Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
not be suitable for all listeners. Ashley Zarski initially seems
like someone Robert Fisher would dislike. He's a conservative, gun
toting hunter in a pickup truck. She's a liberal leaning woman,
unafraid to speak her mind. They're not a natural match,
so it may surprise you that of everyone I interview,
(00:22):
Ashley gives me the best insight into Robert when we
meet in Sedona. All I know is that she worked
with him years ago. I have no idea she was
also one of his closest friends. Our conversation is emotional
and revealing. We talk of affairs and violent threats and caves.
What strikes me most, though, is how Ashley is still
(00:43):
struggling twenty three years later to reconcile the man she
knew with the brutal acts he's accused of committing. Ashley
is perhaps the bravest person I interview for this show.
It would be so easy for her to disown Robert
or at least remain silent. Instead, she's up for him.
To be clear, she abhors the murders she knew and
(01:04):
loved Mary and the kids, but she refuses to paint
Robert as a two dimensional evil cartoon. She resists the
urge to pile on to erase years of happy memories.
Long after the church and hunting Buddies throw Robert under
the bus. Understandable given the circumstances. I'm not judging them,
Ashley recounts to me in her first public interview, the deepest,
(01:27):
most honest, most complex narrative of who Robert really was.
Think of the bravery that takes if tomorrow the world
hates you, viscerally despises you. You are evil incarnate, a
throat slashing child killer who will speak on your behalf,
who will resist the urge to distill you down to
your worst instincts, who will refuse to feed the hungry
(01:50):
media beast and the ravenous public it serves the reductive
archetypal villain they crave. This is not about making Robert
Fisher look good. It's about trying to understand and find him.
It's also about integrity. Courage is more than violence. Courage
can be calm. Courage can be telling a stranger about
a friend you loved, the truth, good and bad, even
(02:12):
when your friend is accused of heinous crimes. To find
Robert Fisher, we need to understand him. To understand him,
we need nuance. Nuance is truth, and truth is integrity,
and integrity still matters, at least on this show from
iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three. I'm John Walzac and this
(02:35):
is Missing in Arizona, the story of a man who
disappeared after allegedly killing his wife and kids, blowing up
their suburban home and escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three
years later, I'm hunting Robert Fisher, and I need your help.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Tell me what you do for a look.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I'm a respiratory therapist. I give breathing treatments to people.
I do diagnostic testing, and the book my job as
I take care of people on life sports systems.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I imagine the last few years with COVID were kind
of tough for you.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
The last three years have been really hard, demoralizing in
a lot of ways. I think the hardest part for
me was that our own government was lying to us. Oh,
in this spring, when it gets warmed this, I'll just
go away, don't, won't. I know? I didn't. When Phoenix
was still shut down, they had this huge protest to
the Capitol. So we did a counter protest. It showed
(03:31):
up in scrubs in ninety five across across the chest
and he said nothing, and people just were horrible. They
threw shapes and sodas out of us. They called us actors.
I'm like, come work one shift in my ICU. You'll
feel differently at my hospital. In the eleven months that
I was there, and I had one thousand and eighty
(03:53):
nine COVID patients on events, and seventeen of them lived
to leave the hospital.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So what year did you begin your career? What year
did you first work as a therapist?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Nineteen ninety and is that when you met Robert Fresher. Yep,
he went vipe up. Nice guy. He was funny, but
he was super quiet, so he would surprise you with
his sense of humor. I'll give you this one story.
We had a cardiac of russ come into the ear.
He had gotten up to ICU and kind of have
a twit for a nurse. So the intensivist comes up
(04:23):
and he wants to see her notes, and she's all
flustered because they're not complete. So she starts telling them
Doctor Hammond, I had to do this and this and
this and this, and finally he's like, Evlin, I'm not
grating your notes, and she goes back into her spiel
of hell, they're not complete, but it's not our fault.
So doctor Hammond says, you know, Everylin, you would get
a lot further with me if just periodically you compliment me,
(04:46):
like doctor Hammond, you dashing young thing here, please look
at my nursing notes. I'm in there, and Pob's in
there that this conversation's too good, So neither one of
us is leaving this room. Finally, doctor Hammond sees the
notes and he gets what he needs and he starts
to leave the room, and Bob lookes up and says,
doctor Hammond, you handsome hunk of steel, where are you going?
(05:07):
And so that became my name for doctor Hammon for
the rest of the time I worked there.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Humor bonds them tightly and helps them cope with blood
and gore and stress.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Healthcare workers become more warped the more pressure there is,
so the jokes become a little bit less appropriate. For instance,
every single stinky year, Memorial Day weekend, and Labor Day weekend,
every trauma center in this state is going to get
hit with vote propeller versus swimmer or a jet scare.
(05:38):
And let's just say that propeller always wins. The patients
that come in. We used to name SEVICI. I'm telling you,
we go darkly under pressure. That's where we went. I
got Sevichi. Are you going to bag and drag this one?
I can remember working a level one track that was
(06:00):
pedestrian versus train. The train never loses, and it was
a blood path, and about every five seconds or so,
Bob would have to take an alcohol wipe across the
goggles because I didn't just being covered and what he
was good at seeing needs and filling those for people,
And he didn't do it with a lot of fanfare,
but he did it really consistently.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Beyond jokes and moments of kindness. Robert was also a prankster.
Ashley tells me about a coworker with whom Robert had
a friendly competition.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
He and Bob used to tease each other and pull
pranks on each other all the time. What kind of
thanks if you left the little bottles of say, Jurgen's
hand lotion on the courtroom table when you came in
in the morning, it was very likely to have been
replaced with the mayonnaise from the cafeteria instead, so you
(06:52):
smelled like the condiment aisle for any of the next
twelve hours. There was this magic shop that sold all
sorts of pranks gifts, kind of like a Spencer's gifts
but better. And it had these little glass files of
the most foul smelling stuff you could imagine. And it
was a pretty common gag that we would take one
of these glass files, this nasty smell of stuff, tape
(07:15):
it into the doorframe, I mean ky the inside door knobs.
So now you've closed the door, break the glass. You're
just being attacked with like chemical warfare, and now you
can't even turn the door knob. Take it off. I
was stupid, kind of juvenile things, but they were just fun.
Bob and a few of us might have stolen one
(07:36):
of the golf carts from security and driven it through
the air once. The things that you could get by
word for so much more fun. Healthcare was a lot
more fun in the mid nineties.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So if you would partake in these pranks.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Oh yeah, he drummed them up half the time. The
golf cart was totally hissitia, Oh, they won't do anything.
I'm like, I like living indoors and eating food. I
don't want to forge myself. I'll hunt you something. I
don't want raccoon. You know, we just had a banter.
We made more jokes than anything about like the Clinton
(08:11):
Monica Lewinski thing. We more or less laughed at these
poor people. It wasn't nice, but it didn't affect us either.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Jokes aside. Robert wasn't very political. With one exception, A.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Lot of people in our department were really excited about
Ross parole when he was initially starting to round in
ninety two. You know, the economy stunk and they were
looking for something different. So he was kind of in
that vein. We had probably fifty people in our department
in about ten or twelve, like, we're doing parole. If
(08:41):
this is the best the two party system can give us,
We're ing parole. And he was kind of into that.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Do you remember any reaction of his Oklahoma City or
Waco or the Clinton years, oj any of the seminal
comments of the nunties.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I can't remember us watching the Oja high speech. Chase
I had all of thirty miles an hour through the
streets of LA with the rest of the country and
laughing at it. I don't remember him expressing a view
whether he had done it or not, but we were like, yeah,
that's exactly how I'd be trying to ditch the La cops.
I'd be driving thirty miles an hour down the four
(09:20):
or five.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
What about religion? Did Ashley ever see Robert reading a Bible?
Did he talk about God?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
No? No, that was a family thing, and we would
get into some philosophical discussions once in a while, but
he certainly wasn't one of these it was going to say, yeah,
the second current dance unless you're Trump and two current
Dans or whatever. He wasn't going to throw his religion
down anybody else's throat.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
The way that he's been portrayed in the media is
as I don't know how to say this nicely, like
a kind of conservative runneck. Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
I think that's inaccurate. I mean, yeah, he liked to
wear overalls with or without T shirt, leaves the T
shirt off, Bobby work out a lot, is a nice field. Again,
I told you all roads lie data, but he wasn't
a redneck at all. And I mean, well, I grew
up in Atlanta. I can tell you a few things
about Redinck and he certainly didn't fit that mold at all.
(10:18):
And I won't even necessarily calm, super concernedive, just quiet.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Do you remember what foods he liked to drink?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
This is going to make him sound like the redneck.
I remember being big on beef jerky, huge on beef jerky,
taking in there the overalls. We always ate dinner together
in those days. Most of us were doing either like
chicken on fries or burger fries. He was the one
who told me to eat fries with ranch dressing, which
the first time I saw that, it's awesome.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
What else was he into?
Speaker 3 (10:50):
He was really into hunting and fishing. I hate guns. No,
I'm not asking to take you away years there, just
not for me. He was really into his fitness. He
used to bent pressed the eight cylinders. They're heavy, until
he got caught and they were like, no, no, you
can't do that because if you drop it, you're going
to kill us all. And then he would do bicep
curls with the east cylinders. They're still a good fifteen
(11:12):
twenty pounds. And then when he got busted with that,
he would just pick a small stuff number he'd been
pressed through.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Can you describe Bob physically to me? Like, if he
walk in this room, what is he?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Sometimes he would shave his head real close. Other times
he had kind of a short blonde haircut, about six
foot two, probably went two and a quarter two thirty.
He was pretty solid. It wasn't heavy set at all.
He was just solid. Thus the bench pressing these tanks
weighed well over one hundred pounds, about nothing of it.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
What about his back pain?
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It would bother him periodically. I can remember a time
that he took a week or two weeks off because
he was just bed balanced. But they were preparing for
their first child and he was helping Mary set up
the nurser, but doing all sorts of home renovations too,
and had just aggravated it. But day to day he
didn't really complain about it that much. Everybody kind of
(12:05):
knew that he had had it, and it's why when
he would do crazy things like bench press the h
cylinders or his co workers, we were like, you're going
to kill your back. No, I got this.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
As the nineties progressed, Robert's back pain got more severe,
but even as he deteriorated, he still went on adventures
with coworkers, hiking, fishing, biking. One trip in particular stands out.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
And some of the air Ducks and some of the
other artists had gone on a mountain bike trip out
by Bartlett Lake and John Hatfield buried a wheel in
the sand. So he was biking in the buried the
front wheel and went over the handoffers smash everything.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
He John Hatfield.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Fractured essentially every bone in his face, ended up requiring
an emergency trait. They had to take him in the field.
You know the bs things you see on television where
they track somebody with a big ballpoint pen. That's how
he came into the ear.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Did Bob perform the trade.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
No one of the er docs did, but Bob helped
secure kept John comb. Somehow they allow Bob to fly
in with John. Had an identical twin. Bob was one
who got in touch with Peter and took care of
notifying people and organizing things like a blood drive, organizing
things like people donating vacation hours to John because he
(13:24):
was going to need it.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Hello, John, I reached John Hatfield by phone.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Robert Fisher was working as a restory therapist as I
was working in the same department at the time. In
the late.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Eighties, Robert started as a respiratory therapist, then was promoted
to cardiovascular tech, a role which had.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
Him responding to the level one trauma center to help
put in central lines and chest tubes inside the trauma
room in the er. The kind of work that you
guys did, that's a high stress environment. There's zero margin
for error. Can you talk about what kind of person
drives in that environment? Anybody with a paramedic kind of
a background, or even rest for a therapist that work
(14:05):
in intensive care to have a low anxiety level When
things need to get done, you just kind of know
what you're going to do because you're trained, you're educated,
you know what the process is. So it's almost reflexive.
If you will, you don't have to think about it.
You just can do it. It's almost like they're stepping
back and even if though people may be on the
verge of death, you know that you're doing what you
(14:25):
need to do to prevent it. It's just through training,
the anxiety level is just not there.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
What was Robert like as a person.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
He was driven on exercise and fan off bills and
making sure his family was taken care of. He was
very traditional kind of a person in a sense of
family hierarchy. It was very much man goes out, works,
makes the money, brings it home. A woman stays home,
takes care of the kids. I can members two kids
being born. His wife delivered. There are two children right
(14:54):
there at the same campus where we worked. So I
remember both his daughter and Bobby Junior both being born,
and he's just being a big proud dad.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Of course, my boy, smile, you're on candy camera.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Boy, the keys there you go.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
When he had his kids was probably the happiest that
I'd ever seen them. In fact, before I went back
to Resttory School, I had worked as a professional photographer. Well,
his wife had taken both kids when Bobby would have
been like three or four months old to sears, and
three times they had to be reshoots for whatever reason.
Film was destroyed, eyes were closed and I still had
(15:32):
access to the studio. So I'll do family pictures. I'll
do the kids together to the kids lull. In those days,
it was still film, so we sent out film. When
they got developed. I took the main shot from each
of those groupings as an alumn by fourteen, put them
in frames and hung on both the patient rooms and
I see you just to watch his reaction, and he
(15:53):
was awesome with that. I think knowing that side of
him is what has made it the hardest for me
to accept did he really do this? For the first
ten years I would have scept not a chance. Twenty
years now I have to say the FBI probably knows
more than I do, even if I knew the guy better.
So that's been hard.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
The Robert Ashley remembers was kind, empathetic.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
And super generous. Like I got hit by a drunk
driver end of ninety one and just broke everything. It
was twenty five surgeries from one car accident, and Bob
gave me, you could donate your PTO time. He gave
me like a couple hundred hours of PTO time. Fairly generous,
but he was just quite so. He wasn't going to
make a big deal of doing it. He wasn't going
(16:37):
to tell forty nine of his closest friends that he
was doing it. But he would just do things like
that t help y'all.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Outside of work.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Ashley, Robert and their families went to baseball games, water parks,
and concerts. Robert was a huge Garth Brooks family.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
And when Pink Floyd came to town.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
We have great seats on the field. It was a
huge crowd passing beach balls around stuff. That was as
I was getting to know him better and he had
seen kind of quiet and reserve. But he asked me,
if I was getting tickets, would I mind getting tickets
for he married to Joinette.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Another time, Robert and Ashley attended a charity consultor in
Sedona organized to raise money for a Native American scholarship fund.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So it was Jackson Brown, Bonnie Ray, the Indigo Girls.
He had never heard the Indigo Girls, but he really
liked because nobody harmonizes like them and let me go
back to like Simon and Garfunkel or something. He went
with the year that Melissa Ethrich was there, which was
funny because I never saw but other friends who were
probably's such a homophobe. I never had him say anything
(18:02):
or act in any way that made me believe that,
And considering that particular concert, looks see between the Indigo
Girls Melissa Etheridge, if he was as big a homophobe
as people in their own minds made them out to be.
You sure wouldn't have known it that day.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
This brings me to an interesting point, Robert Fisher's sexuality.
It comes up unexpectedly. When I interviewed former FBI agent
Bob Caldwell.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
There was a point that they thought maybe he might
be Someone had mentioned that he might be homosexual, and
maybe it was his homosexual.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Lover who helped him escape after he killed his family.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Do you remember who speculator that he was gay.
Speaker 6 (18:39):
I believe that was his pastor, friend that he grew
up with in high school that was counseling him and Mary.
I believe he was the first one to mention that
he might have been gay.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You're talking about Ken. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Ken Hodgson was one of Robert's closest friends in Confidants.
They grew up together. Ken later became a pastor and
for many year Robert attended his church. If Robert told
anyone he was gay, it would have been Ken. I
try reaching Ken, but he never responds. Now, let me
paint a picture of two men. One is a gun
toting hunter and fisherman who drives a pickup, loves country
(19:16):
music and allegedly has affairs with women. The other is
a fitness obsessed wanna be nurse who likes tight shirts,
was in the Navy and jams out to the Indigo girls.
They're both Robert Fisher. This is not about his sexuality.
It's about stereotypes, good, evil, gay, straight, and integrity and storytelling.
I have all the power here. Either version of the
(19:38):
truth I choose is technically true?
Speaker 4 (19:41):
What is truth?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Though?
Speaker 4 (19:43):
What is real?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
These are perhaps the defining questions of our era, which
is why I want to illustrate, briefly, in a tiny way,
how storytellers, reporters, entertainers, dictators can warp what you think.
It's possible to lie by telling the truth, by cherry
picking narrow truths that fit your chosen narrative. As far
as Robert's sexuality.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Who knows.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Maybe he was gay, maybe he was straight, maybe he
was bisexual. No one can answer that except Robert himself
or maybe his pastor friend Ken Ken or Robert I'm here,
call me.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I'm not into conspiracy theories. Think those people are idiots.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Creator honestly Ashley again, But I bought into Lue a
persistent rumor that Robert had an affair.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
With one of the icee and nurses that we both
worked with. Sure she went through a negliative force in
her hospit of the time, would call the hospital and
leave threatening messages for Bob.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
This is a big deal.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Neither the alleged affair nor the threats have ever been
reported publicly to my knowledge. They'll be new even to
law enforcement. Ashley doesn't know for sure whether or not
Robert and the nurse had an affair. Robert never confirmed it,
but he does know that the nurse's husband thought the
affair was ongoing for years.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You said that her husband would call on Friday messages
for Robert.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was like not even a secret.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And was this in the mid nineties, late nineties.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That would have been mid nineties kind of all when
oj thing was happening, Probably ninety five ish did it started,
was still going on dur ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Do you remember anything about the nature of those thoughts,
how frequent they were, what he said, anything like that.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
There were some that you know, I'll be waiting for
you when you get off. But Bob was a big guy.
He was probably six to two and just solid. I
never met husband, but everybody who did kind of laughed
at Yeah, I'll be waiting for them. And I don't
remember a lot of the specifics out there than just
(21:45):
stupid tsasseronn Beard driven rants.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
For three years from nineteen ninety five to ninety eight.
This man thought his wife was having an affair with
Robert Fisher. He called the hospital repeatedly threatening Robert.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
How did Bob react to this throats?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
He laughed them off?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Well, usually Ashley laughed them off too.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Robert was six feet tall with a lean, muscular build.
The nurse's husband not so much, but still.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
There were some epistol off When he was mad. He
would get pretty reserved to himself, so you'd have to
choke with him to kind of get them out of
it and say, Bob, look at the sides, you and
Pevey Herman, who do you think is going to win
this battle? It'll be okay.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
The threats continued until at least nineteen ninety eight, three
years before the murders. They had a material impact on Robert.
He first worked at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital's Osborne campus, only
one point eight miles from his house, about a five
minute drive.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Then, as rumors and the threats started coming, and he
went to share.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The shady campus was much further away, nine point eight
miles from his house, about a thirty minute drive in
rush hour. It's been reported that in nineteen ninety nine,
Robert had an affair with Messuse. I'll get to that
in a later episode, but this is very different. First,
it's new information. Second, it's important to examine the word affair.
(23:09):
Affair connotates an ongoing relationship. The nineteen ninety nine incident was,
by all accounts, a one time sexual encounter, not an affair. This, however,
allegedly went on for three years and was with a
close coworker, not a random Messuse. It was enough to
force Robert to move from one hospital near his house
to another far away. The implications of this alleged affair
(23:31):
and the threats Robert received are potentially important. I haven't
seen any evidence that law enforcement interviewed the nurse implicated
in the alleged affair. I also haven't seen any evidence
they considered her husband a possible suspect. But after the
murders Ashley did.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
If he didn't do it, who else in the world
or would ever want to do anything to hurt with
his family, and the only thing that came to mind
was now ex husband.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I wasn't able to reach the nurse's husband, but I
did speak briefly by phone to the nurse.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
She vehemently denied any.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Affair quote bullshit never happened. 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
(24:28):
three dot com or follow me on Twitter at John
waalzac jo n Wa l Czak. Thanks for listening. The
(24:51):
alleged affair and violent threats are the first bombshell of
my interview with Ashley. The second is the caves. After
the murders, investigators called ash and asked about.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Places that Bob liked to hang out. Where did he
like to camp from with I don't camp, but if
he's alive, and if he's in Arizona, you'll find him
in northern Arizona. Told him about Young because we used
to explore the caves. We ride mountain bikes there and
explore the cave some.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
This has never been reported before. Ashley is the first
witness to establish a link between Robert Fisher and the caves.
Where police thought he was hiding after the murders, where
many people still believe his body remains today. A race
from your mind any image of Grand Hollywood caves. These
are tiny holes leading into claustrophobic tangles of underground passageways.
(25:39):
I had been leaning away from the idea that Fisher
died in a cave. Now I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
The SWAT team entered the redmand cave, but the one
that was closest to where the vehicle was, which is
right there, yeah, fifty.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Feet Gila County Detective Brian Havey.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Were they able to enter that cave?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
No.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Deputy Kron tried to make entry into the cave, and
it's just too narrow. There's no way that any human
being could have crawled down in that one.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
So I'm going down in the cave.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
If you have any claustrophobia, you don't want to be
doing this. Yes, next episode, I go down into the caves.
But first I need to learn more from Ashley.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
You know for a fact that he has some familiarity
with the caves.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Oh yeah, all hands down. I know he used to
like to go to Young and hunt that region of
the caves. I know he knew. He was the one
that kept us from freaking out when you'd take a
turn and then it would get a little tighter than
you wanted it.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
So you actually went in caves with him?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Yeah, all of us did.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Ashley, Robert and some coworkers went mountain biking near the
caves and decided to enter one together.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
It was a great place to cool down when you
got overheated from mountain biking because they were a lot cooler.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
When you say you went into the cave, how far
deep did you guys go? And how far deep did
he go?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
They? You want pretty far because I came out a
different way then we've gone it. I probably want a
few hundred yards at best. Then skill was an involved
and I'm like, yeah, I'm out. Were you crawling when
it got tight? Yeah? So initially you could stand up
and just walk right in. It was a reprieve from
the heat. That was a great place to cool off
(27:11):
during our ride. We kind of made it kind of
like our halfway point turned around.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Do you remember what time of year and what year mentions.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
It was sometime between ninety two and ninety five, ninety
six maybe even, And you.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Said that was near young. Yeah, so it was very
close to where the four Runner was not.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Really close to where the four Runners found and so
I was like, that's kind of creepy. But I also
thought at that point that if Bob really did it,
they were going to find him dead in the cave.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
But they didn't.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
No one ever found any of Robert's remains or belongings.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I knew that he would never hurt the dog. I'm
not surprised if they found Blue alive. I was surprised
that they didn't find up dead. That sounds morbid, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Well, I mean it's true though.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
On April tenth, two thousand and one, when Robert's house exploded, I.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Saw on the news. My jaw hit the ground. I
picked up the phone and called the number to say,
you have this wrong. There was not a.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Chance when news of the murders filtered out.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I accept this, not a chance on how he would
have laid a finger on either one of those kids
or Mary.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
What was Mary like?
Speaker 3 (28:19):
She was sweet? She was quiet, but really sweet, great
with kids like man, you missed your calling all those
years who worked for Bank of America. You should have
been teaching kindergarten. You would be great at this.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Do you remember if you would wear his wedding room?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah? Always.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
In fact, the night Robert kept wiping blood off Ashley's
goggles at work so she could see.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
He ended up having to change gloves a billion times
because the glove would split where his ring was. One
of the things that I always remember him saying was
that he married up, that he got the better end
of the deal, and I thought that was sweet.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Robert also spoke lovingly about at least one other family member.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
He had a sister that he was so close to
it that he talked about finally.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
What did you say about his sister?
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Just she was like a second mother, a friend, a
partner in crime, that she had always been there for him.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Later, as I'm packing up, Ashley tells me she has
a message for Robert's sisters or.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Whatever it's worth. And not everybody hated it.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Or even necessarily knows to sure.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Or even necessarily knows for sure he did it.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You said you've struggled with coming to terms with the
idea that he did it. Do you think that he
did it at this.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Point on an intellectual level, Yeah, I have to think
that he did it on an emotional level. I don't
know that all ever get there. If he in fact
did do this, it had to have been some massive
psychotic break, and I know that doesn't really fit the narrative.
(29:55):
When you see him on the tapes they've shown on
television going to the bank or go you to buy
supplies and stuff, I don't know that I saw any
supplies being purchased that he wouldn't have purchased on any
given day or the week for his lifestyle. So I
kind of was like, oh, yeah, you made that fitter narrative,
whether it was true or not.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
At this point, do you believe he's alive or.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Then I think he's dead. And I've thought that for
a really long time. In the early days of it,
there were a couple of supposed sightings who wanted a
grocery store and pasion, which would have made sense, But
it wasn't him. The guy that they detained in Canada.
He was pretty good image of him, wasn't him. And
I have said from the very start that if you did,
(30:41):
you're not going to find him alive. He's not somebody
that would have said, oh I got rid of that problem.
Now I'm going to start this life I've been secretly
wanting that's certainly not the Bob that I've known him
in any version.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
I asked you a hard question, Sure, how much of
that is objective? And how much do you want to believe.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That it's fifty to fifty honest objectively? Said, Look, his
story and his picture was certainly out there, like right
away out there. So I'm like, really, nobody could find
this guy. It's not like he's Deep Cooper jumping out
of a plane, you know. So that's the objective said,
(31:19):
And the subjective is it sounds more were to say,
you hope that one of your friends or buddy's is
but for his sake, if he did do this, then
I hope that he's not alive, because it would torture him.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
In early two thousand and one, Ashley, her husband, and
their son spent a weekend with the Fishers at a
cabin near Whispering Pines, eleven miles north of Payson.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
It was just before this happened, and we'd had a
great weekend together. Bob helped cut down the lembs that
were too close to the cabin. There was a stream
that went just below where the cabin was in whispered clients,
and he went fishing with Bobby, tried to show my
not quite four year old how'll catch a fit. And
then the next thing I know is not even a
(32:05):
month later, and I'm seeing this on the news and
I'm like, there's no way he did this. That's where
he stayed stuck for completely stuck for about ten years.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
So this trip was in March of two thousand one.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, it would have been in February or March of
two thousand and one. And it was just a weekend thing.
We'd done it a billion times.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Ashley's son, Kyle, was only three and a half.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
And it was a funny kid and he loved Bob
because Bob would toss him around like a basketball for
hours and you wonder why your back coats. Bob would
toss Kyle in the air forever. He loved the billy low.
She's OK, Yeah, I kind of missed this.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I pressed Ashley for as many details about this final
trip weeks before the murders as she can remember.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
During the day out there, you could see other cappins around,
but at night it had a three sided wrap around
porch and the creek ran just below the property. Line,
and it felt like you were the only one on earth.
So that was our happy time. That was Bob's bourbon time.
And that was about the only time that you would
really see him drink very much. I mean after work
(33:09):
sometimes we would all go out and play pool together.
You might see him with a beer, but he liked bourbon.
He tried his damnas to teach my three and a
half year old to fish from the Greek. Yeah, he
was in and out of it, like he was a
child of immediate gratification. So when he cast the first
line and it did not come up with a fish,
he's kind of a pissed off three year old. Bob
(33:30):
thought that was funny. He was patient with him, and
he had Bobby helping him learn how to work the
net that trip.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Did you notice anything negative about his dynamic with Mary.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Or because no, And I think that's part of why
I was like, there is not a snowballs chance and
how he did this. I was just so convicted that
he did not do that. I would have seen something.
I kept racking my brain for did I see any
little argument disagreement took And I didn't. I didn't see
(34:01):
thing different.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
It's kind of hard to hide long standing maurial issues. Yeah,
from somebody you've known for eleven years. It's not like
you knew it for three weeks.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Right, It's like the temperature of the room can get
icy in a bad relationship, and it never did. But
either they put on just a great, unified front or
they were doing all right.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
One question I'd have for you is for people that
believe that he did this, I think it might be
jarring to hear somebody speak of the positive side of him.
Are you okay with that?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
It bothers me that people are that way because and
I think it's just gotten more intense over this last decade, especially,
people only want to see you one way, and I
think one thing about me, I'm like, these are people
who didn't know them, who've never experienced that, and I
want to talk like experts. It bothers me. There's nothing
(34:56):
I'm bill about them. But yeah, that has always kind
of bothered me that in my experience, most people who
have said negative things don't never spend an hour their
life with them and didn't know them.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
By the way, is this is the beginning of all
the same time.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Uh huh, don't worry it rolls too fast, but it's
kind of cool to see.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We get up from Ashley's table, walk to the back door.
Through the window, I see storm clouds roll in the
famous red rocks of Sedona, rise above the horizon and darken.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
The monsoon is here and we.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
Get more of the Lord there when I gonna make
a can.
Speaker 8 (35:38):
O my way up here. I've been, I've been too,
could have paid up the pie. Oh good, this is
I love it up.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
My parents love it up here, so I'm not.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
But it's like he's from an emotional part from this place,
so American up. I'll come back with the need.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
To stone all the pros may and you just.
Speaker 9 (36:21):
Put in a brand new kitchen after bath Redd the pool.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
But replace the roof.
Speaker 9 (36:27):
Like our exit strategy always was it One day Kyle
would cremate us a BACKWASHICETU pull fill start still might
be the exit strategy, but it won't be from.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I haven't heard.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, next time I'm missing in Arizona. Something says not
haunted like anurring a little cave near grave in the woods.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
Cave near the grave.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
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 dot com,
tips at iHeartMedia dot com, online at meon thirty three
dot com, or on Twitter at John Wallzac.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
J O, n w A. L. Czak.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Paul Decan is our executive producer, Chris Brown is our
supervising producer. Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemberline
is our researcher, Ben Bolan is a consulting producer, and
I'm your host and executive producer John Wallzac. Cover art
by Pam Peacock. Meon thirty three. Logo designed by Derek Rudy.
Our intro song is Utopia by Ruby Cube. Please download
(37:51):
the first two seasons of our show, Missing in Alaska
and Missing on nine to eleven, and if you're so inclined,
give us a five star rating. Missing an Arizona is
a co production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three