The Deck - Robert "Bob" Christian (4 of Spades, Wisconsin)

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Our card this week is Robert "Bob" Christian, the 4 of Spades from Wisconsin. In the Fall of 1977, Bob was just weeks into his freshman year at UW-Madison. He was a math whiz with a knack for computers and a big heart. At 18-years-old, there was no telling how far he’d go.But no one ever expected to be asking the question… Where did he go? Yet here we are almost half a century later, with that burning question and just a string of bizarre clues that leads many to believe an infamous serial killer could be to blame for his disappearance.Today, Robert “Bob” Christian would be 65 years old. At the time of his disappearance, he was 5’10” and 210 pounds. He had brown eyes, shaggy brown hair, and wore eyeglasses. You can find his photo in the show notes. If you know anything about Bob's disappearance or movements around Wisconsin in September of 1977, please call Detective Tyler Pointon directly at 608-355-3205. You can also call the sheriff’s office’s non-emergency line at 800-377-1195. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can reach Sauk County Crime Stoppers at 1-888-TIP-SAUK.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/robert-bob-christian Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org.The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Robert L. Christian, the Four of Spades from Wisconsin. In the fall of 1977, Robert, who went by Bob, was just weeks into his freshman year at UW Madison. He was a math whiz with a knack for computers and a really big heart. And at 18 years old, there was no telling how far he'd go. But no one ever expected to be asking the question, where did he go? Yet here we are, almost half a century later

with that burning question and just a string of bizarre clues that lead many to believe an infamous serial killer could be to blame for his disappearance. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. On the evening of Friday, September 16, 1977, 20-year-old Randy Griffith was at his mom's house in Baraboo, Wisconsin, waiting for his childhood friend, Bob Christian, to arrive. The pair had planned to spend the weekend together to kick off the start of deer-bow hunting season. Bob was going to come over at 6, eat dinner with the Griffiths, stay the night, and then

the duo would head out with their bows early the next morning. But six o'clock came and went with no sign of Bob. One thing is, Bob was always earlier or definitely on time, but he was never late. And when he didn't arrive by 630, we said, this ain't like him. And my mom called his mother and said that Bob hadn't arrived yet. And his mom said he didn't leave till about 515. Okay, so it's an hour from their house.

So we're my mom's house is. So I'm thinking, okay, 615, it could be a few minutes late, but you know, and then they didn't arrive still at nine o'clock. That was Randy you just heard. With Bob now a full three hours late, Randy's mom called the Christians again. And this time around, Bob's parents weren't so quick to brush it off. Bob's youngest sister, Amy, was home when that second call came in,

and she remembers that night vividly. Right away, my mom started calling places to find out, was there any accidents reported, any of the hospitals? They checked with, you know, the different areas and nobody, there was no reports of an accident or anybody going into the hospital. And I know that kind of went on. The next day, I can remember, you know, because he was 18, they had to wait 24 hours or something before they could even consider him missing. And that's why my Uncle Glenn came from Milwaukee

the next day and we started looking because we're like, we know there's something wrong. This is not Bob. Bob is not somebody who is gonna just take off without letting somebody know what's going on." The last time Amy spoke to Bob, the Christians were sitting down for dinner in Madison. Bob was the oldest of four kids, followed by 15-year-old Kathy, 13-year-old Mike, and

11-year-old Amy. The family of six almost always ate dinner together, but on this night, Bob's hunting plans with Randy meant that he wouldn't be joining them. That night he had an excuse to get out. My mom was doing Weight Watchers, and she made a Weight Watchers soup. And we all kind of laughed because Bob was like, we'll see you guys later. And I remember him leaving because he was like, I'm out of here. That's probably the last time I remember him saying goodbye to us all, that he was heading out and was going to be, you know, heading to Bear Booth.

Bob had just bought a new motorcycle, but he'd blown the motor out that week, so his mom Carolyn let him borrow her brand new 1977 AMC Hornet for the trip. Wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans, he threw his overnight bag into the car and pulled away from the house. That night, Carolyn actually saw her son once more in town when she was taking the younger Christian siblings to a high school football game. She drove by Bob and waved to him as he was leaving the bank where he'd gone to take out $25 in cash. And that was the last time she would ever see her son. The Christians spent all of Saturday calling everyone they could think of trying to locate

Bob. And by Sunday, the Christians and their extended family had split themselves up to drive every possible route between their home and the Griffiths, searching for any sign of Bob. The most likely drive would have been on rural two-lane highways until reaching Sauk City, and then another rural stretch until Baraboo. But they didn't find anything on that route, so they expanded their search, driving around areas Bob would have been familiar with, like places he'd hunted before. And it was driving in one of those areas on Sunday that Bob's little brother Mike spotted

Carolyn's new car out the window of his dad's van. It was parked off Tower Road in Sauk County, 15 minutes away from the Griffiths' house. He said, Dad, there's mom's car. So my dad started to walk up to the car and he saw the wheels were off and he just said, Hey, stop, you guys, stop. We need to go back to the van. I'm going to go down to the farmhouse that was whatever farmhouse was closest. And my dad used that phone to call the police.

Well, in the meantime, my uncle Glenn and my cousins and I came upon them. And then we realized, oh man, as a kid, I was like, what the heck is going on? You know? Their dad, Lewis, told reporters that it was clear something was, quote, deadly wrong. The car was parked a ways off the road next to a radio tower, and it was sitting flat on the ground. And when I say flat, I mean like flat because the car was missing all four of its wheels. And that wasn't all. The key was in the ignition, but the battery had been stolen from the engine compartment,

and the front license plate had been taken off and thrown into the woods. So that's when we're called. We weren't involved at all until the car was found. And then a patrol deputy showed up, and then a detective came. You know, obviously, given the circumstances, it quickly morphed into, you know, something weird is going on. That was Saw County Detective Tyler Pointon, the lead investigator on Bob's case today.

He said the area where the car was found is what the locals call bluff country. It's heavily wooded and pretty rugged. Tower Road wasn't even paved at the time. Bob had actually hunted in that area as a kid, but he and Randy hadn't been planning to go there this time around. Now when detectives searched the car, they found Carolyn's traveling nurse's kit,

Bob's red and gray high school letterman's jacket, and a pair of jeans, socks, undershorts, and a t-shirt, all kind of strewn about. They also found a receipt from a Walgreens where Bob had apparently stopped to buy cigars on the way to Randy's. But there were no cigars in the car. And Bob's hunting equipment and overnight bag were missing, too. The car itself was sent to the state lab, but unfortunately everything inside of it was immediately turned over to the family as detectives launched an investigation.

Nowadays we would have definitely kept stuff for DNA, but they didn't know what DNA was. So a heavy, intensive search starts. They had people on foot searching, they had blood hounds, they actually arranged to have a helicopter from the Army National Guard. I mean, they did an aerial search. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was also involved. The Bloodhounds were able to track a scent trail from the car southeast into the woods, but they ended up circling back to the road

just a little ways down from the car. What that could mean is that he traveled away from where the car was found and could have potentially got picked up or he could have got on the road and walked a certain way. You know, it's hard to tell. I know there's mention in the reports of I think one of the night so around that time it rained so that can throw the scent off obviously. The search continued through Wednesday afternoon with no sign of Bob, so investigators moved on to a neighborhood canvas.

There weren't really many houses around, and there was barely even any through traffic. But a couple of tips did emerge from the people who lived in the vicinity. The first was from a nearby resident who claimed that he first saw Bob's car parked by the radio tower on Saturday morning at around 6 a.m. And he said there was also a cream colored car with stacked headlights backed up next to it. And Bob's sister Amy said that she couldn't think of anyone close to the family with a car that matched that description. Now, the second tip that came in was from a nun named Sister Genevieve, who lived just a couple of minutes down the road from where the car was found at a Catholic retreat center. And this sighting wasn't one of just a sitting car.

It was something else, something weird that, honestly, they didn't know what to make of at first. Sister Genevieve reported that around 7 p.m. on Friday night, September 16th, this is the night that Bob disappeared, she had returned home after about a week of travel, and she found that someone had broken into her cottage through a window and left a mess. Nothing valuable had been stolen, but someone had definitely made themselves comfortable there. The bed linens were unkept, food was eaten out of the refrigerator, somebody had emptied

a cigarette ashtray out in her sink. I mean, it's apparent to me that whoever was at the house was there for a period of time, like they had been almost staying there for a little while. Sister Genevieve was obviously unnerved by this and she didn't want to be alone. So she called her friend Mary to come down and stay with her. It was around 8.30 PM that Friday night when Mary arrived.

She pulls in the driveway, the friend does. It's a long driveway up a hill. And there's a car sitting in the driveway facing up the driveway towards the house. And it's running with the lights on. So obviously given the circumstances of what she was going there for, she was pretty freaked out. But she approached the car. There was a male in the driver's seat. and he said, I'm looking for my friend

Bob. I'm looking for my friend. I'm looking for my friend Bob. And she said, well, nobody by that name lives here. This is private property. She said he was very polite, very apologetic and said, I'm sorry. And then he put in reverse back down the driveway, got to the road and and then continued east, away from where the car was eventually found. And I could kiss Mary on the mouth because she is a woman after my own heart. She had the sense to jot down the license plate and a description of the car as it was

leaving, and she still had it to give to police. But this is where things get weird again. The car Mary described was a tan AMC station wagon with a wooden panel, which is just like Carolyn's new car. And when police ran the tag, they can affirm this. When questioned, Mary described the driver to detectives as a younger male with longer brown hair, thick rimmed glasses, and light facial hair, which actually did match Bob to a T. But when shown a picture of Bob, Mary said that she

couldn't be sure if it was the same person. She also wasn't able to tell if there was anyone else in the car or not. If it was Bob in the car, why would he say that he was looking for himself? And was he the one who'd broken into Sister Genevieve's cottage? Or was it just an unfortunate coincidence that he was parked there at that time? I mean, it didn't really seem like he could have been there long enough to sleep in the bed and then rummage through the fridge. But then, if it wasn't Bob in the car, then who in the world was it? And why would this

mystery man have been driving Carolyn's car looking for Bob? Mary's account stumped the Christian family too. When they said, he said, I'm lost, I'm looking for a friend. We're all kind of like, huh, he knew that area. We all kind of been up in that area, you know. Our family had connection to that. My brothers went hunting with my dad for years up there." While Sister Genevieve told police all about the cigarette ashes in the kitchen sink and the cup of tea on the counter on the broken window, they didn't find evidence of any of that when they arrived,

because before they got there, she had tidied the kitchen, washed the dishes, and cleaned up the glass from the window. Which meant, aside from that one smudged print left on the kitchen stove, and a 12-inch shoe print on the driveway, which usually corresponds to about a size 14, there wasn't really anything detectives could collect as evidence. And by the way, according to Amy, Bob wore a size 14, there wasn't really anything detectives could collect as evidence. And by the way, according to Amy, Bob wore a size 10.

A police report at the time stated that Bob was, quote, probably not a suspect in the break-in, though it didn't mention how that was determined. Some online sleuths have wondered if maybe Bob was meeting someone at the cottage to pick up drugs, noting the $25 that he withdrew from the bank. Maybe something went wrong. But the Christian family insisted that Bob was not into drugs. Even Randy said that there was, quote, no way in heck that Bob was using.

And Detective Pointon said, quote, there never was nor has there been any belief he was an illicit drug user. So either Bob had nothing to do with the nuns cottage break-in whatever, and it was a bizarre coincidence for a sleepy neighborhood where there had never been any other reported break-ins or I don't know what. I feel like I could come up with a hundred alternate scenarios

and even detectives have struggled to nail down a strong theory. The Salt County sheriff at the time actually told the Baraboo News Republic, quote, It's a real puzzler. And today, Detective Pointon and Randy are still struggling to make sense of it. There's just so many avenues you can go, you know. It was not in his nature to not stick to the plan or at a minimum not let somebody know, like let Randy know he wasn't going to be showing up at the house. He would have stopped at a payphone to let Randy know,

like, hey, I'm going to go check out a spot maybe to hunt. Tomorrow I'll be late. That's what he would have done. He wouldn't have no showed or stood him up especially if he knew that his mom was making dinner for them and that would have been Disrespectful and he was not about that He didn't mention one word about hey on my way. I'm gonna go up in that area He didn't mention one word that he was going up in the bluffs there He didn't mention one word that he was going up in the bluffs there. So when I heard that that's where his vehicle was, I was like, well, he didn't say he was.

And then Bob would usually always tell me anything, you know? So that part just didn't make a lot of sense why he went that direction. But while detectives were trying to wrap their heads around the various possible explanations that week, a call came into the sheriff's office from someone at a local quarry. The quarry was kind of a popular place for locals to go and like target shoot and just, you know, whatever, hang out. So the following Thursday, somebody's in their target shooting and they notice there's these tires discarded in the quarry that weren't there

or the last time he was there, which was just a few days before. Also with the tires are the hubcaps from an AMC car. So we get called down there, they talked to the guy that found the tires. And while you can't say 100% with certainty, they matched the hubcaps from the AMC to T. So what it's presumed happened was

somebody took the wheels off of the AMC, which was almost a brand new car, and popped the hubcaps off the wheels and then put the new wheels on their vehicle and discarded their old wheels with the hubcaps. The hubcaps and tires at the quarry actually had a number of bullet holes in them. But detectives determined that was not related to Bob's disappearance. It was simply due to the fact that they had been used as backdrops for target shooters. Investigators looked into all of the different makes and models of cars that the wheels would have fit,

and they came up with a list of over a dozen, including Plymouths, AMCs, and Dodges. Investigators hoped to narrow this list based on the sighting of the cream-colored car with stacked headlights, but it didn't really help. So they kind of ran into a dead end with that, because I think they were trying to narrow down who would have this type of car and it was just there was just too many. And we don't know if that was somebody who was involved with Robert's disappearance or if it was somebody who was being an opportunist and saw the car sitting there and said, I could use those tires and I could use that battery and, you know, took them from the car without being involved with what happened to Robert. It's a possibility, but it's also possible that they are also the ones that are responsible for his disappearance. The tires were sent to the state lab, but they didn't come back with any fingerprints.

So once again, a promising lead left investigators with more questions than answers. The AMC Hornet, on the other hand, came back with eight latent fingerprints, two of which were legible. Now, one was identified as belonging to Carolyn, but the other didn't match any of the Christians or anyone else they knew. And even though it was eventually added to APHIS once that database became a thing, to this day that print has remained unidentified. But it might have a non-dark and mysterious meaning. You see, there is a chance that this fingerprint belongs to Bob himself.

His fingerprints had never been taken because he had no criminal record, and without him there, they had nothing to compare it to. Detective Pointon says that today, investigators would have tried to pull his prints from items that belonged to him, but it doesn't seem like that happened at the time. So given that the print has remained unidentified for nearly 50 years,

his gut feeling is that it probably belongs to Bob. Around the two-month mark of the investigation, with little to show for their work, the sheriff's office decided to call in help from the Wisconsin DOJ. Detective Pointon said that those agents focused on learning more about who Bob was. His family and friends painted a clear picture. They pretty much just were interviewing anybody and everybody who associated with Robert, who knew him. And he wasn't a guy that had a lot of drama, you know. Like I said, he was pretty cut and dry as far as like his personal life.

Never had any history of running away. A very squared away guy. Nothing, never got in trouble. Was in Boy Scouts, you know, athletic. And just had his life together, you know, for an 18-year-old kid. He was real protective and wanted to make sure he listened to my mom and dad. Now, he didn't want to get in any trouble. He was a good guy.

I know my dad talked about how he wanted him to play football, and my brother was a stout, big kid. You know, he was a little overweight, and he was kind of a big kid. And my brother only played for a couple of years. And my dad said he just didn't have the tenacity. He didn't want to hurt anybody. So he was that kind of a gentle soul. He really was.

I mean, he was that good of a guy. And I always remembered him being really smart. He was really smart. I thought, I mean, he had calculus and all this trigonometry and all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, what is this? I was, you know, like I said, 10, 11 years old when I was looking at his math books.

And I was just like, I thought it was amazing. And he was one of my first heroes growing up. I mean, he was a smart kid and had a lot of future ahead of him, you know, and it's just sad. Anybody that knew him said he was a great guy. He has no enemy, you know, and I'm going like, did somebody play a trick on him or something? You know, somebody's like their car broke down or something. Did he stop to help? Because he would have helped somebody in a heartbeat

to give him a ride, to get help or whatever. But yeah, I mean, it just didn't make any sense, you know. Investigators heard this over and over again. Bob had no enemies, no criminal record, no history of drug use or mental health issues, no gang involvement, nothing even close to a high-risk lifestyle. I mean, they literally talked to his neighbors, all of his friends, of course family, and not a single person said he had any beef with anybody.

I mean, he was just a likable guy who wasn't into drama or anything like that. This made developing a suspect list nearly impossible. At one point, investigators actually aimed their sights at Randy, given that Bob had come to Baraboo to visit him. They interviewed Randy three separate times, once up at his college, but there was never any indication that he was involved in Bob's disappearance in any way. Detectives confirmed that he was at home with his mom and sister the night that Bob disappeared. And he and Bob had a solid friendship.

Here's our reporter, Nicole, speaking with Randy about his and Bob's connection. We'd been friends before I was born. And all during childhood, we loved to fish. And then, you know, we'd throw baseball around. We'd like to play cards." Was it common for you all to hunt together as well? No, I think that might have been the first time that we were going to go hunting together.

Detectives actually collected the handwritten letter that Randy had sent to Bob at college over Labor Day weekend proposing the hunting trip. The offer is sandwiched between a list of classes that Randy was taking at the time and an update on his rec softball team. He signs it off, quote, "...well, I better close so I can finish my homework." The bottom line is, Randy had no discernible motive to hurt his childhood friend. And after all, it was the Griffiths who alerted everyone almost immediately that Bob was MIA. Detective Pointon has also ruled Randy out during

his reinvestigation of this case. So six months in, without something to point to, some one to point to, investigators came up with the theory that maybe Bob might have simply run away, but no one who knew the 18-year-old was buying that. I remember the feeling was that I think they really were trying to find some reason that he left, you know, that it was on his perition. And, you know, we all had maintained he had no reason to leave. He was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. His tuition was getting paid. We didn't have abusive family. We didn't believe Bob took off. We didn't believe he joined some group and took off with my mom's

wheels or anything. I don't think my parents ever felt that was true. Just something bad happened. I don't think my parents ever felt that was true. Just something bad happened." Detectives specifically suggested that Bob had escaped to somewhere in Canada where he had once expressed interest in going on a fishing trip. But reading back through the files, Detective Pointon isn't quite as convinced as those detectives seem to be.

I mean, he's seen runaway cases before, and Bob just doesn't fit the description. You know, oftentimes we see that with people who go, you know, off the grid and just disappear. There's some kind of indication like they're into being a survivalist. They've done it before, but come back. There's usually an indicator somewhere in their past. They don't just fall off the face of the earth without some kind of indication with family or friends or what Noah left behind or, you know, I mean, he had his whole life ahead of him and everybody that you talked to that knew him said that was just not his

nature. Even with no proof, detectives back in 77 were satisfied with this theory because they pretty much stopped investigating. And the Christian family had to face the fact that if they wanted answers, they would have to take matters into their own hands. According to Amy, Carolyn consulted psychics in New York and even hired a private investigator at one point. And for years after Bob's disappearance, the Christians continued searching for him

in the Baraboo Bluffs. But everything was to no avail. In Bob's disappearance, the Christians continued searching for him in the Baraboo Bluffs, but everything was to no avail. It's like the earth opened up and swallowed him, Carolyn told a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. But a few years later, around the early 80s, just when it was starting to feel like answers would never come in this case, one of the special agents from the Wisconsin DOJ had a chilling revelation, and it had everything to do with one of the world's most notorious serial killers, a man who was

active in the Midwest in the late 1970s and preyed exclusively on young men. So John Wayne Gacy, he's a pretty well-known serial killer. I think he has just over 30 confirmed victims that he raped and murdered. The theory that John Wayne Gacy could have killed Bob didn't come out of nowhere. During the years that he was known to be active in the 70s, Gacy lived in Illinois and owned a construction business where he specialized in renovation and landscaping. Their specialty was kind of updating pharmacies, you know, old drugstores to make them more modern.

There are rumors mentioned in the reports that he was in this area around that time, which I've since been able to confirm that he was actually up here in Reidsburg, which is in our county about 15 minutes northwest of here. He was there remodeling a drug store and that was in July of 1977. I've spoken with the wife of the owner of the store and he at least was up here to bid the job. It's a little bit fuzzy on whether he actually completed the work or if he just came here to bid the work. But he was here in July of 77, which obviously that's two months before Robert's disappearance.

And beyond renovation work, there is something else that could have drawn Gacy to the Baraboo area. He used to work as a professional clown named Pogo, performing in full costume and makeup at children's parties, charity events, and even hospitals. And it just so happens that the Baraboo area is pretty much clown headquarters and has been since the 19th century. Baraboo is the home to the Ringling Brothers. They started their first circus here. There's a huge circus heritage here.

The Circus World Museum is here. And Baraboo's circus heritage has only grown since Casey was there, with the opening of the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1987. So, I don't know if that's related or not. That's just speculation that maybe he was tied to Baer-Woo. Gacy's MO was to find men at bus stations or on the streets of Chicago, lure them to

his home by offering them construction work, alcohol, or money, and then sexually assault and murder them. Now, Bob did fit Gacy's preferred type, young males in their late teens. But unlike most of his other victims, Bob wasn't homeless or struggling financially, or at least according to family, a runaway looking for shelter.

Now, Gacy buried the majority of his victims in the crawl space of his house, but he also disposed of a handful of bodies in the nearby Des Plaines River. And Reidsburg, the town in Sauk County that Gacy was reportedly visiting in July, is right along the Baraboo River. But according to Detective Pointon, it was never searched. In fact, no bodies of water have ever been searched for Bob's remains. Gacy was arrested in December of 1978,

which is a year after Bob's disappearance. And he was convicted for the murders of 33 young men. In 1980, he was sentenced to death. And in 1994, he was executed by lethal injection. Detective Pointon is still trying to figure out if he was ever explicitly interviewed about Bob. I'm working with a Cook County Sheriff's Investigator who has a lot of knowledge on the Gacy cases and it sounds like he was in a lot of his interviews very vague about you know maybe I did more

maybe I didn't that's for you guys to figure out type attitude so currently working on that end of things as well whether Gacy's connected or not still working on that." Specifically, Detective Pointon is curious about the fact that of Gacy's 33 confirmed murders, five of the bodies recovered have still never been identified, though DNA profiles suitable for comparison have been obtained from all of them. Pointon is trying to work with Cook County to see if there is a way to match any of those bodies to Bob. And though the 18-year-old's own DNA isn't on file anywhere, Amy and her dad's DNA was entered into CODIS in 2013. Unfortunately, Bob's mom, Carolyn, passed away in 2008 before the family decided to

give their DNA. I'm not proficient enough in the DNA world to know like how close of a match does it have to be or if it's a degraded DNA sample from remains Like how much of the profile does there have to be to match a family member's profile? You know, that's all real sciencey stuff that those professionals DNA analysts they know those questions, of course So our reporter Nicole reached out to an accredited investigative genetic genealogist who is an expert in unidentified remains cases. Her name is Karen Binder. Basically, just because there's DNA evidence doesn't mean that a CODIS profile exists

or that it's been compared to others. Binder explained that especially if a DNA sample is extremely degraded, entry into CODIS might only be accepted for a state-level search, which would mean that bodies found in Illinois might not be compared against missing persons in Wisconsin. In this case, the only way to know for sure if there is a match is to request what is called a direct comparison between unidentified remains and the familial DNA. This way, rather than depending on an automatic match from the database, someone will perform a manual comparison of both profiles.

Detective Boynton says that he is well aware that a direct comparison between Christian family DNA and Casey's unidentified victims is the best course of action in Bob's case, and he said Amy and her brother are on board with the idea. He reached out to Cook County Sheriff's Office about this in February and finally just got a response in April saying that they're open to doing the comparison. It took us a month, but we were finally able to get in touch with the gacy guy over in Cook County, Commander Jason Moran. He told our reporter Nicole at the beginning of April

he ordered a direct comparison to be done via a lab in Texas, but results won't be speedy. Do you have any sort of idea of what a timeline looks like for that? It's gonna take a little while because the samples have been in quotas for so long and there's been no genetic match. And because there's nothing in furtherance to show that Robert had been in Chicago,

I don't want to hit the emergency button with the lab and start saying, let's tear everything apart at this time. But it's something that we will have done in the near future. OK. Is it usually like months, years? We're talking within months. So it's a waiting game. But answers might be worth the wait. Part of Moran's work on this case has also meant creating an extensive timeline of Gacy's whereabouts during the 70s. So he was able to confirm that Gacy was in Reidsburg in July.

However, he also said that there is a plane ticket showing that Gacy purchased a flight to Pittsburgh on September 12th. That's five days before Bob left for Baraboo. But that ticket was never signed. So while Gacy did buy it, there is no confirmation that he actually boarded the flight, meaning he very well could still have been in Wisconsin

on the 16th. As for how and when Gacy could have encountered Bob, well, Randy says that Bob would have pulled over for anyone he thought needed help. But Detective Pointon says that he doesn't have a strong working theory there. And Bob's sister has mixed feelings about a possible Gacy connection. You know, it does give me hope, but then part of me, I said to Detective Point, and sometimes maybe God doesn't answer our prayers for a reason, you know, and maybe this is why if this John Wayne Gacy, you know, maybe we weren't supposed to know, maybe my parents weren't supposed to know. Maybe we weren't supposed to know. Maybe my parents weren't supposed to know.

I hope for answers, but then sometimes you have to be careful what you're hoping for too. It's not always what you want to know." Amy says Bob's disappearance has been a source of torment for her family. And unfortunately, it's not the only tragedy that they've experienced. I know for a long time I felt like, golly, did our family deserve this? What happened? This is just wrong, you know?

And I don't know if you're aware, but then six years later, my sister was killed. It was the spring of 1983, just six years after Bob went missing, when the dead body of 22-year-old Kathy Christian was found in a Wisconsin bar that had been set on fire. When my sister died, and this is an awful memory, but I remember my mom and I were driven to tell my dad about my sister. And I can remember him coming down and he was so happy. He looked happy because he thought they were going

to say something about Bob. And I just, I remember that. And I was like, oh man, it just so sucked. You know, it was like, oh, you know. And I remember that more. I was 17 when my sister was killed. At that time, we thought she had just died in a fire. We didn't know that it was arson.

We didn't know it was, I mean, we knew she hung around some rough people at times, and she always was kind of a little partier in the family, and she was a little wilder, a little bit more, she liked having fun. But I mean, she was a good person. She was a good person, but she just, some of the friends she hung out in high school probably weren't the best people. Kathy had become close to some members of the Ghost Riders,

which Detective Pointon described as an outlaw biker gang. I don't wanna say she was a biker gang member, but she would hang with these guys and they were upset. I think their motive for murdering her was they thought she was being an informant for law enforcement, which wasn't true. That's why she was killed. Apparently the Ghost Riders were looking for a way to silence Cathy, but also collect some insurance money from the bar fire. It was their way of getting two birds with one stone. It wasn't until 1985 when a murder trial was held that the Christians found out Cathy's

death wasn't an accident. Amy actually had to testify at the trial, which resulted in the convictions of three ghost writers. Obviously, given the circumstances, detectives at the time looked into whether Bob's disappearance and Cathy's murder could have been connected. But according to Detective Pointon, there was nothing to suggest that this was anything more than an absolutely tragic coincidence

for the Christian family. In 1977, Kathy hadn't yet become associated with the Ghost Riders. And though Bob did have a motorcycle, he had no known ties to any gangs. And while it took two years for justice to be served in Kathy's murder, the Christians have been waiting almost 50 years for answers about what happened to Bob. When I think about my brother and sister at their ages when they were so young,

and then to try to think about them as adults, you know, they never had that chance. and to try to think about him as adults. And, you know, they never had that chance. I lost my first hero and then my second. It was pretty crazy. In 2023, when Detective Pointon was assigned to the case, this is 46 years after Bob went missing, he hoped to finally give the Christian family the closure that they'd been waiting for.

I really dug into this one. We do look into cold cases from time to time to get a new set of eyes on it. Last thing anybody did, I think, with this case was 2013 when they put in Amy and her dad's DNA. So I figured it'd be good to look it over again. And that's when I really started with everything. Detective Boynton has tried to make contact with anyone mentioned in the case files, but with so much time having passed, it was more difficult than he anticipated.

Both of Bob's parents, the nun, Sister Genevieve, her friend Mary, the former lead detective on the case, and the caller who found the tires in the quarry, they'd all passed away. Fortunately, Randy was still living in Baraboo, so Detective Pointon paid him a visit. When he came and met with me, he said this whole case gets looked at every 10 years. And I said, you know, Tyler, nobody came and talked to me since 1977.

He's the first Saucony detective that came visit me. Part of reviewing Bob's case has meant sifting through a file of hundreds of hits that have come over the years from the NCIC database, which helps law enforcement across the U.S. share and access important crime-related information. Bob's missing persons case, with his physical physical description has been sitting in that database for decades. And there have been hits all over the country to remains or unidentified persons that matched some part of his description.

But each time the matches have been ruled out for one reason or another, most of the time based on dental records. There was one hit from 1985 out of Ontario, Canada, which, you know, given the early runaway rumors, Detective Pointon obviously looked into. But the police report from the time said, quote, "'The info we have to work with is somewhat sketchy,'

end quote. And that tip was eventually ruled out as well. A hit even came in as recently as 2023 from New York. Nicole actually looked through each of these, and honestly, they're kind of all over the place. Like, sometimes the height and weight were just totally off, and then somehow a handful of the matches were female remains. Detective Pointon said NCIC should deliver more accurate possible matches, but clearly that's not always the case. He said the coding is very complicated and even

he doesn't totally understand it. And honestly, the NCIC hits are the least of his concerns. Obviously with going on 50 years almost, 48 years it'll be in September. Memories fade, people die, so that's been hard. The other challenges now would be different, how we would probably process items of evidence, but 77, it just wasn't a thing. Reporting techniques were different back then. There's some things I'm finding out now that we would have definitely documented and reported now that I can't find reports on. Everything is done in paper. There's an electronic record, so it's paging through paper reports, and I don't know if they just have gone missing or

they were never done. I don't know, you know." Still, in spite of the odds, Detective Pointon is pushing on. He believes that someone out there knows something, and for the sake of the friends and family Bob left behind, he's doing everything he can to find them. My hope is that somebody out there now is in that boat where they have a change of heart or a change of circumstance that they can give us information, you know, because time's only going to drag on and more people are going to be gone and more memories are going to be faded and with his are going to be faded.

With his brother and sister still alive to get them some answers. Randy wants those answers too. The only thing I can plead for is somebody out there, whether it was your uncle, your grandpa, great-grandfather, somebody talked about it, somebody lived out there, somebody saw something. Please contact Detective Tyler Pointon and please come forward. Today, Robert Bob Christian would be 66 years old. At the time of his disappearance, he was 5'10 and around 210 pounds. He had brown eyes, shaggy brown hair, and wore eyeglasses.

If you know anything about Bob's disappearance or movements around Wisconsin in September of 1977, please call Detective Tyler Pointon directly at 608-355-3205. You can also call the Sheriff's Office non-emergency line at 800-377-1195. Or if you prefer, you can remain anonymous by calling the Sauk County Crime Stoppers at 1-888-TIP-SAWK. That's TIP-S-A-U-K. The Deck is an AudioChuck 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?