The Deck - Mary and Susanne "Susie" Reker (2 of Hearts, Minnesota) Part 2

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Our card this week is Mary and Susanne Reker, the 2 of Hearts from Minnesota.In part 1 of the Reker case, four agencies were two years into the homicide investigation with little to show for it.  Little did they know, the twists and turns in their investigation were just beginning.There is a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for the murders of Mary and Susanne Reker. To submit a tip please visit here or scan the QR code below. To make a donation to Parents of Murdered Children, visit https://pomc.org/.To listen to the Crime Junkie episode about the Lyon sisters, visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/captured-lloyd-lee-welch/.   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 Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcThe Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at [phone] to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Mary and Suzanne Raker, the two of hearts from Minnesota. This is part two of their story. When we left off last week, four agencies were two years into the homicide investigation with little to show for it. The question on everyone's mind was the same one that the lead investigator rhetorically posed to a St. Cloud Times reporter on the two-year anniversary of the crime. What really happened? I guess your guess is as good as mine.

But there was no more time for guessing, because a little over three weeks after that article ran, another young girl from St. Cloud was attacked in an eerily similar fashion. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is The Deck. On September 25th, 1976, the full family was startled when they got a knock at their door. It was late, past dark, and they weren't expecting anyone. What they saw when they opened the door would stay with them for a lifetime. Standing on their porch was a bloodied young girl begging for help. According to an article from Fox 9, they gave her a space to lay down on their couch while they called for an ambulance.

When she was transported to the hospital and stabilized, police learned she was 14-year-old Sue Ducuwitz, and the story she went on to tell police was horrifying. She said she was working at the front counter of her family's convenience store when two teenage boys came in and robbed her at gunpoint. They took money from her and then forced her to leave the store with them and get into their car, where at some point she was bound with tape. They drove off out of St. Cloud to the nearby and more rural town of Luxembourg. She said that the two drove her out of the city to a gravel pit where they pulled over and sexually assaulted her. When the assault stopped, in a moment

where I am sure she thought the worst was over, they took her out of the car and one of the boys pulled out a knife and began stabbing Sue. I don't know how she was able to do it, but she mustered up every ounce of courage and strength and through the violence pretended to be dead and the boys bought it. They attempted to cover her body in the brush and then they just left her there. When their headlights were long gone, Sue rose from the brush, and walked toward any light she could see, slowly stumbling, making her way to the full store. Now Sue's father had reported her missing from the store even before Sue escaped.

She was able to give police a description of the young men who kidnapped her along with the car that they were in, and police quickly tracked them down. Seventeen-year-old Herb-Nach Jr. and James Wagner were arrested and charged with six felony counts for robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault, and attempted murder. The case bore some eerily similarities to that of the raker girls, which should have still been top of mind for everyone in St. Cloud when they heard about Sudukowitz's attack. But the strange thing is, it doesn't seem like the public noticed. Maybe because Sudukowitz was resolved so quickly. That resulted in far less coverage, far less details about the crime being shared. I mean, not even the rakers knew how close some of the ties were, even though just the

day after Sue Dukowitz was abducted, assaulted and stabbed, Fred went to visit her parents as a show of support. But even if the public didn't see it, investigators saw it. Two years, no arrests, and damn near the anniversary of the girl's bodies being found. You're telling me another teenage girl is abducted and stabbed? They knew that they needed to look into Herb and James. Now it turned out James didn't live in St. Cloud until the year after the murders. So it doesn't look like they really dug into him much.

That was worth noting that there's no mention of where he lived before or if he had ties to the area that would have brought him there before the move. Herb, though, he was around. He was a local from Luxembourg. You know, the town he drove sued Dukowitz too. The same town that Mary's grandparents lived. A.K.A. The same town she was staying the summer before she vanished, which was the same

summer she started showing signs that something was wrong. Herb would have been about a month shy of 16 when the raker sisters were killed, the same age as Mary, though they didn't go to school together or anything. Herb went to an alternative school and read us that Herb not to junior wasn't a name she ever heard from her daughter. But police wanted to check anyway. After both Herb and James stood trial as adults and each pled guilty to two charges related to the kidnapping, police got to work polygraphing Herb and questioning him about Mary and Susie.

Now, according to Dudley's book, there was no deception indicated. But Sergeant Bullig told us that his polygraphs were pretty much inconclusive. So this seems to be where Herbnatch kind of fell off the radar for a while. Though, it's not like they had other viable leads at the time. Things were still a mess between departments. They were each running in their own direction. None of them super great at sharing information. There was a new police chief who came into office in 1976 and he was honestly pissed at

how the case was being handled. I mean, these were two young girls for God's sake. They should be the only thing that mattered. Every decision should be based around what was best for them, not what was best politically for anyone involved. At one point, he, in all seriousness, proposed that all of the agencies get together, lock themselves in a room, and just figure it the f**k out. How were they going to move forward and catch the monster who did this?

Now, this was a nice idea, but it doesn't seem like anyone else was on board because this meeting never happened. A couple more years passed and the girl's case got less and less attention. Other unrelated murders were committed in the area, and so what little time and attention the raker case was getting kept getting diverted. It was basically going to take something new to spark movement, and in December of 1978, knew is what they got. Investigators got word of a potential new suspect, someone who had never been on their radar.

Michael Bartochesky At the time, Michael, along with a buddy of his named Boyd Tarwater, were being arrested in charge with the murder of an eight-year-old girl from Colorado. The two had kind of been bouncing around, found themselves in Colorado, and got connected to a guy who needed some manual labor help. He even let them stay in the basement of his family home as part of the compensation. But at some point, there was a dispute

about what the rest of that compensation would be, or whether it was getting paid out or who knows. But basically, Michael and Boyd felt ripped off. So Michael cooked up a plan to go steal from the guy. He said he got super drunk, went into the house, stole some guns that he knew the guy had in a closet, and then he doesn't really remember much else. Well, conveniently, the part he doesn't remember

is killing the man's eight-year-old daughter as she lay on the couch. It was a horrific crime involving a knife. And the reason it even got on the radar for law enforcement up in St. Cloud was because it turns out that Michael was from there and more than just from there. And he had gotten into trouble with the law here in St. Cloud and I think he had held a woman at Nice point somewhere along the line. And he lived just a couple, I think, five or six blocks from us.

We did not know him, but he lived nearby and he was young. The young thing was important, because at some point in the investigation, the FBI was brought in to profile the girl's killer or killers. And what we knew from the profilers in those days was that they were looking for somebody young. We don't know what else the profile said. It's never been fully released to the public. But this idea of Mary and Susie's killer being young started to become commonly accepted

among law enforcement and those in the community. But aside from Michael's age, seeming to fit the profile, the fact that he lived near the Rakers in 74, and a few other things that could have just been coincidences, like the knife that he used to attack being similar to the one in the Raker killings, not much else was making him look like their suspect. Sure, the girl in Colorado was young, but his goal was robbery, and so much was so different. It just didn't add up. So as quickly as hopes raised around this potential new lead, they were dashed.

For some, it felt like they were back at square one. But maybe not for all. Because unbeknownst to anyone else, Lawrence Krzyszek, who'd been off the case in an official capacity for years by this point, he had never quite given up. And he held on to a piece of evidence that he believed would lead him to the killer. Why Lawrence never shared this information with anyone else is a mystery. This is complete speculation on my part, but maybe it had to do with all that political nonsense I told you about.

Maybe he just wanted to be the guy who solved the case. But either way, it came to light in 83 that he'd never stopped looking at the case. The only reason we know that is because he died that year. And when they were cleaning out his desk, they found a bunch of files that had all this info about the raker case and evidence. And I'm not saying info about evidence, they found an actual piece of evidence, just in this dude's drawer. It was a pair of gold metal framed glasses with a prescription to correct for near-sightedness. I don't know if there was documentation in Lawrence's

file about these glasses or how they determined where they came from, but ultimately they decided that they were somehow connected to the murders. Though, no one would say how. There's still pretty tight-lipped about these glasses today. Here's what Sergeant Bullick would tell us. I do know that when reading a file, there was extensive work done on those glasses as far as figuring out the prescription and things like that. Okay, but you don't know if anything ever came of those glasses like if they ever connected

them to anybody or anything? I guess the whole comment on that. Hmm. Anyone know a near-sighted person who lost a pair of gold rims 70-style glasses on Labor Day of 1974? I actually don't even know if that's the right question since I don't know where or when the glasses were found. But it's specific enough of a detail that I think it's worth throwing out for people listening who were there back in the area at the time. Anyway, even after these glasses and all those long-lost files were found at the bottom of a desk drawer, nothing in them materialized into and

arrest, and more and more years slipped by with no movement. Just like the rakers were left to do their own searches in the early days, sometimes they felt like they needed to find suspects, too. In the 1990s, they pushed police to look at a local reverend, father Richard Echroff. Obviously, I'm sure you're aware of the Catholic sex abuse scandal that had kind of erupted around that time. He was accused of that, of sexually abusing other children. He kind of came on the radar because there was a cabin

near little falls that was owned by the church that there was some sexual misconduct allegations occurring at that cabin. Mary did attend that cabin, whether Father Echroff was there or not, I can't speak for that. We have no evidence that she ever reported that she was sexually assaulted by Father Echroff or any allegations of that either,

but he was put on the radar related to possibly having contact with Mary at this church-owned cabin, where basically, I think they would do retreats with youth up there. There is no record of Mary having ever disclosed any abuse at the hands of Acroft to anyone, and there was no evidence of him or any of the other reverence he was accused alongside of being violent. Everything they reportedly did was related to grooming, but it needed to be vetted all the

same. He was polygraphed in 1995 by the BCA and passed that polygraph. We don't have any physical evidence connecting him to the crime. Sergeant Bolig said that Eckroth willingly provided a DNA sample before his death in 2015, which they kept in evidence just in case. I think the thought was as technology improves, we can't go back in time and it's tougher to get people's DNA obviously when they're deceased and now we can go through like family trees and stuff

but it's still a lot more work. I think the thought was to grab his DNA and have it on file in case we do develop profiles or if we do have profiles to compare it to. Sergeant Bullig is casting a wide net. But as far as persons of interest go... He's not my favorite person of interest in this investigation. However, it's tough to 100% clear anyone until the crime is solved in my opinion.

Bolig said Eck Roth was fairly cooperative with the investigation, which he added is more than he could say for other persons of interest. But that was kind of the problem. They were working with the same names over and over. Each one suspicious, but none of them suspicious enough to say for sure they did it. Maybe it would take another new set of eyes to look at the picture in front of them and make it fit after all of these years. And once again, it was Rita, who stepped up

to find the new set of eyes. It was 2004 by this point, and in the decade since her children's murder, Rita had become involved with a nonprofit organization called Parents of Murdered Children. The organization offers a tremendous amount of resources to people who find themselves part of the worst club imaginable. It is truly an amazing organization that we are supporting in honor of Mary and Susie,

and I highly recommend you check them out as well. One of the things that they offer is an annual conference that's actually one of the things we're sponsoring and it's for the parents to come together and they fill the conference with professional resources for these people in unthinkable positions. I was a little in that year I went out with another lady and this wasn't Cincinnati I think and two men from the BDOC Society gave one of the workshops. And after it, I went up to one of them and told them about our case.

And he gave me the name of the guy who was the president in the Pittsburgh area that year. I wrote to him, I sent some newspaper articles, and they agreed to hear our case. The BDOC Society shouldn't be new to anyone here. They review cold cases, even cover the expenses in doing so. The catch is the organization must be invited and by law enforcement, and they can't go out and go rogue if they think they have it figured out.

They just make recommendations for law enforcement to follow. But most of these people know what they're doing and all these years later, Sterns County quite literally had nothing to lose. So after some back and forth, the raker case was presented to the Vitox Society on May 19th, 2005, Mary's birthday. Rita never expected to spend any of Mary's birthdays like this. Rita never expected to spend any of Mary's birthdays like this. But here she was, continuing to give her the greatest gift a mother could by fighting for her and Suzy. A St. Cloud Times article reported that after the VDoc Society reviewed all of the case materials, they agreed with the current investigators who apparently presented one or more persons of interest to them.

They said they were on the right track, looking at the right people or person. But who was that? In the years immediately following the consultation, law enforcement still wouldn't name an official suspect. They were holding, waiting. Maybe for technology, more evidence, a confession, there just wasn't enough. Even with new tips that came in, none of them brought a fresh perspective to the case. It was more of the same rehashing old rumors or throwing around names that police had known about since the beginning.

Then, out of the complete blue, 40 years after the girls had been killed, a brand new name popped up. Lloyd Welch came on the radar sometime in 2014 to our office. The Lion Sisters murder, are you familiar with that case at all? OMI Ever. Back in 2019, I covered the Lion Sisters murder on an episode of Crime Junkie. I have that linked out in the show notes if you're curious. It was one of the hardest cases I ever researched and wrote about.

Sheila and Catherine Lion were 12 and 10 when they disappeared from a shopping center outside of DC in 1975. The investigation into what happened to them unearthed a story so depraved it is hard to speak about again. So I won't. I'll just tell you this. It took decades to get to the truth in that case, but at the end of the day, the perpetrator was in front of them all along.

A man named Lloyd Lee Welch. He abducted the girls and took them back to his family property. He said his whole family was involved They say it was just him and there are some dark stories that came out of that household So I don't know what to believe but there was some evidence found that connected at least one of the girls to the property So even though their bodies were never recovered there were answers as to what happened to them. So why was this coming up on Stern's county's radar in 2014? Well, two sisters,

gone shopping, abducted and murdered, just one year apart. And by the time Lloyd was arrested, he was already suspected in other crimes across the country. So it seems like it's worth taking a look, right? Well, that's not even the thing that got Stern's County's attention. When the lion's sister's story started breaking in the news, it garnered national attention. And along with Sheila and Catherine, Lloyd's picture was published online. It was that picture that caught the eye of a woman in Minnesota named

Georgian. She spoke with care 11 about the encounter she said she had with him. All the way back in 1974, according to her, just days before Mary and Susie were killed. She was new to town and eager to meet new people, so she was excited when a teenage boy wrote up to her on his bike. They got to talking, and she asked if he knew of any swimming spots, and he suggested the quarry. Though no reports ever specifically say what quarry or where at the quarry, because remember, Sergeant Bullig said that a lot of people get that info wrong about where the girls were found. But anyway, this kid suggested a quarry

and they biked off together and went up to this riverbank. While they were sitting there talking, Georgian said that this guy pulled a knife on her and assaulted her. She said all the while he talked about his fantasies, specifically a fascination with sisters. After the attack, a car pulled up and distracted him, which allowed her to run away. Georgian showed Carol Evans a diary entry from that time where she recounted the attack,

and she scribbled the man's name down in the entry. Lloyd. Lloyd the Carnival worker who was traveling with someone named Helen. Now, Lloyd Lee Welch did work for the carnival. He did have a girlfriend named Helen that he traveled with. Was everyone wrong all these years? Was it truly the traveling cycle path that found his way to a town and committed the worst possible crime

and then left as quickly as he'd shown up? Durjan said that she went to police after the raker murders and told them about her attack, even suggested that there might be a connection back then. But she came forward again in 2014 when she was sure Lloyd was her attacker. She figured now with a name and his story maybe they'd take her seriously. Sergeant Bullig said he couldn't find any record of her attempt to contact law enforcement back in 1974.

But he did seriously look at Lloyd when he was handed the case. He's currently in Carstri in the state of Delaware. I went and interviewed Lloyd in prison. I was pleasantly surprised that he talked to me. I was told by prison staff that other investigators had flown out there to interview him and he wouldn't cooperate at all or talk to them at all and he did talk with me. I questioned about this case and he cooperated with pretty much anything that I asked. Did he had deny involvement? He's always denied involvement with this case and he's denied being in Minnesota. So our office has been unable to prove or disprove

that he was in Minnesota. Back when our office in 2014 did try to locate carnival records, they just don't exist from back then, but we can't say for sure one way or the other that he was in Minnesota, that he was not in Minnesota. There was carnivals in Minnesota. I have reached out to some owners of those carnivals and I don't have enough information

to confirm that he ever worked for them or did ever work for them. It's kind of going on people's memory because there was no records. The first follow-up question I asked felt like the obvious one. They preserved all of the evidence from the raker crime. Is there anything preserved from Georgian's assault that could be tested now. I mean, if it's linked to Lloyd, it proves that he was there. But this is where things get a little hairy. Again, there's no record of Georgian's attack, not just her coming forward about a connection

to the raker sisters, but like no report at all, which means no evidence at all. According to Bullig, Georgian says she reported her attack and he did an extensive search in their records but was unable to find a report there at the Sheriff's Office. He's not saying it didn't happen and maybe she reported it to a different agency,

but he said that they're the only agency in the area that keeps records that far back. So, back to the matter is, there just is nothing we have that we could use almost 50 years later to put Lloyd in Minnesota with the Raker Sisters. Care 11 quoted a 2020 email from a law enforcement official that said, quote, the investigation of the Raker homicides

points in a different direction than Mr. Welch. End quote. But Bullegg didn't say that outright when we talked to him. of the raker homicides points in a different direction than Mr. Welch." End quote. But Bullig didn't say that outright when we talk to him. He just said, kind of the same thing he did about Ekroth. No one's out until this thing is solved. And I believe that's really how he feels, because a year or two after that email to K-A-R-E-E-11,

he actually went and spoke with Lloyd. So he's still taking all the investigative steps in all of the directions. But for the rakers in 2014, 15, 16, it was still feeling like those steps were all one forward and then two back. A new name. Great. No arrest. What the hell? Well, two years after Lloyd's name made headlines, everyone, even the family was about to find out why they kept taking so many steps backwards. Because maybe the answer to this enduring mystery had been right in front of them all along.

In 2016, a journalist for Fox 9 in Minneapolis came out with an explosive investigative piece on the raker case. You see, up to this point, remember nobody really knew about Sue Dukeowitz. I mean, they knew about her, you knew about her attack even, but like I said before, it kind of seemed like no one was making any official connection to the Raker Sisters. But Fox 9 did. Their article published a ton of never before known facts about both cases that drew some scary similarities, like the fact that both Sue and Suzy were hidden in brush after their attacks. Like the fact that Mary had her sweater cut down the front and her bra had been cut off.

Facts that weren't known before about the raker case. And because Su's case didn't get much media play back then, no one knew that the same thing happened to her. Fox 9 was able to find all of this out through a records request using Minnesota's Open Records Law. They got tons of files that were never made public before, some of which brought Herb Notch Jr.'s name back into the spotlight. Though, I have no idea what tipped them off to do so in the first place. Whatever the reason, this was explosive, and it made the idea of a connection even harder to ignore.

It had just never been pointed out so loudly to me as when we watched that story and looking back the Sheriff's Department show have held him at that time. What the Sheriff's Office did in relation to Herb Notch Jr. and the Raker case is a little fuzzy. We don't have the case file in front of us that outlines every investigative step, but I'm confident that he's been looked at extensively over the years, even before the Fox 9 story. I mean, police always knew what the public didn't. And again, there were some scary similarities. But in 2016, when this news piece came out, the sheriff's office still wasn't willing

to call her a suspect. All that then sheriff could be quoted saying was, I can agree with you that there are similarities in both cases. That was from Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtel. Along with just the similarities between the two cases, there were other things that stood out. Strange coincidences if that's what you wanna call them.

Like remember, Herb lived in Luxembourg, the town where Mary spent the summer before she was murdered. Herb would have been just shy of 16 the time Mary was killed, which is young like the FBI profile suggested. And here's another fun fact. Herb worked in the grocery department at Zaire's department store back in the summer of 1974. That's the store that the girls were at when they were last seen alive by their neighbor.

He saw them walking toward the grocery department if you remember. Now, the grocery department was closed for Labor Day, and it was in the same direction as the coats which Mary said she needed, but again, strange coincidence, especially since the department was closed, so we know he would have likely had that day off work. Here's something else I find very interesting. he would have likely had that day off work. Here's something else I find very interesting. According to Dudley's book, after Herb was caught and confessed to attacking Sudokuets, he, quote, told investigators he wanted counseling

and acknowledged he had previously been in a mental hospital in 1974. The same year, the Rager Girls were stabbed to death. End quote. Now, we have zero details on this. And when we asked Bullegg about this, he said he didn't recall that information. He did say, though, that Herb would have been a minor at the time. So if he was committed anywhere, it would have been with the sign-off of his parents,

not like forced in by any reason, by police or something like that. I don't know if authorities ever collected his DNA like they did for Echroff, you know, just in case. But I do know he was polygraphed at some point, but that didn't help one way or another. His polygraph examinations have been more inconclusive than anything. Polygraph examinations have been more inconclusive than anything. With nothing to definitively rule him out and coincidences that just kept piling up and piling up, by the time Herb was on his deathbed in 2017, the Raker family was all but convinced of his guilt. Rita told the St. Cloud Times, quote,

I honestly have hope in my lifetime that I will see it solved. I'm not sure why, but I do." With herb on his deathbed, dying of liver failure, Rita felt she finally had the chance to get answers. Now Rita didn't really want to get into this part of the story when we interviewed her, but she talked about it with Fox 9 back in 2018. She told them that with a blessing from law enforcement, she went to talk to her in his hospital room,

not to get justice, not to be vindicated, but just for answers, to hear him say what she believed for so long to be true. The conversation lasted just over 20 minutes and she told Fox 9, quote, he was totally in denial. I found him to be very angry, a very hard and bitter person. There was no sense of remorse at all." During their short interaction, Herb maintained his innocence, but he did say two things that will stick with Rita for

the rest of her days. He asked her, quote, why can't you just put it all behind you? And then he said something some might interpret as a confession. I'm going to hell. Rita said she left that interaction feeling numb. But for her and the rest of the Raker family, what Herb said during those few short minutes was enough. Marty Raker, one of the girl's older brothers, told the St. Cloud Times that he doesn't spend much time thinking about who. He

believes he knows who. He just wants to know when police will be able to prove it. But if authorities agree on the who, they're not saying, is Herb not Jr. a person of interest? Yes. But the Sheriff's Office isn't using the term suspect for anyone, not even Herb, who died not long after Rita went to visit him. But if he was involved, I'm not totally convinced all the answers died along with him. Even though Herb has passed away, Bullig is still working the case. He believes it's his duty to solve it, and not all the persons of interest we've talked about are gone. And here's the

thing. You know there's always a thing with me when I get this deep into a case, so buckle up and put your speculation hats on with me for just one second. Now none of what I'm about to tell you is proven. It's just meant to make everyone think outside of the box a little. Because for 48 years, it has been the same names, over and over. Usually there is some truth to rumors that persist that long. There is a reason it's not solved. So what if we have a piece, but just not the whole truth in front of us?

Or at least we hadn't. Hear me out. So say for arguments, say only, that Herb notch junior was involved. I couldn't help but wonder how he could have pulled it off alone. If you remember from part one of the story last week, it was reported that the girls had no defensive wounds. Now, Bola gave us a cool no comment on that, so there's a lot of wiggle room on whether this could be off or flat out inaccurate.

But I'm going off what I have. If they have no defensive wounds, how does a 15-year-old boy get control of two sisters long enough to stab them, to cut off Mary's top and her bra? I mean, the girls were 12 and 15, they aren't little kids. He could have had a gun, like he and James used two years later when they abducted Sue Dukowitz. Sure, they reportedly used a gun to get her in the car, and then still used a knife to stab her. But know what else he had with him when he abducted su? An

accomplice. And the more you look at Herb's other crimes around the time, even, the petty ones, like some purse-snatching stuff that he was implicated in during, like, 1976, that all happened with an accomplice. Now it doesn't seem like police looked into James at all for the raker case. Again, he's the one who assaulted Sue with her, and it seems from the earlier reporting that he didn't live in the area in 1974. Again, I have loads of questions about where he was, but there are probably reasons police never went down that road.

He took a plea in the Sudokuwets case and was out within seven years. Fox 9 reported that James stayed totally out of trouble since, and at least as of 2016 he's kept his nose clean. So who else? I'm sure there were loads of people Herb had connections to at one time or another. But there was one person who jumped out so hard at me that it hurt my eyes, like staring into the sun, and I can't get them out of my head. So here we go. I'm just going to lay out for you the pieces I'm putting together, because I don't know

how else to make it make sense or to get you where I'm at. In Dudley's book, there is a passage that reads, quote, Mary knew two teenage boys who worked in the grocery department. One of them was a friend of a boy Mary was acquainted with. The other boy was someone she knew from nearby Luxembourg, where her grandparents lived. End quote. Now, I have other sources that say herb worked in the grocery department at Zairs. And I know that he's from Luxembourg.

So he's the Luxembourg one. So then we just have this friend of a boy Mary was acquainted with. Okay, cool. Someone who knows Mary, knows Herb, works with Herb. Herb and the unnamed boy both worked at the place Mary and Susie were last seen. Great.

Now remember that Fox 9 article I mentioned earlier that was all about Rita confronting Herb on his deathbed. Will it also included comments from James Herb's accomplice in the Sue Dukewoods case? James said basically that Herb had no remorse, he was a scary dude, and there was one instance back when they were in prison together where quote, the guy was hissing like a snake and talking about he wants to kill everybody. End quote. The article goes on to say that there was someone else who heard this hissing thing that her did.

And this is who I think is the unnamed boy. It says this happened right after the girls were killed. And the guy who had that encounter was a man that we'll call Roy. Roy and Herb went to the same alternative high school back in 1974, and they also worked together at Zayers. So they had every chance to know each other pretty well. The writer of the article claimed, quote,

He remembers notch always playing with a knife. He'd sit in his car in the Zayers parking lot on his days off and just stare at people. One day, he, and he, meaning Roy, said his gut told him to ask Nauch about the raker girls. I said, Herb, did you know about this or have anything to do with this? Roy said, I don't remember which way I worded it, but he went, hiss. And that was the only response I got out of him. End quote. The hissing thing is super weird, I'll give you that, but it's not what I

get hung up on. Herb hangs out at the store on his days off. Grocery was closed on Labor Day, that equals days off. Now even before this, Roy said that he was suspicious of Herb, and after the hissing thing, he told police about it and they confirmed that it happened. So based on those things, I'm pretty confident the unnamed boy is Roy. Roy knew Herb well. So tell me what the f***ing odds are. That by the way, Roy was one of the two boys who found Susie Raker's body in the quarry that according to Sergeant Bullig isn't super well-known.

Now I pieced most of this together after our initial interview with Bullig, so we called him up for a follow-up to see if he had ever talked to Roy himself. Was Roy ever considered a person of interest as well? But the answer is no. Sergeant Bolig told us there's more than a few strange coincidences in this case, and to him, it's not super alarming necessarily that Roy knew her. Sergeant Bolig said he can't say 100% either way. But what he knows is that Roy has never once been uncooperative with him, and he's always

seen to be genuinely concerned about catching whoever did this. Sure, Roy's gotten in trouble with the law a few times for trespassing, DWI, etc. But nothing that would point toward him being capable of something like assisting in the murder of two young girls. We triple confirmed with Bolig that not definitely was not the other boy with Roy who found the bodies. That boy has never done any interview or been named publicly, so Bolig wouldn't name him either. Now, none of this means Roy had anything to do with the raker sister's murders, and it certainly doesn't seem like Bolig thinks there's anything fishy there, and they're

very well might not be. But there's enough that I'd love to talk to him, and he's not the only one, because if you remember, Dudley's book brings up a mutual acquaintance. Like, this guy, the unnamed boy who I'm assuming is Roy, had an acquaintance with Mary. Who's that? Maybe that's the person we should be talking to. We reached out to Roy via Facebook.

And he actually responded pretty quickly and said he was down to chat. But when we tried to set something up, he ghosted us. So our reporter, of course, followed up. Maybe he got busy, forgot whatever. She sent a couple more messages, and then she was blocked. So was Roy an accomplice of some sort, or even if he wasn't, does he know something? I have no idea. The guy won't talk to me. There's nothing to prove he was. I just know that he probably has information stored away in his head that I'd love to get at.

But is there an accomplice in general? I'm almost certain of it. Rita did tell us that when she talked with her on his deathbed, he mentioned a name. Someone she thinks could be an accomplice. But when we asked her for the name, she couldn't remember. So we went back to Sergeant Brian Bolig one more time, but he didn't want to comment on the name of the individual. In his earlier interview with us, the idea of multiple perpetrators did get brought up

in kind of a less direct way. And here is what his thoughts were then. We can't say the case is still unsolved. We can't say for searching if it was one person, two people or five people. I think the best way to look at it for my other experiences is being a law enforcement officer is it's always tough for more than one person to keep a secret.

And we're on the 49th year, the 49th anniversary of this case is coming up this fall, and we still don't have the answers that we would like to provide to the family about what happened. And no one credible has come forward saying, I know this occurred, this is who did it, and provided us with the evidence to show that this actually did happen the way they say it did. Everything I've come to learn about this case on the record and off makes me believe a solve is within reach.

The clock's ticking for someone. Mary and Susie are stuck forever in 1974, while whoever killed them got to grow up and make a whole lifetime worth of memories. The girls didn't get to meet a partner or have kids and careers. And Susie could have been anything. She was so stinkin' smart. She was a more serious person. She was a bookworm and she was rather quiet. During the summer months, she read a lot of books.

We went back and forth to the library to get books for her. She practiced her violin. She was a violin player. I don't know if I mentioned that, but that was definitely an interest. All of our family had an interest in music. Rita knows that without a doubt Mary would have been a teacher, maybe a teacher edging toward retirement now. She loved teaching the neighborhood kids. We had some deaths down in our basement when she was growing up and she often had students over. One day I was up in my kitchen and I heard Mary teaching in the basement just teaching ways so I went down there, and there were no students sitting there at all

to teaching to the empty desk. I always believe that there are people who care. People who probably worked this case to the bone. And I think Sergeant Bullig really cares today. I think he sees all that was taken from Mary and sweet Sue and every member of the raker family whose life was never the same after September 2nd, 1974. But you can't go back. There's no redo button.

There's just hindsight. And in hindsight, I think these two girls and their horrific murders got lost in a lot of grown men's egos, and they deserved so much better. Sergeant Bullick is trying to give them better, to give Rita better. It's not about me, it's about them, and them going 49 years with not getting what happened to her daughters.

Fred has passed away several years ago, so they still have sisters and things. They're aunts now, you know, and there's just there's a family there that doesn't have answers what happened to a loved one. Maybe you have the answer. There is a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for the murders of Mary and Suzanne Raker. There's a link in the show notes that'll take you to the Stern's County page if you have any information about this case. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit the DeckPodcast.com.

So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo