15. The Accomplice?

Jon exposes Robert's likeliest accomplice.

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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
alleged physical, verbal, and sexual abuse 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

(00:23):
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. The Tale of
Robert Fisher now takes us from the arid pine forests
of the Arizona High Desert to the drizzly, misbeaten coasts

(00:44):
of Oregon, specifically Astoria, home of the Goonies, those treasure
hunting misfits of cinema lore and seventy four year old
Greg Anderson, the man who found Mary Fisher's forerunner in
the woods in two thousand and one one grade. We
knock on a door. A woman answers Greg's out back.

(01:05):
She says, in the metal shed. A door opens slowly.
We hear a voice, grizzled, gravelly. Greg invites us in.
We cross into his dimly lit layer shadows slice chilly air.
His face is weathered, his hair white. We sit down
at his desk explain who we are. He agrees to

(01:26):
speak for the first time since police called him a
person of interest and the media labeled him a vagabond.
They call you vagabond.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
That was in the paper.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Greg is a recovering alcoholic many years ago. When he
quit drinking, everyone told him to socialize. But Greg is
a solitary guy.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
So I didn't go resocialize. I would leave.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
He spent summers in Oregon and winters in Arizona laying
concrete concrete work.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
You could tie out there in the slabs and know
where to come out and bother you about anything.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
When he wasn't working, Greg retreated into the wild one time.
He spent three months in near total isolation. After the
first month and a half.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
He came back in bod groceries, did everything, didn't talk
to anybody. The only thing I said was twenty bucks
on pump number three and that was it. Then drove
back out for another month and a half.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
To be alone for so long, you have.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
To be tough in your head. Your own mind will
tear you apart if you let it. Out there, you'll
just rip yourself up.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Greg spent much of his time hiking. Other than hiking,
what would you do? How would you kill time.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Just wandering around? I didn't really like sitting that much,
and I'd have a little pot out there, but I'd
have to watch that. If you smoke some pot, you're
not going to go for the walk. Take it with you,
roll up a joint and put it in your sock
and go. But then you're smoking it when you're out there,
up on top of a mountain, and then you're too
stone to get back down, and you think that's a
stupid thing to do.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
How do you find the balance between moving, moving, moving,
always moving, hiking, walking, driving, traveling, and sitting still and
being able to sit with your thoughts. Where's the balance
there for you?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I think the Arizona stuff gave me the ability to
sit and let things just go the way they're going
to go, and not get all worried about shit. I
see all the people now are looking at their phones
all the time. You've got to have somebody else around
or something going on. And I can sit stare at
the wall and not feel bad at all. After about
four hours of just looking at the wall. Somebody would say, oh,
you're what is it when you sit try to calm

(03:28):
yourself down, your meditation meditating? Yeah, well you're just sitting meditating.
Well I don't know exactly what that is. Maybe I'm
just sitting looking at the wall, and I can do
that pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Did you ever worry that being alone for such a
long period of time would literally drive you crazy?

Speaker 2 (03:45):
You can, yeah, yeah I thought that.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Were you scared about it?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
No, but you know you got to do something about it.
When you come in and you're overwhelmed by the store,
a grocery store with all the signage and crab it's
just overmodulating. I look at a wall of foot writing
and shit, I can't see any of it. None of
it makes any sense. It's like having three people talk
to you can't understand any of one of them.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
A society that assaults your eyes and ears, trying to
twist your brain and empty your wallet. I consider myself
an introvert. People are surprised because I speak to people
for a living, but I like my alone time. But
I can imagine at a certain point, not only are
you alone, but it's so quiet, it's so peaceful, out there.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, fire don't make no noise. The first thing I
noticed is fire is quiet or doesn't pomp or snaprinding,
But it's just dead silent.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
What did it mean to be out in the wilderness
to you? Did you find that to be a spiritual experience?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah? I never failed alone, never failed alone. Always talked
to Jesus, talked to somebody. You're fine. I did more, bitch,
and as far as one on one with Jesus, I'd
be bitching about stuff. I don't use religious terms like
rebuke you and all that. Hey, fucker, how come you
do this shit like that? What's going on? Why did
you get to why do you kill these little kids

(05:05):
that didn't do anything wrong? I don't see the reasoning
for that. Don't give me this god words and mysterious
ways shit That don't cut it. That just catch twenty two.
If you keep a good bitch on, you're in good
shape because you're talking to yourself and you're not letting
your brain wander off by itself and get you all screwy.
But I can see where you stay in that desert
too long and you're banning for gold or digging a

(05:27):
cave or something that you'll turn into a weirdo after
a while. Anything you want out in the.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Desert, including your sanity, you're gonna have.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
To work for or do something to get to keep it.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
What about food? Would you bring your food with you?
Was there anything to scavengers? Did you hunt?

Speaker 3 (05:41):
No?

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I brought my own food with be all time. About
a top ramen, about a chili and just anything that
you're dealing with, just dry food or can food. And
I didn't have any refrigerator any of that. So any
of the water, I'd mixed it with crystal light, you know,
just have some flavor in it. A lot of crackers
and peanut butter at a different kind of bee engine,
a lot of noodle stuff, just add water and the packages.

(06:04):
I can't even think of the names of it.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
If you weren't surviving off the land.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
No, not at all. No. I didn't fish and didn't hunt.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
As for water, Greg always kept an eye out for
creeks and cattle holes, but for the most part he
survived on the forty gallons he bought when he went
into town.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
You shudn't use a lot of water for bathe in
or shaven. You drank that water and you'd get pretty
ripe out there. After a while, you take a sponge bath.
I'd have my shower bag, put water in that with
if you found some quick I'd fill up that shower
bag and it'd get warm. In an hour, it'd be
hotter and you'd have to put cold water in it
to cool it off. Hang it from a tree and
get a pretty good shower out of it. I use

(06:41):
that a lot. If you left it in the sun,
I'd throw it on top of the van, and if
you forgot about it, it would pop and all the
water and shoot out of it, and you have to
buy another one.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Greg also had to watch out for certain menaces of nature,
including snakes.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
If you get three days warm, real warm snakes will
wake up down the desert and they get out, and
they're real cantankerous because they know it's not time to
get up yet. They'll start rattling when you're two hundred
feet away. You usually got to be right up on
them and then they'll rattle. That's another thing. Some of
them don't rattle. They sound like you left the air
out of a truck tire. Just louder shit bears. I've

(07:19):
running into bears a couple of times. I had a
bear come in my van once in uh Signal Vite
and they were saying on the news that the bears
were coming down because there's nothing up there in the
mountains from me. So they're catching a lot of them
in scott today, Old a few other places. They're sitting
in the trees. They're darkning them and getting them out
of there. And I think the same night or same
couple of nights, woke up, I had my door open

(07:42):
all the time in the van because it's beautiful out
the moon's out. Can't see out the door, and it's
stunk smelled in there, and there was something right in
front of it, and I couldn't see what it was
because I'm just laying there. It got it backed up.
They see the little goopy years they got sticking out
of his head. Fuck, that's a bear. And I don't
have a gun and around nothing, so jumped out of

(08:02):
the way. His face was right here. I jumped in
the back, grabbed my cooking pan and I just started
beating it on his racket, just making a lot of noise,
and bear you could see him got out. Let him
pause out there and start walking away and then I
could grab my flashlight and I was shining it at it,
and you could see the red eyes just looking at me.
Just don't fuck with me. I'll kick your ass. But

(08:23):
that's the scaredest I've ever been in my life. And
the bear was after I had a flat of strawberries
and I'd been eating on it, so that brought that
bear in there, and I wanted to give him all
the strawberries, but you know, fed bears are dead bear
they don't like to doing that humans. I was standing
out in the middle of nowhere, just my van was
somewhere else. I was on the side of this little

(08:44):
dirt road. It was dusk. It was just about dark,
all the way dark. He comes just in the BMW
or something up the highway and then it turned came
down to the gravel road, and then it turned down
this little dinky road that I was on.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Greg's the hidden behind brush and trees.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
This car pulled up right next to me. I could
reach out and tap on the window if I wanted to,
and they got out their crack pipe or something. People
in business lady driving and the other guy in business
suits that looked like they were lawyers or something. But
they said to find a sneaky place to smoke the crack.
And it was just weird that way out in the
middle of nowhere like that, somebody pulls right up next
to you. And where was that? That was up on

(09:23):
the rim, not too far from where the car was at.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Just to be clear, you're saying that was a whole difference.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
If it was just to say, weird shit happens out there,
that somebody to pull right up, I mean, I could
have got them in big trouble. They looked like they
were in nice professional people.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
I get the sense that your personalities to handle that
would be don't mess with them. Yeah, just kind of
keep clear, do your own thing, and don't start any trouble.
They won't start any trouble.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
With exactly conflict avoidant's personality. They used to accuse me
that in American lake.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Out here, it's a safety mechanism. Isolated corners of the
American Southwest have always drawn out laws, people gridge to
avoid desperation and ferocity stalk this thirsty landscape. Many incidents
never make the news. A few do, including the Tyson
gang July nineteen seventy eight. Gary Tyson's three sons break

(10:15):
him and another man, Randy greenawalt out of prison. The
Tyson gang goes on a rampage, killing six people, including
a two year old boy, on the back rows of Colorado,
New Mexico, and Arizona. On day twelve, the gang barrels
through a checkpoint in a stolen van. Bullets rain down.
One son dies, two are captured, along with Randy. Gary

(10:38):
disappears ten days later. He's found in the desert.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Dead Danny Ray Horning.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
May nineteen ninety two. Horning, a bank robber, breaks out
of the same prison as Gary Tyson. For two months,
he zigzags through Arizona, eating cacti. He makes his way
to the Grand Canyon, where he kidnaps two taurusts and
slips past police. Media call him Arizona's Rambo. Speeding down
a highway one hundred miles an hour, Horning shoots at

(11:06):
a cop. He crashes, but escapes again to Sedona, where
he escapes again just kidding. He's caught.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
The Four Quarters Fugitives.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
May nineteen ninety eight, the spot where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico,
and Arizona meet. Three men kill a cop and steal
a water truck. Their plan is to rob a casino,
destroy a power plant, or blow up a dam. They fail,
They die, or at least two of them do. Police
find a body at a riverside campsite. Thirteen months later,

(11:41):
on Halloween at sunset, a group of hunters find another
body on a mesa. Both men died of gunshot wounds.
Did they commit suicide or were they killed by the
final fugitive, Jason mcveen. No one knows. Mcven slips away,
melting into the red desert. Nine years later, a cowboy
finds his skeletonized remains in an isolated canyon next to

(12:04):
an AK forty seven, five hundred rounds of AMMO five
pipe bombs and survival gear.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Frank Bannashley Junior and Senior.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
December ninth, nineteen ninety nine. Tenny Gatewood Junior is the
only officer on duty on the Ford Apache Indian Reservation,
one cop covering one point seven million acres. While struggling
with two burglary suspects, he shot in the head with
his own gun. Frank Banashley Senior and his son, Frank Junior,
flee into the wild. A massive manhunt ensues. The next day,

(12:40):
a police helicopter spots two campfires in the forest below.
The cops catch the Banashlees by chance. Robert Fischer is
nearby when the murder occurs. The final photo we have
of him was taken that day in the Apache Sickreaves
National Forests. So, yes, these wild lands are populated not
only by bears and bats and pinion pines and dust

(13:02):
storms and monsoons, but also by murderous men, and yes,
Greg Gunderson wants to avoid them.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
His conflict AVOIDANTCE personality.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Comes in handy April nineteenth, two thousand and one. Greg

(13:39):
Gunderson is driving home Arizona to Oregon. As he rumbles
up Young Road to Highway two sixty on top of
the muggy on rim afternoon evaporates into a darkening sky.
The weather worsens.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
You're just a slushy snow was coming down. I figure, well,
it's going to get crappy. You got to get a
spot before it gets dark or you're never going to
have a fire.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
You were just transitting, You weren't planning on camping at
that time for a while.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
No, it was the weather made me want to just
and it was getting dark and I wanted to scoop
up to firewood because it was cold. It's either that
or when it's snowing like that, you're going to sit
in the van or go to sleep at five o'clock
getting dark early, so you want some firewood anyway, So
you've got to find a camp spot when it's still
light enough to find some firewood.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Greg knows a great spot, but it's twenty minutes south.
He already passed it, so he turns around, drives back,
takes a left onto our forest service road and parks.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
The sun was already down. It was just the end
of the evening, darker than this, but it was getting
down there to where it was fifteen minutes it could
be dark.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
What was it like to be out there at night?

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Couldn't see it starts that night, But normally I liked
it at night because you've got to see the moon
go through its changes. It's out every night. There was
nights when midnight the moon would be a full moon.
If you were down in the Superstitions, there's a zinc
mine area that they used to haul zink out of them.
The roads are white, just white white. So when the

(15:03):
moon's out midnight, that bright You can see a tarantula
two hundred feet away walking across the road at midnight,
which is pretty amazing to see that bark. It's just
bright out at night. Saw a lot of shit the
rim especially. You see a lot of satellite stuff, a
lot of shit moving up in the air. You stare
at the stars, you're all over the place. They start

(15:25):
moving on.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
You tonight, though. The only dots Greg sees in the
sky are the snowflakes falling on his eyes. Was it
heavy or just kind of white?

Speaker 2 (15:33):
It was mushy. It messed with your vision, but it
wasn't sticking real good.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
So there wasn't like accumulation on the ground.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
A little bit, yeah, a little bit, but not. I
can still see the wood. I remember picking up.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
The branches, walking down a tiny rutted road, gathering firewood.
Darkness falling, the final glimmers of muted light on the horizon.
Greg sees a glint of silver.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
I noticed this carpark truck SUV out no one's and
he wasn't camping, that was just parked. You could tell,
you know, I could say, you could see if that's
a drug deal or that's somebody's staying forever. If the
blue tarps come out, they're staying for a long time.
If there's any transmissions laying around, they've been there for
two months. You'd just tell it, you know, win a
bago just louder in hell with the old bikes strapped

(16:18):
to the side of it. You see one of them
every so often, or a school bus.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Have you been in that area before?

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, so you.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Were familiar with like some of the camp area of
the camp.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, I'll try. I knew that that fore runner was.
That's not how you camped there. He was parked in
the wrong spot. Like he just got out of the
car and left, and that's pretty much what he had done.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
I think what about it. Immediately said something's wrong here.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
The way the car was sitting there, it wasn't level.
If you're going to spend the night, your level of
the car up that kind of that's the first thing
you'd do. And then parking the spot, maybe that you
could have a little fire. The fire pits all over
the place. You just got to move the rocks around
where you want it. That car wasn't in there right,
and it was too far out in the middle of
nowhere to be a drug deal. The drug deals you
see right outside of town. You see somebody leaning on

(17:02):
the roof of their car, standing there out in the
middle of nowhere. Well, he's waiting for somebody. Looked like
somebody had just abandoned that car. It just looked odd
the way he was sitting in. And that's not even
how you go in that spot. You drive over here
and you build a little fire over there. It's pretty
blase a little spot. But it wouldn't camp angled like that.
I parked flat. I mean, it just dead flat. That's

(17:25):
the way I wanted. If not, I'll jack up my
bed with some books underneath his legs. But you don't
want to be sleeping downhill if you're sleeping in the rig.
And he was parked just a little off. I don't
know if it was right, so he was down or
the front or whatever, but he wasn't He wasn't flat.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Do you remember seeing anything else when you saw the Forerunner?
Did you see any camping equipment and any cans of food,
any water bottles? Nothing, so just a car.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, that's why I thought it was just parked there.
It wasn't camping, and it was parked at an angle
and in the wrong spot, and it was just.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Don't Greg knows it could be Fisher, but he isn't sure.
He doesn't want to get involved. He's cold, he's tired.
He walks back to his man. Did you see a
fire that night?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
No?

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Do you see any fires anywhere in the distance?

Speaker 2 (18:14):
No, you couldn't really see that far.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
But no, did you hear anything that night?

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Oh? There are no people up there.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Did you light a fire that night?

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah? Yeah, I had a fire that night. Well, the
branches that are in the stumps where they taper down there,
there's a lot of resident in them that burned real good.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Were you worried that if it was Robert Fisher, that
he would see her fire and come after you.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
No, I was concerned about it, that that could be him,
But it didn't seem like anybody was there, just from
the looks of it, like there's not even a chair, nothing,
just there's just nothing.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Were you worried that he would come over and kill
you and take your van?

Speaker 2 (18:53):
I wasn't thinking like that, but that would cross through
your mind real quick. But yeah, what would I do?
I din'te a gun. I never took a gun with me.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Did you think, well, if he comes at me, how
am I going to protect myself?

Speaker 2 (19:04):
I didn't even think like that.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
But just in case. Greg stands in the dark, away
from his fire in the woods, watching for movement. He
sees none. Between when you got to that spot and
when you left the next day. Do you recall seeing
or hearing any vehicles pass by?

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You go a long time up? She had a vehicle
up here? No, I don't remember any.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Cold air biting his face, exhaustion his mind. Greg nods
in and out of lucidity. How much sleep did you
got that night?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Oh? Probably not much? Two hours? Maybe?

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Were you in a sleeping bag of tent?

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Sleeping bag? I stay in the back of the van.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
So you slept in the van that night? Yeah, So
you didn't like go a little ways off in the
woods to try to put some distance. Did you not
worry that you would be a target?

Speaker 2 (19:51):
I didn't worry about that. No, I didn't. I was thinking,
he's got more trouble than come over. Wuck with me.
He's got to get out of there. If he did that, Jeff,
somebody took him away.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
The next morning, I got up and I.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Wanted to go over and see what kind of car.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
That was greg an axe Marine zig zags through the woods.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
I kind of walked in herky jerky behind the tree,
and I didn't want to be a steady target if
he was down there, I didn't know. I saw it
down there, and I walked along this ridge looking down
at it and got to where I got behind the
back and I could see the back door, got the
binoculars up and it had had the big four on it.
I couldn't see the runner, but I know with the
four on it, that's the four runner.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
He sees movement, there's the dog.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Damn. I mean it kind of went up in increments.
You know, it's a four runner. Holy shit. And that's
a perfect place for somebody to go stash a car
way up out in the middle of nowhere. And I
started walking back to my campus spot and I saw
the dog came up to me. It had porcupine crap
around his mouth. It was real odd acting dog. I've

(20:52):
had dogs all my life. He was looking at me
and looking back at the car and looking at me
and not wanting to go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Greg worries Robert is dead in the creek bed or
alive waiting to shoot him.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's not threatening or anything. Then it was stop and
look back again. So I was thinking maybe he was
down in that, or that he went down in that cave.
You know, you jump in that and you're gone. That
was gobbling up enough water. There had to be a
big opening down there.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
This is significant. On the morning of April twentieth, Greg
sees water flowing into the cave Apex Cave, the one
surrounded hours later by a swat team. It's impossible to
imagine Robert Fisher choosing to hide in a water guzzling cave,
entering via a tide opening at the bottom of a
sinkhole like a rat trying to crawl down a bathtub

(21:42):
drain as water circles and empties. Did you ever go
in that cave?

Speaker 2 (21:47):
No, you'd have to be a speed lunker to do that,
you know, and be tied off and all that. One
of them deals is dark. You wouldn't even know what
was happening. You could call five hundred feet before you
even knew what happened. No, I'm not that bold.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Greg hustles back to his campsite, puts out his fire,
and then I left and went up to Heber.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
That's where the road comes out at. I went to
their mini mart there at Hebert, and I remember one
of the only numbers I had was Jim Jacka. I
called him because I didn't want to call the cops myself.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Why why does Greg flee? Why does he disappear for
a month. My first guest before I meet him is
that he's trafficking drugs commercially, But that's not true. The
answer is simple.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Because I had some pot that I wanted to save
and use on the trip back, and if I called
the cops, they're going to say you stay right there,
we'll be right up there, don't go nowhere, And I
would have to throw that pot out because the dogs
would be over barking at me. You know, they want
my pot and I have to get rid of it,
trying to be a nice guy. Well fuck that, you know,
I'm out of here. You call it in, Jim. It's
forest road, YadA YadA, and it's a Forerunner I don't

(22:50):
remember the collar, gray or something, and there's a dog
there and it's an Australian sheep dog or something like that,
blue whatever. He's got porcupine needles on. So that was
enough information that they knew he shouldn't have known what
kind of dog that is? Unmust he saw it?

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Can you tell me about the call when you called
the jackas What did you say?

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I said, what do you used to call it? Dickhead? Hey, dickhead?
How you doing? Yeah? Whatever? Dream? I said, I think
I found that Robert Fisher's car and write this down,
give him the forest service road? And he had a dog.
The dog is this? You got a kind of dog?
Said for a runner? And I pretty much nailed it.
I said, call that in for me because I'm having to.

(23:29):
You know, I don't know where I told him, I said, patient.
Maybe I didn't want them guys telling me to stay
there and disobey the law, because if I get Jim
to do it, then I'm scott free. I'm fine.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
So you were just worried because he got weed with
you thought they would.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, I'd been saving it for myself for the trip back.
I had a whole month I and I wandered around.
It was just a little bit of pot there. But
I'm not throwing that ship out just because they're going
to come up there with her dogs barking and go
do your job out there. Look for Fisher quit looking
at my van.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Do you think that's why they were suspicious later, because
you left town and they didn't understand why you left
without speaking to them.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think so. But they had heard from everybody that
this guy just he doesn't have an address, he didn't
have a phone. You don't give a shit about what
you guys are doing. I don't know how you find him.
I don't know what. You're not gonna call him, you know,
just when he shows up, you'll find him. But I
kind of took pride in that you can't touch me.
Don't matter what kind of rich you are or whatever
they are, you can't touch me. I'm separate from you guys.

(24:27):
You do what you want, and I don't care. I
don't care what's going on with Fisher. I don't like
what he did, but my life is going to keep
going this way. I'm gonna go over here and go
over there and drive up towards Fregan fuck Fisher.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
On May eleventh, Greg speaks to Arizona detectives by phone
from his brother's house in Oregon.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
I couldn't understand why there was such a big deal
out of it. I didn't do anything. I just drive
along and there's a car and a runner, and there's
a dog.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
But the cops don't know that. All they know is
that a critical witness fled the state. They immediately and
understandably consider him a suspect.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
They were thinking that I probably picked him up and
took him somewhere.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Later, the FBI speaks to Greg at his mom's house.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
She's pissed because they were being real nice, and then
they would throw these questions in that, well, what do
you think about murder? What do you think about killing
your slitting the throats to the kids or whatever. She
didn't want to hear that shit, And I didn't really
want to answer them questions. What I got to do
with me slitting throats? What do you think about getting
the fuck out of here? Pieces of shit?

Speaker 1 (25:29):
But you understand why they asked the questions.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Kind of, But I don't think what they're going to
get out of that? What do I think about cutting throats?
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (25:39):
What do you say? When I asked those questions?

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Probably the same thing. I'm sandy, what do you mean
I found his car? I didn't cut throats. I don't
know why you're asking that. What are you going to
gain from that.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
I think for them that they just didn't have many leads.
And then, yeah, well, am I just kind of desperate
to find something?

Speaker 2 (25:54):
And I'm going to say, yeah, I love to cut
throats on kids. I really like doing that. You got
any kids I can slash up. I don't understand the
reasoning for what if I said yes or no? What
good'sa gonna do.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Does it make you angry that Sto's the only FBI
considered you suspect.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
No, not really, because they do that to everybody. I'd
talked to a couple of guys since then. One guy
who was the library in the city had found a
body outside the library. Out there, unassuming guy just required
he says, Man, they beat him up, thinking that he
did it. He just didn't look like somebody's going to
bother anybody. He was the one that was saying, if
you see a body, just keep walking. You didn't see nothing,

(26:31):
just keep going. Don't help him out because they're not
going to take you that way.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Unlike our next person of interest, who I'll get to
in a minute, I'm confident Greg had nothing to do
with the Fisher case other than finding Mary's SUV He's
just an interesting character who lived a life many of
us fantasize about. Unencumbered in nature. Greg used to sit
on top of the muggy on rim as thunderstorms rolled in,

(26:55):
sweeping down onto the force that expands below, turning dust
to mud, pelting an agitated land with the life blood
it greedily soaked up.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Like fires in the trees. I think I've seen two
burning at once. They go out because it's raining so hard.
Whoever said lighting? And don't hit the same place twice?
It's full of shit. I've watched it hit the same
place ten times in a row.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
At seventy four, Greg now kills time alone tinkering with stuff.
He sits at a desk, wrapped in shadows, puffs of
breath dispersing into the dim light of his chili metal shed.
He's drinking again, lightly, not like the old days.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
The VA to over here a while back. You've got
curosis the liver. Oh yeah, I've deserved that, and I
should have. My lungs should be shot, but they're fine.
I smoked for fifty years. I've been going through the
VA and everything's come out fine, all the tests, and
I don't deserve that. There's too many people that don't
smoke and don't drink any die early, and I want

(28:00):
to have day do wrong. I've just been trying to
kill myself my whole life.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Seems like Greg is content, he's prepared to die. He
doesn't want to, but he's ready. And really, when we're old,
what more can we ask?

Speaker 2 (28:13):
I would have a do not resuscitate, but you got
to do much paperwork for that.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Do you feel a peace?

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, I'm feeling more than I have in a lot
of years. Well, I tell people I never get anything
I want. So every night when I go to bed,
I pray to the Lord, please kill me tonight, please
just get this shit over with. I'm done, I'm out
of here. And next morning I wake up. I'm fine
because I don't ever get what I want. So as
long as I keep wanting to want to be dead,

(28:42):
and I'll be one hundred and twenty years old here
in a little while.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
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 Jo n Wa l Czak, thanks
for listening. Our final person of interest is the most

(29:32):
important by far, the person I consider likeliest to have
helped Robert Fisher before, during, or after the murders. Police
got a lead never made public until now that he
directly assisted Fisher. His name is Okay, I can't tell
you his name. I'm sorry. I'm in a tough spot.
I find him highly suspicious, but I'm unaware of any

(29:54):
evidence proving his complicity in these crimes. Furthermore, one of
his kids accused him of physic, cole verbal, and sexual abuse.
To protect her identity, I need to hide his so
let's call him Tony. Tony is a fifty nine year
old white male, four years younger than Robert Fisher. He
used to work for the State of Arizona. He's now retired.

(30:16):
In two thousand and eight, Scottsdeal detective Hugh Lockerby and
FBI agent Bob Caldwell showed up at Tony's job. They
first went to human resources, trying to get his employment
records from April two thousand and one. A manager confirmed
they existed, but said she would need a subpoena to
release them. They then spoke to Tony's supervisor, and finally
they tried to find Tony himself. They ran into him

(30:39):
outside his building asked to speak in private. He agreed.
From a police report quote.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
We interviewed Tony about his knowledge of Robert Fisher. At first,
when we asked Tony if he knew Robert Fisher, he
stated he did not recognize the name. We next explained
to Tony that Fisher had gone to the same church,
Scottsdale Baptist as him in two thousand and one, and
Fisher had killed his family in Scottsdale and burned the
house down. At this time, Tony acknowledged that he did
remember Fisher but did not know him. Tony then began

(31:08):
stating that the incident was a tragedy and he remembered
when it occurred. As the interview continued, we asked Tony
if he recognized Fisher at church, and he said no.
Tony stated that when he saw Fisher's picture in the paper,
he did not recognize him. Tony stated when he saw
Fisher's wife, Mary's picture, he recognized her because his ex
wife used to talk to Mary after church. Tony stated

(31:29):
that when his wife was speaking with Mary, he never
saw Fisher around her. We asked Tony if his children
ever played with the Fisher children, and he said they did,
but that his ex wife arranged that. We asked Tony
if he ever did any activities with Fisher, and he
said no. We asked Tony if he ever went hunting
or fishing with Fisher, and he said no. Tony stated
that he does not hunt, but only Fisher's. Tony told

(31:51):
us that he got a divorce from sometime in two
thousand and one. Tony stated that he thinks moved to
with their kids. Tony stated that he has not seen
them in a long time. During the interview with Tony,
he appeared to be very nervous and was breathing heavily.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
When I hear this, what jumps out to me is
not that Tony got nervous when the police and FBI
showed up at his job, which is understandable. It's that
he denied recognizing the name Robert Fisher, and then, with
gentle prodding, he remembered the guy at his church who
murdered his family, burned down their house, and was on
the FBI's ten most wanted list. Ah yes him. Suddenly

(32:31):
he recalled that his wife knew Mary Fisher, and that
his kids knew and played with the Fisher kids. It's
a big leap from I don't recognize the name Robert
Fisher to my wife knew his wife, my kids, his kids,
all the while appearing nervous, breathing heavily. This lead stunned me.
I immediately started investigating independently. Here's what I learned. First,

(32:55):
I verified that Tony and his family did, in fact
attend Scottsdale bout A Church at the same time as
the Fishers. Their names appear in a nineteen ninety seven directory,
a copy of which I obtained. One of Tony's kids
was the same age as Brittany Fisher. Second, Tony had
some rough years in the late nineties and early two thousands.

(33:17):
In April nineteen ninety nine, his wife filed for divorce.
She moved out and took their two kids with her.
That September, Tony crashed his truck into a tree, killing
his brother. The accident took place in the Apache Sikgreaves
National Forest, where Robert Fisher was photographed less than three
months later, at a spot only thirty miles from where

(33:38):
police later found Mary's fore runner. At the time, Tony
was driving a green pickup truck. I'm not sure what
happened to it, if it was discarded or salvaged, but
a green pickup later shows up in two leads tied
to the Fisher case. Listen to this clip. I found
it while combing through archival news footage.

Speaker 6 (33:55):
Right now, we're looking for a late model Dodge Dakota truck.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
HeLa County Sheriff's deputy got a bird's eye view of
the Tanto National Forest, eyes peeled to the ground looking
for any signs of Fisher.

Speaker 6 (34:08):
This truck earlier went through the little roadblock we have
down there, didn't stop, and everybody's been looking for it.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
It's unclear how or why someone drove through a roadblock
on Young Highway as police hunted Fisher in April two
thousand and one. This isn't just suspicious, it's also an
embarrassing security breach. Later that year, on August, twelve, weeks
before nine to eleven, someone reported seeing Fisher driving a
green pickup in Scottsdale. Now, obviously a ton of people

(34:37):
owned green pickups, not just Tony, but still I want
to mention it just in case the nineteen ninety nine
crash that killed Tony's brother took place only seventy two
hours after police investigated Tony for allegedly abusing his daughter physically, verbally,
and sexually. It's feasible to think that the investigation took

(34:58):
a toll on him, severely affect his mental state, possibly
playing a role in the crash. I obtained a copy
of a police report on the alleged abuse. I'm not
publishing certain details, for example, on the sexual abuse claims,
but here's what I can tell you. Tony quote terrified
his daughter. She was scared he would hurt her mom.

(35:19):
She wrote a school paper titled Fearful for Life, in
which she said, quote, every night, I'd wonder if he'd
really kill me if he had the chance, with the
same conclusion, yes. She showed scars to officers and said
they were from her father's abuse. She claimed he punched
her and hit her with a belt, knocking her down

(35:40):
and leaving her in pain for days. She said he
threw glasses at her feet, which shattered and cut her legs.
She claimed he made her and her sibling hold soap
in their mouths until they gagged and threw up when
she was younger. She said her dad told her a
story about a wolf, and then as she was falling asleep,
he would quote makes scratching noises at the door and

(36:02):
wild animal sounds until she cried. He allegedly did this
for years. As a result, she feared the dark and
had trouble sleeping without a night light. She told police
that he was capable of killing her and her sibling.
Remember this was in nineteen ninety nine, a year and
a half before the Fisher murders. That May, a judge

(36:22):
barred Tony from contacting his wife or kids in person.

Speaker 7 (36:26):
Quote the court finds that the defendant represents a credible
threat to the physical safety of the plaintiff, his wife
or other protected person, his children, and or may inflict
bodily injury or death on the plaintiff. The judge prohibited
Tony from possessing, receiving, or purchasing guns or ammunition. In July,
his daughter told a counselor that Tony used the threat

(36:48):
of murder to keep her quiet. Quote if you tell
mom about the abuse, I will kill you, counselor, you
mean he would get physical with you, No, I mean
he would kill me. She said, why didn't you tell
your mom? He said he would hurt mom. Tony's daughter
told a different counselor that she worried her dad would
abduct her. He only wanted to remain in her life

(37:10):
quote based on his need to control. Years earlier, Tony
faced a separate allegation that he sexually abused a child
his wife babysat. He vehemently denied abusing any child. He
was never prosecuted. Not only that, he said, but after
his daughter's allegations, police didn't even bother contacting him, indicating
to him that they didn't believe her. In April two thousand,

(37:34):
a year before the Fisher murders, in a court filing,
Tony submitted a list of character witnesses who might testify
on his behalf.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
I immediately recognized two names. Greg Cantelmo, Robert Fisher's pastor, who
didn't respond to interview requests, and Jim Rodin, Robert's friend,
who doesn't remember Tony. Do you recognize the name's.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Questions No.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
By early two thousand and one, Tony was broke. He
was in debt, He needed money. He couldn't even afford
to pay his attorney, who like his wife dumped him.
One night in February two thousand and one, seven weeks
before the Fisher murders, Tony allegedly idled outside his family's
home ominously before speeding off, prompting his wife to obtain

(38:20):
a second protective order. On March twentieth, a judge told
Tony's wife to put his belongings, including camping gear and
fishing equipment, in a storage unit. On April third, a
week before the Fisher murders, Tony met his wife's attorney
to pick up his stuff. Two other witnesses were present.
On April tenth, Robert Fisher allegedly slit the throats of

(38:41):
his wife and kids, blew up his house, and escaped.
On April sixteenth, Tony provided the court a list of
items he claimed his wife failed to return, including, intriguingly,
a red handled fishing knife. Let me pause and review
what we've learned so far. Police got a lead that
Tony assisted Robert before, during, or after the murders. Tony,

(39:04):
his family, and the Fishers attended the same church. Tony's
wife knew Mary, Tony's kids knew the Fisher kids. In
a court filing, Tony named two people who knew Robert,
Greg Cantelmo and Jim Rodin as potential character witnesses. Investigators
interviewed Tony in two thousand and eight. He appeared nervous
and was breathing heavily. He claimed not to recognize the

(39:27):
name Robert Fisher. Then magically his memory returned. He suddenly
remembered not only Robert, but that their families were friends.
In nineteen ninety nine, Tony's wife left him, took the kids,
got a protective order. His daughter accused him of abuse, physical, verbal,
and sexual. She expressed fear that he would kill their family.

(39:49):
The cops investigated Tony. Only seventy two hours later, he
crashed his pickup truck into a tree, killing his brother
in a forest in which Robert Fisher was photographed. Left
less than three months later at a spot thirty miles
from where police later found Mary Fisher's forerunner. Tony was
heavily in debt he needed money. Six days after the

(40:11):
Fisher murders, Tony claimed in a court filing that his
wife hadn't given him back a red handled fishing knife,
which was now missing. He said, next, I found the
name of a woman with whom Tony was allegedly having
an affair in two thousand and one, I reached out
to her, she didn't respond. I had a private investigator

(40:32):
run a background check on Tony. It came back clean,
no criminal charges. But I kept digging and discovered that
in twenty sixteen, Tony was arrested for soliciting a prostitute.
He allegedly saw an ad on backpage dot com. An
undercover cop texted you coming to see me today eighty
or one hundred for bareback. Tony showed up at a

(40:52):
motel to meet the woman, was arrested, but again, for
some reason, not prosecuted. Here's why this matter. Because of
the arrest, Tony's fingerprints are now on file with the
department that arrested him, not Scottsdale, a different department. In
two thousand and eight, when investigators interviewed Tony, his prints
were not on file and they didn't have probable cause

(41:15):
to obtain them. I don't think Scottsdale or the FBI
were aware until now that a different department subsequently arrested
and finger printed him. They should compare his prints to
those recovered from Mary Fisher's forerunner. They should reinterview Tony,
his ex wife, his parents, who by the way, had
property in northern Arizona, and what happened to the red

(41:37):
handled fishing knife. This is a critical lead. It should
be investigated again. Let's sink back to episode two. We
found two new witnesses, both of whom changed the case.
Timeline Peter, a neighbor, and Bud Wolfe, a newspaper delivery man.
Both saw Mary's suv at the Fisher house on April

(41:58):
tenth at three thirty am and Bud at five point thirty,
proving that Robert Fisher did not flee the night before
after visiting the atm. Their testimony tells us that between
three point thirty and seven thirty am, someone pulled Robert's
truck out of the driveway, Mary's suv into the driveway,
Robert's truck behind the suv, the truck out again, the

(42:21):
suv out, the truck back, and then drove away in
the suv, all on a small cul de sac. I
can't explain this. My best guess, which is still lacking,
is that after the murders, Robert wanted to load up
Mary's for runner with supplies without drawing attention from the neighbors,
so he parked as close as possible to the house,

(42:42):
then moved his truck behind the suv to better hide
his activity. Regardless of why this game of musical cars
took place, it seems to be a small piece of
circumstantial evidence that someone else was at the Fisher house
the night of the murders. It makes more sense that
two people shuffled around the vehicles, which, if true, would

(43:02):
mean Robert had help and accomplice at least to clean
up and escape. Now, let's think back to episode three.
I shared emails I got from the son of the
Fisher's next door neighbor, the odd Son, whose mom heard
Robert and Mary fighting the night of April ninth. I
bleeped things, said i'd share them later, and I did,

(43:25):
except for one a final reveal. The odd Son told
me that on April ninth, his mom.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
Saw and Fisher fiddling with the gas light into the
house heard the gunshot that killed Mary.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Okay, y'all, let's remove that beep. On the night of
the murders, he said, his mom.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
Saw the helper's white truck in the alley and Fisher
fiddling with the gas light into the house. Heard the
gunshot that killed Mary.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
The helper's white truck in the alley. Okay, So we're
in the alley behind Robert Fisher's home. It's kind of
overgrown a little bit. There's detritus in garbage. This alley
is kind of impressive. It loops all the way around
the cul de sac and now we're going back to
the main street. What is that street? Ok okay, okay, yeah.

(44:14):
Is that detecting like obstacles?

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Why is it?

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah? Okay, So this is overgrown enough that there are
bushes and trees that are poking out, and the car
is detecting and beeping for obstacles. The alley is actually
a small road. It circles the entire block and connects
directly to Oak Street, a thoroughfare. It makes sense that
if Robert Fisher had help, his accomplice would use the alley.
Listen closely to this clip from a Fisher home video.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
Baby Bi Tira, you say I.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Love it, I love you.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
That click at the end was Robert closing a gate
connecting his backyard to the alley after driving a pickup
truck through it. I decide to ask investigators about Tony
the likeliest accomplice.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
His wife left him.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Former FBI agent Bob calledwell.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
He was an abusive abuser in the family, according to
the wife, to the point where she had to get
the kids and leave.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
He lied to us about Noan Robert.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
We know that, but we kept pressing, kept pressing, kept
looking into him, and at that time, again, he's one.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Of those people.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
He just didn't want to talk to us, didn't want
anything to do with it, kept denying it. But we
didn't have enough anything to charge him with. He's got
his rights, he doesn't have to talk to us. That
was one It was always left open. It's like, you know, okay,
we know you're lying to us. We know you knew
him a lot better than you're saying you did, but
we had nothing to other than to prove.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
It's such a massive red flag though for somebody to say,
I don't remember that name. It's one thing to say
I don't have anything to do with it. It's another
to say, the person at my church in a nice,
quiet suburb who murdered his family and blewt their house,
So I don't remember who you're talking about. Wouldn't that
indicate that he was hiding something?

Speaker 6 (46:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, was a person of interests Yeah, gods still, Lieutenant
Hugh Lockerby.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, he was a person of an interest.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
We tried to get him to come to a polygraph.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
He said he would do it, and then the next
day you never showed up.

Speaker 6 (46:11):
Bob and I were pretty convinced that he knew some
more about it than he was leading us to believe.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
At this point, I know that I have to try
to speak to Tony myself. I want to catch him
off guard, so I show up at his home unannounced.
I'm concerned for my safety that he'll fly into a
rage and attack me, but I figure the odds of
him being home are low, and even if he is home,

(46:39):
he'll slam the door in my face, and even if
he doesn't, he'll tell me to get lost. No matter what.
He won't talk right next time, I'm missing in Arizona,
and if you keep asking me this, I'm going to
call the police and have you removed from my property.

(46:59):
You can reach just 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
Neon thirty three dot com or on Twitter at John Waalzac,
j O n w A l Czak. This episode produced

(47:23):
by Taylor Shacoyne and nik JOA Worski at Podcast Monster.
Paul Dekan is our executive producer. Chris Brown is our
supervising producer. Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer. Additional production
support by Evan Tyre. Paul Gemberlin is our researcher, Ben
Bolan is a consulting producer, and I'm your host and
executive producer John Waalzac. Recreation's voice by Ben Hackett, Taylor Shacogne,

(47:45):
and Ben Bolan. Header's voiced by Ben Bolan and using
altraed Ai software. Cover art by Pam Peacock. Neon thirty
three logo designed by Derek Rudy. Our intro song is
Utopia by ruby Cube. Please download 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 in Arizona is a co production

(48:07):
of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three.