It’s been 21 years since Robert and Mary Fisher’s house exploded into flames in the early hours of April 9, 2001. Authorities searching the house following the blaze would find the remains of Mary and the couple’s children. All three had been slain hours before the fire. Robert Fisher was nowhere to be found. And he hasn’t been found.
Fisher — a retired firefighter who worked as a surgical catheter technician and respiratory therapist — married Mary Cooper in 1987. The marriage was not a happy one. Friends and acquaintances of the couple described Fisher as aggressive and controlling. “They did not have a happy marriage,” Wade Rencsok, a former neighbor told CNN. “They screamed constantly. Everybody heard it. You could hear it in the house next door, and you never really heard him scream, which is kind of weird. I mean he had a way about him, but you never heard him scream. You always heard his wife screaming. Things like, ‘You’re worthless. I could have done better than you. We should get a divorce.'”
Ten hours before his family’s home exploded into flame, neighbors heard the couple in yet another argument. Shortly after murdering Mary, 38, daughter Britney, 12, and son Bobby, 10 with a gun and knife, Fisher is believed to have severed a gas line in the home and lit a candle in a lower area of the house. He then reportedly doused the murder scene in accelerant.
On April 14, 2001, Fisher was declared an official person of interest in the triple homicide by the Arizona Department of Public Safety in a statewide bulletin. The last bit of physical evidence of Fisher’s whereabouts was found six days later when authorities discovered Cooper’s abandoned Toyota 4Runner in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest. Intensive searches of the area followed, including the many networks of caves in the area but no trace of Fisher has emerged since.
Some have speculated that he may have taken his own life or even become lost in the area and that his body simply hasn’t been recovered. However, others believe that Fisher — who was an avid outdoorsman — managed to escape the forest, and survives as a fugitive.
“There have been a ton of tips,” FBI Supervisory Special Agent Lance Leising told the Phoenix New Times in 2016. “It’s not known yet if any of those tips will be promising. But we follow the facts, so we don’t dismiss anything.” Six years later Fisher was removed from the FBI’s Most Wanted list though he remained missing.
Although Fisher is still being sought by the organization, twenty-one years after the crimes he no longer fits the criteria to be included on the Bureau’s famous list. As reported by AZ Central, the FBI has stated that “because the extensive publicity Fisher’s case received during its nearly 20 years on the list has not resulted in his successful location and/or capture, the case no longer fulfills that requirement.” Inclusion on the list depends on a belief that wide publicity will increase the chances of a fugitive’s capture.
For Scottsdale police Detective John Heinzelman — who currently heads the ongoing investigation — the FBI’s decision makes no difference to his pursuit of Fisher. “We’re still looking for him, no different than before,” he told AZ Central. According to Heinzelman, he is still receiving two to three tips per week regarding Fisher’s whereabouts. Fisher is still included on the FBI website as well under the section of fugitives wanted for murder.
If he is alive today, Fisher is 60 years old. He is 6′ and weighed around 190 pounds at the time of his disappearance. Anyone with information regarding Fisher and his current whereabouts is encouraged to call Scottsdale police at 480-312-5000.
