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October 30, 2025 45 mins

It’s a mystery that’s haunted Wisconsin’s hunting community for nearly 50 years. On September 16, 1977, 18-year-old Bob Christian left home to spend the night at a friend’s house before the opening day of bow season. That night, his future looked bright. He’d just been accepted to the University of Wisconsin as a computer science major, and his friendly, easygoing personality endeared him to family and friends alike. But something happened on that drive, and to this day, no one knows what. His car was later found stripped on a remote dirt road near his childhood hunting grounds, and nearly five decades later, Bob’s whereabouts remain unknown. Join host Jordan Sillars as he unravels a tangle of clues that spans small-town secrets, mysterious headlights, a convent break-in, the Ringling Brothers Circus—and even a possible connection to the infamous John Wayne Gacy. Through the eyes of hunters, family, and detectives, this is a story of friendships frozen in time and forests that keep their secrets.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt
meets the harvest. A portion of each bottle goes to
support backcountry hunters and anglers. Limited supply available at velvet
Buck Vineyards dot com. Enjoy Responsibly. This episode contains discussion
of crimes involving sexual violence and murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
In a mystery that's haunted Wisconsin for nearly fifty years,
a young hunter left home for an opening day archery
hunt and was never seen again. His car was found
abandoned in the woods, stripped of its wheels and tires.
But that wasn't even the strangest part of this baffling
and disturbing investigation that's next on Blood Trails. The year

(00:54):
was nineteen seventy seven. Opening day of Wisconsin's archery deer
season was set for septem number seventeenth, and Robert Christian
was ready. The eighteen year old Badger State native had
hunted most falls since he was a kid, but this
year was going to be different. He and his childhood
friend Randy Griffith had both grown up hunting, but they'd
never gone out together, so that year they planned to

(01:17):
team up and hunt some family property north of Baraboo, Wisconsin,
which is just outside of Madison. Randy was expecting his
friend to arrive at his house at six pm on Friday,
September sixteenth, the night before opening day. Robert, who went
by Bob, would sleep over at the Griffith house and
then the two would head out with their bows early
the next morning. Across Wisconsin, hundreds, probably thousands of friends

(01:41):
made the same simple plan. Most woke up to crisp
air and hopefully the rustle of a deer walking through
the forest. But Bob and Randy never got that chance.
What started out as a plan for a hunting trip
became one of the most dis concerning cold cases in

(02:01):
Wisconsin history.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Bob is always on time or a little early, and
so it was like six thirty, and you know, we're
there to have supper at six, and mom and I
were talking and my sister and I said, you know,
I this ain't like him to be late. So my
mom called his mom said, you know, Bob was going

(02:25):
to be up here at six, and he's not here.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Randy waited, the hours ticked by the sun dipped lower
and still no Bob.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
You know, he's still doesn't show up and we called
back down around nine o'clock his mom's and and said
he's still not here. And then at that time she
contacted Dame County to report him as you know, not
a wife.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Amy, Bob's younger sister, was only eleven years old at
the time, but she still remembers is getting that call.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Valeria, Randy's mom called again and said, Carolyn, you know,
Bob isn't here yet, and we all knew them and
there something was.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Wrong, something was wrong, very wrong. But to this day,
no one knows exactly what that's because nearly five decades later,
Bob is still missing. His body has never been found,
his bow and hunting clothes have never been recovered, and
his whereabouts remain at least publicly unknown. All Bob's family

(03:34):
and friends have is a baffling set of coincidences, contradictions,
and strange interactions. Bob's case intersects with a nun, the
Ringling Brothers, circus clowns, the American Motors Corporation, and one
of the world's most famous serial killers. But the thing

(03:54):
that makes the most sense of at least part of
Bob's story can really only be understood my hunters, and
that is the desire to give himself the best shot
at success on Opening Day, andred and stillers, and this
is Blood Trails an Opening Day Disappearance, Part one. The drive.

(04:27):
The Christian family lived in a small, two story home
on the east side of Madison. Randy lived with his
family in the town of Barriboo, which is about an
hour's drive northwest from Bob's house. The property they planned
to hunt was located about ten minutes north of Barriboo,
so it made sense for Bob to spend the night
at the Griffiths. It would have saved him about an
hour of sleep and allowed the pair to set up

(04:49):
well before shooting light. Bob could have taken a few
different routes, but there are two main ones. The primary one,
according to Amy, that the family took and that she
believe Bob probably took, was to go up Highway twelve
straight up to Barriboo, around the west side of Lake Wisconsin.
But Bob also could have hopped on Interstate ninety going north,

(05:12):
which goes around the east side of the lake, and
then exited onto Highway thirty three going west. We don't
know which way Bob took, but we do know that
he made two stops along the way, both of which
were in Madison. The first is he stopped at a bank,
and we know this because he bumped into his mother

(05:32):
on the way. The circumstances of this meeting are a
little unclear. The reports say she saw him as she
was taking Amy and Bob's brother to a local football game,
but Amy thinks otherwise.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
My mom was on a walk or probably coming home
from work, and they probably crossed each other. It was
an Anchor bank out on you Off where we lived.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Detectives at the time confirmed that Bob withdrew twenty five
dollars from the bank around five fifteen pm, and then
he made another stop to pick up a few things
at a convenience store just down the street.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
Some Swiss or sweets I think it was, or something
like that. He used to smoke cigars with his friends
and have beer and play cards, so that was their
big thing.

Speaker 5 (06:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Whether he planned to smoke those cigars that night with
Randy or were saving them as a celebration after a
successful hunt, we'll never know. What we do know is
this somewhere between the convenience store and Madison and Randy's
home in bear Aboo, Bob vanished, and it's haunted Bob's
family and friends ever since.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
You know, it's you just got a nippy feeling. What
do you say, He's not had here with us.

Speaker 6 (06:44):
And all that and all it was pop.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Part two the search. If Bob had gone missing in
twenty twenty five instead of nineteen seventy seven, his case
may have ended much differently. It's hard to fault detectives
back then for doing what they did, but in retrospect,
they made several pretty serious errors. Because Bob was technically

(07:10):
an adult eighteen years old, law enforcement didn't consider him
a missing person for the first twenty four hours. This
is why, according to Detective Tyler Poynton of the Satut
County Sheriff's Office, the search took several days to begin
in earnest.

Speaker 7 (07:26):
Back then, it was more like while he's an adult.
You hear it kind of cliche all the time, But
there's the twenty four hour rule. You hear all the
time about people being missing and waiting a certain amount
of time. I eat twenty four hours before you know,
you really start looking into things.

Speaker 6 (07:42):
I'm just speculating, but I.

Speaker 7 (07:43):
Can only assume that was kind of the operating procedure
back then.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Detective point and assured me that that policy is long gone.
But without much help from law enforcement, the Christians were
kind of on their own. They started by calling everyone
they knew who may have seen their son and brother.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Called all the hospitals that night, and called everywhere that
she could think of to see if there was any accidents,
if there was any reports of anything that went on
between Madison and bear Boo, and nothing was showing up.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Randy knew something was wrong right away. It was unlike
his friend to disappear without telling anyone, even in an
era before cell phones and Google maps. Do you remember
sort of what your thoughts and feelings were that night
and into the next day. Were you extremely worried or
were you kind of like, well, you know, I'm sure
he's okay, we'll find him.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
No, it's not, he's okay. I've been own him, you know,
since we were a little kid. So he's straight. You know,
he's never in trouble tea. You know, if he says
he's going to do something, he's going to do it.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Now you might assume that the Christians and the Griffiths
hopped in the car that Friday night and drove the
various routes Bob may have taken, but according to Amy,
they didn't do that until Sunday. I asked Randy about this,
and he explained that both routes Bob may have taken
were along major highways, and so they figured somebody would
have surely seen him if he'd been in an accident.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
There's Tory County she went through, and he went by
maybe like five or six towns on them off ramps,
you know, but he went through like dang Columbia and
Saw County and basically if you total that up, that's
like twenty seven and fifty square miles. So I was like, okay,

(09:33):
you know whoa you started looking.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
But when Bob still hadn't turned up by Sunday, the
family started the search. They were looking for a nineteen
seventy seven AMC hornet. Bob had a motorcycle, which he
usually drove, but it had broken down, so Bob's mom
let him use her brand new car to drive up
to Randy's. It didn't take the family long to find something.

(09:57):
Here's Amy, my.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Brother was with my dad the van, and my cousin
Jim and my brother had they would gone up Tower
Road and at that time it was a dirt road then,
and he looked over to the right where there was
a radio police radio tower, and he saw my mom's
car and he's like, Dad, that's mom's car.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Tower Road is between Madison and Barriboo, as the crow flies,
but it's not along either of the main roads. That's
because Lake Wisconsin is also in between Madison and Bearriboo,
and you have to go around the lake on either
side to get to either town. In other words, there's
almost no reason Bob would have driven down Tower Road

(10:38):
under normal circumstances. But what they found wasn't just strange,
it quite literally defied explanation.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
My dad and the boys went to go walk up
to the car and they saw that it was on
the ground, no tires, no nothing, and my dad said stop,
you know, he said stop, We got to turn around.
He had the boys go back into the van and
he walked down to the closest farm to try to call,
you know, the police, and by that time we had

(11:09):
pulled up behind him, and you know, my uncle Glenn
was like, oh man, there's you know, it was like,
what is going on here?

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Missus Christian's brand new AMC Hornet wasn't parked. It was
discarded flat on the dirt, no wheels, no tires, and
it wasn't on blocks, It was just lying on the ground.
Detective point and told me that the car's battery was
also missing, and the front license plate but not the
back had been taken off and thrown into the grass.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Here's Randy, And when we were there that day, they said, well,
they didn't use a jack because there was no jack,
and Prussians in the sand in the dirt. So flabbergasting.
How you get wheel and a tire, four of them
off that vehicle and don't have any marks.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Bron I'm sure Bob's father looked through those car windows
with some trepidation, but Bob was nowhere to be seen.
His bare compound bow and hunting gear were missing and
have never been recovered. His letterman jacket was still in
the front seat, along with his mom's nursing kit, but
not much else. Now the Wisconsin State Crime Lab found

(12:23):
Bob's mom's fingerprints, along with the print from someone they
couldn't identify, But Bob had never had his fingerprints taken,
and the print they found wasn't matched to anyone else
in any law enforcement databases, so we don't know whether
that print belonged to Bob, which would make sense, or
to someone else. This was the first real indication that

(12:47):
Bob was actually missing and probably in trouble. Law enforcement
got involved and they did an extensive search of the
area around where the car was found. Bob's family and friends,
another local volunteers scoured surrounding woods. They brought in bloodhounds,
and the National Guard conducted an aerial search with a helicopter.
But that area is what detective Point called bluff country,

(13:10):
cut through with gullies and covered with trees and brushed.
It's the kind of place you might say is good
for keeping secrets. Still, the detective is confident that Bob
wasn't in those woods.

Speaker 7 (13:23):
Confident they did a thorough search. Again, they did just
about everything they could I think at the time. You
know nowadays we have drones, but they brought an actual helicopter.
They put bloodhounds, so they did try to do some
tracking that way. People who were firefighters at the time
on a local volnteer fire department who were out and

(13:46):
they did they did a pretty extensive search of the area.
I know the family did that, plus a lot more.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
The search may well have been thorough, but it didn't
start until Monday, full two days after Bob had gone missing.
By the time they figured out Bob wasn't in those woods,
you could have been halfway across the globe. Part three,
Sister Genevieve. What investigators didn't know until later is that

(14:17):
just down the road from where Bob's car was found,
another crime had been committed. If you keep driving east
down Tower Road about a mile and a half, you'll
find what today is called Durward's Glen Retreat Center, But
back in nineteen seventy seven, it was a convent for
Roman Catholic nuns, and in a cabin on that property
lived none named Sister Genevieve. Sister Genevieve had been away

(14:41):
for about a week, but when she returned home that Friday,
which remember, is the same day Bob disappeared, she found
that someone had been living in her cabin. It hadn't
been ransacked, but someone had slept in her bed, prepared
food in her kitchen, and left cigarette ashes in the ashtray.
Sister Genevieve was pretty understandably upset. She was afraid the

(15:04):
person would return, and so she called her friend, a
woman named Mary. Mary drove over to the sister's cabin,
but when she arrived around eight thirty that evening, she
saw something no one in that situation would ever want
to see.

Speaker 7 (15:20):
She pulls in in about halfway up the driveway, there's
a car parked in the driveway, running with the headlights
pointed up the driveway towards the house. She has the
wherewithal to jot down the license plate number, and then
approaches the car and there's a mail driver in the
driver's seat. She describes him as a white male, brown hair,

(15:45):
light facial hair, thicker, rim glasses and asks him what
he's doing.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
He says something to the effect.

Speaker 7 (15:54):
Of I'm looking for my friend Bob or I'm just
looking for my friend. It's quoted a couple different ways
in the reports back then.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
He's looking for his friend Bob. This has baffled investigators
both then and now. If it was Bob driving the car,
why would Bob be asking about himself? And if it
wasn't Bob in the car, how does that person know
Bob's name? And why would he pretend to be looking
for him. Mary's description of the driver matches Bob to

(16:23):
a tee, but when she was shown a picture of him,
she said she couldn't be sure it was him. Mary
has unfortunately passed away, and so Detective Point is unable
to ask her anything further about what she saw. All
we have are the notes in the report. But we
do know that the car parked in the driveway belonged

(16:44):
to Bob's mother. That's because Mary recorded the license plate number,
and so we can place the Christian car in the
area around eight thirty pm Friday evening, two and a
half hours after he was supposed to have been at Randy's.
But whoever was driving that car, whether it was Bob
or someone else, didn't immediately go back to where it

(17:06):
was eventually found. According to Mary's account, the car took
a left and headed even further east. This, Randy told
me makes zero sense.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
And then they said when he pulled a lot of there,
he went towards ther Word's line. So he keeps driving
further and further away from my house, you know, to
where I love right right?

Speaker 6 (17:33):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (17:36):
As far as Randy knows, Bob would have no reason
to go up the Nuns driveway and definitely no reason
to drive towards the convent. While he admits it may
have been Bob in the driver's seat, he doesn't think
his friend was alone. I'm thinking somebody was in That
kind of worked them at that point.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
There's no sense for him to be there.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Mary said it was too dark to see whether anyone
else was in the car, so Randy might be right.
Amy also agrees that Bob's strange comment about looking for
himself may have been his attempt to signal for help
or let investigators know that it was him.

Speaker 5 (18:11):
If he was being apprehended. That would be a smart
thing to do. Send a clue to.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Somebody, Hey, I'm Bob, you know, or something you know.
That's the only thing I can think of.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
When Amy and her family heard about this, they went
to sister Genevieve's cabin themselves to take a look around.
If Bob was signaling for help, maybe he left a
clue as to his whereabouts. They didn't find anything like that,
but they did find something that today may have blown
this case wide open.

Speaker 5 (18:39):
And I remember my uncle Jack finding.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
A grocery bag, the old grocery bags, the paper bags,
stuffed into a log.

Speaker 5 (18:50):
And they have had a receipt.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
It had cigarettes, it had raw bacon, it had different
things and evidence that we thought pertained to that for
sure for the robbery, because who is going to be
sticking that into a log there.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Amy says they gave this evidence to law enforcement. A
detective point in confirmed to me that it was in
the case file. He also confirmed that the receipt was
for a local butcher shop in town, but investigators at
the time were unable to confirm who the bag belonged to,
and while there's a record of these items in the
case file, none of the actual items were retained as evidence.

(19:30):
We also don't have any evidence from inside sister Genevieve's cabin.
This is due in part to the fact that forensic
DNA testing hadn't really been invented yet. Back then, a
cigarette butt couldn't tell you much besides the fact that
the person smoked. But it's also due to yet another unfortunate,
infuriating coincidence about this case. Bob's car was found in

(19:53):
Sauk County, but Sister Genevieve's cabin, only a mile and
a half down the road, was in co Columbia County
and Columbia County Deputies investigated the break in as unrelated
to Bob's disappearance.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
At that time, they said, this has nothing to do
with your brother's case. So the two police departments didn't
work well together there, so all of that evidence is gone.
We have no idea where it went to, and at
the time, it could have been really relevant for that
case to find out and connect them. I don't know

(20:28):
why they couldn't see the connection. To me, it's as
obvious as a sore of thomb you know, how can
you not see the connection?

Speaker 3 (20:36):
There?

Speaker 6 (20:39):
Part four car parts.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
There is a quarry south of Baarboo that Bob would
have passed on one of the routes up to Randy's.
This quarry became a popular target shooting spot, so there
were people in and out, and about a week after
Bob went missing, someone reported that they'd found a set
of old wheels and tires along with hubcaps. These hubcaps

(21:04):
came from an AMC Hornet, which is the same kind
of car that Bob was driving.

Speaker 7 (21:09):
So the presumption was that whether it was the person
involved with Robert's disappearance or an opportunist took the new
wheels off the hornet and then swapped them with their
old wheels, and then left the old wheels with the
hub caps at the quarry.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Much like finding the bag of groceries in the tree stump.
This could have been a big break in the case.
If detectives could have matched those old wheels and tires
with a specific vehicle, they could have at least had
a make and model to look for. The problem was
those wheels and tires were incredibly common. Detective Point told
me that the list of potential vehicles was so long

(21:48):
that it would have been useless to go down that road.
But tires weren't the only car parts detectives looked into
as part of their investigation. While canvassing the area around
where Bob's car was found, investigators spoke to a local
farmer who had driven down Tower Road Saturday morning, right
after Bob disappeared. He reported looking up the side road

(22:08):
and seeing Bob's car parked in the same location where
it was found the next day. But Bob's car wasn't alone.
A second vehicle, light colored with stacked headlights, sat beside
it in the shadowy morning light.

Speaker 7 (22:23):
He estimated it was around like six six thirty in
the morning. It was still kind of dawn, darker out,
but just beginning light. This car is backed up next
to the Christian car and the dome light is on,
and he specifically remembers it having stacked headlights, so one
headlight on top of the other headlight, and he thought

(22:44):
it was kind of like a lighter cream colored, But
he didn't think a lot too much of it because
it wasn't all that uncommon for people to park up
in there, whether it be people servicing the tower or
hunters or kids parking, you know, doing kid things.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
The farmer didn't recall seeing anyone in either car, but
it was dark, just beginning to be light, so that's
not unusual. Those stacked headlights are more unique than the
tires and could have belonged to a number of Plymouth models,
but they weren't unique enough for investigators to find the
owner of that mysterious vehicle. Was it the abductor a

(23:28):
curious resident, the tire thief, or just someone drawn to
a still warm crime scene. No one knows.

Speaker 7 (23:37):
We don't know if that's somebody who was involved in
the disappearance, or if that was somebody who was just
capitalizing on the fact that there was this random car
parked in kind of a obscured area somewhat and you know,
I could really use those tires type thing.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
After the break, we investigate the ways some have tried
to explain Bob Christian's disappearance. Did he run away? Was
he the victim of a drug deal gone wrong? Or
was it something much much worse. That's next.

Speaker 6 (24:19):
Part five, Bob.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Whenever someone disappears without a trace, there are a few
theories that investigators almost always consider. The first is that
the person simply ran away. Maybe Bob had a tough
home life. Maybe he was an unhappy kid who wanted
his freedom or decided to pursue a career his parents
wouldn't approve of. But that didn't really jive with Bob's character.

(24:46):
Everyone I spoke with about the eighteen year old described
him as a straight laced kid who was excited to
start his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin Madison
as a computer science major.

Speaker 7 (24:56):
He was never as a youth, never talked about running away,
had a bright future, just enrolled as a college student
at a pretty good college. And you know, at that
time would have been, you know, a pretty fast growing career.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Amy agrees that her brother would never have run away.
She admits that her father was strict as the oldest
of fourteen children, but she doesn't think her brother was
unhappy living in the Christian household.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
I thought we had a great family. I felt blessed
to have my parents. So I can't imagine Bob would
have wanted to you know, why would he want to
take off after he just started, you know, at the university.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
After Bob disappeared, investigators learned that he'd talked about going
fishing in Canada. Maybe they guessed he decided to do
just that on the spur of the moment. But when
Randy heard about this theory, he went to one of
the detectives to set him straight.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
A month or two later, you know, and there was
rumors going around that Bob took off for Canada. And
when I came home, you know, that was getting to
people that went to school from Barber Reedsbury, that was
going to school in Old Claire, and they'd say, oh, yeah,
they're Shane. He ran off to Canada, and you know
about it. And so I came one of the one

(26:14):
of the next weekends. When I was coming home, I
called the tective Borski and I said, I'd like to
talk to you about it. I said, there's no way
he would have rang off to Canada. She got along
great with his parents, siblings, She just started school.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
He was excited about that.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
And you know, he went to the bank and he
only took out twenty five dollars out of his account.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
And you know, he wasn't just going to.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Run away and not tell Anyboddy. You know, he went
to ran a white period.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Detective point and told me that. Years later, someone claimed
to have spotted Bob in Canada, but investigator ran that
down and it turned out not to be him. If
Bob didn't run away, maybe he had a secret life
that got him killed. Maybe investigators thought he went up
to Tower Road because he was a drug user and
had planned to meet someone to purchase drugs. That also

(27:16):
may have explained his strange behavior when talking with Mary,
sister Genevieve's friend, but according to Detective Pointon, this was
also quickly ruled out. Bob was both literally and figuratively
a boy scout. Amy says he enjoyed a cigar and
a beer with his friends who doesn't. But he never
tried anything more adventurous.

Speaker 5 (27:38):
I know, people said, oh, was he You think he
was going up there to get drugs?

Speaker 4 (27:41):
No, I mean, even back then, twenty five bucks isn't
gonna Why would you.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
He wouldn't have done that. It just wasn't him. If
he was going to get.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
Drugs, why wouldn't you got him in the city and
taken him to the small you know what I mean?
I don't Who would he know in the rural area
to get drugs. He didn't know anybody up there, Bob.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
He also didn't have any enemies or vengeful girlfriends, and
he wasn't the kind.

Speaker 7 (28:04):
Of guy to pick a fight, you know, no issues,
relationship issues.

Speaker 6 (28:09):
He didn't have any beasts with anyone. He was a
real likable guy.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
He played a couple of years of football growing up.
But he just didn't have the tenacity. My dad was
kind of disappointed, But he just didn't have the tenacity.
He didn't want to hurt somebody else, and that's how
he always was.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Detective Point is convinced that he would not have disappeared
of his own volition, But much like the rest of
this case, there's a wrinkle in that theory too.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
My dad hunted with the boys from the day they
were able to go hunting. He took them deer hunting,
and they did some squirrel hunting and small game and
a lot of fishing. We all went fishing, and the
Griffith farm was right there by that hunting land that
was pretty much open to anybody. So my dad and

(28:59):
his brother and their kids all hunted up there.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
The Griffiths, remember, are Randy's family, and the up there,
Amy mentions, is the same area where Bob's car was found.
She says the car was parked just around the corner
from where they usually parked to go hunting, and Bob
had been up there many times. That's part of the
reason they were driving those roads in the first place
on their search, even though it wasn't on the way
to Randy's house. That's too much of a coincidence for

(29:26):
detective point.

Speaker 7 (29:28):
I mean, it would be a low probability that he
would have ended up in that area just randomly without
knowing it. But it's very off the beaten path, very
rule how he ended up in the same you know,
within a half mile or so of his child at
hunting grounds just by coincidence I did. I don't. I

(29:48):
don't think there's that's a coincidence. I think that that
happened for a reason.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
In other words, while Bob didn't disappear by choice, he
almost certainly drove up to that area of his own volition.
The question is why. Part six, John Wayne Gacy. You
may have your own theories about what Bob was doing

(30:14):
near the convent that evening. I know I do. But
before we get to that, we have one more piece
to add to this puzzle. Bob disappeared in nineteen seventy seven.
One year later, in nineteen seventy eight, Chicagoland police arrested
one of the most vicious and notorious serial killers in
American history, John Wayne Gasey. Gasey raped, tortured, and murdered

(30:40):
at least thirty three young men and boys between nineteen
seventy two and nineteen seventy eight. He would often lure
young men back to his Chicago home, where he would
violate them, kill them, and bury them in the crawl
space of his house, or dump them in the Deplains River.
Fest of these murders, and after a lengthy trial and

(31:02):
appeal process, was executed in May of nineteen ninety four.
Barriboo and Madison are only about two and a half
hours from Chicago, which was close enough to stir dread
in Bob's mother, close enough to warrant sending his dental
records to Chicago.

Speaker 5 (31:22):
I know when that whole case broke.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
I know, my mom asked for my brother's dental records
to be sent down there. So I mean, as far
as I know, they did send his dental records, but
they didn't have DNA back then, you know, And so
I don't know if there was any more they could
have done as far as that. But that's how we
found out about all this is they reopened the case again.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Detective Points told me that Gaysey's name does appear in
the case file, but it doesn't sound like he was
ever considered very seriously. That's because most of Gaysey's known
victims were from the Windy City, and law enforcement had
no real reason to think that Gaysey had traveled up
to Baraboo. But then, not too long ago, Detective Pointing

(32:09):
got a tip. Turns out Gaysey was in the Barriboo
area and at nearly the exact same time that Bob disappeared.

Speaker 7 (32:17):
John Wayne Gacy at the time in nineteen seventy seven
was a contractor for a company that kind of specialized
in updating or upgrading older pharmacies to more modern look
or design, and he had been in Readsburg in July
seventy seven for a pharmacy job, and I was able

(32:38):
to confirm that with one of the owners of the
pharmacy at the time.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Reidsburg is a thirty minute drive from where Bob's car
was found, about twenty miles as the crow flies, and
that wasn't Gaysey's only trip to the area. Detective Point
received another tip that Gacy had also done some work
in the town of Maston, which is about half an
hour northwest to Reidsburg, and work wasn't the only reason

(33:03):
Gaysey may have been attracted to the Reedsburg Baraboo area.
Gaysey was famously a clown, not like a class clown,
but an actual clown. One of his nicknames was the
Killer Clown because he joined a clown club in nineteen
seventy five and performed as Pogo the Clown and Patches.

Speaker 6 (33:21):
The clown.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Gaysey for you younger listeners, is likely the inspiration for
subsequent depictions of clowns as villains, especially Stephen King's horror
novel and the film it. Another weird coincidence is that
in that novel, the clown claims that his name is Bob.
Gaysey's interest in clowns may have drawn him to Baraboo,

(33:44):
because it turns out that Baraboo is a clown nuts
dream vacation. It's the site of the Ringling Brothers first
circus and home to the Owl Ringling Mansion. Today, Baraboo
has a Ringling brewing company, a Ringling theater, and a
Ringling bed and breakfast. It's so well known for circuses
and clowns that the International Clown Hall of Fame chose

(34:06):
Baraboo as its headquarters in nineteen eighty six. All of
that was enough to convince Detective Pointing to take a
closer look at Gaysey as a potential suspect. Now, being
in another town in July isn't the same thing as
abducting Bob in September. It's also worth pointing out that
even though Gaysey targeted young men much like Bob, many

(34:28):
of them were homeless. He would often pretend to befriend
his victims and then lure them into his home, not
violently kidnap them on the street. Still, if Bob and
Gacy had somehow met, it's possible the eighteen year old
was another of Gaysey's victims. To this day, investigators aren't

(34:49):
sure whether they've accounted for everyone Gaysey killed. While he
admitted to some of the killings, he was vague and
evasive about everything he did. He was convicted of killing
thirty three pe Twenty nine bodies were found in the
crawl space of his home, and another four were pulled
from the Deplain's River, but five of those bodies still
haven't been identified, and Detective point In wonders whether one

(35:13):
of them might be Bob. We don't have any samples
of Bob's DNA, much like we don't have any of
his fingerprints. But back in twenty thirteen, Amy and her
father submitted DNA samples to Cotis, which is a DNA
database used by law enforcement. They did this so that
if an unidentified body was found anywhere in the country,

(35:33):
investigators might be able to match that body to Amy
or her father. So far, they haven't had any hits,
but Detective Pointing isn't taking any chances. He requested the
Cook County Sheriff's Office, which includes Chicago, to run a
direct comparison between the unidentified gaycy victims and Amy and
her father.

Speaker 7 (35:53):
My understanding is that a blood sibling and father should
have a close enough profile to you know, if one
of these victims is Robert, that it would match close
enough that they'd.

Speaker 6 (36:07):
Be able to say that.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Cook County officials agreed to conduct the testing. A detective
point is waiting for results. There is no timeline for
when those might be available, but he submitted their request
months ago, so it could be any day. I asked
Amy how she would feel if the DNARE results came
back positive.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
It's not always great to know what happened. If it
ends up being this John Wayne Gacy, he probably didn't
have a very good ending, but at least it would
be some resolution, you know, there would be some finality
to it. If the DNA came back positive, then we
would know for sure what happened to him.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Part seven. Questions and Coincidences. The questions that surround Bob
Christian's disappearance are hard to wrap your head around. Was
the person squatting at sister Genevieve's house responsible for Bob's disappearance,
or was that a coincidence? If a county line didn't

(37:09):
separate the sister's house from where Bob's car was found,
would investigators have more quickly put two and two together.
Did a murderer steal the tires from Bob's car or
was it just an opportunistic tire thief? Why did the
tire thief take the tires with him and not swap
them out right there? Did the car the farmer saw,

(37:30):
the one with the stacked headlights belong to a kidnapper
or just a curious local. Was Bob's car found near
his childhood hunting ground because he drove it there? Or
did the perpetrator just happen to park in that exact area.
There are no clear answers to any of these questions,
but if you're a hunter, you may have already had

(37:51):
some insight into that last one. Remember, Bob and Randy
had planned to hunt some family property north of Barriboo.
But what if Bob was worried about their prospects. What
if as he was driving to Randy's he figured he'd
swing by his old hunting spots and just see what
there was to see The area was heavily wooded, so
a scouting trip wasn't the most practical, but the sun

(38:14):
didn't set until around seven pm that night, and he
would have had plenty of time to take a quick
look around. Here's detective point.

Speaker 7 (38:22):
I'm a hunter as well, and that thought crossed my mind, like, well,
if this place we don't go to doesn't pan out,
you know, maybe in the afternoon, we'll go try this
other spot that I've been to before, and maybe I'll
just go check it out and see where we could
park and go in or whatever. Maybe see if I
can see something a scouting mission basically.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Amy also thinks this could explain why Bob ended up
so far off the route to Randy's.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
He might have been just checking it out for gun season.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
You know, they hunted up there so long that it
wouldn't surprise me that he was just going to drive
by and he would have just parked where they knowally parked.
I just wouldn't be surprised at all if Bob just
went up there to see his spots.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Unfortunately, as with most things in this case, there's a
convincing counter argument.

Speaker 6 (39:13):
Here's Randy.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
It's possible he went up there to the scalp, but
he still sit there and going like, well, then why
didn't he called me and say that before he left
Madison on nerves.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Because then he would have been late. You know, he's
going to be late. He's going to be later. You know,
he keeps going in all that the direction Bob was
a responsible kit Dinner started at six pm sharp, and
he wasn't raised to keep Missus Griffith or his friend waiting.
If he left Madison at five point fifteen, he would
have been to Randy's house at least eighteen minutes late

(39:46):
if he'd taken a detour to the bluffs, and that's
not even factoring in any time to do actual scouting.
Of course, Bob could have misunderstood the time and assumed
he had more of a window than he did. But
the fact is that wasn't much like Bob either. Whatever happened,
whether Bob met the wrong person on the road or
was kidnapped, or whether he was targeted by John Wayne Gacy,

(40:10):
or he had some kind of accident that left his
body hidden in the woods, Amy, their family and Bob's
friends are still struggling. This isn't the only tragedy to
have struck the Christian family. In the spring of nineteen
eighty three, one of Bob's other sisters, Kathy, was found

(40:31):
dead inside a burned out Wisconsin barr Further investigation revealed
that Kathy had been murdered by three members of a
biker gang, who then set the bar on fire to
try to cover up their crimes. Detective Point is convinced
that Kathy's death has nothing to do with Bob's disappearance.
She was only fifteen years old when Bob died and

(40:51):
didn't start hanging around bikers until later, but to lose
two children in six years was devastating to the Christian family.
Amy remembers being there when they visited her father at
his work to break the news about Kathy.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
I mean there was a few years I told my husband,
I thought my parents were going to end up splitting up.

Speaker 5 (41:12):
I mean, that was pretty rough to have. My one
memory of.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
When the police came to our house with my sister
is going with my mom to oskar Myers and my
dad coming down to the security shack and he was
so happy he thought they finally found something out about
my brother, only to find that his oldest.

Speaker 5 (41:35):
Daughter was killed. And I'll never forget that.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
You know, look on his face and it's like I
remember myself thinking why what did we do?

Speaker 2 (41:46):
As Amy has looked back on these experiences, she's realized
that it's helped her to be more understanding and compassionate
towards others. Her faith has kept her tragedies in perspective,
and she believes now that her parents have pasted, they
know what happened to Bob and that God has taken
care of them. Still, she would like to be able

(42:08):
to put her brother's remains to rest beside her sister.

Speaker 4 (42:12):
It would be awesome if we could find any remains
and put him to rest. That I know would mean
a lot to my parents. I know God took care
of them.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
She might get a chance. Detective Pointin told me that
the Gacy lead isn't the only one he's been tracking down.
Thanks to a few recent media articles, there's been a
renewed interest in Bob's case.

Speaker 7 (42:35):
I've gotten a lot of good tips that have kept
me moving forward. There's a lot of people out there
I'm finding that, for one reason or another, didn't say
anything back then. But given the passage of time and
stewing on it for a while, they've changed her mind.

Speaker 6 (42:52):
You know.

Speaker 7 (42:52):
The hope is that there's somebody out there who maybe
wasn't in a position to say something back then, or
to a family member they suspected were involved or told
them they were involved, and now that person's gone, or
they're in a different position now where they feel comfortable
talking to law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
If that's you, Detective Point and wants to speak with you,
give the Sack County Sheriff's Office a call at six
oh eight three five five three two zero five. You
can also reach out anonymously to the Stck County Crime
Stoppers at one eight eight eight eight four seven seven
two eighty five to those who might know something and
are wondering whether they should pick up the phone and

(43:31):
dial one of those numbers. Amy has this to say.

Speaker 4 (43:36):
It's been very difficult all these years not knowing what
happened to our brother, and you know, my parents never
did have any resolution for that for themselves, and it
would be an awesome thing for them to come forward
if they know, you know, even if there's that kind
of resolution, at least to know something about what happened

(43:57):
to him, I mean, just to have him go on
a Friday night to meet somebody and then never show up.
And it's just it's sad. It's sad not to know,
and I know there's a lot of our family members
that would like some kind of closure with it.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If
you'd like to see images related to this case, including
images of Bob and crime scene photos of his abandoned car,
head over to the meeteater dot com slash blood Trails
and click on the case file for this episode and
be on the lookout for a special bonus drop when
the DNA results come back from the unidentified gasey victims.

(44:33):
We'll be sure to keep you in the loop as
soon as we know more. If you have a tip
about this case or another case you think we should cover,
send us an email at blood Trails at the meat
eater dot com. That's b l O O D T
R A I L S at the meaeater dot com.
See you next time.
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