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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It was 10 o'clock on the night of Monday, March 23, 2009, when a team of police officers gathered outside a two-story, off-white condominium in Walkershire, a small suburban community in the Midwest American state of Wisconsin.
Earlier that day, their department had received a phone call from a local recreation centre asking them to investigate one of their long-time swim instructors after he'd been accused of acting inappropriately with some of his underage students. An outwardly calm, mild-mannered individual, the man agreed to let investigators search his home.
As the officers made their way through the condo's first floor, they were struck by how immaculate it was. Not a stick of furniture was out of place, and each room had been meticulously cleaned and organised. One thing did strike them as odd, though. All of the windows were covered in sheets and tarps.
Heading down into the basement, the officers discovered an array of toys and games, things one would expect to find in the home of devoted parents or grandparents. Not a lifelong bachelor with no children. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. As investigators began digging through sealed boxes beneath the stairs, they unearthed something that unsettled even the most seasoned among them.
Two highly detailed models, handcrafted from balsa wood and built to scale. The first was a police station, the second a firehouse. Investigators lifted the roofs off the models to reveal more than a dozen photographs of children glued to the walls. Above each one was a tiny LED light that illuminated the child's face like a painting in a museum.
One of the detectives recognised some of the faces from milk cartons and nightly news reports. They were children who had either been murdered or gone missing from across the country, stretching back decades. But one face in particular stood out. A 14-year-old boy with a buck-toothed smile and sandy blonde hair swept over blue eyes. His name was John Zierer.
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Chapter 2: What happened to John Zira on February 20, 1976?
Because that's what I saw them do to the boy in the park. According to Acker, Joe told him that on the day John Zira disappeared, Joe had been at a McDonald's in Hale's Corners when three men in a dark blue sedan picked him up. One of them was openly brandishing a gun. A teenage boy sat in the back seat, flanked by two of the men.
The boy looked nervous, a large suit coat dwarfing his small frame. They drove to Whitnall Park, pulled over near the edge of the woods, and hiked to a popular make-out spot. There, the men forcibly removed the boy's clothes as Joe stood by and watched. Terrified, the boy tried to run, but one of the men ordered Joe to catch him and bring him back.
Joe didn't want to hurt the boy, but he did as he was told, scared he'd be shot if he didn't. The men then took turns raping the boy as he screamed and cried, calling his attackers sons of bitches. John Zira's parents later confirmed that John hardly ever swore, but when he did, that was the phrase he'd use.
Once the men finished assaulting the boy, one of them grabbed a nearby rock and struck him savagely on the head. At the time of John's murder, Joe was 22 years old, but had the mental faculties of an 8-year-old and an IQ of just 58. An IQ below 75 is the standard benchmark used to diagnose an intellectual disability.
According to Joe's sister, his brain was damaged at birth when a doctor used forceps to deliver him. As a result, he'd spent much of his life in court-mandated institutions and group homes.
Joe was charged with assaulting the young woman from the Milwaukee mental health complex, but the case was dropped after lawmakers determined he didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand what he'd done. Police spoke to Joe, who reiterated the basic facts of Acker's story with less detail.
They showed Joe a photo line-up in an effort to identify the boy he claimed to have seen being murdered in Whitnall Park. Although John Zira's photo was in the line-up, Joe said he didn't recognise him and instead chose a photo of a 16-year-old who lived across the street from his parents.
Given Joe's low IQ and inability to pick John out of a line-up, police felt confident he had nothing to do with the murder. They, along with Joe's doctor, thought it seemed likely he had been told a story and then instructed to repeat it. Jo's sister told investigators that her brother was very impressionable and could easily be manipulated into telling a false story.
But Daniel Acker denied feeding Jo information about the crime, telling investigators, "...he knows what happened. He was there." After the police refused to investigate Acker's claims any further, he went to the media, setting up an on-camera interview with the WTMJ News. He even sent a letter to John's parents informing them that one of his patients may have witnessed their son's murder.
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Chapter 3: How did the initial investigation into John Zira's disappearance unfold?
Detective Patrick reached inside and pulled out two large models built to resemble a police station and a firehouse. The walls of each model were wired with LED lights and plastered in black and white photos of missing and murdered children.
Among them were Eaton Pates, a 6-year-old boy who went missing from New York in 1979, Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped and murdered in Minnesota in 1989, and Kenarik Synthesomphone, a 14-year-old victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer who was murdered in Milwaukee in 1991. In another box, police found miniature models of fire trucks, police cars, and other automobiles.
One of the officers reached inside and picked up a gold matchbox-sized Buick Riviera. Written on the bottom in magic marker was the number 14, as well as a name, John C. Zierer. It didn't take long for Detective Patrick to find a corresponding photo of the 14-year-old, whom he immediately recognised as a local unsolved murder victim.
In a bedroom closet upstairs, officers discovered a photo album and a journal focused entirely on John Zira, with entries dating back to the day the teenager went missing. Inside were family photos of John and his brothers, as well as maps of Franklin High School and Whitnall Park covered in handwritten notes.
In some of the photos, which looked as though they'd been captured surreptitiously, John's brothers appeared much older than they were at the time of his murder. This led officers to believe Acker had performed surveillance on the family for years. They also found a framed photo of John and his brothers sitting on their living room couch with two dogs.
It was wrapped in newspaper along with pinecones and what appeared to be a cross. Another item recovered was a diary which contained numerous concerning passages. One of them read, "'Friday, February 20th, 1976. Between 1.30pm and 2pm, the boy is made to, or is, completely undressed. Even his socks are removed.' Such is the horror John had to go through.
The boy was sexually assaulted, but somehow, after the assault, he managed to run away to attempt to escape, but was caught about 30 feet from the sexual assault area. John C. Zira was caught, knocked down on the ground, possibly unconscious, then struck on his right forehead with a round rock, which sadly caused the boy's death. Another read, February 29th, 1976.
As I kneel, I see the blood and fluids from the head trauma. To the left is the empty hole where the rock had been removed, telling me it was a panic meant to kill the boy because of his escape attempt. Detective Kent Schoonover was on his way to a conference when he received a phone call from his boss who instructed him to turn around and head to the station right away.
Schoonover was shocked to learn what had been discovered at Acker's home. Like most detectives who'd worked the case, he knew all about Acker. An innocuous busybody who police had taken an interest in back in 1976, the former mental health aide was dismissed as a suspect after passing a lie detector test.
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Chapter 4: What evidence was found at the scene where John Zira's body was discovered?
The result was an in-depth series of articles about the Zira case, published on the 40th anniversary of John's murder, along with a podcast series titled Unsolved. Much of the information revealed in Barton's reporting had previously been withheld from the public.
This information reignited public interest in the case and raised new questions about the systemic failures that had plagued the initial investigation. In a Q&A, Barton explained why taking on John's case was so important to her. One of the primary reasons we wanted to put our efforts into this was the fact that it's unsolved.
In talking with the Hales Corners Police, they and we at the Journal Sentinel hoped that perhaps shedding light on it could help finally bring the killer to justice. Following the release of Barton's series, the Hales Corners police chief decided to reopen the case. The first thing the new team did was ask Greenfield Police for the models from Daniel Acker's basement, but they no longer had them.
After Acker was convicted of sexual assault, the models were returned to one of his sisters. She'd since thrown them away, leaving police without access to yet another puzzle piece. The newly retired Detective Kent Schoonover agreed to work on the case as a consultant.
One day, while sifting through boxes of evidence taken from Acker's home, he'd found a woven leather belt too small for Acker, but just big enough for a 14-year-old boy. He wondered if the belt could have belonged to John. In the 6,000 plus pages of documents pertaining to the Zira case, only once was a belt brought up.
The day police found John's body in Whitnall Park when describing his clothing, one officer had mentioned a basket weave brown leather belt approximately 1.25 inches wide. No such belt was ever saved as evidence, but the description sounded eerily similar to the one found in Acker's possession.
The belt was sent away for forensic examination, with the Hales Corners police chief telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that if it was John's belt, that's going to be the nail in Acker's coffin. Hopes were raised further when investigators discovered a journal entry Acker had written on the day John's body was found. It read, Oddly, I would learn that the boy's belt was not found.
Amidst dozens of sinister entries, this more innocuous one had gone unnoticed for years. In light of Detective Schoonover's discovery, it suddenly took on greater significance. Investigators also gave John's clothing to the internationally renowned DNA Diagnostics Center in Fairfield, Ohio, believing it might harbor trace DNA such as skin cells or sweat.
The items had been tested in the 1990s and early 2000s, but failed to generate any leads. Given advancements in forensic science, police were optimistic things would be different this time around.
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