10. Jon's Theory (Part 1)

Jon reveals what likely triggered the murders.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
not be suitable for all listeners. This episode also discusses suicide.
You can reach the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at nine.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
To eighty eight.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
A quick note, this episode is packed with so much
detail we're splitting it into two parts from iHeartRadio and
Neon thirty three. I'm John Walzac and this is Missing
in Arizona, the story of a man who disappeared after
allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing up their suburban

(00:33):
home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three years later,
I'm Hunting Robert Fisher and I Need your Help, Part one.
By April two thousand and one, the demons of Chaos
are tightening their grip around Robert Fisher's neck. Try as

(00:54):
he might, he's unable to pry free their fingers. They
start choking him slowly. In nineteen eighty, when he injures
his back, for the next sixteen years, he's in pain.
By two thousand and one, he needs spinal surgery, but
he's terrified it'll paralyze him. He also hurts his knee.
He's losing control of his body. He almost loses control

(01:15):
of his family too. In nineteen ninety nine, he goes
to a massage parlor seeking pain relief. Instead, he finds temptation.
He cheats on Mary with a masseuse. Then he confesses
and threatens suicide if Mary leaves him. They patch up
their marriage, but the demons of lust loom just out
of view, and apparently once again they seduce him. Anew,

(01:36):
this man so intent on controlling others is unable to
control himself. If in the lead up to the murders,
Robert cheats again and Mary finds out this could be
the spark that triggers his nihilistic demons to light the
fire of total annihilation. But does Robert actually have another
fling or an affair? Circumstantial evidence says yes. He tells

(01:59):
a friend that things are quote clicking between him and
a coworker. He doesn't say anything else except that she's
in his unit. He tells a colleague, a cardiologist, that
he's having marital trouble. Several times it seems like he's
going to say more confess, but he backs off. The
final two months, he appears nervous, anxious. The cardiologist thinks

(02:20):
Robert had an affair, just not with a coworker that
would be tough to hide. He says. Hospitals are chit chatty,
tight knit places. People notice things, people talk. On April tenth,
the day the house explodes, Scottsdale Detective TJ. Juran interviews
Robert's boss at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. For
privacy's sake, let's call her Dolly. From a police report quote.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
I asked Dolly if it was possible Fisher was having
an affair with a female from work or outside of work.
At first, Dolly denied any knowledge of an alleged affair,
but within a few moments should began to cry. Dolly
then advised me that approximately six to seven weeks prior,
Fisher confided in her. Dolly related to Fisher appeared depressed,
so she had a talk with him after work. Dolly
also knew that Fisher had a urinary tract infection. During

(03:06):
December two thousand, Fisher related that he was having a
very hard time with the situation involving another female. Fisher
went on to tell Dolly that he had gone to
a massage therapist because of his back. Fisher said he
obtained the infection from the therapist. During the session, Fisher
related that he did not have sex with the therapist,
but that things did begin to get out of hand.
Fisher backed off from the therapist and left because he

(03:28):
was concerned about his wife, Mary finding out. Fisher did
not know whether he should tell Mary or his pastor
about the situation with the therapist. Fisher also felt that
coworkers in the calf Lab had been talking about him
behind his back. Dolly related that Fisher never told her
the name of the therapist.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Let's break this down first, Robert appears to admit to
a new affair. He questions whether he should confess to
his pastor and Mary, both of whom already know about
his previous infidelity in nineteen ninety nine, so he can
only be refered ring to something new. He reveals this
to Dolly only six to seven weeks before the murders,

(04:05):
roughly the end of February two thousand and one. He
says he's quote having a very hard time with the
situation involving another female, which sounds more like a full
blown affair and less like a one time fling. He
claims the woman is a messuse. This later leads to
confusion with many people, including police, mixing up his nineteen
ninety nine infidelity with a different affair in two thousand

(04:29):
or two thousand and one. I suspect that Robert is
confessing the big truth he cheated again while hiding details
like the woman's identity using his ninety nine infidelity as cover,
or that Dolly's lying she's the woman. But that's for
another episode. For now, don't focus on who, focus on
the binary. Does Robert cheat again after nineteen ninety nine?

(04:51):
The answer appears to be yes, and his mystery ailment
from December two thousand appears not to be a urinary
tract infect uti, not prostatitis, not a kidney infection, but
an STI or sexually transmitted infection. Robert tells a coworker
he's never been so sick. He's scared. He visits a

(05:12):
doctor and has an MRI. The co worker is suspicious.
Quote I've never known anybody that got a urinary tract
infection that was so sick, unless they were like septic,
and then they'd be in a hospital. Robert tells another coworker,
the cardiologist, that a masseuse gave him the infection, but
quote it was not from a sexual affair. Robert is

(05:33):
paranoid that coworkers are looking at his medical records, and
he thinks people at church know that he cheated again,
which begs the question why how could they? Unless he
confesses maybe to his pastor, and worries the pastor will
say something. One Sunday night in December two thousand, Robert
is called into work late around eleven PM. He's quiet,

(05:55):
doesn't say anything, doesn't look good. The next day, he
calls in sick. First tells police quote, it's really unlike
Bob to call in sick unless he's really really sick.
By this point, Robert's in pain, scared of surgery, disability, paralysis,
sick with the possible STI, paranoid that Mary will find out.

(06:15):
He's losing control quickly. What's the spark though? What finally
detonates the House of Fisher Remember On Friday March thirtieth,
eleven days before the murders, Robert and Mary spend the
day together alone into wilderness on Robert's ATV. They seem fine.
The next day they attend a wedding in Sedona. Again,

(06:36):
they seem fine, but something changes. Between April first and
April fourth. On April fourth, Robert shows up at church
looking for Mary and the kids. Mary seems afraid of him.
They've had generic marital trouble for months. It's likely not
enough to trigger the murders. So what is If Robert's
loss of control is the accelerant, what lights it a flame?

(06:59):
While reporting this story, I learned something new, something critical.
Right before the murders. Mary finds out that she has syphilis.
I would never report this based on rumor. I'm only
doing so because I learn about it from a reliable source.
This is the spark I think. By all accounts, Mary
is faithful to Robert, so she could only get syphilis

(07:21):
from him. When does she find out? Obviously I don't
have access to her medical records, but I'm curious whether
or not she had a doctor's appointment between Monday, April
second and Wednesday, April fourth, because she learns about it
right before the murders, and there's no way she'd be
out on March thirtieth writing around with Robert on an
ATV having a jolly good time. If she knew not

(07:43):
only that he cheated again, but that he gave her syphilis,
she would be done and Robert would know it. Remember,
the number one cause of familicide is family breakdown. This
would be the snapping point, the moment Robert loses control
of everything that matters his health, his family, the spark.
Knowing that Mary had syphilis, which has never been reported,

(08:06):
what can we learn from it? For an expert opinion,
I turned to doctor.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Joseph cherbe An, an infectious diseases physician at Washington University
in Saint Louis.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
The first thing to note is that Robert's UTI style
symptoms are a better fit for other STIs not syphilis.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
In sexually active individuals of that age. Gonnery and chlamydia
are at the top of my list, especially if they
are having signs of pain, with your nation, frequent yourination,
anything that people would say is a sign of a UTI.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
So Robert possibly has gonnerihea or chlamydia.

Speaker 5 (08:42):
But you have to.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
Remember that sti's travel I packs, so if an individual
has syphilis, they are more likely to acquire chlamydia, gonneria.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
HIV, GONERIEA. Symptoms typically manifest within one to three weeks
of exposure. For chlamydia, it's one to three months. So
if EBERTSI alleged Uti is in fact gonerhea or chlamydia,
he would have been exposed, meaning he cheated again sometime
between September and December two thousand, which lines up with
when his back pain intensifies and his personality starts changing

(09:14):
around October two thousand. Maybe he goes to a massage
parlor for pain relief and is offered sex again, or
maybe he's having an affair with a coworker. Whatever the truth,
he hides it from Mary, the cheating, the STI. She
knows he's sick, but not with gonerrhea or chlamydia. Thankfully
he doesn't transmit it to her. What about syphilis, though,

(09:36):
which at some point he does. How is it transmitted?
What's the timeline?

Speaker 4 (09:40):
The most common means in which individuals contract syphilis is
actually through direct contact with a lesion, typically wet lesions,
or sexual contact with an individual who has underlying syphil as.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Within three to six weeks, a person exposed to the
bacterium that causes syphilis develop helps a raised lesion called
a shanker. This is stage one primary syphilis, and then
that shanker resolves.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
Most people may not notice the shanker, especially if it's
a part of the body that you are unable to see.
So if that shanker develops, for example, within the folds
of the vulva or within the rectum if you are
having anal sex, then it is difficult for people to
see the shanker and most people won't notice it. The
other issue with the shanker is oftentimes it is painless

(10:30):
and it goes away on its own, So most people
may think that they have some ulceration, they rub their
skin the wrong way, or there's maybe an allergic reaction,
they self treat, it goes away and they don't think
anything of it. That is why most people will present
with secondary syphilis that develops at around three months after inoculation.
You develop most typically a rash. That rash can appear

(10:53):
like any other rash. In the textbooks, they describe it
as being on the palms and soles of the feet,
But I have seen people who look like they're having
a massive allergic reaction have a maculum popular eruption on
their chest, on their face. Some people get alopecia's well
where they could get hair loss. This is where most
people will present because they feel swollen lymph nodes they
feel a key, they have a rash.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
So they seek medical treatment. Thankfully, if caught early, syphilis
is highly treatable with penicillin, but many people don't catch
it in the primary stage, when they have a shanker
a painless lesion, they may not even be able to see.
This is often when they transmit it to sex partners.
Robert apparently passes it to Mary sometime in the six
months before the murders, dating back again to October two thousand.

(11:38):
Mary apparently finds out in April two thousand and one.
By this point she likely has secondary syphilis, which if untreated,
can progress to stage three latent syphilis and later stage
four tertiary syphilis, which can be much more severe, causing aneurysms, meningitis,
and other formidable symptoms neurological symptoms. I knew this, but

(12:01):
what I didn't know is that.

Speaker 4 (12:03):
Neurologic manifestations of syphilis can occur at any stage of syphilis,
whether it's primary, secondary, tertiary. You can get involvement of
the guys in which you can have vision changes. You
can get hearing loss. Most commonly, people report ringing in
their ears or muffled hearing, and you can get meninjo,
vascular disease or meningitis, unrelenting headaches, next stiffness, altered mental status.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Altered mental status which can present.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
As irritability, memory, loss of personality changes, insomnia, and later
compaired judgment and emotional liability.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Severe mood swings.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Given the nature of the story, I have to ask you,
is psychosis a possibility, propensity for violence, any other serious
mental health concerns.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
With respect to neurosyphilis, we have had some individuals who
have developed altered mental status, including hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations.
There have been individuals who have developed illusions and psychiatric manifestations.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's tough to measure the frequency of neurological symptoms in
patients with primary or secondary syphilis, in part because they
can be tough to diagnose. Syphilis is known as the
great imitator. It mimics other conditions, and that's.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
Why syphilis is such a humbling disease. It does present
in fifty million different ways. It's one of the oldest
and most historic diseases, and it's why it's my favorite
bacteria by far, by far, the best bacteria you could
fight me. It is the best bacteria because it alludes
us to this day.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
In summary, Robert likely cheats on Mary again. In late
two thousand. He apparently catches gonorrhea or chlamydia and syphilis,
which he transmits to Mary, who learns about it right
before the murders, likely triggering them. Also, neurological symptoms can
manifest during any stage of syphilis, meaning they could have

(13:52):
affected Robert in the lead up to, even during the murders.
I'm not saying this is my theory, but it.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Is possible, especially if left untreated, that this progress over
time to a state in which there was altered mental status.
There is a irritability, and that could possibly be a
manifestation of neurosophas.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I'm now going to lay out five scenarios of what
could have happened to Robert Fisher his fate in order
of least to most likely in my opinion, which is
the key phrase, my opinion. I don't expect you to
necessarily agree. In fact, I encourage dissent. Battle it out
on Reddit number five Grizzly Adams theory. Robert Fisher is

(15:01):
living off the land twenty three years later, surviving in
the wild. Verdict no way. This is so ridiculous. I'm
not going to spend too much time on it. What
about Eric Rudolph, you say the Olympic Park bomber Well.
Rudolph survived for five years, not twenty three, in a
more hospitable environment, the mountains of western North Carolina. He

(15:23):
didn't have a bad back, and as Detective TJ. Juran
wisely notes, he had help. He was a right wing ideologue,
a folk.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hero, extremeist living in the area helped him, so that
was to his benefit.

Speaker 5 (15:35):
Nobody here is.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
Going to help Robert Fisher after a man just annihilate
his family.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Number four died in the wild not by suicide, theory,
Robert Fisher fled into the wilderness and died from something
other than suicide, a snake bite, drowning, tumbling down a ravine,
a rock hitting his head, starvation, a heart attack, water
borne disease, anything but suicide. Verdict possible but unlikely. None

(16:03):
of Fisher's remains or belongings were ever located. Maybe that
seems unsurprising. It is, after all, a huge expanse of land.
Fair but not locating something is abnormal, not impossible, just
not as rare as you might think. People die and
disappear in the wilderness all the time, including in places
much more remote than Arizona. They are usually found at

(16:26):
some point. For example, in nineteen seventy six, a man
named Gary Sutherden vanished in an isolated part of Alaska
above the Arctic Circle. In nineteen ninety seven, a hunter
found his skull, though it wasn't matched to him until
twenty twenty two. Also in ninety seven, rock climbers in
rural Nevada found a body buried beneath rocks. In twenty

(16:47):
twenty three, it was matched to a missing woman named
Lorena Moseley. In nineteen seventy seven, a nineteen year old
named Douglas Muller was abducted in Scottsdale. There were multiple
ransom demands which his parents tried to pay, but no
one picked up the money. Muller was never heard from again.
In two thousand and seven, a hiker found of femur
at twenty three nine ninety three North seventy fourth Place

(17:10):
in Scottsdale. If that sounds familiar, it's because the Fishers
lived on the same road North seventy fourth Place. The
Femur case fell to a detective named Hugh Lockerbee. Lockerbye
was proactive. With the help of Arizona's crime lab, he
matched the femur to Muller. It seems to have been
dug up in the early two thousands, likely by animals
rummaging through a clandestin burial spot in a rugged part

(17:33):
of North Scottsdale. The homicide remains unsolved now. Of course,
thousands of people disappear in the wilderness and are never found,
but this seems not to be a major issue. In
the area around which Robert abandoned Mary's Forerunner, many people
have died there, but few remain missing.

Speaker 7 (17:51):
We've seen hundreds of people come to the Rim country
just to be and God's country when they met their demise.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Former Helix County detective Brian Havy.

Speaker 7 (18:01):
We found people hanging out in the woods that were
from the valley, all over the place up here. And
why they come up here to kill themselves, I don't know.
Being God's country, I guess really hundreds of people, yes, literally,
we found him on top of four peaks. We found
him up here in the woods around Payson. We had
one guy that dropped his van off at top of

(18:24):
the rim on two sixty and hiked five miles down
in towards Cold Courts, sat down with a case of
beer and started drinking, and hung himself from a low
hanging juniper bush. And we didn't find him till two
years later when a couple of nurses were hiking in
the woods and found some bones that they could positively
identify as human bones, and we went out and I

(18:45):
found the skull on that probably two one hundred and
fifty yards from the tree that he hung himself on.

Speaker 8 (18:53):
So what you most commonly see in terms of suicides
in that area death bite, guns, hanging.

Speaker 7 (19:00):
I've seen it all different mannerisms. Hanging seems to be
a popular one. I've seen guys hang themselves with the
cable that they'd used to hold their dog. I've seen
people hang themselves with shoer bootlaces. Really doesn't take that much.

Speaker 8 (19:15):
And these are people that are just hanging in the
woods on trees.

Speaker 7 (19:17):
Yeah, yeah, I've seen one. Lady wanted to be found,
so she dropped her daughter off at Payton Police Department
with a note pinned to her chest and said go
in there. And she had written across the note a
little pad about six by six about ten different ways
where she would be, and we had to really work
our way through that little piece of paper and figure

(19:40):
out directions. As we pulled into her campsite, she looked
right at us and put a nine milimeter to her
head and shot herself. She didn't want the animals to eat,
or she wanted to be found.

Speaker 8 (19:52):
In terms of missing people, if you got to report
that somebody was up in that area and was suicidal,
can you remember cases where you were not to locate
their remains? Sometimes it would take a year or two.
Do any cases come to mind that you weren't able
to find a body.

Speaker 7 (20:07):
Not that I recall. Eventually, just like the guy that
parked on top of the rim, we had no direction
to travel or anything like that until those nurses stumbled
upon human bones, and fortunately if all of my instincts
and walked right to the skull some two hundred and
fifty yards away up a little canyon where the coyotes
had drug it. When they hang themselves, that's the first

(20:29):
thing that rots un falls off, and if you're on
a slope, it's going to roll downhill, So it makes sense.
It's like a bowling ball. It's going to roll and
then the wildlife will take it someplace where they're not
going to be seen, and that's exactly what they did.

Speaker 8 (20:44):
How often have unidentified remains been located that you guys
thought this might be Robert Fisher?

Speaker 7 (20:50):
None that I know of that we thought was absolutely
Robert Fasher. And the remains that we have found, I
don't think we have any unsolved currently. We've been aeople
to identify most all of the remains that we found
in Heila County to recap.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
In his twenty seven year career, Haviy and his colleagues
found hundreds of bodies in remote parts of HeLa County.
He can't recall any case in which someone was missing
and or suicidal and wasn't found at some point. He's
unaware of any still unidentified remains that could match Robert Fisher. However,
if Fisher died, his remains were likely scattered by wild

(21:27):
animals or not. HeLa County supervisor would he Klein tells
me an interesting story.

Speaker 9 (21:33):
One time we had a couple that was south a
young and they were down on one of those little roads.
It was a man and a woman. They had a
camp sitting there. They had a dog too. She shot
him and then shot herself. It was late in the
fall when they figured when she killed him. We didn't
find him until the late in the spring. The bears
that actually came out and they ate her and he

(21:57):
was still intact.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
I'm assuming you don't know the answer to this, but
do you have any idea why the bear did not
eat one of them?

Speaker 9 (22:04):
No, there's nothing but bones scattered around there, and obviously
the dog had been eaten on it too, because the
dog was there still alive.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
A bear eats one body, not the other. One body
reduced to bones, scattered, the other intact. Chaos. I decide
to drive to Tucson to meet up with Bruce Anderson,
a forensic anthropologist with the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office,
which for many years handled cases out of nearby HeLa
County in that.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Area around young If Robert Fischer died in the woods,
if he died in a cave, can you walk me through.

Speaker 5 (22:37):
I want to say, the decomposition and.

Speaker 8 (22:38):
Calendar, but can you give me an idea within twelve hour,
twenty four hours a week, a month, a year, twenty years?

Speaker 6 (22:44):
So he disappeared in April. So it'll be no snow.
There might be some residual snow, but it's not going
to have snow, so the temperatures might even in April
up there, they might be close to freezing. So if
he did die, the night to be cold, but today
is would warm up and by the middle of the summer.
Looking at closer triple digit. It's if he died on
the surface, I believe animals would have found him, and
they would have started with the easy parts, the fingers

(23:06):
and toes, in the face, and even if you're wearing
leather boots, they'll eventually chew through the leather and get
to your feet. Denim is not an issue for coyotes.
They'll rip right through it. Any kind of leather jacket,
they'll rip through it, eat all the soft tissue, and
then while they're doing that, probably eat a little bit
of bone. And then if they revisit the site, if
the body goes undetected for weeks or months, they'll.

Speaker 5 (23:25):
Revisit and they'll keep doing that.

Speaker 6 (23:27):
There's wolves or bears, it's possible a body could be consumed. Now,
if he was in a cave, it's going to be cooler.
I've been in caves in their flagstaff. For the temperature
is the same all year round, and it's dark except
for bats.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
I don't know who lives down there.

Speaker 6 (23:40):
So in a cave situation, if there's no large carnivores
and I don't know fruit bats or insect bats would
bother their body. I've never heard anything along those lines.
But lacking any large animals, then I'd expect there's going
to be decomposition.

Speaker 5 (23:54):
The body's going to bloat because of the autolysis.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
The cells are going to start secreting chemicals, and you
get gas built up. But eventually that gas is going
to cause either bursting of the skin or some kind
of a GI track expulsion, and then the body's going
to collapse a little bit. And if there's no critters
to smell that income eat, there still might be flies
and other insects that smell it, and then it could
be kind of akin to somebody who dies indoors. The

(24:19):
doors are locked and the windows are locked, but somehow
flies and mosquitoes get in and beetles, and then over
weeks or months, in that scenario, the flies and the
beetles would eat everything butt bone, So you could conceivably
have a complete skeleton devoid of any or most soft
tissue after several years.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
The idea that Robert Fisher's skeleton could be sitting in
a cave untouched is cinematic in a macabre way, But
in the past twenty three years, all the caves in
which he could have died have been searched repeatedly by
recreational cavers and occasionally law enforcement. No one ever found
his remains or belongings in a cave. It's possible he's

(24:58):
in one, ossified in a cravas or something, but unlikely.
What about outside in a forest or canyon.

Speaker 6 (25:05):
In that case, you're not going to find a skeleton
that's complete.

Speaker 5 (25:09):
It's not going to happen. Right.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
Even if for some reason the animals, the carnivores or
birds didn't.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
Find him, the bugs would skeletonize them.

Speaker 6 (25:16):
That domestic beetles would finish cleaning the bones off, but
raccoon or something would come and disturb the skeleton.

Speaker 5 (25:22):
Plus the whole skeleton laying out in the desert.

Speaker 6 (25:24):
Not twenty years later, there's hunters, there's people on ATVs.
So if he did die up here, it's almost if
his body had to be hidden.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
It's strange nothing was ever found. That's in stark contrast
with the majority of people who vanished in Kila County,
nearly all of whom are located in whole or part
I asked Bruce to check NamUs, the National Database of
Missing People and Unidentified Remains. Are there any remains that
could belong to Fisher?

Speaker 6 (25:51):
As of today, there's thirty possible matches to him within
one hundred miles of where he disappeared.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Which sounds intriguing, but you can immediately rule out the
majority of them. Only eleven have ever warranted further examination.
For eleven different ups unidentified persons.

Speaker 5 (26:07):
Somebody thought we got to make sure this isn't Fisher.
Apparently it's not.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
If you like this show, please download our first two seasons,
Missing in Alaska and Missing on nine to eleven. For updates,
visit meon thirty three dot com or follow me on
Twitter at John waalzac j O n Wa l Czak.
Thanks for listening. Scottsdale Police and the FBI keep a

(26:52):
close eye on any remains found in or near Heila County.
When remains are located, it's possible to determine quickly whether
or not they could belong to Fisher. Experts can tell
whether the person is male or female, estimate the person's height,
look for dental fillings like the infamous gold tooth, and
look for signs that the person had back surgery. All

(27:14):
that before lab testing as far as DNA, even twenty
three years later, Even in Arizona, even without a skull
or teeth, most skeletal remains will still yield DNA. Meaning
if you find any human bone in HeLa County, turn
it in, it could be Fisher.

Speaker 5 (27:33):
The larger, thicker bones are better. But even a rib,
let's say he was.

Speaker 6 (27:36):
Devoured by animals and there's just scraps left, a few ribs,
maybe a piece of clavicle or something, maybe a piece
of mandible.

Speaker 5 (27:44):
That could yield.

Speaker 6 (27:44):
Even after two decades, it could yield because sunlight is
a very strong inhibitor for DNA preservation, and we have
a lot more of it down here in the Sonoran Desert,
and they do up on the rim or near the rim.
And still given that we have submitted samples from bleached
white bone, bone has been laying after a decade or more, Yeah,
when we cut into it, it's still yallow. In the middle,

(28:05):
that yellow part of the bone may still have some
viable DNA in it.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Any DNA can be run through COTIS, the national DNA database,
to see if it matches Robert. His parents submitted samples
of their DNA to police, who uploaded them to COTIS.
If investigators run DNA through COTIS and it's Robert, it'll
ping bam we found him. Sadly that hasn't happened. What
about his belongings, his pistol, camping gear, driver's license, credit cards,

(28:33):
car keys, tobacco tens. They could still be out there.
In twenty fourteen, an archaeologist in Nevada found a one
hundred and thirty two year old rifle propped up against
a juniper tree. It's now known as the Forgotten Winchester.
It apparently lay there untouched for at least a century.
Two years later, a wildfire burned through the area. This

(28:56):
teaches us two important lessons. One yes, stop can survive
outside in the arid Southwest for a long time, and two,
wildfires can easily destroy it, which is pertinent to the
fissure case. Since two thousand and one, two fires have
ravaged the area around the fore runner spot. The Rodeo
Chetta Sky fire in two thousand and two and the

(29:18):
Poco Fire in twenty twelve. The Rodeo Chetta sky fire
burned from the east, the Poco fire from the west.
What's incredible is that while both came extremely close to
the fore Runners spot, neither reached it. By examining maps,
our researcher, Paul Gemberline, determine there's a tiny strip of
land between the fires, three quarters of a mile wide

(29:40):
that didn't burn. Amazingly, it includes the four Runners spot. Furthermore,
while maps show us fire perimeters, they can't tell us
how intensely the fires burned. Paul said, quote. There can
be patches within a perimeter that are less burned, not
burned at all, or burned to a crisp meaning there
might still be evidence in places marked as burned that

(30:02):
didn't burn, separate from physical evidence bones, guns, keys. Let's
dial back to common sense. How likely is it that
a man who spent his entire life outside died at
a critical moment from something other than suicide, a snake bite,
a falling rock disease, something random. Sure, anything is possible

(30:23):
in a violent nature, and Fisher would have been in
a rush, making him more prone to fatal error, But
is it likely that he died of natural causes or
a random act of God and none of his remains
or belongings were ever located. Moving on number three, escaped
then died theory Robert Fisher escaped and lived as a fugitive,

(30:45):
but sometime in the past twenty three years he died.
No one ever connected his body to him, either because
he lived under a false identity or because his remains
are sitting somewhere unidentified. Verdict possible, but unlikely. According to
the Social Security Administration, Fisher had a life expectancy at
birth of seventy five years, meaning if he didn't die

(31:07):
by suicide, he's probably alive. If alive age sixty three,
If he made it this far, he'd still have about
twenty years left to live. That's because as you get older,
as you survive the perils of youth and middle age,
your life expectancy increases. The government would now expect him
to die around January twenty forty five. For argument's sake, though,

(31:29):
let's say he did escape and die. He could have
been buried or cremated under a false name. But if
his remains were unidentified, a mysterious John Doe. They likely
would have been fingerprinted and maybe even tested for DNA.
His fingerprints are on file in a national database, so
too are DNA samples from his parents. So there's next
to zero chance his remains have been located and checked

(31:52):
against databases without being connected to him. Now, maybe he
died somewhere with a lazy corner. Anything's possible, I guess.
But again, is it likely number two died in the
wild by suicide? There are only two theories that make
sense to me, and this is one of them. Everything
I said though about option number four, that Robert died

(32:15):
in the wild not by suicide, still applies here. It's
strange that none of his remains or belongings have ever
been found. The Forerunner spot is rugged and remote, but
not that remote. It's only two hours and twenty minutes
from the fifth largest city in America. People head up
there all the time to hike, hunt camp cave. It's

(32:36):
been twenty three years. Still nothing. However, there's a possible
explanation for this. If he died, I think he died
on tribal land.

Speaker 8 (32:45):
Is that a fence that is offense?

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Police find Mary's suv near the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

Speaker 8 (32:52):
This is the boundary.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Tribal land is sovereign territory over which state and local
law enforcement have limited influence. Tribal police assist in the
initial hunt for Fisher, but in the years that follow,
the one point seven million acre reservation population fifteen thousand
is never searched as thoroughly as the federal land next
to it, the Tonto National Forest. The tribal border is

(33:16):
marked by a barbed wire fence and no trespassing signs. Yes,
people violate them, but still the national forest is much
easier to visit and access. Therefore, it's likelier that any
undiscovered remains are on tribal land. Now moving on, eighty
to eighty five percent of family annihilators die by suicide,

(33:37):
but fifteen to twenty percent don't. A minority, sure, but
a sizeable one. How can someone live with themselves after
killing their family? I don't know, but fifteen to twenty
percent of annihilators do, including some prominent ones like John List. Furthermore,
Robert had strong religious beliefs against suicide. Obviously they also

(33:59):
prohibit murder, but to many Christians, suicide is the cardinal sin,
the one you can't come back from the one, in
their view for which there's no redemption, the one that
sent you to hell. Now, many people who knew Robert
believe he died by suicide, in part because he threatened
it previously in nineteen ninety nine, when he confessed to
cheating on Mary. I discussed this with Fisher family friends,

(34:22):
including John Rodin and his wife Mary Beth.

Speaker 6 (34:25):
He had said in that letter that if she wasn't
going to take him back, he was going to kill himself.

Speaker 5 (34:30):
So that's why at first we figured, yeah, he's dead.
I know this is a tough question.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
But what would indicate that he was serious about killing
himself versus it being a ploy for attention to Mary.

Speaker 9 (34:40):
Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
I didn't thought about that.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Robert told Mary he was going to a cabin in
the wild for thirty days. He conveyed that she could
leave him, but if she did, he'd kill himself. He
told her how to reach him. Mary ignored him. Only
three to four days later he came home. In this context,
it seems like Robert's threat was insincere, just one more

(35:05):
blunt instrument to manipulate and control Mary.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
End of Part one, Please continue to Part two.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
You can reach us by phone at one eight three
three new Tips That's one, eight three, three, six three, nine,
eight four seven seven, by email at tips at iHeartMedia
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meon thirty three dot com, or on Twitter at John Wallzac,
j O, n w A. L. Czak. Paul Decan is

(35:43):
our executive producer, Chris Brown is our supervising producer. Hannah
Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemperlin is our researcher,
Ben Bolan is a consulting producer, and I'm your host
and executive producer John Wallzac recreation voiced by Rob Lamb.
Additional production support provided by Ben Haas. Cover art by
Pam Peacock. Neon thirty three, logo designed by Derek Rudy.

(36:04):
Our intro song is Utopia by Ruby Cube. Please download
the first two seasons of our show, Missing in Alaska
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a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three