SCOTTSDALE, AZ — April 2026 marks 25 years since Robert William Fisher, one of Arizona’s most infamous fugitives, reportedly murdered his wife and two children and blew up the family’s Scottsdale home to cover up the crime.
Then Fisher vanished.
“This case is the worst case. It is the destruction of innocence. This is the monster that lives as your neighbor,” said Scottsdale Detective John Heinzelman, who currently oversees the Fisher cold case.
On the morning of April 10, 2001, a ranch house near Scottsdale and McDowell roads exploded and caught fire. Firefighters digging through the charred debris found the bodies of Mary Fisher and her two children, 12-year-old Brittney and 10-year-old Bobby. The husband and father, Robert Fisher, and the family dog named Blue were missing.
“This is not a murder from a distance,” Heinzelman said. “This was close.”
Police say Robert Fisher slashed the throats of his wife and his two children as they lay in their beds. His wife, Mary, was shot in the head.
Fire investigators found a gas line to the home severed and rigged to explode.
“The best we can determine was that he had arranged a candle - or something burning - that he could leave as more of like a long-term fuse,” Heinzelman said.
The big question remains: Is Fisher still alive today?
He remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives List, though five years ago, he was removed from the Top 10 because there have been no confirmed sightings of him since his disappearance.
Heinzelman is the third Scottsdale detective assigned to oversee the case. Scottsdale police still receive and follow up on one to two tips a week about Fisher. The tips increase whenever a TV show or a podcast features the infamous fugitive.
Police expect the 25th anniversary of the crime will lead to even more tips. They ask anyone with information to reach out to the Scottsdale police's non-emergency line at 480-312-5000 or the FBI.
Watch our extended interview with Detective Heinzelman in the player below:
The last confirmed sighting
The evening before the explosion, Fisher withdrew $280 in cash from an ATM near his home. Video surveillance shows he drove Mary’s Toyota 4Runner to the bank. This was the last documented sighting.
After the murders, police formally identified 40-year-old Fisher as a murder suspect. A statewide bulletin directed law enforcement to arrest him if spotted.
Several days after Fisher disappeared, on April 20, investigators found the 4Runner,100 miles away in the woods near Payson. It was a place where Fisher liked to camp. Blue, the 2-year-old heeler mix, was waiting under the vehicle. His nose was full of porcupine quills.
A search of the rugged area turned up empty.
Friends told police about a possible motive, noting the couple may have been close to a divorce. He had told friends he was traumatized by his own parents’ divorce as a teen.
John Kirkham was the initial detective on the Fisher case. He has since died.
“Robert said, ‘Divorce is not an option. I will never be divorced. I will not put my children through that type of pain,”’ Kirkman told ABC15 in a previous interview years ago.
Kirkham told ABC15 he interviewed a neighbor of the Fishers. She heard the couple arguing the night before the house exploded.
“I believe that fight that was overhead by the neighbor was the precipitating event that drove him to do it,” Kirkham told ABC15 in a previous interview.
Three theories on what happened
There are three prevailing theories on what happened to Fisher, according to investigators:
- He fled and is living under an assumed identity, perhaps in a different country.
- He walked into the woods outside Payson, near the place where he used to camp, and died by suicide.
- He was on the run and has since died. His remains have not been identified.
The age of the case presents a challenge for police. Some tipsters describe a person who looks like Fisher when he disappeared in 2001. He was 40 when he vanished. But if he is still alive, he would turn 65 this month.
What could break the case open?
If Fisher is still alive, someone out there may know his secret.
“The break may come when a relationship may falter,” Heinzelman said.
Investigators have a set of fingerprints from when Fisher served in the U.S. Navy. Those fingerprints have been uploaded into a national database. If he’s ever arrested for something else, police will get alerted.
Heinzelman has his own belief of what happened to Fisher.
He believes something happened to him because there have been no confirmed sightings since he vanished.
He said Fisher – overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation – may have wandered into the woods and died by suicide.
But until he knows for sure, “I have to work it as if he’s still around, that he’s still a fugitive. And that one day, he’ll be caught.”
Email ABC15’s Anne Ryman at anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter.