Is Robert Fisher dead or alive? Scottsdale police still pursuing leads after 25 years

John Hook: It has been 25 years since Robert Fisher allegedly murdered his wife and two children in Scottsdale, and then set the family home on fire to cover up the crime. Fisher has not been seen in 25 years. He has seemingly vanished after all this time. The question remains: Is Robert Fisher dead or alive?

No one knows this case like John Heintzelman, Scottsdale P.D., the lead detective in the Fisher case.

John Heintzelman: Absolutely. Coming up next week will be 25 years.

Hook: If you were a betting man, do you think Fisher is still alive somewhere?

Heintzelman: I work it as if he is. Clearly, we still work every tip we get. I’m hopeful that he is.. that someday he walks through the door. But every day, every month, every year that passes when we don’t have any confirmation, the doubt starts to creep in and to look at it and to say anything could have happened. He could have committed suicide the day that we found the truck or the day before we found the truck, he could have died of natural causes. Some medical issue.. all these different things. So, it's beginning to get disheartening. The fact that he's going to be, in his 60s, 65 years old.. is another thing where age and time is not on our side.

The day of the explosion

Hook: This happened April 10th, 2001, in Scottsdale. He was just a few days short of his 40th birthday, right?

Heintzelman: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Hook: Take me back to that day. And the explosion, the fire. The house goes up in flames. We had pictures of this on the news. We had Skyfox over the scene. Everybody thought it was an explosion. House fire. Then you guys get in there and discover his son, 10, his daughter, 12, and his wife, 38, I believe. Yes. Mary. All dead inside. So then immediately, you're thinking fire, an explosion to cover up a murder scene.

Heintzelman: That's exactly it. So what started as a normal business day and morning rush hour and things like that, even our patrol officers starting their day shift when the 911 calls came in about this house fire, that, this explosion in a relatively quiet south Scottsdale cul-de-sac. There's three or four houses in that, just in that little street. 

And the explosion that rocked the neighborhood that that people called and said their windows were shaking from this explosion. And immediately this and this house is engulfed. Obviously, the first thing we think of is, okay, this is some sort of tragic event. Let's get there. Let's put this fire out. And so the police department, we sat, we guarded the street.

We guarded the fire hoses. We assisted Rural Metro Fire at the time in putting out the fire. It wasn't until after we went in that we discovered this, this gruesome scene. And again, what we'd learned is there should be a husband, wife, two children, and all we find is a wife and two children.

Hook: He's mysteriously not there.

Heintzelman: That's correct. 

Hook: Okay, let's let's go back. Robert Fisher, in some ways is a complicated guy who was working at Mayo Clinic. He was a tech there. 

Heintzelman: Yes. Respiratory.

Hook: He had served in the Navy. He did, he was a fairly bright guy.

Heintzelman: From all accounts, yes.

Hook: The night before the murders, he withdraws $280 from an ATM at 74th Street and McDowell. $280 isn't a lot to live on. That's the last picture of him.

Heintzelman: That ATM transaction is the last known location where we knew he was. He was captured on video, and we have still images of him withdrawing that money. The significance of $280 could have just been the limit that he could have taken. It could have been something that he had, once this once the crime occurred that he decided I have to leave, and I have to take as much money out as I can. But that is that's the last moment on the face of the Earth that we saw him.

A calculated execution

Hook: Do you think he had a plan? Because the murders were really calculated. I mean, he went in and slashed the throats of both of his children in bed while they were asleep. He slashes Mary's throat, his wife, and then shoots her in the head. Do we think in that sequence?

Heintzelman: You know, I don't think the medical examiner was able to determine as to how it all happened. So my guess what it looks like is that the children were in their beds, that they were probably asleep. And that could have been the first acts and then Mary and then the gunshot would have been maybe that final act.

Hook: He and his wife were having trouble, right?

Heintzelman: Yes, they were.

Hook: And since Fisher had grown up in a family of divorce and had gone through a really tough time with his parents splitting, he had said to friends, is this confirmed that he had said to friends, you know, divorce is not an option. I don't want my kids raised by some stranger. Is it possible that they were to that point where she was going to leave him, and he thought, no, that's not going to happen.

Heintzelman: That's a speculation that, we've heard we've heard that story. We've talked to some people who have said, yes, he made those statements that again, growing up and, like you described it, this broken family, this divorced family, that he didn't want his children to be subject to that. So, there is cause to believe maybe if there if it was to that point, that he could have taken this to drastic measures. But again, we're looking at, a calculated, brutal murder or spending two Thanksgivings or two Christmases.

Hook: His cell phone.. and cell phones were around then. This is pre-9/11, but only by about five months. His cell phone was turned off or not operable. He didn't take it with him. 

Heintzelman: There were no outgoing calls or incoming calls.

Hook: So was it in the house still?

Heintzelman: I don't remember where it was. 

Hook: Oh, you didn't find it.

Heintzelman: We don't have any documentation or records of any phone calls after that evening. After the ninth, actually.

Hook: Does it seem like a guy who was fleeing the scene to escape or to go possibly kill himself?

Heintzelman: The only person that would honestly know that is Robert. It could be. When we did find the vehicle, it was, it was almost detailed how clean it was. There were only a couple of items.

Hook: Did it look like it was wiped?

Heintzelman: Not necessarily, but it certainly didn't have luggage. It didn't have things like you would think of. It was a it was a SUV, and it was empty.

The mystery of the Tonto National Forest

Hook: It was found 10 days later, up near Payson. This was up in the Tonto National Forest near Young, Arizona. It's a Toyota 4Runner. It's left abandoned. But his dog, Blue, is there at the truck 10 days after these murders. As if he's waiting around or was abandoned.

Heintzelman: That's correct.

Hook: That's a curious fact in the case.

Heintzelman: It is. And that became one of the first things that we looked at. Not only was the vehicle there, and we have a location, but then what about this dog? He did have hunting dogs. Blue, as far as everybody told us, was Mary's dog. So this was not something that he would have a real close bond with. So he even took the dog is a question that we don't have an answer to.

Hook: Interesting. So Blue was not a particularly close pet to him.

Heintzelman: That's our understanding.

Hook: That's interesting. I didn't know that part. I thought he was, because taking the dog out of the house and slaying everybody in your family, that's a curious move.

Heintzelman: And the only thing I could think of is that was maybe the one true.. in his mind, innocent being is the dog. I don't know why he took it.

Hook: You mentioned to me before that, you know, if everybody becomes a dog whisperer, if Robert Fisher went out into the wilderness after leaving that car, the dog would probably be with him. The dog wasn't tied up.

Heintzelman: The dog was loose. As a matter of fact, what he did is there were some porcupine quills that he had.. looked like he maybe got a little too close to a porcupine, but was untethered. He was just running around the truck when our witness saw the 4Runner. And then when we got up there, but no sign of Robert. So that became that issue to say, what would the dog, what would Blue have done? Would Blue have stayed with him if he wandered off into the woods? Or did he get into a vehicle and therefore Blue couldn't follow? So those are those were the two, repeating thoughts that we had. 

Hook: The topography up there is interesting because you're right on the edge of Apache lands. You could not search that area.

Heintzelman: That's correct. So the vehicle was found, just over 300 yards directly west of the border of that Apache reservation. So that sovereign nation, we can't go in as even as law enforcement, we can't go.

Hook: Has the tribe gone in to look for possible remains of Robert Fisher in there?

Heintzelman: We have heard that they have done searches, that they've done extensive searches. But we as Scottsdale PD have not had an opportunity to go on to that reservation land and to look for ourselves. We just take it on face.

Hook: Would he have known about that border?

Heintzelman: I can't see how he couldn't. 

Hook: There is a fence there.

Heintzelman: There was a barbed wire fence, which could also maybe explain the reason why the dog couldn't get across the fence... It's three or four rows.. strands. Then the dog wouldn't be able to get.. but he, we knew prior to finding the vehicle, that he had spent a great deal of time up in that area, even he and Mary, as a matter of fact, they even talked about going up, on a weekend, I think, prior, to go up into some cabins up there to kind of almost reconcile their marriage, which didn't happen. But again, it was talked about that they had that they had ridden 4Runners and all kinds of things up in that area.

Hook: So the possibility is that he could have gone out there. His gun was never found. The weapon used to shoot Mary.. the case was found empty inside the safe in the house?

Heintzelman: Yes.

Hook: So his gun is missing. He could have gone out into the desert and killed himself. Maybe in one of the labyrinth of caves that are out there.

Heintzelman: Absolutely. And that is a thought. And the other part about that is we didn't find that particular gun. We did find other hunting rifles and other guns. But here in Arizona. Yeah. How many, how many does somebody own? The, 20 guns. They own 30 guns. So we were never able to confirm. Did he have any more?

Hook: Do we know that the gun that was missing from the safe, that the handgun.. fired the fatal shot on Mary?

Heintzelman: We don't know. Forensically, we have the projectile.

Hook: We know the type of weapon. Probably.

Heintzelman: But until we have that weapon to actually test fire, to compare those rounds that came through it. We don't have any way of knowing for certain.

Hook: Do you think it is? 

Heintzelman: I think it is.

Hook: It's consistent with the weapon missing.

Heintzelman: Absolutely.

Evading capture in the digital age

Hook: There's so many questions. Fisher. $280. His cell phone. There's no activity. There's no activity on his accounts after the murder.

Heintzelman: That's correct.

Hook: So now he's either in survivalist mode out in the wilderness, trying to live off the land, or tries to get out of there and go somewhere.

Heintzelman: I think every day when we don't have we have not up to this point, we have not had one confirmed sighting where we can say that was definitely Robert Fisher. We may have missed him by a week, a month, a year, but we haven't had that one piece that we're looking at to say, now we know where to focus our efforts.

The fact that the vehicle was found up there, again, we start thinking about was this misdirection. Was this something where I'm going to go north, I'm going to leave the vehicle where they think it's going to be, and then I'm going south.

Hook: 9/11 happens five months after this murder. Do you think that the case lost some momentum with the FBI after 9/11? Because everything was focused on terrorism at home?

Heintzelman: I think that was certainly another draw that took the resources away. The FBI has always been very, gracious, as we'll say, to say this is a Scottsdale investigation, and they're here to assist us. But to think that obviously resources were pulled in all different directions after September 11 is a valid value.

Hook: You still are following leads to this day.

Heintzelman: Absolutely. As early as or as late as this morning. I've talked to two different people who called in this last couple of weeks.

Hook: Do you think some of this 25th anniversary will rekindle interest in the case that could generate a lead?

Heintzelman: It seems to.. 25th anniversary, 20th anniversary. Any time a podcast or a news special airs about Robert Fisher, we see an uptick in tips.

Hook: And you need it. America's Most Wanted. All of these crime shows have done it.

Heintzelman: Absolutely. Unsolved murders, all these different things. And now with the advent of the true-crime podcasts.. that's giving this re-energized energy to this investigation.

Hook: The case of Robert Fisher, one of the great mysteries, in Arizona. And he was on the FBI Most Wanted list removed a couple of years ago because the FBI didn't feel that having him on the list was generating anything. If you found Fisher, what would you want to ask him?

Heintzelman: Primarily, I'd like to ask him about the investigation in the case. My personal questions that I would like is.. I want to know where he's been. I want to know what he was. Where? Tell me those, confirm the theories or prove us wrong about what happened. What was the purpose of putting the truck where it was. 

What did you do for those 10 days between the 10th and the 20th? Were you living up there? Were you camping out and then everything else? And then we could get into tell us a little bit about some of the issues with the scene and some things that you did.

Hook: As time goes on, when you get to 25 years, how many people are floating around out there who commit the quote unquote perfect crime and are still able to evade capture in an era of real ID? I mean, this person would have to avoid traffic collisions, traffic tickets, a police stop, a phony ID isn't going to cut it now—you’d have to be perfect.

Heintzelman: You would have to avoid being arrested for anything. Where you get your fingerprints taken as simple as a shoplift, to get you into the system where it would be matched. Because right now, his fingerprints are in the automated fingerprint identification system.

Hook: From the Navy. Those are his original Navy prints.

Heintzelman: Absolutely.

Hook: DNA, you don't have on him, though?

Heintzelman: We don't have a full profile, only so much as we don't have a known standard from him. What we have is in the ATM video. He's wearing a Oakland Raiders baseball cap that we found in the 4Runner. There was a coffee cup we found in the 4Runner.

Hook: You could run DNA on that. Even now.

Heintzelman: We've tested those. You have a partial profile. The problem with it is we don't have that known standard from him. We do have Mary's DNA. We have Britney's, and we have Bobby's, and almost like a paternity lawsuit was back, and you'd say, here you are, the father.

Hook: You can reconstruct it.

Heintzelman: We can turn that around, but we still need that DNA sample from him to compare directly to the items we have.

Hook: You had a couple of close calls in the one that I remember vividly. I think it was 2012 up in Vancouver. Robert Fisher had some quirks. He had an incisor with a gold cap on it. Right?

Heintzelman: Yes 

Hook: And he had back surgery from a back injury. So there was a scar on his back. You find this guy? I guess Canadian authorities did in Vancouver with a scar on the back who looks like Robert Fisher, who's missing that same tooth. When you got that call, you had to think, we got him.

Heintzelman: That’s him. That's the closest we’ve come to positively identifying him. The other mystery that was shrouded with that person is he had committed some crimes in Vancouver.

Hook: And was evasive about who he was.

Heintzelman: Exactly. So this is exactly the person that we were looking at, not somebody would walk in the door and say, hi, I'm Robert Fisher. So to look at this and to say, this is everything, this all lines up. Okay, let's go, let's identify him. Let's go talk to him. Let's get his fingerprints, and we'll match it up, and then we'll move on.

Hook: And you did all that. And it's not the guy.

Heintzelman: It's not.

Hook: So that had to be incredibly disappointing. You did not personally talk to this guy? 

Heintzelman: I did not, so I wasn't on the case at that point yet. But, we did send investigators up to speak with him. At that point, he, he at least said who he wasn't, that he wasn't our Robert Fisher, our fugitive. And, he allowed us to take fingerprints.

Two Arizonans on the FBI's Most Wanted list

Hook: There's one other case that I can think about locally, where somebody got away with this, and it's been years and decades, and I believe it's Jason Brown who did the armored car robbery down in Ahwatukee. He is still on the run.

Heintzelman: He is.

Hook: And we believe he's alive, but we don't know.

Heintzelman: And for a while there, both of them, out of the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted.. the Phoenix area, Arizona, specifically, had two top 10 fugitives.  

>>FBI Most Wanted: Robert William Fisher

>>FBI Most Wanted: Jason Derek Brown

"Robert Fisher was, for all accounts, a Jekyll and Hyde" 

Hook: Did Fisher, when the FBI profiled his background, was he a guy who you felt.. I mean, obviously he committed. We believe he committed these murders. There's no reason not to believe he did. But did he have that in his background that somebody would say, this is a guy capable of this?

Heintzelman: Robert Fisher was, for all accounts, a Jekyll and Hyde. Depends on where he was. He was a chameleon. He could be the churchgoing family man, the father that would take the kids on camping trips or fishing trips. They recorded birthday parties and things like that. And then there was this other side. And when you look, when you watch the videotapes, and you look at him, there's something there, there's something in his eyes or something that gives you this impression.

Hook: I agree with that.

Heintzelman: Something is hidden in there.

Hook: There's something a little off, like he's there, but he's not all there or something's going on in the background. If he were trying to run, that truck is known. You knew that truck was missing.

Heintzelman: The truck was put out. So in that 10 days from the 10th forward, it saturated the news all over, especially up in, in that Payson area because we had already known that he frequented the area. 

Hook: Almost like he left you a clue.

Heintzelman: Right. And that's again, was it this misdirection? Was it the, was it I want to draw them up here, but then I'm going to be somewhere else. Almost like the magician who makes the distraction. That puts the every just focus on the wrong spot. When he saw the truck on the 19th park, he thought it was odd because it was parked in a way that looked like it was kind of hidden. And he was camping. He lit a fire, but he noticed that there was no fire by the 4Runner in an area that people camp. He thought that.

Hook: Where's the guy? Yeah. Where's the person?

Heintzelman: In addition, then it was one of those freak, April snowstorms. We had a snowstorm. 

Hook: During the search and I remember that.

Heintzelman: And so that became another, another confounder for us to say, well, what do we do here with this?

The search continues

Hook: How do you operate on a case that has gone cold for 25 years?

Heintzelman: Some of the things I'm doing now is, in talking about the technology we talk about 25 years, all of the interviews, for example, were all done on cassette tapes. Now you talk to somebody who just comes on the job, and they look at this, and they say, what exactly is that? That's a cassette tape.

That's what we used. Finding a cassette player to play those interviews. I happened to have the one that was issued to me when I got hired. So that's the one I use to listen to the tapes. But as you well know, too they dry out, they break up, they're very brittle. So what I've done is, is I've had all those updated into digital formats, and now I have so we can listen to them without risking the original evidence. All the home videos that were shot were all on VHS tapes. Again, that's a thing of the past. We have to find players. 

Hook: Or get it digitally in a place where you can look at it.

He’d be 64 years old now, about to turn 65. Do you think the odds are that he would make it that long?

Heintzelman: I have a hard time believing that he can, with no means with no source of income, with nobody supporting him. I can't see how he can be surviving. That would be one of those probing questions to ask. How did you do it for all these years?

Hook: I don't know how you guys put it away when you're not at work. Is it always kind of stirring in the background for you?

Heintzelman: It's generally always percolating a little bit. I wouldn't be honest if I said that I didn't wake up at times and say, oh, I got to make sure when I get into work, I've got to call that person or I've got to, or I just come up with a new idea about something, even going back up to to Young and doing a search on my weekend. I'd love to drive up and just wander around there just to see. Is there anything that that we missed.

Hook: We'll leave it there. I hope, you know, if there's some tip out there that this creates great. And I'm sure you'd appreciate it.

Hook: John, thank you for all the hard work. I know you’ve put a lot into this.

John Heintzelman: Thanks, I appreciate that.

Hook: The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for tips that lead directly to the arrest of Robert Fisher. He is still considered armed and dangerous.