Case 343: John Zera

*** Content warnings: Child victims, sexual assault *** On February 28 1976, the suburban community of Hales Corners, Wisconsin, was rocked when the body of missing schoolboy, 14-year-old John Zera, was discovered in a local park. The teenager hadn’t been seen for over a week, having gone missing in the middle of the school day without so much as a word. Over the next few years, the investigation into John’s brutal murder was plagued by mistakes and misconduct before eventually going cold. Thirty years later, the case was resurrected after police discovered a chilling scene. --- Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Research & writing – Brianne Jaskulski Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/ Audio editing – Anthony Telfer Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casefile-true-crime/id998568017?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=casefile_podcastsSpotify Premium https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9gSwcv7USsbPatreon https://www.patreon.com/casefileFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/case-343-john-zera Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From journalist Olivia LaVoix, the creator of the hit investigative series The Bakersfield Three, comes the new Case File Presents series, Ada. In 2011, the body of a woman was discovered in a California vineyard. For more than a decade, she was known only as Jane Doe. Then detectives finally discovered her name. But identifying her was only the beginning. Listen to Ada wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Hannah from Giggly Squad. Sweater season is in full effect and Abercrombie is setting a new standard. Thanks to quality fabrics like 100% cashmere, wool blends and other natural fibers, I'm using this drop as permission to curate my entire fall wardrobe around sweaters, especially the Roll Neck Cruise sweater. It's a classic silhouette that I can easily throw on and go, or dress up for nights in the city. Outfit accordingly this season with Abercrombie. Shop in the app, online and in stores.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  It was 10 o'clock on the night of Monday, March 23, 2009, when a team of police officers gathered outside a two-storey off-white condominium in Waukesha, a small suburban community in the Midwest American state of Wisconsin. Earlier that day, their department had received a phone call from a local recreation centre asking them to investigate one of their longtime swim instructors after he'd been accused of acting inappropriately with some of his underage students. An outwardly calm, mild-mannered individual, the man agreed to let investigators search his home.

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  As the officers made their way through the condo's first floor, they were struck by how immaculate it was. Not a stick of furniture was out of place, and each room had been meticulously cleaned and organised. One thing did strike them as odd, though: all of the windows were covered in sheets and tarps. Heading down into the basement, the officers discovered an array of toys and games, things one would expect to find in the home of devoted parents or grandparents, not a lifelong bachelor with no children. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. As investigators began digging through sealed boxes beneath the stairs,

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  they unearthed something that unsettled even the most seasoned among them: two highly detailed models, handcrafted from balsa wood and built to scale. The first was a police station, the second, a firehouse. Investigators lifted the roofs off the models to reveal more than a dozen photographs of children glued to the walls. Above each one was a tiny LED light that illuminated the child's face, like a painting in a museum. One of the detectives recognised some of the faces from milk cartons and nightly news reports. They were children who had either been murdered

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  or gone missing from across the country, stretching back decades. But one face in particular stood out: a fourteen-year-old boy with a buck-toothed smile and sandy blonde hair swept over blue eyes.

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  His name was John Zera.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  On Friday, February 20, 1976, John Zera failed to come home from school without so much as a note or a phone call. Initially, his parents suspected he might have stayed late to catch a ride with his older brother, Mark, who had wrestling practice after school. But when Mark arrived home alone, the Zeras knew something was wrong. The family of five were relative newcomers to the quaint community of Franklin, which was about a 20-minute drive southwest from their previous home on Milwaukee's bustling south side. They had moved to Franklin the previous year after John Senior, a blue-collar worker,

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  and his wife Janice, a middle-school teacher, fell in love with the area's peaceful, close-knit community. A small suburb made up of farmland and new housing developments, it seemed like the perfect place to raise their three sons. John and his brothers, 15-year-old Mark and 13-year-old Phil, loved their new home, a two-story colonial big enough for each boy to have his own room. They also loved their wooded backyard, which was often filled with whitetail deer, raccoons, squirrels, and other wildlife. John, in particular, enjoyed trawling the muddy wetlands that surrounded the property in search of frogs and crayfish.

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  But the move hadn't been entirely smooth sailing for John. Although he enjoyed spending time at home with his family and neighbours, he had a difficult time adjusting to his new life at Franklin High School, where most of his classmates had known one another since childhood. He did his best to make friends, carving out a quiet place for himself amongst Franklin's student body, but he missed his old friends in Milwaukee. Sometimes he visited them after school or on the weekends, but he always made sure to get permission from his parents. John Senior and Janice knew he'd never take off on a whim to see his old friends without asking first.

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  Janice called the Franklin Police Department to report her son missing. The officer on duty reassured her that John was probably just out with friends and there was nothing to worry about. Knowing her son too well to agree with this assessment, Janice began calling everyone she could think of who might know where he was, repeatedly asking: "Have you seen Johnny?"

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  With each "no" she received, Janice became increasingly convinced that John had been hit by a car on his way home from school and was lying in a ditch somewhere, dead or dying. She waited by the phone while her husband slowly drove the route from their house to Franklin High School. Mark Sierra ran back and forth behind the car, frantically checking roadside ditches for any sign of John's distinctive olive-green parka. There was nothing. After more than two hours, an icy rain began to fall, making it impossible for the father and son to continue their search. As they made their way home, snow mixed with the rain,

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  blanketing Franklin in an eerie silence and erasing everything in its path.

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  The following morning of Saturday, February 21, there was still no sign of John. His mother called the police for the second time, but again, they dismissed her fears. The officer suggested that John might have spent the night at a friend's house, or perhaps he'd gotten mad and run away from home. Teenagers did that kind of thing all the time, and they almost always came back within a few days. Janice argued that John had no reason to run away. He had a good relationship with his family, and all the money he had, thirteen dollars in cash, was still on the dresser in his bedroom. Surely, if he planned to run away, he'd have taken the money with him.

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  But the officer remained skeptical.

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  Frustrated by the police's indifference, John Senior and Mark headed to Franklin High School, where they met with the principal. Together, the group made their way to John's locker, and Mark entered the combination. Inside were several schoolbooks, a well-worn copy of the alternative magazine Bugle American, and John's olive-green Parker. The moment Mark saw his brother's coat, he knew John hadn't left the school willingly. If he had, he would have taken his coat with him. The principal immediately called Franklin Police, who sent a sergeant and firefighters to the scene.

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  They scoured the school in search of John, checking every classroom and locker, but he was nowhere to be found. The Zera family filed a missing persons report. Throughout the weekend, they were inundated with reporters, law enforcement officers, family members, and volunteer searchers. They canvassed the neighbourhood, passing out flyers featuring a photo of a smiling John, and asking everyone they met if they'd seen a blond-haired, blue-eyed fourteen-year-old who was five foot six and one hundred and ten pounds. At the time John went missing, he was wearing jeans, a dark-coloured shirt, and brown shoes.

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  No one had seen anyone matching that description. The local snowmobile club even joined in the search, combing the outskirts of Franklin, to no avail. All in all, the police had very little to go on. After speaking with students and teachers at Franklin High, they learned that John had eaten lunch with a small group of friends on Friday. Nothing about his behaviour had raised any red flags, nor had he given any indication that he was planning to run away. After lunch, John went to study hall, where a teacher issued him a hall pass at approximately 1.30pm. He'd then walked out of the classroom, and never returned.

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  A student roaming the halls around that time claimed to have seen John leave through the school's main entrance and get into a waiting Ford Torino. Several other students said they saw him loitering outside his drafting class. Only one thing was certain: John never made it to that class. Where he went after excusing himself from study hall remained a mystery. By Tuesday, February twenty-four, John had been missing for four days and no clues about his whereabouts had emerged. More than fifty volunteers joined the Zera family in searching Franklin High School and its surrounding property.

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  For the previous few months, a small construction crew had been working on an addition to the school, and a local psychic worried that John may have gotten injured after wandering into the hard hat area. Under her supervision, Mark and several others sifted through the dirt and debris, calling out for John as they went. There was no answer. On Saturday, February twenty-eighth, eight days after John went missing, two teenage boys were taking a walk in Witnall Park, the largest park in Milwaukee County. Spanning six hundred and forty acres across both Franklin and its neighbouring community

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  of Hales Corners, the park is popular with cyclists, hikers and runners who enjoy exploring its five miles of nature trails. At approximately eleven thirty a.m., the boys stumbled upon a clearing about one hundred and eighty feet east of Nature Trail Road and two hundred feet south of Golf Course Lane. Lying face down in the mud and melting snow of the clearing was the naked body of a teenage boy. His head, which was propped up on a log, had suffered a violent injury. Beside his left leg was a large rock matted with blood and what appeared to be human hair.

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  Petrified, the boys raced home to alert one of their parents, who in turn contacted the police. Since the body had been discovered in the Hales Corners section of Whitnall Park, it was Hales Corners Police who responded to the scene. About twenty feet from the body was a pile of clothes the officers assumed belonged to the victim. Blue jeans, a flannel shirt, an undershirt, a pair of white boxer shorts and brown shoes. Tucked neatly inside the shoes was a pair of blue socks. They also found a pen, a pencil, a hair comb,

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  and a Franklin High School hall pass dated February 20 and made out to John Zera. Although it would need to be officially confirmed, there was little doubt. They had found the missing boy. There were no obvious signs of a struggle, nor any evidence that John's body had been dragged to the site. It appeared that he had been killed there, his body preserved by the falling snow. As officers cordoned off the area, one of them noticed something that stopped everyone in their tracks. On John's right wrist, written in ballpoint pen, was the word “hell”.

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  Police didn’t know whether he’d written it himself, or if it was an ominous message left by the killer.

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  John’s body was still partially frozen when it reached the office of Associate Medical Examiner Elaine Samuels for autopsy. Although Samuels was unable to pinpoint an exact time of death, she concluded that the teenager had been killed on the afternoon he went missing, roughly a week before his body was found. His cause of death was the four blows to his head. Dr. Samuels couldn’t determine with certainty which one was the fatal blow, but the largest and most severe laceration had been struck from the front while John was facing his assailant. He had also been sexually assaulted prior to his murder.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  News of the crime spread quickly through Hales Corners, shocking residents with its senseless brutality. Like Franklin, Hales Corners was a safe, family-friendly community known for its low crime rate and provincial charm. Murder was incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that Hales Corners Police had only dealt with one other homicide over the past two decades. A local pharmacist who’d beaten his wife to death, then immediately called the police to confess.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  At the time of John Zierer’s murder, there were only thirteen officers on the Hales Corners Police Force, making it the smallest force in Milwaukee County. Compared to the larger departments, they were under-resourced and many of their officers were under-qualified. As one of the attending officers later recalled to reporter Gina Barton, some of his colleagues had smoked near the crime scene, littering it with cigarette butts and contaminating the area. “Makes it real hard to collect evidence when you’re picking up some officer’s cigarette butt instead of the suspect’s cigarette butt,” he remarked.

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  Police also walked through the crime scene without shoe covers and collected evidence without gloves. This led to a surplus of footprints and fingerprints, making it difficult for investigators to determine what was worth documenting and what wasn’t. Those forensic issues were exacerbated by interdepartmental drama between Hales Corners and Franklin Police. Although the Zierers had filed a missing persons report in Franklin, where they lived and sent their kids to school, John’s body was discovered in the Hales Corners section of Witnall Park, meaning they had jurisdiction over his murder investigation.

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  This didn’t sit well with the Franklin Police Chief, who believed his department should be spearheading the hunt for John’s killer. He shared this opinion with the Hales Corners Police Chief, who reluctantly agreed that their departments should collaborate on the case, despite not always seeing eye to eye.

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  But neither Franklin nor Hales Corners Police had much experience with cases spanning multiple jurisdictions and didn't always share information efficiently. This hindered the case, quickly proving to all involved that police were in over their heads. Several weeks into the investigation with no breakthroughs, local police sought help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to generate a psychological profile of John's killer. The FBI determined that the perpetrator was a “sadistic male homosexual or bisexual

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  who exhibited psychopathic behaviour when it came to sex. He likely had a strong religious background and was of average or below average intelligence. His wife or girlfriend would have left him in the very recent past due to what they called his peculiar sexual demands. He would be between 18 and 50 years old, have allowed outgoing personality and be a heavy drinker. John Zera would not have been his killer's first victim.” The criminal profiler believed that the offender wouldn't want anyone to know that he was same-sex attracted.

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  The FBI therefore urged local investigators to keep the fact that John had been sexually assaulted out of the news for fear that it would agitate the perpetrator. The lead investigator went along with the FBI's plan, releasing a statement that claimed there was no evidence to support the theory that John had been molested. Unfortunately, someone with insider knowledge leaked the truth to the press. In a desperate attempt to rectify the situation, the police retracted their original statement, but it was already too late. Due to a homophobic bias that was prevalent at the time, news of John's assault quickly turned neighbour against neighbour.

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  Police also fell victim to this prejudice, focusing their search almost exclusively on Milwaukee's gay residents.

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  When interviewing potential witnesses, the first question they asked was: "Who do you know who's gay?" They also spent a great deal of time trying to establish whether John Zera had any ties to the gay community. They interviewed his family, friends, classmates and teachers, but no one had any reason to suspect that John was gay.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  The only potential lead police had was the dilapidated copy of Bugle American magazine found in John's locker. According to several tipsters, a classified ad had run in the back of the magazine, which had asked "John Southside Gay" to write to a man named Bob via a post office box.

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  Upon further investigation, police determined that the ad had been placed two years earlier.

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  The likelihood that the ad was directed toward a then 12-year-old John Zera was incredibly slim.

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  But investigators remained convinced that the man they were looking for was part of Milwaukee's gay scene. Associate Medical Examiner Elaine Samuels concurred. Although there was no mention of this in her final autopsy report, Dr Samuels had found traces of semen in John's rectum. She also claimed the lack of injury to John's anus suggested he'd been abused repeatedly in the weeks or months leading up to his death. If she was correct, then detectives were looking for a groomer who'd had consistent access to John under his parents' noses.

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  With the most likely place for this to have occurred being Franklin High School, investigators requested a list of all male faculty members who'd worked in or around the school at the time of John's disappearance. After speaking with many of them, they learned that two of the construction workers who'd been working on the addition to the school regularly ate lunch in the cafeteria alongside some of the ninth and tenth grade boys, one of whom they'd taken to a rock concert. They also hung out in the parking lot after school, blasting music from the bed of their truck as students came outside to smoke cigarettes, sometimes engaging them in conversation.

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  There were also rumours that the two men sold cannabis to students and that one of them might be bisexual. The man in question, David Cole, not his real name, was recently divorced and on probation for drug-related offences. According to his employer, he'd been acting strangely for the past few months and seemed unable to concentrate on his work. Co-workers confirmed that Cole's behaviour had changed following the discovery of John Zera's body, which he spoke about with disturbing frequency. He'd since been let go from his job and appeared to be using drugs again.

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  In an official police interview, Cole claimed he wasn't at Franklin High School the day John went missing, as he'd been working at a local factory. He remembered the date vividly, because the night before, he'd met a male go-go dancer at a Milwaukee tavern whom he'd later gone home with. As the interview went on, Cole became increasingly agitated and his mind wandered to strange places. He said his girlfriend was psychic and that she and her mother could read his thoughts, no matter where he was or what he was doing, and they were probably listening in on his conversation with police.

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  He also claimed he could control animals using the power of mental suggestion, making them do flips or crawl up walls. At one point, Cole started choking on the cigarette he was smoking, which had been given to him by one of the detectives. Paranoid, he immediately stubbed it out, saying investigators were using it to try to control his mind.

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  Cole claimed that ever since John Zera's death, strangers had been following him. They'd show up in one location, then reappear days later in another. Fearing for his safety, he'd started carrying a knife, which he called his pig sticker, and driving with a 12-gauge shotgun in the back of his red 1976 Chevette. When officers handed Cole a photo of John, he clutched it tightly in both hands, his expression pained. "He was a beautiful boy," he said after several uncomfortably long seconds. "He was one of God's children."

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  Over the next few days, investigators obtained records from David Cole's employer, which confirmed that he'd been working at the flooded factory the day before John Zera went missing. However, he hadn't shown up for work at all the next day. Police questioned Cole about the discrepancy in his story, but he had no explanation. He swore he had nothing to do with John's death, saying he didn't even know the 14-year-old, and that he was willing to take a lie detector test to prove it.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  The Wisconsin Supreme Court banned the use of polygraph evidence in criminal trials in 1981, ruling the results too unreliable and the potential Ferrera too great. Today, investigators view polygraph testing as a useful but flawed interrogation tool. In the 1970s, however, it was considered the cutting edge of forensic technology, a near foolproof method of determining whether or not someone was telling the truth.

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  Police hooked David Cole up to a polygraph machine and asked if he or anyone he knew had killed John Zera. He answered, “No.” The machine verified that he was being truthful. But detectives still had their doubts. They spoke to a friend of Cole’s named Christine Widderman, who said he’d bragged about beating the lie detector test. She also claimed that his frequent drug use was affecting his mental health and causing him to act erratically. In a television interview with WTMJ News, Christine said:

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  “Cole came to my house the night he took the test, and he told me that he passed it. But then, after a while, he started going into his other personalities. He said they had the best producer, the best equipment, and the best cops, but I fooled them all.” David Cole denied Christine’s claims, and while he remained a strong person of interest in the case, there was no evidence tying him to the crime. Police continued exploring other possibilities. In October 1976, eight months into the investigation, an anonymous tip came in regarding a 28-year-old

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  mental health aide at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. According to the tipster, this man, whose name was Daniel Acker, had a reputation for befriending young boys. This wasn’t the first time Acker’s name had come up during the investigation. While patrolling Witnel Park on February 29, 1976, just 24 hours after John Zera’s body was found, an officer had spotted a man loitering near the crime scene on his yellow Schwinn bicycle. It was Daniel Acker. The officer watched as Acker parked beside a thicket of trees and walked toward the

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  small clearing where John had been murdered. Curious, he approached Acker and asked what he was doing there. Acker replied that he was looking for the place where John Zera’s body had been found. “Apparently, this is it,” he said.

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  Although the officer found Aker's behaviour strange, he hadn't questioned him any further.

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  After this new tip landed eight months later, a detective went to Daniel Aker's apartment to question him about John Zera. Aker claimed he didn't know the 14-year-old, but felt deeply connected to him. When the detective asked why, Aker's eyes filled with tears. He explained that he'd planned to take a bike ride through Whitnall Park on the day John was murdered, but decided against it at the last minute. According to Aker, his girlfriend had called him that morning and they'd spoken for a couple of hours, after which, Aker was exhausted and decided to take a nap.

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  By the time he woke up at 2:30pm, the weather had taken a turn, so he decided to stay home instead of going for his bike ride. Aker said he'd visited Whitnall Park the day after John's body was discovered because he needed to know how close his path would have taken him to the crime scene. If he'd been there that day, perhaps he could have prevented it.

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  Like so many locals, Aker said he'd learned of John's disappearance through the near-constant media coverage. He'd even organised a search in Whitnall Park on the Friday after John went missing, before he was discovered, fearful the team may have drowned in one of its many ponds. He was plagued by guilt, believing his decision to take a nap that fateful afternoon could have been the difference between life and death.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  To prove his intentions were pure, Aker volunteered to take a polygraph test. The results came back as inconclusive. He took a second test, which he passed. Police dismissed him as a suspect, but that didn't mark the end of Aker's involvement in the case.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  In late 1976, Daniel Acker sent the police a letter claiming he knew someone involved in John's murder. In April that year, a female patient at the Milwaukee Mental Health Complex where Acker worked had been attacked in the woods behind the facility. Her assailant was a fellow patient named Joe. He had left her on the brink of death, her head propped up on a rock and a wooden post shoved in her mouth. Acker didn't hear about the attack until months later, and when he did, he immediately asked Joe why he'd done it. Joe's response sent a chill up Acker's spine.

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  "Because that's what I saw them do to the boy in the park." According to Acker, Joe told him that on the day John Zera disappeared, Joe had been at a McDonald's in Hales Corners when three men in a dark blue sedan picked him up. One of them was openly brandishing a gun. A teenage boy sat in the backseat, flanked by two of the men. The boy looked nervous, a large suit coat dwarfing his small frame. They drove to Whitnall Park, pulled over near the edge of the woods, and hiked to a popular make-out spot.

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  There, the men forcibly removed the boy's clothes as Joe stood by and watched. Terrified, the boy tried to run, but one of the men ordered Joe to catch him and bring him back. Joe didn't want to hurt the boy, but he did as he was told, scared he'd be shot if he didn't. The men then took turns raping the boy as he screamed and cried, calling his attackers "sons of bitches." John Zera's parents later confirmed that John hardly ever swore, but when he did, that was the phrase he'd use.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Once the men finished assaulting the boy, one of them grabbed a nearby rock and struck him savagely on the head.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  At the time of John's murder, Joe was 22 years old, but had the mental faculties of an eight-year-old and an IQ of just 58. An IQ below 75 is the standard benchmark used to diagnose an intellectual disability. According to Joe's sister, his brain was damaged at birth when a doctor used forceps to deliver him. As a result, he'd spent much of his life in court-mandated institutions and group homes. Joe was charged with assaulting the young woman from the Milwaukee Mental Health Complex, but the case was dropped after lawmakers determined he didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand what he'd done.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Police spoke to Joe, who reiterated the basic facts of Acker's story with less detail. They showed Joe a photo lineup in an effort to identify the boy he claimed to have seen being murdered in Witnall Park. Although John Zera's photo was in the lineup, Joe said he didn't recognise him, and instead chose a photo of a 16-year-old who lived across the street from his parents.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Given Joe's low IQ and inability to pick John out of a lineup, police felt confident he had nothing to do with the murder. They, along with Joe's doctor, thought it seemed likely he had been told a story and then instructed to repeat it. Joe's sister told investigators that her brother was very impressionable and could easily be manipulated into telling a false story. But Daniel Acker denied feeding Joe information about the crime, telling investigators: "He knows what happened. He was there."

• 34:56Speaker 00

  After the police refused to investigate Acker's claims any further, he went to the media, setting up an on-camera interview with the WTMJ News. He even sent a letter to John's parents, informing them that one of his patients may have witnessed to their son's murder. Acker took every opportunity he could to talk to Joe about the crime, cataloguing what he'd learned in a journal, which he eventually shared with investigators. But they remained unconvinced. In their view, Acker was a clout-chasing nuisance, the kind of wannabe detective who couldn't help but insert himself into an investigation.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Annoying, but ultimately harmless.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Casefile will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. The holidays are always such a busy time of year, and between work, socialising and everything else going on, the last thing I want to be thinking about is what I'm going to make for dinner every night. With fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door and easy recipes to follow, Home Chef takes the stress out of dinner. There are more than 30 meals to choose from each week, with options for different tastes and dietary needs, including calorie-conscious and GLP-1-friendly meals. And there's something for every schedule, whether you want a 30-minute meal, an oven-ready tray,

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• 37:28Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Hannah from Giggly Squad. Sweater season is in full effect and Abercrombie is setting a new standard. Thanks to quality fabrics like 100% cashmere, wool blends and other natural fibers, I'm using this drop as permission to curate my entire fall wardrobe around sweaters. Especially the Roll Neck Cruise sweater. It's a classic silhouette that I can easily throw on and go or dress up for nights in the city. Outfit accordingly this season with Abercrombie. Shop in the app, online and in stores.

• 38:02Speaker 00

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• 38:17Speaker 00

  The investigation into John Zera's murder continued, but by July 1977, almost a year and a half had passed with no breakthroughs in the case.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  On Tuesday, July 5, two women moved into a duplex on Milwaukee's East Side. While going through the basement, they found an abandoned dresser. Opening one of its drawers, they came across a file containing confidential materials relating to the John Zera murder investigation, including crime scene photos, interdepartmental memos and a copy of John's autopsy report. The file had been given to Paul Moore, an investigator for the District Attorney's Office, a year earlier. Moore had shared it with an employee from the Glendale Crime Lab, a private, nonprofit organization specializing in forensic analysis,

• 39:13Speaker 00

  with the understanding that he was to return it after giving his professional opinion. Instead of returning the file to Moore, the employee gave it to Moore's lover, not knowing the two had recently broken up. To get back at Moore, his lover hid the file in the dresser before moving out of the building.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  When news broke that the District Attorney’s office had misplaced a file containing such sensitive explicit materials, the community was outraged. The Hales Corners’ police chief released a public statement decrying the mistake, saying: “It certainly casts doubt on the reliability of the District Attorney’s office and their investigators.” He then blamed the district attorney for not performing background checks on the investigators he hired. By this point, the Zera family had grown frustrated by the police’s lack of progress and transparency, so they hired an attorney to start a John Doe investigation.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  In Wisconsin, a John Doe investigation is an independent proceeding that allows a judge to determine if a crime was committed and who might be responsible before filing charges. The judge can force witnesses to testify under oath, grant immunity, and order the proceedings to remain secret, encouraging witnesses to speak without fear of retaliation or public exposure. In 1978, John’s father told WTMJ News: “I’m just totally resentful of everything, of our police system. I have no faith at all in them. I don’t think I’m getting any help from anybody.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Why should I have to hire an attorney to get all this stuff when it’s my right to have this investigated?” His wife, Janice, echoed his disappointment, saying: “I never had an idea that the police were like Starsky and Hutch. I never had that idea. I was never that naïve. But I can’t believe the foul-ups.” The Zera’s attorney, Alan Eisenberg, agreed. A local celebrity, he was known for his trademark red fedora, in-your-face personality, and aggressive style of legal representation.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  He was also known as a fierce victims’ rights advocate who took on cases other lawyers wouldn’t. If anyone could light a fire under the Zera investigation, it was Eisenberg.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  By this point, medical records had confirmed that the reason construction worker David Cole hadn't been at work on the day of John's murder was because he was at the doctor's office being treated for a hernia. Police confirmed his 3pm appointment with the doctor's staff, though they couldn't account for where he'd been earlier that day. Despite not knowing the exact time of John's death, police suspected he was murdered shortly after leaving school around 2pm, making it highly unlikely that Cole could have had time to commit the murder.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Under normal circumstances, this and the results of his polygraph would have been enough to exonerate him, but the notoriety of the case and the lack of other viable suspects kept him on the police's radar.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Attorney Alan Eisenberg spoke to Cole's friend Christine Widderman and discovered that she was having an affair with the lead detective in John's case, a married man who had instructed her to lie about their relationship if ever questioned by authorities. Eisenberg filed an affidavit claiming that the detective had been using the Zera case as a pretence to romance Christine. Rumours quickly spread that the detective had initiated the affair with Christine specifically to dig up the dirt on David Cole. The Hales Corners Police immediately launched an internal investigation, and while they found nothing to suggest that the affair

• 43:36Speaker 00

  had impacted the detective's work on the Zera case, he was found guilty of personal indiscretion involving an informant and suspended without pay for 60 days. He returned to work after that, but never to the John Zera investigation.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  As the investigation wore on without a breakthrough, police focused on the criminal profiler's belief that John Zera would not have been his killer's only victim. At the advice of the FBI, they took a closer look at a certain individual. Nine years earlier, in August 1967, 14-year-old Milwaukee teenager Steve Scallan was walking home from football practice at his local high school when 23-year-old laundry truck driver James Lee Crummel pulled up beside him and offered him a ride. Steve accepted, and the two proceeded along Crummel's delivery route. What Steve didn't know was that Crummel,

• 44:42Speaker 00

  a former sharpshooter for the US Army, had a history of sexually assaulting children. He was also a suspect in the unsolved murder of a nine-year-old boy who had been killed in Arizona just six months earlier. After stopping at several local businesses to drop off sheets and towels, Crummel pulled over near an isolated park and led Steve into the woods. "Do you want me to show you a rope trick?" he asked. "Yes," Steve answered.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  Crummel tied the boy's wrists together before challenging him to free himself.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  For several minutes, Steve struggled, but the rope held fast. Crummel then told him to get on the ground, promising not to hurt him. Steve did as he was told, and Crummel proceeded to rape him.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Afterward, Crummel loaded Steve back into his truck and drove to another secluded spot. There, he raped the 14-year-old again. Steve lost consciousness this time, Crummel's hands wrapped tightly around his neck. When Crummel was done, he took Steve outside, grabbed a large tree limb off the ground, and struck him repeatedly in the head. He then threw the teenager down a nearby hill and drove off.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Miraculously, Steve survived. He was found the next morning and taken to the hospital, where he remained incoherent for three days, his skull severely fractured. When questioned about the assault, Crummel admitted: "I don't know why I did it. I need help. I couldn't keep it inside me."

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Several months after his arrest, Crummel told a prison psychiatrist that he went out looking for young boys whenever he felt lonely. He found them attractive because they were cute and clean. Crummel said he'd lost control with Steve Scallan because he feared the boy would tattle on him. Sinking low in his chair, he then described his desire to kill Steve in a flat, detached manner, admitting he'd choked the 14-year-old until his face turned blue.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  The psychiatrist went on record, calling Crummel "one of the few people that we see who really fits the prototype of a cold-blooded killer." His report ended with a warning:

• 47:22Speaker 00

  "Whenever Mr. Crummel is released, we have to worry about the risk of repetition of his violent conduct."

• 47:30Speaker 00

  After pleading guilty to sexual perversion and aggravated battery, Crummel was found to be in need of specialized help for sexual deviancy and was committed for treatment. Police expected Crummel to serve at least 30 years. To their astonishment, he was released on parole after just five.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Hales Corner's police couldn't help but notice the similarities between Steve Scallan's brutal assault and John Zera's murder. Both victims were 14, lived in the greater Milwaukee area, and were intercepted leaving school. Both were taken to the woods to be sexually assaulted before being bludgeoned in the head and left for dead. Then, there was Crummel's tattoo. On his right wrist was a picture of a devil along with the phrase: "Born to raise hell."

• 48:30Speaker 00

  They wondered if the word “hell” being written on the inside of John Zierer’s right wrist was Crummell leaving some kind of calling card. Six months into the John Zierer investigation, police tracked Crummell down to the Californian city of Costa Mesa and questioned him about his whereabouts on the day John went missing. Crummell said he was alone in his Costa Mesa apartment that whole week. He swore he hadn’t touched a single boy since his assault on Steve Scallan, though he refused to take a polygraph test to confirm it. Hale’s Corner’s police had no doubt Crummell was capable of murder, but they couldn’t

• 49:13Speaker 00

  place him in Wisconsin at the time of John’s death.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  As the three-year anniversary of John Zierer’s murder approached, police felt they’d exhausted every lead. Despite the John Doe proceeding initiated by the Zierer family, no new suspects had emerged. Then, in December 1978, an unidentified woman called the Franklin Police to ask if they’d looked into a man called Michael Uporsky. Uporsky, a former substitute teacher and basketball coach at Franklin High, no longer lived in the area, but had become a frequent topic of conversation amongst his old colleagues. In the years following John’s murder, he’d secured a dream job with professional basketball

• 50:04Speaker 00

  team the Seattle Supersonics, scouting players for the NBA. The woman told the police that, just recently, Uporsky had returned to Wisconsin to scout potential players. While in town, he’d invited a teenage boy back to his hotel room.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  This subsequently became a topic of conversation at a Christmas party for Franklin High staff, where the woman heard about it.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  She didn’t know if anything sexual had occurred between the two, but she had a strong suspicion Uporsky might be connected to John Zierer’s murder.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Franklin Police looked back at their files and saw that Michael Uporski was briefly interviewed after John's death. He'd said that on the day John went missing, he had taught several classes, two of which were held in classrooms on the lower northeast side of the school, far from the front entrance where John was last seen. While Uporski knew who John was, he said he didn't know him well. He remembered that the shy teenager had been reluctant to get in the water during one of Uporski's swimming classes. He knew John's athletic older brother Mark much better.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  In the early days of the investigation, police had requested a list of all full-time male employees at Franklin High, including teachers, staff, substitutes and coaches, so that they could follow up and conduct more in-depth interviews. When administrators turned the list over to authorities, Uporski's name wasn't on it. With his name coming up almost three years later, police reviewed the school records and discovered that Uporski didn't have any classes during fifth period that day, which was around the same time that John Zera was last seen.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  This led to the question of why it had taken so long for anyone to notice his absence from the list. Rumours quickly spread that someone at Franklin High School was trying to protect Uporski.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Franklin Police began digging into Michael Uporski's past and learned that his first run-in with the law occurred when he was just 12. He had lured a six-year-old boy back to his house by promising to let the boy play with his puppy. Once they were alone, he forcibly removed the boy's shoes. Two years later, when Uporski was 14, a woman called the police to report that Uporski had tackled her 12-year-old son to the ground, tore off his shoes and socks, and violently twisted his toes. Uporski was charged in juvenile court and required to attend counselling.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Less than a year later, police received a report that Uporski had led a nine-year-old boy into a secluded yard, made him lie face down in the grass, and then played with his feet. According to one detective, feet were his thing. He would go down on the parkway, wait for a little kid riding on a bicycle, grab the kid off their bike, and drag them into the woods. Then he'd take their shoes and socks off and tickle their feet until the kid urinated or started screaming. Because the Milwaukee County Court system was more interested in rehabilitating teenagers

• 53:41Speaker 00

  than punishing them, Uporski faced no criminal charges for his actions. As Uporski got older, so did the boys he targeted. According to police records, when he was 22, he picked up an 18-year-old hitchhiker in Milwaukee, drove him to a tree-lined neighbourhood, and ordered him into the bushes, promising not to hurt him if he did as he was told. Once he was sure passersby couldn't see them, he pushed the young man to the ground, removed his shoes and socks, and fondled his bare feet. The following year, a 12-year-old newspaper-delivery boy accused Uporski of snatching him off

• 54:25Speaker 00

  the street and dragging him into a nearby garage, where he climbed on top of him and tickled his feet. Shortly afterward, a 14-year-old made a similar allegation. Uporski was cited with disorderly conduct, and once again remanded to counselling, which he attended for approximately six months. Investigators reached out to young male students and athletes who had known Michael Uporski during his time at Franklin High School to see if anyone else had a similar experience. Several admitted that Uporski had gotten them alone, wrestled them to the ground, and tickled their feet.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Many had been too confused or ashamed to come forward, dismissing his actions as harmless roughhousing.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  As John Zera was found barefoot with his socks tucked neatly inside his shoes, it wasn't a stretch to wonder if his killer had a preoccupation with feet. Police sent Uporsky a letter, asking him to return to Wisconsin for an interview. He reluctantly agreed, writing back: "I would have been more than happy to help long ago, but was never asked. I am not trying to take out any animosity on you or display arrogance. I am simply stating that I was always willing to offer any info that I had."

• 55:53Speaker 00

  He pushed back against allegations that his prior arrests were sexual in nature, stating: "My previous police record does not include sexual molestings, as you termed them. In the late 60s, I underwent some nervous disorder treatment, and at this present time, am a rational, heterosexual human being."

• 56:20Speaker 00

  A month after the anonymous tip-off, 32-year-old Michael Uporsky flew to Wisconsin to meet with the police. He denied having anything to do with the John Zera's murder, saying he was most likely on his lunch break when the 14-year-old went missing. But, police had already questioned witnesses at Franklin High, and no one recalled seeing Uporsky during the lunch hour that day. Furthermore, some of his students said he was 10 minutes late to his first class after lunch. Confronted with these statements, Uporsky couldn't explain why he'd been late, but maintained he never left campus during school hours.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  Investigators asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph test to confirm his story. Uporsky looked uncomfortable, but he agreed.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Veteran polygraph examiner Robert Peters was brought in to conduct the test. He started off slow, asking Uporsky a series of personal questions to establish an emotional baseline. Uporsky fidgeted in his seat as he answered, taking big gulps of air. Peters watched him with interest as he switched to questions about the murder. “In February 1976, in a wooded area in Wittemore Park, did you strike a John Zera on the head with a blunt object?” he asked. “No,” was Uporsky’s reply. As the test went on, he started to hyperventilate.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Examiner Peters instructed him to take slow, steady breaths, as erratic breathing could tamper with the results. Uporsky said he couldn’t help it, he was nervous, but Peters suspected he was trying to throw off the machine. They agreed to take a break. Police accompanied Uporsky back to his hotel, where they shared a tense dinner before returning to the police station to continue the exam. Peters picked up where they’d left off. “In February of 1976, did you strike a John Zera on the head?” “No.”

• 58:39Speaker 00

  “In February 1976, did you take part in a sex act with the John Zera?” “No.” This line of questioning continued until Peters felt confident they had their answer. Uporsky was lying. The following day, Uporsky was taken to the Milwaukee County Courthouse as part of the Zera family’s ongoing John Doe investigation. There, he was confronted in the hallway by John Zera’s father, who was convinced Uporsky was responsible for his son’s death. It was an ugly, combative scene which effectively put an end to the John Doe investigation.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Michael Uporsky returned to Seattle, but over the next few months, police there kept tabs on him.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  When he started dating a woman named Nancy, both Wisconsin and Seattle police suspected Uporsky could be romancing her in an attempt to get to her 10-year-old son. Nancy agreed to participate in a covert surveillance operation. With her permission, two Seattle police officers hid in her spare bedroom while she confronted Uporsky about his arrest record and John Zera's murder.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  The interrogation went on for hours, the officers unable to move or speak as they waited for something they could use to nail Uporsky. But every time John's name was brought up, he quickly changed the subject.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Although investigators were convinced Uporsky was their man, they didn't have anything concrete to connect him to the crime. So, they waited for science to catch up to their theory. As the months turned into years, they tracked Uporsky's every move, contacting anyone who employed him or began a romantic relationship with him to let them know he was the primary suspect in a 14-year-old boy's murder.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  In 1979, shortly after winning the NBA championship, the Seattle Supersonics fired Michael Uporsky. Whether this had anything to do with investigators contacting the team's owner remains unclear.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Over the next two decades, the investigation into John Zera's murder faded into obscurity while his killer—or killers—roamed free.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Many of the detectives who originally worked the case retired. Then, in February 2001, John's younger brother, Phil Zera, now 38 years old and living in New York, called police to discuss the status of the investigation.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  In the twenty-five years since John's murder, there had been significant strides in criminal profiling and forensics. Perhaps with the help of DNA, police could finally catch his killer.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Two detectives, Kent Schoonover of Hales Corners and Scott Stoll of Franklin, agreed. After speaking with Phil, they decided to reopen John's case. The mood this time around was markedly different, starting with the relationship between Hales Corners and Franklin Police. While the original police chiefs had frequently butted heads and spoke privately of their dislike for each other, detectives Schoonover and Stoll quickly found common ground, establishing a friendly rapport built on communication and shared resources. Schoonover told case file of his respect for Stoll, saying:

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  "I can't say enough good things about Scott Stoll. He is one of the best cops I've ever known." A seventeen-year veteran of the Hales Corners Police Force, Schoonover took on the role of lead detective, meticulously combing through more than 6,000 pages of police reports, witness logs, interview transcripts, and medical records. He also re-interviewed witnesses and consulted with experts who might have a fresh perspective to offer. Upon familiarizing himself with the case and its suspects, his conclusion was the same as investigators before him: Michael Uporsky, the former substitute teacher, was John's killer.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  All he and detective Stoll had to do was prove it.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Their first move was to contact the medical examiner who had conducted John's autopsy, Dr. Elaine Samuels.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  During her time working as the Associate Medical Examiner for Milwaukee County, Dr Samuels was known to be eccentric. In 1979, her boss discovered her office contained a dozen jars of human testicles, including those of a recent murder victim. According to Samuels, she was trying to uncover evidence of a statistical connection between low birth rates and men who took recreational drugs. Her superiors told her to stop what she was doing, but seven years later, an additional 15 jars of human tissue were discovered in the basement of her condominium.

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal, Dr Samuels claimed to have no idea where the specimens came from. But her superiors contradicted her narrative, saying she'd come to them years earlier, asking if she could save testicles for medical research. One morning in 1986, months after this discovery, reporter Meg Kissinger received a frantic phone call from Samuels, who claimed someone was trying to kill her. Apparently, she'd been driving home the previous evening when her car burst into flames. The fire chief who investigated the incident determined there was no foul play and the

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  fire was the result of a faulty plug, but that didn't comfort Dr Samuels, who remained convinced her life was in danger. Shortly after, the Milwaukee County Board eliminated her position within the Medical Examiner's office.

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  It subsequently emerged that throughout the 1970s and 80s, Dr Samuels had mishandled countless autopsies, her shoddy medical work leading to reduced sentences for several criminals. She was also backlogged in writing autopsy reports for both homicide and non-homicide cases, leaving dozens of families with lingering questions about their loved ones' deaths, including the Zierers.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  At the time of John Zera's murder, the Civil Service Commission required medical examiners in the state of Wisconsin to meet five specific qualifications. Elaine Samuels met just two of these. She took the test to become board certified in pathology in 1976, but failed. As a result of Dr. Samuels' inexperience and negligence, John's autopsy was plagued by mistakes. Not only had she misplaced the contents of John's stomach, preventing investigators from narrowing down a more specific time of death, she had also failed to check under his fingernails for any traces of blood, skin, or hair,

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  which would have been helpful in determining the identity of the killer. And then, there was the fact that Dr. Samuels claimed John had been sexually assaulted prior to his murder. Yet, her final report failed to mention any traces of semen in or around his body.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  In the years since Milwaukee County terminated her position, Dr. Samuels had largely disappeared from public life. But Detective Schoonover located her in an elderly apartment complex on the south side of Milwaukee. Samuels agreed to speak with him, but only through a small crack in her apartment door. Asked about the Zera case, she placed the blame on Hales Corner's police, saying the lead detective instructed her to keep certain findings out of her final report, including the fact that semen was found in John's rectum. According to Dr. Samuels, she'd collected semen samples back in 1976

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  and preserved them on slides. That was all the information she was willing to give Detective Schoonover before slamming the door in his face.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  This was a watershed moment in the investigation. For decades, police had believed there was no DNA evidence from the Zera crime scene.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Detective Schoonover immediately contacted the medical examiner's office to see if they had the evidence box from John's case, and was told not to get his hopes up. Back in 1976, the morgue was housed in the Milwaukee County Safety Building with all evidence stored in the basement. Over the years, unhoused people had set up camp in the stairwells, heavy masonry had fallen off the dilapidated exterior, and a series of floods destroyed years' worth of evidence. It would be a minor miracle if the box hadn't been damaged.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Detective Schoonover waited for weeks, and then came the call he'd been dreading. The box from John's case had been located, but the swabs Dr. Samuels used to collect the samples from his body were nowhere to be found.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Detective Schoonover checked the Justice Department's records and discovered that Dr. Samuels had gotten rid of the swabs because no one directly asked her to keep them. A report from a detective dated October 22, 1976, read: "Dr. Samuels had taken swabs of the body cavities and later determined that anal intercourse had occurred with the body on the day that the victim died. The swabs that she had taken from approximately one inch of the anal passage revealed considerable semen." Although the swabs weren't available, the test slides had been perfectly preserved.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  Schoonover sent them to the State Crime Laboratory in the hopes that they might yield some DNA. They did not.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Detective Schoonover sat down with the technicians, who explained their final option was to pulverise the slides in an attempt to find even a small trace of genetic material. As Schoonover explained to case file, the problem with that option was that if the case ever made it to trial, there would be nothing left for the defence to do their own testing. Schoonover told the technicians to go ahead, saying he was willing to fight the decision in court if it ever reached that point. For three months, he waited on results from this final test. When the technicians at the crime lab finally got back to him, it was with bad news.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  There was no DNA.

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  Undeterred, Detective Schoonover and his partner Detective Stoll pressed on, determined to find the evidence needed to prove Michael Uporsky's guilt. But so many mistakes had been made in the early days of the investigation that anyone investigating John's murder was automatically fighting an uphill battle. Police had also failed to collect key pieces of evidence, including soil and foliage samples from the spot where John's body was recovered. Much of what was collected was improperly processed and stored, causing it to degrade over time. They had also neglected to photograph the macabre message scrawled on John's wrist.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  In the event that it had been left by the killer, they had no way of comparing it with writing samples from potential suspects. When Detective Schoonover went to the evidence room to examine the rock police believed to be the murder weapon, he found it completely clean, not a trace of blood or hair as the officers on scene that day had reported.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  Examining the crime scene photos, he also discovered that a key piece of evidence was missing: a broken tree limb that had been found about twenty feet from John's body, near his discarded clothes. It was clear the limb had been snapped off shortly before the photos were taken, as the wood beneath the bark was nearly white, not dark and weathered as it would have been had it sat there a long time. Detective Schoonover wondered whether John's killer could have used it as a weapon. Scratches on the boy's face supported this theory, but there was no way to test it. Six months after John's murder, the lab technician in charge of the crime scene noted that he

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  had “probably” checked that piece of wood for hair fragments or blood, and found none. He couldn’t recall with any degree of certainty whether he had or hadn’t. Detective Schoonover and Stoll accepted that John’s murder was unlikely to be solved by forensic evidence such as DNA or fingerprints. Instead, they’d have to rely on good, old-fashioned police work. In reviewing files from the original investigation, Schoonover discovered a transcript from Michael Uporsky’s 1979 post-polygraph interview with the Franklin Police Chief that had him on the edge of his seat.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  To Schoonover, it sounded like the chief was one question away from getting a confession, before another investigator from the Wisconsin Department of Justice burst into the room and shut the interview down. Detective Schoonover couldn’t understand why an experienced agent would impede a confession. He tracked down the now-retired investigator and asked why he’d intervened that day, but he claimed to know nothing about it. Showing the report, the investigator said: “This never happened. This is complete fiction.”

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Regardless, for detectives Schoonover and Stoll, the report’s contents played a key role in their belief that Michael Uporsky was guilty. In October 2001, they travelled to California to meet with Uporsky, now a widower with two grown children. During their nearly five-hour conversation, Uporsky remained unflappable, reiterating that he had nothing to do with the John’s murder. At one point, Detective Schoonover produced a doctored crime lab report that made it look as if Uporsky’s DNA had been found on John’s body. This was in accordance with the 1969 US Supreme Court ruling that allows police to legally

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  lie about evidence as long as they don’t violate due process or coerce a confession using threats of violence.

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  Uporsky didn’t even break a sweat. When Detective Stoll asked him why his DNA would be on John Zera’s body, Uporsky replied: “You know I can’t answer that.”

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  The two detectives returned to Wisconsin no closer to solving John’s murder than they had been on day one.

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode sponsors.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

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• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  Eight years passed without much progress. Then, in March 2009, a woman called the West Dallas West Milwaukee Recreation Department with a disturbing allegation. One of their longtime swim instructors had been showering with her son and other young boys following swimming lessons. Two weeks later, a man called the instructor's boss to warn her that the instructor was a pedophile who had sexually assaulted him during the early 1970s, when he was between the ages of 11 and 15. The instructor's name was Daniel Acker. Acker's boss immediately contacted the police,

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  and on March 23, Acker was arrested while coaching youth swimmers at a middle school in West Dallas, a Milwaukee suburb 10 miles from where the Zera family lived. When questioned by detectives at the Greenfield Police Station, he was calm and agreeable, as though he didn't quite grasp at the severity of the situation. He declined the offer of a public defender, stating, "If I don't want to talk any further, I'll tell you."

• 1:18:17Speaker 00

  Acker was surprisingly forthcoming, admitting that he regularly showered with his underage students. When detectives asked if they could search his home, he agreed.

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  Detective Sergeant David Patrick and a small team of officers were dispatched to Acker's condo in Walkershire. Upon entering the condo, officers noted that it was almost alarmingly clean. No mess, no clutter, not even a speck of dust. On the windows, Acker had hung sheets and tarps, presumably to block out the sun. After performing a cursory sweep of the first floor, officers made their way into the basement. Like the rest of the condo, it was meticulously organised, with boxes stacked beneath the stairs. Detective Patrick and his team began sifting through them, eventually coming across one

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  labelled “fire hobby”. This box, unlike the others, was sealed with heavy fibreglass tape and had to be cut open with a knife. Detective Patrick reached inside and pulled out two large models built to resemble a police station and a firehouse. The walls of each model were wired with LED lights and plastered in black and white photos of missing and murdered children. Among them were Reet and Pete, a six-year-old boy who went missing from New York in 1979; Jacob Wedderling, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped and murdered in Minnesota in 1989; and Kanarik

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  Synthosim Phone, a 14-year-old victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer who was murdered in Milwaukee in 1991. In another box, police found miniature models of fire trucks, police cars and other automobiles. One of the officers reached inside and picked up a gold, matchbox-sized Buick Riviera. Written on the bottom in magic marker was the number 14, as well as a name: John C. Zera. It didn’t take long for Detective Patrick to find a corresponding photo of the 14-year-old, whom he immediately recognised as a local unsolved murder victim.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  In a bedroom closet upstairs, officers discovered a photo album and journal focused entirely on John Zera, with entries dating back to the day the teenager went missing. Inside were family photos of John and his brothers, as well as maps of Franklin High School and Witnall Park, covered in handwritten notes. In some of the photos, which looked as though they'd been captured surreptitiously, John's brothers appeared much older than they were at the time of his murder. This led officers to believe Acker had performed surveillance on the family for years. They also found a framed photo of John and his brothers, sitting on their living room couch with two dogs.

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  It was wrapped in newspaper, along with pinecones and what appeared to be a cross. Another item recovered was a diary, which contained numerous concerning passages. One of them read: "Friday, February 20th, 1976. Between 1:30pm and 2pm, the boy is made to, or is, completely undressed. Even his socks are removed." Such is the horror John had to go through. The boy was sexually assaulted, but somehow, after the assault, he managed to run away to attempt to escape, but was caught about thirty feet from the sexual assault area.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  John C. Zero was caught, knocked down on the ground, possibly unconscious, then struck on his right forehead with a round rock, which sadly caused the boy's death. Another read: "February 29th, 1976. As I kneel, I see the blood and fluids from the head trauma. To the left is the empty hole where the rock had been removed, telling me it was a panic meant to kill the boy because of his escape attempt."

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Detective Kent Schoonover was on his way to a conference when he received a phone call from his boss, who instructed him to turn around and head to the station right away. Schoonover was shocked to learn what had been discovered at Aker's home. Like most detectives who'd worked the case, he knew all about Aker. An innocuous busybody who police had taken an interest in back in 1976, the former mental health aide was dismissed as a suspect after passing a lie detector test. Over the years, he'd annoyed police with his persistent claims that a mental health patient named Joe witnessed John's murder.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  At best, he was seen as a citizen detective who wanted to help solve a well-publicised crime. At worst, he was a nuisance who perpetuated harmful theories and wasted investigators' time. Now, Detective Schoonover wondered if it was possible police had misjudged him. At the Greenfield Police Station, two detectives conducted a second interview with Aker, asking him about the bizarre scene in his basement. Aker said it was nothing more than a harmless hobby. In his youth, he'd wanted to be a fireman, but his health prevented him from pursuing such a physically demanding career.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  To fill the void, he'd started building and collecting model fire trucks. John Zera's death affected him so greatly that he'd decided to dedicate his model building to missing and murdered children. To make the hobby more meaningful, he put some of their names on certain vehicles. Watching the interview in real time, Detective Schoonover was immediately reminded of John Zera's own love for model building. According to his parents, he could spend an entire Saturday in his room lovingly assembling model railroads, cars and trucks.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Acker began telling the detectives about his strange relationship with his mother, whom he claimed had belittled him from the time he was a child. He'd wet the bed growing up, something she openly made fun of in front of his friends. He also claimed that his mother ridiculed his dream of becoming a fireman. A former neighbour of Acker's later confirmed this, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "He would have killed her if he could have." The vitriol with which Acker discussed his mother surprised the detectives, who thus far had only seen his soft-spoken side. When confronted about the allegations put forward by his boss,

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  Acker admitted to engaging in inappropriate sexual behaviour with a handful of young boys. He said that in the 1970s he'd had relationships with several teenagers, but all were consensual. He blamed the fact that these relationships turned sexual on his drinking at the time, claiming he only pursued the boys when under the influence of alcohol. He said that beer made him horny, which was why he'd given it up as he got older. That was all the information police needed to charge him with second-degree sexual assault of a child, a crime that carried a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  In the days and weeks that followed, scores of men came forward to accuse Daniel Acker of having molested them when they were children, and four new counts of sexual assault were filed against him. In total, more than 50 individuals claimed to have been victimised by the swim instructor over a 33-year period, with one man saying he was molested more than 100 times. Acker only admitted to having "relationships" with five of his accusers, all in the 1970s. According to authorities, his victims were between the ages of 7 and 18 when they were abused.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  In the years since, at least one had taken their own life while another died of a drug overdose. Several others suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, leading to broken marriages and unstable work histories. The Greenfield Police Department released a public statement that said: "We believe we've only scratched the surface in people we've talked to already. We believe there are more victims out there."

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  After speaking with several survivors, a disturbing pattern emerged. It seemed that Acker went out of his way to target boys from troubled homes, befriending them and gifting them expensive shoes, sports jerseys, video game systems and meals. He even allowed several to live with him when things got tense at home. Once Acker secured the boys' trust, he would ply them with alcohol and cannabis before coercing them into sex. Police believed this was a deliberate manipulation tactic. By making his victims feel indebted to him, Acker was able to groom them into doing whatever he wanted,

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  from taking nude photos, to giving and receiving massages, and performing various sex acts.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  On Saturday, March 28, 2009, Acker appeared in court, shackled at the wrists and ankles. No friends, family, or accusers were present, as the court commissioner set his bail at $65,000 and told him he could no longer have any contact with the men and boys who'd filed charges against him. The community was horrified. For more than 30 years, Acker, known to his students as "Mr. Dan", had been a beloved teacher and friend. Co-workers from the West Dallas West Milwaukee Recreation Department spoke of his kindness, calling him "a role model for new instructors".

• 1:29:14Speaker 00

  Several even compared him to actor Rowan Atkinson, star of the British television series "Mr. Bean", which revolves around an adult who acts like a child. One man who worked alongside Acker in the 1980s and 90s told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

• 1:29:33Speaker 00

  "Sometimes, you know when a coach is just there for the money." I always thought Dan truly cared about the kids in class.

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  Despite compelling evidence tying Daniel Acker to John Zier's murder, detectives Schoonover and Stoll didn't want to interfere with Greenfield's investigation, so they waited.

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  In the meantime, they gathered as much information on Acker as they could, starting with his troubled childhood. The only boy in a family of girls, his mother was harder on him than she was on his three sisters, often berating him for minor infractions and discouraging his ambitions.

• 1:30:18Speaker 00

  His father was largely absent due to a demanding job, but when he was home, he ignored his children in favour of drinking. Acker graduated from St Rita Catholic School in 1962, around the same time that George Neudling was associate pastor at the church. Neudling died in 1994, when Acker was 46. Eight years later, in 2002, ten men accused him of molesting them in the 1960s and 70s. When SNAP, the survivors' network of those abused by priests, looked into the allegations, they found dozens of additional men who'd reported being abused by Neudling.

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  Though Acker never claimed to be one of them, it did raise questions in the minds of investigators. Was it possible that Daniel Acker had also been a victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted older man?

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  Detective Schoonover and Stoll were surprised to learn that while living in Greenfield in the 1970s, Acker's landlord had confronted him about the steady stream of teenage boys he had at his apartment. Acker assured him nothing untoward was going on, and explained that the boys were fellow hobbyists who just wanted to see his extensive collection of models. The landlord didn't believe him, and in 1973, he asked Acker to move out.

• 1:31:52Speaker 00

  Several months later, while living in nearby Franklin, Acker was accused of asking a teenage boy and his friend to pose for nude photos. He claimed it was a misunderstanding, and the police dropped the matter. A year later, Acker's former landlord offered his old apartment back as long as he promised not to invite any underage boys over. Acker agreed, but soon went back on his word.

• 1:32:22Speaker 00

  This time, the landlord called Greenfield Police, who spent several days staking out Acker's apartment. When they didn't see any boys coming or going, they closed the case.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  In the years that followed, Acker became a foster parent, taking in a troubled boy named Tim. Tim's mother, who had six other children, could no longer handle her 11-year-old son, so Acker offered to informally adopt him. For years, the two lived together, Acker providing Tim with the stability he desperately needed, taking him on camping trips, buying him birthday presents, and providing a space for him and his friends to hang out.

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  When Tim grew up and had children of his own, those children also lived with Acker.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  "He was just somebody who wanted to be a parent, and he did the best he could", Tim told reporters following Acker's arrest.

• 1:33:22Speaker 00

  According to Tim and his two sons, Aker never crossed any lines with them, though, in retrospect, there were moments that seemed off. One time, while out for dinner with Tim and several others, Aker was confronted by a man he'd known in the 1970s. The man accused the swim instructor of sexually abusing him as a teenager in front of the entire dining hall. Over the next few months, the man threw food at Aker's house, called him at work, and left rambling messages on his answering machine. He also ordered pornographic magazines in John Zera's name and mailed them to Aker in an attempt to unnerve him.

• 1:34:08Speaker 00

  Tim hadn't wanted to believe the man's story back then, but now, he wondered if it was true.

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  Although the original investigators of John's murder knew about Aker's history of inappropriate contact with young boys, he'd been eliminated as a suspect following a successful polygraph test. In the 1970s, criminal profiling was in its infancy. Police didn't know that murderers often returned to the scene of the crime to either relive the act or regain a sense of control. Nor did they know that killers can pose as helpful witnesses in an effort to misdirect police and steer suspicion away from themselves. Aker had done both of those things. With their more sophisticated training, detectives Schoonover and Stoll recognised these red flags

• 1:35:01Speaker 00

  and began to dig deeper. In speaking with the John's family, they discovered that Aker had inserted himself into their daily lives. Several months after John's murder, he wrote to John's parents, offering his services as a private investigator, free of charge. He didn't have a licence or any experience in law enforcement, yet he passed himself off as someone who could help them find their son's killer, preying on their desperation for answers. Over time, he became friends with the John's mother, Janice, enjoying dinners at the Zera house and receiving a yearly Christmas card from the family.

• 1:35:44Speaker 00

  He even tried to form relationships with the Johns brothers, inviting them to baseball games and open swims at the pools where he worked.

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  Both were put off by Acker, who they found creepy and invasive. As Mark later recalled to reporter Gina Barton: "I remember having either Christmas or Thanksgiving or some kind of dinner with him. I just didn't like the guy. I thought he was a creep from the first time I ever met him."

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  On Friday, February 5, 2010, the now 62-year-old Daniel Acker was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual assault of a child. In a pre-sentencing interview, he confessed to molesting around 20 boys, ranging in age from 10 to 17, over 30 years. Given Acker's age, there was a strong chance he'd die in prison.

• 1:36:46Speaker 00

  In Detective Schoonover's view, this meant he had nothing to lose by admitting he was John's killer. He visited Acker in prison, but Acker wouldn't confess. In fact, he doubled down on his claims about Joe the Patient, seemingly determined to convince Schoonover he was a good guy trying to help a grieving family cope with their son's death.

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  Frustrated but not defeated, detectives build a circumstantial case against Acker. Their theory was that he and John had bonded over their shared love of model building. Back in 1976, the greater Milwaukee area didn't have many places for hobbyists to gather, but there were a few arts and crafts shops that both John and Acker frequented, though no one could recall having ever seen them together. Detectives believed they'd met at one of these shops and that Acker had likely been scoping John out for some time. An experienced predator, he'd taken advantage of the boys' loneliness and presented himself as a friend.

• 1:37:57Speaker 00

  On the day of the murder, he picked John up from school and took him to Whittenall Park. There, after weeks, or possibly even months of grooming, he made his move. When things didn't go as planned, he bludgeoned John in a panic.

• 1:38:16Speaker 00

  Such an action would be consistent with the scene detailed in Acker's diary.

• 1:38:23Speaker 00

  Detectives Schoonover and Stoll took their case to the district attorney's office, but were told that all of the original investigation's mistakes and misconduct would make it nearly impossible to prosecute. Without concrete evidence like DNA or a confession, there was no guarantee they could prove Acker's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

• 1:38:46Speaker 00

  With no avenues left to pursue, Detective Schoonover retired from the Hales Corners Police Force, haunted by the fact that he was unable to solve John's murder. "I feel like I failed," he admitted in 2015. "I wonder if there's something else I could have done."

• 1:39:09Speaker 00

  John's case once again went cold, and his family was forced to grapple with the fact that his killer might never be caught. His parents tried to move forward as best they could, refusing to talk about the case with reporters and sometimes even their own children, the pain just too great to keep reliving. Their youngest son Phil was traumatized by the loss, moving nearly 1,000 miles away from where he and his older brother were forced to grow up without John. Elder son Mark stayed in the Milwaukee area, married, and had children of his own. He continued to communicate with both the police and press, determined to keep John's memory alive.

• 1:39:56Speaker 00

  In 2015, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative journalist Gina Barton was granted unprecedented access to the Zera case file and many of its key players, including investigators, witnesses, and suspects. She spent months conducting interviews, reviewing official documents, and watching more than 20 hours of interrogation videos.

• 1:40:21Speaker 00

  The result was an in-depth series of articles about the Zera case, published on the 40th anniversary of John's murder, along with a podcast series titled Unsolved.

• 1:40:33Speaker 00

  Much of the information revealed in Barton's reporting had previously been withheld from the public.

• 1:40:40Speaker 00

  This information reignited public interest in the case and raised new questions about the systemic failures that had plagued the initial investigation.

• 1:40:50Speaker 00

  In a Q&A, Barton explained why taking on John's case was so important to her.

• 1:40:57Speaker 00

  “One of the primary reasons we wanted to put our efforts into this was the fact that it’s unsolved. In talking with the Hales Corners Police, they and we at the Journal Sentinel hoped that perhaps shedding light on it could help finally bring the killer to justice.”

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  Following the release of Barton’s series, the Hales Corners Police Chief decided to reopen the case. The first thing the new team did was ask Greenfield Police for the models from Daniel Acker’s basement, but they no longer had them. After Acker was convicted of sexual assault, the models were returned to one of his sisters. She’d since thrown them away, leaving police without access to yet another puzzle piece.

• 1:41:46Speaker 00

  The newly-retired Detective Kent Schoonover agreed to work on the case as a consultant. One day, while sifting through boxes of evidence taken from Acker's home, he'd found a woven leather belt, too small for Acker, but just big enough for a fourteen-year-old boy. He wondered if the belt could have belonged to John.

• 1:42:09Speaker 00

  In the six-thousand-plus pages of documents pertaining to the Zera case, only once was a belt brought up. The day police found John's body in Whitnall Park, when describing his clothing, one officer had mentioned a basket-waive brown leather belt approximately 1.25 inches wide. No such belt was ever saved as evidence, but the description sounded eerily similar to the one found in Acker's possession.

• 1:42:40Speaker 00

  The belt was sent away for forensic examination, with the Hales Corners Police Chief telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that if it was John's belt, that's going to be the nail in Acker's coffin. Hopes were raised further when investigators discovered a journal entry Acker had written on the day John's body was found. It read: "Oddly, I would learn that the boy's belt was not found." Amidst dozens of sinister entries, this more innocuous one had gone unnoticed for years. In light of Detective Schoonover's discovery, it suddenly took on greater significance.

• 1:43:24Speaker 00

  Investigators also gave John's clothing to the internationally-renowned DNA Diagnostics Centre in Fairfield, Ohio, believing it might harbour trace DNA such as skin cells or sweat. The items had been tested in the 1990s and early 2000s, but failed to generate any leads. Given advancements in forensic science, police were optimistic things would be different this time around.

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  In 2016, Hales Corners Police announced that no biological material had been found on the belt from Daniel Acker's home, and that the tests run on John's clothing had failed to provide a usable DNA profile, likely due to improper storage and contamination.

• 1:44:15Speaker 00

  Februari 2026 markte 50. anniversariet van de dood van John Zierer. Op het moment dat deze episode wordt gepubliceerd, is niemand beschuldigd met zijn doden.

• 1:44:28Speaker 00

  Toen de hele 1045 naam's in het Zierer gevalverhaal opnieuw onderwerkt werden, ontdekte de Polis van Hales Corner dat 105 individuen moeten worden onderwerkt. Ze zijn nu in het proces om dat te doen. In de wakkerheid van het arrest van Daniel Acker, Michael Uporski, de vervangende docent die once de prime suspect in de doden van John was, werd uitgekeurd. Terwijl zijn carrière in professionele sport nooit teruggekregen is, kijkt hij zichzelf graag aan om nog hier te zijn. In een interview met de Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Uporski zei: "Als je terugkijkt naar de tragédie, de Zierers hebben een sonnet verloren. Ik heb een werk verloren."

• 1:45:14Speaker 00

  James Lee Crummell, de vorige autoverwerpers, die ook een suspect in de doden van John was, werd uiteindelijk verfijnd van twee andere doden en vijf raams. Hij bleef zijn onzekerheid in het geval van John blijven, terwijl hij wachtte op de executie in de St. Quentin Stadwagen, voordat hij door suïcidie in zijn wagencellen doodde. Als voor Daniel Acker, vorige detective Kent Schoonover en veel anderen die de geval bevolkten, kijken hem nog steeds als de meest vijandelende suspect in de doden van John. "Deze geval is nog niet tot een volledige conclusie, zei Schoonover tegen Gina Barton in 2015.

• 1:45:55Speaker 00

  En het moet worden, voor het bedreven van de familie, voor het bedreven van de recht, voor het bedreven van het departement. Deze geval moet worden bepaald."

• 1:46:07Speaker 00

  On the fortieth anniversary of John's murder, his older brother Mark imagined what a world with the John still in it would look like. Speaking to Gina Barton, he said: "I'd like to think if he was still alive today, he'd have a successful career and a family: a wife, some kids, maybe a couple grandkids. A place out in the country, because that's what he liked. He liked dogs and pets, so he'd probably have the nuclear family. One of the things that really bothers me is that he missed out on all that kind of stuff. People tell you to let it go and forget about it, that you've got to move on with

• 1:46:51Speaker 00

  your life, and I certainly have done that. But it's something I think about almost every single day."