TWO DECADES CHASING A FUGITIVE
Thousands of tips have come in about possible sightings of wanted man
ACanadian man surfing the FBI website thought his neighbor’s boyfriend looked a lot like the American fugitive Robert Fisher. He called in the tip to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They descended on the home in the seaside town of White Rock, British Columbia, and took a gap-toothed man into custody in February 2004. If the man was Robert Fisher, they would need the show of force.
Fisher was believed to have murdered his wife and two children and then set their Scottsdale home ablaze three years earlier on April 10, 2001. By 2004, he was on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
He was notorious across the United States.
He was considered a fugitive, with every reason to want to avoid being cap tured.
And the man in British Columbia matched Fisher’s description dead-on.
He had the same short hair. A similar surgical scar on the lower back. He was missing a tooth in the same place where Fisher’s gold tooth had been. Both men were 6 feet tall. Brown hair. Blue eyes.
If Fisher had gone to the Pacific Northwest to flee law enforcement in the United States, White Rock was essentially the first place he would set foot after crossing the border.
Police believed they had their man. One of Fisher’s former neighbors, who lived near the Canadian-U.S. border, drove up at the request of law enforcement in an attempt to verify the man’s identity. The neighbor thought he looked just like Fisher, said FBI Special Agent Taylor Hannah, who is currently assigned to the Fisher case.
A media frenzy ensued. TV news trucks camped out. “Is this accused murderer living free in White Rock?” blared the headline in the Vancouver Sun.
Further investigation, though, revealed one major problem. The man’s fingerprints didn’t match prints taken from Fisher’s military records.
Police ultimately decided the man was not Fisher, but a Canadian resident who was two years older.
The Canadian tip remains the most high-profile sighting of the triple-murder suspect to date.
But the notoriety of Fisher’s alleged crime, the visibility of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and a chain of reports on true-crime shows, documentaries and podcasts have created a sort of self-sustaining ecosystem of the Robert Fisher case. In it, sightings generate reports, reports lead to investigations, and investigations raise the profile of the case, which leads to new sightings.
“I can always tell when something has been aired somewhere,” said John Heinzelman, the Scottsdale Police Department detective assigned to the case. “Because suddenly I’ll get a few more tips.”
Top 10 fugitive posters, once a fixture in post office lobbies, can now be seen anywhere and all the time, thanks to the internet. TV shows air again and again.
And the effect of all that visibility is that more people see people who might look like the person on the list.
Thanks to one TV show alone, “America’s Most Wanted,” Heinzelman said, Robert Fisher has been spotted at a mall food court in British Columbia; an apartment complex in Willowbrook, Illinois; a 7-Eleven in Ormond Beach, Florida; and a Walmart in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Whether or not any one of those people was really Fisher can’t be known. No one who has ever been investigated turned out to be Fisher.
But that hasn’t stopped more people from reporting more tips, and sometimes disrupting many other lives in the process.
Attorney Matthew Nathanson, who represented the Canadian man who was swept up by police because of the 2004 tip, told The Arizona Republic in a recent interview that Canadian authorities wanted to hold his client even after the fingerprints had cleared him.
Nathanson threatened to sue. His client was released out a back door with a blanket over his head to protect his privacy.
Nathanson said when police turn to the public for assistance in solving serious crimes, there is a danger that people leap to unwarranted conclusions.
“It’s extremely important that the police vet those tips in a substantive way,” Nathanson said, “as opposed to charging ahead with SWAT teams kicking in the doors of innocent people.”
Most-wanted list drives tips
The FBI says the theory behind its most-wanted fugitives list is simple: The more people know a face, the harder it is for that person to hide.
But while its name suggests the members have been measured in some way, there isn’t a scientific method for choosing who makes the top 10.
Rather, the FBI chooses fugitives based on two main factors: The person must be dangerous or have a record of serious crimes, and the FBI must believe nationwide publicity will help find the suspect. Those factors helped put Fisher on the list.
Scottsdale police said on the oneyear anniversary of the Fisher murder case that they were convinced the triple-murder suspect was probably living under a false identity in an obscure town. In June 2002, the FBI put him in the top 10.
He joined a list that at the time was made up of suspected serial pedophiles, murderers, drug kingpins and the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden.
The photo of Fisher that joined the mug-shot gallery was taken in 1999.
Since then, the only updates have been artificial age-progression pictures of what he may look like bald or with gray hair. If still alive, Fisher would turn 60 on April 13.
The Fisher case is so old that it has been handed down to new detectives at the Scottsdale Police Department and to new FBI special agents. One detective has died; others have retired or been promoted.
And while the FBI put Fisher on its national list, its partner on the case is Scottsdale.
The Fisher investigative files at the Scottsdale Police Department consist of more than 15 three-ring binders, each several inches thick. The binders are housed on bookshelves filled with other unsolved Scottsdale murder cases dating back to the 1970s.
The Fisher file has about twice the volume of the other cold cases at the Scottsdale Police Department. The files contain police reports, witness interviews, Fisher’s medical records and tips that have come in.
From 2006 to 2011, “America’s Most Wanted” got tips about Fisher on its hotline. Heinzelman opened a whole binder stuffed with them.
Even 20 years after the murders, Heinzelman gets two to three tips a week, or about 100 potential sightings a year. Thousands of tips have come from nearly every state and all over the world: Mexico, Canada, South America and as far away as Africa and Europe.
The tips can be vague: A caller talked to someone in the grocery store seven years ago who looked like the fugitive.
The sightings can be specific: A caller dated a guy, who was abusive and violent. She ended the relationship but thinks he may be Fisher, using an assumed name.
The tips can also be far-fetched: A psychic watched a Fisher documentary and has a feeling that Tulsa, Oklahoma, is where police need to look.
Scottsdale police and the FBI vet the tips and can often rule someone out without having to contact the person. Some tips are so vague there is nothing to go on. But every so often, an investigation makes the news.
A Colorado sighting; shots fired
Police got a tip on the afternoon of Oct. 11, 2014. An Arizona man on the FBI’s most wanted list was at a townhouse in a Denver suburb.
The tip came from a 35-year-old Denver resident, who told police he was certain a man he met two weeks previously was Fisher.
He didn’t know the man well. But when he learned his location on that October afternoon, he called police and told them that Robert William Fisher was at the residence.
That the tipster recognized Fisher in the man’s face wasn’t just chance. He told police he routinely went to the FBI’s website to look at the most-wanted fugitives list. He contacted the FBI, at first telling them he wasn’t sure it was Fisher, but then became convinced when he saw the man again and he had shaved his beard and cut his hair.
Four officers headed over. When they learned the Fisher look-alike was on the move and possibly armed, they moved in.
The first officer saw two men standing outside by a green BMW. The officer pointed his gun and told the men to put their hands in the air, according to a police report.
Both men ran.
One headed toward a backyard where three children played. An officer chased him and yelled to stop and show his hands. When he refused and moved his hands as if reaching for a weapon, the officer fired his gun, according to police. The bullet didn’t hit anyone. Police arrested the man while another officer helped the three children over a fence and away from the scene.
The Robert Fisher look-alike ran into the townhouse. When he heard the gunshot, he came outside and surrendered. He told police he ran because he was scared.
He insisted he was not the fugitive. He told them his fingerprints would prove it.
Back at police headquarters, his fingerprints were checked against Fisher’s in the national database. They didn’t match. He was also 44 years old, nine years younger than Fisher would have been at the time.
Unfortunately for him, police found methamphetamines in his pants pocket.
They arrested him on suspicion of illegal drugs.
‘Could we have your fingerprints?’
Most Fisher sightings don’t end in a police chase. Heinzelman said 90% of the investigative work takes place in the office, where they research the person’s background.
If police can verify the Fisher lookalike had a life before 2001 — the year Fisher went missing — they can be ruled out.
Heinzelman or the FBI will knock on the person’s door in some instances. This interaction can lead to some interesting conversations, he said.
They will explain why they are there, and then ask, “Could we have your fingerprints?”
Investigators carry a portable fingerprint scanner, where they can compare them to Fisher’s prints. His digits are in the national fingerprint database because he was fingerprinted while in the Navy.
Fingertips are unique. Even identical twins have different fingerprints. If someone tries to alter their fingerprints, say by burning the tips, the scarring becomes part of their unique fingerprint.
“I have not had anyone run away from me at that point,” Heinzelman said. “Everyone we have checked has been verified to not be Robert Fisher.”
About three years ago, Heinzelman received a tip about a man who had moved into a new housing development in a Phoenix suburb. He and an FBI agent knocked on the door in the West Valley near Loop 303 and, after talking with the man, determined he could not be Fisher.
The man was flattered.
“‘Oh, hey, can I get your card so I can tell my wife when she comes home that I was visited by police and FBI thinking I was this suspect?’ ” he told Heinzelman.
“She’s not going to believe it.”
While curious encounters like Heinzelman’s may be more of the norm, there’s little doubt the prolonged attention to the case has fueled armed responses, like the one in Colorado, that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Nathanson, the attorney who represented the Canadian man in the 2004 report, says he still has to fight to protect him after he had his “life turned upsidedown.”
If his client’s name had leaked to the media, Nathanson said, “it would have been extremely damaging to the reputation of a completely innocent person.”