September 18, 2024 • 65 mins
April 10, 2001, an explosion rocked a cozy Scottsdale neighborhood. The mother of the family, along with her children, were discovered murdered inside. The father, Robert Fisher, disappeared -- and may still be out there, somewhere. Join Ben and Matt as they welcome Jon Walczak, the creator and host of the Missing series, to learn more about his newest work Missing in Arizona, and the techniques he's using to search for one of the most wanted men in the world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Our colleague Noel is on a sensitive operation for IGU.
They call me Ben. We're joined with our guest super producer,
Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Now, Matt, as we're rolling into this,
(00:50):
we got to say it's a something a little different
for this evening, because this one is for fans of
not just true not just investigations, but mysteries.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Right oh yeah, The whole story we're getting into today
is a mystery. Every aspect of it is a mystery.
And we're gonna be speaking with somebody who has created
It's the third season of a show, Ben that I'm
gonna call you out. You work on and I think
it's a fantastic show. This specific season deals with the case.
(01:28):
The details are so fine. I've been lost now, I've
been immersed in it for the past forty eight hours.
I can't escape, and I think I know how our
guest feels now after diving into it so deeply.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Right, we are speaking with the world expert on a
case that remains unsolved in this modern evening. So that's
our cold open, and we're gonna have a quick word
from our sponsors. And we can't wait for you to
meet this guy. And we've returned. We are joined with
(02:08):
the world class investigative journalist, a man who never met
a rabbit hole that he would not go down. Friends, neighbors,
conspiracy realist, lend us your ears and help us. Welcome
the one and only John Wallzac.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Guys, Yeah, joining you from the depths of madness with
my postit notes and my strings and my maps, so
an undisclosed location. Glad to be with you, guys.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, right behind John, I'm seeing a picture of a
certain wanted individual. I believe that individual's name is Robert Fisher,
who is the subject of this season of missing titled
Missing in Arizona. Go check it out right now while
you're well, wait until you're done with this and then
go subscribe, like do that. But John, can you can
(03:00):
you tell us who is Robert Fisher. Why are you
focusing on this individual for a whole season of missing?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, so missing in Alaska season one was a plane
that disappeared, missing on nine to eleven, a doctor that
vanished in New York the night before nine to eleven,
and season three is missing in Arizona about Robert Fisher.
So Robert Fisher killed his family, blew up their house,
and then escaped into the wilderness in Arizona. He abandoned
his wife's SSUV in the remote forest in the mountains,
(03:28):
and for ten days they didn't know where he was.
There was this man hunt. They found the wife's SUV,
the Forerunner, near caves near an Indian reservation. So the
big question is did Robert Fisher die in the wilderness?
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Did he escape?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Their clues everywhere, And I think what makes it really
fascinating to me personally is obviously it's an unsolved mystery.
Part of it is the landscape of the American West,
So it's an adventure to go into the mountains, to
go hunting for a hermit's cabin, to go splunking in
underground caves, which we do in next week's episode. And
(04:04):
I think that that's part of the appeal. The other
thing is because it happened in April two thousand and one,
it was right before nine to eleven. It was before
social media, it was before smartphones. And so one of
the things that we talk about is we really lack
what I call these mono mysteries, these great mysteries that
unite us, and there's so few of them these days.
(04:25):
That we look to the past and it was almost
like you can look at two thousand and one in
the early two thousands, that's kind of the end of
these mysteries. So this is one of the great final
mysteries of the pre digital age.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, oh well. Put Also, we've got to point out
there is something you said that really really resonates, at
least with me, the idea of mono mystery and the
idea of the Great West, because, as we say so
often on this show, a lot of times people forget
(04:59):
just how wide and wild the interior of the United
States is before we dive in. I do want to
point out that you've worked on this show in concert
with our comrade Paul Mission Control decand when you all
are exploring this stuff, you're not just you know, on
(05:23):
a browser on an Internet you guys are out there
pounding sand, you're out there actually exploring caverns. Could you
tell us maybe One of the first questions here is
the following, was it easier for people to disappear in
this time in April of two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Yeah, So that's one of the big questions, is, well,
if Robert Fisher did escape, I think he's alive, clear
about that, And I've spoken with most of the investigators.
They also think he's alive. So our goal is to
find Robert Fisher with this show. And you know, some
of the pushback that we get is, well, how could
he remain hidden for twenty three years? I think if
(06:07):
he disappeared in twenty twenty four or maybe not, but
in April two thousand and one, it was just a
different time. And so I mean, I was, I was twelve,
so I'm rapidly aging, but I was. I have a
little bit of memory of.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
That that pre nine to eleven world.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
And you know, I think especially for like gen z To,
they have never lived in a world where you could
walk up to it a gated an airport, for example.
So one of the things with this show that I've
found really fascinating. I have a book sitting right behind
me called Hide Your Assets and Disappear, Hide Your Assets
and Disappear, and it was it was a best selling book,
(06:45):
and I think nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, So you know,
I think it was possible that Robert Fisher got out.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
In the nick of time.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
I call it kind of the fugitive sweet spot, the
fugitive donut hole where he got lucky and he escaped
right before Facebook, right before the iPhone, right before nine
to eleven, and is still on the lamb.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
One of the things we talked about in this show
a lot is that someone is presumed innocent until they're
found guilty. Right when you've got a missing person like
this and there's a stack of evidence against you, that's
a weird gray area for me cognitively, right, because unless
it's proven in a court of law that he's guilty,
then I kind of have to personally at least keep
(07:32):
an open mind to like, did he actually do this?
One of the things you do is you look at
that stack of evidence and you go through it with
a fine toothed comb in your mind. What are the
biggest pieces of evidence that say Robert definitely killed his
family and escaped.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
So yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
So one of the things that I do is I'm
like you guys, I am a truth based person. It's
fun to look at these things, and sometimes conspiracies play out,
and sometimes the police are law enforcement, they kind of
want to minimize information because they want to stick to
a simple narrative.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
So I just go wherever the narrative leads me.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
And as far as Robert Fisher, I think, for example,
the police have said for years that there were poor
patterns indicating that he used a liquid accelerant to help
burn down his house. And one of the things that
we looked at is poor patterns, as junk science say,
it doesn't actually prove anything.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Oh and just for all of us tonight, what is
a poor pattern? Defined as PO you are?
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, thank you, po you are pattern?
Speaker 5 (08:37):
So it basically, if you're looking if I were to
burn down the house I'm in right now, and you're
looking at the rubble, and you see patterns where it
looks like I dumped a gasoline and then walked walked
backward out of the door, it would look like I
had dumped a liquid accelerant. And in this instance, because
it was something that happened in a weekday, late at night.
(08:58):
If there were a liquid accel aren't used, it would
indicate premeditation, and that kind of starts to give us
clues about who actually pulled off this crime. That it
wasn't some random person walking by the home. In this case,
it's actually junk science. So I looked very critically at
I believe Robert Fisher committed these crimes, but there were
people that should have been looked at more closely that weren't. So,
(09:21):
for example, I look at the neighbors. When I ask
everybody who was feuding with the Fishers, everybody said the neighbors.
The neighbors were kind of strange, and they said things
that the police don't believe. They said things that the
police lean on. I also, I spoke to this episode
we just ran this week a co worker of Roberts
(09:43):
who was a very close female friend of his, who
told me that there was a heavy rumor he was
having an affair with a certain coworker in the nineties
and that her husband at the time would call and
leave threatening messages. And I don't think law enforcement ever
looked at him. So while I think Robert Fischer committed
these crimes. I always keep an open mind and run
(10:04):
it down and then you know, one of the great
hopes is that people hear that and then come forward
with other information.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Oh man, Ben, I don't want to jump the gun,
and John, I don't want to jump the gun. But
I wanted to talk about Ashley and her story of
the affair because yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Burning in my mind.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I just listened to episode six and it is one
of those it's an idea that I think is infectious.
So it went into my mind. Okay, maybe he was
having an affair. Maybe was there was a jealous husband
out there that wanted, you know, bad things to happen
to him, And that would be a pretty big suspect
(10:41):
in my mind. If you wanted to destroy Robert's life,
fully you do what happened, right.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And this is something Matt and I were talking about offline.
This was the this was the oh snap moment.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, well, just because I didn't I didn't know that
there was someone out there like that, right, like a
potential nemesis for Robert Fisher, and it just we haven't
even really like gotten into the details. You do in
great depth in your show. But just how horrifying these
deaths were. Maybe just a quick trigger warning, Can we
(11:17):
just let people understand what occurred inside the house even
before the fire?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Great? Yeah, great point, So trigger warning disclaimer everyone. The
following conversation will include graphic and accurate descriptions of horrific events.
This is your warning. Three two one over to you, John.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Yeah. So, eight forty two am April tenth, two.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Thousand and one. The house explodes. Is this little ranch
in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is a fireball into the sky.
Obviously nobody's expecting it. Please show up and they find
three bodies in the wreckage of the house, a wife
and two kids, and all.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Three three of them had their throats cut and.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Mary, the wife, also was shot in the head one
single time with a bullet. So and then whoever killed them,
whoever set the house to blow up, They basically left
the natural gas going from the furnace, set some kind
of trigger which we think probably was a candle, and
then maybe a few hours later, the house exploded. So
the cops and the firefighters show up. They find these
(12:24):
charred bodies, but they realized immediately that something's wrong. Because
they're mostly in like fetal positions, like they're sleeping, and
in other cases like this, obviously if there's a fire,
you're going to at least try to escape. You're not
going to be found in bed. So they immediately know
that they're dealing with a triple homicide, and their initial
strategy is to not name Robert Fisher's suspect, to kind
(12:47):
of hope that he just shows up and says, hey, guys,
like I was out camping, what happened? And he doesn't
show up. So that strategy was controversial and failed, but
I understand.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Why they they went with it.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
But you know, one of the fascinating things about this case,
and we go into detail, is there is no forensic
evidence proving that Robert Fisher committed these crimes. There is
a lot of circumstantial evidence, and so you ask, well,
why do.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I think he did it?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Well, one of the key small details, and this is
why I get so much so into the weeds, but
I also like to give all these details to the
audience and let let them kind of come to their
own conclusions. But one of the small details that really
matters is where Mary Fisher's SUV was abandoned. It was
a spot in the forest that Robert Fisher and his
(13:33):
family were supposed to go camping several days later. It
was a spot that.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He knew well.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
And so you have to ask yourself, well, let's say
it was an external party, they would have had to
know somehow that he knew this exact spot, so you
could you could start getting into theories about, oh, maybe
somebody took him at gunpoint, and it doesn't make as
much sense to me as that he just did it.
But I've heard from from everybody, including people that really
(13:59):
knew that Fisher as well, and including from law enforcement
that they've they've you know Ashley for example, who we
just spoke to in this last episode, she gave us
some important new information she she spoke to me about
like the idea.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Of a cartel.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
So you know it is it is a spectacle, like
I say it in the show. But you have three
throats cut, you have a suburban home that explodes, you
have a fugitive who vanishes in the wilderness near a
cave caves. It's it's really I see it and came
(14:35):
to see it as this classic Western sort of this
like neo Gothic Western story that takes place in two
thousand and one in Arizona against this very like harsh landscape,
not of the desert, but of the high country in
the mountains of Arizona.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And with that, we're gonna take a quick break, but
we'll be right back for more with John.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And we've returned with this. There's something that I think
is on a lot of people's minds with cases like this,
right that occur in how did you put it, the
donut hole, right of the possibility of disappearance. One of
the one of the things that continually stands out in
(15:24):
cases like this is always going to be the function
of law enforcement, which I know is a sensitive topic. However,
given the resources available at the time for the investigators,
do you think it is possible that they have they
(15:44):
maybe missed some aspects of the investigation to Matt's earlier point,
for instance, about people worth looking at.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Yeah, absolutely, and I know that for a fact because
we found those people. So that is I love the investment,
the negative part of this that is really my passion.
The writing can be painful, and the audio and the
storytelling are fun, but I love investigating and I really,
really really get heavily into the investigation, and so does
our team. Ben's been involved in that, and then Paul
(16:16):
Deckett was involved in that as well. And yeah, so
for example, we find two new witnesses who changed the
timeline of the case, who see Mary Fisher's SUV after
what we've been told for twenty three years is the
final sighting. That really matters because it means there was
a much shorter window during which Robert Fisher could have disappeared.
(16:38):
We find forensic experts that haven't spoken before, at least
the press. We found witnesses and family friends and co
workers who haven't spoken to even law enforcement. So I
find it fascinating about these cases. This is a high
profile case. Robert Fisher was on the FBI's ten most
wanted list for nineteen years. When I come onto a
(16:58):
case like this, I wonder what we Why am I
doing this? Why am I investigating this? Obviously you know
the FBI and the police must have found everything. Right, Well,
the answer is no, and that is why I love
doing this, because it's exhausting. But then the one out
of ninety nine people, they actually have new information that
you've never heard before. So we speak to those people
(17:19):
throughout the show and even as we work toward an
ending for the show, and I'm clear we haven't found
Robert Fisher yet. I really want to find him, and
that is a big hope of mine with the audience
that we're getting, that we find Robert Fisher. But throughout
the show, you're going to hear from new people. And
I know law enforcement is listening to the show as well,
(17:40):
and they are learning about people because I'm in contact
with the spokes and they've never spoken to the cops
or the FBI before. So my hope is I have
an interesting relationship with law enforcement. I really really respect
some of them. Some of these guys really care about
this case. Bob Caldwell, FBI, Hugh Lockerby Scottsdale, TJ. Jurand Scottsdale,
(18:03):
very smart, capable guys who care. And then I also
am clear, like I get to just focus on this
full time. But if they really want to solve this,
and I believe they do, there are certain things that
I think they can do.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
That I kind of want to light a fire to
push them to do.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
So I lay out, well what can be done forensically,
So for example, as of last summer, they had not
used like open source like jed match, like DNA databases
to say, well, one thing that I speak to experts
on familicide and domestic violence, they say, if Fisher did escape,
he could have another family. At this point, he could
have adult children. So what if one of their adult
(18:40):
kids uploaded their DNA and wanted to learn about their ancestry.
And then it's like, okay, well, you know, that seems
kind of far fetched. But one of the things that
I talked to the law enforcement about that as of
last summer they had not done, is to look at
open source DNA databases like jed match, to say, well,
Robert Fisher could have a new family, and if he does,
(19:01):
maybe he has a kid who uploaded their DNA and
wants to learn about their ancestry. And then it's like, okay,
well this is a little weird. I didn't know I
had family members in Arizona. So I think, you know,
twenty three years later, it is still possible to solve
this case. There are forensic things that law enforcement can do.
I wish I could do them. Sometimes I try to
(19:22):
do them, and I fail occasionally, But you know, one
of my goals is to kind of walk this line
with law enforcement of respect for the work that they've done,
but also to kind of light a fire and say,
you know, my allegiance are to the people involved in
this case first and foremost, and they really want to
get this thing solved. So I you know, people say, well,
(19:47):
is this realistic? Like this guy's been gone for twenty
three years, you know, like, let's be real, You're not
going to find him.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
TJ.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Juran is one of the detectives of the case. He
calls this the John List of our generation, and I
agree with him. And John List was somebody who killed
his family in New Jersey in the early seventies, was
on the land for eighteen years, was featured on America's
Most Wanted, and then he was living a new life.
He had remarried, his wife obviously didn't know who he was.
And I think that there are also just other forensic
(20:15):
and tech sides of things that we can do to
move the case forward. And I know, you guys, we'll
probably get into that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah. This brings us three paths that are mission critical
to the show. The technology piece that I think we
I think we have to get into that at some point.
But to your point about the forensic aspects here, one
of the questions that I know a lot of people
are having are going to be immediately concerned with the car, right,
(20:49):
isn't a car traceable to some extent? I mean, Matt,
what do you think it through there?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh, well, the suv was recovered. I just listened to
the whole segment where it was the veterinary technicians who
are the vets who like helped capture Blue, which was
the family dog, and using donuts by the way, which
we're mentioned already in the show. But I've been pretty
(21:14):
in my mind have been a little focused on the
suv because I just listened to episode two again where
you discuss the vehicle shuffle where there are two vehicles involved.
There's a pickup truck which is owned by Robert and
then an suv which is owned by Mary, his wife
or that it's their cars, right, And on the night
(21:37):
that everything went down, there's a witness who or several
witnesses they like saw those vehicles being moved in and
out of the carport right or out toward the street
because they lived in a cul de sac where if
you've got you know, you've got neighbors around a cul
de sac, they noticed that kind of thing sometimes. What
my big question about suv was, well, they're a couple.
(21:57):
But the first one is did any witnesses actually see
Robert in the suv leaving the house ever, or on
the road or once it got to where it ended up.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
So there are some alleged sightings and there are some
that I kind of buy in many that I don't.
It's as difficult to evaluate them. There's nobody confirmed who
saw Robert in the suv leaving the house, on the
road or in the woods. So I mean that's as
an excellent question. And getting to what you were talking
(22:30):
about shuffling the vehicles around is why this kind of
investigative work matters, because the two new witnesses that we found,
that's the only reason that we know this now because
previously the final sighting of Robert Fisher or Mary Fisher's
suv was on atm footage at ten forty two pm.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
On the night of April ninth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
And then we pushed the timeline back like seven hours
I think. And so you know, one of the things
we say is that night there was this game of
I call it musical cars, And the question is why
it's You'll listen to the show, but it's like in out,
in out, driveway in, street in driveway out, and it's like,
this was a little bizarre and why.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Was this going on?
Speaker 5 (23:09):
And also one of the things that I really heavily
am going to focus on as the show goes on
is whether somebody helped Robert Fisher, and if instead of
only focusing on Robert Fisher, if we start to focus
on suspected accomplices who helped him before, during, or after,
if we can help bring this case so close.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So I'll just tell you where my mind went because
I listened in a weird order. I listened through one
through six in order, and then I went back and
after hearing episode six, Ashley, Now in my mind, I'm
almost reevaluating everything in the mind of well, what if
there was somebody, like a third party that was not
a part of the family at all, that was maybe
(23:51):
an enemy of Robert. What if that person was doing
all these actions that we're seeing we have witnesses seeing
things and evidence of and in my mind, I went
through this whole list of if I just and this
is horrible to say this out loud, but I am
thinking this way, if I just murdered this family of
(24:12):
this guy I hate and him, I murdered him as well,
Like somewhere at some point in that time, I wouldn't
take a pickup truck because with an open bed with
a body in it or something, I would put evidence
and everything that I had in this suv that's covered
that police officers wouldn't see, and the chance that I
(24:33):
passed one, and I would try and make it look
like that suv got driven to a place where this
guy would have gone, and now he's just missing, and
now he gets blamed for everything and his whole life
is destroyed. And I just keep thinking about all these
little pieces of evidence, and I know it's conspiratorial, John,
That's it's like, WHA could you out there? And I
(24:54):
don't mean to introduce that necessarily other than the all
the information that you're finding is like painting kind of
a weird picture in my mind.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Yeah, And I don't think there's anything wrong with looking
at the conspiracies like that's. I love looking at the
conspiracies like I like your guys's approach because you look
at the conspiracies, but you also look at facts, and
I think that there's like there's there's this blindness on
the part of people who are only logic, like you
need to look outside the box. Like a huge theme
(25:24):
that we've had in all three seasons is Aukham's Razor,
which is there's a reason that we're spending years on
these particular cases because yeah, Okham's razor ninety nine percent
of the time, but there are times where.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
It doesn't work.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
It doesn't always work, and you know, so this is
a case too where no, it's really smart to look
at the alternative answers.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
And I think that.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
The media and law enforcement in this case had blinders on.
And even if you come to the conclusion that you
still think Robert Fisher did it, there certainly were other
people that they should have looked at that in different
circumstances they did not look look at very closely. The neighbors,
for example, I cite them in the show, the aggrieved
husband of somebody who Robert Fisher was allegedly having an
(26:09):
affair with. To my knowledge of law enforcement wasn't even
aware of that until our show, So you know, Yeah,
you go through that, you look at it, you say
there is doubt, Like, let's not just paper it over
for a convenient narrative for the cops and for the media,
and let's let's look at that stuff. And at the
end of the day, if we still think Fisher did it, great,
(26:30):
but it's absolutely worth looking at.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Absolutely And that's that's one thing here. There's not a
stone unturned, not a cavern unexplored.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Right, well, just the cavern's in this thing if you
want to hide a body.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Also, So with this I completely agree with you, guys,
the concept of the exploration, right again, the idea that
no lead, no information, regardless of how potentially tenuous, should
be in that realm of binders or blinders.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
So you have this wide scope and then you narrow
into these specifics and you have again been on the
ground and under the ground looking for these things that
law enforcement does appear to have missed for one reason
or another. Quite possibly, if we're being honest, resources and
(27:28):
the need to move with other cases in Scottsdale and abroad.
One axiom though, that stands out in this exploration is
that through your research, John, you have become increasingly convinced
that Robert Fisher successfully committed what we call pseudo side
(27:51):
perhaps or on the edge of pseudo side has disappeared,
and you believe the man is alive, and we see
this in the show from the jump. So could you
tell us just a little bit about why you know, Like, Matt,
you gave this I think very well thought out what
(28:12):
if on this one, and it's one that a lot
of our audience and a lot of the audience missing
is immediately going to understand because it is possible. So
what to you just in a general way, like, was
there a moment when you were looking in this case
and you said, no, this guy is alive.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah, So just to circle back to the fore Runner, Matt,
the interesting thing about the Forerunner is how clean it was.
So they found it in the forest, all the windows
were rolled down. It was so clean, like no mud
or dirt. A little bit of dirt, you know, but
not a ton. I've been up there in dry weather
and definitely in wet weather. Your car is filthy.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
It was.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
It was so incredibly clean. And then they processed the
car and they did find some evidence. It's been erroneously
reported that they did not find any So, for example,
they found fingerprints, and those fingerprints I actually speak to
a person of interest later in the show, and I
would really like law enforcement to check that person's fingerprints.
(29:16):
But you know, and then and then, so basically getting
now to Ben's question, why do I think Robert Fisher
is alive?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Well, also, could you talk about the dog? I hate
to be a sucker, Yeah, such a fan of animals.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
Well, yeah, Ben, Ben knows this. But in season two
miscou nine to eleven, the person whose disappearance we were
investigating her cats were in her apartment when the World
Trade Center fell, and the number one question I got
the entire show, which I didn't even think about at first,
was like, are the cats okay? So I learned to
(29:49):
like definitely tell people what happened with the pets. So
that's kind of a fun, colorful, happy, little, very brief
moments of happiness in this show.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Not many, but we take them. So when they.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Found the Forerunner abandoned in the woods, they found the
Fisher's dog, Blue, Australian cattle dog. And one of the
big questions is if Robert Fisher went into the wilderness
and died by suicide. For example, why would Blues stay
with the vehicle and not follow Robert and I speak
to the veterinarian they called in and she was just
like a normal mourning at her little office and they
(30:22):
sent her into the woods alone with like.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Some donuts to capture this dog.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
And she and her friend Patty Blackmore and Samantha Right,
they're hilarious, hilarious, wonderful people.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
But yeah, the.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Dog was rescued, but no blood on the dog. Where
was the dog during the murders? And the dog was
missing its collar and spoiler alert.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Close your ears if you're listening to the show.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
But we believe that we tracked down the dog's collar
and we flagged that to law enforcement. So even twenty
three years later, there's a possibility that because of our show,
that they have a new piece of forensic evidence that
they can process for things like blood stains or DNA.
As to why I think Robert Fisher escaped, that is,
(31:11):
I don't have a succinct answer. Is something that I'm
going to make in multiple episodes, but overall, this is
what I think. I think Robert Fisher was a smart guy.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
He was not stupid.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
He had experience, He was in the Navy, worked with
aviation fuel, he was a firefighter and EMT. He worked
in hospitals. He was good under pressure. In my personal opinion,
it is something I've discussed privately with law enforcement. He
basically had this plan where his family was starting to crumble,
his wife seemed like she was about to leave him,
(31:42):
and he basically plotted out how to escape. So he
went to an ATM. It's the final time that we
thought that we saw him, though we know that's not
true now, and he was wearing, for example, a black
ball cap. I mean, even in two thousand and one,
you know if you're going to the ATM, you're going
to be on camera. When they found the suv abandoned
(32:04):
in the woods, they found none of the belongings he
took from his home, none of the camping gear, not
his gun, absolutely nothing. The only two things they found
the dog and the hat, the hat that he was.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Wearing in the ATM footage.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I spoke to the cop who was the very first
person to reach the suv. It was carefully placed on
the side of the passenger seat, so to me it
was almost like a calling card of I was here
and then where he abandoned the suv is also fascinating.
We have a brilliant researcher on our team who was
originally a fan of Missigan, Alaska, Paul Gemperline, who we
(32:43):
brought on as a member of our team this season,
and with his help, we pinpointed down to the exact
spot in the woods where the Forerunner was abandoned. So
I've stood up against the actual tree in the woods
in Arizona where the Suv was abandoned. One thing we
did with that as we metal detected around that area.
(33:03):
I won't spoil that, but we went into the caves.
But that spot, if you wanted to pick a spot
that was frustrating for law enforcement, it was let like
nine hundred feet from an Indian reservation. And the importance
of that is because there's tribal land outside, law enforcement
can't just go on. It creates a jurisdiction issue. He
(33:25):
put it one hundred and fifty feet from the closest
cave I've been into that cave. When you're standing in
the entrance, you can see.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Where the car was parked.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
We parked our super cross track kind of close to
the size of what they were driving. So if you
wanted to make this as frustrating and annoying and difficult
as possible for law enforcement. That's what you would do.
Something else we look at Robert Fisher had very serious
back pain, enough so that at points it was crippling.
(33:56):
He seemed to be addicted to opioids. So there's just
this issue of people think maybe he went into a cave. Well,
did he go into a cave with severe back problems,
a possible opiod addiction, carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment,
and no sign of his remains or belongings have ever
been found. It starts to seem a little fishy to me,
(34:17):
and then that circles back to do we think somebody
helps Robert Fisher?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think somebody helped him.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
So then you're looking at well, did he have any
connections to the drug world? Was he having an affair?
Did he have any kind of shady friends? And I
think those are questions that we look at later in
the show. But long story short, Yeah, I think Fisher
is alive and I really really want to find him.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor,
and then we'll return with more from John Walsey, and we're.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Back let's get into it. So I'm trying to imagine,
Let's say you take that suv to that place where
it's found. Right, it's pretty much clean, but we know
it was filled with stuff because stuff was missing from
the house. Right. Where do we think that stuff went?
Just was it enough stuff that he could carry on
(35:16):
his person or was it one of those things where
there needed to be another vehicle where it got loaded
into or you know, I don't know. Just what do
you think there?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (35:26):
So I think that that's a really important clue because
the two main theories are that Robert Fischer died by
suicide in the wild, or that somebody helped him escape
and maybe throwing a suicide trigger warning here.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
But if you're going.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
To die by suicide in the wild, it's a beautiful
area out there. It's unfortunately not uncommon in that general area.
It's something that law enforcement told me.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
But you're not.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Necessarily going to take all of your hundreds of pounds
or one hundred two hundred pounds of equipment. You might
just walk up to a hill. So I think that
he left the cap that he was wearing in the
ATM footage as Yes, this was me. You have me
on camera. Now this cap which has my DNA on
it is in the car. Nothing else is here, and
(36:13):
now I'm going to park the vehicle in a very
difficult spot where you're going to have to navigate Cave's
tribal land the wilderness. And so I think that that
is that is a big clue. Personally, I think he
took his stuff with him, wow, just like picked.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
It up and went somewhere well real quick.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I mean also that could still be something that helps
us solve this today because one thing I found, for example,
is he took a thirty eight revolver and we know
the serial number of that thirty eight. So that's something
I say in the show, if you have a snubnose
thirty eight, please look at the serial number. So kind
of like the kind of like the dB Cooper cash,
(36:54):
like you'd all think it's ever going to be found,
And as a little kid is digging on a sandbank,
like we can, we can hope.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, the idea of the wilderness here. One thing that
maybe a lot of us listening this evening are not
experientially aware of is the fact that there are people
who do successfully live off the proverbial grid. There are
folks who are simply nomadic in a forest or have
(37:21):
you know, some kind of hobo jungle or a camp. John,
Is that something that exists in the area of the
wilds of Arizona.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
I don't think Robert Fisher is still living in the
wilderness twenty three years later, but there's definitely a chance
that he did for a time. And I think, you know,
one of the things that we look at, we will.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Get other cases. Right.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
So Eric Rudolph is the most prominent case, the Olympic
Park bomber who in the late nineties and early two thousands,
I mean, he hid out in the mountains of western
North Carolina, my home state, for five years, and he
managed to evade a massive, massive man hunt. Something that
I also just find interesting is getting away from crime.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Absolutely, there are people that do this all over the country.
Is something I heard examples of in Alaska. It's something
I heard about in Arizona, where, even though I'm looking
specifically at the Fisher case, that's something that personally fascinates me. So,
for example, I spoke with members of law enforcement who
work in these very rural It is one of those
counties on the map that's like a quarter of the
(38:30):
country long. And they they told me true examples and
names of people that is recently is the last few years,
are are living off the grid on public land and
in the forest in Arizona. So one of the things
that we do in the show is we got to
lead about a possible hermit's cabin not that far from
(38:52):
where Robert Fisher disappeared, and so we tried to hike
to that cabin. It got very rough, rough, but so
we know certain things, for example, that would it maybe
prove something, but would give us an indication of let's
look at this more closely, like this type of gun.
He was very into winter green Copenhagen chewing tobacco. So
(39:15):
if I found a little shanty in the woods and
it was like these dusty old winter green tobacco tins,
it would kind of raise my blood pressure. But the
hermit aspect is really fascinating, and I think that for me.
I think, you know, missing in Alaska in particular, and
now missing in Arizona, there's this strong wilderness angle where
there are few mysteries that are new. There are few
(39:39):
spots on the map that are unexplored that's what we think.
But then go go put some GPS coordinates into your
phone like like we did, and you'll see it's pretty
rugged and roughen And you know, I reference that, I say,
in a violent nature.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Like the film.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Oh yeah, Hey, by the way, when you're finished listening
to Missing an Arizona, which you need to go listen
to right now, do subscribe to Flashpoint, which is a
whole season that we're making with Tenderfoot on Eric Rudolph
and just the points you're making about him and how
he was able to just vanish for so long in
the wilderness, and he was protected somewhat by individuals that
(40:18):
maybe sympathized a bit with him and what they perceived
as his cause, which is something to think about here.
I don't think that Robert Fisher had a cause, at
least that I'm aware of. It doesn't seem like there
was any kind of religious or political or any kind
of motivations for the actions that were potentially taken there,
(40:38):
is that correct, That's what I'm getting from the show
at least.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So Robert Fisher, I mean, kind of a right leaning guy,
but this was definitely not motivated by politics. And then
you touched on something really important. They were talking again
about Eric Rudolph, which is, you know, Rudolph had far
right ideologues who supported him, so he had help over
the years and people that could have turned them in.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Who did it.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
Nobody's supporting someone who killed their.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Wife and children.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
Yeah, there's there's not an ideology that no matter where
left right, whatever, you know, political ideology, there's there's no
support for that. That is he committed. You know, I
think in a different case, if he had robbed a
bank or something, he'd be a folk hero and to
some people even Eric Rudolph was, though obviously I disagree
with that, but thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Yeah, just just to clarify, you guys.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, just get in front of that one, John.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
And my when I and my teens in North Carolina
when he when he disappeared, I wasn't out there giving
him a wheat or.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Just really quick. If that show is hosted by this
is a spoiler, is hosted by a child who would
have been aborted by his mother if if Eric Rudolph
hadn't bombed the abortion clinic the morning of the appointment,
Which is a crazy conundrum that you know, in that
host's mind and in all of our minds, you have
to like work through anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean
(42:00):
the Rudolph case is fascinating, And I mean I grew
up in North Carolina, went to college in Nashville, North Carolina,
and I think he was caught Murphy maybe a year
before I went to the school. So wow, that was
very very like you know, I mean they got him before.
But I used to go hiking and camping, and but
there there's also this like dark romanticism of the wilderness
a fugitive, and with Rudolph, it's a little bit more political.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
With Fisher.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
What's really interesting about this case, I think is in
some ways this is an extremely rare case. It's a
man who is a family annihilator who successfully escaped. And
I say it in the show. We might not know
his ultimate fate right now, but he did successfully escape.
That is extremely rare in these cases, very few cases
like this. So I think, you know, one of the
(42:46):
things we do everything from speak to experts to go
go into spider filled caverns, but we can learn from
experts who study familicide and family annihilations, and so I
one of the fun parts of this job, and you
guys obviously know it is you get to speak to
experts about fascinating topics. And so in some ways Robert
(43:06):
Fisher is extremely rare and unique, and in other ways
he's not. And what I mean by that is there
are patterns that typically lead towards these types of crimes.
There are different ways to classify family annihilators. And in
the sense that Robert Fisher's family was breaking down and
he was spiraling and losing control, I say it and
(43:28):
verbalize it. Ben heard me say this. Control control, control, control, control,
that's Robert Fisher. He started to lose control, you know.
And something I tie into is I know there are
people out there who are possibly dealing with abusive situations
or situations.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
That are not safe.
Speaker 5 (43:45):
And one important thing about many of these men who
commit family annihilations is they do not have a history
or a pattern of physical domestic violence. So our idea
of the stereotypical wife beater or abuser or doesn't necessarily
fit these guys. Many of them are quote respectable. Robert
Fisher was a church going guy who worked at the
(44:07):
Mayo Clinic Hospital and had no known history of physical
domestic violence.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
So there's a point here that I think you've nailed
with great articulation, which is the idea. The patterns and
predictive kind of analysis only take you so far, because
even in the most depraved cases of criminal behavior, even
(44:37):
when the perpetrators do not think of themselves as human,
they are ultimately human and therefore beholden to certain constraints. Right,
so we can get we can get a rough idea
for some things, but you're to beautifully put point there.
This stuff can happen somewhere else. So what makes this
(45:00):
case rare is, without sounding emotionless, what makes this rare
is not that it occurred. What makes it rare is
that the suspected perpetrator has disappeared. And this brings us
to something that you are able to do that has
(45:21):
not been done in many other cases. You are this
is a light spoiler for everybody listening. You are also
leveraging technology in an innovative way to not only give
us an idea of what Fisher may look like if
(45:42):
alive now, but also just an exploration that I would
of artificial intelligence and voice modeling that I would argue
also at times goes a little past just the mission
of the show. We're talking about a lot of things.
Could you I know I'm throwing a lot at you there, John,
(46:04):
Could you speak a little bit about why you and
your team chose to leverage technology in this way and
what inspired you to do so.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:16):
Absolutely, So there are always things that we can do
that are not easy or even sometimes possible for law
enforcement to do. We're not constrained the way that they are,
and we're not bureaucratic the way that they are. So
the first thing that we did is I worked with
three different forensic artists on new age progressed images of
Robert Fisher. So one of the things every single person
(46:38):
who knew Robert Fisher I asked, do you have any
photos or video of him? Because people ask, well, why
did he blow up the house? And the answer is
always to destroy evidence. I agree with that, but not
in the way people are probably thinking. The bodies were
not destroyed, that evidence was there. He must have had
some ideas military experience hospital that wasn't going to fully work.
(46:59):
I think partially it could have been maybe just something
an emotional outbursts, But if you're looking at evidence, it
was pre smartphone and at the dawn of digital cameras,
so we only have so many photos and so many
videos of Robert Fisher. I worked on this for two
years and I found fewer than thirty to give you
an example, So I asked every single person that knew
(47:21):
Robert Fisher, do you have photos?
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Do you have videos?
Speaker 5 (47:23):
And we got some excellent new photos of him that
I purposely am not publishing because I'm using them privately
for investigative reasons. They show new angles of his face,
for example. And so we worked with three forensic artists
at the same time without telling them it was an experiment,
and we gave them the same material because I wanted
to see all these three talented people, what do they
(47:45):
come up with when given the same source material? And
then what we did with that is the best one
in my opinion. We put on our show art. So
for people right now, if they're on their phones, if
you look at the missing in Arizona's show art, that
is an age progressed image of Obert Fisher done by
a very talented forensic artist named Michael W. Streed, who
we worked with previously. The goal being turn our show art,
(48:08):
which is going to be the most visible part of
this show visually into a mini wanted poster. So anybody
who sees that and that that gets to the voice.
So we were able to take home videos of Robert
Fisher that survived the fire. When the house exploded, there
was a fire safe and there were six tapes VHS
(48:30):
tapes in there, Crackley audio and video from the eighties
and nineties. I went through last year and indexed every
single second of Robert Fisher's voice. I have like two
thousand entries of like one second where you hear him speaking.
This is where we get to the crazy, the carry mathison, the.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Maps and stuff.
Speaker 5 (48:52):
But so we took that and then I think, you know,
we recreated Robert Fisher's voice using artificial intelligence. We partnered
with a company called alter day I out of the UK.
They worked on They typically work on projects like Hollywood projects,
so for example, they recreated the voice of a young
Michael Jordan and we partnered with them and we recreated
(49:16):
Robert Fisher's voice. I think when you first hear it,
it's a little jarring because it's lower quality. This was
extremely tough for us to do because we're so used
to it now we're we have high quality, high res
versions of you know, all all of us, Matt, Ben
and me our voices out there so we can make
each other say whatever we want, right or my brother
(49:38):
sends me videos of Johnny Casts singing hip hop songs
or you know, that's the fun side of it. But
with Robert Fisher, we have we had about ten minutes
of source audio and it was horrible. It was from
Crackley home videos that mostly survived in a fire safe
and an exploded house. So what Alter Day I was
able to do is create a custom voice model for
(50:00):
us and we later on in the show it hasn't
aired yet, I interview an AI Robert Fisher, which is
a very fine ethical line to walk. Uh So that's
it's tough because like I'm scripting this, like so you
know in my head of man, Okay, so I got
(50:21):
to be careful, right, like we really I've got to
be careful ethically, I've got to be careful. Obviously, I
still want it to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
So you're upfront about it.
Speaker 4 (50:31):
I'm upfront about it.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Yeah, Like I'm not gonna have Robert Fisher say certain
things like I killed everybody, like you know, but it's
because because this is this is coming edge technology. You know,
we were able to take horrible sorts audio and still
do this. And and the goal here is, you know,
people have heard it in the trailer, only a tiny
(50:52):
snippet of it. Right now, we haven't played the full thing.
And the goal when you speak to visual forensic artists,
what they tell you and what they told me is
we're not trying to do a piece of art that's
going to hang in somebody's house, though behind me it
is actually hanging over my shoulder. What they say is,
we want to do something that sparks familiarity because we're
(51:13):
trying to capture this guy, so we don't want to
say this is exactly what he looks like, because we
don't know exactly what he looks like. We want you
to look at this the show art, the forensic image,
and say, man, that kind of looks like my neighbor,
that kind of looks like my uncle or my father
or god forbid, my husband. And we're starting to get
those leads already, and people are sending us pictures and
(51:35):
it's interesting because we're looking at those internally, and also
I know people are contacting the FBI as well, but
with the voice what's really interesting is what I want
people to understand is that we're not saying this is
exactly what Robert Fisher sounds like in twenty twenty four.
We're saying, if this sparks some familiarity, if you see
this image and say that kind of looks like this guy,
(51:57):
if you hear the voice and say, okay, well kind
of eighties nineties quality, but that kind of sounds like
him a little bit too, then maybe you'll do a
double take and look closely at people. And we are
legitimately using and leveraging and trying to use this show
to find this guy. So that is, if we find
this guy, it's going to be because of the audience.
It's the same thing that happened with John List. It
(52:20):
was an audience member. It was a woman in Colorado
in her apartment watching America's Most Wanted who said, I
think that kind of looks like our neighbor, Bob. And
I think her kids were like yes, Mom, like like yeah,
that's that's Bob the neighbor, all right, And it was
it was John Listed.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
This lady callde John List.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
That's so crazy.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
That's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
The forensic DNA thing I think is so so great.
We talked a lot about what was it the original
night stalker.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
That got caught, and.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Just a bunch of other people that we've covered on
our show that ended up getting caught because officers waited
for whoever to have a finished can and the trash
can took it. And then now they found you. But
it was through finding like a long lost cousin or
a distant relative via those things like Jed match Man.
What you're doing with the AI stuff is so fascinating.
(53:15):
I remember when I first saw the cover art. I
was like, oh, wow, that's crazy and asked Ben about
it and he's like, oh, that's actually you know, this
is like what he would look like potentially.
Speaker 4 (53:26):
What No.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
I love how it sounds like. I love how it
sounds like we're we're hanging out at a college door room,
which is kind of like how our conversations go, like, yeah, bro,
this is like what he would look like.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
I'm sorry, we're not high in the you know, in
the quad or whatever that is made at home depot.
I don't know if we'll have time. Sorry to shout
out to one of my favorite Wilferrel movies.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Okay, this is how we talked to each other.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
That stuff so awesome. One thing that I really appreciate
about this show is something we've talked about a couple
times already. You don't just take for granted what has
been written in a publication like a local newspaper states
something early on in the investigation that ends up not
being the truth. But a lay person or me or
just whoever else that's coming to this story way after
(54:17):
the fact might look at that and say, oh, well,
it says here you know, in two thousand and one
that this happened, and you just take that as a fact.
Speaking again about myself and anybody else who might be
just a third party observer of what happened or researching
for their own purposes or on the surface, I really
appreciate that you dig into that, you actually go to
(54:39):
the investigator, you actually go to the human beings that
were there, and you verify stuff. Just really appreciate it,
and just want to say thanks for doing what you do,
and please keep doing stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (54:52):
Yeah, No, I appreciate it. I think that you know,
because this is an ongoing investigation, we're not just telling
a story. We're trying to add to it. And solve it.
And because of that, we need to have all the
facts correct. So you know, quite often I say it,
but their early erroneous reports that are later corrected, but
they live on and these stories become myth and so
you have these a lot of people sometimes even third,
(55:14):
second or third generation law enforcement that they're getting these
bits and pieces that are not accurate, and that is
really hampering any movement on the case. So yeah, we
dig into myths and we look at everything and reevaluate it.
Speaker 4 (55:28):
And make sure that you know, even for our audience like.
Speaker 5 (55:31):
That they have the facts so that if they want
to try to help with this. And for the last
three seasons we have had a lot of actually wonderful
help that they have everything correct.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
And I know I ruffle some feathers.
Speaker 5 (55:44):
But truly my fidelity is to the show as to
the story. And yeah, I mean that's just me. I
nerd out on I nerd out on that stuff, and
the truth matters to me, you know. Crediting regional and
local journalist matters to me.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
And yeah, yeah, it's been a saying it matters such
a great deal too, And it is just sometimes difficult,
I think when you're in this sea of all of
these links and all of the people now who write
about stuff, right, and there's so much commenting, there's so
many threads on every subject. It's so difficult to sift
(56:19):
through all that stuff to get to what is likely
the closest thing to the truth. And there is a
bit of faith in there every time you're like, pretty
sure when that person wrote that down, that's they could
verify it.
Speaker 4 (56:32):
I hope. It's tough.
Speaker 5 (56:35):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's definitely tough. And I mean,
you know, you look at the press reports and sometimes
they're even conflicting reports, like in the same publication. So
I think a lot of it is just being able
to evaluate information kind of to use your best judgment
to determine what's accurate, and if there's anything that's really
important or sensitive, to follow up on it and dig
in on it, especially when, for example, one thing that
(56:57):
we mentioned is the idea that there were footprints leading
to the cave and no return tracks. So if you
hear that, and it's something that's been repeated for the
last twenty three years, you're understandably going to think, well,
Robert Fisher died in a cave because they found footprints
going to the cave, and why are we even bothering
with this show or this investigation? Why am I looking
(57:18):
for him? He's clearly dead in a cave, guys. But
then when you dig into it and you say, okay,
well that seems like such a small detail, right, like
some footprints. But there's so many people I've talked to
who say something like that, and then you look at
it and you say that's actually not true. Then that
removes that idea from people's head. And I say it
in the show, but it opens up their mind to
other possibilities, or that they're not shutting down the idea
(57:41):
that he escaped immediately, and that people kind of get
reinvigorated to help find him.
Speaker 3 (57:46):
And I really appreciate that point, John, That's something on
a personal level I run into a lot with research myself,
and I'm sure Matt feels the same way. This is
indicative or illustrative of a great truth that people ignore history,
hinges on what may appear to be very small things,
(58:08):
and so we must triangulate, we must look into that.
And that's something that I think makes our mad endeavor
here a kindred spirit with missing and speaking of following up,
one thing we have to say before we go. This
is again an active investigation. John is cooking live. There
(58:36):
is a possibility to figure out what actually happened to
Robert Fisher and John. You have constructed a way for
people to contact you directly about this case. I believe
you are still very much open to any new leads
or possibilities.
Speaker 4 (58:56):
Yeah. Absolutely, so.
Speaker 5 (58:58):
I tell everybody, look at every single man in your
life who wasn't in your life prior to April two
thousand and one. Look at them in real life, look
at them on Facebook, look at them.
Speaker 3 (59:07):
On the street, and wait, when did we meet?
Speaker 2 (59:11):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Six?
Speaker 3 (59:14):
Okay, oh all right.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
And and look at our show art. And now I'm
looking kind of closely at this Ben Bowling character.
Speaker 4 (59:24):
All right, this was over.
Speaker 2 (59:26):
How old would he be right now?
Speaker 4 (59:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (59:28):
Yeah, so I don't want to age Ben, so he
would Robert Fisher would be sixty three.
Speaker 4 (59:31):
Ben is much younger than that, but unless he just
aged very well.
Speaker 5 (59:36):
But yeah, so, yeah, So I truly want everybody to
look at everybody in their lives and we I will say,
we're getting leads, We're getting emails. I personally funded a
ten thousand dollars reward to help find Fisher, because when
he came off the FBI's ten most wanted list in
(59:56):
twenty twenty one, there was I was shocked to learn
zero available for his captures. So we are doing everything
in our power to find him, and I'd encourage people
to the contact infos in the show, but the quickest
way to reach us is to go to neon thirty
three dot com. There's a way you can submit information
to us. We take your ananimity very seriously and Ben
(01:00:19):
has seen this. But one thing that I've found we're
getting leads live is a certain photo of someone taken
in the earlier mid two thousands who, to me personally
we've discussed this internally strongly resembles Robert Fisher.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
So we are this is.
Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
An active investigation and people people can help just by
looking at other people and looking at the age progressed
image of him. And we absolutely want people's help. And
like I said about the older lady in Colorado with
John List, if this is solved, we might bring attention
to it, but it's going to be solved by somebody
who's out there listening or watching.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
You have a number for tips as well right.
Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
Yeah, So if people want to call in, they can
call one eight three to three new tips. That's any
w tips, So it's one eight three three six three
nine eight four seven seven. They can email us at
tips at iHeartMedia dot com, tips at iHeartMedia dot com,
or they can go to our site at neon thirty
three dot com. And if they go to our site,
one of the things they'll be able to see as
(01:01:16):
a new wanted poster we did with a high resolution
ACE progress image of Fisher.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
And with this we want to thank you John Waalzac,
investigative host, creator of the Missing series. You can check
out Missing in Arizona right now. It is in media rests,
which is just the fancy way of saying we're in
the thick of it right now, in the trenches. As
John said, we want your help and while you're at it,
(01:01:44):
while you're up, do also check out Missing in Alaska
and Missing on nine eleven. John, We can't thank you
enough for your time here.
Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
Yeah, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
And if you like the show, if you give us
five stars on Apple, I would be humbly appreciative.
Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
But I hope we find Fisher.
Speaker 5 (01:02:00):
I hope the next time I talk to you, it's
so with a picture of him and handcoffs or you know,
my dream is he says, I'm not speaking to anybody
but John and Ben and I get to go to
go to the jail in Arizona and speak to him.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
So whoa what if he contacts you and wants you
to go to the woods somewhere.
Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Let's just let's bring a crew. Matt, what are what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
You?
Speaker 5 (01:02:24):
You know, Matt, Matt is your idea, So you're going
to be the sacrificial lamb.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
All right, John, I'm coming.
Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Let's hang out.
Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Okay, thanks guys, And that is our conversation with Missing
An Arizona creator John waalzac H. Matt, I feel like
we went to a lot of places and we still
have more to figure out.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Well, now, I want to dive into the case with
you guys, because I have so many questions and I've
got my own pet theories that I kind of want
to disprove that I currently cannot. But I'm just going
to keep listening because they're way more episodes than six right.
Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yes, yeah, there are more episodes on the way we
can't wait for you to hear them. And one thing
that John said that I think really resonates with all
of us is that it will be you, specifically you,
who helps solve this mystery. So reach out to John,
tell us your thoughts as well about this case any
(01:03:22):
similar cases that you may have knowledge of. We try
to be easy to find online. We're talking YouTube, the instagrams,
the social meds. You can find us as some derivation
of conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show at basically any
place that hasn't act in the front of their handles.
(01:03:42):
And if you don't want to do that, if you
prefer to go a little more analogue, which we're always
fans of, we have a telephone number as well.
Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yes, our number is kind of like John's one eight
three three STDWYTK. When you call in, it is voicemail
system and you only get three minutes, and within that
three minutes you need to give yourself a cool nickname.
We don't care what it is. We're excited to hear
it and let us know if you give us permission
to use your name and voice in one of our
listener mail episodes. And hey, if you've got more to
(01:04:14):
say they can fit in a message, why not instead
send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. I don't want to lose the point about
listener mail segments and our strange news segments, because they
do inform episodes. You don't have to feel like you're
responding to something that was already on air. If you
want to give us a lead, if something crazy is
(01:04:39):
happening in your neck of the global woods, we want
to hear it.
Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Or if you just want to call and just say
something silly to us.
Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Or if you just want to call and say something
silly to us. We love the emails. We love the
phone calls. Join us over here in the dark Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Our colleague Noel is on a sensitive operation for IGU.
They call me Ben. We're joined with our guest super producer,
Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Now, Matt, as we're rolling into this,
(00:50):
we got to say it's a something a little different
for this evening, because this one is for fans of
not just true not just investigations, but mysteries.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Right oh yeah, The whole story we're getting into today
is a mystery. Every aspect of it is a mystery.
And we're gonna be speaking with somebody who has created
It's the third season of a show, Ben that I'm
gonna call you out. You work on and I think
it's a fantastic show. This specific season deals with the case.
(01:28):
The details are so fine. I've been lost now, I've
been immersed in it for the past forty eight hours.
I can't escape, and I think I know how our
guest feels now after diving into it so deeply.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Right, we are speaking with the world expert on a
case that remains unsolved in this modern evening. So that's
our cold open, and we're gonna have a quick word
from our sponsors. And we can't wait for you to
meet this guy. And we've returned. We are joined with
(02:08):
the world class investigative journalist, a man who never met
a rabbit hole that he would not go down. Friends, neighbors,
conspiracy realist, lend us your ears and help us. Welcome
the one and only John Wallzac.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Guys, Yeah, joining you from the depths of madness with
my postit notes and my strings and my maps, so
an undisclosed location. Glad to be with you, guys.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, right behind John, I'm seeing a picture of a
certain wanted individual. I believe that individual's name is Robert Fisher,
who is the subject of this season of missing titled
Missing in Arizona. Go check it out right now while
you're well, wait until you're done with this and then
go subscribe, like do that. But John, can you can
(03:00):
you tell us who is Robert Fisher. Why are you
focusing on this individual for a whole season of missing?
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, so missing in Alaska season one was a plane
that disappeared, missing on nine to eleven, a doctor that
vanished in New York the night before nine to eleven,
and season three is missing in Arizona about Robert Fisher.
So Robert Fisher killed his family, blew up their house,
and then escaped into the wilderness in Arizona. He abandoned
his wife's SSUV in the remote forest in the mountains,
(03:28):
and for ten days they didn't know where he was.
There was this man hunt. They found the wife's SUV,
the Forerunner, near caves near an Indian reservation. So the
big question is did Robert Fisher die in the wilderness?
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Did he escape?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Their clues everywhere, And I think what makes it really
fascinating to me personally is obviously it's an unsolved mystery.
Part of it is the landscape of the American West,
So it's an adventure to go into the mountains, to
go hunting for a hermit's cabin, to go splunking in
underground caves, which we do in next week's episode. And
(04:04):
I think that that's part of the appeal. The other
thing is because it happened in April two thousand and one,
it was right before nine to eleven. It was before
social media, it was before smartphones. And so one of
the things that we talk about is we really lack
what I call these mono mysteries, these great mysteries that
unite us, and there's so few of them these days.
(04:25):
That we look to the past and it was almost
like you can look at two thousand and one in
the early two thousands, that's kind of the end of
these mysteries. So this is one of the great final
mysteries of the pre digital age.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, oh well. Put Also, we've got to point out
there is something you said that really really resonates, at
least with me, the idea of mono mystery and the
idea of the Great West, because, as we say so
often on this show, a lot of times people forget
(04:59):
just how wide and wild the interior of the United
States is before we dive in. I do want to
point out that you've worked on this show in concert
with our comrade Paul Mission Control decand when you all
are exploring this stuff, you're not just you know, on
(05:23):
a browser on an Internet you guys are out there
pounding sand, you're out there actually exploring caverns. Could you
tell us maybe One of the first questions here is
the following, was it easier for people to disappear in
this time in April of two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Yeah, So that's one of the big questions, is, well,
if Robert Fisher did escape, I think he's alive, clear
about that, And I've spoken with most of the investigators.
They also think he's alive. So our goal is to
find Robert Fisher with this show. And you know, some
of the pushback that we get is, well, how could
he remain hidden for twenty three years? I think if
(06:07):
he disappeared in twenty twenty four or maybe not, but
in April two thousand and one, it was just a
different time. And so I mean, I was, I was twelve,
so I'm rapidly aging, but I was. I have a
little bit of memory of.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
That that pre nine to eleven world.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
And you know, I think especially for like gen z To,
they have never lived in a world where you could
walk up to it a gated an airport, for example.
So one of the things with this show that I've
found really fascinating. I have a book sitting right behind
me called Hide Your Assets and Disappear, Hide Your Assets
and Disappear, and it was it was a best selling book,
(06:45):
and I think nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, So you know,
I think it was possible that Robert Fisher got out.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
In the nick of time.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
I call it kind of the fugitive sweet spot, the
fugitive donut hole where he got lucky and he escaped
right before Facebook, right before the iPhone, right before nine
to eleven, and is still on the lamb.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
One of the things we talked about in this show
a lot is that someone is presumed innocent until they're
found guilty. Right when you've got a missing person like
this and there's a stack of evidence against you, that's
a weird gray area for me cognitively, right, because unless
it's proven in a court of law that he's guilty,
then I kind of have to personally at least keep
(07:32):
an open mind to like, did he actually do this?
One of the things you do is you look at
that stack of evidence and you go through it with
a fine toothed comb in your mind. What are the
biggest pieces of evidence that say Robert definitely killed his
family and escaped.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
So yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
So one of the things that I do is I'm
like you guys, I am a truth based person. It's
fun to look at these things, and sometimes conspiracies play out,
and sometimes the police are law enforcement, they kind of
want to minimize information because they want to stick to
a simple narrative.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
So I just go wherever the narrative leads me.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
And as far as Robert Fisher, I think, for example,
the police have said for years that there were poor
patterns indicating that he used a liquid accelerant to help
burn down his house. And one of the things that
we looked at is poor patterns, as junk science say,
it doesn't actually prove anything.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Oh and just for all of us tonight, what is
a poor pattern? Defined as PO you are?
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, thank you, po you are pattern?
Speaker 5 (08:37):
So it basically, if you're looking if I were to
burn down the house I'm in right now, and you're
looking at the rubble, and you see patterns where it
looks like I dumped a gasoline and then walked walked
backward out of the door, it would look like I
had dumped a liquid accelerant. And in this instance, because
it was something that happened in a weekday, late at night.
(08:58):
If there were a liquid accel aren't used, it would
indicate premeditation, and that kind of starts to give us
clues about who actually pulled off this crime. That it
wasn't some random person walking by the home. In this case,
it's actually junk science. So I looked very critically at
I believe Robert Fisher committed these crimes, but there were
people that should have been looked at more closely that weren't. So,
(09:21):
for example, I look at the neighbors. When I ask
everybody who was feuding with the Fishers, everybody said the neighbors.
The neighbors were kind of strange, and they said things
that the police don't believe. They said things that the
police lean on. I also, I spoke to this episode
we just ran this week a co worker of Roberts
(09:43):
who was a very close female friend of his, who
told me that there was a heavy rumor he was
having an affair with a certain coworker in the nineties
and that her husband at the time would call and
leave threatening messages. And I don't think law enforcement ever
looked at him. So while I think Robert Fischer committed
these crimes. I always keep an open mind and run
(10:04):
it down and then you know, one of the great
hopes is that people hear that and then come forward
with other information.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Oh man, Ben, I don't want to jump the gun,
and John, I don't want to jump the gun. But
I wanted to talk about Ashley and her story of
the affair because yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Burning in my mind.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I just listened to episode six and it is one
of those it's an idea that I think is infectious.
So it went into my mind. Okay, maybe he was
having an affair. Maybe was there was a jealous husband
out there that wanted, you know, bad things to happen
to him, And that would be a pretty big suspect
(10:41):
in my mind. If you wanted to destroy Robert's life,
fully you do what happened, right.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And this is something Matt and I were talking about offline.
This was the this was the oh snap moment.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, well, just because I didn't I didn't know that
there was someone out there like that, right, like a
potential nemesis for Robert Fisher, and it just we haven't
even really like gotten into the details. You do in
great depth in your show. But just how horrifying these
deaths were. Maybe just a quick trigger warning, Can we
(11:17):
just let people understand what occurred inside the house even
before the fire?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Great? Yeah, great point, So trigger warning disclaimer everyone. The
following conversation will include graphic and accurate descriptions of horrific events.
This is your warning. Three two one over to you, John.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Yeah. So, eight forty two am April tenth, two.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Thousand and one. The house explodes. Is this little ranch
in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is a fireball into the sky.
Obviously nobody's expecting it. Please show up and they find
three bodies in the wreckage of the house, a wife
and two kids, and all.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Three three of them had their throats cut and.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Mary, the wife, also was shot in the head one
single time with a bullet. So and then whoever killed them,
whoever set the house to blow up, They basically left
the natural gas going from the furnace, set some kind
of trigger which we think probably was a candle, and
then maybe a few hours later, the house exploded. So
the cops and the firefighters show up. They find these
(12:24):
charred bodies, but they realized immediately that something's wrong. Because
they're mostly in like fetal positions, like they're sleeping, and
in other cases like this, obviously if there's a fire,
you're going to at least try to escape. You're not
going to be found in bed. So they immediately know
that they're dealing with a triple homicide, and their initial
strategy is to not name Robert Fisher's suspect, to kind
(12:47):
of hope that he just shows up and says, hey, guys,
like I was out camping, what happened? And he doesn't
show up. So that strategy was controversial and failed, but
I understand.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Why they they went with it.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
But you know, one of the fascinating things about this case,
and we go into detail, is there is no forensic
evidence proving that Robert Fisher committed these crimes. There is
a lot of circumstantial evidence, and so you ask, well,
why do.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I think he did it?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Well, one of the key small details, and this is
why I get so much so into the weeds, but
I also like to give all these details to the
audience and let let them kind of come to their
own conclusions. But one of the small details that really
matters is where Mary Fisher's SUV was abandoned. It was
a spot in the forest that Robert Fisher and his
(13:33):
family were supposed to go camping several days later. It
was a spot that.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He knew well.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
And so you have to ask yourself, well, let's say
it was an external party, they would have had to
know somehow that he knew this exact spot, so you
could you could start getting into theories about, oh, maybe
somebody took him at gunpoint, and it doesn't make as
much sense to me as that he just did it.
But I've heard from from everybody, including people that really
(13:59):
knew that Fisher as well, and including from law enforcement
that they've they've you know Ashley for example, who we
just spoke to in this last episode, she gave us
some important new information she she spoke to me about
like the idea.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Of a cartel.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
So you know it is it is a spectacle, like
I say it in the show. But you have three
throats cut, you have a suburban home that explodes, you
have a fugitive who vanishes in the wilderness near a
cave caves. It's it's really I see it and came
(14:35):
to see it as this classic Western sort of this
like neo Gothic Western story that takes place in two
thousand and one in Arizona against this very like harsh landscape,
not of the desert, but of the high country in
the mountains of Arizona.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And with that, we're gonna take a quick break, but
we'll be right back for more with John.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And we've returned with this. There's something that I think
is on a lot of people's minds with cases like this,
right that occur in how did you put it, the
donut hole, right of the possibility of disappearance. One of
the one of the things that continually stands out in
(15:24):
cases like this is always going to be the function
of law enforcement, which I know is a sensitive topic. However,
given the resources available at the time for the investigators,
do you think it is possible that they have they
(15:44):
maybe missed some aspects of the investigation to Matt's earlier point,
for instance, about people worth looking at.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Yeah, absolutely, and I know that for a fact because
we found those people. So that is I love the investment,
the negative part of this that is really my passion.
The writing can be painful, and the audio and the
storytelling are fun, but I love investigating and I really,
really really get heavily into the investigation, and so does
our team. Ben's been involved in that, and then Paul
(16:16):
Deckett was involved in that as well. And yeah, so
for example, we find two new witnesses who changed the
timeline of the case, who see Mary Fisher's SUV after
what we've been told for twenty three years is the
final sighting. That really matters because it means there was
a much shorter window during which Robert Fisher could have disappeared.
(16:38):
We find forensic experts that haven't spoken before, at least
the press. We found witnesses and family friends and co
workers who haven't spoken to even law enforcement. So I
find it fascinating about these cases. This is a high
profile case. Robert Fisher was on the FBI's ten most
wanted list for nineteen years. When I come onto a
(16:58):
case like this, I wonder what we Why am I
doing this? Why am I investigating this? Obviously you know
the FBI and the police must have found everything. Right, Well,
the answer is no, and that is why I love
doing this, because it's exhausting. But then the one out
of ninety nine people, they actually have new information that
you've never heard before. So we speak to those people
(17:19):
throughout the show and even as we work toward an
ending for the show, and I'm clear we haven't found
Robert Fisher yet. I really want to find him, and
that is a big hope of mine with the audience
that we're getting, that we find Robert Fisher. But throughout
the show, you're going to hear from new people. And
I know law enforcement is listening to the show as well,
(17:40):
and they are learning about people because I'm in contact
with the spokes and they've never spoken to the cops
or the FBI before. So my hope is I have
an interesting relationship with law enforcement. I really really respect
some of them. Some of these guys really care about
this case. Bob Caldwell, FBI, Hugh Lockerby Scottsdale, TJ. Jurand Scottsdale,
(18:03):
very smart, capable guys who care. And then I also
am clear, like I get to just focus on this
full time. But if they really want to solve this,
and I believe they do, there are certain things that
I think they can do.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
That I kind of want to light a fire to
push them to do.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
So I lay out, well what can be done forensically,
So for example, as of last summer, they had not
used like open source like jed match, like DNA databases
to say, well, one thing that I speak to experts
on familicide and domestic violence, they say, if Fisher did escape,
he could have another family. At this point, he could
have adult children. So what if one of their adult
(18:40):
kids uploaded their DNA and wanted to learn about their ancestry.
And then it's like, okay, well, you know, that seems
kind of far fetched. But one of the things that
I talked to the law enforcement about that as of
last summer they had not done, is to look at
open source DNA databases like jed match, to say, well,
Robert Fisher could have a new family, and if he does,
(19:01):
maybe he has a kid who uploaded their DNA and
wants to learn about their ancestry. And then it's like, okay,
well this is a little weird. I didn't know I
had family members in Arizona. So I think, you know,
twenty three years later, it is still possible to solve
this case. There are forensic things that law enforcement can do.
I wish I could do them. Sometimes I try to
(19:22):
do them, and I fail occasionally, But you know, one
of my goals is to kind of walk this line
with law enforcement of respect for the work that they've done,
but also to kind of light a fire and say,
you know, my allegiance are to the people involved in
this case first and foremost, and they really want to
get this thing solved. So I you know, people say, well,
(19:47):
is this realistic? Like this guy's been gone for twenty
three years, you know, like, let's be real, You're not
going to find him.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
TJ.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Juran is one of the detectives of the case. He
calls this the John List of our generation, and I
agree with him. And John List was somebody who killed
his family in New Jersey in the early seventies, was
on the land for eighteen years, was featured on America's
Most Wanted, and then he was living a new life.
He had remarried, his wife obviously didn't know who he was.
And I think that there are also just other forensic
(20:15):
and tech sides of things that we can do to
move the case forward. And I know, you guys, we'll
probably get into that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah. This brings us three paths that are mission critical
to the show. The technology piece that I think we
I think we have to get into that at some point.
But to your point about the forensic aspects here, one
of the questions that I know a lot of people
are having are going to be immediately concerned with the car, right,
(20:49):
isn't a car traceable to some extent? I mean, Matt,
what do you think it through there?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Oh, well, the suv was recovered. I just listened to
the whole segment where it was the veterinary technicians who
are the vets who like helped capture Blue, which was
the family dog, and using donuts by the way, which
we're mentioned already in the show. But I've been pretty
(21:14):
in my mind have been a little focused on the
suv because I just listened to episode two again where
you discuss the vehicle shuffle where there are two vehicles involved.
There's a pickup truck which is owned by Robert and
then an suv which is owned by Mary, his wife
or that it's their cars, right, And on the night
(21:37):
that everything went down, there's a witness who or several
witnesses they like saw those vehicles being moved in and
out of the carport right or out toward the street
because they lived in a cul de sac where if
you've got you know, you've got neighbors around a cul
de sac, they noticed that kind of thing sometimes. What
my big question about suv was, well, they're a couple.
(21:57):
But the first one is did any witnesses actually see
Robert in the suv leaving the house ever, or on
the road or once it got to where it ended up.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
So there are some alleged sightings and there are some
that I kind of buy in many that I don't.
It's as difficult to evaluate them. There's nobody confirmed who
saw Robert in the suv leaving the house, on the
road or in the woods. So I mean that's as
an excellent question. And getting to what you were talking
(22:30):
about shuffling the vehicles around is why this kind of
investigative work matters, because the two new witnesses that we found,
that's the only reason that we know this now because
previously the final sighting of Robert Fisher or Mary Fisher's
suv was on atm footage at ten forty two pm.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
On the night of April ninth, two thousand and one.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
And then we pushed the timeline back like seven hours
I think. And so you know, one of the things
we say is that night there was this game of
I call it musical cars, And the question is why
it's You'll listen to the show, but it's like in out,
in out, driveway in, street in driveway out, and it's like,
this was a little bizarre and why.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Was this going on?
Speaker 5 (23:09):
And also one of the things that I really heavily
am going to focus on as the show goes on
is whether somebody helped Robert Fisher, and if instead of
only focusing on Robert Fisher, if we start to focus
on suspected accomplices who helped him before, during, or after,
if we can help bring this case so close.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So I'll just tell you where my mind went because
I listened in a weird order. I listened through one
through six in order, and then I went back and
after hearing episode six, Ashley, Now in my mind, I'm
almost reevaluating everything in the mind of well, what if
there was somebody, like a third party that was not
a part of the family at all, that was maybe
(23:51):
an enemy of Robert. What if that person was doing
all these actions that we're seeing we have witnesses seeing
things and evidence of and in my mind, I went
through this whole list of if I just and this
is horrible to say this out loud, but I am
thinking this way, if I just murdered this family of
(24:12):
this guy I hate and him, I murdered him as well,
Like somewhere at some point in that time, I wouldn't
take a pickup truck because with an open bed with
a body in it or something, I would put evidence
and everything that I had in this suv that's covered
that police officers wouldn't see, and the chance that I
(24:33):
passed one, and I would try and make it look
like that suv got driven to a place where this
guy would have gone, and now he's just missing, and
now he gets blamed for everything and his whole life
is destroyed. And I just keep thinking about all these
little pieces of evidence, and I know it's conspiratorial, John,
That's it's like, WHA could you out there? And I
(24:54):
don't mean to introduce that necessarily other than the all
the information that you're finding is like painting kind of
a weird picture in my mind.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
Yeah, And I don't think there's anything wrong with looking
at the conspiracies like that's. I love looking at the
conspiracies like I like your guys's approach because you look
at the conspiracies, but you also look at facts, and
I think that there's like there's there's this blindness on
the part of people who are only logic, like you
need to look outside the box. Like a huge theme
(25:24):
that we've had in all three seasons is Aukham's Razor,
which is there's a reason that we're spending years on
these particular cases because yeah, Okham's razor ninety nine percent
of the time, but there are times where.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
It doesn't work.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
It doesn't always work, and you know, so this is
a case too where no, it's really smart to look
at the alternative answers.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
And I think that.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
The media and law enforcement in this case had blinders on.
And even if you come to the conclusion that you
still think Robert Fisher did it, there certainly were other
people that they should have looked at that in different
circumstances they did not look look at very closely. The neighbors,
for example, I cite them in the show, the aggrieved
husband of somebody who Robert Fisher was allegedly having an
(26:09):
affair with. To my knowledge of law enforcement wasn't even
aware of that until our show, So you know, Yeah,
you go through that, you look at it, you say
there is doubt, Like, let's not just paper it over
for a convenient narrative for the cops and for the media,
and let's let's look at that stuff. And at the
end of the day, if we still think Fisher did it, great,
(26:30):
but it's absolutely worth looking at.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Absolutely And that's that's one thing here. There's not a
stone unturned, not a cavern unexplored.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Right, well, just the cavern's in this thing if you
want to hide a body.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Also, So with this I completely agree with you, guys,
the concept of the exploration, right again, the idea that
no lead, no information, regardless of how potentially tenuous, should
be in that realm of binders or blinders.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
So you have this wide scope and then you narrow
into these specifics and you have again been on the
ground and under the ground looking for these things that
law enforcement does appear to have missed for one reason
or another. Quite possibly, if we're being honest, resources and
(27:28):
the need to move with other cases in Scottsdale and abroad.
One axiom though, that stands out in this exploration is
that through your research, John, you have become increasingly convinced
that Robert Fisher successfully committed what we call pseudo side
(27:51):
perhaps or on the edge of pseudo side has disappeared,
and you believe the man is alive, and we see
this in the show from the jump. So could you
tell us just a little bit about why you know, Like, Matt,
you gave this I think very well thought out what
(28:12):
if on this one, and it's one that a lot
of our audience and a lot of the audience missing
is immediately going to understand because it is possible. So
what to you just in a general way, like, was
there a moment when you were looking in this case
and you said, no, this guy is alive.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah, So just to circle back to the fore Runner, Matt,
the interesting thing about the Forerunner is how clean it was.
So they found it in the forest, all the windows
were rolled down. It was so clean, like no mud
or dirt. A little bit of dirt, you know, but
not a ton. I've been up there in dry weather
and definitely in wet weather. Your car is filthy.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
It was.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
It was so incredibly clean. And then they processed the
car and they did find some evidence. It's been erroneously
reported that they did not find any So, for example,
they found fingerprints, and those fingerprints I actually speak to
a person of interest later in the show, and I
would really like law enforcement to check that person's fingerprints.
(29:16):
But you know, and then and then, so basically getting
now to Ben's question, why do I think Robert Fisher
is alive?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Well, also, could you talk about the dog? I hate
to be a sucker, Yeah, such a fan of animals.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
Well, yeah, Ben, Ben knows this. But in season two
miscou nine to eleven, the person whose disappearance we were
investigating her cats were in her apartment when the World
Trade Center fell, and the number one question I got
the entire show, which I didn't even think about at first,
was like, are the cats okay? So I learned to
(29:49):
like definitely tell people what happened with the pets. So
that's kind of a fun, colorful, happy, little, very brief
moments of happiness in this show.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Not many, but we take them. So when they.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Found the Forerunner abandoned in the woods, they found the
Fisher's dog, Blue, Australian cattle dog. And one of the
big questions is if Robert Fisher went into the wilderness
and died by suicide. For example, why would Blues stay
with the vehicle and not follow Robert and I speak
to the veterinarian they called in and she was just
like a normal mourning at her little office and they
(30:22):
sent her into the woods alone with like.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Some donuts to capture this dog.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
And she and her friend Patty Blackmore and Samantha Right,
they're hilarious, hilarious, wonderful people.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
But yeah, the.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Dog was rescued, but no blood on the dog. Where
was the dog during the murders? And the dog was
missing its collar and spoiler alert.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Close your ears if you're listening to the show.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
But we believe that we tracked down the dog's collar
and we flagged that to law enforcement. So even twenty
three years later, there's a possibility that because of our show,
that they have a new piece of forensic evidence that
they can process for things like blood stains or DNA.
As to why I think Robert Fisher escaped, that is,
(31:11):
I don't have a succinct answer. Is something that I'm
going to make in multiple episodes, but overall, this is
what I think. I think Robert Fisher was a smart guy.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
He was not stupid.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
He had experience, He was in the Navy, worked with
aviation fuel, he was a firefighter and EMT. He worked
in hospitals. He was good under pressure. In my personal opinion,
it is something I've discussed privately with law enforcement. He
basically had this plan where his family was starting to crumble,
his wife seemed like she was about to leave him,
(31:42):
and he basically plotted out how to escape. So he
went to an ATM. It's the final time that we
thought that we saw him, though we know that's not
true now, and he was wearing, for example, a black
ball cap. I mean, even in two thousand and one,
you know if you're going to the ATM, you're going
to be on camera. When they found the suv abandoned
(32:04):
in the woods, they found none of the belongings he
took from his home, none of the camping gear, not
his gun, absolutely nothing. The only two things they found
the dog and the hat, the hat that he was.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Wearing in the ATM footage.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I spoke to the cop who was the very first
person to reach the suv. It was carefully placed on
the side of the passenger seat, so to me it
was almost like a calling card of I was here
and then where he abandoned the suv is also fascinating.
We have a brilliant researcher on our team who was
originally a fan of Missigan, Alaska, Paul Gemperline, who we
(32:43):
brought on as a member of our team this season,
and with his help, we pinpointed down to the exact
spot in the woods where the Forerunner was abandoned. So
I've stood up against the actual tree in the woods
in Arizona where the Suv was abandoned. One thing we
did with that as we metal detected around that area.
(33:03):
I won't spoil that, but we went into the caves.
But that spot, if you wanted to pick a spot
that was frustrating for law enforcement, it was let like
nine hundred feet from an Indian reservation. And the importance
of that is because there's tribal land outside, law enforcement
can't just go on. It creates a jurisdiction issue. He
(33:25):
put it one hundred and fifty feet from the closest
cave I've been into that cave. When you're standing in
the entrance, you can see.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Where the car was parked.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
We parked our super cross track kind of close to
the size of what they were driving. So if you
wanted to make this as frustrating and annoying and difficult
as possible for law enforcement. That's what you would do.
Something else we look at Robert Fisher had very serious
back pain, enough so that at points it was crippling.
(33:56):
He seemed to be addicted to opioids. So there's just
this issue of people think maybe he went into a cave. Well,
did he go into a cave with severe back problems,
a possible opiod addiction, carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment,
and no sign of his remains or belongings have ever
been found. It starts to seem a little fishy to me,
(34:17):
and then that circles back to do we think somebody
helps Robert Fisher?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think somebody helped him.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
So then you're looking at well, did he have any
connections to the drug world? Was he having an affair?
Did he have any kind of shady friends? And I
think those are questions that we look at later in
the show. But long story short, Yeah, I think Fisher
is alive and I really really want to find him.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor,
and then we'll return with more from John Walsey, and we're.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Back let's get into it. So I'm trying to imagine,
Let's say you take that suv to that place where
it's found. Right, it's pretty much clean, but we know
it was filled with stuff because stuff was missing from
the house. Right. Where do we think that stuff went?
Just was it enough stuff that he could carry on
(35:16):
his person or was it one of those things where
there needed to be another vehicle where it got loaded
into or you know, I don't know. Just what do
you think there?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (35:26):
So I think that that's a really important clue because
the two main theories are that Robert Fischer died by
suicide in the wild, or that somebody helped him escape
and maybe throwing a suicide trigger warning here.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
But if you're going.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
To die by suicide in the wild, it's a beautiful
area out there. It's unfortunately not uncommon in that general area.
It's something that law enforcement told me.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
But you're not.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Necessarily going to take all of your hundreds of pounds
or one hundred two hundred pounds of equipment. You might
just walk up to a hill. So I think that
he left the cap that he was wearing in the
ATM footage as Yes, this was me. You have me
on camera. Now this cap which has my DNA on
it is in the car. Nothing else is here, and
(36:13):
now I'm going to park the vehicle in a very
difficult spot where you're going to have to navigate Cave's
tribal land the wilderness. And so I think that that
is that is a big clue. Personally, I think he
took his stuff with him, wow, just like picked.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
It up and went somewhere well real quick.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I mean also that could still be something that helps
us solve this today because one thing I found, for example,
is he took a thirty eight revolver and we know
the serial number of that thirty eight. So that's something
I say in the show, if you have a snubnose
thirty eight, please look at the serial number. So kind
of like the kind of like the dB Cooper cash,
(36:54):
like you'd all think it's ever going to be found,
And as a little kid is digging on a sandbank,
like we can, we can hope.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, the idea of the wilderness here. One thing that
maybe a lot of us listening this evening are not
experientially aware of is the fact that there are people
who do successfully live off the proverbial grid. There are
folks who are simply nomadic in a forest or have
(37:21):
you know, some kind of hobo jungle or a camp. John,
Is that something that exists in the area of the
wilds of Arizona.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
I don't think Robert Fisher is still living in the
wilderness twenty three years later, but there's definitely a chance
that he did for a time. And I think, you know,
one of the things that we look at, we will.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Get other cases. Right.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
So Eric Rudolph is the most prominent case, the Olympic
Park bomber who in the late nineties and early two thousands,
I mean, he hid out in the mountains of western
North Carolina, my home state, for five years, and he
managed to evade a massive, massive man hunt. Something that
I also just find interesting is getting away from crime.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Absolutely, there are people that do this all over the country.
Is something I heard examples of in Alaska. It's something
I heard about in Arizona, where, even though I'm looking
specifically at the Fisher case, that's something that personally fascinates me. So,
for example, I spoke with members of law enforcement who
work in these very rural It is one of those
counties on the map that's like a quarter of the
(38:30):
country long. And they they told me true examples and
names of people that is recently is the last few years,
are are living off the grid on public land and
in the forest in Arizona. So one of the things
that we do in the show is we got to
lead about a possible hermit's cabin not that far from
(38:52):
where Robert Fisher disappeared, and so we tried to hike
to that cabin. It got very rough, rough, but so
we know certain things, for example, that would it maybe
prove something, but would give us an indication of let's
look at this more closely, like this type of gun.
He was very into winter green Copenhagen chewing tobacco. So
(39:15):
if I found a little shanty in the woods and
it was like these dusty old winter green tobacco tins,
it would kind of raise my blood pressure. But the
hermit aspect is really fascinating, and I think that for me.
I think, you know, missing in Alaska in particular, and
now missing in Arizona, there's this strong wilderness angle where
there are few mysteries that are new. There are few
(39:39):
spots on the map that are unexplored that's what we think.
But then go go put some GPS coordinates into your
phone like like we did, and you'll see it's pretty
rugged and roughen And you know, I reference that, I say,
in a violent nature.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Like the film.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Oh yeah, Hey, by the way, when you're finished listening
to Missing an Arizona, which you need to go listen
to right now, do subscribe to Flashpoint, which is a
whole season that we're making with Tenderfoot on Eric Rudolph
and just the points you're making about him and how
he was able to just vanish for so long in
the wilderness, and he was protected somewhat by individuals that
(40:18):
maybe sympathized a bit with him and what they perceived
as his cause, which is something to think about here.
I don't think that Robert Fisher had a cause, at
least that I'm aware of. It doesn't seem like there
was any kind of religious or political or any kind
of motivations for the actions that were potentially taken there,
(40:38):
is that correct, That's what I'm getting from the show
at least.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So Robert Fisher, I mean, kind of a right leaning guy,
but this was definitely not motivated by politics. And then
you touched on something really important. They were talking again
about Eric Rudolph, which is, you know, Rudolph had far
right ideologues who supported him, so he had help over
the years and people that could have turned them in.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Who did it.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
Nobody's supporting someone who killed their.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Wife and children.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
Yeah, there's there's not an ideology that no matter where
left right, whatever, you know, political ideology, there's there's no
support for that. That is he committed. You know, I
think in a different case, if he had robbed a
bank or something, he'd be a folk hero and to
some people even Eric Rudolph was, though obviously I disagree
with that, but thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Yeah, just just to clarify, you guys.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, just get in front of that one, John.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
And my when I and my teens in North Carolina
when he when he disappeared, I wasn't out there giving
him a wheat or.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Just really quick. If that show is hosted by this
is a spoiler, is hosted by a child who would
have been aborted by his mother if if Eric Rudolph
hadn't bombed the abortion clinic the morning of the appointment,
Which is a crazy conundrum that you know, in that
host's mind and in all of our minds, you have
to like work through anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean
(42:00):
the Rudolph case is fascinating, And I mean I grew
up in North Carolina, went to college in Nashville, North Carolina,
and I think he was caught Murphy maybe a year
before I went to the school. So wow, that was
very very like you know, I mean they got him before.
But I used to go hiking and camping, and but
there there's also this like dark romanticism of the wilderness
a fugitive, and with Rudolph, it's a little bit more political.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
With Fisher.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
What's really interesting about this case, I think is in
some ways this is an extremely rare case. It's a
man who is a family annihilator who successfully escaped. And
I say it in the show. We might not know
his ultimate fate right now, but he did successfully escape.
That is extremely rare in these cases, very few cases
like this. So I think, you know, one of the
(42:46):
things we do everything from speak to experts to go
go into spider filled caverns, but we can learn from
experts who study familicide and family annihilations, and so I
one of the fun parts of this job, and you
guys obviously know it is you get to speak to
experts about fascinating topics. And so in some ways Robert
(43:06):
Fisher is extremely rare and unique, and in other ways
he's not. And what I mean by that is there
are patterns that typically lead towards these types of crimes.
There are different ways to classify family annihilators. And in
the sense that Robert Fisher's family was breaking down and
he was spiraling and losing control, I say it and
(43:28):
verbalize it. Ben heard me say this. Control control, control, control, control,
that's Robert Fisher. He started to lose control, you know.
And something I tie into is I know there are
people out there who are possibly dealing with abusive situations
or situations.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
That are not safe.
Speaker 5 (43:45):
And one important thing about many of these men who
commit family annihilations is they do not have a history
or a pattern of physical domestic violence. So our idea
of the stereotypical wife beater or abuser or doesn't necessarily
fit these guys. Many of them are quote respectable. Robert
Fisher was a church going guy who worked at the
(44:07):
Mayo Clinic Hospital and had no known history of physical
domestic violence.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
So there's a point here that I think you've nailed
with great articulation, which is the idea. The patterns and
predictive kind of analysis only take you so far, because
even in the most depraved cases of criminal behavior, even
(44:37):
when the perpetrators do not think of themselves as human,
they are ultimately human and therefore beholden to certain constraints. Right,
so we can get we can get a rough idea
for some things, but you're to beautifully put point there.
This stuff can happen somewhere else. So what makes this
(45:00):
case rare is, without sounding emotionless, what makes this rare
is not that it occurred. What makes it rare is
that the suspected perpetrator has disappeared. And this brings us
to something that you are able to do that has
(45:21):
not been done in many other cases. You are this
is a light spoiler for everybody listening. You are also
leveraging technology in an innovative way to not only give
us an idea of what Fisher may look like if
(45:42):
alive now, but also just an exploration that I would
of artificial intelligence and voice modeling that I would argue
also at times goes a little past just the mission
of the show. We're talking about a lot of things.
Could you I know I'm throwing a lot at you there, John,
(46:04):
Could you speak a little bit about why you and
your team chose to leverage technology in this way and
what inspired you to do so.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:16):
Absolutely, So there are always things that we can do
that are not easy or even sometimes possible for law
enforcement to do. We're not constrained the way that they are,
and we're not bureaucratic the way that they are. So
the first thing that we did is I worked with
three different forensic artists on new age progressed images of
Robert Fisher. So one of the things every single person
(46:38):
who knew Robert Fisher I asked, do you have any
photos or video of him? Because people ask, well, why
did he blow up the house? And the answer is
always to destroy evidence. I agree with that, but not
in the way people are probably thinking. The bodies were
not destroyed, that evidence was there. He must have had
some ideas military experience hospital that wasn't going to fully work.
(46:59):
I think partially it could have been maybe just something
an emotional outbursts, But if you're looking at evidence, it
was pre smartphone and at the dawn of digital cameras,
so we only have so many photos and so many
videos of Robert Fisher. I worked on this for two
years and I found fewer than thirty to give you
an example, So I asked every single person that knew
(47:21):
Robert Fisher, do you have photos?
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Do you have videos?
Speaker 5 (47:23):
And we got some excellent new photos of him that
I purposely am not publishing because I'm using them privately
for investigative reasons. They show new angles of his face,
for example. And so we worked with three forensic artists
at the same time without telling them it was an experiment,
and we gave them the same material because I wanted
to see all these three talented people, what do they
(47:45):
come up with when given the same source material? And
then what we did with that is the best one
in my opinion. We put on our show art. So
for people right now, if they're on their phones, if
you look at the missing in Arizona's show art, that
is an age progressed image of Obert Fisher done by
a very talented forensic artist named Michael W. Streed, who
we worked with previously. The goal being turn our show art,
(48:08):
which is going to be the most visible part of
this show visually into a mini wanted poster. So anybody
who sees that and that that gets to the voice.
So we were able to take home videos of Robert
Fisher that survived the fire. When the house exploded, there
was a fire safe and there were six tapes VHS
(48:30):
tapes in there, Crackley audio and video from the eighties
and nineties. I went through last year and indexed every
single second of Robert Fisher's voice. I have like two
thousand entries of like one second where you hear him speaking.
This is where we get to the crazy, the carry mathison, the.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
Maps and stuff.
Speaker 5 (48:52):
But so we took that and then I think, you know,
we recreated Robert Fisher's voice using artificial intelligence. We partnered
with a company called alter day I out of the UK.
They worked on They typically work on projects like Hollywood projects,
so for example, they recreated the voice of a young
Michael Jordan and we partnered with them and we recreated
(49:16):
Robert Fisher's voice. I think when you first hear it,
it's a little jarring because it's lower quality. This was
extremely tough for us to do because we're so used
to it now we're we have high quality, high res
versions of you know, all all of us, Matt, Ben
and me our voices out there so we can make
each other say whatever we want, right or my brother
(49:38):
sends me videos of Johnny Casts singing hip hop songs
or you know, that's the fun side of it. But
with Robert Fisher, we have we had about ten minutes
of source audio and it was horrible. It was from
Crackley home videos that mostly survived in a fire safe
and an exploded house. So what Alter Day I was
able to do is create a custom voice model for
(50:00):
us and we later on in the show it hasn't
aired yet, I interview an AI Robert Fisher, which is
a very fine ethical line to walk. Uh So that's
it's tough because like I'm scripting this, like so you
know in my head of man, Okay, so I got
(50:21):
to be careful, right, like we really I've got to
be careful ethically, I've got to be careful. Obviously, I
still want it to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
So you're upfront about it.
Speaker 4 (50:31):
I'm upfront about it.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Yeah, Like I'm not gonna have Robert Fisher say certain
things like I killed everybody, like you know, but it's
because because this is this is coming edge technology. You know,
we were able to take horrible sorts audio and still
do this. And and the goal here is, you know,
people have heard it in the trailer, only a tiny
(50:52):
snippet of it. Right now, we haven't played the full thing.
And the goal when you speak to visual forensic artists,
what they tell you and what they told me is
we're not trying to do a piece of art that's
going to hang in somebody's house, though behind me it
is actually hanging over my shoulder. What they say is,
we want to do something that sparks familiarity because we're
(51:13):
trying to capture this guy, so we don't want to
say this is exactly what he looks like, because we
don't know exactly what he looks like. We want you
to look at this the show art, the forensic image,
and say, man, that kind of looks like my neighbor,
that kind of looks like my uncle or my father
or god forbid, my husband. And we're starting to get
those leads already, and people are sending us pictures and
(51:35):
it's interesting because we're looking at those internally, and also
I know people are contacting the FBI as well, but
with the voice what's really interesting is what I want
people to understand is that we're not saying this is
exactly what Robert Fisher sounds like in twenty twenty four.
We're saying, if this sparks some familiarity, if you see
this image and say that kind of looks like this guy,
(51:57):
if you hear the voice and say, okay, well kind
of eighties nineties quality, but that kind of sounds like
him a little bit too, then maybe you'll do a
double take and look closely at people. And we are
legitimately using and leveraging and trying to use this show
to find this guy. So that is, if we find
this guy, it's going to be because of the audience.
It's the same thing that happened with John List. It
(52:20):
was an audience member. It was a woman in Colorado
in her apartment watching America's Most Wanted who said, I
think that kind of looks like our neighbor, Bob. And
I think her kids were like yes, Mom, like like yeah,
that's that's Bob the neighbor, all right, And it was
it was John Listed.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
This lady callde John List.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
That's so crazy.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
That's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
The forensic DNA thing I think is so so great.
We talked a lot about what was it the original
night stalker.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
That got caught, and.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Just a bunch of other people that we've covered on
our show that ended up getting caught because officers waited
for whoever to have a finished can and the trash
can took it. And then now they found you. But
it was through finding like a long lost cousin or
a distant relative via those things like Jed match Man.
What you're doing with the AI stuff is so fascinating.
(53:15):
I remember when I first saw the cover art. I
was like, oh, wow, that's crazy and asked Ben about
it and he's like, oh, that's actually you know, this
is like what he would look like potentially.
Speaker 4 (53:26):
What No.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
I love how it sounds like. I love how it
sounds like we're we're hanging out at a college door room,
which is kind of like how our conversations go, like, yeah, bro,
this is like what he would look like.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
I'm sorry, we're not high in the you know, in
the quad or whatever that is made at home depot.
I don't know if we'll have time. Sorry to shout
out to one of my favorite Wilferrel movies.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Okay, this is how we talked to each other.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
That stuff so awesome. One thing that I really appreciate
about this show is something we've talked about a couple
times already. You don't just take for granted what has
been written in a publication like a local newspaper states
something early on in the investigation that ends up not
being the truth. But a lay person or me or
just whoever else that's coming to this story way after
(54:17):
the fact might look at that and say, oh, well,
it says here you know, in two thousand and one
that this happened, and you just take that as a fact.
Speaking again about myself and anybody else who might be
just a third party observer of what happened or researching
for their own purposes or on the surface, I really
appreciate that you dig into that, you actually go to
(54:39):
the investigator, you actually go to the human beings that
were there, and you verify stuff. Just really appreciate it,
and just want to say thanks for doing what you do,
and please keep doing stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (54:52):
Yeah, No, I appreciate it. I think that you know,
because this is an ongoing investigation, we're not just telling
a story. We're trying to add to it. And solve it.
And because of that, we need to have all the
facts correct. So you know, quite often I say it,
but their early erroneous reports that are later corrected, but
they live on and these stories become myth and so
you have these a lot of people sometimes even third,
(55:14):
second or third generation law enforcement that they're getting these
bits and pieces that are not accurate, and that is
really hampering any movement on the case. So yeah, we
dig into myths and we look at everything and reevaluate it.
Speaker 4 (55:28):
And make sure that you know, even for our audience like.
Speaker 5 (55:31):
That they have the facts so that if they want
to try to help with this. And for the last
three seasons we have had a lot of actually wonderful
help that they have everything correct.
Speaker 4 (55:41):
And I know I ruffle some feathers.
Speaker 5 (55:44):
But truly my fidelity is to the show as to
the story. And yeah, I mean that's just me. I
nerd out on I nerd out on that stuff, and
the truth matters to me, you know. Crediting regional and
local journalist matters to me.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
And yeah, yeah, it's been a saying it matters such
a great deal too, And it is just sometimes difficult,
I think when you're in this sea of all of
these links and all of the people now who write
about stuff, right, and there's so much commenting, there's so
many threads on every subject. It's so difficult to sift
(56:19):
through all that stuff to get to what is likely
the closest thing to the truth. And there is a
bit of faith in there every time you're like, pretty
sure when that person wrote that down, that's they could
verify it.
Speaker 4 (56:32):
I hope. It's tough.
Speaker 5 (56:35):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's definitely tough. And I mean,
you know, you look at the press reports and sometimes
they're even conflicting reports, like in the same publication. So
I think a lot of it is just being able
to evaluate information kind of to use your best judgment
to determine what's accurate, and if there's anything that's really
important or sensitive, to follow up on it and dig
in on it, especially when, for example, one thing that
(56:57):
we mentioned is the idea that there were footprints leading
to the cave and no return tracks. So if you
hear that, and it's something that's been repeated for the
last twenty three years, you're understandably going to think, well,
Robert Fisher died in a cave because they found footprints
going to the cave, and why are we even bothering
with this show or this investigation? Why am I looking
(57:18):
for him? He's clearly dead in a cave, guys. But
then when you dig into it and you say, okay,
well that seems like such a small detail, right, like
some footprints. But there's so many people I've talked to
who say something like that, and then you look at
it and you say that's actually not true. Then that
removes that idea from people's head. And I say it
in the show, but it opens up their mind to
other possibilities, or that they're not shutting down the idea
(57:41):
that he escaped immediately, and that people kind of get
reinvigorated to help find him.
Speaker 3 (57:46):
And I really appreciate that point, John, That's something on
a personal level I run into a lot with research myself,
and I'm sure Matt feels the same way. This is
indicative or illustrative of a great truth that people ignore history,
hinges on what may appear to be very small things,
(58:08):
and so we must triangulate, we must look into that.
And that's something that I think makes our mad endeavor
here a kindred spirit with missing and speaking of following up,
one thing we have to say before we go. This
is again an active investigation. John is cooking live. There
(58:36):
is a possibility to figure out what actually happened to
Robert Fisher and John. You have constructed a way for
people to contact you directly about this case. I believe
you are still very much open to any new leads
or possibilities.
Speaker 4 (58:56):
Yeah. Absolutely, so.
Speaker 5 (58:58):
I tell everybody, look at every single man in your
life who wasn't in your life prior to April two
thousand and one. Look at them in real life, look
at them on Facebook, look at them.
Speaker 3 (59:07):
On the street, and wait, when did we meet?
Speaker 2 (59:11):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Six?
Speaker 3 (59:14):
Okay, oh all right.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
And and look at our show art. And now I'm
looking kind of closely at this Ben Bowling character.
Speaker 4 (59:24):
All right, this was over.
Speaker 2 (59:26):
How old would he be right now?
Speaker 4 (59:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (59:28):
Yeah, so I don't want to age Ben, so he
would Robert Fisher would be sixty three.
Speaker 4 (59:31):
Ben is much younger than that, but unless he just
aged very well.
Speaker 5 (59:36):
But yeah, so, yeah, So I truly want everybody to
look at everybody in their lives and we I will say,
we're getting leads, We're getting emails. I personally funded a
ten thousand dollars reward to help find Fisher, because when
he came off the FBI's ten most wanted list in
(59:56):
twenty twenty one, there was I was shocked to learn
zero available for his captures. So we are doing everything
in our power to find him, and I'd encourage people
to the contact infos in the show, but the quickest
way to reach us is to go to neon thirty
three dot com. There's a way you can submit information
to us. We take your ananimity very seriously and Ben
(01:00:19):
has seen this. But one thing that I've found we're
getting leads live is a certain photo of someone taken
in the earlier mid two thousands who, to me personally
we've discussed this internally strongly resembles Robert Fisher.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
So we are this is.
Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
An active investigation and people people can help just by
looking at other people and looking at the age progressed
image of him. And we absolutely want people's help. And
like I said about the older lady in Colorado with
John List, if this is solved, we might bring attention
to it, but it's going to be solved by somebody
who's out there listening or watching.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
You have a number for tips as well right.
Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
Yeah, So if people want to call in, they can
call one eight three to three new tips. That's any
w tips, So it's one eight three three six three
nine eight four seven seven. They can email us at
tips at iHeartMedia dot com, tips at iHeartMedia dot com,
or they can go to our site at neon thirty
three dot com. And if they go to our site,
one of the things they'll be able to see as
(01:01:16):
a new wanted poster we did with a high resolution
ACE progress image of Fisher.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
And with this we want to thank you John Waalzac,
investigative host, creator of the Missing series. You can check
out Missing in Arizona right now. It is in media rests,
which is just the fancy way of saying we're in
the thick of it right now, in the trenches. As
John said, we want your help and while you're at it,
(01:01:44):
while you're up, do also check out Missing in Alaska
and Missing on nine eleven. John, We can't thank you
enough for your time here.
Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
Yeah, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
And if you like the show, if you give us
five stars on Apple, I would be humbly appreciative.
Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
But I hope we find Fisher.
Speaker 5 (01:02:00):
I hope the next time I talk to you, it's
so with a picture of him and handcoffs or you know,
my dream is he says, I'm not speaking to anybody
but John and Ben and I get to go to
go to the jail in Arizona and speak to him.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
So whoa what if he contacts you and wants you
to go to the woods somewhere.
Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Let's just let's bring a crew. Matt, what are what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
You?
Speaker 5 (01:02:24):
You know, Matt, Matt is your idea, So you're going
to be the sacrificial lamb.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
All right, John, I'm coming.
Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Let's hang out.
Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Okay, thanks guys, And that is our conversation with Missing
An Arizona creator John waalzac H. Matt, I feel like
we went to a lot of places and we still
have more to figure out.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Well, now, I want to dive into the case with
you guys, because I have so many questions and I've
got my own pet theories that I kind of want
to disprove that I currently cannot. But I'm just going
to keep listening because they're way more episodes than six right.
Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yes, yeah, there are more episodes on the way we
can't wait for you to hear them. And one thing
that John said that I think really resonates with all
of us is that it will be you, specifically you,
who helps solve this mystery. So reach out to John,
tell us your thoughts as well about this case any
(01:03:22):
similar cases that you may have knowledge of. We try
to be easy to find online. We're talking YouTube, the instagrams,
the social meds. You can find us as some derivation
of conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show at basically any
place that hasn't act in the front of their handles.
(01:03:42):
And if you don't want to do that, if you
prefer to go a little more analogue, which we're always
fans of, we have a telephone number as well.
Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yes, our number is kind of like John's one eight
three three STDWYTK. When you call in, it is voicemail
system and you only get three minutes, and within that
three minutes you need to give yourself a cool nickname.
We don't care what it is. We're excited to hear
it and let us know if you give us permission
to use your name and voice in one of our
listener mail episodes. And hey, if you've got more to
(01:04:14):
say they can fit in a message, why not instead
send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. I don't want to lose the point about
listener mail segments and our strange news segments, because they
do inform episodes. You don't have to feel like you're
responding to something that was already on air. If you
want to give us a lead, if something crazy is
(01:04:39):
happening in your neck of the global woods, we want
to hear it.
Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Or if you just want to call and just say
something silly to us.
Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Or if you just want to call and say something
silly to us. We love the emails. We love the
phone calls. Join us over here in the dark Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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