Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Sevey. You can connect with the show at murdershetold.com or on Instagram at murdershetoldpodcast.
Donna Faye Anthony was 21 years old when she had her one and only child with a man named Robert Cooley. Young and in love, they left Rhode Island for Colorado. She lived with him and their baby boy, but in 1971, after a tumultuous three years of abuse and alcoholism, she left Robert, suddenly and definitively.
That was Bobby, her only son. When he was old enough to understand, his mother explained her fear that his dad might show up one day and take him away. But fortunately, that day never came.
From the time Bobby was three until about 11 years old, it was just him and his mom. Growing up, we had the typical single-parent apartment with cinder block and wood plank entertainment center, you know, milk crates for storage bins. And I think if she had found one of those big electrical wire spools, that would have been our table. Bobby and his mom supported one another.
Donna was practical and down to earth, unfussy and unflappable.
My mother was a complete plain Jane. Like she hardly ever wore makeup unless it was a big event. But she had such a magnetic personality that everybody flocked to her. She was the cool mom on the street. All my friends that met her really loved her. She was just that cool mom. Oh, you need something? Here you go. She'd give you the shirt off of her back.
Even when Donna was a kid, she attracted interest from boys because of her winning personality. Bobby remembered a story that she would sometimes tell. Though she didn't know it at the time, she had rejected the offer of a boy destined to become a famous actor.
She actually rejected a date to the prom from James Woods. Asked my mother to the prom and she said, uh, no, because you're kind of creepy. You might know James Woods best as the voice of Hades in the Disney movie Hercules. Bobby remembered her love for the unlovely, fighting for the underdog.
My mother was a hippie as long as the day is. She was a hippie and a half. She loved animals, loved nature, loved being out in nature. She found a sapling on the side of the road one day and had to stop the car and dig it up. I guess they were mowing or something along the highway. She had to stop the car, dig up this little sapling, this little Charlie Brown of a tree, bring it home, put it into a pot, a
As somebody who also loves to name my plants and save everything that looks neglected, I relate to Donna's quest of saving and loving Andrew the tree.
When Bobby was 10 years old, his mom's best friend, Linda, who was like a second mother to Bobby, set up Donna with one of her childhood friends, Bill Fisher. Donna was 30 years old at the time in 1978, and Bill was going through a divorce. They hit it off. Linda later said, occasionally he'd go off fishing without her, but other than that, they did most everything together.
By 1979, they were married and living together. And though Bill had two children of his own from a previous marriage, they primarily stayed with their mother. Bobby and Donna now had a plus one.
It was just me and my mother for a very long time. So when we first came into the picture, I carried a lot of resentment because, you know, now there's another guy here and he's living here and he's eating breakfast with us and trying to discipline me, trying to, you know, set me on the right path, which I didn't know then, but do know now. But I resented him a great deal.
Bill and Donna were both living in Warwick at the time, and together they moved to Cranston in 1981 into an apartment a bit closer to the big city. Bill had his own business, Sterling Offset Negative in Providence, which had to do with photography, signage, and print developing, and he was doing well for himself. Donna continued to work, doing mostly bookkeeping and secretarial work.
One of her employers was a drill bit manufacturer called Cleveland Twist, and another was Lang Jewelry. In 1982, when Bobby was 14, they moved into a house that was just a block away from their apartment, 78 Prospect Street. Around this time, Bill decided to take full responsibility of being a father to Bobby by illegally adopting him, and Bobby soon changed his last name to Fisher, abandoning Cooley, the surname of his biological father.
During his teenage years, Prospect Street became the nexus of his youth. He knew the kids in the neighborhood, and they all played together. The Fisher House was a safe place and a hub of the community. We were living on Prospect Street in Cranston, Rhode Island. Last house on the left. That area was a little bit tougher of an area, but the neighborhood that we were in was pretty nice.
We had, you know, large crowds of people that would come down for Halloween and everybody decorated the house for Christmas. It was a good neighborhood and nobody bothered anybody. Everybody, it seemed as though, looked out for everybody else. Prospect Street was surrounded by a dense, mixed-use area with big box retail and other businesses. But it backed right up into Fenner Pond and some wild woods that kept its connection to nature. In fact...
Bobby's backyard was literally the pond. They had campers in the yard and a boat called My Sweetheart, and all three of them enjoyed being outdoors. We would go canoeing and do a lot of fishing, and the pond would freeze over in the winter, so we would be out there ice skating. The backyard itself was a pretty decent size, and me and all my friends would play manhunt or hide-and-seek in the woods behind the houses.
Bobby lived on his bike. He had a BMX-style trick bicycle. He used it as his main form of transportation and entertainment with his friends. The flatland tricks, you know, spinning the bars and whipping your body around the bike and always trying to push ourselves to do that one trick that, you know, wasn't achievable. Bobby and his friends saved up enough money and built an eight-foot-tall quarter-pipe ramp that was positioned right in the front yard of his house.
Bill hated it, but it was a huge draw. Kids would come from all over to hang out and ride it.
One time in 1985, when Bobby was 16, he came home from school and found the house ransacked. Someone had broken in. Things were a mess, especially the bedroom upstairs. He called his parents right away, and the police came to investigate. He remembered that their fierce watchdog was a wimp and had run to hide in the basement. The radio, television, and jewelry were all stolen.
But most galling of all was the fact that the thieves had drank orange juice from the fridge and left the half-empty carton in the bedroom upstairs. As a result of this deeply unsettling crime, they got a home security system and upgraded the locks. All of the windows and doors had contact sensors, and they installed motion sensors for the interior. Around this time, Bobby was struggling in school in a big way.
I did not pay attention at all in high school. I had much bigger and better things to do than to go to high school. Education was not high on my priority list, as it should have been. But at a 17-year-old know-it-all kid, the last thing I wanted to do was to sit in class all day long, every day. So I didn't really do, I didn't put myself out
as much as I could have in school, which frustrated all of my teachers 'cause they all thought that I was intelligent enough to do the work, I just didn't dedicate myself to doing it. I stayed back in the 11th grade
and was about to stay back in the 11th grade again due to lack of effort when my father, when Bill said to me, "You know what? I'm taking you out of school. Your head's not there, so we're gonna pull you out of school." They signed the paperwork and Abby pulled out of school.
The following day, he brought me to his work and sat me down with the newspaper and said, just because you're not in school any longer doesn't mean that you're going to sit around and do nothing. You're going to work. And that began my working career. Bobby got his first job at McDonald's. And even though he was no longer in high school, the schedules worked out well for him to be able to finish his shift, clock out, and meet back up with his friends, who had just gotten out of school.
It was Friday, December 5th, 1986. Bobby had just turned 18 five days prior, and Donna's birthday was coming up in just a few days on the 8th. By this point, Bobby had moved on from McDonald's and was working at a company called Polychem. Bill had left for work already at 7 a.m., and Bobby left that morning sometime between 7.30 and 8 a.m., leaving Donna alone in the house.
The security system could be armed in two modes: active or passive. The active mode would turn on the motion sensors and would be appropriate to use if there was no one home, including the dog. The passive mode would have armed the contact sensors on the doors and windows. Bill and Bobby, as usual, locked the doors when they left. The memory of the recent burglary still weighed on them, but it's unknown if they armed the security system as well.
That day was just a normal day. I was working, she had the day off, and my stepfather was also at work. Said goodbye to her, have a great day, that type of stuff. At 18 years old, I wasn't aware of what her plans were for the day because, you know, who at 18 thinks about what their mom is doing? But, you know, I figured that I would catch up with her when I get back home from work afterwards. At
At that time, I had worked for my next-door neighbor. He was the manager of a chemical and dye plant in Cranston, not that far down the street from the house. I was sitting on the back loading dock having a cigarette.
when the next door neighbor pulls up and says to me, something's wrong with your mother. You need to come with me right now. So I got into his car and we took off back to the house. Got to the house and found that the rescue car
was already there. So we went around to the back of the house and found the two rescue workers at the back door. The dog was barking. They weren't sure whether or not the dog was friendly or whatever, but the dog was barking, protecting the house.
And from there, it just became a blur. I told them, you know, get in the house. The dog's not going to hurt you. Go right ahead. Go in. Which they did. And they went to the upstairs bedroom to find her. I had stayed behind because I didn't know what I was going to be walking into. All I knew was that my mother was hurt. And, you know, you don't know what to expect. I later went up the stairs as they were working on her.
She was on the floor with a comforter covering her, partially naked.
One of the EMS workers turned back to my direction and kind of like blocked my view of her as they were working on it. You know, in that instance, your whole world just comes crashing down. She wasn't just my mother. She was my best friend. She was my confidant. And, you know, she meant the world to me. For a long time before meeting my stepfather, it was just me and her. I
At some point during all this, Bill returned home. Bill had gotten a phone call, something's wrong. He returned home. He had a much longer trip to get home than we did. And he got to the house as they were loading my mother into the ambulance. The three of us then went from the house and followed the ambulance to Rhode Island Hospital.
This is the current detective on the case, Robert Santagata, explaining what happened that morning based primarily on the account of Donna's neighbor and friend, Joanne Mission. Approximately maybe 9 o'clock in the morning, a neighbor who they were very friendly with, I mean, you know, in the late 80s, most people, unlike today, talked to their neighbors, I'm sure. And they became close, and everybody had a key to each other's house. And the neighbor next door had called Donna and said, hey, you know, I'm going to go shopping for the day. Do you want to come with me?
So Donna had told her, "Yeah, I'm just finishing ironing. Give me a couple of minutes and I'll be ready." About 20 minutes later, Donna called the neighbor and said, "Hey, I need a little more time." Maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, the neighbor decided to leave. She got into her car and backed up and went into the Fisher's driveway, rang the bell, and there was no answer. So she went next door, she tried calling, there was no answer.
So she said to her father-in-law at the time who lived with them that, "Hey, you know, something's not right. Donna's not answering the door." So he said, "Hey, you know, we have the key. Just go in the house." So the door was locked. It didn't appear that there was any forced entry to the home. She went in. The father-in-law stayed behind. And she was calling out her name. She noticed the phone was hanging in the kitchen. And when she went upstairs, she found Donna laying on the floor.
So she immediately left the house, went back to her house next door, told her father-in-law, who then went next door to check on Donna while she called 911. And I think she called everybody, her own husband, and Bobby was notified, and they all responded back to the house.
Joanne had actually mentioned the time of 941 when she got into the car to go get Donna. And she remembers that, ironically enough, because she had a digital clock on her radio. And I guess in 1986, that was like a big deal if you had like a digital clock on your stereo in the car because it was fairly new. So that kind of stuck out to her. Bobby's life was forever changed. You walk into your house that's supposed to be your safe haven. And, you know, this is what you walk into.
You don't really know what to do, what to think. One of the worst memories I have is watching them carry her out of the house on a gurney. It was horrendous. Rescue workers rushed to get her the care she needed. She was lying upstairs under a quilt, unconscious, wearing only a bra, a sweater, and underwear. So they put her into the ambulance. She was unconscious immediately.
They were able to get a pulse, but she still wasn't breathing on her own. So they loaded her into the ambulance and took her to Rhode Island Hospital. During this time, my stepfather, Bill, had gotten the call and came racing back to the house. And he met us at the house as the ambulance was pulling away. Myself, Bill, and my next-door neighbor followed the ambulance to Rhode Island Hospital.
The hospital quickly developed a theory of what was wrong with her and related it to Bobby and Bill. At Rhode Island Hospital, they put her on life support. They put a vent in, got her breathing, not on her own, but, you know, through a machine. The pulse was still there, and that maintained. And they started to evaluate what was going on with her. At first, it came back as a brain aneurysm.
That was what we heard on the first day. She had a brain aneurysm. The pain was so intense that she tried to call for help downstairs. That's when she ripped off the phone. This is all stuff that we're hearing day one. And she ripped the phone off the wall downstairs. And...
Then she tried to leave, but she had another attack, and she moved the couch and ripped out her earrings, which were found on the living room floor. And then when that didn't work, she went upstairs and probably had another attack and tried to call from the bedroom phone, and that's when they found her. So that was the assumption. You have doctors telling you this, and you kind of believe it.
After a long day at the hospital, doctors told Bill and Bobby to get some rest. There's really nothing else that you can do here for her, so you might as well just go home. And, you know, the first thing that you do when you walk into a house that's all disarrayed is, you know, you start putting stuff back together.
The next day, they returned to the hospital, and Linda, Donna's best friend, made a shocking discovery. Her best friend was a nurse at Kent County Hospital. They were lifelong friends. The two were inseparable. Her friend is like my second mother, or was my second mother, a saint of a woman.
But she is the one that noticed ligature marks on my mother's neck. And she was the one that pressed them to investigate it and to do a rape kit. And sure enough, that's when it became an active investigation.
Donna was in a coma. She was hooked up to machines that controlled her breathing and IVs that fed her intravenously. On Monday, December 8th, three days after she was found, her family faced a difficult decision.
So while she was in the hospital on the ventilator, it was determined that she was brain dead for longer than the eight minutes that she would be able to come back out of. Doctors told us that if she were able to come out, that she would probably have the mentality of a 10-year-old, if anything.
And the question was asked, what is it that we want to do? I can remember the doctor asking me at 18 years old as, you know, the only biological relative of hers, what was it that I wanted to do? And
My mother was very big on no machines. She didn't want any machines. She had made it known even at 39 years old, or 38 years old rather at the time, if anything were to happen to her, she didn't want to be hooked up to any machines. She didn't want machines controlling her life. So when the doctor asked me, I said, no, we have to let her go. We have to honor her last wishes, which was not an easy decision. So
On what would have been her 39th birthday, December 8th, 1986, with my stepfather, her best friend and her best friend's husband, I couldn't go to her. There was no way I could be there mentally, physically, whatever. I just couldn't do it. They pulled the plug on her and she slipped away.
Despite the hospital's diagnosis that it was a medical event, there was enough suspicion surrounding her death that an autopsy was ordered. And the next day, the medical examiner issued her findings. She ruled the manner of death homicide. Donna had been strangled.
And that's when the investigation really started to kick in because they were able to do the autopsy. They found the broken bone inside of her neck, which indicated strangulation. Her fingernails were dirty, even though she had just gotten out of the shower, so they were able to gather up all of that evidence. In addition to the broken bone in her neck, the medical examiner also found two bruises on the back of her head. It was shocking to everyone who knew her.
It was so surreal. This person that would never hurt a fly was taken out in that type of manner in such a violent way. It's unimaginable. And 36 years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. You just can't. I mean, you really can't lose somebody that meant the world to you and, you know, that you tried to model yourself to be like.
Before the autopsy, Bill told the police of his suspicions of foul play based on the condition of the house, but they dismissed his concerns.
The phone in the kitchen had been hanging from the wall, so it was believed that due to her medical issue that she knocked the phone off the wall. So it wasn't really that suspicious at the time. And then the following day, her husband, William, called the department and said, hey, you know, there's some things that look out of place to me as far as the phone in the bedroom on the second floor had been removed from the wall, the wire.
A couch had been moved downstairs, but investigators thought that maybe, you know, the fire department, because they were in there first, I mean, they have a habit of moving furniture to get people out. After they verified that they hadn't touched anything, they decided, hey, something's not right, you know, and they started investigating it, and she hadn't passed yet. And once she passed, a couple of days later, and the autopsy was performed, they discovered that she had been strangled, possibly sexually assaulted. So that kind of was listed as a homicide, and it kicked off the investigation from that point forward.
Bobby believed the attacker had to have been strong. She wasn't a petite woman. She was built similar to me, very tall, stocky, could handle herself. It would take someone large to overpower her.
Both Bill and Bobbie had regretted that they cleaned the house when they got home Friday. We wanted to put the house back in order for when she got home because she would have liked that. And that's when we discovered that the phone line had been pulled out of the wall upstairs and the earrings were on the floor and the couch had been moved. So without knowing it, we basically contaminated the house by our own actions.
The house wasn't treated as a crime scene because there wasn't a crime scene in the hospital's eyes. It had rained a few nights previous, so outside was all muddy and there were footprints in the mud. That kind of stuff could have been used. Put the phone back up on the wall. That could have been used. Just try to put your house back in order because she's going to be coming home in a couple of days, so let's make sure that everything looks nice.
I don't blame us for going back and trying to return the house to quote-unquote normal because you gotta find some sort of normalcy in what just happened. On the morning of Thursday, December 11th, less than a week after the violent attack, Donna's funeral was held in Cranston at Butterfield Chapel. It was so sudden and shocking. Linda, who spoke to Donna daily, couldn't remember anything out of the ordinary in the conversations leading up to her death.
The day of her funeral, I went outside and picked some of her flowers because I didn't know whether or not there was going to be flowers at her funeral. That was just not in my right state of mind. It changes a person. And people that I knew from high school say that all the time, how much of a different person I am now versus when they remember me in high school. And, well, yeah, yeah, because this shit happened.
Even before the funeral, the police immediately turned their sights on the most likely suspects, the husband and the family. Bill and Bobby were closely scrutinized. When the investigation first started, me and Bill and the two male next-door neighbors were all main suspects. You know, it's just like what you see on Law & Order. They bring you into the little room
You try to interrogate, you try to get you to say something that will help their investigation, which I don't blame them. This is their job. This is what they're supposed to do. But I'll never forget the detective standing up quickly out of his chair and slamming his fist into the table in front of me saying, I know you did it. You're going to rot in jail. I know you killed your mother.
And I'm just uncontrollably crying because he couldn't be so far from the truth. But it seems like that, that played through my memory. And it was, it was just like what you see on television.
You start to doubt yourself, too. Was I really at work? Well, yes, I was. But how can I prove that I was at work? Because now I know that I didn't do anything. But I also know that the police don't believe that. So now what do I have to do to make the police believe that? It's that type of stuff that drives you insane, too.
Though Bobby knew he had nothing to do with his mom's murder, the police investigation planted seeds of doubt of whether Bill could have been involved. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash.
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Bill was the suspect. So now you stop playing through your head. Could he have done this? Is what they're suggesting true? Well, he had to go and get a polygraph. Did he pass? Was he able to trick the system? And I'm sure that people thought the same for everybody else. Me and Bill both cooperated with the police 100%. Anything they asked us to do, we did.
Against the advice of his lawyer, Bill volunteered to take a polygraph exam. He passed. Bobby, too, took one and passed. Ultimately, it was physical evidence that definitively cleared both Bill and Bobby as suspects in the eyes of the police. Bill and Bobby were both blood-typed, and the results were compared to the blood type that was determined from the semen that was collected from Donna's body.
Bobby's life was transformed after his mom's death. He described her as the glue that held the extended family together. They often had big gatherings for the holidays. But that all ended with Donna's death. Right after my mother passed away, he was there for a few months but left. He joined a group, Family and Friends of Murder Victims, which I was not invited to or did not partake in.
From there, he met his next girlfriend and moved in together with her. Moved me out of the house so that he could sell the house and all the property, the boat, her car, and stuff like that. And had me move in with my grandmother, who had helped raise me. My grandfather had since passed. From the point where he moved out until I want to say...
The next Christmas, Bobby was with his grandma, but the anniversary brought up difficult memories.
My grandmother took it extremely hard. And when I had moved in with her later on, she had told me that, you know, she didn't want to do anything for Christmas. So I went out and set up a small tree for her while she was sleeping on Christmas Eve.
That Christmas would be the last one he'd ever get to share with his grandmother.
When I moved in with my grandmother, we were both just going through the motions and she passed not long after that. I want to say a heart condition. So at that point, I was still somewhat of a suspect. So when I called for the ambulance, the very first people to show up were two walled detectives asking me where I was. Like, no, seriously, it was a weird time. It was a weird, weird time.
It's hard for me to imagine Bobby's situation. His mother was murdered. His biological father was absent. His stepdad was estranged, and his grandmother had died. He had almost nowhere to turn.
I went down a dark path during that time as well and wound up wherever I could lay my head down at any given day. It was hard to lay down any roots anywhere because at that point in time I wanted to lay down roots, but it was hard to find a place that you could call home anymore.
He found support from his mother's best friend, Linda, who was his only anchor. Linda was forever bound to Bobby because she was so close to Donna. They had been inseparable since seventh grade and were, quote, closer than best friends, closer than sisters.
She was always my second mother, and that didn't change for one second after my real mother passed away. In fact, it just intensified. It just solidified our relationship. She was that one person that I
I could go to and talk to about anything and everything, and I did. I turned to alcohol at a very young age and stayed that way for a little while. I snapped myself out of it, thankfully. But the person that swooped in that really saved me was, again, my mother's friend, Linda. She brought me into her household with her two kids and took me under her wing.
She was always a very, very big part of the family back then. It was nothing to come home and she was there cooking dinner or talking with my mom or whatever. My mother's sister, who was living in New Hampshire at the time, sold the grandmother's house out from underneath me, said, you know, you got a month to find another place and you can't come here. So see you later.
It was like being a pinball. Pinball in a machine, you know, you're just bouncing back and forth. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I did move in with my mom's friend and stayed there until I was able to get on my feet and get out on my own.
Other than a $5,000 reward offered by Bill and another $1,000 offered by Cranston Crime Stoppers in 1987, the case was out of the news for the next 26 years. In 2012, Detective Jamie Cahill with the Cranston PD spoke with the Providence Journal and announced that he was creating a Facebook page for Donna. And then in 2019, a new detective was assigned to the case.
My name is Detective Robert Santagata of the Cranston Police Department in Rhode Island, 20-year veteran currently assigned to the Detective Division Major Crimes investigating also cold cases when I have time. I got reassigned this case in 2019 I believe it was and quite a lot has been done in that time. It was exciting and it was time consuming and it still is. Unfortunately
You know, most agencies, we don't have time to dedicate eight hours a day to these cases because, you know, as we all know, crime happens every day and it doesn't take a break. So, you know, on top of getting assigned my day-to-day work, you know, I try to look at this case as much as I can.
And then, you know, when COVID happened, it kind of, everybody kind of shut down. So it became very difficult to do anything with this. So it's been nice to kind of pick it back up and, you know, at least two, three times a week, I go through the files and try to see if I missed anything and constantly making phone calls and trying to solve it.
I asked Detective Santagata when he had first learned about the case.
So interesting enough, before I got on the job, a family friend who was a retired detective from my department, I worked for him prior to being hired as a police officer. And he was the original investigator in this case in 1986. And I actually started hearing about this case probably when I was 19 years old and how it haunted him until the day he died in 2013. So I was quite familiar with it before I started investigating it. And then when the case got reopened in 2008, 2010, somewhere in that timeframe,
Detective Santagata has the highest regard for the original detective, William Grady.
And I'm not just saying this because he was a really close friend of mine, the original investigator, but he had the reputation around here of leaving nothing unturned. And he was very dedicated and probably the smartest investigator to ever roam the hallways up here. You mentioned his name around here and he, you know, I don't want to say he's like a legend, but he is. He handled every major case and...
was one of those guys who you could just throw a name at him and he would remember every single thing they did for the last 30 years, you know, which to me is amazing. I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday morning. And some of these guys could remember, you know, what color underwear you had on on a certain day. That's just how he was. But he was tough too. So I can just imagine, you know, in 86, him sitting in a room with Bobby smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke at his face and screaming at him, you know, trying to intimidate him. I can totally see that happening and then becoming friendly with him, you know.
Bobby, too, respects the work that William Grady did on the case, but wonders how things have taken so long.
I fully understand that Cranston isn't devoting 100% of their attention on my mother's case. No, I get that. Things happen. This has been 36 years, and other cases pop up, and they need to be solved, too. And, you know, I get that. So for the past 36 years, basically, we've been waiting for someone to come forward and say, that's what I did. Deep down inside, I don't know for a fact, I don't know 100% sure, but I know who did it. And I could take you to their house, and it's just frustrating that, you know, nothing can be done 36 years later.
And though it was no fault of Detective Grady, he also questions if Cranston PD would have ever looked at the case if it hadn't been for the astute observations of her best friend, Linda. Honestly, if it wasn't for her, none of this would have happened. The brain aneurysm theory would have stuck, but she was the one that pointed out, you know, in front of doctors and nurses, she's got bruising on the side of her, on both sides of her neck. And, you know,
you know, after she pointed out, you could clearly see fingertips impressions or breathing. So she was really the one that spearheaded the whole start of this is something other than natural causes.
In December of 2012, the detective then launched a Facebook profile for Donna and told the Providence Journal that within a week, she had gained 138 friends. He was optimistic that the publicity could garner some new information from the public. But since then, Cranston PD lost access to the profile, and they haven't been able to get in it for years.
But Bobby has confidence in the current detective. I firmly believe that Detective Santagata is going to be the one that cracks the case. I can see the frustration in his face whenever we talk. I know that he's personally vested in this case. He'll accept my phone call whenever I call him. He texts me back as soon as I text him. He's not absent to the case in one bit.
Detective Sanagata explained that some of the nation's best labs were involved in this case from the very beginning because of a scary coincidence. A series of killings that happened up and down the east coast of 195. They were finding, you know, women killed and raped and all this stuff. It was kind of a hectic time in the Providence area from 86 to 88. So the FBI became heavily involved in a lot of these cases and all the evidence was sent to them. But this was the dawn of a new DNA era.
The first man to be convicted with DNA was in England in 1986, the same year of Donna's death. The FBI was focused on blood typing, which did eliminate Bobby and Bill as suspects.
Physical evidence has been a huge focus on the case from the beginning, and as technology improves, more becomes possible. So that's been most of the cases, kind of like going through the file and trying to see what's been tested, what hasn't been tested, what can be retested. Unfortunately, some of the stuff that we had sent to be retested was used up, so they couldn't get any samples out of it.
For me, when I took it over as far as, okay, we know it's definitely not who they thought it was in '86, so how do I move forward from this point? And things were re-sent to the lab. We do have active evidence at the lab as we speak that was recently discovered because in '86 they didn't handle the evidence
looking for what I'm looking for today. So kind of just sat in the box and we looked at all over and said, hey, you know, we can send this stuff to be re-examined and maybe we can get something out of it. And ironically, we got our fingers crossed right now that maybe we have something that has been overlooked for the last 35, 34 years.
So it's been a little more exciting the last couple of weeks knowing that, hey, I either have something or I have nothing. Even without the results yet from the current testing, Detective Sanagata already has DNA evidence.
DNA is playing a huge part in this case. It's just a matter of finding a match for it, which is, again, in the process of doing. But there is a process with the whole genealogy. There's been a lot of cases, obviously, nationwide that have been broken that way, and I'm hoping that maybe I have enough to go down that avenue and maybe it'll produce suspects that we're not even thinking about. He also believes he knows who did it. I mean, I have my own theory on the case, and I have a person in mind of interest.
Being such a closed window of time, there's not too many people that could have been involved unless it was just some random person that nobody's thinking of that could possibly have been, that nobody knows about except Donna, which would be tragic. Bobby shares Sanagata's belief.
I'll never know why, but I have a good idea of what happened. Not only do I know the what, but I also know the who, and I know where they live. And to wake up every day and, you know, make a conscious choice not to do something, sometimes it's very hard not to do that because, you know, you want to go and make things right, quote-unquote,
But I have my faith. I keep the faith that the police are going to come through and this is going to be solved and everything will fall into place.
But knowing that person is marred for life, that his name has run through the mud because of what he did 36 years ago, that's justification enough for me. And if he spends the rest of his life in jail because of what he did to me and my family, then so be it. Because I've been in jail. I've been locked up and the key thrown away for the past 36 years. And it's not fair.
I asked Detective Sanagata if he believes the case will be solved.
Bobby continues to wait for that day.
In the meantime, he clings to the memories of his mother. Like, I don't even remember the sound of her voice, which disturbs me. That bothers me greatly. I remember pictures. Like, I can thumb through a photo album and say, oh yeah, I remember that. But I'm not sure if I remember the pictures themselves or if I remember the instances where those pictures were taken and stuff.
I asked him about a memento that he has kept for his entire life that is symbolic of his mom. But it was just one of those things that was carried around from house to house to house. I'm looking at it right now. It's about three foot tall and maybe a foot wide at its widest point. It's nowhere near cut level, but it's just a tree stump. And this tree stump has been in the family forever.
for, you know, over 50 years. It doesn't have to have, like, a significance. It just, it meant something to her, and, you know, it's mine. This time of year is hard on Bobby, but he is resilient and strong, just like Donna. His daughters are too, and they're his only living connection to his mom.
October comes around, which was always a big month for her, and I start getting into a funk. And then November, it's my birthday, and I get into a bigger funk. And then December 8th hits, and now I'm at my funkiest.
Every year I gather the kids and anybody else that wants to come along. It's not like an event type of thing, but her ashes were spread in the water off of the lighthouse that for whatever reason he picked that lighthouse, I'll never know, but it's not accessible to the general public. So you can't actually go to that lighthouse, but we go to a different lighthouse in the same area and laid off three very much illegal fireworks.
Donna Fisher was 38 years old when her life was cut short by a man who still remains free. For nearly as long as she was alive, Bobby and Bill have waited for justice.
Linda passed away in 2019, never seeing the culprit convicted. Linda said, "'Not a day goes by that I wish I could tell her something or show her something. It's a huge hole in my heart.'" Before her death, Linda told reporters, "'I thought about having a cup of coffee with her that Friday morning, and I've kicked myself for 26 years for not going.'"
With such a narrow window of time in which the crime was committed, the lack of any signs of forced entry to the house, and the abundance of physical evidence, it appears that Bobby won't have much longer to wait.
I hope you've been sleeping easy for the past 30 some odd years because the clock's ticking on you and eventually I'm going to be face to face with you and you're not going to be sleeping so easy anymore. So I hope that day comes and I hope I'm the person to actually be able to put a pair of handcuffs on him and sit in front of him and ask him how he's lived with himself all this time, knowing what he did.
If you have any information about the murder of Donna Fisher from December of 1986, I encourage you to call Detective Robert Santagata of the Cranston Police Department at 401-477-5169 or submit an anonymous tip at 1-877-747-6583. ♪
Thank you for two years of Murder, She Told. I am always grateful that you chose to be here and I couldn't do this without you. It would mean the world to me if you could celebrate by sharing Murder, She Told with your friends, either by word of mouth or on social media. Also, if you show a little love in the reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or other platforms, check the link in the show notes and I'll send you a sticker.
A very special thanks to Bobby Fisher for reaching out and trusting me with his mother's case. And thank you to Detective Robert Santagata and the Cranston Police Department. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research support. If you have a story that needs to be told or a correction, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've kept the memories of your loved ones alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told.
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