Speaker 1: Missing Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may not
Speaker 1: be suitable for all listeners. April tenth, two thousand and one, am.
Speaker 2: Exploded off of Hollie and a fire and a fire.
Speaker 1: You're good, big fire, get the big fire.
Speaker 3: You bet I can do it.
Speaker 2: The house is exploded and ignited on fire.
Speaker 1: Who hi are you telling about the fire?
Speaker 2: As nobody on the way.
Speaker 4: Okay, we have the whole on the way.
Speaker 5: I'm just telling to make sure you're good.
Speaker 1: They come in on Hollie.
Speaker 4: They get lost every damn time with the fire.
Speaker 5: They's gonna come in on Hollie.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's told a second.
Speaker 4: It's so many folly seventy four goodness, thank you.
Speaker 1: There is still no fire equipment.
Speaker 4: He's okay, ma'am.
Speaker 6: We're on our way.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you can do to make a little faster. Okay,
Speaker 4: you're on our wing.
Speaker 7: Wasn't going on?
Speaker 4: It's a big fire, really calling me.
Speaker 6: It's just like blow up.
Speaker 8: Okay, one's on fire.
Speaker 1: The whole house, the whole hell, whole house is burning up.
Speaker 9: And I want to hear them.
Speaker 10: Going three w It isn't around seventy fourth and.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and there it is whole house in quoting.
Speaker 11: Okay, we do have.
Speaker 1: Police the fire on the way, where there are people
Speaker 1: outside the house, Yes.
Speaker 12: There are no Probably did.
Speaker 11: We have one.
Speaker 8: Cordia web cars?
Speaker 6: I'll maybe one's done.
Speaker 12: He could not say how many.
Speaker 3: Many of those.
Speaker 2: They're all this.
Speaker 1: From iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three. I'm John Walsac, and
Speaker 1: this is Missing in Arizona, the story of a man
Speaker 1: who disappeared after allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing
Speaker 1: up their suburban home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty
Speaker 1: three years later, I'm hunting Robert Fisher and I need
Speaker 1: your help. So we're turning for the first time onto
Speaker 1: Robert Fisher's street, pulling up into the cul de Sac,
Speaker 1: one hundred and eleven degrees out. You want to park
Speaker 1: in front of the stone wall. It's always amazing the
Speaker 1: simple items that survived catastrophe, the resilient relics, stubbornly dotting
Speaker 1: desecrated landscapes, refusing to yield. At the end of North
Speaker 1: seventy fourth place in Scottsdale, Arizona, there sits a little
Speaker 1: stone wall. It's a gravestone beyond which three people died
Speaker 1: it's a vital witness, but it cannot speak, and it's
Speaker 1: an eternal marker of a suburban fabric. One man found
Speaker 1: so suffocating he slashed and shot and burned his way out.
Speaker 1: Long after the family who lived twenty feet away died,
Speaker 1: long after most neighbors moved, Long after a new home
Speaker 1: replaced the one that exploded, this little stone wall remains.
Speaker 1: You see it in a home video from nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Hey Babe, Hey, Robert Fisher stands in his driveway, barefoot,
Speaker 1: cradling his one year old daughter, Brittany, as twilight takes
Speaker 1: hold just over his right shoulder. The stone wall. You
Speaker 1: see it too in crime scene photos from two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. Blackened beams rise from charred, smoldering rubble as
Speaker 1: investigators circle what remains of the Fisher house. Orange fire
Speaker 1: hoses spaghetti across cul de Sac pavement under a gray
Speaker 1: sky stamped with faded, fluffy white clouds. A silver pickup
Speaker 1: truck sits burned and blistered under a half collapsed carport roof.
Speaker 1: And there then, as now, the stone wall. This wall,
Speaker 1: maybe two feet tall, is the line that separates the
Speaker 1: Fishers from their next door neighbor. Around ten pm on
Speaker 1: April ninth, two thousand and one, the neighbor hears Robert
Speaker 1: and Mary fighting. Forty minutes later, Robert gets into Mary's
Speaker 1: Toyota fore Runner and heads to a nearby ATM, where
Speaker 1: a camera captures grainy, black and white footage of him
Speaker 1: pulling out two hundred and eighty dollars, then driving away
Speaker 1: poof gone forever. This is the final sighting of Robert,
Speaker 1: the final sighting of Mary's suv until a camper finds
Speaker 1: it ten days later, abandoned in a remote forest. At least,
Speaker 1: that's what we've been told for twenty three years by
Speaker 1: the police, media and FBI. The leading theory is that
Speaker 1: Robert is grabbing cash and fleeing town, that he already
Speaker 1: killed Mary and the kids. This is a critical detail.
Speaker 1: It means he has a ten hour jump on the cops.
Speaker 1: April ninth, ten forty two pm, Robert's at the ATM
Speaker 1: April tenth, eight forty two am. His house explodes, a
Speaker 1: ten hour gap. Except this timeline is wrong. I found
Speaker 1: a new confirmed sighting. Real quick, let me take you
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen nineties. Listen to this tiny but
Speaker 1: important clip from a Fisher home video. Mary films Brittany
Speaker 1: peddling a small bike down their cul.
Speaker 12: De Sac dip.
Speaker 13: You can turn around in that driveway.
Speaker 1: That driveway two houses down by two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: It belongs to a man who agreed to speak to
Speaker 1: me on the condition I not use his real name.
Speaker 1: Let's call him Peter. He works long hours in the
Speaker 1: food service industry.
Speaker 14: Sometimes I'd leave to the three o'clock in.
Speaker 1: The morning April tenth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 15: When I got up, he had one vehicle underneath to carport,
Speaker 15: and he had her vehicle on the street.
Speaker 10: At about three thirty in the morning's when I left,
Speaker 10: that vehicle was still on the street.
Speaker 1: His vehicle was pulled underneath to carport. Peter sees both
Speaker 1: Robert's truck and Mary's suv at the Fisher house at
Speaker 1: three thirty am, which means we can say definitively for
Speaker 1: the first time that Robert returned home from the ATM
Speaker 1: the previous night. This tightens the timeline by five hours
Speaker 1: and takes me completely by surprise. When I agree to
Speaker 1: meet Peter, I don't expect much maybe some anecdotes about
Speaker 1: the Fishers. Instead, three thirty in the morning and both
Speaker 1: vehicles was still in I asked him repeatedly, if he's sure.
Speaker 15: I do know that it was zero When I last this,
Speaker 15: I'd pull out and look right at it and then
Speaker 15: take off go to Ord.
Speaker 1: But Peter, are you one hundred percent certain and hositive?
Speaker 1: Peter has never been interviewed by the media or more importantly,
Speaker 1: law enforcement, despite living only eighty feet from the Fishers.
Speaker 1: He provides us two new clues. One a sighting of
Speaker 1: both vehicles at the Fisherhouse at three thirty am on
Speaker 1: April tenth, two thousand and one, and two how the
Speaker 1: vehicles are parked.
Speaker 14: The truck was in the driveway.
Speaker 1: A SEV was on the street. This is abnormal. Peter
Speaker 1: usually sees Mary's SUV in the driveway and Robert's truck
Speaker 1: on the street.
Speaker 14: This day it was yapposite.
Speaker 1: A different neighbor, the one who heard Robert and Mary fighting,
Speaker 1: tells police the same thing. Why does this tiny detail matter?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later. April tenth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: a twenty year old Alicia Keys releases her debut single
Speaker 1: Fallen at eight forty two two the Fisher House. Exwait,
Speaker 1: hold up, I lied, I told you I found one
Speaker 1: new witness, but I actually found two. I have another
Speaker 1: one for you, and he tightens up the timeline even further.
Speaker 1: His name is Bud Wolf. Unfortunately he died in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, so instead I meet with his daughter, Jenna.
Speaker 1: We're learning now that the very last person to ever
Speaker 1: see Mary Fisher's SUV or any sign therefore, Robert Fisher,
Speaker 1: was your dad.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: Jenna often joins her dad as he makes repeated early
Speaker 1: morning visits to the Fisher's cul de sac.
Speaker 9: I know this show was pretty dark.
Speaker 1: On April tenth, two thousand and one, Jenna is not
Speaker 1: with her dad as he delivers newspapers.
Speaker 13: He would have picked him up and then drove to Scottsdale,
Speaker 13: so I had to put him there between four and five.
Speaker 1: Bud Wolf is in Scottsdale by four or five am.
Speaker 1: But when exactly does he pass the Fisher House? What
Speaker 1: does he see? And how do I even know this?
Speaker 1: Last year I obtained a previously unreported memo written by
Speaker 1: a Scotts Sale police officer. Here it is read by
Speaker 1: a voice actor on four eleven oh one, the day
Speaker 1: after the house explodes.
Speaker 16: At zero five zero five hours five oh five am.
Speaker 16: While working traffic control at seventy fourth Place in Holly,
Speaker 16: monitoring the northbound entrance to seventy fourth Place, I observed
Speaker 16: a paper carrier approach my location. I contacted the paper
Speaker 16: carrier Arizona Republic, who identified himself verbally as Bud Wolf.
Speaker 16: Bud stated that he needed to deliver five newspapers on
Speaker 16: seventy fourth Place north of Holly. Bud inquired if he
Speaker 16: should simply walk in, as northbound seventy fourth Place was
Speaker 16: taped off with yellow crime scene tape. I advised Bud
Speaker 16: to go ahead and walk into the neighborhood. When Bud returned,
Speaker 16: he stated that yesterday he accidentally delivered a newspaper to
Speaker 16: the house that burned. He added that he delivered this
Speaker 16: paper by mistake.
Speaker 1: At zero five thirty hours five thirty am.
Speaker 16: Bud stated that on four to ten oh one, at
Speaker 16: zero five thirty, he noticed that the large pickup that
Speaker 16: is now parked under the car port and burned was
Speaker 16: parked in the driveway, but the rear of the vehicle
Speaker 16: was sticking out blocking the sidewalk. Bud added that there
Speaker 16: was another vehicle parked in front of the truck under
Speaker 16: the carport. At that time, Bud described the other vehicle
Speaker 16: as a white car possibly. Bud said that he wasn't
Speaker 16: positive about the vehicle type. About two minutes after he
Speaker 16: delivered the paper, he realized his mistake. Bud then went
Speaker 16: back and retrieved the paper. Bud left the area. Bud
Speaker 16: did not see any activity in the area on that morning.
Speaker 16: After Bud left, I noticed that I forgot to get
Speaker 16: Bud's state of birth. I called Bud's cell phone. I
Speaker 16: spoke to Bud and got his birth date. During the conversation,
Speaker 16: Bud volunteered that he now remembered that the vehicle that
Speaker 16: he saw in front of the truck was not a car,
Speaker 16: but a white suv. Bud was not sure what type
Speaker 16: of suv it was. Bud added that it appeared to
Speaker 16: be an older model. Bud said that the vehicle was
Speaker 16: definitely not a van.
Speaker 1: Signed by Officer Abernathy, Badge number seven zero four. Let's
Speaker 1: pause for a minute and take stock of what we've learned.
Speaker 1: One hbor who hears Robert and Mary arguing at ten
Speaker 1: pm on April ninth, sees their vehicles parked abnormally. Mary's
Speaker 1: fore Runner in the driveway Robert's truck in the street.
Speaker 1: Two Peter, a different neighbor, sees the same thing when
Speaker 1: he leaves for work at three thirty AM on April tenth.
Speaker 1: Three Budwolf, a newspaper delivery man, sees Robert's truck and
Speaker 1: what appears to be Mary's four runner at five thirty AM.
Speaker 1: So for the first time in twenty three years, we've
Speaker 1: narrowed down the case timeline significantly. Robert Fisher does not
Speaker 1: immediately flee after visiting the ATM on April ninth. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's still home seven hours later at five thirty AM.
Speaker 1: On April tenth. The house explodes at eight forty two AM,
Speaker 1: so Robert flees sometime between five thirty and eight forty two.
Speaker 1: But we can narrow it down even further because Mary
Speaker 1: Fisher is supposed to pick up a neighbor's son for
Speaker 1: a school carpool at seven thirty. When she doesn't show up,
Speaker 1: that neighbor looks out a window and sees Robert's truck,
Speaker 1: but not Mary's forerunner. So with two new witnesses, we've
Speaker 1: narrowed down when Robert flees to between five thirty and
Speaker 1: seven thirty. What else can we deduce. Well, the sun
Speaker 1: rises in Scottsdale on April tenth at six oh three am,
Speaker 1: but civil twilight starts at five thirty seven, meaning there's
Speaker 1: already a good bit of light in the sky. Robert
Speaker 1: likely wants to leave quickly now to avoid neighbors and sunlight.
Speaker 1: My best guess is that he flees shortly after Bud
Speaker 1: Wolf sees both vehicles at the house at five thirty
Speaker 1: Is it really creepy to think that that morning Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher would have been home when your dad was slivering
Speaker 1: the paper?
Speaker 14: Extremely creepy.
Speaker 1: Extremely, There's no reason to doubt, Bud Wolf. He shares
Speaker 1: his story with a police officer the day after the
Speaker 1: Fisher house explodes, then dies, having never spoken to the media.
Speaker 1: He has no reason to lie. Would you describe your
Speaker 1: dad as a trustworthy person?
Speaker 9: Oh? Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: What do you say he had a good memory? He
Speaker 1: did at the time.
Speaker 12: Yes.
Speaker 17: Towards the end of light is when with the brain
Speaker 17: cancer is memory started deteriorating.
Speaker 18: But during that period his memory was incredible.
Speaker 1: Would there be any reason to doubt an account that
Speaker 1: he gave the police.
Speaker 12: Oh not at all.
Speaker 1: Now let's turn to what Budwolf sees not just when
Speaker 1: Bud sees Robert's truck parks behind what he first describes
Speaker 1: as a quote white car, possibly and shortly thereafter as
Speaker 1: a quote white suv. Mary's fore Runner is silver, not white.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that Bud sees an entirely different vehicle
Speaker 1: parked at the Fisher House. Yes, but that's extremely unlikely.
Speaker 1: The most plausible explanation is that Bud's memory is good
Speaker 1: but not perfect, that he recalls a silver suv spotted
Speaker 1: during twilight as white. So here's the new case timeline.
Speaker 1: Ten pm, a neighbor hears Robert and Mary arguing. The
Speaker 1: neighbor sees their vehicles parked abnormally, Robert's truck in the driveway,
Speaker 1: Mary's suv in the street. Forty two pm, Robert withdraws
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty dollars from a nearby atm three
Speaker 1: thirty am, Peter, a different neighbor, also sees Robert's truck
Speaker 1: in the driveway and Mary's fore Runner in the street.
Speaker 1: Five thirty am Budwolf, the newspaper delivery man, sees Mary's
Speaker 1: four Runner in the driveway, parked in front of Robert's truck,
Speaker 1: which is now jutting out into the cul de sac.
Speaker 1: Here's why this is important. It means that between three
Speaker 1: thirty and five thirty, someone shuffles the vehicles Robert's truck
Speaker 1: out of the driveway, Mary's suv into the driveway, Robert's
Speaker 1: truck behind the suv. By the time the house explodes,
Speaker 1: Robert's truck is under the car port and Mary's fore
Speaker 1: runner is gone. Meaning after Budwolf leaves around five thirty,
Speaker 1: someone shuffles the vehicles again, pulling out the truck, pulling
Speaker 1: out the suv, putting the truck under the car port,
Speaker 1: and driving away in the suv. What the heck is
Speaker 1: going on here? To recap, between three thirty and seven
Speaker 1: thirty am, we have a game of musical cars. Someone
Speaker 1: pulls Robert's truck out of the driveway, marries suv into
Speaker 1: the driveway, Robert's truck behind the suv, the truck out again,
Speaker 1: the suv out, the truck back, and then drives away
Speaker 1: in the suv. This is extremely bizarre, especially because Robert's
Speaker 1: truck is allowed diesel and the cul de sac is small.
Speaker 1: It's also a lot for a single person to pull
Speaker 1: off by themselves. I'll get to that in a later
Speaker 1: episode Stay tuned. So your family owned the land on
Speaker 1: which the Fisher home was built originally, and how long
Speaker 1: has that property been in your family.
Speaker 18: My father bought the property in twenty nine and he
Speaker 18: moved there about nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: On that forty acres, what was farmed.
Speaker 18: Mostly cotton, sorghum, and some citrus.
Speaker 1: Mike Wilmith now owns only two of the original forty acres,
Speaker 1: but those two acres and his house are a extremely
Speaker 1: valuable and b directly behind the Fisher property. On April tenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, Mike is in bed only one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet from the Fisher house.
Speaker 18: I was just beginning to come out of sleep. That's
Speaker 18: sort of to my laid zone. And I heard the
Speaker 18: explosion and I went, that sounded like an explosion.
Speaker 1: And you didn't immediately hop out of bed. It sounds
Speaker 1: like you stayed in bed for a minute.
Speaker 18: I stayed in bed for a few minutes until he
Speaker 18: heard the helicopters and I'm like, Okay, now I gotta
Speaker 18: go check what's going on.
Speaker 1: I don't blame you, your Dralsey, Ye're waking up. It's
Speaker 1: not how you want to start your morning news. Helicopters
Speaker 1: circle overhead, broadcasting live watching at home. One woman immediately
Speaker 1: recognizes the burning house. Jan Howell, Robert Fisher's mom. She
Speaker 1: calls nine one. Here's the recreation of that call.
Speaker 6: Rural Metro Fire Department.
Speaker 4: Yes, this is missus Howell, my son, Robert Fisher's house.
Speaker 4: I just saw blow up on television. I want to
Speaker 4: make sure see what's happening there.
Speaker 6: It's okay, and this is your son's house.
Speaker 15: Yes, okay, just a minute, ma'am, Yes, okay, I'm going
Speaker 15: to have somebody contact you.
Speaker 6: Was there anybody? Was your son out of town or
Speaker 6: was he in town?
Speaker 4: Do you know he's supposed to I just called the hospital.
Speaker 4: He works at Mayo Hospital, Uh huh. And I called
Speaker 4: him and they didn't hear from him. And then I
Speaker 4: got his mother in law on the line and she
Speaker 4: said a neighbor had called the church and said the
Speaker 4: house exploded with gas. And okay, and on television I
Speaker 4: saw his truck in the driveway.
Speaker 15: Okay, now we're not sure. You said the person who
Speaker 15: owns this house his last name is Fisher. Yes, okay,
Speaker 15: we're not showing that as being his house. No, okay,
Speaker 15: never mind, all right. All I can do is how
Speaker 15: many people were in the family or that lived in
Speaker 15: the house.
Speaker 4: There's a boy ten years old, a girl thirteen years old,
Speaker 4: the wife Mary, and my son who's forty.
Speaker 6: Okay, so there's four people that live in the house, yes,
Speaker 6: and a dog.
Speaker 1: The explosion is violent, rattling houses for a half mile
Speaker 1: in every direction, sending flames shooting twenty feet into the air.
Speaker 1: The most direct witness is a man named Max Moody
Speaker 1: working on a nearby rooftop. He's slammed by a deafening
Speaker 1: boom as debris flies out and a column of black
Speaker 1: smoke climbs into the sky. Flames flare from shattered windows.
Speaker 1: The first cop to arrive is Scottsdale Police Officer Jay Hawkins.
Speaker 1: As he pulls up, there's a series of smaller secondary explosions,
Speaker 1: probably ammunition. Neighbors screamed that there are people in the house.
Speaker 1: Firefighters speed to the scene, as through reporters, including Tom Zohner.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 14: I was working as a reporter at the Arizona Republic,
Speaker 14: which is the statewide daily newspaper, and on the morning
Speaker 14: of April tenth, two thousand and one, I walked out
Speaker 14: of my house to go to my car to go
Speaker 14: to work, and I saw a plume of smoke on
Speaker 14: the horizon and it looked like a gigantic fire and
Speaker 14: the smoke was black. Whatever it was was still engaged,
Speaker 14: and so instead of going straight to work, I decided
Speaker 14: to swing by the fire and I arrived to the
Speaker 14: house of Robert Fisher, which was completely on fire. I
Speaker 14: was the first reporter at the scene, and the fire
Speaker 14: crews were already working the blaze.
Speaker 1: The scott Steel Police Department is here too. Detective TJ.
Speaker 1: Duran arrives to a fire blasted Norman Rockwell painting nice
Speaker 1: little house, nice little house, nice little house, and then
Speaker 1: a pile of smoldering rubble.
Speaker 3: The damage was incredible. We were kind of like, what
Speaker 3: the fuck caused the explosion?
Speaker 1: Juranne guesses correctly, natural gas. He and other detectives, including
Speaker 1: John Kirkham and Joe LaDuke, circle the house trying to
Speaker 1: decipher this enigmatic molten mess.
Speaker 3: We went around the backyard, so the fire had started
Speaker 3: and then it exploded. It blew out the back walls
Speaker 3: of the house. Now you had a four feet high
Speaker 3: brick wall where you could look in and John and
Speaker 3: I were looking in and there were two bedrooms we
Speaker 3: were able to look into, and we could see that
Speaker 3: there were bodies on a bed, and John and I
Speaker 3: looked at each other and we basically said, this is
Speaker 3: definitely a homicide. We knew that the fire was burning
Speaker 3: and the bodies looked small, so we knew they were kids.
Speaker 3: Normal cases, somebody's going to wake up and move. They
Speaker 3: were still lying there like they were sleeping. I've been
Speaker 3: on investigations where a child died in the fire, and
Speaker 3: when we found the child in the house, they were
Speaker 3: in the fetal position. You tend to curl up because
Speaker 3: of the heat. These bodies weren't like that.
Speaker 1: To Duran's dismay, news of the bodies leaks to the media.
Speaker 14: Soon it became apparent that it wasn't just a house
Speaker 14: fire but a triple homicide.
Speaker 1: Detectives fight to keep gory details private, and they're successful
Speaker 1: for now, but they're already feeling intense pressure. This will
Speaker 1: clearly be a high profile case, and their crime scene
Speaker 1: is burning on live teev as someone leaks secrets and
Speaker 1: family and friends of the victims descend on the cul
Speaker 1: de Sac.
Speaker 7: Someone called me and said I think Mary's house blew up.
Speaker 1: Mary's friend Kim Davidson.
Speaker 12: So, what do you mean?
Speaker 7: And they said, I just heard there's a house and
Speaker 7: scuffs of the blew up. We think it's Mary's. So
Speaker 7: I went to the house and there was police in
Speaker 7: front of it. Her sister, mRNA was sitting in the
Speaker 7: police cart and there was an ambulance there and the
Speaker 7: house was in shambles. The next thing I knew, I
Speaker 7: overheard the police officers say there's three bodies and their
Speaker 7: two children. I just kind of went into shock.
Speaker 1: At SUPERI Middle School, principal Diane Wells calls an emergency
Speaker 1: meeting of Britney Fisher's teachers, including Miss Honey, who we
Speaker 1: heard from in episode one, and.
Speaker 13: Then the police come in and they're like, there's been
Speaker 13: a fire. House has been on fire, and we're like, oh,
Speaker 13: whose house? And then I realized she's not in class today.
Speaker 1: Brittany is missing, her house is on fire, Rumors fly,
Speaker 1: No one can focus the SUPERI gang. This hearty bunch
Speaker 1: of teachers must remain calm.
Speaker 5: Because the news was blowing up and we had to
Speaker 5: be the turquoise team of the teachers. We had to
Speaker 5: be strong That was the strongest I've ever had to
Speaker 5: be as a teacher, as an educator, because these kids
Speaker 5: are leaning on us to be strong and to make
Speaker 5: this okay. So we all fall apart.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, everyone has the same question.
Speaker 13: One of my colleagues, Kate Evererly it said, wait, where's
Speaker 13: Robert Fisher? And I'll never forget that moment. I will
Speaker 13: never forget that moment because all I know is the
Speaker 13: police looked at each other and she said, you need
Speaker 13: to find him because I think he did it, and
Speaker 13: that all I know. All I can remember is the
Speaker 13: police is like, all right, well, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Bam, they were gone.
Speaker 1: This is on purpose. The Scottsdale Police Department wants to
Speaker 1: minimize any discussion of Robert Fisher as a suspect. They
Speaker 1: hope he'll return and claim to have been camping or
Speaker 1: something when his family died, expecting their bodies critical evidence
Speaker 1: to be destroyed. It's a controversial strategy. Most people immediately
Speaker 1: suspect Robert the missing dad with military medical and firefighting experience,
Speaker 1: but in defensive SPD, if Robert's not thinking rationally, which
Speaker 1: is possible, this strategy could work. As the fire dies down,
Speaker 1: there's so much confusion. Jim Rodin, a Fisher family friend.
Speaker 1: Here's a false rumor that SPD found Robert's body, So
Speaker 1: I go, oh.
Speaker 18: Man, my friend Robert's gone.
Speaker 19: Then it's the reports start coming in.
Speaker 16: No, he's not there.
Speaker 11: They found the bodies of Brittany and Bobby and Mary
Speaker 11: and it looks like dirty pool. So then it's just like, oh,
Speaker 11: my goodness, this just went from bad to very very
Speaker 11: very bad. From an accident happened or a suicide to
Speaker 11: a triple homicide.
Speaker 8: And where is he?
Speaker 19: That's probably the first time I go, oh, Robert, what
Speaker 19: did you do?
Speaker 1: Even as it starts to click mom dead, daughter dead,
Speaker 1: son dead, dad missing, SPD declares that Robert is not
Speaker 1: a suspect, though he is wanted for questioning. The next day,
Speaker 1: Mary's father, Bill Cooper, a retired school principal who walks
Speaker 1: with two canes, speaks to the media.
Speaker 12: Robert, we love you, whoever you are, Robert, please we understand,
Speaker 12: we love you. Just come home, please, Robert and I
Speaker 12: don't know what's going on. We don't know anything for sure,
Speaker 12: but we'd like to hear from you, please.
Speaker 1: Robert, Bill begs a newspaper reporter to quote, please please
Speaker 1: keep writing good things about Robert. He's a good man.
Speaker 14: You want to know about my Robert. He was the
Speaker 14: greatest dad, he was the greatest husband.
Speaker 1: I miss him. I miss him terribly. I miss him
Speaker 1: almost as much as I miss my daughter, because they
Speaker 1: were one. Bill's grief hurts my soul reporting this case.
Speaker 1: I think of it every time I see him in
Speaker 1: old family videos, including this clip from nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: with Robert and Brittany.
Speaker 20: Oh Brittany got cross file. They're like, Oh, Brittany's one
Speaker 20: years old.
Speaker 1: On April fourteenth, two thousand and one, the Arizona Republic
Speaker 1: leads with a story by Tom z Ohner headline family
Speaker 1: in Blaze slashed shot quote. Mary Fisher was shot in
Speaker 1: the back of the head and her children's throats were
Speaker 1: slashed and the hours before their Scottsdale home exploded Tuesday,
Speaker 1: scott Stale detectives including T. J. Duran and John Kirkham
Speaker 1: are furious with his owner.
Speaker 3: Somebody gave him information on the crime that shouldn't have
Speaker 3: been in the newspapers. So at that point we realized, well,
Speaker 3: the Republic's distributed throughout the whole state, there's no doubt
Speaker 3: he's looking at newspapers, so we knew at that point
Speaker 3: our theory that he'd come back is out the window.
Speaker 3: That's done. As a matter of fact, when that printed,
Speaker 3: John called me that morning, really early in said, have
Speaker 3: you seen the fucking newspaper front page? And at that
Speaker 3: time I used to have it delivered to me, and
Speaker 3: I looked at it, and then I called him back
Speaker 3: and said, who the fuck is talking?
Speaker 1: SPD is fighting to find Robert Fisher and Tom Zohner
Speaker 1: just nuked their strategy.
Speaker 14: That came to a head and what amounted to a
Speaker 14: yelling match in between myself and Detective Duran. He completely
Speaker 14: uncorked on me. I yelled back at him, and that
Speaker 14: was that. Years later we passed it up. I do
Speaker 14: have a lot of respect for him. I think he
Speaker 14: did as good a job as any police officer could
Speaker 14: have done on this case, and he also understood why
Speaker 14: we were twined for the information that we got. In
Speaker 14: some ways, the mission of the police end of the
Speaker 14: news is parallel. You want to find out what the
Speaker 14: heck happened.
Speaker 1: Zohner's article with details on the murders is a turning
Speaker 1: point in the case.
Speaker 8: And now father and husband Robert Fisher is officially being
Speaker 8: called a suspect.
Speaker 1: At Superi Middle School, Miss Honey, Britney's teacher and the
Speaker 1: second to last person to see and speak with Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher at the Honor Society event on April ninth, takes
Speaker 1: a deep breath, and then it was.
Speaker 5: This moment of Oh my God, I shook his hand.
Speaker 5: I shook his hand that night.
Speaker 16: It was me.
Speaker 9: I was the one.
Speaker 1: As the gravity and depravity of the situation sink in. Mary, Brittany,
Speaker 1: and Bobby are cremated and laid to rest in a
Speaker 1: private ceremony on Easter weekend. Then on April seventeenth, a
Speaker 1: crowd of thirteen hundred gathers for a public memorial. Undercover
Speaker 1: cops scan the crowd for any sign of Robert Fisher.
Speaker 1: As speakers memorialized Brittany ten days before what would have
Speaker 1: been her thirteenth birthday, we saw her as.
Speaker 17: A bright and shining star among her peers. Such a
Speaker 17: beautiful young lady, so precious, so unique, so special. She
Speaker 17: will be missed more than I can say. God must
Speaker 17: be thrilled to have her right now in his choir
Speaker 17: in heaven.
Speaker 7: I love you, Maria.
Speaker 17: I love you, Brittany, I love your Barney.
Speaker 1: Bill Cooper speaks.
Speaker 10: Like God has a plan. He has a timing for
Speaker 10: our lives. And you've heard today that this was not
Speaker 10: something that was yanked from Mary and Brittany and Bobby.
Speaker 10: God has a plan. We don't know what it is,
Speaker 10: but I know someday we're going to know. But until then,
Speaker 10: I just want you to know that we're going to
Speaker 10: miss him so much. They were such a joy to
Speaker 10: my life. But I still have my murder and we
Speaker 10: will see them again in glory. Did I keep that
Speaker 10: under seven minutes?
Speaker 4: Great?
Speaker 6: Bill.
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 me on thirty three dot com or follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at John waalzac.
Speaker 12: J O n w A.
Speaker 1: L Czak. Thanks for listening. Thursday April nineteenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, nine days after the house explodes, as darkness falls,
Speaker 1: a fifty year old man named Greg drives down a
Speaker 1: bumpy road in Arizona's Tonto National Forest looking for a
Speaker 1: place to camp. Greg is alone. He often is. He
Speaker 1: wanders the country doing construction work he parks his van
Speaker 1: at a primitive campsite and gets out. Slushy snow falls
Speaker 1: gently from above, drifting down into an inky forest devoid
Speaker 1: of light and sound. This spot is one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty miles northeast of Scottsdale, fifteen miles from the tiny
Speaker 1: town of Young, and one thousand feet from the Ford
Speaker 1: Apache Indian Reservation, on a steep climbed down from the
Speaker 1: muggy on rem l l o n An escarpment, a
Speaker 1: long steep slope, a strip of cliffs. Think of it
Speaker 1: as a jagged raised scar stretching two hundred miles across
Speaker 1: the state. This is where Greg finds himself cold, wandering
Speaker 1: down a forest service road, hunting by flashlight for firewood,
Speaker 1: when he spots a glint of silver in the woods.
Speaker 14: Closing your eyes, dot dot dot, here we go.
Speaker 1: Tom Dolner, now a successful author, published a book last
Speaker 1: year called rim To River, Looking into the Heart of Arizona,
Speaker 1: in which he paints a vivid portrait of this remote spot.
Speaker 14: It's up in what Arizona's call the high country, at
Speaker 14: five thousand feet above sea level, A lot of tall
Speaker 14: pine trees, a lot of granite crags, a lot of
Speaker 14: places to get lost.
Speaker 21: It's alpine, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Frank Kimbler is a geologist and former Arizona resident.
Speaker 21: There are creeks and there are lakes up there. It's
Speaker 21: essentially the high country of Arizona. It's a full of
Speaker 21: wild light. There's lots of beer. There's bear It's almost
Speaker 21: like going to a miniature version of Yellowstone.
Speaker 22: It's hon rosa pine tree forest with Laura shrubs consisting
Speaker 22: of Manzanita and Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Brian Havey is a retired detective in Heila County, a
Speaker 1: stunning expanse of wilderness dotted by towns with names like
Speaker 1: six Shooter Canyon, Dripping Springs, and Whispering Pines, great.
Speaker 22: Hunting grounds, deer, elk, turkey, nonline, bear, bobcats, coyotes, the
Speaker 22: whole nine yards.
Speaker 1: This is where Greg Our protagonist or the FBI will
Speaker 1: later wonder antagonist finds a silver suv at night, alone
Speaker 1: in a three million acre national forest. Greg knows Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher is missing. He knows Fisher is likely driving a
Speaker 1: silver suv. But he's tired, it's dark, he's cold, and
Speaker 1: he's learned generally to mind his own business. He doesn't
Speaker 1: know for sure if the suv is the suv, so
Speaker 1: he makes a fire, has dinner, and falls asleep in
Speaker 1: his van. The next morning, the suv is still there,
Speaker 1: perching behind it. Greg pulls out binoculars and zooms in.
Speaker 1: He sees a four an R. It is a Forerunner.
Speaker 1: Then he sees movement a dog. This has to be
Speaker 1: the Forerunner the dog. The dog starts to approach him,
Speaker 1: but pauses halfway and turns around. Greg wonders is Robert
Speaker 1: in the woods watching him? Is he dead in a ditch?
Speaker 1: He doesn't wait to find out. He packs up and
Speaker 1: drives forty minutes north to a gas station, where he
Speaker 1: uses a payphone to call Jim and Bobby Jacka, an
Speaker 1: elderly couple in Mesa. He tells them what he found
Speaker 1: and asks them to call the police, and then he vanishes. Friday,
Speaker 1: April twentieth, two thousand and one, ten am, the Jackas
Speaker 1: call the Scottsdale Police Department. Detective Kirkham takes the call.
Speaker 1: Detective Duran stands next to him. They look at each other.
Speaker 1: A silver Forerunner and a dog abandoned in the woods.
Speaker 1: It has to be Mary's suv and blue the Fisher
Speaker 1: family pet right, but they need confirmation and they're two
Speaker 1: and a half hours away by car.
Speaker 3: So we immediately called DPS.
Speaker 1: The Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Speaker 3: And said, hey, CA, you do me a favor.
Speaker 1: Fly up over there by helicopter.
Speaker 3: Within an hour, DPS calls and says, hey, this is
Speaker 3: the truck we have in this is the plate, that's him,
Speaker 3: that's the truck. Well, guess what happens. Who's listening to
Speaker 3: the scanners the media, So that immediately hits the news.
Speaker 3: Helicopters are up there, they're filming it, and we're like,
Speaker 3: are you fucking kidding me? So within an hour or so,
Speaker 3: John and I are on a Blackhawk and they fly
Speaker 3: us to the rim. HeLa County and Coconino County are
Speaker 3: already there.
Speaker 1: Who was the first member of law enforcement on the scene.
Speaker 22: You're looking at him?
Speaker 1: HeLa County Detective Brian hay I.
Speaker 22: Had Deputy Colt White in my vehicle. Two of us
Speaker 22: did a walk in through the trees and brush, using
Speaker 22: them as cover.
Speaker 1: Hayvey pause behind a tree and aims his rifle at
Speaker 1: the suv. He sees movement. Is it Fisher? No, it's
Speaker 1: blue the dog. But Fisher could be anywhere waiting to
Speaker 1: snipe cops or blow them up. What if he rigged
Speaker 1: the Forerunner to explode or scattered booby traps in the forest.
Speaker 1: As Hevey makes a final approach, he startled to see
Speaker 1: a car speed past him on a rough dirt road
Speaker 1: directly to the suv. The good news backup is here.
Speaker 1: The bad it's a less experienced cop with blatant disregard
Speaker 1: for tactical safety.
Speaker 22: I remember having a discussion with officer why that idiot.
Speaker 22: If he's there, we're going to have to rescue his
Speaker 22: ass too.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, other members of law enforcement set up a command
Speaker 1: post a quarter mile south on Young Highway Highway, it
Speaker 1: should be noted is an overly generous moniker. Much of
Speaker 1: the seventy four mile road is unpaved and sounds like this.
Speaker 1: Scottsdale Detective T. J. Juran arrives by helicopter. Did they
Speaker 1: land you on the highway?
Speaker 3: No, they landed us in a field surrounded by pine trees.
Speaker 1: As Duran lands, a swat team moves methodically through the
Speaker 1: forest with scant cover. There's no sign of Fisher. The
Speaker 1: leading theory is that he's armed extremely dangerous and hold
Speaker 1: up in a nearby cave. As the sun sets and
Speaker 1: the forest darkens, Police set up a perimeter, but don't
Speaker 1: enter the cave. Instead, they call a plumber. Imagine you
Speaker 1: spent your day unclogging toilets and now, voila, you're part
Speaker 1: of a high stakes man hunt. The plumber snakes a
Speaker 1: grainy drain camera down into the tight underground cave, perhaps
Speaker 1: expecting a pair of eyes to peer back at him.
Speaker 1: He sees nothing. At the command post, restless media beg
Speaker 1: for updates, the Heela County Sheriff agrees to speak.
Speaker 3: They all gather around him with the cameras and they
Speaker 3: shine lights in him, and his first words were turn
Speaker 3: your lights off. And everybody was like, oh okay, And
Speaker 3: they shut the lights.
Speaker 1: Off, just in case anyone's watching from the woods.
Speaker 23: Even though the search has been called off for the night,
Speaker 23: heavily armed swat team members kept a watchful eye for Robert.
Speaker 1: Fischer the next day.
Speaker 23: More than one hundred men and women from DPS, Heale
Speaker 23: County Sheriff's Department and Scottsdale Police swat team moved in
Speaker 23: early this morning, hoping to pick up on Fisher's trail.
Speaker 23: A special dog from the Americopa County Sheriff's Department used
Speaker 23: to search for dead people, will also be joining the team.
Speaker 24: We're going to be checking the caves, but we don't
Speaker 24: need to do those with the cadaver dog in the
Speaker 24: eventity is in the hole and has expired. We don't
Speaker 24: know that.
Speaker 23: The Healay County Sheriff's Department thinks Fisher may have been
Speaker 23: here for at least a week before his car was found,
Speaker 23: because it was clean without having been driven in the mud.
Speaker 24: We do know what was after this nose because these
Speaker 24: vehicles clean. So we're working a period of time from
Speaker 24: the thirteenth to the month until now.
Speaker 23: Meanwhile, on a roadblock cars coming and going into the
Speaker 23: area where checks to make sure Fisher wasn't hiding out
Speaker 23: A scary thought for some drivers.
Speaker 7: I wish I was armed.
Speaker 15: You know, it's concerning because this is I have a convertible.
Speaker 1: We put the top up because we don't want anybody
Speaker 1: jumping in the car, and you know.
Speaker 2: That they've got homicide soft.
Speaker 22: Yeah, I read about it. Okay, Yeah, probably shouldn't.
Speaker 23: Want to don't want to pick up any hut hikeruiser
Speaker 23: where strike to yatten.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, lady, thank you.
Speaker 24: Okay. What we have done this morning, though, is we've
Speaker 24: gone out checked all the areas a musing the snow
Speaker 24: as a guide for us, looking for tracks, trying to
Speaker 24: locate if the subject had walked out. We found no
Speaker 24: new tracks.
Speaker 11: We did have a couple of reports.
Speaker 23: About a minle.
Speaker 1: It's not him, as cadaver dogs circle caves and bloodhound
Speaker 1: sniff the forerunner. Patty Blackmore, a veterinarian in the mountain
Speaker 1: town of Paysin, gets a call. At least one member
Speaker 1: of the Fisher family is running around the woods, Robert
Speaker 1: Fisher's dog, and the cops want Patty to nab him.
Speaker 1: Patty's having a rough morning. She and her friend Samantha
Speaker 1: Wright just euthanized a white malamute after a failed surgery
Speaker 1: to remove a huge stomach tumor. The malamute's owners drop
Speaker 1: off a dozen donuts to say thank you. Now, Patty
Speaker 1: and Samantha hop in a car and drive into the
Speaker 1: center of a massive manhunt.
Speaker 25: Oh my gosh, they're busy everywhere, and news people lining
Speaker 25: the road and napping pictures, and it was very overwhelming.
Speaker 19: Yeah, and I think you had a ball cap on.
Speaker 8: I mean it was set morning.
Speaker 5: We were no makeup, barely out of our pajamas.
Speaker 19: Yeah, I had my pajamas on.
Speaker 17: I don't remember.
Speaker 25: Now, just another day, we go do a surgery, get
Speaker 25: called in to capture some dog.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, yeah, allegedly worded his family.
Speaker 1: No, just like another day, Patty reports to headquarters.
Speaker 25: They're all these guys and they've got all their gear on,
Speaker 25: you know, their bulletproof vests. And I said, I was
Speaker 25: here to pick up the dog, and they said, well,
Speaker 25: did you bring your stun gun. I said no, I
Speaker 25: had no idea that they had not caught the dog.
Speaker 25: And so we ended up loading up in a suv myself,
Speaker 25: my girlfriend, the donuts, a leash, and I think there
Speaker 25: were probably four or five guys, and we drove out
Speaker 25: into the forest and when we got there, they were
Speaker 25: actually loading Robert Frisher's car onto a flatbed, and the
Speaker 25: dog was just acting confused, walking in circles, and I
Speaker 25: just said, don't take the vehicle away, because if you do,
Speaker 25: the dog doesn't have any reason to stay here. So
Speaker 25: I had them all stay in their vehicle. I approached
Speaker 25: the dog with a donut and a leash, and the
Speaker 25: helicopter was going above, and they were all filming all
Speaker 25: of this.
Speaker 1: The forest is silent save for a panting dog, a
Speaker 1: distant helicopter, and the wind. There's a heavy scent.
Speaker 19: Of pine that was kind of cold and wet and dewey.
Speaker 1: Patty doesn't pay much attention to the forerunner.
Speaker 25: It was mostly figuring out how am I going to
Speaker 25: catch this dog on live television without.
Speaker 5: Looking like an house.
Speaker 1: It's the truth.
Speaker 25: I threw him a piece of doughnut and he ate it.
Speaker 25: I threw him another one and got a little closer
Speaker 25: and he ate it. And then I finally stuck my
Speaker 25: hand through the leash like a slip leash, gave him
Speaker 25: the piece of donut, and then I was.
Speaker 5: Able to catch the dog.
Speaker 1: Now all Patty can think is what if Fisher shoots me?
Speaker 25: Is in the sniper me out of some tree was creepy,
Speaker 25: which is not that crazy.
Speaker 1: To think, right, And you were the one everybody was
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 25: Sv Yeah, and they sent me in the middle of
Speaker 25: the forest, you know, with the dogs dog me the dog.
Speaker 25: Don't it in a leash against the world?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 24: Seriously?
Speaker 18: Oh man, have you ever seen the video of yourself.
Speaker 25: I don't think I ever have.
Speaker 12: Do you have it?
Speaker 19: Yes, that's it. That photo, that's it. Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 19: So this is me and Patty's down trinking Blue.
Speaker 1: Blue, a two year old Australian cattle dog, is hungry, thirsty,
Speaker 1: and agitated.
Speaker 25: When I caught him, he had porkpine quills off throughout
Speaker 25: his face, so I went ahead and sedated him, and
Speaker 25: then went ahead and carried him out. We ended up
Speaker 25: taking him back to the clinic where I removed all
Speaker 25: the porcupine quills, and then brought him home to my
Speaker 25: house and kept him with me. After that, there were
Speaker 25: multiple multiple people that wanted to adopt him, but the
Speaker 25: family didn't want the dog to be a big spectacle,
Speaker 25: so we didn't, of course talk to any of them.
Speaker 25: And I think at one point I even had a
Speaker 25: sign on my door because people were following me, following
Speaker 25: me everywhere, calling about the dog, wanting the dog, And
Speaker 25: so I ended up adopting Blue and handed up living
Speaker 25: with us for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Patty and her family moved to Missouri in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: They nicknamed Blue Duck because he makes a funny honking
Speaker 1: noise with his mouth. Blue spends his final years roaming
Speaker 1: a farm, happy and free. He dies in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Patty and Samantha have vivid memories of their surreal experience
Speaker 1: in the forest. Until two years ago. Samantha also had
Speaker 1: physical mementos, some of the porcupine quills pulled from blue snout.
Speaker 1: She wanted to make Patty a memory box.
Speaker 19: I kept putting it off, and then our house burned
Speaker 19: down two years ago, and so we lost it all
Speaker 19: that morning, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 19: go run errands, get stuff done.
Speaker 8: I grabbed little Ella's face, our chocolate lab and said, sweetheart,
Speaker 8: I'll be right back. I left in about twelve ten.
Speaker 8: Phone call from Sergeant Hansen and he says, your house
Speaker 8: was on fire. When they got there was fully inflamed.
Speaker 8: Somebody had heard our dog Ella barking. She was outside
Speaker 8: on the deck and they thought she was in a room,
Speaker 8: and he thought if he threw a rock through the
Speaker 8: window he could get the dog out, but she wasn't.
Speaker 8: She was on the other side of the deck. Anyway,
Speaker 8: back drafted and killed her pretty quick. We lost our
Speaker 8: kitty too.
Speaker 1: Remember that little stone wall in Scottsdale. The relics that
Speaker 1: survived catastrophe well.
Speaker 8: In the room that burned the hottest, I found two things,
Speaker 8: my great grandmother's rosary and the gold crucifix that had
Speaker 8: belonged to her. I mean, we're talking black chart everywhere,
Speaker 8: we're looking for the remains of my cat, and these
Speaker 8: are the two things that I find in that room,
Speaker 8: totally untouched. In one bedroom, I had an old cabinet
Speaker 8: had all my notebooks from Phoenix Seminary. I'd gone to seminary.
Speaker 8: They were wet, but all those notebooks survived. Every Bible
Speaker 8: in the house was charred on the outside, but fine
Speaker 8: on the inside.
Speaker 1: Samantha leans on God, but it all just hurts.
Speaker 19: You have brain trauma. I couldn't remember anything. First week
Speaker 19: after the fire.
Speaker 8: I would be an ARII and I'd see a dog
Speaker 8: toy and I'd just start weeping, and people were like,
Speaker 8: they don't know what to do with you.
Speaker 19: I felt like our kids were just pointing us into
Speaker 19: the right direction.
Speaker 8: Tim and I both lost about fifteen pounds that first
Speaker 8: month because we couldn't even eat.
Speaker 19: It was so stressful.
Speaker 1: Samantha's fire makes her think of the Fisher fire, or
Speaker 1: trauma of the trauma visited upon Mary's parents.
Speaker 19: I would think, as a parent, why didn't I see
Speaker 19: this coming? Could I have done something? I even think
Speaker 19: about losing Ella and Esther in the fire, and there's.
Speaker 8: A lot of guilt, you know, if you would have
Speaker 8: been there that morning, you were so selfish and you
Speaker 8: had to leave and go run errands instead.
Speaker 19: And they're just my animals. They're not even my children.
Speaker 8: So I can't fathom just the devastation that the parents
Speaker 8: felt and losing their.
Speaker 19: Daughter and grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Sometime before Patty leaves Arizona, Mary's parents stop by to
Speaker 1: visit Blue.
Speaker 25: Because he was a piece of their family. You know,
Speaker 25: he knew kids, and it was still part of that story,
Speaker 25: the only living part of that story that they knew
Speaker 25: for sure.
Speaker 2: Brit Brittany, Benny Jean, Brittany, Benny Jean, Hey bye bye
Speaker 2: bye bye bye bye bye bye, Glad Gunny, Where I hear.
Speaker 20: Baby bye bye?
Speaker 13: B Janie.
Speaker 1: Saturday, April twenty first, two thousand and one. As the
Speaker 1: search for Robert Fisher continues, attention turns to another cave.
Speaker 1: The Scottsdale SWAT team, trained to operate in cities, not
Speaker 1: the wilderness, is out of its element. They ask Heulet
Speaker 1: County Detective Brian Havey to help guide them via radio.
Speaker 22: I was on a little knoll maybe two hundred yards
Speaker 22: from the entrance to the cave, behind some good rocks
Speaker 22: as cover. There was sleeting hail and snow coming down.
Speaker 22: They would go like twenty feet and all shot up
Speaker 22: behind a tree, and every time they come out from one,
Speaker 22: they'd say where are you at? So I'd stand up
Speaker 22: and go right here? Which way do we go?
Speaker 18: Now?
Speaker 22: That direction? And it took for them to cover that
Speaker 22: two hundred yards I want to say, forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: So they get to the cave entrance and they drop
Speaker 1: flash banks.
Speaker 22: Flash banks, smoke grenades the whole nine yards. I don't
Speaker 22: know if they were trying to scare Robert Fisher out
Speaker 22: of the cave or any bears or lions or tigers
Speaker 22: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the weather is rapidly deteriorating.
Speaker 22: The storm came in. We had rain, sleet and some hail,
Speaker 22: and it became quite miserable. As you know, that red
Speaker 22: dirt up there turns into mud real quick though. Everybody
Speaker 22: was tramping around and that stuff.
Speaker 1: Visibility drops to ten feet.
Speaker 22: Sometimes we get what we call tide crystals, looks like
Speaker 22: tide soap, and it's just little fluffy snowballs that come down.
Speaker 1: At four PM, the SWAT team retreats from the cave.
Speaker 1: At seven the search is temporarily suspended. Only four units
Speaker 1: remain overnight Sunday, April twenty second, Monday three.
Speaker 23: Of the search for murder suspect Robert Fisher is quite
Speaker 23: a different picture. Snow covered the entire area, and there
Speaker 23: are a lot less officers right now.
Speaker 24: We're down to about a third. We've probably got twenty
Speaker 24: five people. I don't have an exact count, but yes,
Speaker 24: we are down because of what's happened in the weather change.
Speaker 23: But the thick blanket of fresh snow also can be
Speaker 23: a benefit for searchers because it's easier to spot new tracks.
Speaker 24: When you have the no snow, you need more searchers
Speaker 24: to cover the ground.
Speaker 1: Officers dart from one false lead to the next, including
Speaker 1: a nearby lean to no sign of Fisher, buzzards in
Speaker 1: the sky, no sign of Fisher, sightings everywhere, none confirmed
Speaker 1: to be Fisher. Monday April twenty third, headline Fisher search fruitless,
Speaker 1: murder suspect vanishes in wilds It's been an exhausting weekend
Speaker 1: for cops and the media. The Arizona Republic has been
Speaker 1: stellar in its reporting, though it does make some mistakes,
Speaker 1: saying at one point, for example, that Robert Fisher is
Speaker 1: definitely cornered in a cave. The Republic also never realizes
Speaker 1: that its own employee, Bud Wolf, is a critical witness,
Speaker 1: the last person to see Mary's Forerunner before it's located
Speaker 1: nine days later in the forest. Today, the search ends
Speaker 1: only seventy hours after it began. Heela County Sheriff John
Speaker 1: Armer tells the Pace and Round Up that law enforcement
Speaker 1: spent four thousand, five hundred man hours scouring a one
Speaker 1: point five mile radius around the Forerunner searching for Fisher.
Speaker 1: As far as we're concerned, he says, the probability of
Speaker 1: him being in that area is so low we're not
Speaker 1: looking anymore. Back in Scottsdale, it.
Speaker 9: Was a home where a mother and her children were murdered.
Speaker 9: It was also a home purposely set on fire, police say,
Speaker 9: to destroy the bodies and to cover up the triple homicide.
Speaker 9: But as of this morning, the home was torn down
Speaker 9: by a demolition crew, hauled away and.
Speaker 1: Then you see it the little stone wall, this resilient
Speaker 1: relic watching as an orange bulldozer karts off rubble from
Speaker 1: the house burned and the lives shattered only twenty feet away.
Speaker 9: While the investigation continues, questions continue to mount. Did Robert
Speaker 9: Fisher really murder his family?
Speaker 23: And if so, why?
Speaker 9: But the big question police say remains, is Robert Fisher
Speaker 9: still out here somewhere.
Speaker 1: Next time, I'm missing in Arizona. So we found Mary
Speaker 1: Fisher's forerunner. It's still on the road, still in Arizona,
Speaker 1: and we're about a half mile away from its current address.
Speaker 1: You can reach us by phone at one eight three
Speaker 1: to three new tips. That's one three six three nine
Speaker 1: eight four seven seven, by email at tips at iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: dot com, tips at iHeartMedia dot com, online at neon
Speaker 1: thirty three dot com, or on Twitter at John Wallzac,
Speaker 1: j O, n W A. L. Czak. Paul Dekan 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 Bowen is a consulting producer. And I'm your host
Speaker 1: and executive producer, John Wallzac recreations. Voice by Paul Decktt,
Speaker 1: Holly Frye and Joe McCormick. Additional production support provided by
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Special thanks to Zach Fradella. 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
Speaker 1: and Missing on nine to eleven, and if you're so inclined,
Speaker 1: give us a five star rating. Missing in Arizona is
Speaker 1: a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three