The Deck - Robert Mitchell Jr. (8 of Clubs, New York)

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Our card this week is Robert Mitchell Jr., the 8 of Clubs from New York. When the body of Robert Mitchell Jr., a “gentle giant” and towering presence in Rochester’s bar scene, is discovered burning in a public park, detectives don’t know what to think. As rumors swirl and leads dry up, the case grows cold… until a witness comes forward with details so specific, only someone close to the crime could know them. Now, nearly a decade later, investigators believe they know who killed Robert… But proving it in court is another story. If you know anything about the murder of Robert Mitchell Jr., please call Rochester Police Department’s major crimes unit at 585-428-7157 or email them at [e-mail]. You can also call Crime Stoppers at 585-423-9300 or submit a tip online here.You can listen to The Leighton Avenue Killings mentioned in this episode here.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/robert-mitchell-jrLet 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! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Robert Mitchell Jr., the aid of clubs from New York. Early one summer morning in 2016, a man out walking his dog through a Rochester Park stumbled onto a body. He was burned and still smoldering. That discovery would mark the beginning of an investigation that is stretched on for nearly a decade, one riddled with strange twists, frustrating dead ends, and coincidences that don't feel like coincidences at all. And just when it seemed like the case had gone completely cold, a witness came forward with details so specific only someone close to the crime could possibly know them. But getting that information into a courtroom has been challenging. And now, more than nine

years later, investigators are hoping that by sharing Robert's story, someone out there can help them finish what they started. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. On Wednesday, July 6th, 2016, a man began his morning like usual, walking his dog through LaGrange Park in Rochester, New York. It was a routine that he knew like the back of his hand, and most days, it was uneventful. But as they neared the basketball courts at the rear of the park around 6.20 in the morning, something caught his eye. Smoke. He went closer to check it out, and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. Frantically, he pulled out his phone, and here is part of that 911 call he made. Christ.

911 Center, what is this? Yeah. I'm in LaGrain's doing my dog a walk. God, what's wrong with these people? Is it a dead body here? LaGrains, the park, is it that body smoldering? Jesus, cool. There's a body on fire? Jack, the grain. Now, send somebody now.

All right, hold on just a moment, okay? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What is the wrong with these people? Is the body still on fire? He's smoldering. Okay, stay on the line with me until they get there with you, okay?

Don't hang up. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, the poor man. Within minutes, Rochester police were at the park. They were short-staffed that week. A lot of investigators were on vacation after the 4th of July. But not Detective Terry Deer Cop. She and her partner were on call.

Our shift was starting within the hour anyways, so we went right to the crime scene. When they got there, the location itself raised eyebrows. We thought that was a very unusual spot. It's a pretty quiet neighborhood. On one side is apartment buildings, but the whole backside is just industrial. The victim was laying face down, hands bound with duct tape, and he was naked from the waist down except for socks. Arson can make identification challenging,

but this time police caught a break. They could see the victim was a very tall black man, and despite the fire, some of his tattoos were still visible. Even more helpful and almost unbelievable is that lying next to his body was a wallet with a birth certificate inside. We pretty quickly determined it was Robert Mitchell Jr. The 37-year-old's body was still smoldering when police arrived, which told them that he hadn't been there long

and that he'd been set on fire right there in the park. But they didn't think that he was killed there. He was wrapped in blue tarp and black trash bags. Tire tracks led straight to his body. So whoever did this drove into the park, pulled up to that clearing tucked between the basketball courts and the thick tree line, And then they dumped him there and set him on fire.

Even with the burns, it was obvious that Robert had suffered head trauma. And the medical examiner confirmed that he had been hit several times with something large, something like a bat, and the blows fractured his skull and his jaw. There was a theory that he was probably attacked, either sitting down or laying down, because of where it was on the head. I mean, his height alone. Someone would have to be extremely tall to hit you. that hard in the head.

He also didn't have any obvious defensive wounds. And this all led investigators to believe that he was already dead by the time he was bound. My thought is that he was tied up to make it easier to move him. Because, again, how do you move someone that is so tall and big? I mean, he was a big guy. We knew at least two people had to have been involved in moving his body. But where was he moved from? and when? Residents in the large apartment complex nearby said they hadn't noticed anything unusual.

Most workers at the factories and warehouses that backed up to the park had just clocked in when police arrived. Many of the businesses had cameras, but a lot didn't work or were angled the wrong way or just didn't capture anything useful. Still, investigators managed to find one crucial piece of footage. We were able to get video from one of the industrial building, that showed a bright ignition in the middle of the night. You could see kind of like an, I don't want to say explosion, but you could see like the sky light up, and you could tell that that's the point

an accelerant had to have been poured on Robert. They might not have known where Robert was before the park or who put him there. They now knew when, 3 a.m. We have a time. Now we just have to track the vehicle. And at that time, it's not that hard to track a vehicle because there's not that many vehicles on the road.

Famous last words, right? Because it turned out to be pretty hard. The only vehicles caught on cameras near the park around that time were sedans. But the footage was too grainy to make out license plates or even car colors. It was all like night vision cameras, so every car was gray or black. They had hoped Robert's loved ones would know more. So while crime scene texts processed the park and officers continued canvassing, Detective Deercombe and her partner went to notify

Robert's family in the Rochester suburb of Pittsburgh. It was the hardest death notify I've ever done. His mother didn't want to speak with us, not out of being rude or mean, out of, I think out of when she saw us there, she immediately left and went upstairs because I think she knew why we were there. Like, she didn't even have to hear the words. It was Robert's father who ended up talking to them. He told detectives that the family had always been close, but Robert had been struggling.

Robert's only sibling, his sister Ashley, died of a heart condition in 2004. He went on to play college basketball. I mean, his six-nine height made him a natural until an injury ended that path. Without the routine of playing basketball on that injury, he started drinking too much and not going to class and ultimately, you know, lost his ability to play basketball in college. After that, things never fell back into place. While his longtime friends were starting careers and families, Robert, or Big Rob, as everyone called him,

just seemed stuck. He didn't have steady work or a place to live. But what he did have, according to Detective DeerCopp, was no shortage of what she called lady friends. At this point in his life, he was kind of couch surfing. He had a lot of friends in the Bayer District down on Monroe Avenue that he would stay at a lot of their places. Robert's dad told detectives,

hadn't heard from his son in a few days. His cell phone had been shut off weeks earlier, and unless Robert was connected to Wi-Fi, there was no way to reach him. Their recent chats had all been through Facebook. Now, personal issues aside, Robert's father couldn't think of anyone who wanted to kill him. But Robert's newer circle of friends was a mystery to his dad. I mean, the best he could do was connect them with some of Robert's longtime buddies in hopes that they could point them in the right direction.

And my partner and I walked down the driveway and he looked at me and he's like, we have to solve this case. And we got in the car and we didn't talk the rest of the way back. We were just so, I guess, we just, we were so sad for the father and mother. We just saw it in their face. I mean, it was terrible. Bit by bit in talking to Robert's longtime friends, police began piecing together what Robert's life looked like in the months leading up to his death.

Robert played in a darts league. He did temp work. He was a talented photographer. He could usually be found at his favorite bar, O'Callaghan's, on Monroe Avenue. He was a familiar face to several pubs in that area, and not just as a customer. A lot of the bars that he hunt out at on Monroe Avenue

would hire him to, like, be a bouncer at the door because he was so large. One of his friends told us that any time there was a fight, Rob would run to the back because he didn't want to get in a fight with anyone because he just did not have. They said he did not have a mean bone in his body and wouldn't fight anyone or wouldn't confront anyone. Most people described Rob as a gentle giant. But things had recently gotten harder for Robert.

He'd lost his job at the YMCA when staff caught him sneaking in at night to sleep. He'd worn out his welcome at some friends' houses, and he was drinking more. And even though he didn't have a serious criminal history, multiple people said that Robert had recently started selling small amounts of cocaine at the bars that he hung around. Very early in the investigation, his friends told us that they were convinced it had something to do with Robert trying to sell drugs.

Maybe he got mixed up with the wrong people because, like his friends told us, Robert wasn't cut out to be a drug dealer. Like, he didn't have it in him to collect money or sell, and they told us that he gave away a lot of the drugs, where he parodied with people. Friends also noticed that he seemed nervous lately, but no one knew if he was scared of anyone in particular

or what was causing his nervousness or where he was and who he was with the night he was killed. So to detectives, the logical place to start in retracing his steps was where Robert spent most of his time. Monroe Avenue, the busy bar corridor that he'd made his second home. The manager at O'Callagans told police that the last time he'd seen Robert was two days before he was found. So that would have been on the afternoon of July 4th. He said that Robert left his camera at the bar for safekeeping.

And that detail stood out because friends had mentioned that Robert would normally go to this 4th of July barbecue every year and he would have likely taken photos. But that day, he never showed. And he never came back to retrieve his camera. So they felt wherever he went, he planned on coming right back. Like he didn't plan on disappearing or leaving town or doing anything. It was that he probably was just leaving for a very short time. The next night, July 5th, Robert missed another commitment,

a D.D. Oxford's, which is just another bar down on Monroe Avenue. He and his partner had a good chance of winning, and with a cash prize on the line, it's not something that he'd flake on. So it would seem that whatever happened to him might have already happened. Except just as they were getting this info from a bartender at O'Callagans, she said something that seriously threw that assumption into question. She said, I saw him walking down Monroe Avenue. She thought it was the fifth because she was away the third and the fourth.

And she said, but it was weird, he didn't come in. O'Callagans and J.D. Oxford's are about a quarter of a mile apart. So we basically knocked on every business door between the two bars for video. And they actually found something useful. A surveillance camera near O'Callaghan's captured a man who looked like Robert at 5.49 p.m. on Tuesday, July 5th. The footage was grainy. It was distant, low resolution. But they could see the man walking east toward J.D. Oxford's carrying a black drawstring bag, the same kind that friends say Robert almost always had on him.

Now, the man in the video footage walks out of frame, and that's it. He's not picked up on any other cameras, and Robert doesn't make it to his dart match. So if that was Robert, it would seem that he vanished somewhere on Monroe in the quarter mile between O'Callagans and J.D. Oxford's. So detectives kept their attention on that street as they looked for other crime scenes, specifically the one where he was actually killed. We just figured he wouldn't have ventured very far because he didn't have a car. He was on foot, and he was almost to the bar where he was supposed to play darts. He's only a couple blocks away from that bar when we last seen him on video camera.

And in an area he knew so well, with so many friends and acquaintances nearby, everyone agreed on one point. This wasn't random. Whoever killed Robert had to be someone he knew, probably even someone he trusted. We wound up interviewing over 100 people. Everybody knew him. The rumors started flying about who it could have been. And people were throwing out names left and right. They looked for overlap with other homicides.

Several people in the region had been found burned that year. And Robert knew two of them, Michael Royal and Jennifer Leisure, both victims of the Leighton Avenue quadruple homicide and arson. That's a case that we covered on this show. All four victims in that case were bound, shot, and stab before the house was set on fire. That investigation also pointed toward a possible low-level drug dispute. But police couldn't find anything actually linking the cases. Even Roberts' photography provided leads. He'd been hired to shoot a wedding, but after his computer crashed, the couple never got their pictures.

I mean, they were furious and started sending him threatening messages via Facebook. We know where you live. we know where you hang out and all that kind of stuff. So it was like, oh, my gosh. But it wound up being completely, you know, they had nothing to do with it. After chasing down every tip, rumor, and theory, the drug-related angles still made the most sense.

So our theory was that Rob had probably either stolen drugs from someone or been given drugs to sell and was short on money and that he was assaulted and we didn't know if the person who assaulted him meant to kill him or just to send him a message. But clearly he died. We felt probably pretty close to the Monroe Ave neighborhood. The suspect pool was huge.

But as detectives sifted through the noise, two names floated to the top. Hours before Robert's body was discovered, there was a stabbing at a bar across the street. the street from O'Callagans, called the Park Bench Pub. According to witnesses, the suspect was a 30-year-old man named Lance, who slashed another guy in the hand. But as that stabbing investigation unfolded, it was Robert's name that kept coming up.

You see, allegedly, he and Lance had gotten close. Police know that Lance sold cocaine for a man named Adrian. But somewhere along the way, things got messy. Lance had either started using the product himself, along with Robert, or someone stole it. Now, police learn that Lance blamed Robert for the missing product, and so Adrian was trying to track them both down in the days before Robert was killed. Now, he found at least one of them because surveillance videos showed that after the bar stabbing,

Lance took off with Adrian and Adrian's girlfriend. We spent a lot of time and effort into getting video surveillance from where they lived to see if they had come in, you know, that night or did they come or go, around the time his body was burned. Detectives pulled phone records and found threatening texts from Adrian in Lance's inbox. But location data didn't place either man

near LaGrange Park where Robert's body was found, which just means that their phones weren't there. Police weren't writing anyone off yet, but they didn't have enough to prove anything either. So they just flagged all three, Lance Adrian and Adrian's girlfriend in their internal databases just in case they pop up.

up again. And that didn't take very long. In early August, a custodian at an apartment complex called 911 with something alarming. He said that a couple had just moved out of one of the townhouses. And when he went inside to clean, he found blood on the living room wall, blood on the back door and on the carpet. The custodian also told us that he was cleaning out the dumpster because he wanted to look to see what they threw away because maybe there was something that he could salvage, and there was a broken baseball bat in the dumpster. And the couple who had just left that unit? Adrian and his girlfriend.

We're thinking, this is it. We really honestly thought this is it. This is where he was killed in this apartment, and there's a broken baseball bat in the dumpster. So we called the crime lab down because we wanted them to see the blood pattern. They were saying that someone was hit, and it was cast off. While crime scene texts were figuring that out, they got another surprise. ATF agents, who were pulled into Robert's case because of the arson,

they picked up Lance on a warrant for the park bench stabbing, and Rochester detectives swooped in to question him. Now, Lance denied knowing anything about Robert's murder, but according to police reports, he confirmed that they had hung out before and that Robert and Adrian had crossed paths, although he wasn't sure if Robert ever sold anything for Adrian. He also admitted that he himself owed Adrian a drug debt of nearly $1,000. And he volunteered that the shirt he wore during the park bench stabbing was still at his place, covered in blood.

So detectives collected it and sent that out for testing just to make sure that the blood really was from the bar fight and not from Robert. So all this bloody evidence that they're collecting had to turn up something, right? Right? Wrong. When detectives talked to Adrian's girlfriend, now his ex, she said that the blood in the apartment was actually hers. Adrian had assaulted her. We still tested the blood, you know, we still wanted to make sure, and it was her blood.

Then we found out that the baseball bat that was in the dumpster, her son actually got at a Red Wings, which is our AAA baseball team, that a player broke the bat swinging and gave it to her son. at the game. A lot of cops will tell you that they don't believe in coincidences. But this case was full of them. It could have been anyone's apartment and it could have been anyone having a domestic, but it happened to be somebody who we thought Robert might have been into drug dealing with.

Then came another blow. The blood on Lance's shirt was not Roberts, and he had an alibi for the general window when police believed that Robert was killed. And we tracked that down, and sure enough, he was somewhere else until he wasn't our suspect. Just like that, two of their strongest leads became dead-ends. And as time kept ticking by with no answers, staying hopeful got harder and harder. Nothing they collected from the park, bits of torn duct tape and fabric, pieces of blue tarp and trash bag, charred towel fragments, a burned USB drive and a lighter,

none of that turned up anything helpful. Shreds of jeans found near Robert weren't his. The groundskeeper told police that he'd run over them with a lawnmower the day before his body was left there. Ditto for a pair of sneakers. Even digital forensics was a bust. With Robert's service shut off, there was no live location data for his phone.

And when detectives finally got into the laptop and sell that he had left at a friend's place, they didn't find anything useful there either. They tried running a geofence around the park, but between the warehouses, factories, and that big apartment complex nearby, there was just too much data to narrow down anything significant. So despite all their work, the case went cold for one year and then two. But in December 2018, a woman, we'll call Erica,

walked into the police station with a bombshell tip. She comes to our headquarters and said, I need to talk to someone. I think my husband was involved in a homicide. She believed that her husband, let's call him Gary, could be Robert's killer. Erica and Robert used to date, and she said that Gary had always been jealous of him. And one day, around the time of Robert's murder, Gary came home smelling like smoke and started acting paranoid. Because she said he and his friends were acting very,

strange, and that he had been on edge around that time, and she remembers him freaking out, talking, whispering in the phone, and she felt like something was going on. So I thought, here we go. We're on to something again. Gary's record showed minor offenses, nothing violent. But Erica told police that he'd been abusive and that she had a restraining order against him. Detective DeerCopp was cautiously optimistic. I mean, Erica and Gary were in the middle of a nasty divorce and custody battle, so detectives knew that her accusations could be fueled by anger or agenda.

Plus, she and Robert hadn't been involved for years. But, unexpected twist. Erica didn't necessarily think that Gary killed Robert because of her. She believed that Gary was dabbling in drug sales, maybe helping his friends out. And she'd heard a rumor that Robert stole a stash that Gary, or one of the of his buddies kept in a hiding spot at O'Callagans. I mean, we took what she told us very serious, and we really tried to exhaust all the information she gave us,

but it wound up being a dead end. She gave us some names of people we had already interviewed. We went and re-interviewed them about the missing stash at O'Callagans and about that stuff, and we couldn't find any truth in any of it. So we kept him as a suspect. We did a full workup on him and his history and everything. We didn't clear him, but we just, nothing led us strongly to him other than her thinking he might have been involved. She didn't have any concrete information like that she knew he did it, that he confessed to her, that she saw the body,

that he and his friends were openly talking about it. She just had a suspicion. It felt like they had so many puzzle pieces, but none of the pieces actually connected it together. Until December 2022, when a new witness came forward, with exactly what detectives needed to bring the picture into focus. For their safety, and at police's request, I'm not going to share any identifying details about this witness,

but I can tell you how they ended up on Detective Deere Cops' radar. I got a phone call from a police agency out in the suburbs of Rochester. And they said that they had a person who called 911 and wanted to give information on a homicide that happened in the city. And they called up to our office

and said that it was the case of Robert Mitchell. So I drove out to this witness's home. The witness said that Robert's killer was a 33-year-old man who were going to call Tom. I actually had this person's name in my notes It's the second day of the investigation. Tom was a newer addition to Robert's Circle, and Robert's longtime friends weren't fans.

They thought that he seemed shady. But back then, Tom was just another name on Detective Deer Cop's list, and he was nowhere near the top of it. Out of all the names that I had been given, his was the one that I had the least information on and couldn't find any motive or connection to Rob. Tom didn't have an extensive rap sheet,

although he did have a serious charge on his record, a violent felony involving gun possession from when he was a teenager. Now, the witness said that back when Robert was killed, Tom was dealing cocaine and he had fronted Robert a few thousand dollars worth to sell. Instead, Robert either used it or gave it away and then never paid Tom back. According to this witness, one night in July, a group of people were hanging out at an apartment where Robert had been staying, basically a friend's place that he was crashing at while that guy was out of town. Tom was there too, and the witness said that's when he made his move. While Robert was asleep on the couch, Tom attacked him.

He was hitting the head with either a baseball bat or a tire iron, something of that length and size multiple times in that he was beaten so badly, his eye was even damaged and bulging out of his head. And the witness said that there were other. people present when it happened and that Robert was taken from that apartment and taken over to a house on the east side of our city hidden behind a shed and after a couple days they said that he was behind the shed for a couple days and then ultimately he was wrapped in a tarp tied up in a tarp and transported over to the west side of our city and dumped out at a park on LaGrange

and he was set on fire. What made this tip so compelling is that police had never publicly shared how Robert was killed. We always thought we'd keep it very close to our chest to how Robert died because we always said if a witness comes forward and knows how he died, then we'll know that they were there and that's exactly what happened. The witness knew.

This one witness knew how he died. and they saw him after he was deceased. The details explained everything they knew from the crime scene, that Robert was attacked while lying down, that he didn't even have an opportunity to defend himself, and it could explain why he had no pants or shoes on. He'd been sleeping. We kept trying to envision what happened,

and when they told this story, it made perfect sense. What really sealed the deal on this person's information is that they told us that the shed that Robert was hidden behind was arsoned that morning and that a vacant house that the shed sat up against to was also arsoned. So I went back to July 6, 2016, and found a house that morning that had been set on fire, a vacant house and a shed that had been set on fire. And inside there was blue tarp that was still left from the fire. So I knew right then and there that this person was sent on.

telling the truth. And finally, after all the people that have come forward giving information that led us to dead end, we finally had someone who had actual real information. And it was very credible information. The only thing that didn't 100% line up was the date. The witness said that Robert was killed at least a couple of days before he was found, probably on July 4th. But all along, police had been operating under the assumption that he'd last been seen on that surveillance footage on the fifth. But honestly, that could have been a wrong assumption. Remember, the quality was poor, and while some people thought it was Robert, there were others who even early on didn't think that.

And actually, the fourth makes way more sense, because the one thing him being alive on the fifth couldn't explain is why he would leave his camera behind at the bar and never come back for it. In the end, Detective Deercott believes that the figure on that footage from the 5th was someone else. Just another weird coincidence. Now, detectives had their work cut out for them. They needed to try and see if they could find anything that proved this story even further, or anything that physically linked Tom to Robert's murder.

The witnesses didn't have addresses for either place where they alleged the murder happened or where Robert's body was first hidden. But no problem, at least on the second one, because they were able to pull the address for the body stash spot because of the police report. That vacant house and shed that burned that morning was at 41 Lang Street in a neighborhood that Tom apparently knew well. Finding the apartment where the murder took place, though, was trickier.

The witness couldn't remember the exact address but said they knew it was on Meg's Street. And the man who rented the apartment was a bartender at the Scotch house pub, a couple of blocks from O'Callaghan's. They only had his first name, and let's call him Harley. Detective Deercop dug through old police reports tied to the Scotch House pub until, boom. A guy named Harley was listed as a witness in a 2016 assault case, and his address at the time was 86 Meg Street, an old Victorian split into apartments.

I figured out who it was. I figured out the apartment. I called the landlord who owned the building back in 2016. And yes, this person was, in fact, the renter of the apartment at the time. We are hearing that the apartment was a mess. And that when the male who rented the apartment came home, he was actually upset. Now, by the time this information came to light, it was way too late to get a warrant to search the place.

But Detective Deercoop went to speak to Harley, hoping for, a breakthrough. Unfortunately, he wasn't exactly forthcoming. He admitted to knowing Robert casually from the bar scene but said that he'd never let him crash at his place. And as for Tom, he claimed that he didn't know him at all. Still, for Detective Deercop, it felt like the finish line was finally in sight. Well, I thought this was it, and I thought we were going to, you know, full steam ahead

and we're going to be making an arrest. And I called my partner who was now retired. I called him so excited, told him everything, and I came back to the office, and I was like, this is it. My supervisor and I were all excited. But, and there's always a but, when prosecutors reviewed everything, a major hurdle emerged. What can you share about that hurdle? That there may be difficulty with this person being able to testify to the knowledge that they have. Of course, some of it might be considered hearsay.

Some is eyewitness knowledge, but that there are reservations about putting this person on the stand. Because there are multiple witnesses, and I don't want to pinpoint why this one witness might be a difficult person to put on this stand. Investigators haven't approached Tom yet. They're holding off so they don't spook him. But more importantly, they want to protect the witness. But if we talk to him now, and then we can't move forward, I certainly would not want him to start confronting people that he thinks are the witnesses, because there are, like I said, there are multiple people who were present.

Even so, Detective Deercop believes that there are ways to move forward. I know now who killed Robert, what it was over, where he was killed, where he was transferred to, and when they drove him to his ultimate. spot on LaGrange Avenue. We know all that. We just have to be able to prove it in court. Police don't think that Tom acted alone. At the very least, someone helped move Robert's body twice.

They're hoping for another witness to come forward and confirm the account. Even a small tip shared anonymously through crime stoppers could make a difference. They're also looking to science to close the gap. We have a tarp, we have duct tape, we have a towel. We have things that were left that we don't have DNA samples from, but maybe we can do some new testing, retest some of the evidence we do have. As an investigator, most will tell you that there's always that one case that sticks with you that you want to solve. That one case that you can't let go.

This case just stays with me. Robert's mom and dad stay with me, his sister. and, you know, I would really love to solve this case before I retire. This is the one case I really would like to put down. Just because this case was nine years ago, does not mean we're not still investigating it. It will never be closed until we make an arrest. Robert's parents declined to be interviewed for this episode,

but it is clear that he was deeply loved. They had made a comment to my partner that when they left the cemetery, they were leaving the two kids behind. For his family and friends, a resolution wouldn't just mean accountability. It would mean answers, an end to the questions that they've been carrying for nearly a decade. Maybe your cooperation could really help us put this case away. There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Robert Mitchell Jr. If you know anything about his murder or what led up to it, please call Rochester Police Department's major crime.

unit at 585-4287-7-157, or you can email them at major crimes at cityof-rochester.gov. If you want to remain anonymous, you can also call crime stoppers. Their number is 585-423-930-0, or you can submit a tip to them online. The deck is an audio-chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck in our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.