just too good to
Speaker 1: pass up. She wasn't traumatized. I promise we laughed about
Speaker 1: it together. This story is so deeply sad. It's an
Speaker 1: active defiance to make space for levity. Speaking of the FBI,
Speaker 1: I get why they removed Fisher from the ten most
Speaker 1: Wanted list, but I hope they put him back on it.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, special Agent Taylor Hannah and Scott Still
Speaker 1: Detective John Heinzelman. The current investigators are busy. They get
Speaker 1: leads almost every week, me and John.
Speaker 5: Topically you vet them together. Sometimes they come via FBI,
Speaker 5: sometimes they come through Scott Stilpadi.
Speaker 14: Unfortunately, there's really no good formula to vet tips that
Speaker 14: come in, and it's anywhere from on the one side
Speaker 14: to say, I'm a psychic in Boise, Idaho, and I
Speaker 14: had this vision that I saw him, or all the
Speaker 14: way up to he's this guy. I think one that
Speaker 14: I had was he's a pastor in a small church
Speaker 14: in Wisconsin, and here's his name, and here he is.
Speaker 14: So those are kind of things that I'll talk to
Speaker 14: folks about. What's an actionable lead or what's something that
Speaker 14: I can follow up on a homeless guy in the
Speaker 14: streets of Los Angeles. There's not much that we can
Speaker 14: really go out and do. But if it's he's living
Speaker 14: under this name and he's in this community, then we
Speaker 14: have something that we can work up and determine. Okay,
Speaker 14: is this person is he just look like him or
Speaker 14: is it something that we need to go with it
Speaker 14: even further.
Speaker 1: Let's say Robert Fisher is alive. Can you imagine interviewing him?
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, that would be my number one interview
Speaker 5: I could ever ask for.
Speaker 1: Once more, Brianna Whitney, the host of True Crime Arizona.
Speaker 5: I have so many questions. Obviously mean everybody else, but no,
Speaker 5: I can't imagine. And honestly, I am quite sure that
Speaker 5: if he was found alive, he wouldn't say a word.
Speaker 1: I think the same thing. I feel like if they
Speaker 1: somehow found him, he would say nothing. He would wait
Speaker 1: for an attorney, there would be a trial, and he
Speaker 1: would not be one of these guys that would speak.
Speaker 1: I think he would sit there in silence with a
Speaker 1: smirk on his face.
Speaker 5: That's what I think too. I think he's way too
Speaker 5: conceded to give away any sort of how he's been
Speaker 5: living or what happened.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, one of the things I asked
Speaker 1: people is how intelligent he was, And everybody has told
Speaker 1: me the same thing, which is like he was kind
Speaker 1: of smart, like not Einstein, not super high Q. But
Speaker 1: if Robert Fisher pulled this off and is alive, this
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest escapes in the history of
Speaker 1: American crime, and that a degree of intelligence.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, yeah, if he pulled us
Speaker 5: off and he's still alive, then he's smarter than everybody thinks.
Speaker 5: You can't be mediocre and pulled this off.
Speaker 1: Summer twenty twenty three, Chris and I are still hiking
Speaker 1: to the cryptic cabin, the hideaway shack, a tipster told
Speaker 1: us about sixteen miles north of where police found Mary's forerunner.
Speaker 1: But I don't think this is safe. I think we
Speaker 1: should turn around. Well, that's unfortunate. That's better than what
Speaker 1: breaking your leg and tumbling down five hundred feet Again
Speaker 1: for everybody listening at home, Yeah, we have no cell service.
Speaker 1: It's just me and Chris. We're in hiking boots. But
Speaker 1: we're on the side of this very steep hill more
Speaker 1: than forty five degree angle, probably fifty or sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: You're one slippery rock away from tumbling down five hundred
Speaker 1: six hundred feet. It's spraining your ankle or breaking your leg.
Speaker 1: There's no clear path for us to get to these coordinates.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it would take us safely probably
Speaker 1: another few hours, and we're not even that far. As
Speaker 1: the crow flies it's also getting darker. It looks like
Speaker 1: it a thunderstorm, and we've still got a hike a
Speaker 1: mile and a half. We should go, Can you lead
Speaker 1: us out? We tried so we don't make it to
Speaker 1: the cabin, but I review photos of it. It's petite
Speaker 1: and made of logs. To get in, you crouch down
Speaker 1: and crawl through a small door. Inside there's dirt covered detritis,
Speaker 1: a rake, a saw, a frying pan, a cooler, white mugs,
Speaker 1: a Folger's coffee container, no sign of a pistol or
Speaker 1: winter green tobacco.
Speaker 8: Ten.
Speaker 1: As we come to a clo I want to review
Speaker 1: all the leads we covered in this episode. Am Nosy Neighbor,
Speaker 1: the bunker rye Barra hitchhiker paysin Walmart, paysin Bashi's Colorado,
Speaker 1: tow truck driver, pawn Shop, old Ford traffic Stop, Oak Flat,
Speaker 1: Tortilla Flat, the Baby Blue Truck, Mexico, Canada, Finland, Australia,
Speaker 1: No More Singing, Guatemala, Malicious Gap, the Pyramids, the medical Magazine,
Speaker 1: the two thousand and three neighbor leads, the Buddhist compound,
Speaker 1: the gold Panting Hermit, the canyon Man, the mountain Man,
Speaker 1: the sheepherder's cabin, Fossil Creek, Burglar, FBI headquarters, even this
Speaker 1: damn shack ah, so many leads. We didn't start the fire,
Speaker 1: but we're looking for the man who did. Coming up
Speaker 1: a rocky hill with my henley choking my neck so
Speaker 1: that the mic doesn't slide too far down, only the
Speaker 1: best audio for our loyal fans want to capture this
Speaker 1: and all it's glory. So if I coumble down a
Speaker 1: hillside and they find this, they'll be very sad, but
Speaker 1: at least at least still have an ending. Next time
Speaker 1: I'm missing in Arizona, her husband recall and red friny
Speaker 1: messages for.
Speaker 5: Robert Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Someone had mentioned he might be homosexual, and maybe it
Speaker 4: was his homosexual lover.
Speaker 1: You can reach us by phone at one eight three
Speaker 1: three new tips that's one eight three three six three
Speaker 1: nine eight four seven seven, by email at tips at
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com, tip s at iHeartMedia dot com, online
Speaker 1: at neon thirty three dot com, or on Twitter at
Speaker 1: John Wallzac j O n W A. L. Czak. Paul
Speaker 1: Duckan is our executive producer. Chris Brown is our supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer, Paul Gemperlin is our researcher,
Speaker 1: Ben Bowen is a consulting producer, and I'm your host
Speaker 1: and executive producer John Wallzac special thanks to Bring Whitney.
Speaker 1: If people want to follow you on socials or anything,
Speaker 1: where can they find you?
Speaker 5: I'm on the mall, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I mean all
Speaker 5: of it's the same. It's at Brianna Whitney. Brianna only
Speaker 5: have one in.
Speaker 1: Additional production support provided by Ben Hackett. Recreations voiced by
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, Matt Frederick and Ben Bollen. Header titles voiced
Speaker 1: by Me and morphed with altered AI software. Cover art
Speaker 1: by Pam Peacock. Neon thirty three logo designed by Derek Rudy.
Speaker 1: Our intro song is Utopia by Ruby Cube. Please download
Speaker 1: the first two seasons of our show, Missing in Alaska
Speaker 1: and Missing on nine to eleven, and if you're so inclined,
Speaker 1: give us a five star rating. Missing in Arizona is
Speaker 1: a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three