The Deck - Bobby Joe Fritz (5 of Spades, Wisconsin)

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Our card this week is Bobby Joe Fritz, the 5 of Spades from Wisconsin.  On May 14, 1983, 5-year-old Bobby Joe Fritz asked his sister to walk him back home after playing a game of kickball with the neighborhood kids in the Wisconsin village of Campbellsport. After walking him toward their house and watching as he made it to the end of their driveway, his sister waved goodbye and returned to kickball — and that was the last confirmed sighting of Bobby Joe. For nearly four decades, police in Wisconsin have been trying to figure out how Bobby Joe seemingly vanished into thin air.  If you know anything about the 1983 disappearance of Bobby Joseph Fritz, please call the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office at 920-906-4777. To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.orgcom.

Our card this week is Bobby Joe Fritz, the five of spades from Wisconsin. When five-year-old Bobby Joe vanished one afternoon in the early 80s, no one suspected right away that he'd been abducted, because stuff like that just didn't happen in his tiny hometown. But as days went by without any sign of the little boy, the clues started to point to a worst-case scenario, and revealed something much more sinister going on in Northern Wisconsin. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. on May 14, 1983, in the small northern Wisconsin village of Campbell's Port, 10-year-old Sinda Fritz and her 5-year-old brother Bobby Joe were out playing kickball with some

neighborhood kids. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the group was playing in an empty field across from East Main Street where Senda and Bobby Joe lived. The kids played there all the time because the field was close enough to their row of houses that most of their parents could step outside their front doors and see them. But Campbell's Port, especially back in the 80s, was one of those small Midwestern towns where all the kids roamed wherever they felt like it until it was time to go home for dinner. This is how Fondulac County Sheriff's Detective Eric Mullenbach describes it. Campbell sports mall everybody knows everybody literally so even back then you know you

could say hey that's the Smiths you know they're 12 doors down and they drive you know a green car and they just clean up their movements because it's a small town. May 14th was a nice spring day and the kids played kickball for hours that afternoon. But around 4.30 pm, Sinda's brother Bobby Joe asked her to take him home because he was hungry and he wanted a snack. Since Sinda was 5 years older than Bobby, he became her responsibility when they were out playing, so Sinda walked him toward home. She stopped just short of their house, but she watched as her little brother made it to the end of their mom's driveway about 30 feet from their front door.

They waved goodbye and Sinda went to join back in on the kickball game. Sinda arrived back to the house about an hour later to wash up in time for dinner, and she was taken aack almost immediately when her mom asked her where Bobby Joe was. Sinta said, I brought him home an hour ago, but Sinta's mom Sharon just looked confused. She said she never saw Bobby Joe come inside. At first Sharon thought maybe Bobby Joe had snuck by her? You see Sharon was a newly single mom with four of her six kids under one roof.

She had recently divorced from their father, Robert, and he had moved to Illinois with two of their older sons. So it was a lively household and not uncommon for Sharon not to have eyes on all four kids at all times. So Cindy, Sharon, and the two other kids taught in Laura started searching the house for Bobby Joe at 530. They shouted his name and looked in the closets and under the beds to see if he was hiding, but he was nowhere to be found, so they expanded their search outside and looked in the yard.

Some neighbors heard the fritzes yelling out for Bobby Joe and got worried, so they joined in. It was one of them who suggested they alert the Sheriff's Office, and at 5.37pm a neighbor called the Fondulac County Sheriff's Office and reported Bobby Joe missing. Now, I'm happy to tell you this is not one of those stories where police were dismissive and said, oh, just give it a few days, he'll probably show back up. Deputy's responded right away and joined in the search for Bobby Joe. Pretty soon, there were teams of people looking all over the neighborhood for the five-year-old.

Not long into their search, someone found a toy gun near the edge of the Milwaukee River in a field where the kids had been playing kickball, which butts up to the river bank. A neighbor said he had seen Bobby Joe with a toy gun in the past, so they were pretty sure it was his, though none of the kids could recall if Bobby Joe had had it with him earlier that day. Because they found the toy so close to the river, investigators worried Bobby Joe might have somehow wandered back here on his own and fallen in the water. They were especially worried about this because of an incident that happened a few weeks earlier. The family told Fondulat County deputies that Bobby Joe had been playing outside

and fell in the water, but a bigger kid was able to grab him and get him out. Now, the river in that spot isn't super deep because it flows south into a pond with a dam before narrowing again. And that was comforting at first because, hey, they knew they had a really good chance of finding him in that immediate area if he had gone in the water. And B, if he'd fallen in that exact spot, he likely would have been able to get out safely on his own. The Sheriff's Office called out the rescue squad, and by 6.30 pm, there was a full-scale search underway in the Milwaukee River. Detective Mullenbach wasn't part of the search team back then, but he's working the case

today and has reviewed every piece of paperwork associated with it. That was thoroughly searched with boats walking in the water, with poles poking everywhere. If there was something underwater, where the rocks created a little cavern or something all that was scuba divers in the dive team. Because of the dam and the way the river flows, Detective Mullenbach said it would be nearly impossible for someone, even a child, to have fallen in and not be spit out downstream,

unless he was able to get out of the water himself. That's the belief that he'd have been washed downstream, and it gets narrow, so those are all farm fields. And, you know, brush hanging over the shorelines. At some point, he'd have got caught up in some brush, and either a deer hunter or some type of hunter or farmer would have seen something in the water.

The dive team kept searching the water until dark, at which point the Fritz family had to go home panicked, thinking about the worst case scenario. The next day, the water searches continued while deputies questioned Bobby Joe's family and neighbors. They wanted to find out if anything strange had happened before Bobby Joe vanished. They had a yard sale earlier that day,

Cindy did, she didn't sell anything, so there wasn't anybody suspicious hanging around or any suspicious vehicles. A neighbor was talked to, and at some point during that day, he had seen Bobby Joe playing by some water earlier in the day. Though everything seemed to lead back to the water, Divers still hadn't found Bobby Joe or any sign of his clothing. So investigators started to wonder if he could have been abducted.

They can't miss the neighborhood to see if anyone else had noticed any suspicious people or cars in Campbell's Port on Saturday, but no one had. And everyone who knew Bobby Joe said he wouldn't willingly have gone anywhere with a stranger. I had read some interview reports that he probably wouldn't go up to somebody, and especially men. He was just very shy. Detective Momobox said the old reports from the 80s aren't super detailed about the interviews police back then conducted with Bobby Joe's family members, but Sharon did

say that she was concerned about her ex-husband. The reports don't indicate anything suspicious or rumor mail because that's just not what they did back then and even now we don't put rumour or anything that we can't verify in the reports. But mom had a suspicion that maybe he, you know, Robert took him, Robert's senior. According to Old Police Reports, Sharon had tried to contact her ex-husband on the Saturday Bobby Joe went missing, but he'd been out. And then when she did finally get in touch with him on Sunday, he was a little dismissive of the situation.

The best way detectives today describe it is Sharon Figured Robert would hop in the car and come up to Wisconsin to help search for their son, but he didn't. After two days of unsuccessful searching, deputies knew it was time to alert some neighboring police agencies about Bobby Joe's disappearance. They sent out some bulletins, stapled flyers up at local businesses, and alerted the local press. And before they knew it, calls were coming in about alleged sightings of Bobby Joe. He was sawing Wyoming.

He was sawing cans, seeing cans, you know, things like that. So a lot of phone calls back then, a lot of requests for other agencies just letting them know. And that was through a system and the computer system back then that it would come out on a teletype, a little paragraph that, hey, there's a boy missing from Canalsport, Wisconsin, here's his description. By the time Monday rolled around, and Bobby Joe

had been missing for two full days, everyone in town had heard about his disappearance. Calls continued to come in with theories about what people thought happened to Bobby Joe, and over the next week, as divers continued searching the Milwaukee River, the dam and a nearby pond, deputies worked to follow all possible leads. Efforts were made for FBI agents to interview Bobby Joe's dad in Illinois, and though there aren't a ton of details about what Robert Sr. told law enforcement, they did find out that he got remarried on the weekend following his son's disappearance, which some people

found suspicious. But agents didn't find Bobby Joe at his dad's house in Illinois, so while the timing of his wedding made them scratch their heads, he was pretty much ruled out as a suspect. As deputies continued to interview everyone who knew the young boy, they heard concerns from his teachers about his home life. Reports indicate that mom had drank periodically. She would show up to school if she showed up for an appointment, if she showed up, and sometimes she would show up and teachers or school staff would feel that she may have been intoxicated. The kids missed quite a bit

of school. Some of the older kids would miss anywhere from 40 to 60 days a year. The school would offer help, and it wasn't necessarily taken by mom. They offered to go home to the house and help the kids along and teach because Bobby Joy had a little speech and pedimental a little bit, you know, the language teacher, just to help the kids along. And she was just dismissive? Yeah, if I recall it correctly, the report said,

you know, we're not gonna be home, we're busy. And again, that's all from what I read in the reports. I want to be clear that police said the teacher's concerns were about the children's absences and there were never any accusations of neglect or anything against Sharon. Part of me wants to cut her some slack because she had just gone through what police called a bitter divorce and was on her own with four small kids. But of course deputies had to rule her out as a person of interest, which they did.

By early June, Wisconsin state investigators had gotten involved in the search for Bobby Joe, and they sent the civil air patrol out to conduct the first aerial search of Campbell's port, which focused on a five mile radius of the Milwaukee River. The air crew searched for 10 hours and videoed their efforts, so investigators could have a bird's eye view of the area in case they could spot anything that was missed from the water searches. But even they came out of it empty handed. In a June 13, 1983 article in the Fondylac Commonwealth Reporter, the sheriff at the time

was quoted as saying he was frustrated by his department's inability to make headway in the Fondylac Commonwealth Reporter, the sheriff at the time was quoted as saying he was frustrated by his department's inability to make headway in the case. He said, there isn't a day or night that goes by that we don't think about him. We're going to find him." End quote. I think the reason they were so frustrated was because there are only a couple ways in and out of Campbell's port

and so many people involved in the initial search for Bobby Joe fully expected to have found him within a couple of days. But as days turned into months, all they could do was keep up the weekly river searches for Bobby Joe. No one knew what else to do. In July 1983, the Fondylac Commonwealth reporter ran a story about how Bobby Joe's sixth birthday was approaching. And with each passing day, the Fritz family's hope at finding him alive was fading.

Bobby Joe's mom Sharon told the newspaper that her son had asked for a fish tank and a real fish for his sixth birthday, and she hoped her son would be found so she could buy him that fish as a gift. In that same article, Sharon said that friends and family members were working to pass around flyers about Bobby Joe to long haul truck drivers, so they could spread the word. The flyers described Bobby Joe as five years old, blonde, with a red birthmark on his left leg

and a speech impediment. Sharon shared with the newspaper that she was having trouble sleeping at night and would sit up and just cry, thinking about what could have happened to her little boy. She also said that some of her other kids were getting counseling because they were having such a hard time dealing with Bobby Joe's disappearance. According to that newspaper, Sam reporting Sharon even wrote a letter to the president at the time, Ronald Reagan. She told Reagan in her letter that there were 50,000 kids

abducted in the United States every year. Isn't there anything you can do to help us parents of missing children, Chiasd? We couldn't find any reports about whether or not the Fritz family ever heard back from the White House. Then, in the spring of 1984, an entire year after Bobby Joe went missing, deputies received a tip that not only had the potential to break the case wide open, but pointed them to something much darker

going on in their community. A couple in Shabuigan County, Wisconsin decided to visit a brand new art gallery in Waldo, a tiny village about 25 minutes east of Campbell's Port. But instead of finding art that they might want to purchase to hang on their walls at home, they found paintings that creeped them out. The paintings looked to be of young boys in their underwear. And the fact that the gallery owner and artist himself was a 30-something man creeped them out even more. They were about to leave when they spotted an article on a table in the gallery.

It was one of the articles about Bobby Joe's disappearance that featured a photo of him. And it was near a painting that looked like it could be of Bobby Joe, except the face was obscured. This gave the couple chills. They got out of there as fast as they could and called police to report everything they'd seen. Here's Shaboying County Sheriff's Detective Kevin Whitlinger, who works the case today alongside Detective Mullenbach. I'm not sure who that couple is or where they're from. It became known to law enforcement that, hey, this guy has these articles out of this boy that's missing and he has this weird artwork of young boys and these I would call Skimpy Swimsuits.

The Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office connected with deputies in Fondylac County about the tip, which kicked off a deep dive into the gallery owner. They found out the man was 35-year-old Michael Menzer, a former teacher and swim coach who'd been arrested for sexual assault and fired from the Shabuigan School System in 1980. I don't think he had a reputation there yet, but he left the city sometime after being arrested in 1980 for the molestation of other children. After Menzer's arrest, he was released from jail on his signature bond, meaning he didn't have to pay any bail money.

And according to old news reports in the Shaboykin Press, he was later placed on probation after pleading no contest in the sexual assault case. But he lost his teaching and coaching jobs jobs as well as his volunteer position at Big Brothers Big Sisters. Police also found out that Menzer bought the art gallery, which was also his house, in Waldo in 1981. But the research also revealed Menzer had a wife and a couple of step kids, so to some, he appeared to have cleaned up his act after his 1980 arrest.

But the more police looked into it, they realized the men's or family dynamic was complex. It wasn't even clear if the kids and wife lived at the Waldo Art Gallery with him, and it was in a rural area so neighbors weren't sure what went on there. But considering men's or criminal history and the fact that he lived just 25 minutes from where Bobby Joe went missing, deputies were thinking, this has to be our guy. If they wanted to find Bobby Joe, if he was still alive, they had to be very careful with their next steps in the investigation. As they started writing a search warrant for Menzer's art gallery and attached house, rumors started to swirl, and deputies got

another disturbing phone call. It was from a parent of a young boy who said Michael Menzer had made their son pose naked for pictures. That was all police needed to hear to launch a full-blown investigation into the sky, who was obviously still praying on young boys. In June of 1984, investigators executed a search warrant at Menzer's property hoping to either find Bobby Joe or his remains or some clue that would tell them

that he'd been there. Instead, they found an enormous amount of evidence that convinced them their suspect needed to be behind bars for crimes relating to other children. In Menzer's Gallery in Home, police found child-sex abuse materials, books and brochures showing young boys, an article about child-sex abuse materials and First Amendment rights. They also found several pairs of little boys' swimsuits, photography equipment, photos of nude boys, chains and manacles, and legal model releases for

parents to sign to allow men's or to photograph their children. Police also found a wooden box with a lock on it containing more child abuse materials, with a note on it signed by Men's or that said quote, At my death, please destroy by fire this box and everything in it without opening it. Please." They also found the article that the couple had seen about Bobby Joe's disappearance and the paintings and other disturbing articles. Here's Detective Mullenbach again.

On timely deaths of three children in Walker, Shakone was suffocated. Two young people that were killed in a traffic crash. Child that was ran over by a car and a bizarre clipping from wherever it was in the country. A child being placed in a oven by a mother. So just odd paper clippings and a lot of negatives, of photos of kids, young kids dating back to 1968 when men's are a graduated college and began teaching.

Detectives shared some photos of Men's house and the g-rated photos of their evidence with us. So you can actually see those on thedeckpodcast.com. Detective Whitlinger said Men's are later made up excuses about why he had the news articles in his house. So he was questioning about the articles. They said, well, how come you had these newspaper articles? And he stated the one where the child was placed into an oven that he got from when he was in college for some sort of project that he was working on then.

But on the article written in Greece pencil is the date of 83. So I don't know when that article actually was published, but I would have a hard time thinking that's an article that it retained from 1970. And then the one with Bobby Joe Fritz, he said he saved that because he wanted to talk to his wife about child safety because their kids were always running around and it was near a highway in a rural area just like Bobby Joe. So he wanted to talk to her. He doesn't say he did. He says I wanted to talk to her. He doesn't say he did.

He says, I wanted to talk to her about child safety and shore that these things are possible. And this happens. One of the last pieces of evidence police found at the house was a calendar. It caught their attention because someone had put a red star sticker on May 14, 1983. That is the day that Bobby Joe vanished. After seeing that, police were more convinced

than ever that Menzer had something to do with the Little Boys abduction. But there was no sign of Bobby Joe at Menzer's home. When he was interviewed about the star on May 14, Menzer said it had something to do with his stepson's birthday. He dismissed that saying it had something to do with his stepson's birthday. He dismissed that saying it had something to do with one of the boy's birthdays, but I don't think any of the boys are born on the 14th. It appeared in the way it's written that was a flippant response. Well, I don't know. I was probably had to do it with, I think it was Kyle that was born in May. Probably had something to do with Kyle's birthday.

But there's nothing else written there. It's literally just the star not going out to dinner or party or call the grandparents or anything like that. It's just, oh, I think they probably had something to do with Kyle's birthday. Police arrested the 35-year-old and charged him with sexual exploitation of a child. According to reporting by the Shaboygan press,

he saw a judge on June 30 of 84, and his bail was set at $10,000. But weeks later, Menzer pled not guilty, demanded a jury trial, and was allowed to post a $15,000 property bond in place of his $10,000 cash bond, and he was released from jail. The news of Menzer's arrest opened the floodgates. Other parents were calling in, saying their children had also been abused by Menzer. I'll spare you the details, but it was enough for them to tack on several more counts of exploitation.

After he made bail in 1984, Menzer's wife Grace told investigators that he spent an afternoon burning stuff and erected a huge cross behind his Waldo property and kept flowers at the base of it. Despite police being convinced Menser abducted Bobby Joe Fritz, they had no actual evidence tying him to it, except for that article and a star on the calendar being suspicious. So they continued their investigative efforts while Menser went on with his life while

he was out on Bond awaiting trial. But calls about Bobby Joe slowed down. The next year in 1985, a psychic called the Fondulac County Sheriff's Office and said Bobby Joe was being held captive in a park in Ontario, Canada. The psychic must have been convincing or maybe police just didn't want any tip to go ignored because Wisconsin deputies called up the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and asked them to respond to this park where the psychic had her vision, but they didn't find Bobby Joe or any other suspicious activity there. The next call they got though pointed them in a more believable direction, right back

at Menzer. A man called police to report that he'd heard about Menzer's arrest, and he realized that he'd been in Menzer's house in January of 1984 and saw something weird in the basement. The man said that he had considered purchasing a turbine that Menzer listed for sale, and he'd gone to the Waldo property to see it. The man said that he'd got to the bottom of the basement stairs and there was some plastic and would appear to be some kind of shrine in the corner. He also said that if you walked far enough into the basement, the concrete floor turned to dirt, where there was then a hole in the ground, six feet long and five feet deep, like a grave.

He said he looked in the hole, but it was empty. This was incredibly frustrating for police to hear, because this was just another thing that was fishy as hell, but no matter how many tips like this came in, no matter how many other crimes against children he was accused of, There was just nothing physical tying him to Bobby Joe. By 1986, most hope about Bobby Joe still being found alive was gone. In June, Menzer was finally convicted of the unrelated exploitation charges and given a year of county jail time with probation and a possible prison sentence of four and a half years

if he violated his parole. I'm gonna let that just sink in for a minute because it made me sick to my stomach when I learned about it, especially because he ended up getting out of jail within a couple of months, and then he went off the grid for several years. Despite the FBI getting involved in trying to put pressure on Mender to confess or lead investigators to Bobby Joe's body, he never did. There's a time when he's spoken to, and I don't think it's by locals, it would have been state or federal agents,

where it's just kind of brought up. And he says, I actually think he says, oh yeah, no one's ever really asked me about that, but I didn't do anything to do with those kids. After laying low for a few years, Menzer filed divorce papers on his wife in 1989. In September 1990, Menzer called the school counselor for his son and two step-son, and asked out of the blue if she could tell whether or not the boys had been sexually molested. According to police reports the counselor said, yes that can be

determined through counseling. A few weeks later, Men'sers divorce was finalized and his wife Grace got full custody of all three kids. She later discloses that he almost immediately within a few months starts molesting his stepkids now. So now he has access again to children until he loses them at divorce. According to detectives, Grace told police that she had threatened men's or in the past to turn him in for molesting their kids. But she said that he would threaten her back, usually saying that their marriage was the only thing keeping her a legal resident in the US.

Three days after their divorce was finalized, this was September 17, 1990. The same day as the kids next scheduled counseling session, someone set the Waldo Art Gallery and home on fire. By then, men's or and grace were still working on separating completely. So grace and the kids were staying at the Waldo House, and police believed men's are staying somewhere else. Either his parents' lake house or at his mom's primary house in Shabuygen. The fire started at 4am when grace and the three boys were all asleep.

The fire killed two of the children, but grace in their five-year-old escaped by jumping from a three-story window. Despite Menzer being the main suspect for the arson and murders, police had no physical evidence tying him to it, so he wasn't immediately arrested or charged with anything. A few weeks later, an insurance representative said, Menzer had contacted her agency about filing a claim, and Menzer had asked some weird questions. He wanted to know specifically if the basement would be dug up. Menzer asking about the basement was enough for police to be granted another search warrant for the basement of Men's' Chard Home and former art gallery in addition to a family

cabin that he frequented at nearby Elkhart Lake. Police executed the search warrant in October 1990, and during the search at his family's cottage at the lake, police found a peephole in the wall of a room that was used by men and boys to change into their swimwear. But as far as evidence goes, they didn't find much else at the cottage. Detective said Menzer had access to the lake house and would use it when he knew other family members weren't going to be there. Back in Waldo, Menzer's art gallery and house sat right on the Milwaukee River, so police got rescue teams out to search the water, too. They dragged the area directly behind Menzer's house looking for human remains, clothing

or anything that could sink to the bottom of the water that he could have used to hide human remains. Then, in the basement of the Waldo House, police dug up the entire basement and discovered children's clothing under a concrete slab. They also found bones. But the thing is, none of the clothing they found matched what Bobby Joe was wearing the day he went missing. So investigators wondered if

maybe they just discovered the remains of another unknown victim. But according to detective Whitlinger, an anthropologist examined the bones and determined that they were from an animal. Unfortunately, nowhere in the reports does it say how that determination was made or what animal the anthropologist thought the bones belonged to. Menzer remained the only suspect in the arson that killed his step-kids, so investigators continued looking for evidence that could prove he did it. And some people came forward with information that made menzer look even more suspicious. Apparently, before the fire started, menzer had told various people that he thought someone

was going to burn down his house and kill his family because of his reputation as a pedophile. He also reported a small fire behind his house in the weeks prior to the deadly blaze. In hindsight, police think that he had planned the fire and was kind of planting seeds to make police think that someone else was out to get him. So in 1991, Menzer was interviewed by special agents. This time, they had accusations from grace

that he'd been molesting their children for years. It was during that interview that Menzer finally admitted to molesting numerous children in the past, but he said not his stepkits, mostly children he met through volunteering at the Big Brothers program. He also didn't admit anything relating to Bobby Joe Fritz. Combining all the evidence, interviews with victims and his confession, police and prosecutors built a federal case against Menzer, which took years, but in 1993 he was convicted of the arson and murders of his seven and eight-year-old step-sons. During the trial, according to documents, a federal jury learned that

men's are had molested at least 10 boys over the course of his adult life. In a letter to a federal judge after the conviction, but before sentencing, the prosecutor called men's are a dangerous pedophile whose crimes escalated over his lifetime. The attorney said Menzer deserved a harsher punishment than even the recommended maximum, and ultimately he was given 40 years in federal prison. Bobby Joe's family never stopped missing him or wondering what happened to him. Detective said in 2000, one of his brothers even moved back to Campbell's Port as a personal quest to find his brother.

Every so often, someone would call Wisconsin deputies out of the blue thinking that maybe they were Bobby Joe, but those were ruled out quickly. Years ago, you know, you would have somebody say, hey, I think I'm Bobby Joe or somebody thinks, I know there's a kid, I think it's Bobby Joe. And then the detectives would just touch me so that person in the first thing is,

hey, do you have a birthmark on your thigh? No, okay. Men's are died in a federal prison in Maryland in 2008 when he was 58 years old. He never confessed to anything related to Bobby Joe or revealed any information related to the case. Police in Wisconsin said they wish they'd been able to interview him one last time before his death, but because he was in federal custody, they didn't even know that he was sick with cancer. In 2010, police finally dug out some of the old evidence, the clothes

that they had found under concrete in Menzer's basement, and they submitted them for DNA. They've swabbed some of Bobby Joe's family members to try and see if anything matches, which would at least tell them if Bobby Joe was ever in Menzer's home, but they haven't gotten any matches yet. They haven't gotten any hits on the clothing

for other DNA profiles related to other missing or murdered children either, but detectives are hoping to work with the Wisconsin State agents to use genealogy resources. Even if the clothes were not Bobby Joe's, they had to have belonged to someone, and detectives worry that the clothes might belong to another unknown or unidentified victim. Over the years, there have been small updates here and there. In 2012, as part of a public works project in Campbell's Port, local officials needed to drain the old pond to reconfigure how the Milwaukee River flows there. So they took it as an opportunity to do another thorough search

for any signs of Bobby Joe's remains or clothing, but it turned up nothing. In 2013, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed photo of Bobby Joe to drum up some new publicity and hopes of new leads. The poster featured a real photo of Bobby Joe on the left at five years old. It's the usual school photo, and the blonde little boys looking just off camera and smiling in a red-collared shirt. His age-progressed photo shows what they think Bobby Joe would have looked like at 27. His blonde hair a little darker and face a little bit fuller.

The photo did create some new local publicity, but it actually didn't lead to any new tips in the case. So, in 2014, Detective submitted more evidence for DNA testing. Six hairs were found on some of the old clothing that had been taken from Menzer's basement. And one of the strands of hair belongs to a male. But that's all we know of now because more specific testing hasn't happened yet.

The Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office is still deciding how to test the hair without ruining the strand. It might sound like a long shot, and it is, but the fact is, police don't have much else to work with. It's going to take a DNA match or a tip to physically connect Bobby Joe and Michael Menzer. And interestingly, in 2008, a tip came in that detective thought could have been that

missing link. That's when one of Michael Menzer's family members emailed the Shabuigian County Sheriff's Office, asking if they'd ever search a place called Grasshopper Hill. It was near the family cottage at Elkhart Lake, and that lake is about 20 minutes north of Waldo where Menzer lived. This family member said that they all used to go up there as kids and play in the woods, and men's are had secluded access to the hill. It took the sheriff's office a while to get together the necessary team, but in the summer and fall of 2021,

detectives with cadaver dogs took to Grasshopper Hill, which is now a 25-acre preserve, and their hope was to finally find the remains of Bobby Joe Fritz. And they got their hopes up when three different dogs indicated on a cadaversent between some trees. And it goes back and forth between the cedar tree and this oak tree. And it kind of just does this loop looking around and gets... Even I can see a behavior change in the dog like it's trying to find something. It reminds me of giving a positive indication between the two trees. After that, the whole team of people who are involved in this search are thinking, this

has to be it, this has to be where Bobby Joe is buried. So they brought in ground penetrating radar, which indicated on two areas of possible soil disturbances. They put together a plan, and it was not just a hand-to-shovel operation. On October 18 and 19 of 2021, members of the Shaboying County and Fondylac County Sheriff's Departments and FBI evidence recovery team, special agents with the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigations, and a forensic anthropologist went back to Grasshopper Hill with heavy machinery, and they conducted two days of excavation operations,

fully expecting to find the remains of Bobby Joe Fritz. But there was nothing. Detectives said it was surprising and frustrating. After seeing the dogs indicate on a possible grave site in the area where one of Menzer's relatives said he frequented, they thought for sure it was going to be the end of the decades-long search for Bobby Joe. The disappointment of not finding his remains forced them to go back to the beginning and try to think about things differently.

What's tough is the fact that Bobby Joe disappeared mere feet from his own door in broad daylight. Whoever took him did it quietly and without being detected. Plus if that did happen, it's unlikely Bobby Joe or his body wouldn't have turned up somewhere near Campbell's port. If you had the stranger who comes through town, it just happens to get lucky and grabs Bobby Joe. Statistically speaking, get lucky and grabs Bobby Joe. Statistically speaking, they are not keeping Bobby Joe. They're going to do, it's a three hour window.

They're going to do what they're going to do. They're going to dispose of Bobby Joe. And when they dispose of them, it's within 250 feet of the roadway, somewhere else. You know, they get off the main road, they go through their thing. And within 250 feet of that road is usually where the body is disposed of. Bobby Joe has never been found. Detectives Whitlinger and Bowenbach remain hopeful. And within 250 feet of that road is usually where the body is exposed of. Bobby Joe has never been found. Detectives Whitlinger and Bologna Bob remain hopeful

that if they continue to test for DNA matches on every piece of evidence that they'll eventually come across Bobby Joe's remains. And even though their primary suspect is dead, finding Bobby Joe would at least provide some answers to his family, answers that they've been searching for for decades. I am of the opinion that Bobby Joe is, if he's dead, his remains are in Shabboy County. Because there's nothing that I can find at Ty's Men's or anywhere else outside of the

state. Bobby Joe Fritz has been missing for 39 years and his siblings still miss him and they still wonder what happened. His parents both passed away without ever learning what happened to their son. Bobby Joe would be 44 today if he was still alive. Investigators in Wisconsin are not going to give up until they find him. So, if you know anything about the 1983 disappearance of Bobby Joseph Fritz, please call the Fondulette County Sheriff's Office at 920-906-4777.

The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeafpodcast.com. So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve? Aaaaah!