Speaker 1: Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
Speaker 1: not be suitable for all listeners. Ashley Zarski initially seems
Speaker 1: like someone Robert Fisher would dislike. He's a conservative, gun
Speaker 1: toting hunter in a pickup truck. She's a liberal leaning woman,
Speaker 1: unafraid to speak her mind. They're not a natural match,
Speaker 1: so it may surprise you that of everyone I interview,
Speaker 1: Ashley gives me the best insight into Robert when we
Speaker 1: meet in Sedona. All I know is that she worked
Speaker 1: with him years ago. I have no idea she was
Speaker 1: also one of his closest friends. Our conversation is emotional
Speaker 1: and revealing. We talk of affairs and violent threats and caves.
Speaker 1: What strikes me most, though, is how Ashley is still
Speaker 1: struggling twenty three years later to reconcile the man she
Speaker 1: knew with the brutal acts he's accused of committing. Ashley
Speaker 1: is perhaps the bravest person I interview for this show.
Speaker 1: It would be so easy for her to disown Robert
Speaker 1: or at least remain silent. Instead, she's up for him.
Speaker 1: To be clear, she abhors the murders she knew and
Speaker 1: loved Mary and the kids, but she refuses to paint
Speaker 1: Robert as a two dimensional evil cartoon. She resists the
Speaker 1: urge to pile on to erase years of happy memories.
Speaker 1: Long after the church and hunting Buddies throw Robert under
Speaker 1: the bus. Understandable given the circumstances. I'm not judging them,
Speaker 1: Ashley recounts to me in her first public interview, the deepest,
Speaker 1: most honest, most complex narrative of who Robert really was.
Speaker 1: Think of the bravery that takes if tomorrow the world
Speaker 1: hates you, viscerally despises you. You are evil incarnate, a
Speaker 1: throat slashing child killer who will speak on your behalf,
Speaker 1: who will resist the urge to distill you down to
Speaker 1: your worst instincts, who will refuse to feed the hungry
Speaker 1: media beast and the ravenous public it serves the reductive
Speaker 1: archetypal villain they crave. This is not about making Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher look good. It's about trying to understand and find him.
Speaker 1: It's also about integrity. Courage is more than violence. Courage
Speaker 1: can be calm. Courage can be telling a stranger about
Speaker 1: a friend you loved, the truth, good and bad, even
Speaker 1: when your friend is accused of heinous crimes. To find
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher, we need to understand him. To understand him,
Speaker 1: we need nuance. Nuance is truth, and truth is integrity,
Speaker 1: and integrity still matters, at least on this show from
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three. I'm John Walzac and this
Speaker 1: is Missing in Arizona, the story of a man who
Speaker 1: disappeared after allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing up
Speaker 1: their suburban home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three
Speaker 1: years later, I'm hunting Robert Fisher, and I need your help.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you do for a look.
Speaker 3: I'm a respiratory therapist. I give breathing treatments to people.
Speaker 3: I do diagnostic testing, and the book my job as
Speaker 3: I take care of people on life sports systems.
Speaker 2: I imagine the last few years with COVID were kind
Speaker 2: of tough for you.
Speaker 3: The last three years have been really hard, demoralizing in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways. I think the hardest part for
Speaker 3: me was that our own government was lying to us. Oh,
Speaker 3: in this spring, when it gets warmed this, I'll just
Speaker 3: go away, don't, won't. I know? I didn't. When Phoenix
Speaker 3: was still shut down, they had this huge protest to
Speaker 3: the Capitol. So we did a counter protest. It showed
Speaker 3: up in scrubs in ninety five across across the chest
Speaker 3: and he said nothing, and people just were horrible. They
Speaker 3: threw shapes and sodas out of us. They called us actors.
Speaker 3: I'm like, come work one shift in my ICU. You'll
Speaker 3: feel differently at my hospital. In the eleven months that
Speaker 3: I was there, and I had one thousand and eighty
Speaker 3: nine COVID patients on events, and seventeen of them lived
Speaker 3: to leave the hospital.
Speaker 2: So what year did you begin your career? What year
Speaker 2: did you first work as a therapist?
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety and is that when you met Robert Fresher. Yep,
Speaker 3: he went vipe up. Nice guy. He was funny, but
Speaker 3: he was super quiet, so he would surprise you with
Speaker 3: his sense of humor. I'll give you this one story.
Speaker 3: We had a cardiac of russ come into the ear.
Speaker 3: He had gotten up to ICU and kind of have
Speaker 3: a twit for a nurse. So the intensivist comes up
Speaker 3: and he wants to see her notes, and she's all
Speaker 3: flustered because they're not complete. So she starts telling them
Speaker 3: Doctor Hammond, I had to do this and this and
Speaker 3: this and this, and finally he's like, Evlin, I'm not
Speaker 3: grating your notes, and she goes back into her spiel
Speaker 3: of hell, they're not complete, but it's not our fault.
Speaker 3: So doctor Hammond says, you know, Everylin, you would get
Speaker 3: a lot further with me if just periodically you compliment me,
Speaker 3: like doctor Hammond, you dashing young thing here, please look
Speaker 3: at my nursing notes. I'm in there, and Pob's in
Speaker 3: there that this conversation's too good, So neither one of
Speaker 3: us is leaving this room. Finally, doctor Hammond sees the
Speaker 3: notes and he gets what he needs and he starts
Speaker 3: to leave the room, and Bob lookes up and says,
Speaker 3: doctor Hammond, you handsome hunk of steel, where are you going?
Speaker 3: And so that became my name for doctor Hammon for
Speaker 3: the rest of the time I worked there.
Speaker 1: Humor bonds them tightly and helps them cope with blood
Speaker 1: and gore and stress.
Speaker 3: Healthcare workers become more warped the more pressure there is,
Speaker 3: so the jokes become a little bit less appropriate. For instance,
Speaker 3: every single stinky year, Memorial Day weekend, and Labor Day weekend,
Speaker 3: every trauma center in this state is going to get
Speaker 3: hit with vote propeller versus swimmer or a jet scare.
Speaker 3: And let's just say that propeller always wins. The patients
Speaker 3: that come in. We used to name SEVICI. I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: we go darkly under pressure. That's where we went. I
Speaker 3: got Sevichi. Are you going to bag and drag this one?
Speaker 3: I can remember working a level one track that was
Speaker 3: pedestrian versus train. The train never loses, and it was
Speaker 3: a blood path, and about every five seconds or so,
Speaker 3: Bob would have to take an alcohol wipe across the
Speaker 3: goggles because I didn't just being covered and what he
Speaker 3: was good at seeing needs and filling those for people,
Speaker 3: And he didn't do it with a lot of fanfare,
Speaker 3: but he did it really consistently.
Speaker 1: Beyond jokes and moments of kindness. Robert was also a prankster.
Speaker 1: Ashley tells me about a coworker with whom Robert had
Speaker 1: a friendly competition.
Speaker 3: He and Bob used to tease each other and pull
Speaker 3: pranks on each other all the time. What kind of
Speaker 3: thanks if you left the little bottles of say, Jurgen's
Speaker 3: hand lotion on the courtroom table when you came in
Speaker 3: in the morning, it was very likely to have been
Speaker 3: replaced with the mayonnaise from the cafeteria instead, so you
Speaker 3: smelled like the condiment aisle for any of the next
Speaker 3: twelve hours. There was this magic shop that sold all
Speaker 3: sorts of pranks gifts, kind of like a Spencer's gifts
Speaker 3: but better. And it had these little glass files of
Speaker 3: the most foul smelling stuff you could imagine. And it
Speaker 3: was a pretty common gag that we would take one
Speaker 3: of these glass files, this nasty smell of stuff, tape
Speaker 3: it into the doorframe, I mean ky the inside door knobs.
Speaker 3: So now you've closed the door, break the glass. You're
Speaker 3: just being attacked with like chemical warfare, and now you
Speaker 3: can't even turn the door knob. Take it off. I
Speaker 3: was stupid, kind of juvenile things, but they were just fun.
Speaker 3: Bob and a few of us might have stolen one
Speaker 3: of the golf carts from security and driven it through
Speaker 3: the air once. The things that you could get by
Speaker 3: word for so much more fun. Healthcare was a lot
Speaker 3: more fun in the mid nineties.
Speaker 2: So if you would partake in these pranks.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he drummed them up half the time. The
Speaker 3: golf cart was totally hissitia, Oh, they won't do anything.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I like living indoors and eating food. I
Speaker 3: don't want to forge myself. I'll hunt you something. I
Speaker 3: don't want raccoon. You know, we just had a banter.
Speaker 3: We made more jokes than anything about like the Clinton
Speaker 3: Monica Lewinski thing. We more or less laughed at these
Speaker 3: poor people. It wasn't nice, but it didn't affect us either.
Speaker 1: Jokes aside. Robert wasn't very political. With one exception, A.
Speaker 3: Lot of people in our department were really excited about
Speaker 3: Ross parole when he was initially starting to round in
Speaker 3: ninety two. You know, the economy stunk and they were
Speaker 3: looking for something different. So he was kind of in
Speaker 3: that vein. We had probably fifty people in our department
Speaker 3: in about ten or twelve, like, we're doing parole. If
Speaker 3: this is the best the two party system can give us,
Speaker 3: We're ing parole. And he was kind of into that.
Speaker 2: Do you remember any reaction of his Oklahoma City or
Speaker 2: Waco or the Clinton years, oj any of the seminal
Speaker 2: comments of the nunties.
Speaker 3: I can't remember us watching the Oja high speech. Chase
Speaker 3: I had all of thirty miles an hour through the
Speaker 3: streets of LA with the rest of the country and
Speaker 3: laughing at it. I don't remember him expressing a view
Speaker 3: whether he had done it or not, but we were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's exactly how I'd be trying to ditch the La cops.
Speaker 3: I'd be driving thirty miles an hour down the four
Speaker 3: or five.
Speaker 1: What about religion? Did Ashley ever see Robert reading a Bible?
Speaker 1: Did he talk about God?
Speaker 3: No? No, that was a family thing, and we would
Speaker 3: get into some philosophical discussions once in a while, but
Speaker 3: he certainly wasn't one of these it was going to say, yeah,
Speaker 3: the second current dance unless you're Trump and two current
Speaker 3: Dans or whatever. He wasn't going to throw his religion
Speaker 3: down anybody else's throat.
Speaker 2: The way that he's been portrayed in the media is
Speaker 2: as I don't know how to say this nicely, like
Speaker 2: a kind of conservative runneck. Is that fair?
Speaker 3: I think that's inaccurate. I mean, yeah, he liked to
Speaker 3: wear overalls with or without T shirt, leaves the T
Speaker 3: shirt off, Bobby work out a lot, is a nice field. Again,
Speaker 3: I told you all roads lie data, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: a redneck at all. And I mean, well, I grew
Speaker 3: up in Atlanta. I can tell you a few things
Speaker 3: about Redinck and he certainly didn't fit that mold at all.
Speaker 3: And I won't even necessarily calm, super concernedive, just quiet.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what foods he liked to drink?
Speaker 3: This is going to make him sound like the redneck.
Speaker 3: I remember being big on beef jerky, huge on beef jerky,
Speaker 3: taking in there the overalls. We always ate dinner together
Speaker 3: in those days. Most of us were doing either like
Speaker 3: chicken on fries or burger fries. He was the one
Speaker 3: who told me to eat fries with ranch dressing, which
Speaker 3: the first time I saw that, it's awesome.
Speaker 4: What else was he into?
Speaker 3: He was really into hunting and fishing. I hate guns. No,
Speaker 3: I'm not asking to take you away years there, just
Speaker 3: not for me. He was really into his fitness. He
Speaker 3: used to bent pressed the eight cylinders. They're heavy, until
Speaker 3: he got caught and they were like, no, no, you
Speaker 3: can't do that because if you drop it, you're going
Speaker 3: to kill us all. And then he would do bicep
Speaker 3: curls with the east cylinders. They're still a good fifteen
Speaker 3: twenty pounds. And then when he got busted with that,
Speaker 3: he would just pick a small stuff number he'd been
Speaker 3: pressed through.
Speaker 2: Can you describe Bob physically to me? Like, if he
Speaker 2: walk in this room, what is he?
Speaker 3: Sometimes he would shave his head real close. Other times
Speaker 3: he had kind of a short blonde haircut, about six
Speaker 3: foot two, probably went two and a quarter two thirty.
Speaker 3: He was pretty solid. It wasn't heavy set at all.
Speaker 3: He was just solid. Thus the bench pressing these tanks
Speaker 3: weighed well over one hundred pounds, about nothing of it.
Speaker 4: What about his back pain?
Speaker 3: It would bother him periodically. I can remember a time
Speaker 3: that he took a week or two weeks off because
Speaker 3: he was just bed balanced. But they were preparing for
Speaker 3: their first child and he was helping Mary set up
Speaker 3: the nurser, but doing all sorts of home renovations too,
Speaker 3: and had just aggravated it. But day to day he
Speaker 3: didn't really complain about it that much. Everybody kind of
Speaker 3: knew that he had had it, and it's why when
Speaker 3: he would do crazy things like bench press the h
Speaker 3: cylinders or his co workers, we were like, you're going
Speaker 3: to kill your back. No, I got this.
Speaker 1: As the nineties progressed, Robert's back pain got more severe,
Speaker 1: but even as he deteriorated, he still went on adventures
Speaker 1: with coworkers, hiking, fishing, biking. One trip in particular stands out.
Speaker 3: And some of the air Ducks and some of the
Speaker 3: other artists had gone on a mountain bike trip out
Speaker 3: by Bartlett Lake and John Hatfield buried a wheel in
Speaker 3: the sand. So he was biking in the buried the
Speaker 3: front wheel and went over the handoffers smash everything.
Speaker 4: He John Hatfield.
Speaker 3: Fractured essentially every bone in his face, ended up requiring
Speaker 3: an emergency trait. They had to take him in the field.
Speaker 3: You know the bs things you see on television where
Speaker 3: they track somebody with a big ballpoint pen. That's how
Speaker 3: he came into the ear.
Speaker 2: Did Bob perform the trade.
Speaker 3: No one of the er docs did, but Bob helped
Speaker 3: secure kept John comb. Somehow they allow Bob to fly
Speaker 3: in with John. Had an identical twin. Bob was one
Speaker 3: who got in touch with Peter and took care of
Speaker 3: notifying people and organizing things like a blood drive, organizing
Speaker 3: things like people donating vacation hours to John because he
Speaker 3: was going to need it.
Speaker 1: Hello, John, I reached John Hatfield by phone.
Speaker 5: Robert Fisher was working as a restory therapist as I
Speaker 5: was working in the same department at the time. In
Speaker 5: the late.
Speaker 1: Eighties, Robert started as a respiratory therapist, then was promoted
Speaker 1: to cardiovascular tech, a role which had.
Speaker 5: Him responding to the level one trauma center to help
Speaker 5: put in central lines and chest tubes inside the trauma
Speaker 5: room in the er. The kind of work that you
Speaker 5: guys did, that's a high stress environment. There's zero margin
Speaker 5: for error. Can you talk about what kind of person
Speaker 5: drives in that environment? Anybody with a paramedic kind of
Speaker 5: a background, or even rest for a therapist that work
Speaker 5: in intensive care to have a low anxiety level When
Speaker 5: things need to get done, you just kind of know
Speaker 5: what you're going to do because you're trained, you're educated,
Speaker 5: you know what the process is. So it's almost reflexive.
Speaker 5: If you will, you don't have to think about it.
Speaker 5: You just can do it. It's almost like they're stepping
Speaker 5: back and even if though people may be on the
Speaker 5: verge of death, you know that you're doing what you
Speaker 5: need to do to prevent it. It's just through training,
Speaker 5: the anxiety level is just not there.
Speaker 1: What was Robert like as a person.
Speaker 5: He was driven on exercise and fan off bills and
Speaker 5: making sure his family was taken care of. He was
Speaker 5: very traditional kind of a person in a sense of
Speaker 5: family hierarchy. It was very much man goes out, works,
Speaker 5: makes the money, brings it home. A woman stays home,
Speaker 5: takes care of the kids. I can members two kids
Speaker 5: being born. His wife delivered. There are two children right
Speaker 5: there at the same campus where we worked. So I
Speaker 5: remember both his daughter and Bobby Junior both being born,
Speaker 5: and he's just being a big proud dad.
Speaker 4: Of course, my boy, smile, you're on candy camera.
Speaker 6: Boy, the keys there you go.
Speaker 3: When he had his kids was probably the happiest that
Speaker 3: I'd ever seen them. In fact, before I went back
Speaker 3: to Resttory School, I had worked as a professional photographer. Well,
Speaker 3: his wife had taken both kids when Bobby would have
Speaker 3: been like three or four months old to sears, and
Speaker 3: three times they had to be reshoots for whatever reason.
Speaker 3: Film was destroyed, eyes were closed and I still had
Speaker 3: access to the studio. So I'll do family pictures. I'll
Speaker 3: do the kids together to the kids lull. In those days,
Speaker 3: it was still film, so we sent out film. When
Speaker 3: they got developed. I took the main shot from each
Speaker 3: of those groupings as an alumn by fourteen, put them
Speaker 3: in frames and hung on both the patient rooms and
Speaker 3: I see you just to watch his reaction, and he
Speaker 3: was awesome with that. I think knowing that side of
Speaker 3: him is what has made it the hardest for me
Speaker 3: to accept did he really do this? For the first
Speaker 3: ten years I would have scept not a chance. Twenty
Speaker 3: years now I have to say the FBI probably knows
Speaker 3: more than I do, even if I knew the guy better.
Speaker 3: So that's been hard.
Speaker 1: The Robert Ashley remembers was kind, empathetic.
Speaker 3: And super generous. Like I got hit by a drunk
Speaker 3: driver end of ninety one and just broke everything. It
Speaker 3: was twenty five surgeries from one car accident, and Bob
Speaker 3: gave me, you could donate your PTO time. He gave
Speaker 3: me like a couple hundred hours of PTO time. Fairly generous,
Speaker 3: but he was just quite so. He wasn't going to
Speaker 3: make a big deal of doing it. He wasn't going
Speaker 3: to tell forty nine of his closest friends that he
Speaker 3: was doing it. But he would just do things like
Speaker 3: that t help y'all.
Speaker 4: Outside of work.
Speaker 1: Ashley, Robert and their families went to baseball games, water parks,
Speaker 1: and concerts. Robert was a huge Garth Brooks family.
Speaker 4: And when Pink Floyd came to town.
Speaker 3: We have great seats on the field. It was a
Speaker 3: huge crowd passing beach balls around stuff. That was as
Speaker 3: I was getting to know him better and he had
Speaker 3: seen kind of quiet and reserve. But he asked me,
Speaker 3: if I was getting tickets, would I mind getting tickets
Speaker 3: for he married to Joinette.
Speaker 1: Another time, Robert and Ashley attended a charity consultor in
Speaker 1: Sedona organized to raise money for a Native American scholarship fund.
Speaker 3: So it was Jackson Brown, Bonnie Ray, the Indigo Girls.
Speaker 3: He had never heard the Indigo Girls, but he really
Speaker 3: liked because nobody harmonizes like them and let me go
Speaker 3: back to like Simon and Garfunkel or something. He went
Speaker 3: with the year that Melissa Ethrich was there, which was
Speaker 3: funny because I never saw but other friends who were
Speaker 3: probably's such a homophobe. I never had him say anything
Speaker 3: or act in any way that made me believe that,
Speaker 3: And considering that particular concert, looks see between the Indigo
Speaker 3: Girls Melissa Etheridge, if he was as big a homophobe
Speaker 3: as people in their own minds made them out to be.
Speaker 3: You sure wouldn't have known it that day.
Speaker 1: This brings me to an interesting point, Robert Fisher's sexuality.
Speaker 1: It comes up unexpectedly. When I interviewed former FBI agent
Speaker 1: Bob Caldwell.
Speaker 6: There was a point that they thought maybe he might
Speaker 6: be Someone had mentioned that he might be homosexual, and
Speaker 6: maybe it was his homosexual.
Speaker 1: Lover who helped him escape after he killed his family.
Speaker 2: Do you remember who speculator that he was gay.
Speaker 6: I believe that was his pastor, friend that he grew
Speaker 6: up with in high school that was counseling him and Mary.
Speaker 6: I believe he was the first one to mention that
Speaker 6: he might have been gay.
Speaker 2: You're talking about Ken. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ken Hodgson was one of Robert's closest friends in Confidants.
Speaker 1: They grew up together. Ken later became a pastor and
Speaker 1: for many year Robert attended his church. If Robert told
Speaker 1: anyone he was gay, it would have been Ken. I
Speaker 1: try reaching Ken, but he never responds. Now, let me
Speaker 1: paint a picture of two men. One is a gun
Speaker 1: toting hunter and fisherman who drives a pickup, loves country
Speaker 1: music and allegedly has affairs with women. The other is
Speaker 1: a fitness obsessed wanna be nurse who likes tight shirts,
Speaker 1: was in the Navy and jams out to the Indigo girls.
Speaker 1: They're both Robert Fisher. This is not about his sexuality.
Speaker 1: It's about stereotypes, good, evil, gay, straight, and integrity and storytelling.
Speaker 1: I have all the power here. Either version of the
Speaker 1: truth I choose is technically true?
Speaker 4: What is truth?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 4: What is real?
Speaker 1: These are perhaps the defining questions of our era, which
Speaker 1: is why I want to illustrate, briefly, in a tiny way,
Speaker 1: how storytellers, reporters, entertainers, dictators can warp what you think.
Speaker 1: It's possible to lie by telling the truth, by cherry
Speaker 1: picking narrow truths that fit your chosen narrative. As far
Speaker 1: as Robert's sexuality.
Speaker 4: Who knows.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was gay, maybe he was straight, maybe he
Speaker 1: was bisexual. No one can answer that except Robert himself
Speaker 1: or maybe his pastor friend Ken Ken or Robert I'm here,
Speaker 1: call me.
Speaker 3: I'm not into conspiracy theories. Think those people are idiots.
Speaker 1: Creator honestly Ashley again, But I bought into Lue a
Speaker 1: persistent rumor that Robert had an affair.
Speaker 3: With one of the icee and nurses that we both
Speaker 3: worked with. Sure she went through a negliative force in
Speaker 3: her hospit of the time, would call the hospital and
Speaker 3: leave threatening messages for Bob.
Speaker 4: This is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Neither the alleged affair nor the threats have ever been
Speaker 1: reported publicly to my knowledge. They'll be new even to
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Ashley doesn't know for sure whether or not
Speaker 1: Robert and the nurse had an affair. Robert never confirmed it,
Speaker 1: but he does know that the nurse's husband thought the
Speaker 1: affair was ongoing for years.
Speaker 2: You said that her husband would call on Friday messages
Speaker 2: for Robert.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was like not even a secret.
Speaker 2: And was this in the mid nineties, late nineties.
Speaker 3: That would have been mid nineties kind of all when
Speaker 3: oj thing was happening, Probably ninety five ish did it started,
Speaker 3: was still going on dur ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Do you remember anything about the nature of those thoughts,
Speaker 2: how frequent they were, what he said, anything like that.
Speaker 3: There were some that you know, I'll be waiting for
Speaker 3: you when you get off. But Bob was a big guy.
Speaker 3: He was probably six to two and just solid. I
Speaker 3: never met husband, but everybody who did kind of laughed
Speaker 3: at Yeah, I'll be waiting for them. And I don't
Speaker 3: remember a lot of the specifics out there than just
Speaker 3: stupid tsasseronn Beard driven rants.
Speaker 1: For three years from nineteen ninety five to ninety eight.
Speaker 1: This man thought his wife was having an affair with
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher. He called the hospital repeatedly threatening Robert.
Speaker 2: How did Bob react to this throats?
Speaker 3: He laughed them off?
Speaker 4: Well, usually Ashley laughed them off too.
Speaker 1: Robert was six feet tall with a lean, muscular build.
Speaker 1: The nurse's husband not so much, but still.
Speaker 3: There were some epistol off When he was mad. He
Speaker 3: would get pretty reserved to himself, so you'd have to
Speaker 3: choke with him to kind of get them out of
Speaker 3: it and say, Bob, look at the sides, you and
Speaker 3: Pevey Herman, who do you think is going to win
Speaker 3: this battle? It'll be okay.
Speaker 1: The threats continued until at least nineteen ninety eight, three
Speaker 1: years before the murders. They had a material impact on Robert.
Speaker 1: He first worked at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital's Osborne campus, only
Speaker 1: one point eight miles from his house, about a five
Speaker 1: minute drive.
Speaker 3: Then, as rumors and the threats started coming, and he
Speaker 3: went to share.
Speaker 1: The shady campus was much further away, nine point eight
Speaker 1: miles from his house, about a thirty minute drive in
Speaker 1: rush hour. It's been reported that in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Robert had an affair with Messuse. I'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a later episode, but this is very different. First,
Speaker 1: it's new information. Second, it's important to examine the word affair.
Speaker 1: Affair connotates an ongoing relationship. The nineteen ninety nine incident was,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, a one time sexual encounter, not an affair. This, however,
Speaker 1: allegedly went on for three years and was with a
Speaker 1: close coworker, not a random Messuse. It was enough to
Speaker 1: force Robert to move from one hospital near his house
Speaker 1: to another far away. The implications of this alleged affair
Speaker 1: and the threats Robert received are potentially important. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any evidence that law enforcement interviewed the nurse implicated
Speaker 1: in the alleged affair. I also haven't seen any evidence
Speaker 1: they considered her husband a possible suspect. But after the
Speaker 1: murders Ashley did.
Speaker 3: If he didn't do it, who else in the world
Speaker 3: or would ever want to do anything to hurt with
Speaker 3: his family, and the only thing that came to mind
Speaker 3: was now ex husband.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to reach the nurse's husband, but I
Speaker 1: did speak briefly by phone to the nurse.
Speaker 4: She vehemently denied any.
Speaker 1: Affair quote bullshit never happened. If you like this show,
Speaker 1: please download our first two seasons, Missing in Alaska and
Speaker 1: Missing on nine to eleven. For updates, visit meon thirty
Speaker 1: three dot com or follow me on Twitter at John
Speaker 1: waalzac jo n Wa l Czak. Thanks for listening. The
Speaker 1: alleged affair and violent threats are the first bombshell of
Speaker 1: my interview with Ashley. The second is the caves. After
Speaker 1: the murders, investigators called ash and asked about.
Speaker 3: Places that Bob liked to hang out. Where did he
Speaker 3: like to camp from with I don't camp, but if
Speaker 3: he's alive, and if he's in Arizona, you'll find him
Speaker 3: in northern Arizona. Told him about Young because we used
Speaker 3: to explore the caves. We ride mountain bikes there and
Speaker 3: explore the cave some.
Speaker 1: This has never been reported before. Ashley is the first
Speaker 1: witness to establish a link between Robert Fisher and the caves.
Speaker 1: Where police thought he was hiding after the murders, where
Speaker 1: many people still believe his body remains today. A race
Speaker 1: from your mind any image of Grand Hollywood caves. These
Speaker 1: are tiny holes leading into claustrophobic tangles of underground passageways.
Speaker 1: I had been leaning away from the idea that Fisher
Speaker 1: died in a cave. Now I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2: The SWAT team entered the redmand cave, but the one
Speaker 2: that was closest to where the vehicle was, which is
Speaker 2: right there, yeah, fifty.
Speaker 1: Feet Gila County Detective Brian Havey.
Speaker 2: Were they able to enter that cave?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Deputy Kron tried to make entry into the cave, and
Speaker 2: it's just too narrow. There's no way that any human
Speaker 2: being could have crawled down in that one.
Speaker 4: So I'm going down in the cave.
Speaker 1: If you have any claustrophobia, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: doing this. Yes, next episode, I go down into the caves.
Speaker 1: But first I need to learn more from Ashley.
Speaker 2: You know for a fact that he has some familiarity
Speaker 2: with the caves.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all hands down. I know he used to
Speaker 3: like to go to Young and hunt that region of
Speaker 3: the caves. I know he knew. He was the one
Speaker 3: that kept us from freaking out when you'd take a
Speaker 3: turn and then it would get a little tighter than
Speaker 3: you wanted it.
Speaker 2: So you actually went in caves with him?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of us did.
Speaker 1: Ashley, Robert and some coworkers went mountain biking near the
Speaker 1: caves and decided to enter one together.
Speaker 3: It was a great place to cool down when you
Speaker 3: got overheated from mountain biking because they were a lot cooler.
Speaker 2: When you say you went into the cave, how far
Speaker 2: deep did you guys go? And how far deep did
Speaker 2: he go?
Speaker 3: They? You want pretty far because I came out a
Speaker 3: different way then we've gone it. I probably want a
Speaker 3: few hundred yards at best. Then skill was an involved
Speaker 3: and I'm like, yeah, I'm out. Were you crawling when
Speaker 3: it got tight? Yeah? So initially you could stand up
Speaker 3: and just walk right in. It was a reprieve from
Speaker 3: the heat. That was a great place to cool off
Speaker 3: during our ride. We kind of made it kind of
Speaker 3: like our halfway point turned around.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what time of year and what year mentions.
Speaker 3: It was sometime between ninety two and ninety five, ninety
Speaker 3: six maybe even, And you.
Speaker 2: Said that was near young. Yeah, so it was very
Speaker 2: close to where the four Runner was not.
Speaker 3: Really close to where the four Runners found and so
Speaker 3: I was like, that's kind of creepy. But I also
Speaker 3: thought at that point that if Bob really did it,
Speaker 3: they were going to find him dead in the cave.
Speaker 4: But they didn't.
Speaker 1: No one ever found any of Robert's remains or belongings.
Speaker 3: I knew that he would never hurt the dog. I'm
Speaker 3: not surprised if they found Blue alive. I was surprised
Speaker 3: that they didn't find up dead. That sounds morbid, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's true though.
Speaker 1: On April tenth, two thousand and one, when Robert's house exploded, I.
Speaker 3: Saw on the news. My jaw hit the ground. I
Speaker 3: picked up the phone and called the number to say,
Speaker 3: you have this wrong. There was not a.
Speaker 1: Chance when news of the murders filtered out.
Speaker 3: I accept this, not a chance on how he would
Speaker 3: have laid a finger on either one of those kids
Speaker 3: or Mary.
Speaker 2: What was Mary like?
Speaker 3: She was sweet? She was quiet, but really sweet, great
Speaker 3: with kids like man, you missed your calling all those
Speaker 3: years who worked for Bank of America. You should have
Speaker 3: been teaching kindergarten. You would be great at this.
Speaker 2: Do you remember if you would wear his wedding room?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Always.
Speaker 1: In fact, the night Robert kept wiping blood off Ashley's
Speaker 1: goggles at work so she could see.
Speaker 3: He ended up having to change gloves a billion times
Speaker 3: because the glove would split where his ring was. One
Speaker 3: of the things that I always remember him saying was
Speaker 3: that he married up, that he got the better end
Speaker 3: of the deal, and I thought that was sweet.
Speaker 1: Robert also spoke lovingly about at least one other family member.
Speaker 3: He had a sister that he was so close to
Speaker 3: it that he talked about finally.
Speaker 2: What did you say about his sister?
Speaker 3: Just she was like a second mother, a friend, a
Speaker 3: partner in crime, that she had always been there for him.
Speaker 1: Later, as I'm packing up, Ashley tells me she has
Speaker 1: a message for Robert's sisters or.
Speaker 3: Whatever it's worth. And not everybody hated it.
Speaker 2: Or even necessarily knows to sure.
Speaker 1: Or even necessarily knows for sure he did it.
Speaker 2: You said you've struggled with coming to terms with the
Speaker 2: idea that he did it. Do you think that he
Speaker 2: did it at this.
Speaker 3: Point on an intellectual level, Yeah, I have to think
Speaker 3: that he did it on an emotional level. I don't
Speaker 3: know that all ever get there. If he in fact
Speaker 3: did do this, it had to have been some massive
Speaker 3: psychotic break, and I know that doesn't really fit the narrative.
Speaker 3: When you see him on the tapes they've shown on
Speaker 3: television going to the bank or go you to buy
Speaker 3: supplies and stuff, I don't know that I saw any
Speaker 3: supplies being purchased that he wouldn't have purchased on any
Speaker 3: given day or the week for his lifestyle. So I
Speaker 3: kind of was like, oh, yeah, you made that fitter narrative,
Speaker 3: whether it was true or not.
Speaker 2: At this point, do you believe he's alive or.
Speaker 3: Then I think he's dead. And I've thought that for
Speaker 3: a really long time. In the early days of it,
Speaker 3: there were a couple of supposed sightings who wanted a
Speaker 3: grocery store and pasion, which would have made sense, But
Speaker 3: it wasn't him. The guy that they detained in Canada.
Speaker 3: He was pretty good image of him, wasn't him. And
Speaker 3: I have said from the very start that if you did,
Speaker 3: you're not going to find him alive. He's not somebody
Speaker 3: that would have said, oh I got rid of that problem.
Speaker 3: Now I'm going to start this life I've been secretly
Speaker 3: wanting that's certainly not the Bob that I've known him
Speaker 3: in any version.
Speaker 2: I asked you a hard question, Sure, how much of
Speaker 2: that is objective? And how much do you want to believe.
Speaker 3: That it's fifty to fifty honest objectively? Said, Look, his
Speaker 3: story and his picture was certainly out there, like right
Speaker 3: away out there. So I'm like, really, nobody could find
Speaker 3: this guy. It's not like he's Deep Cooper jumping out
Speaker 3: of a plane, you know. So that's the objective said,
Speaker 3: And the subjective is it sounds more were to say,
Speaker 3: you hope that one of your friends or buddy's is
Speaker 3: but for his sake, if he did do this, then
Speaker 3: I hope that he's not alive, because it would torture him.
Speaker 1: In early two thousand and one, Ashley, her husband, and
Speaker 1: their son spent a weekend with the Fishers at a
Speaker 1: cabin near Whispering Pines, eleven miles north of Payson.
Speaker 3: It was just before this happened, and we'd had a
Speaker 3: great weekend together. Bob helped cut down the lembs that
Speaker 3: were too close to the cabin. There was a stream
Speaker 3: that went just below where the cabin was in whispered clients,
Speaker 3: and he went fishing with Bobby, tried to show my
Speaker 3: not quite four year old how'll catch a fit. And
Speaker 3: then the next thing I know is not even a
Speaker 3: month later, and I'm seeing this on the news and
Speaker 3: I'm like, there's no way he did this. That's where
Speaker 3: he stayed stuck for completely stuck for about ten years.
Speaker 2: So this trip was in March of two thousand one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would have been in February or March of
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. And it was just a weekend thing.
Speaker 3: We'd done it a billion times.
Speaker 1: Ashley's son, Kyle, was only three and a half.
Speaker 3: And it was a funny kid and he loved Bob
Speaker 3: because Bob would toss him around like a basketball for
Speaker 3: hours and you wonder why your back coats. Bob would
Speaker 3: toss Kyle in the air forever. He loved the billy low.
Speaker 3: She's OK, Yeah, I kind of missed this.
Speaker 1: I pressed Ashley for as many details about this final
Speaker 1: trip weeks before the murders as she can remember.
Speaker 3: During the day out there, you could see other cappins around,
Speaker 3: but at night it had a three sided wrap around
Speaker 3: porch and the creek ran just below the property. Line,
Speaker 3: and it felt like you were the only one on earth.
Speaker 3: So that was our happy time. That was Bob's bourbon time.
Speaker 3: And that was about the only time that you would
Speaker 3: really see him drink very much. I mean after work
Speaker 3: sometimes we would all go out and play pool together.
Speaker 3: You might see him with a beer, but he liked bourbon.
Speaker 3: He tried his damnas to teach my three and a
Speaker 3: half year old to fish from the Greek. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: was in and out of it, like he was a
Speaker 3: child of immediate gratification. So when he cast the first
Speaker 3: line and it did not come up with a fish,
Speaker 3: he's kind of a pissed off three year old. Bob
Speaker 3: thought that was funny. He was patient with him, and
Speaker 3: he had Bobby helping him learn how to work the
Speaker 3: net that trip.
Speaker 2: Did you notice anything negative about his dynamic with Mary.
Speaker 3: Or because no, And I think that's part of why
Speaker 3: I was like, there is not a snowballs chance and
Speaker 3: how he did this. I was just so convicted that
Speaker 3: he did not do that. I would have seen something.
Speaker 3: I kept racking my brain for did I see any
Speaker 3: little argument disagreement took And I didn't. I didn't see
Speaker 3: thing different.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to hide long standing maurial issues. Yeah,
Speaker 2: from somebody you've known for eleven years. It's not like
Speaker 2: you knew it for three weeks.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like the temperature of the room can get
Speaker 3: icy in a bad relationship, and it never did. But
Speaker 3: either they put on just a great, unified front or
Speaker 3: they were doing all right.
Speaker 2: One question I'd have for you is for people that
Speaker 2: believe that he did this, I think it might be
Speaker 2: jarring to hear somebody speak of the positive side of him.
Speaker 2: Are you okay with that?
Speaker 3: It bothers me that people are that way because and
Speaker 3: I think it's just gotten more intense over this last decade, especially,
Speaker 3: people only want to see you one way, and I
Speaker 3: think one thing about me, I'm like, these are people
Speaker 3: who didn't know them, who've never experienced that, and I
Speaker 3: want to talk like experts. It bothers me. There's nothing
Speaker 3: I'm bill about them. But yeah, that has always kind
Speaker 3: of bothered me that in my experience, most people who
Speaker 3: have said negative things don't never spend an hour their
Speaker 3: life with them and didn't know them.
Speaker 2: By the way, is this is the beginning of all
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, don't worry it rolls too fast, but it's
Speaker 3: kind of cool to see.
Speaker 1: We get up from Ashley's table, walk to the back door.
Speaker 1: Through the window, I see storm clouds roll in the
Speaker 1: famous red rocks of Sedona, rise above the horizon and darken.
Speaker 4: The monsoon is here and we.
Speaker 7: Get more of the Lord there when I gonna make
Speaker 7: a can.
Speaker 8: O my way up here. I've been, I've been too,
Speaker 8: could have paid up the pie. Oh good, this is
Speaker 8: I love it up.
Speaker 2: My parents love it up here, so I'm not.
Speaker 3: But it's like he's from an emotional part from this place,
Speaker 3: so American up. I'll come back with the need.
Speaker 2: To stone all the pros may and you just.
Speaker 9: Put in a brand new kitchen after bath Redd the pool.
Speaker 2: But replace the roof.
Speaker 9: Like our exit strategy always was it One day Kyle
Speaker 9: would cremate us a BACKWASHICETU pull fill start still might
Speaker 9: be the exit strategy, but it won't be from.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, next time I'm missing in Arizona. Something says not
Speaker 1: haunted like anurring a little cave near grave in the woods.
Speaker 4: Cave near the grave.
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, nine, eight, four,
Speaker 1: seven seven, by email at tips at iHeartMedia dot com,
Speaker 1: tips at iHeartMedia dot com, online at meon thirty three
Speaker 1: dot com, or on Twitter at John Wallzac.
Speaker 4: J O, n w A. L. Czak.
Speaker 1: Paul Decan is our executive producer, Chris Brown is our
Speaker 1: supervising producer. Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemberline
Speaker 1: is our researcher, Ben Bolan is a consulting producer, and
Speaker 1: I'm your host and executive producer John Wallzac. Cover art
Speaker 1: by Pam Peacock. Meon 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 an Arizona is
Speaker 1: a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three