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!
Chapter 1: Who was Robert 'Bob' Christian and what is his story?
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 16th, 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 6 o'clock came and went with no sign of Bob.
Chapter 2: What happened on the night Bob disappeared?
One thing is, Bob was always earlier or definitely on time, but he was never late. And when he didn't arrive by 6.30, 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 5.15. Okay, so it's an hour from their house to where my mom's house is. So I'm thinking, okay, 6.15, it could be a few minutes late.
But, you know, and then they didn't arrive still at 9 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. 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 going to 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, ah, 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 Baraboo.
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.
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Chapter 3: What unusual clues were found related to Bob's disappearance?
So that's when we're called. We weren't involved at all until the car was found. And then the 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 Sauk County Detective Tyler Poynton, 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 bloodhounds. They actually arranged to have a helicopter from the Army National Guard when 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 nights around that time it rained. So that can throw this 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.
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Chapter 4: How did the investigation into Bob's disappearance unfold?
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 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. 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 and 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 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 nun's 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, 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 Poynton 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.
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Chapter 5: What significance do the break-in at Sister Genevieve's cottage and the mysterious car hold?
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 him 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 Poynton 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 Poynton 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.
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Chapter 6: What leads did the police find from the car and physical evidence?
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 Poynton has also ruled Randy out during his reinvestigation of this case.
So six months in, without something to point to, someone 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 fruition. 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.
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 Poynton 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 no 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. It's like the earth opened up and swallowed him, Carolyn told a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.
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Chapter 7: Who was Bob according to his family and friends?
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 crawlspace of his house. But he also disposed of a handful of bodies in the nearby Des Plaines River.
And Reedsburg, the town in Sauk County that Gacy was reportedly visiting in July, is right along the Baraboo River. But according to Detective Poynton, 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 Poynton 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. Boynton 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 science-y 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.
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Chapter 8: Was Randy Griffith ever considered a suspect in Bob’s disappearance?
Do you have any sort of idea of what a timeline looks like for that?
It's going to 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.
Okay. 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 Reedsburg 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 Poynton 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. 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.
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