Case 343: John Zera

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It was 10 o'clock on the night of Monday, March 23, 2009, when a team of police officers gathered outside a two-story, off-white condominium in Walkershire, a small suburban community in the Midwest American state of Wisconsin. Earlier that day, that apartment had received a phone call from a local Recreation Center, asking them to investigate one of their longtime swimming structures after he'd been accused of acting inappropriately with some of his underage students.

And the outwardly calm, mild mannered individual, the man agreed to let investigators search his home.

As the officers made their way through the condo's first floor, they were struck by how a macular it was.

Not a stick of furniture was out of place, and each room had been meticulously cleaned and organized. One thing did strike them as odd, though. All of the windows were covered in sheets and tops. 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, 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 their 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 recognized some of the faces from milk gardens and nightly news reports. They were children who had either been murdered or gone missing from across the country, stretching back to decades. But one face in particular stood out, a 14-year-old boy with a buck toothed smile and a sandy blonde hair swept over blue eyes.

His name was John Zero. On Friday, February 20, 1976, John Zero 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.

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 southside.

“They had moved to Franklin the previous year after John Senior, a blue collar worker, and his wife Janis, 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 then-you-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 white-tailed deer, racoons, squirrels, and other wildlife. John, in particular, enjoyed trawling the muddy wetlands that surrounded the property in search of frogs and crayfish.

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's senior and Janice knew he'd never take off on a whim to see his old friends without asking first.

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?"

“With each note 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 parker. 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, blanketing Franklin in an eerie silence and erasing everything in its path.

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 have 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, 13 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. But the officer remained skeptical. Frustrated by the police's indifference, John's 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, with several schoolbooks, a well-worn copy of the alternative magazine, Bugle American, and a 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. They scoured the school in search of John, checking every classroom and locker, but he was nowhere to be found.

The zero family filed a missing person's report. Throughout the weekend, they were inundated with reporters, law enforcement officers, family members, and volunteer searches.

who was five foot six and 110 pounds.

“At the time, John went missing, he was wearing jeans, a dark colored shirt, and a brown shoes.”

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 behavior 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 130 pm.

“He then walked out of the classroom and never returned.”

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 for 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 24, John had been missing for four days, and to no clues about his whereabouts had emerged.

“More than 50 volunteers joined to the zero family in searching Franklin High School and its surrounding property.”

But 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 28, eight days after John went missing, two teenage boys were taking a walk in Whitnell Park, the largest park in Milwaukee County.

Spanning 640 acres across both Franklin and its neighbouring community of Hales Corners, the park is popular with cyclists, hikers and runners who enjoy exploring its five miles of nature trails. At approximately 1130 a.m., the boys stumbled upon a clearing about 180 feet east of nature trail road and 200 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.

The site he's left leg was a large rock matted with blood and what appeared to be human hair. Petrified, the boys raised 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 Whitnell Park, it was Hales Corners Police who responded to the scene. About 20 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 a brown shoes.

Tucked neatly inside the shoes was a pair of blue socks. They also found a pen, a pencil, a hair comb, and a Franklin High School hall pass dated February 20 and made out to John Zero. 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. He's body preserved by the falling snow. As officers caught in 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. Police didn't know whether he'd written it himself, or if it was an ominous message left by the killer. John's body was still partially frozen when it reached the office of associate medical examiner Elaine Samuels for autopsy.

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. Muse of the crime spread quickly through Hale's corners, shocking residents with its senseless brutality. Like Franklin, Hale's 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 Hale's 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.

“At the time of John's year as murder, there were only 13 officers on the Hale's 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 report a 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 officers cigarette butt instead of the suspects cigarette butt, he remarked.

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 inter-departmental drama between Hale's corners and Franklin Police.”

Although the Zeeris had filed a missing person's report in Franklin, where they lived and sent their kids to school, John's body was discovered in the Hale's corners section of Wittonol Park, meaning they had jurisdiction over his murder investigation. 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 Hale's corners police chief, who reluctantly agreed that their departments should collaborate on the case,

despite not always seeing eye to eye.

But neither Franklin nor Hale's corners police had much experience with cases spanning multiple jurisdictions, and it didn't always share information efficiently. This ended 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 "sadistic male homosexual or bisexual, who exhibited psychopathic behavior when it came to sex." He likely had a strong religious background and was a 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 Zero would not have been his killer's first victim.

The criminal profile I believed that the offender wouldn't want anyone to know that he was same sex attracted. 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 within side a 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 neighbor against neighbor.

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 Zero 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. The only potential lead police had was the dilapidated copy of bugle American magazine found in John's locker. According to several tipters, a classified ad had run in the back of the magazine, which had asked John's south side gay to write to a man named Bob via a post office box.

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

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

“But investigators remained convinced that the man they were looking for was part of Milwaukee's gay scene.”

A 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. 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 track as students came outside to smoke cigarettes.”

Sometimes engaging them in conversation. There were also rumors 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 offenses. According to his employer, he'd been acting strangely for the past few months and seemed unable to concentrate on his work. Cole workers confirmed that Cole's behavior had changed following the discovery of John Zero'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. 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.

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. Cole claimed that ever since John Zero'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 shavad. When officers handed Cole a photo of John, he clutched it tightly in both hands, he's expression-pained. He was a beautiful boy, he said, after several uncomfortably long seconds.

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 Zero 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 the 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. The Wisconsin Supreme Court banned the use of polygraph evidence in criminal trials in 1981, ruling the results to unreliable and the potential Ferrara to great. Today, investigate his 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.

Police hooked David Cole up to a polygraph machine and asked if he or anyone he knew had killed John Zero.

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 Whiteman, 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, 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 mental health aid at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. According to the tip star, this man, whose name was Daniel Lacker, had a reputation for befriending young boys.

This wasn't the first time Acca's name had come up during the investigation.

While patrolling Whitnell Park on February 29, 1976, just 24 hours after John Zero's body was found, an officer had spotted a man loitering near the crime scene on his yellow, Schwinn Bicycle. It was Daniel Lacker. The officer watched Azacca parked beside a thicket of trees and walked toward the small clearing where John had been murdered.

Curious, he approached Acca and asked what he was doing there. Acca replied that he was looking for the place where John Zero's body had been found. Apparently, this is it, he said. Although the officer found Acca's behavior strange, he hadn't questioned him any further. After this new tip landed eight months later,

a detective went to Daniel Lacker's apartment to question him about John Zero. Acca claimed he didn't know the 14-year-old but felt deeply connected to him. When the detective asked why, Acca's eyes filled with tears. He explained that he'd planned to take a bike ride through Whitnell Park on the day John was murdered, but decided against it at the last minute.

According to Acca, he's girlfriend had called him that morning, and to date spoken for a couple of hours. After which, Acca was exhausted and decided to take a nap. By the time he woke up at 2.30 pm, the weather had taken a turn, so he decided to stay home instead of going for his bike ride.

Acca said he'd visited Whitnell 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. Like so many locals, Acca said he'd learned of John's disappearance through the near constant media coverage.

before he was discovered, fearful the team may have drowned in one of its many pawns.

“He was plagued by guilt, believing his decision to take a nap that fateful afternoon”

could have been the difference between life and death. To prove his intentions were pure, Acca 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 Acca's involvement in the case. In late 1976, Daniel Lacca 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 Acca worked, had been attacked in the woods behind the facility. Her assailant was a fellow patient named Jo.

He had left her on the brink of death, her head propped up on a rock, and a wooden post shoved in her mouth.

Acca didn't hear about the attack until months later, and when he did, he immediately asked Jo why he'd done it.

Jo's response sent a chill up-acca's spine.

“Because that's what I saw them do to the boy in the park.”

According to Acca, Jo told him that on the day John Zero disappeared, Jo had been at a McDonald's in Hale's corners when three men in a dark blue sedan picked him up. One of them was openly brandishing again. A teenage boy sat in the back seat, flanked by two of the men.

The boy looked nervous, a large suit coat, warping his small frame.

They drove to Whitnell Park, pulled over near the edge of the woods, and hacked to a popular make-out spot. There, the man forcibly removed the boy's clothes as Jo stood by and watched.

“Terrified, the boy tried to run, but one of the men ordered Jo to catch him and bring him back.”

Jo didn't want to hurt the boy, but he did as it 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 Zero's parents later confirmed that John hardly ever swore, but when he did, that was the phrase he'd use. Once the men finished assaulting the boy, one of them grabbed a nearby rock and struck him savagely on the head. At the time of John's murder, Jo 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 Jo'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. Jo 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. Police spoke to Jo, who reiterated the basic facts of Akka's story with less detail. They showed Jo a photo line-up in an effort to identify the boy he claimed to have seen being murdered in Wittner Park. Although John Zero's photo was in the line-up, Jo said he didn't recognize him, and instead, Jo's a photo of a 16-year-old who lived across the street from his parents.

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

After the police refused to investigate Akka's claims any further, he went to the media, setting up an on-camera interview with the WTM J News.

Akka took every opportunity he could to talk to Jo about the crime, cataloging what he'd learned in a journal, which he eventually shared with investigators.

But they remained unconvinced.

“In their view, Akka was a cloud-chasing nuisance, the kind of wannabe detective who couldn't help but insert himself into an investigation, annoying but ultimately harmless.”

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Continue to deliver quality content. The investigation into John Zero's murder continued, but by July 1977, almost a year and a half at past with no breakthroughs in the case. On Tuesday July 5, two women moved into a duplex on Milwaukee's east side. While going through the basement, they found an abandoned addresser. Opening one of its drawers, they came across a file containing confidential materials relating to the John Zero 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 non-profit organization specialising in forensic analysis, 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, he's lover hid the file in the dresser before moving out of the building.

When news broke that the District Attorney's Office had misplaced a file containing such sensitive explicit materials, the community was outraged. The hails corners police chief released a public statement to crime 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 zero family had grown frustrated by the police's lack of progress and transparency, so they hired an attorney to start a John Doe investigation.

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. 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 will act stasky and hutch. I never had that idea. I was never that naive, but I can't believe the fell ups."

He was also known as a fierce victim's right advocate who took on cases other lawyers wouldn't.

“If anyone could light a fire under the zero investigation, it was Eisenberg.”

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 he's 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.

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. Attorney Alan Eisenberg spoke to Cole's friend, Christine Whiteman, 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 zero case as a pretense to romance Christine.”

Rumors quickly spread that the detective had initiated the affair with Christine specifically to dig up a dirt on David Cole. The hails corners police immediately launched an internal investigation, and while they found nothing to suggest that the affair had impacted the detective's work on the zero case, he was found guilty of personal indiscration involving an informant and suspended without pay for 60 days.

He returned to work after that, but never to the John Zero investigation.

As the investigation war on without a breakthrough, police focused on the criminal profile as belief that John Zero would not have been his killers 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 Scallon 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, 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 a towel, 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. Crummel tied the boys' wrists together before challenging him to free himself.

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. Afterwards, 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 trailer of the ground and struck him repeatedly in the head. He then threw the teenager down a nearby hill and drove off. Miraculously, Steve survived. He was found the next morning and taken to the hospital, where he remained in coherent for three days, he's 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."

He found them attractive because they were cute and clean.

“Crummel said he'd lost control with Steve's skull and 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. 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. Whenever Mr. Crummel is released, we have to worry about the risk of repetition of his violent conduct.

After pleading guilty to sexual perversion and aggravated battery, Crummel was found to be in need of specialized help for sexual devianty 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.

“Hales' corners police couldn't help but notice the similarities between Steve's skull and brutal assault and John Zero'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."

They wondered if the word hell being written on the inside of John Zero's right wrist was Crummel leaving some kind of calling card. Six months into the John Zero investigation, police tracked Crummel down to the California City of Costa Mesa and questioned him about his whereabouts on the day John went missing.

“Crummel 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 Scullon, though he refused to take a polygraph test to confirm it. Hales' corners police had no doubt Crummel was capable of murder, but they couldn't place him in Wisconsin at the time of John's death. As the three-year anniversary of John Zero's murder approached, police felt they'd exhausted every lead. Despite the John Doe proceeding initiated by the Zero family, no new suspects had emerged. Then, in December 1978, an unidentified woman called the Franklin Police to ask if they looked into a man called Michael Upozki.

Upozki, 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 secure a dream job with professional basketball team the Seattle Supersonics, scouting players for the NBA. The woman told the police that, just recently, Upozki had returned to Wisconsin to scout potential players. While in town, he'd invited a teenage boy back to his hotel room.

This subsequently became a topic of conversation at a Christmas party for Franklin High's staff, where the woman heard about it. She didn't know if anything sexual had occurred between the two, but she had a strong suspicion Upozki might be connected to John Zero's murder. Franklin Police looked back at their files and saw that Michael Upozki 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 holding classrooms on the lower north east side of the school, far from the front entrance where John was last seen.

While Upozki 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 Upozki's swimming classes. He knew John's athletic older brother Mark, much better. 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,

When administrators turned the list over to authorities, Upozki's name wasn't on it. With his name coming up almost three years later, Police reviewed the school records and discovered that Upozki didn't have any classes during fifth period that day, which was around the same time that John Zero was last seen.

“This led to the question of why did Taken so long for anyone to notice his absence from the list?”

Rumors quickly spread that someone at Franklin High School was trying to protect Upozki.

Franklin Police began digging into Michael Upozki's past and learned that he's first running with the law occurred when he was just 12.

He had lowered a six-year-old boy back to his house by promising to let the boy play with his puppy. Once they were alone, he forcefully removed the boy's shoes. Two years later, when Upozki was 14, a woman called the police to report that Upozki had tackled her 12-year-old son to the ground, tore off his shoes and socks, and violently twisted his toes. Upozki was charged in juvenile court and required to attend a counseling.

“Less than a year later, police received a report that Upozki had led a nine-year-old boy into a secluded yard, made him life 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 than punishing them, Upozki faced no criminal charges for his actions. As Upozki 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 neighborhood and ordered him into the bushes,”

promising not to hurt him if he did as he was told. Once he was sure, passes by, 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 Upozki of snatching him off 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.

Upozki was sighted with disorderly conduct and, once again, reminded to counselling, which he attended for approximately six months. Investigators reached out to young male students and athletes who had known Michael Upozki during his time at Franklin High School to see if anyone else had a similar experience. Several admitted that Upozki had gotten them alone, wrestled them to the ground, and tickled their feet. Many had been too confused or ashamed to come forward, dismissing his actions as harmless rough housing.

As John Zera was found barefoot with these socks tucked in neatly inside his shoes, it wasn't a stretch to wonder if his killer had a preoccupation with feet. Police sent Upozki 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 a longer go, 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. 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 that this present time, a irrational, heterosexual human being.

Unmonth after the anonymous tip-off, 32-year-old Michael Upozki 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.

Furthermore, some of his students said he was 10 minutes late to his first class after lunch.

Confronted with these statements, Upozki couldn't explain why he'd been late, but maintained he never left campus during school hours.

Investigators asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph test to confirm his story. Upozki looked uncomfortable, but he agreed. Veteran polygraph examiner Robert Peters was brought in to conduct the test. He started off slow, asking Upozki a series of personal questions to establish an emotional baseline. Upozki 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 Whitnell Park,

“did you strike a John Zero run the head with a blunt object he asked?”

No, was Upozki's reply. As the test went on, he started to hyperventilate. Examiner Peters instructed him to take slow steady breaths as a radical breathing could tamper with the results. Upozki 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 Upozki 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 Zero on the head?”

No. In February 1976, did you take part in a sex act with the John Zero? No. This line of questioning continued until Peters felt confident they had their answer. Upozki was lying.

The following day, Upozki was taken to the Milwaukee County Courthouse as part of the zero family's ongoing John Doe investigation. There, he was confronted in the hallway by John Zero's father, who was convinced Upozki was responsible for his son's death. It was an ugly, combative scene, which effectively put an end to the John Doe investigation.

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

When he started dating a woman named Nancy, both Wisconsin and Seattle Police suspected Upozki could be romantic 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 Upozki about his arrest record and John Zero's murder. The interrogation went on for hours. The officers unable to move or speak as they waited for something they could use to nail Upozki.

But every time John's name was brought up, he quickly changed the subject. Although investigators were convinced Upozki 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 Upozki'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.

In 1979, shortly after winning the NBA Championship, the Seattle Supersonic's fired Michael Upozki. Whether this had anything to do with investigators contacting the team's owner, remains unclear. Over the next two decades, the investigation into John Zero's murder faded into obscurity while his killer or killers roamed free. Many of the detectives who originally worked the case retired. Then, in February 2001, John's younger brother, Phil Zero, now 38 years old and living in New York,

called police to discuss the status of the investigation. In the 25 years since John's murder, there had been significant strides in criminal profiling and forensics.

Two detectives can't scoon over of Hale's corners and Scott Stahl of Franklin agreed.

“After speaking with Phil, they decided to reopen John's case.”

The mood at this time around was markedly different, starting with the relationship between Hale's corners and Franklin Police. While the original police chiefs had frequently butted heads and spoke privately of their dislike for each other, detectives scoon over and Stahl quickly found common ground, establishing a friendly report built on communication and shared resources. Scoon over told Casefile of his respect for Stahl, saying, "I can't say enough good things about Scott Stahl. He is one of the best cops I've ever known."

A 17-year veteran of the Hale's corners police force, Scoon over took on the role of lead detective, meticulously coming 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 at suspects, his conclusion was the same as investigators before him. Michael Yuposki, the former substitute teacher, was John's killer. All he and detective Stahl had to do was prove it.

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

Dr. Elaine Samuels. 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.

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 Megakissinger 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 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. It subsequently emerged that throughout the 1970s and '80s, Dr. Samuels had miss-handled countless ortopsies, her shiny medical work leading to reduced sentences for several criminals. She was also backlogged in writing ortopsie reports for both homicide and non-homicide cases,

leaving dozens of families with lingering questions about their loved ones' deaths, including Bizarre's. At the time of John Zero'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 miss-paced 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, 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,

In the years since Milwaukee County terminated her position, Dr. Samuels had largely disappeared from public life,

“but detective Scunova 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 zero case, she placed the blame on Hale's corners 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 and preserved them on slides.

That was all the information she was willing to give detective Scunova before slamming the door in his face.

This was a watershed moment in the investigation.

“For decades, police had believed there was no DNA evidence from the zero crime scene.”

Detective Scunova 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. Detective Scunova 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 when nowhere to be found. Detective Scunova 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.

Scunova sent them to the state crime laboratory in the hopes that they might yield some DNA. They did not. Detective Scunova 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 Scunova explained to Casefile, the problem with that option was that if the case ever made it to trial, there would be nothing left for the defense to do their own testing. Scunova 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. There was no DNA. Undeterred, Detective Scunova and his partner Detective Stoll pressed on, determined to find the evidence needed to prove Michael Yuporsky'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 Macarb message scrolled on John's wrist. 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 Scunova 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.

A broken tree limb that had been found about 20 feet from John's body near his discarded clothes.

“It was clear that 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 Scunova 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 had "probably" checked to 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 Scunova and Stol 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 a good old-fashioned police work. In reviewing files from the original investigation, Scunova discovered a transcript from Michael Yuporsky's 1979 post polygraph interview with the Franklin police chief that had him on the edge of his seat. To Scunova, 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 shot the interview down. Detective Scunova 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."

“Regardless, for Detective Scunova and Stol, the report's contents played a key role in their belief that Michael Yuporsky was guilty.”

In October 2001, they travelled to California to meet with Yuporsky, now a widow are with two grandchildren. During their nearly five-hour conversation, Yuporsky remained unflappable, reiterating that he had nothing to do with the John's murder. At one point, Detective Scunova produced a doctored crime lab report that made it look as if Yuporsky's DNA had been found on John's body. This was in accordance with the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows police to legally lie about evidence, as long as they don't violate due process or coercer confession using threats of violence.

Yuporsky didn't even break a sweat. When Detective Stol asked him why his DNA would be on John's ear as body, Yuporsky replied, "You know I can't answer that." The two detectives returned to Wisconsin, no closer to solving John's murder than they had been on day one. Case fire will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. You support Case fire to continue to deliver quality content.

Thank you for listening to this episode's ad. By supporting our sponsors, you support Case fire to continue to deliver quality content. You support Case fire to continue to deliver quality content. 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 long-time swimming structures had been sharing with her son and other young boys following swimming lessons.

The instructor's name was Daniel Lacko.

“Lacko's boss immediately contacted the police, and on March 23, Lacko was arrested while coaching youth swimmers at a middle school in West Dallas, a Milwaukee suburb 10 miles from where the zero family lived.”

When questioned by detectives at the Greenfield Police Station, he was calm and agreeable, as though he did him 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." Lacko was surprisingly forthcoming, admitting that he regularly shared with his underage to students. When detectives asked if they could search his home, he agreed. Detectives Sergeant David Patrick and a small team of officers were dispatched to Lacko's condo in Walkershire.

Upon entering the condo, officers noted that it was almost alarmingly clean.

“No mess, no clutter, not even a spec of dust.”

On the windows, Acca 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.

Unlike the rest of the condo, it was meticulously organized with boxes stacked beneath the stairs. Detectives Patrick and his team began sifting through them, eventually coming across one labelled fire hobby. This box, unlike the others, was sealed with heavy fiberglass tape and had to be cut open with a knife. Detectives Patrick reached inside and pulled out two large models built to resemble a police station and a fire house.

“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 eaten pates, a six-year-old boy who went missing from New York in 1979.

Jacob Weddling, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped and murdered in Minnesota in 1989. And Kenarek sent us some 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 roto mobiles. One of the offices reached inside and picked up a gold matchbox size to Buick Riviera. Written on the bottom in Magic Marker was the number 14, as well as a name, John C. Zero.

It didn't take long for Detective Patrick to find a corresponding photo of the 14-year-old, whom he immediately recognized as a local unsolved murder victim. In a bedroom closet upstairs, offices discovered a photo album into journal focused entirely on John Zero, 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 Whitney Park covered in handwritten notes. In some of the photos, which looked as though they'd been captured sopticiously, John's brothers appeared much older than they were at the time of his murder.

This led officers to believe Akka 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. It was wrapped in newspaper along with pine cones and what appeared to be a cross. Another item recovered was a diary which contained numerous concerning passages. One of them read.

Friday, February 20, 1976, between 130 p.m. and 2 p.m., the boy is made to or is completely undressed, even his socks are removed. Such as 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 30 feet from the sexual assault area. 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.

To the left is the empty hole where the rock could be removed, telling me it was a panic meant to kill the boy because of his escape attempt.

“Detective Kent Scunova 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.”

Scunova was shocked to learn what it had been discovered at Arker's home. Like most detective suitwork to the case, he knew all about Arker. And he innocuous busybody, who police had taken an interest in back in 1976. The former mental health aid 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 the John's murder. 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 Scunova wondered if it was possible police had misjudged him.”

At the Greenfield Police Station, two detectives conducted a second interview with Arker, asking him about the bizarre scene in his basement.

Arker 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. To fill the void, he'd started building and collecting model fire trucks. John Zero'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'd put some of their names on certain vehicles.

“Watching the interview in real time, Detective Scunova was immediately reminded of John Zero'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. Arker 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 of 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 neighbor of Arker's later confirmed this, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he would have killed her if he could have.

The vitriol with which Arker discussed his mother surprised the detectives, who thus far had only seen his softspoken side. When confronted about the allegations put forward by his boss, Arker admitted to engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior with a handful of young boys. He said that in the 1970s, he'd had relationships with several teenagers, but all worked in central. He blamed the fact that these relationships turned sexual on his drinking at the time, claiming he only pursued the boys went under the influence of Arker.

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.

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

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.

After speaking with several survivors, a disturbing pattern emerged.

“It seemed that Arker went out of his way to target boys from troubled homes, befriending them and to gifting them expensive shoes, sports jerseys, video game systems, and meals.”

He even allowed several to live with him when things got tanned at home. Once Arker secured the boys' trust, he would apply them with alcohol and cannabis before co-versing them into sex. Police believed this was a deliberate manipulation tactic. By making his victims feel indebted to him, Arker was able to groom them into doing whatever he wanted, from taking nude photos to giving and receiving massages, and performing various sex acts.

On Saturday, March 28, 2009, Arker appeared in court, shackled at the wrists and ankles. No friends, family, or accusers were present, as the court commissioner said he's bailed 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, Arker, 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. Several even compared him to actor Rowan Akinson, star of the British television series, Mr. Bean, which revolves around an adult who acts like a child. One man who worked alongside Arker in the 1980s and 90s told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sometimes, you know when a coach is just there for the money.

I always thought Dan truly cared about the kids in class.

Despite compelling evidence tying Daniel Lacker to John Zero's murder, Detective Scoone over and stole, didn't want to interfere with Greenfield's investigation, so they waited. In the meantime, they gathered as much information on Arker 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. His father was largely absent due to a demanding job, but when he was home, he ignored his children in favor of drinking. Arker graduated from St. Rita Catholic School in 1962,

around at the same time that George Neutolene was associate pastor at the church. Neutolene died in 1994 when Arker was 46. Eight years later, in 2002, Tant Man 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 Neutolene.

Though Arker never claimed to be one of them,

it did raise questions in the minds of investigators.

“Was it possible that Daniel Lacker had also been a victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted older man?”

Detective Scoonover and Stol were surprised to learn that while living in Greenfield in the 1970s, Arker's landlord had confronted him about the steady stream of teenage boys he had at his apartment. Arker assured him nothing unto ward 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 Arker to move out.

Several months later, while living in nearby Franklin, Arker 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 them at her. A year later, Arker's former landlord offered his old apartment back, as long as he promised not to invite any underage boys over. Arker agreed, but soon went back on his word. This time, the landlord called Greenfield Police, who spent several days staking out Arker's apartment.

When they didn't see any boys coming or going, they closed the case. In the years that followed, Arker became a foster parent, taking in a troubled boy named Tim.

so Arker offered to informally adopt him.

“For years, the two lived together, Arker 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. When Tim grew up and had children of his own, those children also lived with Arker. He was just somebody who wanted to be a parent, and he did the best he could, Tim told reporters following Arker's arrest.

According to Tim and his two sons, Arker never crossed any lines with them.

Though, in retrospect, there were moments that seemed off. One time, while out the dinner with Tim and several others, Arker 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 Arker's house, called him at work,”

and left rambling messages on his answering machine. He also ordered pornographic magazines in John Zero's name and mailed them to Arker in an attempt to unnerve him.

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

Although the original investigators of John's murder knew about Arker's history of inappropriate contact with the 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 where they re-live 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.

Arker had done both of those things. With their more sophisticated training, detective Scoon over and stole, recognized to these red flags, and began to dig deeper. In speaking with the John's family, they discovered that Arker 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 license or any experience in law enforcement, yet he passed himself off as someone who could help them find their son's killer,

praying on their desperation for answers. Over time, he became friends with the John's mother, Janice, enjoying dinners at the zero house, and receiving a yearly Christmas card from the family. He even tried to form relationships with the John's brothers, inviting them to baseball games and open swims at the pools where he worked. Both were put off by Arker, 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.

On Friday, February 5, 2010, the now 62-year-old Daniel Lacker 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 Arker's age, there was a strong chance he'd die in prison. In Detective Scunova's view, this meant he had nothing to lose by admitting he was John's killer. He visited Arker in prison, but Arker wouldn't confess.

In fact, he doubled down on his claims about Joe the patient, seemingly determined to convince Scunova he was a good guy trying to help a grieving family cope with their son's death. Frustrated, but not defeated, detectives built a circumstantial case against Arker. 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 the John and Arker frequented, though no one could recall having ever seen them together.

Detectives believed that they'd met at one of these shops, and that Arker had likely been scoping John out for some time.

On the day of the murder, he picked a John up from school and took him to Wittner Park.

“There, after weeks, or possibly even months of grooming, he made his move.”

When things didn't go as planned, he bludgeoned to John in a panic. Such an action would be consistent with the scene detailed in Arker's diary. Detectives Scunova and Stull took their case to the district attorney's office, but were told that all of the original investigations 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 that his guilt beyond the reasonable doubt.

With no avenues left to pursue, detective Scunova retired from the Hales Corner's 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.

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 traumatised by the loss, moving nearly 1,000 miles away from where he and his older brother were forced to grow up without John. Older 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.

“In 2015, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Investigative Journalist, the Gina Barton, was granted unprecedented access to the zero 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. The result was an in-depth series of articles about the zero case published on the 40th anniversary of John's murder, along with a podcast series titled "Unsolved". Much of the information revealed in Barton's reporting had previously been withheld from the public. This information read ignited public interest in the case and raised new questions about the systemic failures that had plagued the initial investigation.

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

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 of Greenfield Police for the models from Daniel Lack's basement, but they no longer had them. After Lacka was convicted of sexual assault, the models were returned to one of his sisters. Sheed since thrown them away, leaving police without access to yet another puzzle piece. The newly retired detective Kent Scoonover agreed to work on the case as a consultant.

One day, while sifting through boxes of evidence taken from Akka's home, he'd found a woven leather belt, too small for Akka, but just big enough for a 14-year-old boy. He wondered if the belt could have belonged to John. In the 6,000 plus pages of documents pertaining to the zero case, only once was a belt brought up. The day police found John's body in Whitnell Park, when describing his clothing, one officer had mentioned a basket weave brown leather belt approximately 1.25 inches wide. No such belt was ever saved as evidence, but the descriptions sounded eerily similar to the one found in Akka's possession.

The belt was sent away for forensic examination, with the hails corner's police chief telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that if it was John's belt, that's going to be the nail in Akka's coffin.

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 Scoonover's discovery, it suddenly took on greatest significance. Investigators also gave John's clothing to the internationally renowned DNA Diagnostic Center in Fairfield, Ohio, believing it might harbor 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. In 2016, hails corners police announced that no biological material had been found on the belt from Daniel Akka'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.”

February 2026 marked the 50th anniversary of John Zero's death. At the time of this episode's release, no one has been charged with his murder. When re-examining all 145 names in the Zero case file, hails corners police found that 105 individuals needed to be followed up on. They're currently in the process of doing so. In the wake of Daniel Akka's arrest, Michael Yuposki, the substitute teacher once considered the prime suspect in John's murder, was exonerated.

Although his career in professional sports never recovered, he considers himself lucky to still be here.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Yuposki said, "When you look back on tragedy, the Zero's lost a son. I lost a job." James Lee Crummel, the former laundry truck driver who was also considered a suspect in John's killing, was eventually convicted of two other murders and five rapes. He continued to maintain his innocence in John's case while awaiting execution in San Quentin State Prison, before dying by suicide in his prison cell. As for Daniel Akka, former detective Kent Scoonova and many others involved with the case still consider him the most viable suspect in John's murder.

This case has not come to a complete conclusion, Scoonova told Gina Barton in 2015, and it needs to, for the benefit of the family, for the benefit of justice, for the benefit of the department. This case needs to be finished. On the 40th anniversary of John's murder, his older brother Mark imagined what a world with the John's 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 sad 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 your life, and I certainly have done that. But it's something I think about, almost every single day. [Music] That's the world-wide Syrian phenomenon, the way the island is located.

On the 22nd of June, there's the third star of House of the Dragon by HBO Max.

Here's the whole world of Western Russia, a game of Thrones, a night of the Seven Kingdoms, and of course House of the Dragon. Dragon, dragon, camp of King Dragon, Targaryens, Targaryens, intrigue, parade, and epic slashes. All that was worth a new starfall.

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