NANCY GRACE - Armed, Dangerous and Wanted by FBI
Aired December 29, 2005 - 20:00:00 ET
CNN.com - Transcripts
[...]
Tonight, from Scottsdale, Arizona, Mary Fisher`s father, Bill Cooper. From the Scottsdale, Arizona, Police Department, Detective John Kirkham. And from the Arizona FBI agent Bob Caldwell.
[...]
HOLLY JOHNSON, "ARIZONA REPUBLIC": ... There have been numerous sightings...
GRACE: Holly, what do we know about motive? Why would he suddenly commit these murders and take off?
JOHNSON: Investigators believe that Fisher had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from a massage therapist.
[...]
JOHNSON: Yes. And his wife had apparently wanted a divorce, and he was just not willing to buy that. So that`s one of the possible motives that they`re looking at.
GRACE: To Bill Cooper. He is the father of Mary Fisher. Bill, did you notice anything wrong with their marriage?
BILL COOPER, FATHER OF MARY FISHER: No, we didn`t at all, Nancy. It was just -- as far as we were concerned, that was the best thing that was going. I mean, Robert was so nice to us. He was just sweet. I could just mention that for the last year, he and Mary had been going out double- dating with my oldest daughter and her husband, and they didn`t know anything was going on. Mary kept everything to herself, for whatever reason, I don`t know, but I think a lot of it was to protect us.
[…]
GRACE: ... Now, let me go quickly to John Kirkham. He`s the lead investigation with the Scottsdale Police Department. That took a lot of planning, not only to commit a triple homicide, but Officer, to then plan out the way this home exploded. Explain how he allegedly set the home on fire.
DET. JOHN KIRKHAM, SCOTTSDALE POLICE DEPARTMENT: Oh, absolutely, it took a lot of planning. What we were able to find out after the fire was out was that the flex pipe on the furnace had been removed in a manner that it couldn`t have ever been put back. And later on, we were able to determine that there was an ignition source placed in the home. And it was probably...
GRACE: An ignition source?
KIRKHAM: ... about eight hours went by.
[…]
KIRKHAM: Well, we think that he placed the candle on a stand in the hallway, and as the home filled with natural gas over a period of eight to ten hours, the gas would slowly come down to the level of the candle and then ignite the gas.
[…]
COOPER: Nancy, I`ve talked to myself about that many times. He was a man who said that he loved his wife, that he loved his two kids. But how can a man who loved his wife and his kids so much put a bullet in my daughter`s head, slash her throat and then slash Britney and Bobbie`s beautiful little throats? And I only come up with one conclusion -- he`s not a man, he`s a monster, Nancy. He`s a monster.
[…]
GRACE: The thought of you watching the house burn all that time and smelling it and not realizing that your daughter is in there...
[…]
BOB CALDWELL, FBI AGENT: We got involved once Scottsdale Police Department had had some probable cause to believe that Robert Fisher fled the state. They looked -- at first, it was -- we believed Robert was missing, didn`t know if he may be also a victim in this crime, at first. And then as the forensic evidence started to get developed, it was determined and started leaning towards that Robert Fisher was actually the suspect in this case.
GRACE: Now, when you say the evidence began to be developed, what do you mean? What evidence led you to Fisher?
CALDWELL: When they forensically started to look at the bodies and they actually determined that these throats had actually been slit and actually slit deep enough to actually cut the vertebrae in the back of the neck.
[…]
JOHNSON: Well, by all accounts, you know, as Mr. Cooper said, he was devout in his religion, he was devoted to his family. Robert Fisher was a man who, by all accounts, was also devoted to his job. He kept to himself a lot. He was an avid outdoorsman. He just -- he was someone that you wouldn`t really peg for a crime like this.
[…]
GRACE: ... Mr. Cooper, ... I mean, I hear that your son-in-law was devout, was very religious. Was there any indication that he had a very dark side to his personality?
COOPER: We`ve found out since then that he was just double-sided.
[…]
GRACE: Well, what about that, Kirkham? John Kirkham is the lead investigator of the Scottsdale Police Department. Is that true? Was Fisher leading a double life?
[…]
KIRKHAM: We know that when he was with his hunting buddies that there was some bizarre behavior. He`d take animals and just kill them for no reason. We`ve got one picture that we got out of the home where he`s covered with blood from his head down to his pants, kind of like a trophy picture that he had taken. So that`s just some of the bizarre behavior that we found when he was with his hunting buddies.
GRACE: What forensics lead you to believe that he is guilty?
KIRKHAM: ... As we cleared the rubble away from the bodies, they were badly charred. We moved the bodies over onto one side and found that there was blood that had been protected in the bedsheets under the bodies, shouldn`t have been there. We noticed the lacerations on the neck. And as we went from one body to the other, they all had the same forensic evidence, the slash to the throat, the blood underneath the bodies. We knew that this wasn`t a result of a fire.
[…]
CALDWELL: ... He left his brand-new pickup truck in the driveway, but Mary`s vehicle was missing. Also, many of Robert Fisher`s personal items in the home were also taken. His clothing, all the male clothing belonging to him was gone. ...
GRACE: Yes, exactly, why would they only take his belongings? And why hasn`t he come back to the home to find out about his family.
[…]
GRACE: Bob Caldwell with the FBI also with us, also on Fisher`s trail. How long can Fisher stay underground?
CALDWELL: You would think by now, after four years, he would have to surface at some time. He`s going to need money. He`s going to need a way to survive. As far as we know, the night before the murders occurred, he took $280 out of his bank account. And whether or not he may have had a stash of money in planning this -- he very well could have. But right now, that money would have run out. So he needs to come out and get supplies, get the normal things that we need to live with day by day.
[…]