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Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. >> And I'm Britt. And the story I have for
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you today is one that has hung over a corner of Wisconsin for decades. In the summer of 1969, a teenage girl walked
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out of a restaurant after her waitressing shift and was never seen alive again. What turned up later,
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scattered in pieces across Racine County, told investigators that they were dealing with someone who had skill,
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patience, and time. Since then, this case has pulled detectives [music] in every direction from a co-worker whose
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own family has been pointing the finger at him for years to a man who terrorized
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his children by claiming he was the killer. And just recently, a new lead surfaced,
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one that came straight [music] from a Crime Junkie episode to a detective's ears.
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This is the story of Stephanie Casberg. [music] Wednesday afternoon, July 9th, 1969
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was a great [music] time for fishing in Racine County, Wisconsin. The day was overcast, low 70s with a little drizzle.
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If you found just the right spot on Root River, you might catch a ton. One family out that day chose to set up
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near an old steel trestle bridge on 8 Mile Road. The bridge had actually been condemned a few weeks earlier, like shut
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down to traffic because it's basically falling apart, but that hasn't stopped people from coming by, including this
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family. At some point, while they're out there, their 10-year-old son makes his way down the riverbank to fish or just
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explore, whatever, but something on the water's edge catches his eye. It's hard to tell what it is from afar, just looks
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like this weird lumpy pile of something, but definitely not natural to the river.
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Any kid would be curious. So, he inches his way closer and closer, but he stops himself when he realizes
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what he's actually looking at. It's a foot. And it sends him running back to his
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parents, but the totality of what's there is so much worse. In several piles along the riverbank, half covered by mud
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and in a mix of torn brown paper bags and newspaper, were the dismembered remains of a teenage girl,
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or at least most of her. What police realized when they came to process the scene is this girl's torso and left leg
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were missing. And even a river dive never turns them up, which to police isn't all that surprising because based
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on the condition of the remains and how they were found, investigators are leaning toward the theory that they were
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likely dumped there, not like that they washed downstream. Now, despite what's missing, there are other clues that have
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been left behind, like the newspaper used to wrap sections of the girl's body. It was a Milwaukee Sentinel dated
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June 24th. And pressed into some of the newspaper folds are cigarette butts. On top of one of the piles, police collect
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a brown leather shoe, and under the remains were burned paper match sticks. Though none of the remains or the paper
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itself actually looks burned. What had been partially burned was a military style jacket with all of its patches
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removed that was like 8 ft away. And was there blood or anything on the jacket? >> No, it was like caked in mud. It looked
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like it actually might have been there for a while, and it was an older style, not something like current service
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members would have been issued, more like a fashion thing almost, like the kind of things showing up in thrift
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stores at the time. >> Okay. But that's pretty much all they have to go off of as far as what is
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found at the scene. What tells investigators far more is what the pathologist finds when he examines the
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remains. He sees two small puncture wounds beneath the right side of her chin and a large cut across the back of
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her neck. Most of the cuts are precise, almost scalpel-like. So, her probable cause of
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death is listed as a neck wound, a severed artery, but really, with no torso, no organs, like that's just a
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best guess based on what they have. Now, what the pathologist can determine is that the dismemberment [music] happened
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after she was already dead, and the cuts at each joint are deliberate, methodical, like this is the work of
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someone who knew what they were doing. Now, the level of decomposition suggests that whoever this girl is, she died
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within the last 24 to 48 hours of being found. And even though no one matching her description has been reported
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missing, it turns out that someone had been missing her. Because that same night, around 11:00 p.m., officials get
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a worried call from Charles Casberg over in Milwaukee. According to Journal Times
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reporter Michael Osan, he and his family had just been about to report their teenage daughter Stephanie missing when
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one of his children heard a news bulletin about that had been found at Root River. They gave like a vague
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description over the broadcast, but Charles tells them about this small mole on the right side of Stephanie's face,
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something that they hadn't mentioned was on their Jane Doe, who obviously isn't a Jane Doe anymore. Cuz
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by the early hours of July 10th, Charles confirmed that this was his daughter, Stephanie Casberg, whose 18th birthday
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would have been the very next day. Her dad and even other members of the family when they talked to them have no
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idea who would do something like this. Stephanie was hardworking, she kept out of trouble. I mean, she just graduated
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high school, and she was like eager to be out on her own. She'd gotten a job even before graduation, this part-time
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job waitressing at a chain restaurant in downtown Milwaukee called Mark's Big Boy. And listen, more than just like
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staying out of trouble, Stephanie was kind. Our reporter Nina spoke to a woman named Romaine who lived in her
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neighborhood, who actually would later marry one of Stephanie's brothers, but she said that she has clear memories of
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Stephanie even though the two only crossed paths briefly. And to Romaine, she was like that older girl who looked
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out for the younger kids, the one who made sure that everyone felt included. Stephanie did have a secret, though,
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that she had been keeping from her parents. Detectives learned that Stephanie had
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been seeing and actually gotten pretty serious with a 22-year-old serviceman named John. And was she keeping it a
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secret because of his age? >> No, she was keeping it a secret because John was black. And while she had met
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John's family and they seemed to openly accept her, she apparently was afraid of
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her parents' reaction. Sneaking around with John is probably one of the reasons Stephanie had been out of the house more
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recently. So, her dad said that it wasn't unusual that summer for her to spend a few days at a friend's house.
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That's one of the reasons that they hadn't called to report her missing sooner. They'd seen her around the house on
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Sunday, July 6th. Unbeknownst to them, John had dropped her off at home at like 4:00 in the
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morning that day after a party the night before. And when police talked to John, he says
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that's the last time he saw her. Now, we know she left her parents' house sometime on the 6th between 5:15 and
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5:30. This is Sunday evening. [music] And John was supposed to pick her up from work when her shift ended around
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12:30 a.m. But apparently, he'd fallen asleep. Co-workers said that Stephanie was mad
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about it. I'd have been mad if my boyfriend fell asleep and forgot to pick me up. And so, the last they knew is she
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walked out the front door of the restaurant with her brown leather purse slung over her shoulder, maybe headed to
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catch a bus. But that is truly the last anyone saw her. And like I said, when she didn't come home on Monday, her
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parents figured that she was staying with friends. And she was scheduled to work that day, but she was a no-call,
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no-show. Though it doesn't sound like anyone notified the Casbergs that first day. Though I will say John had come by
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the restaurant looking for Stephanie, which might have signaled that something was up because the next day, Tuesday,
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when she's a no-call, no-show again, that's when her supervisor called her family to see if they knew what was
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going on. >> [music] >> And that set off this chain of family calls looking for Stephanie. And then
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before they could report her missing on Wednesday, that broadcast came out. So, the 12:30 a.m. departure from the
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restaurant becomes the last confirmed moment anyone had eyes on Stephanie. And as they start working outward from that
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last known sighting, they do find a trail, but it's not Stephanie's. It's her killer's.
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Quiet coastal towns may seem peaceful, but they can harbor dark secrets. I'm Kylie Low, host of Dark Down East, a
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podcast that tells true crime stories from my own New England community to help victims and families get justice.
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Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts. >> [music] >> The day after Stephanie's remains were
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discovered, residents in the nearby city of Franklin, which is like 6 miles north
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of that riverbank, they turn over a cluster of items that had been sitting along a rural road for at least two
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days. There was this gold clutch style purse, a blue appointment book, and plastic wallet insert still holding
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Stephanie's social security card and her driver's license application. And mixed in all of that were pictures,
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like a couple copies of her graduation portrait, and a photo of her father in his Air Force uniform.
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And then, ripped into fragments [music] were pictures of like they're like a photo booth style strip showing a young
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woman who is alone in the photos. But what's hard to tell is if the photos are pictures of Stephanie. Like there is a
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clear shot of this girl's face, and like the dark-haired woman could very well be
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her, but for some reason, no one's been able to confirm that. That seems bizarre. And all of these things, like
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would that have all fit into the brown purse that she had when she left the restaurant?
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>> Yeah, so the lead detective on this case, Racine Sheriff's Lieutenant Brian Van Sock, he told Nina that Stephanie
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had this habit of bringing extra clothes in her bag [music] and like swapping out
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for her work uniform if she was going to go somewhere after work or like even ride the bus. So, while I haven't seen
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the brown bag, I think the brown bag is like a decent size and it gives at least
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the assumption to investigators or what the assumption that they've made is that
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these are all things that would have been in the purse that Stephanie had with her when she first went missing.
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Which tells investigators something important. Someone was moving between Milwaukee, where Stephanie lived, where
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she worked, where the newspaper that her body was wrapped in was from, and then Racine County, where her remains were
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dumped. And then they seem to have been like shedding evidence along the way. And the window for when that happened
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narrows when an attorney [music] contacts the Sheriff's Department. He says that on Monday in like the late
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afternoon, early evening, he and two colleagues were out at the condemned bridge doing a detailed ground survey
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for a lawsuit. And he is adamant, if remains had been there, they would have seen them because they're not far from
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the bridge. So, combine that with the fact that witnesses in Franklin say that the roadside items were there as early
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as sometime on Tuesday. I think it's very likely that sometime Tuesday to Wednesday morning is when her
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killer disposed of her. Which makes the sighting of a man on Root River on Wednesday just hours before Stephanie's
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remains were found very interesting to me. A few miles from where her body was discovered, a man near another small
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bridge over on Root River spotted someone below. It was a white guy in his late 40s down at the water either like
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putting something into the river or pulling something out. Whatever this guy was doing, he
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definitely wasn't fishing though. Right. And it stood out enough that this man took the time to get a good look at this
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guy. He was able to describe him to police as a white guy about 5'11, 175 lbs, reddish hair, said that he was
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wearing a white t-shirt and he had some kind of bandage on one of his hands. >> that description we know that that
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person isn't John. >> No. And this witness even clocked the man's car, too. A white early 60s
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Chevrolet parked just south of the bridge with what he believed were Wisconsin plates, which by the way,
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isn't John's car either. He had a green Camaro that was in the shop at the time.
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[music] And even then, he was driving his sister's blue Mustang. And when he gets asked, he lets police search his
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car, his home, whatever. Nothing points to John being involved in Stephanie's murder. But there is this theory that
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Stephanie might have been murdered because of him. You see, this rumor catches fire that Charles Casper,
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Stephanie's dad, somehow found out about Stephanie and John and that like they were dating
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and maybe like killed his own daughter over the relationship. And does he fit the description of bridge guy? No, he
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doesn't. But at some point, I mean, this rumor like gets big enough that like investigators do go to him and they just
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ask him point-blank, [music] "Did you kill Stephanie?" And his response took me aback even just like
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reading it on paper half a century later because he apparently like chuckled and told
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them something like "If I had, you never would have found her." Which is like that's
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I know. That's not the answer you should be giving here. How long after they find her is he
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saying this? I mean, she's found on the 9th and then he is having this conversation with detectives like on the
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11th. So >> Oh my god. It's definitely odd. Yeah. But there doesn't seem to be anything to
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back up these rumors beyond talk or whatever. Like the Casper house was always full of people and Charles worked
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second shift as as a dispatcher. So, presumably he was like on the job during the overnight hours when Stephanie most
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likely vanished. I'm sorry, presumably? >> I was just I was just going to say, although
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I don't know if the police ever actually like confirmed that, like got like his actual like time cards or records or
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whatever. There's actually another Charles related rumor that made the rounds. Romaine, who married Stephanie's
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brother, remember, she told us that Charles was known to be a gambler. And there was also some speculation that
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maybe Stephanie's murder was like some kind of violent retaliation for unpaid debts.
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>> Uh this isn't feel like an unpaid debts hit [music] to me. >> I agree. And it doesn't seem like that
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or like the her dating John thing, like either theory related to Charles, none of it ever gains much traction with
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investigators. What they keep circling back to is Mark's Big Boy, the restaurant that Stephanie worked at. It
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was like the anchor of her routine, set hours, familiar faces, a world they could map. But that world
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turns out to be messy with reports of staff drinking on the job, managers hitting on waitresses,
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shifts that ended late, >> [music] >> and a cast of men who knew Stephanie's schedule and routine.
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Like one of the managers who puts detectives on alert almost immediately with his eagerness. Like he wants to
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know if any of Stephanie's clothes were found with her remains. He volunteers unprompted that a woman on the radio,
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sort of like a psychic from the sound of it, predicted the killer's initials, which by the [music] way happened to
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match his own initials, which are RS. Okay. >> And then at the restaurant, there's also
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this 20-year-old cook named Michael Bartelt who catches their attention. [music]
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Like John and a lot of other young men at the time, he'd recently come home from Vietnam. Now, Michael's version of
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the [music] night tracks with everyone else's except for one detail. He says that Stephanie left work through
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the restaurant's back door when she was done with her shift, not the front. It's not a huge discrepancy, but what's
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interesting is before they're even finished with him, he asks if it would be all right for him to like go ahead
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with this trip that he had been planning to Hawaii. He says like, "I've got the plane ticket already. I've had it since
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early July. Like I'll be leaving in a couple of days." And he's like, "By the way, I've already quit my job at the
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restaurant." But he is like letting them know cuz he doesn't want like them thinking he is guilty of something if he
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just like takes off. Okay, he quit his job for vacation? It Well, it sound like from the sound of it, it
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sounds like he plans to be gone for a while. Maybe I should call it like a temporary relocation instead of like a
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just a vacation. He's I don't know how much Yeah. And how long after Stephanie's death is this? Like where in
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the timeline are we? >> We're still within like days. So, police interview him on Sunday, July 13th. And
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he says that he he didn't even quit that day. He had quit the previous Friday, so
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a few days even before that. >> And is Michael white guy? He is. >> And what does he drive? Nothing. He
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doesn't have a car. I want to say like did he sell it for the vacation? Like now I'm questioning everything.
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>> Yeah. But they did check this guy's record. They find nothing more than a couple of like drunk and disorderly
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incidents as an adult, so they clear him to go off to Hawaii. Cuz I think really
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like at the time they're looking for someone with like a darker history. Someone with more motive. So, they're
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much more interested [music] in pursuing a story that they hear from a former waitress.
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She tells investigators that about a month before Stephanie was killed, she was [music] attacked while leaving the
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restaurant at around 2:00 a.m. She said a man grabbed her by the neck and told her that he would slit her throat if she
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screamed. So, she shoved him off, he punched her in the stomach, and thank god another coworker actually came along
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and beat this guy with her purse until he took off, like miracle. Now, even though this waitress was injured with
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like a deep cut to her throat, she did not report the assault because she didn't think that she could identify the
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man. Her and the other coworker just had the same vague description of him. White
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guy, maybe early 20s, 5'5 to 5'6, light blonde hair, wearing a white jacket and shoes with cleats. But they're telling
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police now, and what really stands out is the MO cuz there had been, it turns out, a string of attacks across downtown
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Milwaukee following this kind of same playbook. Women targeted while walking alone, a man with a sharp object,
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threats involving cutting and sexual assaults. In fact, one happened not long after Stephanie's remains were found.
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This woman was attacked in a parking lot and then stabbed in the shoulder before
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the culprit fled in her car. Which by the way, made him an easy catch. They catch the guy. Again, this is days
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after Stephanie's found. He's a 17-year-old busboy from Milwaukee's south side. But they can't tie him to the Big Boy
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attack that happened before Stephanie's murder and they can't seem to tie him to
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Stephanie's murder either. And he never admits to either even though he confesses to violent crimes against four
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other women. >> Oh my god. Now, police search this guy's house, but without his confession or
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evidence linking him to Stephanie, like nothing comes of it. They move on. >> And if he was 17 then, like
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where is that guy now? Oh, I checked for sure. He >> [laughter] >> He Well, so he got convicted of rape. He
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spent the next like [music] 6 years cycling between like prison and a mental health institution, but as far as I can
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tell, now he's like alive and out in [music] the world. But the only record he has
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since then is like for some traffic violations. And listen, like that's not even the only
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that they look at, by the way. At one point, detectives get two urgent calls from an anonymous tipster who insists
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that an 18-year-old who killed Stephanie after some kind of argument is about to
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flee town by [music] bus. Sure enough, they find this guy, nab him at the bus station right as he's about
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to board, but he swears that he's leaving because of a family matter, not because he's like running from anything.
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[music] And he says that he doesn't even know Stephanie, though he does know her
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boyfriend, John. Police, like obviously keep this guy for a little bit. They question him. They end up verifying that
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he was working during like this key window of time when Stephanie like left work and they think something happened.
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And so they let him go. And this is like the wild part. They actually come to believe that he was the
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tipster that called the tip on himself. >> Wait, what? They said that he did it or
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they think he did it as some kind of ploy to get attention or sympathy from this girlfriend that he'd been arguing
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with, which is like a weird level of manipulation and like like devious that is, to me, right on par with like
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physical attacks. >> Yeah. >> So I wasn't surprised to learn that though this guy likely had nothing to do
00:21:04
with Stephanie's case, he did turn out to be a dirtbag. His record after 1969 is a long one. Armed robbery, sexual
00:21:13
assault charges, in and out of Wisconsin prisons for decades. So, long story short, police are chasing
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down everything in the first couple of weeks, but they are getting nowhere. There are no sightings that are coming
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up of Stephanie like filling in that like lost time where we don't know where she was. Her purse, that brown leather
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shoulder bag style thing, still MIA. And there are three agencies trying to coordinate efforts. You got Milwaukee,
00:21:44
where she went missing, Franklin, where some of her belongings were found, and Racine, where some of her remains were
00:21:50
found. The place that they still didn't even have, though, was a crime scene. Everything about the crime points to
00:21:58
someone who had time, who had control, and privacy. Not just to dismember her, but perhaps, they wondered, to keep
00:22:08
missing parts of her. Though they would find out within weeks that actually wasn't the case. It didn't happen until
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Monday, July 21st, but that's when a couple on a farm, about 4 [music] and 1/2 miles from the bridge,
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finds bones in their yard. Their dog, I guess, had been like dragging them home for a couple of weeks
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by then. But it was the human pelvis that made someone realize these weren't just
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animal [music] bones. And detectives, when they get brought out, they end up locating this weather-beaten white
00:22:41
cardboard sun-kissed box half buried in heavy brush just off the side of the road. But it's only like 250 feet or so
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from this family's farmhouse. And at the bottom of this box is a dirty towel with
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pubic hairs on it. And inside and then scattered around it, I mean, they find a lot of bones, a rib cage, a spine, like
00:23:05
other missing parts of Stephanie. Cuz these definitely belong to Stephanie. They fit together perfectly with the
00:23:12
rest of her. But even still, there are parts that are still unaccounted for. Her upper right leg from like her hip to
00:23:19
her knee, and then her entire left leg. Though I will say like it's possible they were there at one point, but then
00:23:27
over the course of like the two weeks before this is found, maybe they got carried off by those family dogs or even
00:23:33
other animals in the area. But like think about what this means. This is a second deliberate disposal site.
00:23:42
>> Yeah, I was going to say like why not leave this with the rest of her by the river? Like now you're miles away and
00:23:49
kind of super close to someone's house. >> what I'm like this person is like making
00:23:56
multiple stops, multiple decisions. It's someone comfortable moving through rural
00:24:01
backroads with a body in pieces. >> Well, and then like there's evidence other places, too. I know. So like when
00:24:08
you're looking at this, the distance between the farthest points, so from Big Boy to the farmhouse, it spans nearly 25
00:24:14
miles. Whoever did this seems to know the area or at the very least like moved through this area with habits.
00:24:22
>> So if you take that with what the pathologist said about this person knowing what they were doing in the
00:24:28
dismemberment, this starts feeling less and less like a one-off. But that's the thing.
00:24:35
They don't have anything else around their area at the time that looks exactly like this case. According to
00:24:42
Journal Times reporter Barbara Heffling, in the years surrounding Stephanie's death, there were multiple unsolved
00:24:48
killings across the region. Young women who were stabbed or bludgeoned, their bodies left along railroad tracks and
00:24:54
rural roads in Racine and Milwaukee counties. I mean, one victim's decomposed remains were found like
00:24:59
stuffed in a bag even along railroad tracks the same month that Stephanie was discovered. We have another one that was
00:25:04
like beaten to death and dumped along a county road. And when you look at these like the geography overlaps, but the
00:25:11
methods are so different. And there is nothing concrete tying or making any connection between Stephanie's [music]
00:25:17
case and these other cases. So investigators begin watching for like this specific MO beyond their own
00:25:25
backyard. And the first case that comes on their radar happens about 7 months after Stephanie's murder. That's when a
00:25:32
young woman, 6 hours away in Detroit, Michigan, is found dismembered in a vacant field. [music]
00:25:39
Body parts are in plastic bags, torso is missing, >> [music] >> and there were cuts that were done
00:25:44
precisely with a large knife. And good news, Detroit police even make an arrest in that case. Two, actually. Both men
00:25:53
are cooks at a local restaurant there. >> Which feels kind of promising, right? >> Kind of, yeah. And so investigators
00:26:00
start circulating photos of these two guys through Stephanie's world. They show them to her coworkers at Big Boy,
00:26:05
friends, acquaintances. The problem is nobody can say for sure if they recognize these guys. Stephanie's father
00:26:12
and brothers don't, but the outlier is Stephanie's mother, who reportedly identifies one of the two men as someone
00:26:19
who had picked Stephanie up at their home before. But that lead fizzles out because both
00:26:26
men say that they were working during the time frame of Stephanie's murder, and they deny ever being in Milwaukee or
00:26:33
Racine areas. And it seems like police can't find any evidence actually tying them to the area
00:26:39
even or to Stephanie. And so that is about when the case begins to go cold. For 19 full years, nothing really
00:26:48
happens, and Stephanie's family have to figure out how to keep moving while a killer walks free. Someone who might
00:26:57
have been passing them at the grocery store or serving them a meal. And it probably would have stayed cold for even
00:27:04
longer if not for one woman who I'm going to call Pam. Pam calls detectives out of the blue one
00:27:17
day in 1988 to tell them that she thinks she knows who killed Stephanie Caspers.
00:27:24
She believes it was her brother, Michael Bartelt, the cook at Big Boy who told investigators that he last saw Stephanie
00:27:33
leave [music] through the restaurant's back door. Not the front door like everyone else said. And Pam says that
00:27:39
she believes Michael might have had help from one of their other brothers, who I'm going to call Dan. Now, remember
00:27:45
that trip to Hawaii, the one Michael told police like he'd been planning, tickets already in hand?
00:27:50
>> Yeah. Pam says that was all BS. Never had tickets, didn't even go to Hawaii, at least not at the time.
00:27:59
Instead, Michael took off somewhere with friends and was gone for like close to a
00:28:04
year. So he didn't go to Hawaii, but he did leave after all. He did, correct, but not to
00:28:11
Hawaii. So investigators wonder if the story was a way to like make his sudden vanishing act look planned. And I don't
00:28:19
know, I'm guessing he said like you're going to go away anyways, why not tell them where you were going?
00:28:22
>> Yeah. I'm kind of guessing maybe Hawaii sounded far enough that they wouldn't
00:28:26
come knocking. >> like a vaca- it's it's like a for sure vacation. >> he didn't want them to know where he
00:28:31
was. And listen, Pam says that their mother helped sell that story cuz they did go question his mom back in '69. And
00:28:39
Pam apparently listened in on the conversation and heard her mom tell investigators like, oh yes, Michael did
00:28:44
go to Hawaii, even though Pam's like he absolutely did not. And by the way, she said their mom told them back then like,
00:28:52
oh, Michael doesn't own a gun. They must have asked him that. No, he doesn't own
00:28:55
a gun. But Pam's like, by the way, she lied to you about that, too. >> [music] >> He definitely did own a gun.
00:29:00
And according to Pam, this kind of behavior from their mom was typical. Like she would routinely lie to protect
00:29:06
[music] her sons. Pam also points out that the Bartelts have family in the area. Their uncle
00:29:15
lives between the two dump sites, about a 3-mile drive from where the sun-kissed
00:29:20
box was [music] found, and less than a mile and a half from the riverbank. Which, by the way, investigators realize
00:29:28
is actually visible from parts of that [music] family property. And Pam says that Michael spent years fishing and
00:29:36
hunting in that area. He knew it well. But beyond all of this, one of the main reasons that she suspects him, forget
00:29:46
the geography, forget the fact that he knew Stephanie. She says it's what he did to his own family. Because Pam
00:29:53
alleges that Michael sexually abused her and others. And Michael did have a juvenile charge for indecent behavior
00:30:01
with a child. >> I thought they checked his record. His adult record. Now, police knew about the
00:30:07
juvenile charge at the time I found out, but for whatever reason, they didn't seem to make much of [music] it. And on
00:30:12
top of that, Pam also says that Michael was running with a gang back then. So, why does she think her other brother
00:30:19
Dan's involved? Like did he know Stephanie, too? Not that I'm aware of, but Pam basically says that Dan also
00:30:25
sexually abused her and that about a month after Stephanie's murder, he had some kind of mental breakdown and had to
00:30:31
be hospitalized, which she sees as a potential reaction to him feeling guilty, which I think is
00:30:38
interesting. But it seems like police at this time are like much more focused on
00:30:42
Michael. [music] Who, by this point, has actually relocated to Hawaii, where he was living
00:30:48
with his wife. But he would have been wrong if he thinks that they're not going to come knocking for this. [music]
00:30:52
So, investigators coordinate with law enforcement out there. And in June of '88, this is almost 6 months after Pam
00:30:59
originally calls in and tips them off. This detective sits down with Michael. And surprisingly, I mean, to me at
00:31:05
least, he is cooperative and agrees to talk to them. He describes Stephanie as someone that he barely knew and implies
00:31:12
that he had no interest in her sexually. >> He was already dating a few other women
00:31:16
who like worked at the restaurant at the time. [music] Sure, fine, whatever. It's not even like
00:31:21
he said they were close like back then or anything. But now, in '88, he is putting major distance between them.
00:31:29
Because his story changes. [music] Before, he says that he saw Stephanie leave out the back door when she was
00:31:35
done with her shift at 12:30. Now, he says that he typically clocked out around 10:30, 10:45 at night, which
00:31:43
would have put him out the door well before Stephanie left at 12:30. >> So, he's saying that he doesn't remember
00:31:47
seeing her leave at all. This is the problem. He's not committing to anything now. He's just saying that
00:31:53
he probably wouldn't have seen her leave because he probably wouldn't have been there at that time. [music] And what
00:32:00
does he say about the whole Hawaii of it all? He admits that he didn't go to Hawaii back then. He says he actually
00:32:06
went to Las Vegas with the manager from the restaurant, the one that gave police
00:32:09
like creepy vibes, along with a woman that that manager was dating. >> [music] >> But he's like, "Listen, I had I had
00:32:16
police's blessing to go." Uh no, they cleared you to go to Hawaii. No one said anything about you going to Vegas with
00:32:24
your creepy manager. It doesn't seem like that answer rubs detectives the wrong way, I guess because it's not like
00:32:31
they went looking for him. So, like they don't press him on that. And the bottom line is Michael denies any
00:32:39
involvement in Stephanie's [music] murder. All these years later, they don't have much that they can do to
00:32:44
prove or disprove what he's saying, either. They're like in [music] that weird spot before technology can even
00:32:51
help. >> Mhm. So, since they only have Pam's account, the case goes cold again. But
00:32:58
Pam's account includes someone else. Like did they ever even interview Dan? They did a few times, yeah. But like he
00:33:03
denied being involved in like murder or like sexually assaulting anyone. So really, I mean, I think at this point
00:33:09
they're like they got to wait for technology to [music] advance. Like right? I mean,
00:33:13
'88, you can see it coming, right? Like it's just around the corner in the '90s.
00:33:18
But even with what they have, like really what they're working with in this case is pubic hairs, so early '90s can't
00:33:24
do much with that, either. Those don't get sent off until 2009. And when they do, though, they actually
00:33:32
get something promising. Even for 2009, when I saw that, I was like, "Oh, it's going to be too early to do anything."
00:33:37
No, two of the pubic hairs produce two different partial male DNA profiles. Only one of them is strong enough for
00:33:46
state databases. [music] No match there, though. Neither is good enough for the national
00:33:53
database CODIS. Okay, but can they tell if the two profiles are related? >> Not with what
00:34:00
>> Not with what they have. The profiles aren't strong enough to make that determination. And by the way, it
00:34:06
doesn't even mean that two men were involved. It just means that at least two different men left hairs on this
00:34:14
towel somehow. >> Right. Where did the towel come from? How did it even get in the box? Where
00:34:19
did the box come from? Is this your killer's DNA? Maybe, maybe not. But I do think finding the person who belongs to
00:34:26
these hairs has a very high likelihood of getting you at least one step closer to your killer.
00:34:31
>> And by the way, a partial profile is good enough for comparison to a full profile. So, you can go one by one and
00:34:39
do direct comparisons. If someone comes on their radar when the case gets reinvestigated. Like this can be used as
00:34:47
a tool to help rule people in or out. And the first two people they test are Michael and that suspicious manager who
00:34:55
gave police the bad vibes back in '69. And both are ruled out. But I will say the sample they had from Michael Bartelt
00:35:03
was shaky cuz it was covertly obtained from a plastic fork that he had used in 2012.
00:35:10
So, even with that, like they didn't have much confidence in those results. And then the next person they end [music] up
00:35:17
checking is this guy named Wilbert Mackie. He hadn't come up at all in the case file.
00:35:22
>> [music] >> Well, an anonymous caller puts him on police's radar in 2015. And he's an
00:35:28
interesting lead, for sure, because it turns out that he lived on 8 Mile Road, like less than 10 minutes from
00:35:35
that Root River condemned bridge where her remains are found. And the story behind this lead is wild. So, the caller
00:35:42
says that one of Wilbert's son, who lives down in Florida, has been talking, claiming that his father was a serial
00:35:50
killer who butchered a young woman and dumped her near Root River in the late '60s. And that Wilbert forced his own
00:35:59
daughter, who was just a child at the time, to help him dispose of the body. Now, [music] police can't talk to
00:36:05
Wilbert about any of this because he died in prison in 2009 [music] at the tail end of a 20-year sentence
00:36:13
for child sex offenses. [music] I mean, it sounds like he's a pretty strong contender right out of the gate. Yes,
00:36:20
but in late 2016, investigators do track down two of his adult children, including the daughter who was allegedly
00:36:27
forced to help dispose of the body. >> Mhm. Now, she describes a father who was cruel and abusive, like in every way,
00:36:35
physically, sexually, psychologically. She says that he was obsessed with Stephanie's case and with like true
00:36:42
detective magazines. He would make the kids read what he called Root River Killer stories out loud and then tell
00:36:48
them everything the stories got wrong, which he says he knew because he was the real killer. And his daughter says she
00:36:55
does have this early childhood memory of being forced to throw heavy, sticky bags
00:37:00
into Root River. And her father told her to make sure that they sank. Afterwards, she said Wilbert scrubbed
00:37:08
his car clean. And their family property was overrun with dogs, like more than a
00:37:14
hundred of them. And when they got sick, Wilbert would kill them, butcher them, and then feed them to the other dogs.
00:37:21
I'm telling you, like this dude was the stuff nightmares are made of. But as damning as all of this sounds, none of
00:37:29
it was provable. Investigators nowadays can't even confirm that, you know, he called it the Root River Killer. Like
00:37:36
they don't even know that as a real moniker. Like it was never used by the media, it was never used by law
00:37:40
enforcement. So, there's a world where Wilbert just invented it to terrorize his kids. And listen, moniker aside,
00:37:49
they do get a DNA sample from one of Wilbert's sons to compare against the pubic hair.
00:37:56
No match. Although, that son tells police that there are rumors he may not even be
00:38:02
Wilbert's biological child. So, like there's this moment where they're like, "Does this mean anything?"
00:38:07
>> Yeah. But luckily, there was still a sample of Wilbert's DNA in CODIS because of his
00:38:12
[music] record. So, they do end up doing a better comparison. It's still not a match.
00:38:19
So, he fades out of the picture. But speaking of families pointing fingers at their own,
00:38:26
just a few years ago, one of Michael Bartelt's brothers came forward claiming that he, too, was suspicious of Michael,
00:38:34
just like Pam was. And I'm assuming this brother is not Dan. No, this is a different brother. This guy reaches out
00:38:40
to Romaine after she was interviewed about Stephanie's case for a news segment. And he tells Romaine that he is
00:38:46
confident that Michael killed Stephanie. And that like the whole family has a theory about what happened and why.
00:38:59
Certain members of the Bartelt family have always suspected Michael to [music] be Stephanie's killer.
00:39:05
There was even a rumor within the family at some point that Michael's wife found
00:39:09
one of Stephanie's earring in the car that he'd been using and that she had been holding it ever since, like stored
00:39:16
in a safe deposit box that her sister has, [music] using it as leverage over Michael or as like an insurance policy
00:39:22
or maybe both. Now, this is a little confusing to me because it doesn't seem like Michael was involved with his wife
00:39:30
when Stephanie was killed. They didn't marry until 3 years later. And like she didn't go with him to
00:39:35
Vegas. So, when or how she would have found this earring doesn't make a whole lot of sense in my mind. [music]
00:39:42
But this does hold some decent weight for investigators because when Stephanie was found, she did have an earring in
00:39:48
one ear but not the other. So, the theory that this family has goes like this. Michael borrows a car. Remember,
00:39:56
he didn't own one. >> Right. [music] He lures Stephanie into it by offering to show her an apartment
00:40:01
for rent. And we know for a fact that after graduating, she was wanting more independence and her and John were
00:40:06
supposedly even talking about trying to get a place together. So, this would track. And a lot of people knew that she
00:40:11
was like itching to get out of her parents' house. So, I'm sure this is something that she probably even talked
00:40:15
about at work. So, after he got her in the car, the family believes something went wrong. He may have made
00:40:23
advances toward her or drugged her. And then after he killed her, he disposed of
00:40:28
her in areas that he knew well near where that relative of theirs lived. Oh, where would he have killed
00:40:36
and dismembered her though? That's the part they don't know because he was living at home at the time. So,
00:40:42
it couldn't have been there. Maybe on their uncle's property? Question mark. But like like that is a big gap I think
00:40:49
in their theory. Now, when this makes it to the current investigator, Lieutenant
00:40:53
Vansock, he goes back through the file and he finds something that will make you want to pull your hair out. That
00:41:02
thing about the earring Mhm. that was part of Pam's story when she came to them in '88. For whatever reason, I
00:41:09
guess the detectives just like didn't hone in on it. You said they needed a thing. Like that's
00:41:14
>> That's that's the thing. >> That's the thing. >> I know, but there might have actually
00:41:17
been a good reason that like no one clung onto this. I found out that in early news coverage, it mentioned that
00:41:23
she was found wearing only one earring. So, in theory, anyone could have known about
00:41:29
that. But still, like even all these years later, when Vansock is like reading about this, he's like he's still
00:41:34
intrigued. And with little else to go on in an ice cold case, he and other investigators start trying to chase this
00:41:42
down. This was in 2023. But Michael's wife, now [music] his ex-wife, tells police that she has no
00:41:48
idea what they're talking about. Meanwhile, her sister, the one who supposedly had the earring in in her
00:41:54
possession in that safe deposit box, [music] seems genuinely bewildered by the question. And when they subpoena
00:41:59
bank records, they confirm the sister didn't even have a safe deposit box, at least not at any bank. So, that trail
00:42:06
goes nowhere. But Vansock keeps pulling at the Bartelt thread. And there's a discrepancy buried in the
00:42:14
old records that's hard to explain. So, remember how Michael told police in 1969 that he saw Stephanie leave through
00:42:22
the back door of the restaurant? [music] Yes, but also that he probably clocked out at 10:30. Well, apparently not that
00:42:29
either. Because according to his time card, he wasn't even working that night. What do you mean? How is that not caught
00:42:38
right away? How Why was I I have no idea because investigators had everyone's time cards. As a matter of
00:42:47
fact, police reports from 1988 say that they confirmed Michael was working that night during the same hours as
00:42:53
Stephanie. The schedule seems to be one of the main reasons police were even interested in him in the first place.
00:42:59
>> But think about how much more suspicious it is if the time card is accurate and
00:43:04
he wasn't on the clock because then he's not just like a co-worker who happened to be on the same shift. He lied his way
00:43:11
into the narrative and made himself one of the last people to have seen Stephanie alive. [music]
00:43:18
Still, before Lieutenant Vansock goes straight to Michael in Hawaii, he decides that he needs to like
00:43:25
strengthen his position for the courts out there. So, he sends the hair evidence he has back to the lab hoping
00:43:32
that like modern technology can pull a stronger profile than the partial one they had from years earlier. It's going
00:43:38
to take a little bit more time, but it could be well worth it. >> Yeah. Well, it turns out that was a
00:43:44
risky gamble in a case so old because Michael died of sepsis on June 3rd, 2024 before detectives could get to him. But
00:43:56
at least now, a DNA sample from him was easy to get. And maybe things wouldn't have changed much even if he had gone
00:44:03
sooner or the DNA had been faster or Michael wouldn't have died because his DNA doesn't match the hair. Now,
00:44:10
remember, DNA exclusion doesn't necessarily clear him or anyone. A non-match just means
00:44:16
that that specific hair didn't come from him. But it's worth noting that Michael
00:44:22
and that manager aren't the only ones who have been excluded. Investigators also ruled out Michael's brother, Dan.
00:44:29
So, them plus Wilbur Mackie, right? Yeah, they've all been eliminated from the hair.
00:44:35
So, I kind of want to go back to something that you mentioned at the top. Like with
00:44:39
all those rumors that were floating around, did they ever test it against Stephanie's dad? I know it's like
00:44:45
sensational but like nobody really seems to believe that he was involved in any way. And all they have is this this
00:44:52
these hair samples, right? Like could they test the cigarette [music] butts or the the newspapers or anything else from
00:44:57
back then? >> did test the cigarette butts. There was no DNA on them. There was nothing on the newspaper, like
00:45:03
no usable prints or anything like that. They even tried recently using a wet back extraction system, like M-Vac, on
00:45:09
the military jacket. Like that was like found by the river. >> like burned, yeah. Mhm. They did it on
00:45:14
that and they did it on the towel that was in the Sunkist box. And the initial results from those showed male DNA on
00:45:21
both but the quantities were too low to actually build a full profile or to even
00:45:26
determine if any of them like matched each other or the partial that they were getting from the hair.
00:45:30
>> samples, yeah. So, right now, they're just waiting on further testing. [music]
00:45:34
And they're hoping that the same advances in DNA technology that have cracked other cold cases
00:45:39
means that maybe they'll be able to crack this one one day. Or at the very least get that partial profile to a
00:45:44
better spot that they could put it in a national database. And that's really important because even though Lieutenant
00:45:49
Vansock thought of Michael as a really good suspect for a while, his current working theory is that
00:45:57
Stephanie was killed by a stranger. He doesn't believe that Michael had the skill to do what was done to Stephanie.
00:46:03
[music] He thinks that it's more likely that Stephanie left the restaurant mad at her
00:46:08
boyfriend for not picking her up and gotten a car with someone that she didn't know.
00:46:12
>> [music] >> And that person took her somewhere, sexually assaulted her, killed her, and then dismembered
00:46:18
her. He doesn't know who that person is yet. But a new name was added to the case
00:46:25
file just recently. One that actually started with us. So, last summer, Lieutenant Vansock was
00:46:32
outside doing some yard work listening to our episode on Kristen David. And at the end of that episode, if you
00:46:39
remember, I did this call out. And for anyone who doesn't remember, Kristen was a young woman who went missing in 1981
00:46:45
while riding her bike on a highway between two cities in Idaho. We're not even talking about Wisconsin.
00:46:50
>> Right. But her remains were later found in garbage bags in and along Snake River. Like Stephanie, she'd been
00:46:56
dismembered with surgical-like precision and she'd been wrapped in newspaper. And and one of her legs was never
00:47:04
recovered. Well, and if I remember correctly, the call out at the end like you specifically have been looking for a
00:47:10
guy who was military that the FBI was looking into for like connections to other cases
00:47:16
across the country. And you were like, "Hey, like are there more?" >> Right. Because the FBI opened an
00:47:20
investigation into this guy but like nothing came of it. That is something we are still
00:47:27
investigating but I thought more cases might be the key to cracking some kind of pattern.
00:47:32
And I know I've told you this before but when Lieutenant Vansock heard that call
00:47:36
out, he basically like dropped his mower because it sounded like this case [music] to him. And when he contacted us
00:47:43
to compare notes and he learned that this man has major ties to the Midwest and possibly Wisconsin,
00:47:51
he got he's a chills. I'm going to call them full body chills, yeah. >> Now, Nina has actually been out to
00:47:56
Racine since then to meet with Lieutenant Vansock and he's making the hero wall because like I'm still not
00:48:02
ready to name this other suspect yet. He is still alive as of this recording and
00:48:07
we're still trying to get a handle on the scope of his potential activities. And now, all that's been ongoing for
00:48:14
more than a year now. But Lieutenant Vansock has been like moving heaven and earth in that time to see if this man
00:48:19
can be definitively tied to anything. [music] And it has been an uphill battle. Logistics, bureaucracy, jurisdictional
00:48:27
barriers at every single turn but I have never seen anyone put up the kind of fight that he has. And he gets people to
00:48:34
move. It is incredible. Now, I need to say Romain Casper still believes that Michael killed Stephanie. And listen,
00:48:42
nothing is off the table. This case is not closed and Vansock isn't letting it sit. So, his goal is to rule everyone in
00:48:51
or out definitively and eventually solve this [music] case. Solve it for Stephanie but also solve it for her
00:48:58
family. Romain's son, Nick, was born more than a decade after Stephanie was killed. So,
00:49:03
he never got to meet his aunt. But he told us he felt the emotional toll that Stephanie's death took on his dad, her
00:49:09
brother. I mean, this is the kind of loss that doesn't stay in one generation. It ripples forward.
00:49:15
>> Mhm. So, if you know anything about what happened to Stephanie, the Racine County
00:49:20
Sheriff's Office wants to hear from you. You can call their Detective Bureau at 262-636-3225. [music]
00:49:27
But if you'd rather stay anonymous, you can reach Crime Stoppers at [music] 888-636-9330.
00:49:34
I'll also give you a way to text in the show notes.