Our card this week is George Jares, the 6 of Clubs from Wisconsin. From the outside, 43-year-old George was a family man: a former greeting card salesman turned restaurant owner who loved his kids, the outdoors, and working hard. But after George was shot three times and left for dead in his restaurant’s parking lot, details of his life began to emerge that painted a rather different picture... And the surprising twists that detectives uncovered led them to suspect that George had been targeted by a hitman. For nearly forty years they’ve been looking for the shooter and, more importantly, the person who hired them.If you have any information about the murder of George Jares in Eagle River, Wisconsin, on August 3rd, 1986, please come forward. You can call the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office at (715) 479-4441 and ask for any officer or detective on duty. Or, if you’d prefer to remain anonymous, you can call the Vilas County Sheriff’s anonymous tip line at 1-800-472-7290.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/george-jaresLet 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!
Chapter 1: Who was George Jares and what happened to him?
Our card this week is George F. Jarris, the Six of Clubs from Wisconsin. From the outside, 43-year-old George was a family man, a former greeting card salesman turned restaurant owner who loved his kids, the outdoors, and working hard. But after George was shot and left for dead in his restaurant's parking lot, details of his life began to emerge that painted a rather different picture.
And the surprising twist that detectives uncovered led them to suspect that George had been targeted by a hitman. For nearly 40 years, they had been looking for that shooter and, possibly more importantly, the person who hired them. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. At around 1.30 a.m.
on August 3rd, 1986, a woman named Marcy in Eagle River, Wisconsin, was drifting off to sleep when a loud popping noise jolted her out of bed. It sounded like gunshots coming from just outside her home. So she ran to the window to see what was going on.
I mean, it was still dark, but she was able to make out a lone figure walking across her yard, away from this local supper club down the street called The Arbor. That's when she alerted authorities. Less than three minutes after that call, two city officers responded to the restaurant. From the sidewalk, there didn't appear to be anything amiss.
But as they made their way to the back of the property, they heard what sounded like someone gasping for air. Here's former Vilas County Sheriff's detective and current evidence tech, Cherise Rosga Anderson. She was assigned to this case in 2004.
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Chapter 2: What evidence was found at the crime scene?
They weren't sure what was going on. And when they came upon the pickup truck in the back to the south of the building itself, they discovered a male laying on his back. He was still alive. And I do see an officer notified dispatch at 1.35 a.m. that they had a victim with a severe head injury and an ambulance was needed. So that was within three minutes of the actual call.
Officers immediately recognized the man as the owner of the restaurant, 43-year-old George Jarris. He'd moved to the area the summer before to open Arbor, which quickly became a successful business. The Arbor was home to Wisconsin's best brandy old-fashioned and served a prize-winning prime rib.
But now, its owner was lying unconscious on his back and appeared to be suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the right side of his head. As officers called for backup, George was rushed to the hospital. It was 2.30 a.m. when George's younger sister, Lenore Penny Volchek, got the call that her brother had been shot. She was living in Illinois at the time where they'd both grown up.
It was a crushing blow to me. After that, I never wanted to answer the phone in the middle of the night because I didn't want bad news like that.
The next day, she packed up and headed to the Wisconsin hospital, where she met her parents, George's wife Linda, and their two sons, George III and Michael. George was on life support in a coma when they arrived.
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Chapter 3: What were the circumstances surrounding George's death?
He'd already been through surgery, but he hadn't regained consciousness since the shooting, so he wasn't able to communicate with investigators, which meant that they hoped the crime scene could do some talking for them. Here's Detective Rosga Anderson again.
And that's when they discovered the place was all secure. Doors were locked. No windows were broken. His vehicle was there. Keys were in the ignition. It was unlocked. Nobody tried breaking into the place. They could have taken a perfectly good pickup truck. The keys were right there. And they could have taken his wallet. They didn't do that.
And then as the officers were spreading and looking out further, enlarging the crime scene and looking for more evidence, they found a pair of aviator sunglasses along the trajectory of where the witness who called it in saw him walking. And then as they grew their search pattern, they found a .22 caliber revolver firearm to the east of the road, like it was just tossed.
Both the sunglasses and the firearm were collected and bagged in plastic. And not only did the revolver have a serial number, but it also had a latent thumbprint set into grease near the grip. This led investigators to suspect that whoever pulled the trigger was probably lying in wait for George outside of the restaurant near the kitchen's oil and grease deposit.
Detective Rosga Anderson said the revolver had five spent shells in the cylinder and a sixth round that appeared to be a misfire. From what they saw at the scene, investigators assumed that three bullets had struck George. One had struck and shattered the window of his truck, and one had completely missed.
At the time, no testing was done with the sunglasses, but the revolver was sent to the FBI crime lab for fingerprint analysis. But unfortunately, by the time that it arrived, the grease print had actually melted in the plastic bag. Investigators had photographed it beforehand, but the image quality wasn't good enough to enter anything into a database.
Now, as for a serial number on the gun, detectives were able to trace it back to its original purchaser, a woman in West Virginia. But according to Detective Roska Anderson, it had been stolen from that woman's house in 1974, a full 12 years before the shooting, which pretty much ruled that woman out and made tracing the gun to a shooter much more difficult.
Detective Rosga Anderson said that they had located robbers in that case, the one where the gun was stolen, but there was never any evidence linking them to this crime. The revolver was likely moved through underground channels and could have changed owners dozens of times before it ended up in the hands of George's shooter.
So that we believe is a dead end. The .22 caliber revolver, it's used in a lot of homicides, and they had no qualms leaving it at the scene. I don't think it was accidentally dropped like the sunglasses. I think the sunglasses were probably dropped accidentally, but that firearm, I think it was tossed.
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Chapter 4: Who were the key individuals interviewed about the case?
His wife, Linda, told detectives that she and George had met in Cicero, Illinois, where they lived full-time with their two sons, right up until George bought the Arbor in the summer of 1985. According to George's sister, he'd chosen Eagle River because he was familiar with the area.
The Jaris family used to vacation up there, and a number of George's friends from Cicero already had homes in the area. But George made the move out to Wisconsin on his own, and Linda and the kids commuted the six hours back and forth between the two places.
Linda told detectives that she was planning to move to Eagle River with the kids full-time eventually, but was just wrapping up some things in Cicero. Even though it was late, Linda was actually on a drive back from one of their trips to Eagle River when George was shot. Linda told investigators that it wasn't until she got home that she learned what happened to her husband.
She had just arrived like at 5.30 in the morning and she got the phone call that her husband was shot and was at Wausau Hospital. And I guess she had a friend drive her up there.
The rest of George's family didn't really know anything that could help the investigation. They had been in Illinois at the time of the shooting. But they were all there in Wisconsin on August 8th when George passed away in the hospital. With his death, investigators lost their most direct link to the crime, the one person who might have known who the attacker was.
Here's George's sister Lenore again.
I was devastated when it happened and I was very depressed. I probably should have gone into some kind of therapy because I was so upset by the whole thing. I just, I had a problem handling it. It was like the first death that was ever so close to me.
I mean, my grandpa had passed, my grandma had passed, but for my brother, you know, to lose my brother when he was 43 years old to a violent crime, I just really had a hard time with it.
While George's family struggled to accept their new reality, investigators were having a hard time IDing the shooter. Even though, as you'll hear Detective Rosget Anderson say, many people who were at the Arbor that night thought they'd seen the shooter before the crime.
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Chapter 5: What were the suspicions about Linda Jares?
And in fact, the person said it was almost like, not what time are you guys closing, but what time does George get off of work? So they thought that was kind of suspicious.
Several people at the bar also said this suspicious man had been driving a red 1970 or 1971 Ford Mustang. And some people noted seeing a second person in the car, but they weren't able to give a description. According to media coverage at the time, officers said that they were searching for this red car.
They also had a composite sketch made up, but it's unclear if that was ever circulated to the public. Either way, nothing consequential popped up as a result of their public appeals. But they had learned more from talking to the people who knew George. Turns out he'd been receiving unusual phone calls at the restaurant in the days leading up to his shooting.
reportedly he had told people, several different people, and these are patrons when you think it's a small community, they're the same regulars, right? And he had told them that he's been getting these phone calls like in the evenings and he would answer and there wouldn't be anybody on. He was a little irritated by the phone call. There it is again, and no one's on there.
He never told anybody or, you know, speculated who it might have been. It didn't seem like it concerned him. It more irritated him.
It almost seemed to investigators that someone who didn't know George was trying to learn his routine, finding out what time he usually got off work. Of course, this was merely a hunch, but that, combined with the untraceable gun and the description of a shady-looking character in the area, led investigators to tell the local news that they were looking into professional killers.
Just for clarification, in this next clip, you'll hear Detective Roska Anderson pronounce George's last name slightly differently than I did. But our pronunciation is based on his sister Lenore's guidance.
It was almost like a classic hit. They left the 22 at the scene because they knew it couldn't be traced back to them. And so the question would be, who hired that person? And the person right now that is at the top of the list is Linda Jairz.
Linda and George had been married for over two decades at the time of his murder. And in that time, George's sister Lenore had become close to Linda. But she learned it was hard to trust her.
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Chapter 6: What led investigators to suspect a hitman?
You know, it was so often you'd hear something. Yeah, okay. And as I got older, I realized that she wasn't telling me the truth about everything. Even I had talked, now I talk to her kids as adults, and they both said, yeah, my mom had a problem with the truth. You know? And I really liked her. I just couldn't trust her.
And she'd stab you in the back. Our reporter Nicole Kagan asked Lenore directly about Linda's possible involvement in George's death.
Was this something you thought she could be capable of? Yes. Do you remember what your parents thought at the time? Were they more leaning towards maybe Linda had something to do with this? Yes.
It took me a lot longer to learn to not trust her. George wasn't a perfect angel either. And together, marriage was hard. Things were complicated by the fact that Linda didn't want to move away from the Cicero area right away. The long-distance marriage was taking its toll.
Several of the patrons who were interviewed that stated that George confided in them that he wanted Linda up here. He wanted Linda in Eagle River. He wanted her to come up here and be a wife. He wanted her to help out with the business. Patron's friends of George and Linda did state that George was having an affair or affairs, and Linda also admitted that.
So they did have trouble with their marriage. It sounded like it.
But they were trying to make it work, it seemed, as evidenced by the trip Linda had just made to Eagle River with the boys.
She states that while she was up here from July 30th to the 2nd, everything went well, gave no indication of any trouble or problems with anybody or anything. She did say that George could be obnoxious when he drank, but again, say there was no longstanding with that type of thing.
Linda said that she left for Cicero with her sons at around 10.30 p.m. on August 2nd. And after driving for about a half hour, she stopped at a Holiday Inn to call the Arbor from the hotel's phone. She said she needed to reach George because she thought she left her earring in the bathroom of the restaurant and she wanted him to check for it. But she wasn't able to get through.
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Chapter 7: How did George's family react to the situation?
And then there was a conversation. There was trouble with the phone. They were disconnected. She called a second time and got through. And then she told George to make sure to notify the operator that they were dropped.
Linda said she got back on the road and continued on to Cicero without stopping again, making it home at about 5.30 a.m. Investigators found that there actually were records showing that Linda had placed a call from a payphone two hours away from Eagle River just 30 minutes before the shooting. But to them, that alibi seemed almost too convenient.
According to Detective Razia Anderson, Linda was eager to have investigators check the call logs.
Yeah, and I thought that was suspicious. You know, I mean, is she creating an alibi that it wasn't her? You know, at least physically her pulling the trigger. Was an earring ever found in the bathroom? No, it was not. I wear earrings all the time. I'm naked without them, and I never take off this necklace, and I have never, ever taken earrings off, especially in a restaurant in the bathroom.
I thought that was a little suspicious.
And the elusive earring was not all. There was another evidentiary detail that stood out to detectives.
There was talk about a necklace being missing from the body of George that he always wore. He never, ever took it off.
Well, it so happened that in the days following the shooting, that very necklace just turned up on a side tray in George's hospital room. The same hospital room that Linda had been in and out of every day since returning to Eagle River. No one could prove that she left it there, of course, but in the eyes of investigators, it didn't exactly help her case.
The theory was, oh, whoever killed him took it off and gave it to Linda as proof of the act was done. They made it into, seriously, a very big thing, like, oh, that was proof of the death, proof of the killing.
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Chapter 8: What unresolved questions remain about the case?
She even went as far as to invite him to stay with her at George's house in Eagle River with the rest of his immediate family.
The Gers family stayed in the lower level and her and her one boyfriend stayed in the upper level. This was at the wake of her dead husband.
According to Detective Rosga Anderson, George had known about Linda's boyfriend because she had brought him to Eagle River before, but nothing was ever said about it. Probably the same way most people didn't say anything about the ongoing affair detectives uncovered George was having with someone 24 years his junior.
Investigators looked into Linda's boyfriend, but they couldn't link him to the crime. He was also in Cicero at the time of the shooting. So though Linda did have a motive with the marriage troubles and the fact that she was the sole beneficiary of George's estate, investigators just didn't have nearly enough to conclusively say Linda orchestrated the hit on her husband.
In order to charge someone for hiring a hit, prosecutors don't necessarily need to know the identity of the hitman. But without that, they need rock-solid evidence against the solicitor, like recorded conversations or bank transfers, none of which could be found in Linda's case. So maybe she wasn't the solicitor. I mean, after all, she wasn't the only shady figure that police had come across.
My brother was sometimes involved in shady dealings. You know, and I really don't know more than that. And it was best that way. Also, you have to understand that we came from Cicero. And I don't know if you know much about Cicero. Everything you hear... As far as not so much gangs, but mobs and the way things are run and it's the machine. And yes, it's all true.
I mean, you read it in the paper and people go, oh, come on. Well, no, that's how it is. And that's how it's been all my life. My parents were not involved in anything like this. They were not involved in anything illegal like this. My brother, I was never so sure. That feeling is he got involved in something he should not have been involved in, and it got him killed.
George never necessarily told his family he was connected to mob activities, but some of his actions led them to assume it may have been the case. You see, Eagle River had some mob ties, notably in connection with the Teamsters Labor Union. Starting in the 60s, the Teamsters Union got famously tied up with organized crime.
And for whatever reason, Teamsters members were known to frequent Eagle River. So landing there, of all places for his restaurant, a bit of a flag later on once they got hip on the area. Flag number two was George's side gig flying planes between there and Cicero.
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