WANTED: Justice for Rhys Pocan & MMIW Part 1

In 2021, we set out to cover the case of Rhys Pocan, a 35-year-old Indigenous woman who was murdered in Wisconsin in the ‘80s. But while we were in the field, we uncovered a disturbing pattern of murders with similarities to Rhys’ that were just too blatant to ignore. So, we spent the next three years working with local and federal law enforcement to try and get to the bottom of it.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  And I'm Britt.

• 1:07Ashley Flowers?

  And the story I have for you today has been years in the making. It all started when we set out to cover one unsolved case in Wisconsin. But what we uncovered was a possible serial killer at work in the state and 10 eerily similar cases that had never been connected, separated by jurisdiction and bureaucracy. But sometimes, it takes a little podcast and three years of work to get people working together and thinking outside of the box. So our story today starts with the case that piqued our interest years ago, and that's the murder of Reese Pocan.

• 2:16Ashley Flowers?

  On September 2nd, 1989, the non-emergency dispatch line at the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin started to ring. The caller won't give his name, but he says earlier that morning, like sometime before sunrise, he and his wife were walking in Nichols Creek, which is this like public hunting ground, and they stumbled upon a dead body. So the dispatcher asks, like, are you sure it's a human body? And the man says, quote, "Oh, yeah. It's been decapitated, and it's been there for a while, apparently." Now, he explains that he saw the body about 100 feet off a public access road. And when the dispatcher offers to get a detective on the line, the man's like, no, no, no, no, like, I just found it. I wanted to report it.

• 2:59Ashley Flowers?

  Like, I don't want anything to do with this, basically, right? So he hangs up without identifying himself and leaves before authorities actually get to the scene, where they do find the body that he described. And it is in a particularly gruesome state. This victim is severely decomposed, like almost mummified, and the victim's head and hands are missing. And it appears as if the corpse had been scavenged by animals and insects, like the insides are literally hollowed out and the skin is almost like leather. And other than the body, though, there is nothing else at the scene. And despite searching far and wide, they don't find any other body parts, they don't find

• 3:40Ashley Flowers?

  any clothes, no personal belongings, which makes identification essentially impossible. But based on the pelvic bone of this victim, the ME determines that this was a female. And a small scar on her abdomen, plus surgical clips near where the gallbladder would have been, tells them that this Jane Doe likely had a gallbladder surgery. But there aren't any obvious markings or wounds on the body, so the cause of death is undetermined. And strangely, the manner of death is Undetermined to?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Ma'am, she was decapitated. How is that undetermined in any way?

• 4:16Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I listen, everyone agrees with you like now, but back in the day, I guess the ME, so this guy named Dr. Jeffrey Johnson says that the head and hands being gone, again, he's saying this way back when in 89. He says that could be due to like animal predation.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  And they didn't take her feet? Animals just came and took the things that could identify her.

• 4:38Ashley Flowers?

  I know. It sounds bananas when you say it out loud, but everyone back then was like, well, that's what the ME says. Like, he's the professional. Except, yes, he was a professional, but he was new at his profession at the time. And we actually talked to this doctor for this episode. We asked him to review his own old findings. And he said that if he could do it all over again with like what he knows now, his experience, he would definitely list her death as a homicide rather than leaving that line blank. He said that in 89, again, he's brand new to the job. And in talking to us, he admitted that there's like just no possible way that her head and hands were actually removed by animals. So anyways, almost two months later, the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office, which is just over an hour south of Sheboygan,

• 5:24Ashley Flowers?

  they get a surprise when a hunter walks into their office with a severed hand in a bag. Now, this man, Russell Martin, says that he was out with his son and their dog like pheasant hunting on October 21st in this big open field, which by the way, is also a public hunting ground. When all of a sudden, his dog starts acting super strange, like off in the distance, like he's not right next to him. He's just rolling around on the ground. It's like, I have Chuck. I know he's rolling in something dead, always. Like, it's terrible. So he's not coming when he calls him. He goes over there to see what his dog's doing. And he gets the shock of his life when it's not animal poop or an animal he's rolling in. He like looks at what his dog is so worked up over and it is a human hand.

• 6:09Ashley Flowers?

  It looked like a left hand, mostly skeletal with four fingers and no thumb. But thumb or no thumb, there is no doubt what Russell is looking at. So he actually, he doesn't. Call police like they did with the body. He like picks up the hand and takes it to the sheriff's office in like this little plastic baggie that he had in a first aid kit. And then the sheriff comes out to like where he found it. They end up doing this big search of the area, which turns up the other hand, but nothing else.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  So basically in Sheboygan, there's a body with no head or hands. And in Waukesha, there's hands with no body.

• 6:44Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. So Waukesha actually tried getting fingerprints off the hand to try and identify them. But I told you, it's like mostly skeletal, like it's not even really possible. But then, I'm not really totally sure like which department it was. Someone has this like lightbulb moment and is like, oh, wait a minute. Exactly what you said. Like, I wonder if these hands belong to that body that has no hands.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:06Ashley Flowers?

  Now, they couldn't definitively connect anything yet. But like, you know, come on, probably. Though, even if they could say that these hands belong to the body, like, you still can't say who this person is, right?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Can we at least call it a homicide? Because animals didn't take the hands and drive them 80 miles away.

• 7:25Ashley Flowers?

  Of course, we could, if they were determined to be connected, right? But they can't for sure say that. Like, this is where DNA would be super useful right about now. But in 1989, in rural Wisconsin, like, forget about it. It's not until like six months later, in April of 1990, that efforts are finally made to see if detectives can finally match the Waukesha County hands to the Sheboygan County body. And more importantly, try and identify who they belong to. So lab tests are done out of state, but those ultimately come back inconclusive.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Okay, this might be a dumb question, but I assume they've gone through all of their, like, cataloged missing people, right?

• 8:04Ashley Flowers?

  Not dumb question, no. But yes, they have. So there's nothing in either of these counties that fits the little information they have. But after these inconclusive lab results, investigators decide to broaden their search. And I mean, considering how far apart these remains are, like, clearly someone is willing to travel to cover their tracks here. So they start looking as far away as Milwaukee, which is a pretty big city with a lot more. or missing person reports. And one of them really stands out. There is a 35 year old woman who was reported missing in August of 1989 named Reese Pocan. Not only does the timing fit since she went missing about a month before the body was

• 8:46Ashley Flowers?

  found, but there is a note in her missing persons report about a gallbladder surgery scar that really raises some eyebrows. And it's that scar that helps detectives confirm less than a month later what they'd been waiting almost a year to find out. Their Jane Doe is without a doubt Reese Pocan. But now they have even more questions because the circumstances around Reese's disappearance are truly bizarre. The story of her disappearance begins on August 10, 1989. So Reese had dropped her eight year old daughter Charlie off with her sister Flavia, who was Charlie's aunt. And I actually got to meet Charlie. And even all these years later, she says that she can still remember her last moments with her mom vividly.

• 9:31Ashley Flowers?

  And there are certain parts of this episode, I'll tell you right up front, that I want you to hear something directly from the person who lived it. And this is one of those. So here's Charlie.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  I do remember that day and it's always kind of just replays in my head. She told me I had to go to my aunt's house that she was going to watch me. And so we rode our bikes down. She didn't live far from us. And then we got there and I was like, well, I don't want to stay here. I want to go with you because I would go with her sometimes. So I was like, I don't want to go. I don't want to stay here. I want to go with you. And she's like, no, you can't this time. You have to stay here. And then I remember watching her ride her bike away and I was mad. And then I turned around and that was the last time I saw her. They replay this all the time. And you know, now I look back and it's just kind of weird because I'm watching her, you know, ride away, not knowing that's the last time I would see her. But it's really hard when you look back and you know, that was the last time I was going to see her.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Did your mom tell you why you couldn't go with her that day?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  She just said you couldn't. I just couldn't go with her that day. And she didn't say.

• 10:32Ashley Flowers?

  Reese's brother Billy also remembers seeing Reese that afternoon on her bike. And this is likely right after she dropped Charlie off. But he's not totally sure of the timing. He said they spoke for a second and Reese seemed like she was in good spirits. She told him that she was on her way to her boyfriend's house. We're gonna call her boyfriend Chris. So Chris told Billy that Reese had stopped by his place. And he puts that at like 2:45, 3:00 PM, which would have been right before he left for work. And then Chris says that Reese headed out on her bike in the direction of nearby National Avenue to go bar hopping. And this is where things start to get weird because there was this trail of sightings

• 11:13Ashley Flowers?

  and encounters and even physical signs of Reese Pocan in the following hours. But sometime before midnight, she seemingly vanished into thin air.

• 11:25Ashley Flowers?

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• 12:10Ashley Flowers?

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• 13:44Ashley Flowers?

  All of Reese Pocan's last movements center around this one strip of establishments on National Avenue. The first sighting of her there is actually around 9ish, at a bar called the Golden Spike Tavern. And apparently, while she's there, Reese seems pretty drunk, or like just out of it. Now, where she was from the time she left Chris's place to the time she got to this bar and how she got so drunk, or whatever it is she was, that's unclear. There are no confirmed sightings of her during that period. But the bartender at this bar says that around 10 or 11 p.m., Reese ends up leaving with this older man named Harry to go like sleep it off at his house.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't like that.

• 14:26Ashley Flowers?

  So that was my first reaction too, but apparently, like, it's not as sinister as it sounds. The bartender says that Harry lives like right around the corner from the bar, and he's known, I guess, to let barflies kind of crash at his place if they're too drunk to drive home, or in Reese's case, bike home. So she says that Reese just like grabs her backpack and heads out with Harry on foot.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Did she leave her bike behind?

• 14:46Ashley Flowers?

  It would seem. And actually, a few days later, when her brother Billy is trying to retrace her last steps, like on his own, he does find her yellow bike propped up outside of a place called Jean's Unicorn Bar, which is right across the street from Golden Spike Tavern. It's possible she was there, like in between that time, we saw many sightings of her. But anyway, according to Harry, when he and Reese go to his backyard gate, Reese kind of like stumbles and drops her backpack in his yard. So Harry like bends over, he picks it up to like hand it back to her, but before he even can, Reese darted back toward National Avenue. So Harry started walking back toward the bar to return her bag to her, and she's like out of eyesight by this point. And when Harry gets back to the bar, he sees actually Reese's flip flops,

• 15:29Ashley Flowers?

  like neatly placed together on the sidewalk outside. So he scoops her shoes up, planning to return those as well. But when he gets inside of the Golden Spike Tavern, she's nowhere to be found. So he just leaves the items with the bartender.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Do we know if Reese ever made it inside the bar?

• 15:45Ashley Flowers?

  That's unclear. But around 11:35 PM, Reese encounters a woman named Shirley, who works at the American Indian Council on Alcoholism, which is just down the road from the bars on National Avenue. And I guess Reese was known to attend this council sometimes, so she wasn't a stranger to Shirley. But Shirley says basically she's working a late night session and was approaching the front doors to leave when she sees Reese coming inside. And she said that Reese was incoherent when she tried to speak with her. She seemed to be under the influence of something, but she didn't know what. Shirley thought maybe it was drugs, only because she said she didn't smell alcohol on her. And she said that Reese's words were like slurred when she's trying to talk to her. She just wasn't really making sense, but she seemed super agitated.

• 16:30Ashley Flowers?

  And Shirley says that she tried to talk to Reese, but Reese sort of just like pushed her away. And from there, Reese walked off without explanation, without shoes, in the eastbound direction of National Avenue. Now, what's interesting is Charlie told us that her mom did drink a lot, but the only drug she ever experimented with was pot, and not even that often.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  But maybe that's something that you keep from your kid.

• 16:55Ashley Flowers?

  Totally possible. But I will say, the investigator on this case today, his name's Detective Nathan Hatch, he says that that seems to kind of be backed up by other family members, like not just her eight-year-old kid. Apparently Reese did like to drink beer, but she wasn't into, especially hard drugs.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Which makes me wonder if someone drugged her at the bar.

• 17:13Ashley Flowers?

  What makes me wonder too, I mean, it would be great to have other accounts of her behavior or what she said when she sobered up. But this encounter with Shirley at 11:35 PM is the last known time that Reese Pocan is ever seen alive. She never shows back up at her sister's house at the agreed-upon time to get Charlie. So Flavia ends up taking Charlie back to Reese's apartment herself. And not finding Reese there, she ends up leaving Charlie with the downstairs neighbor Carla. And Reese basically lives in this duplex, so she lives on top, Carla lives on bottom. And Carla watches Charlie, like, pretty regularly since Reese works full-time. So it wasn't all that odd when Charlie got dropped off. But what was odd was when Reese didn't show up the rest of the night,

• 17:58Ashley Flowers?

  or the next day on the 11th, or the 12th. I mean, normally, her routine was to pop by every four hours or so to make sure everything was good when Charlie was with Carla. But two days went by without so much as a word.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  And Carla didn't think to tell anyone?

• 18:13Ashley Flowers?

  I guess not. And we actually did get to speak to Carla, and she wasn't able to remember exactly what she was thinking at the time. But apparently, she, I think, just assumed Reese would turn up eventually. Now, it wasn't until the 12th that she finally started to get concerned, because that's when Chris, her boyfriend, Reese's boyfriend, came by looking for Reese. Apparently, he and Reese were in this bowling league together, and she had been totally MIA to their bowling alley date. So he figured that something might be wrong. But it really wasn't until that moment that he and Carla both realized how wrong things were. So they raised a flag for her brother Billy, and he came over to stay with Charlie until Reese came back. But when she still wasn't there on the 13th, the next day, like all bets are off.

• 18:58Ashley Flowers?

  That Sunday, August 13th, Billy reported Reese missing to the Milwaukee PD and an investigation began. And really, it's like investigation light, I should say, because police call the local hospitals, they call the jails, but of course, they don't find Reese in any of those. And five days later, at the suggestion of Reese's mother, Zane, they pulled Reese's bank records, which showed some transactions on August 7th and 8th and 9th, but nothing on the 10th or after, which is kind of just confirming what they already knew.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Also, leave it to the mom to suggest like very routine, basic investigative moves.

• 19:36Ashley Flowers?

  I know, yeah. So in all that time that Reese has been missing, in almost the year before she was connected to that body showing up in Sheboygan, the Pocan family, to your point, is like pretty much their own investigators. Like, they were having to unravel her disappearance themselves. Like, her brother Billy was actually the one who went and canvassed the National Avenue bars in the early days when police wouldn't. He was the one, like I said, to find her bike, and he is the one who found out that her backpack and shoes were left at the bar with the bartender at the Golden Spike Tavern.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Did Milwaukee PD do anything to search for her?

• 20:10Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, at a certain point, they like follow Billy's lead and start canvassing the bars themselves, but I think that their lack of action probably can be attributed to two things. Number one, 1989 Milwaukee was prime Dahmer time. Like, he gets arrested in 91, and listen, he's like not connected to Reese's story, even though we're talking dismemberments, but it's just proximity and like really close proximity. So interesting, as we're like in Milwaukee, we were like going to all the places that like things had happened, like the scene, the bar she was at. And as we're driving, the detective's like, oh, by the way, that was Dahmer's house. Like, it's literally six blocks east of where Reese's boyfriend Chris lived. But again, just a coincidence that we stumbled across.

• 20:53Ashley Flowers?

  And I don't think police at any point were ever trying to even connect Reese to the Dahmer stuff back then, even before he was like found.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Right. Dahmer targeted men like exclusively.

• 21:02Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. But still, again, this is like Milwaukee PD was zeroed in on that investigation and maybe didn't have the bandwidth to dive into Reese's case as they should have. But the second reason that Reese wasn't getting the full force of the MPD behind her was likely because of who she was. Reese was an Indigenous woman and a single mother. And she didn't just leave behind Charlie. She had three other daughters, too. Barbara, Regina, and Michelle. They were a little older than Charlie. They lived with different relatives out of town. I mean, Michelle was 11 when Reese went missing. Like, she was living with her grandma. She hadn't seen her mom since she was very little. So all of the sisters had vastly different relationships with Reese.

• 21:45Ashley Flowers?

  But her going missing still deeply affected all of them. The summer that Reese vanished, Barbara was actually considering moving to Milwaukee to live with her mom and Charlie. So they had to have been, like, pretty close or kind of close, even though the relationship was long distance. But all that to say, I do wonder if Reese's scattered family played into this assumption that the police maybe had or were making about her life or her lifestyle. And then just add on top of that assumption, just a general apathy toward Indigenous people. As an adult, Reese was a member of the Bad River La Pointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chipewa Indians. And there is no arguing that Indigenous people, especially those who go missing or are murdered,

• 22:29Ashley Flowers?

  are treated vastly different than their white counterparts. And I can say it, but here is where I want you to hear it from someone who has lived it. So this is Reese's daughter, Michelle.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  This happens to our people all the time. They have reports of these Caucasian women that go missing. Nobody reports about us. It's like we don't exist. They need to realize we're still here. But a lot of our women, we go through a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff we don't talk about. Our families, we bury stuff. Our tribes, they bury stuff. They don't want stuff to get out there. But it happens. And there's so many of our women, sorry, they're gone. Nobody knows where they're at. There's so many of our women that are found. And it's a shame that we have to go through this.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  We've been dealing with this for, God, hundreds of years. And it's, this is like something that really just touches my soul. Because it's sad that it's it's hit my my family. And we have to go through this. And you know, and it's it's not just our race. There's also other races that are going through this as well. Our brown brothers sisters are going through the same thing. We're all still here and we need the attention just as everybody else.

• 23:57Ashley Flowers?

  But Reese's disappearance didn't get much attention. And not just from the police. The press at the time wasn't really talking about this missing mother either. And for Charlie, it sort of seemed like nobody cared about her mom, who just up and vanished.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  It was very confusing because I remember when I went to my aunt's house and she was missing for a while. I remember being very angry and saying, I don't understand why they can't find her. Like, she's probably just down at the bar by our house. Did anybody go there? You know, have they looked there? Have they, you know, why can't they find her? I remember being very upset that I just couldn't understand why nobody could find her.

• 24:33Ashley Flowers?

  At this point, Charlie was living with her aunt, uncle, and their five sons. And that situation was starting to feel more permanent.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  It was a completely different world there. I was used to just being my mom and I, and that's it. And then all of a sudden, I have five boys. But it was very different from what I had known. And we lived in the country. I was used to the city. It was a pretty big shift. And then obviously not having my mom. But it was nice, you know? It was different having all those people with you. But I know they cared about me and stuff, so it was good.

• 25:08Ashley Flowers?

  Charlie had been living with her aunt for almost two months when the call from the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Office came in. They had found Reese's body. And Charlie still remembers what that conversation was like with her aunt and uncle when they told her.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  They had sat us all down and they had told us that, you know, my mom's remains were found and, you know, that she had been murdered. And I remember just sitting there and not knowing what to do. It was almost like I was frozen. And then I remember my aunt was like, "It's okay to cry." I started crying. And now I couldn't process everything. I remember telling my aunt that, I remember I had to help her home from the bar one time and maybe she was sick. And she's like, "No, you know, somebody killed her." And I was like, "Oh, okay, yes, that's right." So I remember just being like very confused and not totally understanding. But it was like, I didn't know what to think. I knew they had found her torso.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  And then I knew her hands and her skull were missing. But I didn't totally know like where they found what. They would share things with me, but I don't remember like a lot of the details. My ancestors, they told me. They always tried to be honest with me. So I don't know if maybe I blocked some of it out. But I don't remember them really telling me her hands were found here or her skull was found here and torso was found here. Any of those actual details of, you know, or autopsy or anything like that.

• 26:41Ashley Flowers?

  Reese's skull would end up being found more than a year and a half after Reese went missing in the Vernon Marsh area. And this is about a quarter of a mile from where her hands were found. But finding her skull doesn't progress the investigation much. It's not like it's in a new location that gives them clues. Plus, the skull didn't show any markings or signs of trauma that would indicate even how Reese died.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Is it weird that they didn't find the skull before?

• 27:05Ashley Flowers?

  Possibly, but I mean Detective Hatch took me to that marsh and we were talking about the possibility of animal activity there. Like, I mean, it is this big wildlife area. So animals could have easily moved the hands or skull, for that matter. Now Charlie couldn't understand how anyone could have wanted to do this to her mom. No one in their family could. Not even Detective Hatch could, because everyone he spoke with during the investigation had just glowing things to say about Reese. Her coworkers at the Bradley Center, where she worked as an admin assistant, loved her. Her friends loved her. There wasn't an obvious suspect. That is, until police learned about Reese's boyfriend, Chris.

• 27:48Ashley Flowers?

  And there was something that, right off the bat, set up some pretty big red flags.

• 27:55Speaker 02

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• 29:01Ashley Flowers?

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• 29:46Ashley Flowers?

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• 30:15Ashley Flowers?

  It was a few of Reese's siblings who first became suspicious of Chris. Like, again, very quickly. And for two reasons mostly. One, he had been dating another woman at the same time as Reese. And apparently he started dating this other woman in July and then continued to see her through September while Reese was missing. And two, apparently his story kept changing. Like originally, he told police that the last time he saw Reese, she was biking away from his apartment, heading south after visiting him on the day in question. But later, he told police that the last time he saw her was in his apartment and that he never saw her biking after that, which is like, small inconsistencies, but they stuck out nonetheless.

• 30:58Ashley Flowers?

  And he also didn't have an alibi for the night that Reese disappeared. Chris originally told Billy and detectives, again, Billy is Reese's brother, he said that he was at work while Reese was at the bars. Now, I don't know if they checked with his work, but even if they did, his shift was scheduled to end at 11:00 PM. We know that Reese was last seen at 11:35, so he would have been off work at the time that something happened to her.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not really an alibi.

• 31:23Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Also, it comes to light that Chris apparently sold one of his SUVs a few weeks after Reese's disappearance, and they tried back in the day to track down this car, which was a 1972 red and white Toyota Land Cruiser, but they're never able to locate. Which leaves them with a lot of questions about not only Chris, but specifically his car. I mean, without a doubt, Reese would have had to have been transported in a vehicle all the way to where she was found in Sheboygan. So like, there's no way around that. They need a vehicle.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  And I mean, what are the odds that Reese's cheating boyfriend's car conveniently gets sold?

• 31:58Ashley Flowers?

  It stands out.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Right after she goes missing.

• 32:00Ashley Flowers?

  Right? So Chris also told detectives that he, by the way, had hunted out in the Vernon Marsh before, which is where her hands and her head end up being found.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  And we know perps tend to dispose of things or commit crimes in areas where they're comfortable, that they're familiar with.

• 32:16Ashley Flowers?

  But the thing is, they couldn't really tie Chris to Sheboygan or the Nichols Creek area where Reese's body was.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  And on top of that, is there like a motive? Did he have a history of like violence or violence with her?

• 32:30Ashley Flowers?

  So I mean, he admitted to slapping Reese one time, and Carla, the downstairs neighbor, said she heard them arguing sometimes, but she said it was like normal relationship arguing. And I don't know what that means to Carla, but I don't think it was anything super violent in her mind. I think that everyone who's maybe side-eyeing Chris maybe believes that if he had something to do with it, it might have been just to get her out of the way so he could date that other woman. But even if Chris wasn't violent, if she didn't suffer abuse at his hand, the thing I'll say about Reese is that she had known what life with an abusive partner was like. Enter suspect number two, Larry. Larry was Reese's most recent ex before Chris.

• 33:14Ashley Flowers?

  The two had started dating after Reese gave birth to Charlie, and Charlie actually grew up thinking that Larry was her dad, but he wasn't her actual biological father. Still, he lived with Reese and Charlie in the early 80s, and he definitely had a temper. Like, he was not only violent, but also known to stalk Reese. And here is Detective Nathan Hatch.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  As we took a look at Larry, he stood out to us because he was abusive towards Reese. Not only did we find medical records of abuse, where Reese had went to the hospital in Lechra Falls for abuse, where she had like a broken rib or a contusion on her face or a broken fingernail, that kind of thing. On three separate occasions, she reported her boyfriend at that time had abused her, but we also found out that he had dated a girl in Illinois who he was abusive towards as well.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  I was scared for my mom. He was always very loving towards me and I never had an issue with being afraid of him. But I was definitely afraid of when they would start fighting. And it was really hard because I knew how to call the cops right away. I knew that at a very young age of how to do that. And it's not something the kids should know.

• 34:26Ashley Flowers?

  But when detectives speak to Larry, they find out that he was living in Illinois in the summer of 89. And so at that point, they're like, oh, he's out of town. They pretty much just write him off.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Okay, where in Illinois, though? Because this Midwesterner knows that it's just a hop, skip and a jump from Chicago to Milwaukee.

• 34:44Ashley Flowers?

  And it was Chicagoland, like, you're right. But at the time, I guess the alibi seemed good enough. Larry's girlfriend says she was with him, so like, that's kind of the end on Larry. But our reporting team recently got ahold of Larry and he told us that when Reese disappeared, they had already been separated for like two years. And after he moved to Illinois, he says they didn't visit each other or really stay in touch. He didn't admit to any abuse, but he did say that drinking was a big problem in their relationship. And Larry told us that when he lived in Illinois that summer, he didn't have a car, which was like implying that he couldn't have easily gotten back to Milwaukee. Now, he didn't explicitly say that he didn't visit Milwaukee during his stint in Illinois,

• 35:27Ashley Flowers?

  but he did explicitly tell us that he did not kill Reese.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  And I assume Chris was denying any involvement in Reese's murder, too?

• 35:35Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, and we tried repeatedly to get in touch with him as well, but no luck there. What I know is he told police back in the day that he didn't have anything to do with it, like barking up the wrong tree.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Did anyone ever search Chris's apartment or even Reese's apartment for that matter?

• 35:49Ashley Flowers?

  No, and no. I know they did search whatever vehicle that Chris still had, but they didn't find anything in that. And I know that Reese's daughter Barbara actually moved into her mom's apartment after she went missing. And she told police that there was nothing out of place there, which again, just like seemed like enough for them. Like, okay, thumbs up. So by this point, to try and generate some leads in the homicide investigation, detectives put out the news of Reese's identification to the local media. And over the next six months, a handful of tips come in. Dozens of callers are naming people in the area that they're suspicious of, or saying that they might have seen Reese that night.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Is there anything legit?

• 36:29Ashley Flowers?

  Well, it seems like maybe some of the tips could have been. But again, I go back to like, what are the reasons this case didn't get worked? Were they overwhelmed? Did they not care? Whatever. Plus, add the fact that Detective Hatch told us that the area she was in that night, that she went out in, had this criminal element to it. So people were calling in with all these names of sketchy people who might have been around National Avenue. And for all the reasons listed above, I think things just got lost in the shuffle, or again, just not paid attention to, ignored, whatever. And none of these tipsters are even naming the same people. So like, every single one is different.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  And you can't prioritize who, like, five people are saying it's this person, everyone's saying someone different.

• 37:09Ashley Flowers?

  So they fielded the calls, they run down a few of them. And remember, running them down is no easy task, since they were having to make, this isn't Milwaukee. Milwaukee had the missing persons case, Sheboygan has the homicide. So to go try and find these people, to go to the bars, like, they're making the hours-long trip down to Milwaukee, where she was last seen, every time they want to run something down. They don't even have the internet back then, you know what I mean?

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:33Ashley Flowers?

  Now, the only super interesting tip is from a man who, in a very roundabout and confusing way, calls in at like 2:30 in the morning one day, and tells the dispatcher that he knows who killed Reese. He says that he was with his friend that night, and they picked Reese up. And when she didn't do what his friend wanted, his friend pulled a knife on her.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Wait, so basically, this is a confession?

• 38:00Ashley Flowers?

  Kind of, like a hearsay confession. So basically, the caller tells the dispatcher that, like, gives the friend's name, everything, gives an address, which, by the way, the address is extremely close to National Avenue, where Reese was last seen. And the dispatcher keeps trying to get more details about this murderer friend. And the caller says it's so wild, he says, "You're talking to him right now." And so the dispatcher's immediately like,

• 38:25Speaker 02

  What?

• 38:25Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, you're telling me you killed her? And then he's like, no, no, no, no, my friend did. And the dispatcher asks like, why he's providing this information? And he's like, I'm just feeling really guilty. And then he goes on to say that he doesn't want to face jail time. But again, he's like, I know my friend killed Reese because they were together at the Bush Bar that night. And like, that's where his friend picked Reese up. And then the caller says that about three weeks after all this, his friend told him what he did to her. So he's not even like, he was there. So a detective follows up on this call. He actually figures out the name of the caller. And that phone number that he gave actually belongs to the caller's mom. But guess what?

• 39:09Ashley Flowers?

  That is the extent of the detective work. This call basically, again, call it lost in the shuffle of other tips or whatever, they just stop investigating on that and things go quiet.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  So, wait, did they rule this guy out?

• 39:26Ashley Flowers?

  No, like, the lead just stops getting worked.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  They just stopped working on it?

• 39:28Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Okay, but if things go quiet, this feels like the kind of thing you'd like, circle back on when you have absolutely nothing else?

• 39:36Ashley Flowers?

  Right, but they don't. Which is like a clear mistake because in early 91, some more tips come in. One of them is anonymous, but says that Reese was seen at the Bush Bar the night she went missing.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Where the caller said she had been.

• 39:50Ashley Flowers?

  Right, which is, and it's along the same strip of bars as everything else. And they say she was seen there sometime around 9:00 PM and that she left with a white man.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Potentially the caller who pseudo confessed and implicated his friend?

• 40:03Ashley Flowers?

  And I know he's a white guy. So like, it feels very freaking interesting all of a sudden. But when they're getting this new tip, because that other lead got just dropped, they're not putting two and two together.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Well, we know she's seen after 9:00 as well. And then like, she's alone when she's last seen.

• 40:22Ashley Flowers?

  Right, but that doesn't mean that she didn't like, meet back up with someone. So like, I get what you're saying. Like, she's not with him the whole time.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:28Ashley Flowers?

  But they could have reconnected. I think anyone in her orbit that night is worth identifying and Getting more information from.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 40:35Ashley Flowers?

  Though there is another tip that they get from a woman who says that she knows about a group of people who saw Reese the night that she went missing just before midnight, which is even more interesting.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that feels more promising.

• 40:47Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. She says that this group of people knew Reese, and they saw her walking barefoot in the eastbound direction on National Avenue. Now, east would be away from the bars, but because this tip was third-hand information, detectives were never able to confirm either the Bush bar thing or this new sighting of her being with this group. So in 1991, that's when the case officially goes cold and all investigative work stops.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  And that's it?

• 41:19Ashley Flowers?

  For another decade, at least. But in 2003, there's this like little blip, a strange twist in the case, one that I think throws everyone for a major curveball.

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• 42:40Ashley Flowers?

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• 43:25Ashley Flowers?

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• 43:54Ashley Flowers?

  So in 2003, Sheboygan County gets a weird call from another police department in the region. And they're like, "Hey, there's this guy here saying that he knows something about one of your murders. And this man is none other than the previously anonymous caller who first discovered Reese's body in the woods all those years ago." And I don't know what it is about here and now, but all of a sudden, he's ready to talk. So he tells police that he was in Nichols Creek with his girlfriend, by the way, not his wife, they learn, like he previously said. He says they liked to go there to hook up. Also, he says he has this low-key marijuana patch and he's got to check on his crops.

• 44:38Ashley Flowers?

  So that could explain why he didn't want to give the cops his name back in the day. But police find this man suspicious for a few reasons. One is because when he first called in, he noted that the body belonged to a woman. Like, he said that specifically. "I've seen the photos. I've seen the state of decomposition." I don't know how you could tell that.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Well, you even said that it was determined that it was a woman based on like-

• 45:06Ashley Flowers?

  Pelvic bone.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Pelvic bone.

• 45:08Ashley Flowers?

  And then there's the fact that this guy was known, by the way, to hang out at the bars on National Avenue back when Reese died. And some of his acquaintances were the same people who may or may not have seen Reese, like that group of people. Again, there's like rumors about who they were. His acquaintances could have been that group of people.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  How did they all know each other?

• 45:29Ashley Flowers?

  Well, one of the men who may have seen Reese around midnight or in the group or whatever, was reportedly selling pills to the girlfriend of the guy who found Reese's body. And reminder, she's with him when Reese is found.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  That feels too intertwined to be a coincidence.

• 45:45Ashley Flowers?

  Right? You've got somebody who's like at the place where she goes missing and somebody who, not only do we know they're familiar with the place where she was, they're the people who freaking called it in and like found her. But even though this is like a weird, like tangled web, detectives like don't seem to be able to untangle it. So just as soon as it seems like this case is heating up again, it goes back on the shelf with more potential suspects added to the list.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  I almost feel like if that guy who found her wasn't a part of what happened to Reese, then maybe he like heard about it and went out there looking to see if the rumor he heard was true, you know, like-

• 46:25Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Kind of looking into like how legit it was.

• 46:28Ashley Flowers?

  Right. And like he did have that little like grow operation like I mentioned. And again, like grow operation, maybe too big of a word. It's like a patch of marijuana out there. So I don't know. Like I can't shake the feeling that it feels more connected to me. I also like can't shake the feeling of like, why come forward all those years later? Cause it's not like he's saying he knows who did it, saying he knows more, but like finding this body is like weighing on him. You know what I mean? I don't know. If I found a body in, you know, I called police and they found it, whatever, and I wanted to be anonymous, I don't think I would come forward years later.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  And be like, I was the one who called it in.

• 46:58Ashley Flowers?

  But I have nothing new to say. Right. Oh, and one of the other things I forgot to mention, the reason I find it so weird, is that in this guy's original call to police, when he wouldn't give his name, he also said that it was dark when he stumbled upon the body. And again, like I said, like this body isn't in a state that you could tell the gender, even under fluorescent lights, let alone in like a pitch black field.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:21Ashley Flowers?

  So- All of these tips are coming in. But for Reese's daughter, Charlie, it felt like answers in her mom's case were further away than ever.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  My family didn't really want to talk about it, that it hurt too much. And I understood that, so I just kind of let it go. So many years had passed and they never found anybody. So I just assumed, well, that's kind of just the way it is. There's not going to be anything that comes of this. I don't think I was too hopeful that anything would come of it. So I just didn't want to maybe bring myself through that pain of not finding answers. Because I had been so long and I felt like there was nobody investigating, like she was forgotten.

• 48:04Ashley Flowers?

  Over the next couple of decades, they actually reopen the case a handful of times when various tips come in. But every time after a few months, the case just ends up back on the shelf. And this goes on pretty much until 2017, when Detective Hatch is assigned the case almost 30 years later. But even then Detective Hatch is still working other active cases for the sheriff's department. So he's only able to focus on Reese's in between those assignments. In that time, though, he is able to check off important things. Like in 2018, he sends a bone from one of the hands to a lab in Texas to definitively connect that bone to Reese. Then in 2021, AudioChuck enters the chat. So that's actually when I hired our reporter Emily.

• 48:49Ashley Flowers?

  She was our first reporter on my other weekly show, The Deck. And she was planning a reporting trip to Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, to cover some Deck episodes when she came across Reese's case. So she asked the sheriff's office for an interview about her because she could only find like one or two lone articles about this woman. And she was the only cold case in the county not on the Wisconsin cold case card deck. And we just kind of became obsessed. So Hatch said it was actually Emily coming along that really sparked him to go all in on this case. But hi, in case you haven't looked at the calendar yet, it's 2025. We have been playing the long game. Hatch had to do the unsexy part of investigating first, like digitizing the case file.

• 49:33Ashley Flowers?

  But when he was ready to start the investigative work, there was one person at the top of his list that he wanted to look into first, and that was Larry.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  The ex?

• 49:43Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  I thought he was ruled out for being just across the border in Illinois during Reese's disappearance.

• 49:50Ashley Flowers?

  That's, again-

• 49:51Speaker 02

  That's the point.

• 49:52Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, exactly. But here is the thing. So what I appreciate about Hatch is he's like, I want to do my due diligence. Like, I'm going to get the alibi for myself. And he sees what we see. Like, he can't tell if him being in Illinois was, A, like, meaningful. And honestly, was that even corroborated by anyone?

• 50:09Speaker 06

  When we talked to him, he says, well, I couldn't have done it. I was in Illinois. I was in Chicago. So I talked to his girlfriend, and I was able to find out from her that she remembers the Pocan family calling her house, looking to see if they could identify where Reese was, right? And he didn't know, or said he didn't know. And she recalls, well, he couldn't have done it because he was home with me, but I reminded her that the homicide didn't take place, you know, within minutes or hours of that phone call. So I wondered where he was prior to that. And she said about three or four days leading up to that phone call, he was gone for several days to weeks. To me, his alibi, poof, went away.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Well, that changes things.

• 50:53Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. Because think about it, Chicago isn't that far from Milwaukee.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:57Ashley Flowers?

  If Larry had access to a car, he could have popped into town easily. Of course, Larry said he didn't have a car, but Detective Hatch actually found a driving infraction for Larry in Illinois that summer, which proves that at some point, he at least had access to a car, even if he didn't own it. Like semantics, Larry, Jesus. So even though it's possible, it doesn't prove anything. And Hatch doesn't want to get tunnel vision. He also wants help. So in 2022, he goes to an MMIW webinar where he finds out about the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is a federal agency that in part works to address issues like violence, missing persons, and other serious crimes affecting tribal communities.

• 51:41Ashley Flowers?

  So he reaches out to them to get more eyes on the case, and they're actually able to assign a special agent to help with the investigation. This guy's name's Michael Potter. And together Hatch and Potter re-interview multiple suspects, including Chris, the caller who initially discovered Reese's body, and some men who popped up in initial tips. And they conduct a number of polygraph exams with help from the FBI. And of the seven people total that they tried to give polygraphs to, four of them refuse, three accept. Of the three who accepted, only one showed deception. And I guess this was one of the guys who reportedly saw Reese around midnight the night she went missing.

• 52:23Ashley Flowers?

  But then after he like fails or shows deception in this polygraph, he then refuses to answer any further questions.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  And all these guys are still alive?

• 52:32Ashley Flowers?

  They are, which is like the wild part. We don't often see that in cold cases. Listen, we actually tried, we're not naming all of them, we tried to contact all of them. Nobody had any interest in talking to us. But anyways, around this time, detectives also finally follow up on that suspicious confession phone call from 1990.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Finally.

• 52:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, the one where the caller told the dispatcher that his friend killed Reese after picking her up at the Bush Bar. So they went to this implicated friend's house. And Bert, you won't believe this, but he lives not six houses away from where Reese was last seen. So Detective Hatch actually took Emily and me on a ride along. I mentioned that before. And I'm not kidding, I could be standing at where the Bush Bar and Alcohol Alliance used to be, Alcohol Alliance is where she's last seen, and I could throw a rock and hit this guy's front door, which to me like makes this mysterious friend actually a little more-

• 53:26Speaker 02

  A lot more interesting.

• 53:27Ashley Flowers?

  So when detectives pay him a visit in 2023, he tells them that he's not interested in being interviewed. He does admit to knowing the confession caller, though. And the cops actually play the call for him right on his stoop. But he wanted no part of any of it. And they say he became combative. So that was that.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Do they go back to the confession caller himself?

• 53:52Ashley Flowers?

  They do. He tells detectives that it's not his voice on the old recording call. Like, he's like, you got the wrong person, even though like it was pretty clear who it was. And then he refuses to take a polygraph. And when Detective Hatch hands him his business card, like, hey, if you change your mind, like, we would love to talk to you, the guy. He's like, I'm gonna rip this up when you leave. So, cool. And it's worth noting, like, where this guy lived back when Reese went missing, it was just a half block north of National Avenue. Like, specifically the same cross streets where the Bush bar was. So even he's super close.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  And again, I have to ask, how could this all be a coincidence?

• 54:29Ashley Flowers?

  I know, tangled web, I told you. But it's like, there are just too many pieces of the puzzle still missing. Basically, there's like a lot of smoke here, but they can't find the fire. So in 2023, detectives track down Larry again. They try to talk to him in person. Now, obviously, he's not in Illinois anymore. It turns out that in the early 90s, Larry moved back to Wisconsin and had been living in Black River Falls with a long-term partner. Now, initially, he agrees to come in, take a polygraph, but then he ends up changing his mind. No go. But by this point, some polygraphs given, some interviews, ripping up cards, Hatch is invested. So in September 2023, he gets Crime Stoppers to put up 11 billboards

• 55:14Ashley Flowers?

  with Reese's picture and information. And he even gets some put up near Larry's house. Last we spoke to Hatch, he had interviewed about 45 more people in connection with the case. And while he was busy doing that, Emily was doing some of her own work on this case, but also on the other cases. Because like, hi, again, we have the deck. We're trying to collect cases from all over. For another weekly show, like you have to be juggling like 10 cases at a time. And I'll never forget this moment. We were in the office and Emily comes in, I'm like in the conference room and she's like, "Hey, I think Reese's case might be connected to a bunch of others. And I think there might be a serial killer in Wisconsin that nobody knows about except for me."

• 55:59Ashley Flowers?

  In the next episode, I will unpack our reporting on two of the other Wisconsin dismemberment cases and finally attempt to unravel this twisted thread to get some long overdue justice for these victims. If you're in the Crime Junkie Fan Club, you can listen to that right now in the Crime Junkie app. And I'm bringing you yet another one of these 10 stories next week on my other show, The Deck. That's going to be dropping next Wednesday, which means we're covering at least four of these victim's stories now. And by doing this, I'm hoping it eventually leads to us getting interviews about all of these victims. Until then, if you know anything at all about the murder of Reese Pocan in Wisconsin, please reach out to Detective Nathan Hatch.

• 56:44Ashley Flowers?

  You can reach him at his office line, 920-459-3135, or at his email, [email protected].

• 57:12Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  You can also follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

• 57:20Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 57:58Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

• 58:08Speaker 02

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• 58:36Speaker 07

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