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 nine.
Speaker 2: To eighty eight.
Speaker 1: A quick note, this episode is packed with so much
Speaker 1: detail we're splitting it into two parts from iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Neon thirty three. I'm John Walzac and this is Missing
Speaker 1: in Arizona, the story of a man who disappeared after
Speaker 1: allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing up their suburban
Speaker 1: home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three years later,
Speaker 1: I'm Hunting Robert Fisher and I Need your Help, Part one.
Speaker 1: By April two thousand and one, the demons of Chaos
Speaker 1: are tightening their grip around Robert Fisher's neck. Try as
Speaker 1: he might, he's unable to pry free their fingers. They
Speaker 1: start choking him slowly. In nineteen eighty, when he injures
Speaker 1: his back, for the next sixteen years, he's in pain.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and one, he needs spinal surgery, but
Speaker 1: he's terrified it'll paralyze him. He also hurts his knee.
Speaker 1: He's losing control of his body. He almost loses control
Speaker 1: of his family too. In nineteen ninety nine, he goes
Speaker 1: to a massage parlor seeking pain relief. Instead, he finds temptation.
Speaker 1: He cheats on Mary with a masseuse. Then he confesses
Speaker 1: and threatens suicide if Mary leaves him. They patch up
Speaker 1: their marriage, but the demons of lust loom just out
Speaker 1: of view, and apparently once again they seduce him. Anew,
Speaker 1: this man so intent on controlling others is unable to
Speaker 1: control himself. If in the lead up to the murders,
Speaker 1: Robert cheats again and Mary finds out this could be
Speaker 1: the spark that triggers his nihilistic demons to light the
Speaker 1: fire of total annihilation. But does Robert actually have another
Speaker 1: fling or an affair? Circumstantial evidence says yes. He tells
Speaker 1: a friend that things are quote clicking between him and
Speaker 1: a coworker. He doesn't say anything else except that she's
Speaker 1: in his unit. He tells a colleague, a cardiologist, that
Speaker 1: he's having marital trouble. Several times it seems like he's
Speaker 1: going to say more confess, but he backs off. The
Speaker 1: final two months, he appears nervous, anxious. The cardiologist thinks
Speaker 1: Robert had an affair, just not with a coworker that
Speaker 1: would be tough to hide. He says. Hospitals are chit chatty,
Speaker 1: tight knit places. People notice things, people talk. On April tenth,
Speaker 1: the day the house explodes, Scottsdale Detective TJ. Juran interviews
Speaker 1: Robert's boss at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. For
Speaker 1: privacy's sake, let's call her Dolly. From a police report quote.
Speaker 3: I asked Dolly if it was possible Fisher was having
Speaker 3: an affair with a female from work or outside of work.
Speaker 3: At first, Dolly denied any knowledge of an alleged affair,
Speaker 3: but within a few moments should began to cry. Dolly
Speaker 3: then advised me that approximately six to seven weeks prior,
Speaker 3: Fisher confided in her. Dolly related to Fisher appeared depressed,
Speaker 3: so she had a talk with him after work. Dolly
Speaker 3: also knew that Fisher had a urinary tract infection. During
Speaker 3: December two thousand, Fisher related that he was having a
Speaker 3: very hard time with the situation involving another female. Fisher
Speaker 3: went on to tell Dolly that he had gone to
Speaker 3: a massage therapist because of his back. Fisher said he
Speaker 3: obtained the infection from the therapist. During the session, Fisher
Speaker 3: related that he did not have sex with the therapist,
Speaker 3: but that things did begin to get out of hand.
Speaker 3: Fisher backed off from the therapist and left because he
Speaker 3: was concerned about his wife, Mary finding out. Fisher did
Speaker 3: not know whether he should tell Mary or his pastor
Speaker 3: about the situation with the therapist. Fisher also felt that
Speaker 3: coworkers in the calf Lab had been talking about him
Speaker 3: behind his back. Dolly related that Fisher never told her
Speaker 3: the name of the therapist.
Speaker 1: Let's break this down first, Robert appears to admit to
Speaker 1: a new affair. He questions whether he should confess to
Speaker 1: his pastor and Mary, both of whom already know about
Speaker 1: his previous infidelity in nineteen ninety nine, so he can
Speaker 1: only be refered ring to something new. He reveals this
Speaker 1: to Dolly only six to seven weeks before the murders,
Speaker 1: roughly the end of February two thousand and one. He
Speaker 1: says he's quote having a very hard time with the
Speaker 1: situation involving another female, which sounds more like a full
Speaker 1: blown affair and less like a one time fling. He
Speaker 1: claims the woman is a messuse. This later leads to
Speaker 1: confusion with many people, including police, mixing up his nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine infidelity with a different affair in two thousand
Speaker 1: or two thousand and one. I suspect that Robert is
Speaker 1: confessing the big truth he cheated again while hiding details
Speaker 1: like the woman's identity using his ninety nine infidelity as cover,
Speaker 1: or that Dolly's lying she's the woman. But that's for
Speaker 1: another episode. For now, don't focus on who, focus on
Speaker 1: the binary. Does Robert cheat again after nineteen ninety nine?
Speaker 1: The answer appears to be yes, and his mystery ailment
Speaker 1: from December two thousand appears not to be a urinary
Speaker 1: tract infect uti, not prostatitis, not a kidney infection, but
Speaker 1: an STI or sexually transmitted infection. Robert tells a coworker
Speaker 1: he's never been so sick. He's scared. He visits a
Speaker 1: doctor and has an MRI. The co worker is suspicious.
Speaker 1: Quote I've never known anybody that got a urinary tract
Speaker 1: infection that was so sick, unless they were like septic,
Speaker 1: and then they'd be in a hospital. Robert tells another coworker,
Speaker 1: the cardiologist, that a masseuse gave him the infection, but
Speaker 1: quote it was not from a sexual affair. Robert is
Speaker 1: paranoid that coworkers are looking at his medical records, and
Speaker 1: he thinks people at church know that he cheated again,
Speaker 1: which begs the question why how could they? Unless he
Speaker 1: confesses maybe to his pastor, and worries the pastor will
Speaker 1: say something. One Sunday night in December two thousand, Robert
Speaker 1: is called into work late around eleven PM. He's quiet,
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything, doesn't look good. The next day, he
Speaker 1: calls in sick. First tells police quote, it's really unlike
Speaker 1: Bob to call in sick unless he's really really sick.
Speaker 1: By this point, Robert's in pain, scared of surgery, disability, paralysis,
Speaker 1: sick with the possible STI, paranoid that Mary will find out.
Speaker 1: He's losing control quickly. What's the spark though? What finally
Speaker 1: detonates the House of Fisher Remember On Friday March thirtieth,
Speaker 1: eleven days before the murders, Robert and Mary spend the
Speaker 1: day together alone into wilderness on Robert's ATV. They seem fine.
Speaker 1: The next day they attend a wedding in Sedona. Again,
Speaker 1: they seem fine, but something changes. Between April first and
Speaker 1: April fourth. On April fourth, Robert shows up at church
Speaker 1: looking for Mary and the kids. Mary seems afraid of him.
Speaker 1: They've had generic marital trouble for months. It's likely not
Speaker 1: enough to trigger the murders. So what is If Robert's
Speaker 1: loss of control is the accelerant, what lights it a flame?
Speaker 1: While reporting this story, I learned something new, something critical.
Speaker 1: Right before the murders. Mary finds out that she has syphilis.
Speaker 1: I would never report this based on rumor. I'm only
Speaker 1: doing so because I learn about it from a reliable source.
Speaker 1: This is the spark I think. By all accounts, Mary
Speaker 1: is faithful to Robert, so she could only get syphilis
Speaker 1: from him. When does she find out? Obviously I don't
Speaker 1: have access to her medical records, but I'm curious whether
Speaker 1: or not she had a doctor's appointment between Monday, April
Speaker 1: second and Wednesday, April fourth, because she learns about it
Speaker 1: right before the murders, and there's no way she'd be
Speaker 1: out on March thirtieth writing around with Robert on an
Speaker 1: ATV having a jolly good time. If she knew not
Speaker 1: only that he cheated again, but that he gave her syphilis,
Speaker 1: she would be done and Robert would know it. Remember,
Speaker 1: the number one cause of familicide is family breakdown. This
Speaker 1: would be the snapping point, the moment Robert loses control
Speaker 1: of everything that matters his health, his family, the spark.
Speaker 1: Knowing that Mary had syphilis, which has never been reported,
Speaker 1: what can we learn from it? For an expert opinion,
Speaker 1: I turned to doctor.
Speaker 4: Joseph cherbe An, an infectious diseases physician at Washington University
Speaker 4: in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: The first thing to note is that Robert's UTI style
Speaker 1: symptoms are a better fit for other STIs not syphilis.
Speaker 4: In sexually active individuals of that age. Gonnery and chlamydia
Speaker 4: are at the top of my list, especially if they
Speaker 4: are having signs of pain, with your nation, frequent yourination,
Speaker 4: anything that people would say is a sign of a UTI.
Speaker 1: So Robert possibly has gonnerihea or chlamydia.
Speaker 5: But you have to.
Speaker 4: Remember that sti's travel I packs, so if an individual
Speaker 4: has syphilis, they are more likely to acquire chlamydia, gonneria.
Speaker 1: HIV, GONERIEA. Symptoms typically manifest within one to three weeks
Speaker 1: of exposure. For chlamydia, it's one to three months. So
Speaker 1: if EBERTSI alleged Uti is in fact gonerhea or chlamydia,
Speaker 1: he would have been exposed, meaning he cheated again sometime
Speaker 1: between September and December two thousand, which lines up with
Speaker 1: when his back pain intensifies and his personality starts changing
Speaker 1: around October two thousand. Maybe he goes to a massage
Speaker 1: parlor for pain relief and is offered sex again, or
Speaker 1: maybe he's having an affair with a coworker. Whatever the truth,
Speaker 1: he hides it from Mary, the cheating, the STI. She
Speaker 1: knows he's sick, but not with gonerrhea or chlamydia. Thankfully
Speaker 1: he doesn't transmit it to her. What about syphilis, though,
Speaker 1: which at some point he does. How is it transmitted?
Speaker 1: What's the timeline?
Speaker 4: The most common means in which individuals contract syphilis is
Speaker 4: actually through direct contact with a lesion, typically wet lesions,
Speaker 4: or sexual contact with an individual who has underlying syphil as.
Speaker 1: Within three to six weeks, a person exposed to the
Speaker 1: bacterium that causes syphilis develop helps a raised lesion called
Speaker 1: a shanker. This is stage one primary syphilis, and then
Speaker 1: that shanker resolves.
Speaker 4: Most people may not notice the shanker, especially if it's
Speaker 4: a part of the body that you are unable to see.
Speaker 4: So if that shanker develops, for example, within the folds
Speaker 4: of the vulva or within the rectum if you are
Speaker 4: having anal sex, then it is difficult for people to
Speaker 4: see the shanker and most people won't notice it. The
Speaker 4: other issue with the shanker is oftentimes it is painless
Speaker 4: and it goes away on its own, So most people
Speaker 4: may think that they have some ulceration, they rub their
Speaker 4: skin the wrong way, or there's maybe an allergic reaction,
Speaker 4: they self treat, it goes away and they don't think
Speaker 4: anything of it. That is why most people will present
Speaker 4: with secondary syphilis that develops at around three months after inoculation.
Speaker 4: You develop most typically a rash. That rash can appear
Speaker 4: like any other rash. In the textbooks, they describe it
Speaker 4: as being on the palms and soles of the feet,
Speaker 4: But I have seen people who look like they're having
Speaker 4: a massive allergic reaction have a maculum popular eruption on
Speaker 4: their chest, on their face. Some people get alopecia's well
Speaker 4: where they could get hair loss. This is where most
Speaker 4: people will present because they feel swollen lymph nodes they
Speaker 4: feel a key, they have a rash.
Speaker 1: So they seek medical treatment. Thankfully, if caught early, syphilis
Speaker 1: is highly treatable with penicillin, but many people don't catch
Speaker 1: it in the primary stage, when they have a shanker
Speaker 1: a painless lesion, they may not even be able to see.
Speaker 1: This is often when they transmit it to sex partners.
Speaker 1: Robert apparently passes it to Mary sometime in the six
Speaker 1: months before the murders, dating back again to October two thousand.
Speaker 1: Mary apparently finds out in April two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: By this point she likely has secondary syphilis, which if untreated,
Speaker 1: can progress to stage three latent syphilis and later stage
Speaker 1: four tertiary syphilis, which can be much more severe, causing aneurysms, meningitis,
Speaker 1: and other formidable symptoms neurological symptoms. I knew this, but
Speaker 1: what I didn't know is that.
Speaker 4: Neurologic manifestations of syphilis can occur at any stage of syphilis,
Speaker 4: whether it's primary, secondary, tertiary. You can get involvement of
Speaker 4: the guys in which you can have vision changes. You
Speaker 4: can get hearing loss. Most commonly, people report ringing in
Speaker 4: their ears or muffled hearing, and you can get meninjo,
Speaker 4: vascular disease or meningitis, unrelenting headaches, next stiffness, altered mental status.
Speaker 1: Altered mental status which can present.
Speaker 4: As irritability, memory, loss of personality changes, insomnia, and later
Speaker 4: compaired judgment and emotional liability.
Speaker 1: Severe mood swings.
Speaker 2: Given the nature of the story, I have to ask you,
Speaker 2: is psychosis a possibility, propensity for violence, any other serious
Speaker 2: mental health concerns.
Speaker 4: With respect to neurosyphilis, we have had some individuals who
Speaker 4: have developed altered mental status, including hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations.
Speaker 4: There have been individuals who have developed illusions and psychiatric manifestations.
Speaker 1: It's tough to measure the frequency of neurological symptoms in
Speaker 1: patients with primary or secondary syphilis, in part because they
Speaker 1: can be tough to diagnose. Syphilis is known as the
Speaker 1: great imitator. It mimics other conditions, and that's.
Speaker 4: Why syphilis is such a humbling disease. It does present
Speaker 4: in fifty million different ways. It's one of the oldest
Speaker 4: and most historic diseases, and it's why it's my favorite
Speaker 4: bacteria by far, by far, the best bacteria you could
Speaker 4: fight me. It is the best bacteria because it alludes
Speaker 4: us to this day.
Speaker 1: In summary, Robert likely cheats on Mary again. In late
Speaker 1: two thousand. He apparently catches gonorrhea or chlamydia and syphilis,
Speaker 1: which he transmits to Mary, who learns about it right
Speaker 1: before the murders, likely triggering them. Also, neurological symptoms can
Speaker 1: manifest during any stage of syphilis, meaning they could have
Speaker 1: affected Robert in the lead up to, even during the murders.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is my theory, but it.
Speaker 4: Is possible, especially if left untreated, that this progress over
Speaker 4: time to a state in which there was altered mental status.
Speaker 4: There is a irritability, and that could possibly be a
Speaker 4: manifestation of neurosophas.
Speaker 1: I'm now going to lay out five scenarios of what
Speaker 1: could have happened to Robert Fisher his fate in order
Speaker 1: of least to most likely in my opinion, which is
Speaker 1: the key phrase, my opinion. I don't expect you to
Speaker 1: necessarily agree. In fact, I encourage dissent. Battle it out
Speaker 1: on Reddit number five Grizzly Adams theory. Robert Fisher is
Speaker 1: living off the land twenty three years later, surviving in
Speaker 1: the wild. Verdict no way. This is so ridiculous. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to spend too much time on it. What
Speaker 1: about Eric Rudolph, you say the Olympic Park bomber Well.
Speaker 1: Rudolph survived for five years, not twenty three, in a
Speaker 1: more hospitable environment, the mountains of western North Carolina. He
Speaker 1: didn't have a bad back, and as Detective TJ. Juran
Speaker 1: wisely notes, he had help. He was a right wing ideologue,
Speaker 1: a folk.
Speaker 3: Hero, extremeist living in the area helped him, so that
Speaker 3: was to his benefit.
Speaker 5: Nobody here is.
Speaker 6: Going to help Robert Fisher after a man just annihilate
Speaker 6: his family.
Speaker 1: Number four died in the wild not by suicide, theory,
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher fled into the wilderness and died from something
Speaker 1: other than suicide, a snake bite, drowning, tumbling down a ravine,
Speaker 1: a rock hitting his head, starvation, a heart attack, water
Speaker 1: borne disease, anything but suicide. Verdict possible but unlikely. None
Speaker 1: of Fisher's remains or belongings were ever located. Maybe that
Speaker 1: seems unsurprising. It is, after all, a huge expanse of land.
Speaker 1: Fair but not locating something is abnormal, not impossible, just
Speaker 1: not as rare as you might think. People die and
Speaker 1: disappear in the wilderness all the time, including in places
Speaker 1: much more remote than Arizona. They are usually found at
Speaker 1: some point. For example, in nineteen seventy six, a man
Speaker 1: named Gary Sutherden vanished in an isolated part of Alaska
Speaker 1: above the Arctic Circle. In nineteen ninety seven, a hunter
Speaker 1: found his skull, though it wasn't matched to him until
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Also in ninety seven, rock climbers in
Speaker 1: rural Nevada found a body buried beneath rocks. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, it was matched to a missing woman named
Speaker 1: Lorena Moseley. In nineteen seventy seven, a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: named Douglas Muller was abducted in Scottsdale. There were multiple
Speaker 1: ransom demands which his parents tried to pay, but no
Speaker 1: one picked up the money. Muller was never heard from again.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a hiker found of femur
Speaker 1: at twenty three nine ninety three North seventy fourth Place
Speaker 1: in Scottsdale. If that sounds familiar, it's because the Fishers
Speaker 1: lived on the same road North seventy fourth Place. The
Speaker 1: Femur case fell to a detective named Hugh Lockerbee. Lockerbye
Speaker 1: was proactive. With the help of Arizona's crime lab, he
Speaker 1: matched the femur to Muller. It seems to have been
Speaker 1: dug up in the early two thousands, likely by animals
Speaker 1: rummaging through a clandestin burial spot in a rugged part
Speaker 1: of North Scottsdale. The homicide remains unsolved now. Of course,
Speaker 1: thousands of people disappear in the wilderness and are never found,
Speaker 1: but this seems not to be a major issue. In
Speaker 1: the area around which Robert abandoned Mary's Forerunner, many people
Speaker 1: have died there, but few remain missing.
Speaker 7: We've seen hundreds of people come to the Rim country
Speaker 7: just to be and God's country when they met their demise.
Speaker 1: Former Helix County detective Brian Havy.
Speaker 7: We found people hanging out in the woods that were
Speaker 7: from the valley, all over the place up here. And
Speaker 7: why they come up here to kill themselves, I don't know.
Speaker 7: Being God's country, I guess really hundreds of people, yes, literally,
Speaker 7: we found him on top of four peaks. We found
Speaker 7: him up here in the woods around Payson. We had
Speaker 7: one guy that dropped his van off at top of
Speaker 7: the rim on two sixty and hiked five miles down
Speaker 7: in towards Cold Courts, sat down with a case of
Speaker 7: beer and started drinking, and hung himself from a low
Speaker 7: hanging juniper bush. And we didn't find him till two
Speaker 7: years later when a couple of nurses were hiking in
Speaker 7: the woods and found some bones that they could positively
Speaker 7: identify as human bones, and we went out and I
Speaker 7: found the skull on that probably two one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty yards from the tree that he hung himself on.
Speaker 8: So what you most commonly see in terms of suicides
Speaker 8: in that area death bite, guns, hanging.
Speaker 7: I've seen it all different mannerisms. Hanging seems to be
Speaker 7: a popular one. I've seen guys hang themselves with the
Speaker 7: cable that they'd used to hold their dog. I've seen
Speaker 7: people hang themselves with shoer bootlaces. Really doesn't take that much.
Speaker 8: And these are people that are just hanging in the
Speaker 8: woods on trees.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I've seen one. Lady wanted to be found,
Speaker 7: so she dropped her daughter off at Payton Police Department
Speaker 7: with a note pinned to her chest and said go
Speaker 7: in there. And she had written across the note a
Speaker 7: little pad about six by six about ten different ways
Speaker 7: where she would be, and we had to really work
Speaker 7: our way through that little piece of paper and figure
Speaker 7: out directions. As we pulled into her campsite, she looked
Speaker 7: right at us and put a nine milimeter to her
Speaker 7: head and shot herself. She didn't want the animals to eat,
Speaker 7: or she wanted to be found.
Speaker 8: In terms of missing people, if you got to report
Speaker 8: that somebody was up in that area and was suicidal,
Speaker 8: can you remember cases where you were not to locate
Speaker 8: their remains? Sometimes it would take a year or two.
Speaker 8: Do any cases come to mind that you weren't able
Speaker 8: to find a body.
Speaker 7: Not that I recall. Eventually, just like the guy that
Speaker 7: parked on top of the rim, we had no direction
Speaker 7: to travel or anything like that until those nurses stumbled
Speaker 7: upon human bones, and fortunately if all of my instincts
Speaker 7: and walked right to the skull some two hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty yards away up a little canyon where the coyotes
Speaker 7: had drug it. When they hang themselves, that's the first
Speaker 7: thing that rots un falls off, and if you're on
Speaker 7: a slope, it's going to roll downhill, So it makes sense.
Speaker 7: It's like a bowling ball. It's going to roll and
Speaker 7: then the wildlife will take it someplace where they're not
Speaker 7: going to be seen, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 8: How often have unidentified remains been located that you guys
Speaker 8: thought this might be Robert Fisher?
Speaker 7: None that I know of that we thought was absolutely
Speaker 7: Robert Fasher. And the remains that we have found, I
Speaker 7: don't think we have any unsolved currently. We've been aeople
Speaker 7: to identify most all of the remains that we found
Speaker 7: in Heila County to recap.
Speaker 1: In his twenty seven year career, Haviy and his colleagues
Speaker 1: found hundreds of bodies in remote parts of HeLa County.
Speaker 1: He can't recall any case in which someone was missing
Speaker 1: and or suicidal and wasn't found at some point. He's
Speaker 1: unaware of any still unidentified remains that could match Robert Fisher. However,
Speaker 1: if Fisher died, his remains were likely scattered by wild
Speaker 1: animals or not. HeLa County supervisor would he Klein tells
Speaker 1: me an interesting story.
Speaker 9: One time we had a couple that was south a
Speaker 9: young and they were down on one of those little roads.
Speaker 9: It was a man and a woman. They had a
Speaker 9: camp sitting there. They had a dog too. She shot
Speaker 9: him and then shot herself. It was late in the
Speaker 9: fall when they figured when she killed him. We didn't
Speaker 9: find him until the late in the spring. The bears
Speaker 9: that actually came out and they ate her and he
Speaker 9: was still intact.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you don't know the answer to this, but
Speaker 2: do you have any idea why the bear did not
Speaker 2: eat one of them?
Speaker 9: No, there's nothing but bones scattered around there, and obviously
Speaker 9: the dog had been eaten on it too, because the
Speaker 9: dog was there still alive.
Speaker 1: A bear eats one body, not the other. One body
Speaker 1: reduced to bones, scattered, the other intact. Chaos. I decide
Speaker 1: to drive to Tucson to meet up with Bruce Anderson,
Speaker 1: a forensic anthropologist with the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office,
Speaker 1: which for many years handled cases out of nearby HeLa
Speaker 1: County in that.
Speaker 2: Area around young If Robert Fischer died in the woods,
Speaker 2: if he died in a cave, can you walk me through.
Speaker 5: I want to say, the decomposition and.
Speaker 8: Calendar, but can you give me an idea within twelve hour,
Speaker 8: twenty four hours a week, a month, a year, twenty years?
Speaker 6: So he disappeared in April. So it'll be no snow.
Speaker 6: There might be some residual snow, but it's not going
Speaker 6: to have snow, so the temperatures might even in April
Speaker 6: up there, they might be close to freezing. So if
Speaker 6: he did die, the night to be cold, but today
Speaker 6: is would warm up and by the middle of the summer.
Speaker 6: Looking at closer triple digit. It's if he died on
Speaker 6: the surface, I believe animals would have found him, and
Speaker 6: they would have started with the easy parts, the fingers
Speaker 6: and toes, in the face, and even if you're wearing
Speaker 6: leather boots, they'll eventually chew through the leather and get
Speaker 6: to your feet. Denim is not an issue for coyotes.
Speaker 6: They'll rip right through it. Any kind of leather jacket,
Speaker 6: they'll rip through it, eat all the soft tissue, and
Speaker 6: then while they're doing that, probably eat a little bit
Speaker 6: of bone. And then if they revisit the site, if
Speaker 6: the body goes undetected for weeks or months, they'll.
Speaker 5: Revisit and they'll keep doing that.
Speaker 6: There's wolves or bears, it's possible a body could be consumed. Now,
Speaker 6: if he was in a cave, it's going to be cooler.
Speaker 6: I've been in caves in their flagstaff. For the temperature
Speaker 6: is the same all year round, and it's dark except
Speaker 6: for bats.
Speaker 5: I don't know who lives down there.
Speaker 6: So in a cave situation, if there's no large carnivores
Speaker 6: and I don't know fruit bats or insect bats would
Speaker 6: bother their body. I've never heard anything along those lines.
Speaker 6: But lacking any large animals, then I'd expect there's going
Speaker 6: to be decomposition.
Speaker 5: The body's going to bloat because of the autolysis.
Speaker 6: The cells are going to start secreting chemicals, and you
Speaker 6: get gas built up. But eventually that gas is going
Speaker 6: to cause either bursting of the skin or some kind
Speaker 6: of a GI track expulsion, and then the body's going
Speaker 6: to collapse a little bit. And if there's no critters
Speaker 6: to smell that income eat, there still might be flies
Speaker 6: and other insects that smell it, and then it could
Speaker 6: be kind of akin to somebody who dies indoors. The
Speaker 6: doors are locked and the windows are locked, but somehow
Speaker 6: flies and mosquitoes get in and beetles, and then over
Speaker 6: weeks or months, in that scenario, the flies and the
Speaker 6: beetles would eat everything butt bone, So you could conceivably
Speaker 6: have a complete skeleton devoid of any or most soft
Speaker 6: tissue after several years.
Speaker 1: The idea that Robert Fisher's skeleton could be sitting in
Speaker 1: a cave untouched is cinematic in a macabre way, But
Speaker 1: in the past twenty three years, all the caves in
Speaker 1: which he could have died have been searched repeatedly by
Speaker 1: recreational cavers and occasionally law enforcement. No one ever found
Speaker 1: his remains or belongings in a cave. It's possible he's
Speaker 1: in one, ossified in a cravas or something, but unlikely.
Speaker 1: What about outside in a forest or canyon.
Speaker 6: In that case, you're not going to find a skeleton
Speaker 6: that's complete.
Speaker 5: It's not going to happen. Right.
Speaker 6: Even if for some reason the animals, the carnivores or
Speaker 6: birds didn't.
Speaker 5: Find him, the bugs would skeletonize them.
Speaker 6: That domestic beetles would finish cleaning the bones off, but
Speaker 6: raccoon or something would come and disturb the skeleton.
Speaker 5: Plus the whole skeleton laying out in the desert.
Speaker 6: Not twenty years later, there's hunters, there's people on ATVs.
Speaker 6: So if he did die up here, it's almost if
Speaker 6: his body had to be hidden.
Speaker 1: It's strange nothing was ever found. That's in stark contrast
Speaker 1: with the majority of people who vanished in Kila County,
Speaker 1: nearly all of whom are located in whole or part
Speaker 1: I asked Bruce to check NamUs, the National Database of
Speaker 1: Missing People and Unidentified Remains. Are there any remains that
Speaker 1: could belong to Fisher?
Speaker 6: As of today, there's thirty possible matches to him within
Speaker 6: one hundred miles of where he disappeared.
Speaker 1: Which sounds intriguing, but you can immediately rule out the
Speaker 1: majority of them. Only eleven have ever warranted further examination.
Speaker 1: For eleven different ups unidentified persons.
Speaker 5: Somebody thought we got to make sure this isn't Fisher.
Speaker 5: Apparently it's not.
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 j O n Wa l Czak.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Scottsdale Police and the FBI keep a
Speaker 1: close eye on any remains found in or near Heila County.
Speaker 1: When remains are located, it's possible to determine quickly whether
Speaker 1: or not they could belong to Fisher. Experts can tell
Speaker 1: whether the person is male or female, estimate the person's height,
Speaker 1: look for dental fillings like the infamous gold tooth, and
Speaker 1: look for signs that the person had back surgery. All
Speaker 1: that before lab testing as far as DNA, even twenty
Speaker 1: three years later, Even in Arizona, even without a skull
Speaker 1: or teeth, most skeletal remains will still yield DNA. Meaning
Speaker 1: if you find any human bone in HeLa County, turn
Speaker 1: it in, it could be Fisher.
Speaker 5: The larger, thicker bones are better. But even a rib,
Speaker 5: let's say he was.
Speaker 6: Devoured by animals and there's just scraps left, a few ribs,
Speaker 6: maybe a piece of clavicle or something, maybe a piece
Speaker 6: of mandible.
Speaker 5: That could yield.
Speaker 6: Even after two decades, it could yield because sunlight is
Speaker 6: a very strong inhibitor for DNA preservation, and we have
Speaker 6: a lot more of it down here in the Sonoran Desert,
Speaker 6: and they do up on the rim or near the rim.
Speaker 6: And still given that we have submitted samples from bleached
Speaker 6: white bone, bone has been laying after a decade or more, Yeah,
Speaker 6: when we cut into it, it's still yallow. In the middle,
Speaker 6: that yellow part of the bone may still have some
Speaker 6: viable DNA in it.
Speaker 1: Any DNA can be run through COTIS, the national DNA database,
Speaker 1: to see if it matches Robert. His parents submitted samples
Speaker 1: of their DNA to police, who uploaded them to COTIS.
Speaker 1: If investigators run DNA through COTIS and it's Robert, it'll
Speaker 1: ping bam we found him. Sadly that hasn't happened. What
Speaker 1: about his belongings, his pistol, camping gear, driver's license, credit cards,
Speaker 1: car keys, tobacco tens. They could still be out there.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, an archaeologist in Nevada found a one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty two year old rifle propped up against
Speaker 1: a juniper tree. It's now known as the Forgotten Winchester.
Speaker 1: It apparently lay there untouched for at least a century.
Speaker 1: Two years later, a wildfire burned through the area. This
Speaker 1: teaches us two important lessons. One yes, stop can survive
Speaker 1: outside in the arid Southwest for a long time, and two,
Speaker 1: wildfires can easily destroy it, which is pertinent to the
Speaker 1: fissure case. Since two thousand and one, two fires have
Speaker 1: ravaged the area around the fore runner spot. The Rodeo
Speaker 1: Chetta Sky fire in two thousand and two and the
Speaker 1: Poco Fire in twenty twelve. The Rodeo Chetta sky fire
Speaker 1: burned from the east, the Poco fire from the west.
Speaker 1: What's incredible is that while both came extremely close to
Speaker 1: the fore Runners spot, neither reached it. By examining maps,
Speaker 1: our researcher, Paul Gemberline, determine there's a tiny strip of
Speaker 1: land between the fires, three quarters of a mile wide
Speaker 1: that didn't burn. Amazingly, it includes the four Runners spot. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: while maps show us fire perimeters, they can't tell us
Speaker 1: how intensely the fires burned. Paul said, quote. There can
Speaker 1: be patches within a perimeter that are less burned, not
Speaker 1: burned at all, or burned to a crisp meaning there
Speaker 1: might still be evidence in places marked as burned that
Speaker 1: didn't burn, separate from physical evidence bones, guns, keys. Let's
Speaker 1: dial back to common sense. How likely is it that
Speaker 1: a man who spent his entire life outside died at
Speaker 1: a critical moment from something other than suicide, a snake bite,
Speaker 1: a falling rock disease, something random. Sure, anything is possible
Speaker 1: in a violent nature, and Fisher would have been in
Speaker 1: a rush, making him more prone to fatal error, But
Speaker 1: is it likely that he died of natural causes or
Speaker 1: a random act of God and none of his remains
Speaker 1: or belongings were ever located. Moving on number three, escaped
Speaker 1: then died theory Robert Fisher escaped and lived as a fugitive,
Speaker 1: but sometime in the past twenty three years he died.
Speaker 1: No one ever connected his body to him, either because
Speaker 1: he lived under a false identity or because his remains
Speaker 1: are sitting somewhere unidentified. Verdict possible, but unlikely. According to
Speaker 1: the Social Security Administration, Fisher had a life expectancy at
Speaker 1: birth of seventy five years, meaning if he didn't die
Speaker 1: by suicide, he's probably alive. If alive age sixty three,
Speaker 1: If he made it this far, he'd still have about
Speaker 1: twenty years left to live. That's because as you get older,
Speaker 1: as you survive the perils of youth and middle age,
Speaker 1: your life expectancy increases. The government would now expect him
Speaker 1: to die around January twenty forty five. For argument's sake, though,
Speaker 1: let's say he did escape and die. He could have
Speaker 1: been buried or cremated under a false name. But if
Speaker 1: his remains were unidentified, a mysterious John Doe. They likely
Speaker 1: would have been fingerprinted and maybe even tested for DNA.
Speaker 1: His fingerprints are on file in a national database, so
Speaker 1: too are DNA samples from his parents. So there's next
Speaker 1: to zero chance his remains have been located and checked
Speaker 1: against databases without being connected to him. Now, maybe he
Speaker 1: died somewhere with a lazy corner. Anything's possible, I guess.
Speaker 1: But again, is it likely number two died in the
Speaker 1: wild by suicide? There are only two theories that make
Speaker 1: sense to me, and this is one of them. Everything
Speaker 1: I said though about option number four, that Robert died
Speaker 1: in the wild not by suicide, still applies here. It's
Speaker 1: strange that none of his remains or belongings have ever
Speaker 1: been found. The Forerunner spot is rugged and remote, but
Speaker 1: not that remote. It's only two hours and twenty minutes
Speaker 1: from the fifth largest city in America. People head up
Speaker 1: there all the time to hike, hunt camp cave. It's
Speaker 1: been twenty three years. Still nothing. However, there's a possible
Speaker 1: explanation for this. If he died, I think he died
Speaker 1: on tribal land.
Speaker 8: Is that a fence that is offense?
Speaker 1: Police find Mary's suv near the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
Speaker 8: This is the boundary.
Speaker 1: Tribal land is sovereign territory over which state and local
Speaker 1: law enforcement have limited influence. Tribal police assist in the
Speaker 1: initial hunt for Fisher, but in the years that follow,
Speaker 1: the one point seven million acre reservation population fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: is never searched as thoroughly as the federal land next
Speaker 1: to it, the Tonto National Forest. The tribal border is
Speaker 1: marked by a barbed wire fence and no trespassing signs. Yes,
Speaker 1: people violate them, but still the national forest is much
Speaker 1: easier to visit and access. Therefore, it's likelier that any
Speaker 1: undiscovered remains are on tribal land. Now moving on, eighty
Speaker 1: to eighty five percent of family annihilators die by suicide,
Speaker 1: but fifteen to twenty percent don't. A minority, sure, but
Speaker 1: a sizeable one. How can someone live with themselves after
Speaker 1: killing their family? I don't know, but fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: percent of annihilators do, including some prominent ones like John List. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: Robert had strong religious beliefs against suicide. Obviously they also
Speaker 1: prohibit murder, but to many Christians, suicide is the cardinal sin,
Speaker 1: the one you can't come back from the one, in
Speaker 1: their view for which there's no redemption, the one that
Speaker 1: sent you to hell. Now, many people who knew Robert
Speaker 1: believe he died by suicide, in part because he threatened
Speaker 1: it previously in nineteen ninety nine, when he confessed to
Speaker 1: cheating on Mary. I discussed this with Fisher family friends,
Speaker 1: including John Rodin and his wife Mary Beth.
Speaker 6: He had said in that letter that if she wasn't
Speaker 6: going to take him back, he was going to kill himself.
Speaker 5: So that's why at first we figured, yeah, he's dead.
Speaker 5: I know this is a tough question.
Speaker 2: But what would indicate that he was serious about killing
Speaker 2: himself versus it being a ploy for attention to Mary.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.
Speaker 5: I didn't thought about that.
Speaker 1: Robert told Mary he was going to a cabin in
Speaker 1: the wild for thirty days. He conveyed that she could
Speaker 1: leave him, but if she did, he'd kill himself. He
Speaker 1: told her how to reach him. Mary ignored him. Only
Speaker 1: three to four days later he came home. In this context,
Speaker 1: it seems like Robert's threat was insincere, just one more
Speaker 1: blunt instrument to manipulate and control Mary.
Speaker 3: End of Part one, Please continue to Part two.
Speaker 1: You can reach us by phone at one eight three
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Speaker 1: meon thirty three dot com, or on Twitter at John Wallzac,
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 Bolan is a consulting producer, and I'm your host
Speaker 1: and executive producer John Wallzac recreation voiced by Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Additional production support provided by Ben Haas. Cover art by
Speaker 1: 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
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