Speaker 1: Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
Speaker 1: not be suitable for all listeners. This episode also discusses suicide.
Speaker 1: You can reach the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at
Speaker 1: nine to eight eight. I want you to run an experiment.
Speaker 1: Go to Google News, type in mankill's family, See what
Speaker 1: comes up. I'm scripting this episode. On May sixth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, two weeks ago, a forty two year old
Speaker 1: named Jonathan Candy shot and killed his thirty nine year
Speaker 1: old wife, Lindsay, and three of their sons, ages eighteen, fourteen,
Speaker 1: and twelve. He then died by suicide. For some reason,
Speaker 1: he didn't kill his youngest son. That boy, ten years old,
Speaker 1: woke up the next morning, found his family dead, and
Speaker 1: called nine one to one. Jonathan Candy was a video engineer.
Speaker 1: He lived in a nice home in a well to do,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City suburb. Hours before the murders, he even attended
Speaker 1: an NBA game that night, Jonathan and Lindsay had a fight.
Speaker 1: Jonathan shot Lindsay, then went room to room, killing his
Speaker 1: three older sons. According to Koco, a local TV station,
Speaker 1: it's unclear why he didn't kill his youngest son, or
Speaker 1: how that boy either slept through everything or ignored it.
Speaker 1: The Candy and Fisher cases are similar. Everyone was roughly
Speaker 1: the same age, dads, respectable jobs, moms caring for the kids,
Speaker 1: nice suburban homes, late night fights that apparently led to murder,
Speaker 1: no known history of domestic violence. These cases are called familicides,
Speaker 1: or more brutally, family annihilations. They're rare statistically, yet they're
Speaker 1: common enough that by the time this episode airs, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to google man kills family and read about
Speaker 1: yet another tragic, comparable case. This speaks to broader societal patterns.
Speaker 1: We lift up men, push down women, and try to
Speaker 1: subjugate women who don't consent to being controlled, often with violence. Yes,
Speaker 1: in some ways the Candy and Fisher cases stand out
Speaker 1: the Candy Boy survived, Robert Fisher disappeared. But in other
Speaker 1: ways they're not unique at all. They share similarities with
Speaker 1: hundreds of other familicides, and in these similarities we have
Speaker 1: an opportunity not only to learn about Robert Fisher, but
Speaker 1: to save lives from iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three. I'm
Speaker 1: John Walzac and this is Missing in Arizona, the story
Speaker 1: of a man who disappeared after allegedly killing his wife
Speaker 1: and kids, blowing up their suburban home, and escaping into
Speaker 1: the wilderness. Twenty three years later, I'm hunting Robert Fisher,
Speaker 1: and I need your help. It's tough to research familicide
Speaker 1: because so little research has been done. The only experts
Speaker 1: are a few hyper specialized academics scattered around the globe,
Speaker 1: including Neil Webs Based of all places, in Phoenix, Neil
Speaker 1: is director of Arizona State University's Family Violence Center. He
Speaker 1: also has the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the Robert Fisher case. I'm sure, as a
Speaker 1: specialist and familicide in Arizona, you're familiar with that case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know the Fisher case.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Neil wrote a book called Familicidal Hearts the emotional styles
Speaker 1: of two hundred and eleven killers. He divides family annihilators
Speaker 1: into two categories.
Speaker 2: Vivid coercive, the sort of classic angry batterer who's bullying
Speaker 2: but vulnerable and dependent at the same time.
Speaker 1: This annihilator is the stereotypical wife beater, motivated by shame
Speaker 1: and anger. He's obsessed with being a man, but he's
Speaker 1: really a bully. He hides, interfeares of abandonment, weak, with
Speaker 1: outer spasms of violence strong to him. Masculinity is control
Speaker 1: and control is violence.
Speaker 2: These men, when you really look at their lives, they're
Speaker 2: not that powerful, they're not that in control. In fact,
Speaker 2: they kill when they're out of control and their power
Speaker 2: is ebbing.
Speaker 1: About fifty percent of annihilators fit the livid course of subtype.
Speaker 2: On the other end, civil repeatable. These are offenders where
Speaker 2: I could find no prior history of domestic violence. They
Speaker 2: were often respectable members of the community. There's often a
Speaker 2: lot of surprise expressed about the killing. The killings often
Speaker 2: were done not necessarily in the heat of rage, but
Speaker 2: as part of the unfolding of very uncomfortable circumstances like,
Speaker 2: for example, foreclosure on a mortgage, loss of a job,
Speaker 2: some grand ignominious end, perhaps saving the family from destitution,
Speaker 2: thinking that you're doing people of favor. Some people refer
Speaker 2: to this as misguided ultruism. There's a strong sense of
Speaker 2: entitlement there. There's a strong sense of narcissism there. Often
Speaker 2: there's a lot of repression, depression, suicidality, often very much masked,
Speaker 2: and they would probably number a third and then there
Speaker 2: was the remainder. Twenty percent of cases that rattled both
Speaker 2: I call those contradictory cases, and it was difficult to
Speaker 2: classify them.
Speaker 1: This is probably where Robert Fisher falls in the middle.
Speaker 1: Civil reputable, a church going man who works at a hospital,
Speaker 1: no known history of domestic violence. His life spirals out
Speaker 1: of control. He'd rather kill his family than see it
Speaker 1: break apart like his did when he was fifteen. His
Speaker 1: parents had an acrimonious divorce, which impacted him severely. The
Speaker 1: boy whose world is destroyed becomes as a man, the
Speaker 1: destroyer of worlds. This blends into the other subtype, livid
Speaker 1: course of hyper masculine me man very controlling. One example,
Speaker 1: Robert fixated on Mary's weight. A family friend told me
Speaker 1: Robert quote was not going to have a fat wife
Speaker 1: or kids. Mary would hide cookies around the house. Another
Speaker 1: friend said, quote, he would make her go out and walk,
Speaker 1: then he would lock the door and he wouldn't let
Speaker 1: her in if he didn't think it was long enough.
Speaker 1: He was like, you need to do a double walk.
Speaker 1: A final example, the salt incident.
Speaker 3: We went camping with them one time.
Speaker 1: Fits your family friend John rode In, is there a
Speaker 1: night to cook.
Speaker 4: They cook try tip steak, and she forgot the salt
Speaker 4: and he would not let that go.
Speaker 3: You just like nagging her for the whole night.
Speaker 5: John's wife Mary Beth, and we had salt.
Speaker 6: Well, forgetting salt was like, what a jerk.
Speaker 7: He could be a jerk and she wouldn't fight with him.
Speaker 7: She was very controlled by him. I remember once I
Speaker 7: drove from our house in Skoyspell to the Pavilions and
Speaker 7: then went later with her to dinner that night. She's like,
Speaker 7: I can't believe that John lets you drive there twice
Speaker 7: in one day. Like okay, I never even thought about that.
Speaker 7: He controls where you drive, how far you drive, how
Speaker 7: much you eat, like Mary, how many pieces of pizza?
Speaker 7: Is that just very controlling, but she put up with it.
Speaker 1: My second femalo side expert is David Wilson. David is British,
Speaker 1: which seems random to say, but it's relevant. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why in a minute we chat by zoom. David
Speaker 1: takes great delight when I use in American phrases like.
Speaker 6: On the lamb. I love that I went to school
Speaker 6: in North Carolina and.
Speaker 1: I always you know, I'm from North Carolina.
Speaker 6: Oh, while I was at Chapel Hill.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Carry, North Carolina, right near Chapel Hell.
Speaker 6: Oh wonderful. I have such fond memories and we're speaking
Speaker 6: at such a sad time about Carolina, aren't we? In
Speaker 6: Because of the murder a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: It was literally yesterday. On August twenty eighth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: a grad student shot and killed a chemistry professor at UNC.
Speaker 1: This is where the UK angle comes in. David co
Speaker 1: authored a seminole paper called A Taxonomy of Male British
Speaker 1: Family Annihilators. He studied fifty nine British annihilators. I didn't
Speaker 1: consider that important. I didn't even think about it before
Speaker 1: we spoke, but it matters.
Speaker 6: Gaining access to guns in Britain is very difficult. As
Speaker 6: a result of the dun Blaine massacre of those school
Speaker 6: children in Scotland on.
Speaker 1: March thirteenth, nineteen ninety six, a forty three year old
Speaker 1: man killed sixteen five year olds, their teacher and himself.
Speaker 1: The massacre led to a handgun ban in most of
Speaker 1: the UK. I want you to run another experiment. Go
Speaker 1: to Google news, type in school shooting. See what comes
Speaker 1: up again. I'm scripting this. On May sixth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Three days ago, a bullet hit a girl at a
Speaker 1: high school in DC. Five days ago, police shot and
Speaker 1: killed a boy with a pellet gun outside of middle
Speaker 1: school in Wisconsin. Twelve days ago, a boy shot and
Speaker 1: killed another boy at a high school in Texas. This
Speaker 1: is our society. That's not a comment on gun control.
Speaker 1: It's a statement of fact. This is our society. This
Speaker 1: is America twenty twenty four. And this is why I
Speaker 1: have to highlight that David is British, because easy access
Speaker 1: to guns means that while in many ways his findings
Speaker 1: on femili side are universal, in some ways they're unique
Speaker 1: to the UK. For example, only six of the fifty
Speaker 1: nine annihilators David studied used guns. The five most common
Speaker 1: methods were stabbing nineteen, carbon monoxide poisoning nine, strangulation eight,
Speaker 1: bludgeoning seven, fire seven, and then guns six. Most common
Speaker 1: day of the week Sunday, most common month August. Most
Speaker 1: common locations home thirty four, country lane ten, beauty spot
Speaker 1: six other nine. Most annihilators had jobs. Fifty five percent
Speaker 1: were thirty to thirty nine years old. Eighty four percent
Speaker 1: of victims were under the age of ten. Sixty six
Speaker 1: percent of cases were triggered by family breakdown, meaning the
Speaker 1: family broke up or was about to break up. How
Speaker 1: do the fissures fit in here? Robert was thirty nine
Speaker 1: normal employed normal. He killed Mary and the kids at
Speaker 1: home normal by slitting their throats abnormal, and shooting Mary abnormal.
Speaker 1: For the UK, Bobby was ten and Brittany was twelve abnormal.
Speaker 5: The murders were likely.
Speaker 1: Triggered by family breakdown normal and took place in April abnormal,
Speaker 1: on a Monday or Tuesday abnormal. You might ask, why
Speaker 1: does the day or month matter, Well, think about it.
Speaker 1: The most common month August, the most common day Sunday,
Speaker 1: the summer, the weekend.
Speaker 6: Lots of fathers would gain access to their children, especially
Speaker 6: during school holidays, when they had access arrangements. After they
Speaker 6: had perhaps left the family home. They would take the
Speaker 6: children as if they were going to spend some time
Speaker 6: at his home or say at a picnic area, but
Speaker 6: he would rig the car so that they would all
Speaker 6: die through carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 1: David's paper separates annihilators into four categories, disappointed, anomic, paranoid,
Speaker 1: and self righteous, disappointed, believes that the family has let
Speaker 1: him down, that they've failed, either actively or passively, from
Speaker 1: fulfilling his view of what a family should be. Sees
Speaker 1: family as simply an extension of his own needs, desires, hopes.
Speaker 5: And aspirations.
Speaker 1: Anomic has lost the source of the family's income or
Speaker 1: is facing the threat of bankruptcy. Oversocialized into a belief
Speaker 1: that consumption determines quality.
Speaker 2: Of life, paranoid.
Speaker 1: Annihilator believes that an external threat, which may be real
Speaker 1: or imagined, such as from social services whom he believes
Speaker 1: will take his children into care, will destroy his family.
Speaker 1: In his own mind, killing his family is a way
Speaker 1: of protecting them from that threat. Self righteous seeks to
Speaker 1: blame his partner or ex partner for the annihilation. Will
Speaker 1: have often been controlling, slash possessive in the past, narcissistic
Speaker 1: and dramatic, both in the method by which the annihilation
Speaker 1: takes place and in his statements prior to the murders.
Speaker 6: I was always amazed by how performative the family annihilators
Speaker 6: in our study, where these are very dramatic events, and
Speaker 6: it reveals the underlying need for the hegemonic masculinity of
Speaker 6: the annihilator to be able to demonstrate, even in the
Speaker 6: moment when lives are being taken, that he's still the man.
Speaker 1: This squarely fits Fisher. A family killed their throats, cut,
Speaker 1: a wife shot in the head, a house raped to explode.
Speaker 1: Robert the man is really Robert. The drama Queen David
Speaker 1: repeatedly mentions a similar annihilator named Christopher Foster. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Foster, a fifty year old British man,
Speaker 1: shot and killed his wife and daughter, their dogs and horses,
Speaker 1: burned down their house, and died by suicide.
Speaker 6: What unites all of the family annihilators, whether you're talking
Speaker 6: about Robert Fisher or whether we're talking about Christopher Foster,
Speaker 6: is an idea of the performance of masculinity and how
Speaker 6: they have total control over their family as they see it,
Speaker 6: to do as they would please with those people within
Speaker 6: their family. They do not see their family members, their partner,
Speaker 6: their children as sentient beings, but almost as possessions, almost
Speaker 6: as if they're just like the TV or some kind
Speaker 6: of r They are simply reduced to being objects that
Speaker 6: can be used for whatever purpose the family annihilator would
Speaker 6: like to use them for.
Speaker 1: I've tried to paint Robert Fisher not as a simplistic demon,
Speaker 1: but as a complex man, in part to highlight that
Speaker 1: there's no universal portrait of evil. Evil often sees you
Speaker 1: before you see it. By the time you know someone's evil,
Speaker 1: it might be too late to save yourself. Evil can
Speaker 1: lie dormant in a civil shell, then explode outward with
Speaker 1: sudden force.
Speaker 6: It would be really easy if violent men, if murderers
Speaker 6: and serial murderers or family annihilators had horns on their
Speaker 6: head and a long pointed tail, we could point to
Speaker 6: them and say that's the killer. Avoid them. It doesn't
Speaker 6: work like that. There is a Hollywood trope that somebody
Speaker 6: like a Fisher, or serial killers or mass murderers more generally,
Speaker 6: will be some kind of dysfunctional loner who is clearly
Speaker 6: not socialized within his peer group or within the community
Speaker 6: in which he lives or operates. However, that's not the case.
Speaker 6: Whether we're talking about serial murderers or family annihilators. These
Speaker 6: men are often incredibly successful and well socialized within the
Speaker 6: group or neighborhood. They are seen as trustworthy and you know, John,
Speaker 6: whether we're talking about the United States or in Britain,
Speaker 6: And if I just think about serial murder for a second,
Speaker 6: our most prolific serial killer in Britain was a respected
Speaker 6: old fashioned general practitioner at GP, doctor Harold Shipman, who
Speaker 6: kills two hundred and fifteen, perhaps as many as two
Speaker 6: hundred and sixty of mostly older women patients that he
Speaker 6: had within his general practice. When he was first arrested,
Speaker 6: the other patients in his practice were so annoyed that
Speaker 6: Shipmen had been arrested they set up a fund to
Speaker 6: pay for his legal expenses, a fighting fund. So you know,
Speaker 6: here were somebody who was respected within the community. And
Speaker 6: if I think about the United States, your most prolific
Speaker 6: serial killer was a nurse, Charles Cullin.
Speaker 1: Can I stop you real quick. I was born on
Speaker 1: September eighth, nineteen eighty eight, in Saint Barnabas Hospital in Livingston,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. That is the hospital where Charles Colin worked,
Speaker 1: and he was actively working as a nurse when my
Speaker 1: brother and I were both born there. I was born
Speaker 1: in eighty eight, my brother was born in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: So the hospital where I was born in Livingston, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: Saint Barnabas is exactly where the most prolific serial killer
Speaker 1: in American history was working at the time I was born.
Speaker 6: This is why you are so fascinated with true crime.
Speaker 6: I absolutely guarantee, and I often say John, that an
Speaker 6: interest in true crime is not just normal, it's necessary
Speaker 6: because if we understand the circumstances and which we are
Speaker 6: likely to face violence, we can avoid them. And there's
Speaker 6: a speed. As a specie, human beings have evolved because
Speaker 6: we solved mysteries, and why people kill is a mystery,
Speaker 6: and we want to understand that phenomenon better. And that's
Speaker 6: why it's normal and necessary to have the kind of
Speaker 6: interest that you've got and to do the kinds of
Speaker 6: podcasts that you want to make.
Speaker 1: So I said, my brother was born in nineteen ninety one. Well,
Speaker 1: my family at the time lived in a town in
Speaker 1: New Jersey called Sayerville, New Jersey. And there's a famous
Speaker 1: case nine days after my brother was born, where this
Speaker 1: little boy disappeared from a carnival. His body was found,
Speaker 1: but for many years they didn't arrest anyone. They later
Speaker 1: arrested the mother. Five year old Timothy Wilsey disappeared from
Speaker 1: a carnival in Sayerville, New Jersey on May twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. I was two at the time, living
Speaker 1: a mile away. Police found Tim's remains in a marsh.
Speaker 1: His mother was later arrested, convicted of murder, and sent
Speaker 1: to prison. Then in twenty one, in a shocking four
Speaker 1: to three vote, the state Supreme Court set her free.
Speaker 5: While not a.
Speaker 1: Family annihilation, the wilty case was high profile for an
Speaker 1: obvious reason. The accused killer was Tim's mom. We can
Speaker 1: barely process these crimes when committed by a father, let
Speaker 1: alone a mother. How can a father kill his kids?
Speaker 1: How can a mother? Female annihilators exist, but they're rare.
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you more, but believe it
Speaker 1: or not, no one keeps statistics. I can't go to
Speaker 1: FBI dot gov and search annihilation data. There is none, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, from a policy perspective, seems like low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. We should track this stuff at a federal level. Regardless.
Speaker 1: Familicide is undeniably overwhelmingly a male phenomenon. David tells me
Speaker 1: something surprising. In the not so distant past, judges sometimes
Speaker 1: went easy on killer dads.
Speaker 6: There was one particular case where the judge says, I
Speaker 6: think you suffered enough, and gay from a suspended sentence.
Speaker 6: It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Now I have two more critical questions for David. One
Speaker 1: what can his research tell us about premeditation? And two
Speaker 1: what can it tell us about suicide? How likely is
Speaker 1: it that Robert Fisher planned the murders in advance? And
Speaker 1: how likely is it that he died by suicide? How
Speaker 1: common was it in family annihilations that the family annihilator
Speaker 1: premeditated and planned the annihilation versus day in the popular
Speaker 1: imagination snapped because I think people have trouble understanding how
Speaker 1: somebody could do this.
Speaker 6: None of the family annihilator that I studied ever snapped.
Speaker 6: They all had planned to a greater or lesser extent.
Speaker 6: All of the family annihilations were a consequence of circumstances
Speaker 6: within the family that he felt he was no longer
Speaker 6: able to control. So you can talk about premeditation in
Speaker 6: a very kind of you know, like he had gasoline
Speaker 6: that he was going to burn the house, doarn he
Speaker 6: had bought that specially, he had thought about when the
Speaker 6: children were going to be home. He had premeditated to
Speaker 6: the extent of thinking in which order would he kill
Speaker 6: the children.
Speaker 1: Every single annihilator, David studied. Fifty nine out of fifty
Speaker 1: nine showed evidence of premeditation, a finding supported by Neil Websdale,
Speaker 1: who splits annihilators into two groups, livid, coursive and civil reputable.
Speaker 2: Premeditation was a strong element in both sets of cases.
Speaker 2: It was particularly strong in the civil reputable cases where
Speaker 2: people planned it out very carefully and clearly. The Fisher
Speaker 2: case is an example where there was considerable planning.
Speaker 1: My third and final expert is Taylor Oatal. Taylor is
Speaker 1: a PhD student at the State University of New York
Speaker 1: at Albany. She spent a year and a half studying
Speaker 1: thirty nine familicides that occurred in the US between twenty
Speaker 1: nine and twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: The overwhelming majority of family sides are premeditated, even if
Speaker 4: it's not the full family unit. This is a trend
Speaker 4: I've seen in multiple cases is that they will plan
Speaker 4: on killing the spouse right and now they have this
Speaker 4: realization that they've killed the mother of their children. They
Speaker 4: are now a single parent. They don't want that burden,
Speaker 4: so they follow up and kill their children.
Speaker 1: It's important that all three experts, Taylor, David, and Neil
Speaker 1: say familicide is almost always premeditated, because in the Fisher case,
Speaker 1: police have so far made public very little evidence, if any,
Speaker 1: that Robert planned the murders in advance. They note that
Speaker 1: he changed his oil two days before the murders, so what?
Speaker 1: And that he bought water purification supplies the night of
Speaker 1: the murders. Again, so what? He was going to go
Speaker 1: camping that weekend? Well, they say he always used bottled water.
Speaker 1: He never purified it with tablets or pumps. But I
Speaker 1: found a likely explanation for this in a police file.
Speaker 1: A few days before the murders, Robert and a neighbor
Speaker 1: watched a TV show called Eco Challenge, which featured a
Speaker 1: segment on water purification, which intrigued Robert. Well, police say,
Speaker 1: what about the ATM Robert took out two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty dollars right before the murders.
Speaker 5: Again, so what.
Speaker 1: The only evidence that made sense to me were the
Speaker 1: poor patterns proving that a liquid accelerant was used, which
Speaker 1: would indicate the arsonists stocked it up in advance. But
Speaker 1: in episode three we debunked this. Poor patterns are junk science.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, neither arsen dogs nor lab tests detected
Speaker 1: any liquid accelerant. My point here is not that Robert
Speaker 1: didn't premeditate the murders. I think he did. I'll make
Speaker 1: that case in a later episode. My point is that
Speaker 1: everything cited so far publicly as evidence of premeditation is
Speaker 1: in fact garbage. So that's why the academic angle is important.
Speaker 1: If Fisher's caught and there's a trial, prosecutors will likely
Speaker 1: call some of the same experts I've interview you'd end
Speaker 1: this episode, who found that the vast majority of annihilators
Speaker 1: did in fact premeditate their crimes. Finally, let me say
Speaker 1: this to law enforcement. If you have any better evidence,
Speaker 1: I recommend you make it public asap. There are people
Speaker 1: who know stuff, and they don't want to talk to
Speaker 1: you because they still don't believe Robert did this, or
Speaker 1: if they do, they think he snapped, not that it
Speaker 1: was a cold blooded, premeditated crime. If you want to
Speaker 1: squeeze out new leads, show these folks they're wrong. There's
Speaker 1: no point in saving evidence for a trial that's never
Speaker 1: going to happen. You got to catch him first. If
Speaker 1: 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 Walczak. Thanks for listening. Now,
Speaker 1: the key question Robert Fischer's fate. What happened to him?
Speaker 1: Did he die by suicide in the wilderness? Did he
Speaker 1: escape in the absence of evidence? What can research tell us?
Speaker 2: It wouldn't surprise me if he was alive at all.
Speaker 2: It looked like that was a well planned.
Speaker 5: Exit, Neil Websdale.
Speaker 2: He knew what he was doing, He planned it. The
Speaker 2: exit strategy was there.
Speaker 1: The idea that someone can kill their children and not
Speaker 1: die by suicide is tough to process. When I ask
Speaker 1: people who think Fisher died why they think that, they
Speaker 1: inevitably asked me a question, how could he live with himself?
Speaker 1: Let's turn to statistics. David Wilson studied the fate of
Speaker 1: fifty nine annihilators. Forty died by suicide, thirty one immediately
Speaker 1: after the murders, six after a short delay, and three
Speaker 1: after a long delay. Eight attempted suicide but lived. The
Speaker 1: final eleven did not attempt suicide. That's a sizable minority
Speaker 1: nineteen percent, and it might be even higher in the US.
Speaker 6: I wonder if they had been Americans, they would have
Speaker 6: attempted suicide by cop, and of course, because our police
Speaker 6: aren't routinely armed in Britain, that was never going to
Speaker 6: be an option.
Speaker 1: And the biggest question of all, how common did you
Speaker 1: find cases in which male family annihilators successfully escaped.
Speaker 6: None. I had no examples where the annihilator would escape
Speaker 6: or be still at large in the way that you
Speaker 6: were describing about Robert Fisher.
Speaker 1: Remember, David identified four types of annihilators self righteous, disappointed, anomic,
Speaker 1: and paranoid. Taylor Ohal, the PhD student, further classifies as
Speaker 1: as either.
Speaker 5: Self preserving or mentally ill.
Speaker 4: If I had to categorize Robert Fisher, it would be
Speaker 4: self righteous or self preserving. So these offenders are less
Speaker 4: likely to commit suicide self preserving specifically, and they're more
Speaker 4: likely to deny that they had anything to do with
Speaker 4: it and flee because again, the only person that they're.
Speaker 3: Concerned with are themselves.
Speaker 4: And in this case, I would say, it's less about
Speaker 4: revenge and more about I need to shed myself with
Speaker 4: this family unit they're holding you back.
Speaker 1: Taylor found that eighty five percent of American annihilators died
Speaker 1: by suicide, similar to the eighty one percent of British
Speaker 1: annihilators who either died by suicide or attempted it. That
Speaker 1: figure is lower for self preserving offenders like Robert Fisher.
Speaker 4: Only sixty percent of these offenders commit suicide. They don't
Speaker 4: think they're going to be caught. They're above the law
Speaker 4: in their minds, so they don't need to kill themselves.
Speaker 4: For that reason, they view their family more as accessories
Speaker 4: than an actual family, so they don't feel compelled to
Speaker 4: reunify that family. That's why they were killing them in
Speaker 4: the first place. So they don't kill themselves, and they
Speaker 4: triumph flee because that, in their mind is what they're
Speaker 4: entitled to. They're saving themselves. They're gonna get rid of
Speaker 4: this family so that they can go and have a
Speaker 4: better life.
Speaker 5: Like David Taylor found.
Speaker 3: That nobody successfully fled.
Speaker 1: If committing familicide and not dying by suicide is less
Speaker 1: common in the fifteen to twenty percent range, successful escapes
Speaker 1: are almost unheard of, and Robert Fisher did successfully escape.
Speaker 1: We just don't know his ultimate fate. Let's look now
Speaker 1: at a few similar cases and see if we can
Speaker 1: learn anything chrishiun Lungo. Longo, his wife, and their three kids,
Speaker 1: ages two, three, and four lived in Newport, Oregon, a
Speaker 1: seaside town of ten thousand. In December two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: Longo killed his family. He dumped two of the bodies,
Speaker 1: his wife and youngest daughter in Yaquina Bay next to Newport.
Speaker 1: Just outside the bay sits the wreck of an old ship.
Speaker 1: It is, by chance, my great grandfather's ship. He captained
Speaker 1: it during World War Two. After the war it sank mysteriously.
Speaker 1: It's known as the ship that committed suicide. Anyway, After
Speaker 1: Longo suffocated and strangled his family, he fled to Mexico.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering how an annihilator can live with himself,
Speaker 1: listen to this. Longo stole the identity of a New
Speaker 1: York Times writer named Michael Finkel. He spent his days
Speaker 1: in Cancun and Taloom, dancing, drinking, skinny dipping, and hooking
Speaker 1: up with a German woman. After someone recognized him, he
Speaker 1: was arrested, extradited, and sentenced to death. Finkol, the reporter,
Speaker 1: later wrote a book about the case called True Story
Speaker 1: Murder Memoir Maya Culpa, which was turned into a movie
Speaker 1: starring James Franco and Jonah Hill.
Speaker 5: Xavier DuPont de Legonez.
Speaker 1: In April twenty eleven, a French aristocrat named Xavier du
Speaker 1: BoNT de Legonez shot and killed his wife and four kids,
Speaker 1: ages thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, and twelve.
Speaker 5: He also killed his.
Speaker 1: Dogs and buried them in the backyard with his family. Xavier,
Speaker 1: the same age as Robert Fisher, then fled to southern France,
Speaker 1: where he spent four nights in hotels. He was last
Speaker 1: seen withdrawing cash from an ATM before abandoning his car
Speaker 1: and vanishing. Police didn't open an investigation until April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, ten years to the day from when Mary
Speaker 1: Fisher's forerunner was found in Arizona. It took so long
Speaker 1: in part because Xavier spread letters saying the family was
Speaker 1: moving abroad immediately. That bought him time, maybe ten days.
Speaker 1: His last known location was a small town on the
Speaker 1: French Riviera, surrounded by rugged terrain. Like Fisher, investigators think
Speaker 1: he died by suicide in the wild, or escaped and
Speaker 1: is alive. They searched caves and abandoned mines for his remains.
Speaker 1: They didn't find any. In twenty fifteen, someone sent a
Speaker 1: photo of two of the murdered children to a journalist.
Speaker 1: On the back, they wrote, I am still alive from
Speaker 1: then until this hour and signed the name Xavier DuPont
Speaker 1: de Lagnez. In twenty sixteen, a security camera filmed a
Speaker 1: man who resembled Xavier at a French casino. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: police raided a monastery looking for him, no luck. The
Speaker 1: case remains unresolved. Bradford Bishop Bishop was a Yale graduate
Speaker 1: who spoke five languages and worked for the US State Department.
Speaker 1: On March first, nineteen seventy six, after failing to get
Speaker 1: a promotion, he left work. Agitated, he went to a bank,
Speaker 1: pulled out cash, and bought a sledgehammer, a gas can,
Speaker 1: a shovel, and a pitchfork. Later that night, he bludgeoned
Speaker 1: to death his mom, wife, and three sons, ages five, ten,
Speaker 1: and fourteen. He packed all five bodies into a red
Speaker 1: station wagon and drove from suburban DC to an isolated
Speaker 1: swampy spot in eastern North Carolina, where he dug a
Speaker 1: pit and lit everyone on fire. He then stopped at
Speaker 1: an outdoor store in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where he used
Speaker 1: a credit card to buy fifteen dollars and sixty cents
Speaker 1: worth of supplies. Two weeks later, police found his car
Speaker 1: abandoned at a campground in the Smoky Mountains. In the
Speaker 1: back were a bloody blanket, a shotgun, and an axe.
Speaker 1: According to the Associated Press, the back wheel well was
Speaker 1: filled with blood. An FBI agent told reporters quote were
Speaker 1: working on the assumption that Bishop abandoned the car and
Speaker 1: took off into the mountains. Bradford Bishop and Robert Fisher
Speaker 1: share similar profiles. They were both thirty nine, Their wives
Speaker 1: were thirty seven and thirty eight. Their kids were about
Speaker 1: the same age. Both men allegedly killed their children as
Speaker 1: they slept in bed. Both have surgical scars on their
Speaker 1: lower backs. Both served in the military. Both are avid
Speaker 1: out doorsmen. Both care about fitness. Both are extremely controlling.
Speaker 1: Both prefer neat and orderly environments. Both lived in well
Speaker 1: to do suburbs, had no known history of domestic violence,
Speaker 1: and were once again respectable. Listen to this from a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine Associated Press article. It's about the Bishops,
Speaker 1: but it could easily be about the Fishers. Quote neighbors
Speaker 1: describing the family as well liked puzzled along with police
Speaker 1: over the possible motive for the mass slaying. Police believed
Speaker 1: the most plausible theory of what happened to Bishop is
Speaker 1: that he carried out an elaborate plan to disappear. Since then,
Speaker 1: hundreds of sightings of Bishop have poured in from all
Speaker 1: over the world. From twenty fourteen to eighteen, the FBI
Speaker 1: put him on its ten most wanted list. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, the FBI announced that a sixty three year
Speaker 1: old woman adopted as a child discovered via a commercial
Speaker 1: DNA test that Bishop was her biological father. Bishop apparently
Speaker 1: had her in college long before the murders and may
Speaker 1: not have known she existed. If alive, Bishop would be
Speaker 1: eighty eight. The case remains unresolved. John List by far
Speaker 1: the most famous family annihilator of all time. In November
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, List shot and killed his mom and wife.
Speaker 1: He then made him self a sandwich and went to
Speaker 1: the bank before picking up two of his kids, ages
Speaker 1: thirteen and sixteen, from school, taking them home, and killing them.
Speaker 5: That night, his.
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old son had a soccer game. List attended
Speaker 1: the game, then drove the boy home and killed him two.
Speaker 1: He staged the bodies of his wife and kids in
Speaker 1: the ballroom of the family mansion in Westfield, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: He left his mom in her attic apartment. Lisz wrote
Speaker 1: a letter saying he killed everyone to save their souls.
Speaker 1: He lowered the air conditioning to preserve the bodies, piped
Speaker 1: in organ music through an entercom system, halted deliveries of milk,
Speaker 1: mail and the newspaper. Wrote letters saying his kids were
Speaker 1: visiting a sick relative, cut his face out of every
Speaker 1: family photo, and bolted. Police didn't find the bodies for
Speaker 1: almost a month. Imagine crawling through a window at night
Speaker 1: into a chilly mansion filled with gloomy organ music and
Speaker 1: five bodies. Two weeks after the murders, a man using
Speaker 1: the alias DBA Cooper hijacked a plane in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest and parachuted out with two hundred thousand dollars cash.
Speaker 1: Investigators later considered List a suspect, but that theory went nowhere.
Speaker 1: Unlike List, who fled west, he abandoned his car at
Speaker 1: an airport and caught a train to Michigan, then Colorado.
Speaker 1: For the next seventeen years, he lived in Denver, under
Speaker 1: the alias Robert Bob Clark. He got an accounting job,
Speaker 1: joined a church, and in nineteen eighty five remarried. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, he and his new wife moved to Virginia.
Speaker 1: A year later, America's Most Wanted featured the case. A
Speaker 1: former neighbor recognized that Bob Clark was in fact John List.
Speaker 1: List was arrested in Virginia, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
Speaker 1: life in prison. He died in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: What can we learn from this case? Well, like Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher and Bradford Bishop, John List was respectable, a quiet accountant,
Speaker 1: a Sunday school teacher who lived in a mansion. Importantly,
Speaker 1: though he killed his family, escaped and lived under a
Speaker 1: fake identity for nearly eighteen years, and the case was
Speaker 1: everywhere books, films, TV shows. So by nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: what was the point of yet another show?
Speaker 5: But it worked.
Speaker 1: John List was arrested age sixty three, the same age
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher would be today if alive. Scottsdale Detective TJ.
Speaker 1: Duran often calls Fisher the John List of our generation.
Speaker 1: I agree. If you want to learn more about the
Speaker 1: List case, I highly recommend the podcast Father Wants Us
Speaker 1: Dead by Jessica Rimo and Rebecca Everett. Thomas Shaffrey. On
Speaker 1: July eighteenth, nineteen seventy two, eight months after the List murders,
Speaker 1: in Irvington, New Jersey, only ten miles from the List House,
Speaker 1: a former police officer named Thomas Shaffrey shot and killed
Speaker 1: his wife and two daughters. Police found them in bed,
Speaker 1: shot in the head. Thomas was thirty nine, the same
Speaker 1: age as Robert Fisher. His His wife, Estelle, a kindergarten teacher,
Speaker 1: was thirty three. Laura was twelve, Alison eleven. I've only
Speaker 1: ever seen a photo of Laura nineteen seventy one, sixth grade.
Speaker 1: Zoom in in the middle.
Speaker 5: There she is.
Speaker 1: Six kids down stands another girl, Laura's best friend. That
Speaker 1: girl is my mom. The Irvington police chief told reporters
Speaker 1: that the Shafferys were quote a real nice family. The
Speaker 1: business was doing well, so there was no problem there.
Speaker 1: It was just one of those things, Just one of
Speaker 1: those things. And how sad is that? What does it
Speaker 1: say about our society that, yes, familicide is rare, but
Speaker 1: common enough. It impacted my mom. My mom would often
Speaker 1: hang out at Laura's house. She recalls that Laura had
Speaker 1: a round, pretty face with light brown hair, twinkling blue eyes,
Speaker 1: and a beautiful smile. They loved the song band of
Speaker 1: Gold by Frida Payne and seventies fashion any style boots,
Speaker 1: maxie skirts. They were in the same Girl Scout troop.
Speaker 1: Laura's mom, Estelle, was one of their leaders. Thomas, Laura's dad,
Speaker 1: was a tall, stocky man with brown hair. My mom said, quote,
Speaker 1: I always remember him as surly, never seeming to be
Speaker 1: in a good mood. Surprising because Estelle was the opposite, open, nurturing, caring.
Speaker 1: My mom remembers having dinner with the Shafferys right before
Speaker 1: the murders. Thomas barely made eye contact, barely spoke. Laura said,
Speaker 1: don't mind him, That's just the way he is. The
Speaker 1: day of the murders, my mom was home school was
Speaker 1: out for the summer. In a soft spoken, distraught voice,
Speaker 1: my grandfather told her what happened. I then ran outside
Speaker 1: and got on my bike. My mom said, since Laura's
Speaker 1: house was only a few blocks away, I rode over
Speaker 1: there very quickly, but needless to say, was instantly stopped
Speaker 1: by the police. I remember sobbing uncontrollably, suddenly realizing in
Speaker 1: my heart that what my parents said was true. Orial
Speaker 1: service and Mass was held at the Catholic church next
Speaker 1: to our elementary school. I vividly remember seeing the caskets
Speaker 1: by the altar. For many years, my mom couldn't comprehend
Speaker 1: what happened. She still can't. The murders were one reason
Speaker 1: she later chose to study family law. She wanted to
Speaker 1: be a judge to watch over children. My point here
Speaker 1: is not that my mom is special. It's that, in
Speaker 1: the context of familicide and more broadly, domestic violence, unfortunately
Speaker 1: she's not. Violence against women and children, and yes, even men,
Speaker 1: is obscenely common.
Speaker 5: It's so common.
Speaker 1: Multiple Robert Fishers have killed their partners. In nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: a Robert Fisher killed his girlfriend in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: It's so common.
Speaker 1: Robert William Fisher, Our Robert Fisher isn't even the first
Speaker 1: Robert w. Fisher featured on America's Most Wanted for killing
Speaker 1: his wife. That honor goes to Robert Wayne Fisher, who
Speaker 1: murdered his wife in Louisiana nineteen eighty eight. I want
Speaker 1: to end this episode by speaking to two groups of people. First, men,
Speaker 1: It's not normal or moral, or acceptable or strong to
Speaker 1: abuse or kill women and children.
Speaker 5: It's weak. Please seek help.
Speaker 1: Second women, if you think you can predict when a
Speaker 1: controlling partner might kill you, you're wrong. Mary Jane Longo couldn't
Speaker 1: predict it. Agnes DuPont di Legnez couldn't predict it. Annette
Speaker 1: Bishop couldn't predict it, Mary Fisher couldn't predict it. Estelle
Speaker 1: Shaffrey couldn't predict it, and.
Speaker 5: Neither can you.
Speaker 1: The time to act to seek help is now. It's
Speaker 1: critical to note again that none of these annihilators had
Speaker 1: documented histories of physical abuse. But abuse takes many forms.
Speaker 4: The most common that we think of is physical abuse
Speaker 4: Taylor otelp hitting, shoving, kicking, anything that is causing somebody
Speaker 4: physical harm.
Speaker 3: But that is not at all the full extent of
Speaker 3: domestic violence.
Speaker 4: Some more common ones are economic control. So, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: the sole earner in this house, you don't need to
Speaker 4: work your job.
Speaker 3: I'll take care of you.
Speaker 4: But then that turns into, well, all the money you
Speaker 4: have is my money.
Speaker 3: No, you can't go spend that money. People start to restrict.
Speaker 4: Their financial independence and it forces them to be dependent
Speaker 4: on their spouse, making it harder for them to leave.
Speaker 3: Emotional abuse.
Speaker 4: This is widely ranging, but a lot of times it
Speaker 4: is in the form of blaming. The offender blames their
Speaker 4: spouse for all of their problems, and that spouse comes
Speaker 4: to believe that they are worth nothing, that their entire
Speaker 4: worth is in their partner, and again this prevents them
Speaker 4: from leaving. Another really really big one is isolation, and
Speaker 4: I think this is one that's probably not recognized as widely,
Speaker 4: is that these offenders tend to saw off their spouse
Speaker 4: from all their other support systems so that the only
Speaker 4: form of support they have is the offender. That way,
Speaker 4: they can't leave because they have no one else to
Speaker 4: go to. It can also be verbal calling them horrible names,
Speaker 4: can be sexual in the form of porgion or abuse
Speaker 4: or rape, and then social kind of leads into that
Speaker 4: isolation territory, so things like stalking, physically restraining a person,
Speaker 4: controlling their sexual behaviors, what they wear, making violent threats,
Speaker 4: and not allowing them to leave to divorce them, or
Speaker 4: all forms.
Speaker 3: Of domestic healths.
Speaker 1: Circling back to Robert Fisher, Taylor thinks he's alive. It's
Speaker 1: interesting to think that he could have another family.
Speaker 3: He absolutely could and probably does. To be honest, what
Speaker 3: makes you say that? Because everything is about him.
Speaker 4: If that first family didn't meet his needs, he's going
Speaker 4: to shed that family and go find one. He does so,
Speaker 4: maybe a wife who in his mind, is more subservient,
Speaker 4: children who are more obedient, a family who's more financially successful,
Speaker 4: just going and recreating what he wants his self image
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: If Robert Fisher is alive, if he has a new family,
Speaker 1: they're in danger. So women and men not sure about
Speaker 1: Robert's sexuality, look at your partner if you were born
Speaker 1: after April two thousand and one.
Speaker 5: Look at your dad.
Speaker 1: If you think he's Robert Fisher, contact law enforcement in
Speaker 1: a safe and urgent manner. Neil Websdale, the expert in Phoenix,
Speaker 1: also thinks it's likely that Robert Fisher is alive. But
Speaker 1: this is about so much more than Fisher. Like me,
Speaker 1: Neil sees familicide, particularly in an American context, as an
Speaker 1: indictment of a six society. I want to emphasize that
Speaker 1: this is not isolated to one political tribe, the Red killers,
Speaker 1: the Blue killers. Familicide is bipartisan. Domestic violence is bipartisan
Speaker 1: violence is the bipartisan glue that binds us.
Speaker 2: What we're dealing with here is a society that wants
Speaker 2: a reason, is a society that wants to exhibit shock
Speaker 2: at these horrors. But it's the same society that is
Speaker 2: in many ways alienated, the society that could be You know,
Speaker 2: I should be careful what is say say here, But
Speaker 2: it's the only society on Earth that's dropped nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: on another country. We live with various abominations. When you
Speaker 2: look at the treatment of Native people's, when you look
Speaker 2: at American history, the blood is in the soil. It's here.
Speaker 2: So I think, yes, you're looking at the haunting presence
Speaker 2: of the inexplicable with these cases. And when people say
Speaker 2: they can't understand, none of us can understand. But we
Speaker 2: should realize that there but for the grace of whatever,
Speaker 2: there but for fortune, go you and I.
Speaker 1: If you're experiencing or at risk of abuse, please call
Speaker 1: the National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight hundred seven
Speaker 1: nine to nine safe. That's one eight hundred seven ninety
Speaker 1: nine seven two three three. Next time I'm missing In Arizona.
Speaker 7: He made the trip to go talk to these survivalist
Speaker 7: people and it was right before.
Speaker 1: You can reach us by phone at one eight three
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Speaker 1: j O n w A. L. Czak. Paul Decan is
Speaker 1: our executive producer, Chris Brown is our supervising producer. Hannah
Speaker 1: Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemperlin is our researcher.
Speaker 1: Ben Bollen is a consulting producer, and I'm your host
Speaker 1: and executive producer John Wallzac. Header titles voiced by me
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