The Deck - Eddie & Frances Cizauskas (3 of Clubs, Wisconsin)

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

Our card this week is Eddie and Frances Cizauskas, the 3 of Clubs from Wisconsin. A Wisconsin couple known for their sweet dispositions and hardworking nature were found murdered in a barn near their junkyard in 1988. Bizarre rumors about the murders of Edward and Frances Cizauskas have swirled around for decades, and detectives believe they’re closer than ever to solving the case. If you know anything about the 1988 Cizauskas double murder in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, please call the Sheboygan County dispatch at 920-459-3112. 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.org 

Our card this week is Eddie and Frances Sazowskis, the three of clubs from Wisconsin. Eddie and Frances were in their mid-70s and still working hard as successful scrap metal dealers. When one day, a monster showed up in their junkyard, leaving behind a mystery that has lasted for more than three decades. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. A little after 9 o'clock on Wednesday, November 30, 1988, Herbert Baumgart arrived to his friend Eddie's house to start the work day. He was moving a little slower that morning because there was a fresh dusting of snow on the roads in their small town of Shabwagon, Wisconsin, and he wanted to drive safely. Herbert was 72 and only worked one day a week at his friend's well-known junk business.

Eddie's Jaloppi jungle. Jaloppie is a term for an old car and Eddie had fields full of old cars. Eddie was 75, so a few years older than Herbert, and he ran the business with his 73-year-old wife Francis. The two sometimes joked about retirement, but never fully committed. Eddie was a junk dealer, which basically meant that he collected and bought old discarded cars and car parts and others secondhand stuff to reseller trade. The couple's property was massive over 80 acres and spread around it where several barns and fields full of rusty old stuff. They might have looked like a mess, but it was an organized mess and Eddie and Francis lived in a house on the back of their property near a big barn.

As Herbert turned down their driveway that Wednesday morning, he noticed that it was extra quiet. He parked his car by the barn closest to Eddie and Francis' house and tried to get into the barn, but the door was locked. Now that immediately stuck out his odd, because every time he'd come over to help Eddie out with work before, that barn had never been locked. In fact, it was even weirder that Eddie wasn't already out working because usually Herbert would hardly ever be Eddie to the barn. Eddie was always the first to rise in the morning and get to work.

When Herbert looked between the couple's house and the barn, he didn't notice any tire marks or fresh footprints in the snow between the two locations. So, he figured the only explanation was that maybe Eddie and Francis had a late breakfast and were taking things slow. So his next move was to head toward the house and knock on their door. Shaboykin County Sheriff's Detective Misty Nelson said Herbert wrapped on the front door a few times and no one answered. But when he tried that door, it was unlocked. a few times and no one answered. But when he tried that door, it was unlocked. Any walks in and doesn't see anyone in the house

and actually notices that the beds are made. So he knows that they're around somewhere and then goes back out to the barn again. Herbert was able to get into the barn using a back door that was unlocked. But it was dark when he stepped inside, so he couldn't seem much except the outline of some objects and things laying around. And that's when he peeks around and sees what we believe is probably just a body and

he doesn't know for sure. Herbert fumbled around and found the lights and that's when he saw the scene was far worse than he first thought. On the floor, close to the barn's front door, was the body of his friend, Eddie, and laying right next to him was Eddie's wife, Francis. It was a horrifying scene. Eddie looked like he'd been severely beaten in the head and was covered in blood. Francis was on her side, but by the way, she was positioned, it made it to the parts of

both of their bodies were overlapped. Herbert wasn't able to see Francis' face, so he couldn't tell if she had suffered a similar savage beating like her husband. All he could tell was that neither of them were breathing. Within seconds of seeing his friends, Herbert picked up a phone that was in the barn and called police at 9.38 a.m. He had called in 911 and had stated that he had found a man down, not breathing in the barn, and then

had said that it was the Jolopy jungle, which locals here were aware of what that is. It was a local junkyard. While he waited for authorities to arrive, Herbert stepped outside to catch his breath. He was freaked out being in the barn all by himself. I mean, what if the killer was still in there? He had no idea, but he wasn't going to take any chances.

This is Auskis' property was technically in Shibuya County just outside the town limits. Now, it's important to know at the time it was in the middle of a possible annexation with the town which caused some initial confusion about which law enforcement jurisdiction was sent to respond. But eventually, paramedics and law enforcement officers from both the town and the county arrived to the scene. Medical staff were able to determine pretty quickly that Eddie and Francis had no signs of life. And after a call to the county coroner to bring them on scene, the two were pronounced dead. Right away, deputies got to work looking around. The barn was full of random stuff,

and to be honest, under any other circumstances, would have appeared to have had signs of ransacking. But the clutter was to be expected since Eddie operated a junkyard. Signs of the couple's physical attack were obvious, though. There was blood on some big metal barrels near their bodies, and even more of it on the floor. Sergeant Lance Dastler, whose work the Sazowska's case since about 2005, said investigators

at the scene knew immediately that the couple had been killed inside the barn. Despite searching through all of the junk and seeing tools and things that might have been able to cause the couple's fatal injuries, an obvious murder weapon, like something with blood or hair on it, was nowhere in sight. One of the responding officers on the scene speculated that they might be dealing with a murder suicide. But after everyone gave that theory some more thought, the idea fizzled out. I mean, just from looking at the layout of the crime scene

itself, the victim's injuries and the absence of any kind of obvious murder weapons near their bodies, it didn't make sense. When they searched Eddie and Frances' friend in clues, that's when they noticed that Eddie's wallet was missing. So then detectives wondered if the killer was motivated by money, like a robbery gone wrong. Photos were taken of the scene, and one of the officers did a videotape walkthrough of the inside and outside of the barn.

But this was 1988, and whether it was due to a lack of resources or a lack of training, the images they captured were few and even the ones they did get were not the best quality. They didn't take as many photographs and that of the other parts of the barn. Whereas now, if this happened today, we would have every inch of this place photographed and video recorded. Back then, what do we have? 30 something photos of the crime scene. 32 photos to be exact, which for a double murder case,

Sergeant Dastard is right, that is not many at all. One step, you these were done taking videos and photos, the coroner transported the victim's bodies for autopsy. And the Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office notified Eddie and Francis's family members. The couple didn't have any children but they each had siblings, nieces and nephews that they were close with who lived nearby and throughout Wisconsin. Once the family knew word of the crime spread fast throughout the community. This was big news, you know, we don't have homicides very

often in Shaboying County, thankfully And, you know, we still don't. We're very fortunate like that. So for this to be a double homicide of a elderly couple like that, people running a business is trying to, you know, hardworking people still working at their age. It was big news. I grew up in Chibokin. I remember when it happened.

I was a kid in just out of high school at that point or still in high school at that point. And, you know, everybody was talking about it. It was big news and children hear that something like this had happened. In some cases, word was spreading so fast it got to family members before police could, like with Francis' sister Annette. And that was actually one of the first people investigators talked to, but she told detectives that before police ever even came over, her phone had been ringing off the hook, with family members telling her bits and pieces of disjointed information that basically something bad had happened over at Francis and Eddie's property.

Eventually, a family member called her that morning and said Eddie was found dead, but the details were slim, and the relative wasn't able to tell her anything about Francis. And it said she tried a few times to call over to her sister's place, but no one answered. And that knew this was weird because she said that she and Francis talked on the phone regularly, like multiple times a day. It was at that point police had to break the news to her. Eddie was in fact dead, and so was her sister. And worse, the two had been murdered.

After she regained her composure, she helped detectives start to form a timeline of the couple's last communications and movements. Annette revealed that she had talked to Francis Tuesday morning, November 29th at 8 a.m. That was just 24 hours before the crime scene was discovered. They were talking about it snowing and Francis was talking about having to go into town. And in the afternoon it called for rain in that she would maybe just wait until the afternoon

to go because of the snow in the morning. When a net called back around 1150, there was no answer and no call back. And then so she called again around 8 p.m. that evening and again no answer. Based on that information, police started to wonder if a Nex calls that Francis had missed on Tuesday. meant that Eddie and Francis were killed that day

and not the morning of Wednesday, November 30th like investigators initially thought. The next person authorities talked to was Eddie and Francis' nephew, a man named Dale, who said that he'd also tried to reach Eddie and Francis on November 29th. He said that he received no answer after leaving the phone ring 10 to 15 times, and then Dale said that his wife had also tried calling every hour after 10pm in an effort to make contact with them. Dale and his wife were a little worried that Eddie and Francis weren't answering, but

they held off on calling the police for a welfare check because they didn't think it was totally warranted. On Thursday, just a day after Eddie and Francis were found, news of their murders hit local newsstands and TV outlets. The December 1, 1988 front page of the Shaboygan press read, homicide suspected in death of couple. A photo of a cop car parked outside the Sousa Scus' barn ran underneath the headline. The article quoted officials from a news conference they held that morning.

A Shaboygan County District attorney at the time said the couple's cause of death were still being determined, but since all signs pointed to their deaths being suspicious in nature, the case was being investigated as a double homicide. Reporters at the press conference asked officials if they determined a motive for the crime, but detectives couldn't provide one. Reiterating that Eddie and Francis were well-known, loved, and respected in the community. Basically, they would say it was just too early to speculate. Later that same day, a resident pathologist in Shabuigan County conducted the couple's autopsy at a local hospital.

While investigators awaited those results, they continued to process the crime scene for clues. Like Sergeant Dastler said earlier, detectives' main theory at the time was that Eddie and Francis had been killed in the barn. But just for good measure, deputies also wanted to look around the couple's house for more evidence. And it's during that search that police found something really interesting.

When Shabuik and County deputies processed Eddie and Francis' house after their murders, they found signs that things weren't quite right. There was definitely something that happened in the house that leads us to believe that there was some type of initial confrontation in the house. If that sounds vague to you, that's because it is. Wisconsin investigators still won't say what they found inside Eddie and Francis' home that made them suspect the attack wasn't solely in the barn, so we're left to speculate, though I won't do that here. What Sergeant Dastler would confirm for our team is that the house itself was not ransacked,

and this detail about what deputies found in the house itself was not ransacked, and this detail about what deputies found in the house would be something that only the killer or killers would know about, which is why they aren't telling the public. Whatever this clue was, it's strongly indicated to investigators back in the day that whoever the suspect or suspects were, they might have come over to the junkyard with intentions to rob the couple. That idea has been floated with a lot of different variations. At these stumbles across these people on the property maybe they're looking for money.

Ultimately they confront him whether or not somebody then goes into the house to get Francis to try to get her to encourage him to cooperate and give the money up. We're not certain, obviously. After the newspaper story about the couple's murder on Thursday, December 1st, members of the community started calling in tips. And there was a theme among those phone calls that fed into this idea that perhaps robbery

was the killer's main motive. So I was rumors that they had a lot of money. You know, the business that they were involved in was a lot of the times in particular back in the 80s was all cash. Eddie was kind of a rumor to I was have like a role of cash on when he was out about in the community. So people knew that he had cash through rumors that we've heard during the investigation that people would say, oh, you know, there was rumors that they had cash hidden around on the property and things of that nature. Before

authorities could really dig into those leads, the autopsy results for Eddie came in. An article on the Shaboykin press from December 2nd reported that Eddie had been hit in the head with a blunt object enough times to cause catastrophic open wounds. He had been bludgeoned to death. But Francis, on the other hand, was a different story. Pathologist had a hard time figuring out exactly how she died.

The Shaboykin County corner at the time, a man named Dave Leffin, said that he couldn't rule out Blunt Force Trauma or strangulation for Francis' cause of death. He said the only thing he could rule out was a heart attack. But then Leffin turned right around and basically contradicted himself when he told the Shaboye Impress that Francis' autopsy, quote, doesn't rule out several possibilities,

such as dying of fright as if she had just seen her husband get killed. End quote. Since the autopsy results were going to be crucial to the investigation, the corner called in backup from a forensic pathologist with the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office. As investigators at the Sheriff's Office awaited that doctor's findings, they headed back to the barn to continue looking for clues or items that might have been used to inflict eddies injuries. They wanted and honestly needed to find the murder weapon if it was laying around there somewhere, blending in with the rest of the junk in the barn. But as you can imagine, finding a club like murder weapon that was used in a deadly beating

in a barn full of junk proved to be damn near impossible. There were tire irons, pipes, car parts, wrenches, and other tools in machinery that could have easily been used to kill someone. The problem was, none of those things had any blood on them, and most didn't appear as if they'd been cleaned either. Detectives even sent a dive team to search the nearby Pigeon River, but that turned up nothing. But luckily, the Milwaukee Medical Examiner's office did have something. By December of 1988, they had determined a cause of death for Francis. She was strangled to death. This was confusing to investigators back then.

Honestly, it's confusing to me now. I mean, for one thing, it's strange that there weren't more obvious signs of that for the coroner to see, but most importantly, there two victims had two different causes of death. So different, in fact, that the medical findings caused detectives to wonder if they were dealing with two killers instead of just one. Maybe someone held Eddie and decided to beat him in front of Francis, which then caused her to scream.

So maybe another perpetrator strangled her. All of the questions and possible scenarios were swirling for investigators. And there were actually some details in the couple's autopsy reports that somewhat supported this version of events. The documents stated that there were ligature markings found on their bodies, which made detectives strongly suspect that both Eddie and Frances could have been tied up before they were killed. The only thing that didn't jive with that was the fact that when their bodies were found, there were no restraints on them, nothing like rope or twine anywhere.

So either the killer removed the ligatures after killing the couple and took it with them, or the marks were from something else that police couldn't explain. Tied up or not, the big question was still about motive. Despite searching all over Etienne Francis' barn, home, and property, police never had any luck finding money stashed away or large quantities of cash that the couple were rumored to have had.

And if somehow it was just missed, it's probably never gonna be found. In the years since the crime, their acreage has been sold and part of it annexed into the city limits. The barns are no longer there and even the row near their property has been rerouted. Today, the area looks nothing like it did back in 1988.

For weeks after the crime, deputies with the sheriff's office worked through tons of tips that they'd received. And they decided there were three main angles, or I guess you could say there are three concrete leads that they felt were worth pursuing. The first, and probably the farthest stretch in investigators' eyes, was that maybe the couple had been killed because Eddie had been resistant to let his 80 acres of land be annexed by the town.

Eddie and Francis' great nephew, Justin Scavars, has heard this rumor over and over throughout the years, and he believes wholeheartedly it is far-fetched. I've had a number of people reach out to me on Facebook and send me their tin hat cakes on this, and I mean, just so preposterous. Justin lives out of state now, but he was born and raised in Shaboykin. He was just a toddler when his great aunt and uncle were killed.

I certainly think that my parents shielded me from what had happened at the time and probably maybe discussed it in front of me But I was maybe too young to understand. I certainly remember going to the junkyard pretty vividly. going to the junkyard pretty vividly. They were such good people, and everybody that I retell to, if they didn't have a tip or a lead, told me a great story about how Eddie and friend either cut them a deal or helped them out or was willing to lend a hand when other places won't. The Sheriff's Office never seriously considered the theory about Eddie being a target over his land possibly being annexed by the town. I mean, it's true that Eddie fought against the annexation, but according to everyone

our team interviewed, his conversations about it with town officials were civil. Justin said, out of all the rumors that still pop up about Eddie and Francis' murder, that one might be the worst. I can tell you that in Shiboyan County, there's no land where a double-merder. It's just one of those theories that just doesn't want to seem to go away. And people always just seem to bring it up. The next lead police looked into came from information they'd received about a high school kid who lived really close to Eddie and Francis.

There was an individual who's at the time that the crimes was like 17 or 18 years old, who ran his mouth at some parties in Shiboygan, his, who was a high school aged kid. Ran his mouth at some parties like he was the tough guy and he was responsible for the murders. He lived a couple blocks away from this, his else is his. Sergeant Dastler said detectives at the time interview the teenager, but he denied being involved in the murders. Deputy has continued to keep the pressure on him and follow up interviews, but every time

he denied any involvement, saying that he was just mouthing off at a party and people shouldn't have taken him seriously. Ultimately, police started to doubt his viability as a suspect, the longer that they spoke with him. Because at one point, they learned that he'd bragged about shooting the sezowskaces. Apparently, he'd said this statement to a friend before the couple's cause of death were made public, and police knew that the evidence did not show a gun had been used in the murders. Some of the things that were coming in and referenced to him being involved don't match the crime scene

There was a talk that they were shot and they weren't so there's things like that But those things really sidetracked people for a long time in the investigation The room were about the teenage boy bragging around town made its way back to Eddie and Francis's family members, and it was truly hurtful. So sick and so disgusting that you would brag about committing a double murder of an elderly couple and take a, like, some kind of badge of honor or make it look like you did this in your to be feared. It took police back in the late 80s a long time to figure out that the bragging teenager lead was a waste of their time. So it was months before they really moved on to their next theory.

Their last solid avenue of the investigation had to do with this local guy who was known for burglarizing businesses in Shaboykin. We know his real name, but police asked us not to reveal it, so we're going to call him Roger throughout this episode. He was kind of a bad guy, I guess, for like a better term. So he was a career criminal, kind of was known as kind of a fighter in the area.

Roger was known to target local businesses and steal cash from their registers. A lot of the tips the Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office fielded in the first few weeks of the investigation had to do with him being involved somehow. So police wanted to talk to Roger and anyone he ran around town with. They got a hold of four of his friends, three of whom who all agreed to be interviewed by police.

And each of those guys denied committing the murders, and the fourth guy just flat out refused to cooperate. But deputies also interviewed people associated with the men, like their spouses and other acquaintances, and they got enough information to confirm that the men and Roger had all been together at a roofing job earlier in the day on November 29th. And none of them seemed to have had strong alibis for that afternoon, which was the window of time that authorities believed Fran and Eddie had been killed. Investigators felt in their guts that if the group was involved, Roger was definitely their ringleader.

He was this guy who once you probably had any time to forget him. He had a white, an almost white hair, a real ice-blue eyes, and so everybody else had kind of stood out. So there's a good chance that they recognized them and he knew based on what we're doing, we can't leave them. Roger's criminal history built him such a reputation as a brazen burglar that he's the subject of folklore in Shabuigan. People there still tell stories about him and how he was known to walk into

businesses after hours and literally pick up safe full of money and valuables and just carry them out by himself like some kind of super villain. Deputies and town police officers knew Rogers lengthy rap sheet made him a strong suspect, so they worked to build a case against him for several of the other crimes they believed he was responsible for around town. Basically thinking that if they could just put enough pressure on him, he would come clean about the Sazakis' homicides. While they sat on Roger, authorities knew they needed to find physical evidence that

might tie him to the crime, or at least eliminate him entirely. In 1988, DNA testing came on the scene, so investigators sent the clothing that Francis and Eddie had been wearing when they were killed to the state crime lab for further analysis. Unfortunately, because the technology was still so limited at the time, texts weren't able to detect any foreign DNA on any of the items. Then, in June of 1989, a cleaning crew that had been hired to clean out Eddie and Francis's barn

came across something that police had missed at East Wallet. Cleaners had found it discarded in a random barrel inside the barn. They turned the wallet over to the Shaboykin County detectives who opened it up and found no cash inside, only Eddie's ID. Just like all the physical evidence so far in this case, the wallet was sent off to the state lab for processing,

but they didn't find any fingerprints or DNA on it. A few months later, in the fall of 1989, police arrested Roger, and they charged him with 20 burglaries, crimes totally unrelated to the double homicide. When it came time for his sentence saying the judge gave 44-year-old Roger 100 years in prison, so basically a life sentence.

According to court documents, Roger and his lawyers appealed that sentence, arguing to the state's high court that he was excessive. The justices on the appellate level ended up agreeing with their argument, and then Roger was given a lesser sentence, 95 years instead of a hundred. How that makes a ton of sense? I don't know, but back to prison he went. Despite all their efforts to pressure Roger while he served time, detectives working Francis in Eddie's case still didn't have any hard evidence linking him to the two murders, but he still remained their best suspect. In 1990, so two years after the murders,

the sheriff's office officially confirmed to the local press that they had a suspect, though without specifically naming Roger. But reading between the lines everyone in the area, including the public and the press, assumed that Roger was who authorities considered their guy. Throughout the early 1990s, investigators worked to investigate Roger and his associates, and each of them was brought in for polygraph exams. But the results aren't exactly clear. Current investigators don't have any documentation of what was said in those lie detector tests,

or who might have passed and who might have failed. Detectives working the case today chalked the absence of these reports up to the detectives in the 90s, not taking very good notes. Dastler and Nelson said, if the investigators back then did at some point have documentation of the polygraph then did at some point have documentation

of the polygraph results, they also might have just gotten lost in unorganized evidence storage, which is actually more common than you'd think. But regardless, the polygraphs that were done in the 90s must not have been very helpful, because after that, the case went cold. Throughout the late 90s, as DNA testing was evolving, the Sheriff's Office resubmitted the victims clothing for further analysis as many times as possible, hoping for a break in the case. But every time they got a call from the lab, they got bad news. The results were worthless.

The tests were still not detecting any foreign DNA on the clothing, which could mean one of two things. Either the technology back then wasn't good enough, which we all know was the case in the 90s when the use of DNA testing in criminal cases was still new, or two, the killer or killers literally did not leave any DNA at the crime scene. So with no forensic evidence materializing, despite so many submissions to the DNA lab, the case continued to stall. Tips eventually stopped coming into, and investigators were losing hope of ever closing the case.

But then, in the summer of 1998, a decade after the crime, something unbelievable happened. They asked him specifically if he was involved, and he said yes, but I didn't hurt them. I only wanted to take their money. In June of 1998, the Sheriff's Office heard that Roger, their primary suspect in the murders, was dying of cancer in prison. So they thought, how about we try and get a deathbed confession out of him? But instead of sending a Shiboykin County detective,

an FBI agent who was familiar with Roger and already had some rapport with him from his other crimes was sent to do the interview. He goes there, interviews him. Ultimately, he gives a quasi-confession to being involved in this case. He essentially says that he was aware of the Jalapi jungle having a lot of money hidden around the junkyard, and that him and his partners just wanted the money.

Now this sounds like a solid break in the case, right? I mean, this federal agent must have been standing over Roger's hospital prison bed thinking, okay, game over, case solved, we can all go home now. But somehow, for reasons current homicide detectives cannot even explain, the Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office never got word of this deathbed half confession, which I know is bananas. What's even more wild was constant investigators don't even find out about it until 2006,

eight years later. We see in a report, there's like a fax cover sheet that says, Hey, here's what he said, see what you can do with this. But yet there's no report attached to it. We don't know what happened. The fax had come through completely and the detective who he sent it to got tied up and never followed up to say, hey, where's the rest of the report or whatever, but we hadn't seen that until we found that fact she'd

just going through the files one day. And get this, Roger died literally the day after his confession to the FBI agent. So even, if county detectives had known about it at the time, it was too late for them to go back and ask him any follow-up questions. So in 2006, when new detectives who were reinvestigating the Sazaskis case tracked down the full 1998 interview with Roger, they were really looking forward to hearing for themselves exactly what he said. But once they got a hold of the tape, they realized that there were actually some things Roger

mentioned that didn't really add up. For one, Roger said something about putting the couple in a closet, which was a detailed homicide detectives had no evidence to support. We're thinking something's just not right about this. a detailed homicide detectives had no evidence to support. Police found out that Roger and his group of friends had committed a home invasion not long before Eddie and Francis' murders in a neighboring county. That crime involved an elderly couple that they had tied up and put in a closet.

But there's one major difference between that crime and the Sousauscus case. Roger and his friends didn't kill the other couple. They didn't even injure them. I mean, I'm sure the ordeal was still very traumatic for those two victims, but Roger and his buddies just stole some money and then left.

Sergeant Dastler has always wondered if maybe Roger had been so heavily medicated and close to death when he spoke with the FBI, that maybe he might have gotten the two crimes confused. According to police, during his June 1998 interview with the FBI agent, Roger became so sick that his nurse at the prison had to respond to the room and adjust his oxygen. So medical staff stopped the interview, and then Roger died.

So around the time that Sergeant Dastler was finding this out in 2006, the Sheriff's Office started working with the Wisconsin Department of Justice to take another crack at solving the case, which generated some publicity. Based on some of those news stories that ran in 2007, Francis and Eddie's nephew Justin took a renewed interest in his aunt, Nunkles' case. I was in law school at the time, and because Eddie and Fran had no children, there was nobody really following up with law enforcement at the time, So because of my burdening legal background, I decided that I would kind of take the reins

and be my family's advocate for any in-friend. In 2007 and 2008, Justin started doing some outreach to see what he could find out. He also filed records requests to launch an informal investigation of his own. To be honest with you, I had always known that there had been suspects and that there was a group of suspects specifically that were always suspected to have activity

or be involvement at least, but social media was a real game changer. And it's a tool that obviously my parents and my grandparents didn't have it their disposal and certainly not in 1988. It allowed me to finally be able to reach out to those people and speak to them directly, introduce myself, tell them who I was, tell them that I had a personal interest in the story, and to ask questions. In 2008, on the 20-year anniversary of their murders, the Shaboykin County Sheriff's Office put up billboards around town, asking for anyone with information on the cold case to come forward. The billboards showed Francis and Eddie's photos.

The county strategically placed them on specific roads knowing Rogers' old co-conspirators who had been involved in his previous crimes would drive by and see them. And that did drum up a new lead. One that detectives thought could close the case for good. We ultimately end up with some witnesses, one witness in particular that says, I was driving through that day. I end up seeing people I'm familiar with, one of them, in the area of the Chalapi jungle. That name the witness mentioned was Roger. But the witness was loosely credible. He told authorities that back in 1988,

he'd been Roger's cocaine dealer. And on November 29th, he'd been coming through Shaboykin with his girlfriend. And he had seen Roger and Roger's van at Eddie and Francis's house the day of the murders. Sergeant Dastler and his partner at the time did confirm the man had cocaine-related arrests from back in 88, but they wanted

to corroborate this man's statement beyond that. We ultimately take a trip down to Jasper Albaim and to speak with that witness's girlfriend. She does not recall that at all. It ends up being that she has no memory of that. When detectives interviewed him later, the man recalled it being a nice, sunny day outside on November 29, 1988 in Shabuykin.

But authorities knew that the weather on the day of the murders had actually been the exact opposite. For investigators, little inaccuracies like that made the witness less credible, and they wondered if he had ulterior motives for coming forward, like maybe getting old charges amended in exchange for info about Roger. In the end, the lead ended up going nowhere. Justin said that for his family, ups and downs like this in the case have been really hard. The Sheriff's Office has said multiple times that, to be a matter of days, if things go

right, if things don't go right, it could be a matter of weeks or months. And here we are 33 years later and there's still no formal charges. It's been incredibly frustrating because I do feel like we are incredibly close. I mean, even in my investigation as a private citizen, a invested private citizen at that, but I believe I know it was responsible for their murders

with regards to the investigation that I've done. I believe that I have a strong circumstantial case, understanding the burden of proof, and the charges, the possible charges that the suspect group would face. However, I don't think that if any secret that the Shibon County Sheriff's Office is waiting for at least one person to come forward, who has vital information, and if you read the articles

about any in-friend within the newspaper, it's pretty clear that there's at least one probably more people or more people that have that pertinent knowledge that could make it an open-shot case. If there's one thing Justin could say to the person or group of people responsible for killing his aunt Francis and Uncle Eddie, it would be this. Put yourself in my shoes. I mean, it's horrible to have to experience this. And it's even worse to not have resolution. Eddie and Fran are good people.

They didn't deserve this. If you can imagine losing family in the horrendous way that we did, if it was your loved one, you would want somebody to come forward, just do the right thing." Sergeant Dastler said today they're working with state and federal authorities to get all of Rogers' old friends in to take new polygraph tests. Without fingerprints or foreign DNA at the scene, the key to solving the case is going to be information that's been kept under wraps for decades. Justin said that his family's even supportive of one suspect getting an

immunity deal if that's what helps close the case. I feel like if one person gets immunity, let's still goes on the record and states what happened and it gets a conviction on everybody else is culpable. While that wouldn't be the best result, it would still be justice for any infran. I mean, unfortunately now, people who are responsible for a murderer have been, double murder have been walking free, walking streets for 33 years. In my opinion, it's absolutely travesty that these people have been part of society and walking the streets that they're committing a heinous double murder. So I think the best possible option, which would have been a swift arrest and conviction, is outdoor. I'm just hoping that at some point we are able to have charges

and that these people who committed this horrible, unspeakable, active violence are brought to justice. Eddie and Francis Zowskis were living honest quiet lives when somebody stole their futures from them. They were in their 70s and healthy for their ages. They might have enjoyed a nice long retirement but never got the chance. If you know anything about the 1988 Sizowskis Double Murder in Shabuygen, Wisconsin, come forward. It could be the missing piece that's needed to give their families delayed justice. You can call the Shabuig and County Dispatch at 920-459-3112. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve?