Pubdate: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) Copyright: 2004 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265 Author: Jessica McBride, Special to the Journal Sentinel Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States) A MYSTERY REKINDLED FEUD IN SMALL TOWN INVOLVED MARIJUANA, DOGS LADYSMITH - For 25 years, Robert Pfeil Sr. has pressed for answers in his son's unsolved killing. He has investigated on his own, written endless letters to officials, and offered a $40,000 reward. The 90-year-old Racine man has persisted through strokes and a divorce because he's sure he knows who ordered the execution-style slaying: Robert Rogers, who was then Rusk County district attorney and is now dead. "What it comes to now is who helped him do it? Who pulled the trigger?" said Pfeil. He may finally see justice. A Rusk County grand jury has secretly indicted three people close to Rogers in the killing of Rob Pfeil Jr., sources close to the grand jury have confirmed to the Journal Sentinel. But in Wisconsin, where grand juries rarely are used, the sealed indictment is only advisory. The decision to actually press charges rests with Rusk County District Attorney Kathleen Pakes, a former public defender from Louisville, Ky., who, records show, started looking into the long dormant case in 2002. She declined to comment. Three people who testified told the Journal Sentinel that Pakes launched the grand jury early this summer with assistance from the state attorney general's office. Grand juries can subpoena people under oath, including those from out of state. They can continue indefinitely, and information they gather often is used for further proceedings. They are meant to operate in secret, but in Ladysmith, population 3,900, word spread fast after folks noticed all the extra people at the courthouse, and more cars than usual parked outside. Rob Pfeil Jr., a 27-year-old college student with a criminal past who lived with two Great Danes and a 600-pound caged lion outside Ladysmith, was killed in his driveway by a shotgun blast to his head on Aug. 14, 1979. Some suspected the then-district attorney's involvement from the start. He and Pfeil were colorful, prominent characters around Ladysmith, both thought to be involved in using, and possibly selling, marijuana. An ongoing feud boiled over when deputies shot and killed Pfeil's dogs just a month before his slaying. And under Rogers, the murder investigation never really got any traction at all. Neither he nor anyone else had ever been charged. Five years later, Rogers killed a man in California, then committed suicide. "This whole case has been a bizarre case," said Ladysmith Police Chief Dean Meyer, who has worked it from the beginning when he was a young sheriff's deputy. "Key people have died over time. It also adds to the degree of difficulty when law enforcement themselves are suspects in the case." Deep roots, family loyalty Bob Rogers was raised with five brothers and two sisters outside Ladysmith by a schoolteacher mother. He showed promise for an intellectual career in an area where many settle into factory jobs or farm life and where basketball prowess trumps classroom success for popularity. He went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated from Stanford University law school in 1972. He returned to Madison to work as an assistant prosecutor under then-Dane County District Attorney Jim Doyle, now Wisconsin's governor. But when two of his brothers were alleged to be involved in the theft of windows from a state-owned van, Rogers tried to cover it up and Doyle fired him in 1978. A charge of obstruction was eventually dismissed. Rogers landed back in his hometown. Residents recall him as charismatic and handsome, with a chiseled face and shoulder-length dark hair. He had an A-frame house and an airplane and hosted parties with marijuana, law enforcement officials say now. He and his girlfriend, a lawyer named Cherie Barnard whom he would later marry, spoke Spanish to each other. They each began teaching part time at Mount Senario College, a tiny liberal arts college in Ladysmith. Despite his troubles in Madison, Rogers saw an opportunity to regain standing as a prosecutor when the Rusk County district attorney stepped down to launch an unsuccessful bid for the state Assembly. Running unopposed, Rogers was elected in 1978. Christopher Buslee, a Ladysmith lawyer, recalled Rogers as "urban, rather than rural. He stood out. The way he dressed - he didn't wear socks in court. The way he acted. His habits. He was very outspoken. He was out of place in a small rural community." Meyer, who took criminology classes from Rogers, called him flamboyant. "He was the type of person who, when he walks into the room, he's the one controlling the discussion. He was very arrogant and he was always in control of things." Some of Rogers' siblings still live around Ladysmith. Asked recently for their recollections of him, two family members declined to comment. Outlaw starting over Pfeil moved to Rusk County from Racine in 1976, when he enrolled as a zoology major at Mount Senario. He was a lean 6-foot-2, with a reddish-brown Afro, a penetrating stare, and a woodsman's sensibility. He told locals he was trying to escape a troubled past that included several arrests, a rape accusation and affiliation with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. But it's hard to find someone still around Ladysmith who knew Pfeil and didn't like him. Pfeil traveled about town with his dogs, Bowzer and Waco. At the college, children would climb on the dogs' backs and play with them. Pfeil also kept a lion named Boracon, who sometimes jogged with him or rode in the back of his Volkswagen but mostly lived in a cage at Pfeil's isolated home in the woods about 12 miles east of town. At Mount Senario, Pfeil, an honors student, enjoyed a solid reputation. "In class we had a tarantula in the lab, and he would show other students how they could crawl on you if you respected them," said Randy Backe, a biology professor at the time. "He was gentle. Rob was an excellent student, conscientious. A lot of people would like to see justice served and this solved." Some of Pfeil's past followed him to Rusk County. Former Sheriff William Volkman recalled that shortly after Pfeil arrived, the department got a tip via another agency that a man in Ladysmith who had a lion was keeping two steamer trunks of marijuana in a doghouse. There was no question who it would be, but the tip languished about a month without action. Then information got to the weekly Ladysmith News, which photographed marijuana plants on Pfeil's property. The newspaper turned over the information to police, who later found the steamer trunks in the doghouse. One was full of pressed marijuana bricks, Volkman said. Pfeil was convicted of marijuana possession and sentenced to two years' probation. Immediate friction Once Rogers became district attorney, he took a decidedly different approach to marijuana cases. He didn't believe in prosecuting private, adult use of marijuana, and while in Madison had testified publicly in favor of decriminalizing marijuana possession. Many people believe that's because Rogers himself was involved in marijuana. Meyer said there was evidence Rogers used the drug and probably sold smaller amounts to acquaintances. Though the precise nature of Rogers' differences with Pfeil remains murky, people who knew both men believe drugs played a role. They also say the two larger-than-Ladysmith characters just naturally clashed. The first sign was an altercation in a cafeteria at Mount Senario, where Rogers taught criminology, in 1978. The professor who saw it told authorities he didn't know what started that argument. But Roger Siem, the neighbor who discovered Pfeil's body, thinks the dispute was drug related. He told the Journal Sentinel that Pfeil told him he had tossed Rogers off his property after he asked Pfeil to sell marijuana for him, and Pfeil refused. Siem is one of those who believe that Pfeil was sincerely trying to start a new life in Rusk County. Court records show that another student at the college told authorities Rogers accidentally left marijuana on Pfeil's property. Pfeil gave it to the other student, who baked it into brownies he passed out at Mount Senario, telling classmates the treats were courtesy of the district attorney. "There was evidence he (Rogers) had purchased or received drugs at the college and Rob Pfeil knew about that and had it over him (Rogers)," said Buslee, the Ladysmith defense attorney who represented Pfeil in court and who later became district attorney in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, Rogers' leniency regarding marijuana wasn't sitting well with everyone. "I didn't approve of his philosophy," said Volkman, then a deputy. "Mr. Rogers and I had arguments over when to prosecute and not to prosecute. He was liberal when it came to marijuana." Volkman believes the district attorney's drug use, if known, would "have ruined him. This is a straitlaced community." Dogs' killings raise ante In June 1979, about a month before the slaying, the simmering enmity between Rogers and Pfeil exploded. While Pfeil was on a trip out west with his father, a friend was supposed to watch his dogs, but they had gotten loose. Rogers advised a deputy to take Pfeil's dogs to the pound or, if they resisted, to shoot them, according to police reports and court records. Authorities later said the dogs were running around nearby Josie Creek Park, tipping over garbage cans and threatening people. But a local grocery store owner who a police account said had complained about the animals later signed an affidavit stating she never had complained. Deputies Vern Sanderson and John Ducommun went to Pfeil's place and shot one Great Dane. The other one and a mongrel dog escaped, but the next day, the deputies returned and killed the second Great Dane and wounded the mongrel, which escaped. After Pfeil returned home to find his dogs' carcasses, he stormed into the Sheriff's Department and slugged the first deputy he saw, Volkman. Rogers charged Pfeil with battery, which only made Pfeil angrier. Buslee represented Pfeil in the case. He said the dogs' killings left Pfeil "enraged. He couldn't speak about it without losing control." Pfeil's father later alleged in a federal lawsuit that the dogs were killed to remove protection from his son so he could be slain. The lawsuit was dismissed, but it helped Pfeil Sr. obtain depositions from people around Rogers - and a media attention that kept the pressure on. In one deposition, Sanderson testified that on Aug. 13, 1979, the day before Pfeil's killing, Rogers asked to meet on a lonely country road. Sanderson had been terminated from the department for an unrelated reason. He recalled that as they stood outside their cars, Rogers said he had "received a threat that Pfeil was going to kill him and I and Ducommun." Rogers did not tell Sanderson where he got the information. Sanderson said Rogers asked him to "go up and talk to Rob Pfeil." Sanderson said he refused. Asked in the deposition whether he knew anything about Rogers subsequently getting a hit man to kill Pfeil, Sanderson said no. Authorities say today they don't believe that Sanderson or Ducommun was involved in the slaying. Investigation stalled from start The 911 call sheet from that day shows that a new assistant district attorney responded to the crime scene and that Rogers was not located until the next morning. A neighbor whose wife was having an affair with Pfeil was arrested and questioned before Rogers was located. The man had called police and said he heard he was a suspect. After the man was in custody for 35 hours, Rogers ordered his release. After the killing, the Ladysmith News, The Milwaukee Sentinel and other newspapers covered the case heavily. After six months of pressure from angry residents, Rogers called for a special prosecutor to examine the Great Danes' deaths. Assistant District Attorney Daniel A. Enright of Eau Claire eventually opted not to charge the deputies, saying he couldn't prove criminal intent, but adding that he did "not condone" what occurred. On July 15, 1980, as the first anniversary of the Pfeil slaying approached, Rogers resigned as district attorney. He and Barnard moved to Fort McCoy and took jobs as translators for Cuban refugees. Then, they moved to Truckee, Calif., where Rogers opened a law office and became a small-claims judge. Two suicides Back in Wisconsin, the Pfeil case took a bizarre twist. In 1981, state investigators, called in on the case by then-Sheriff William Miller, went to a rural Ladysmith home to question Betty Zajec, an Avon saleswoman who claimed she had seen Rogers and others at the scene around the time of Pfeil's killing. As the investigators waited at the door, Zajec went inside and fatally shot herself. A sheriff's deputy was later convicted of misleading police, for getting Zajec to fabricate her account, in hopes of advancing his own career by cracking the Pfeil case. Meyer said Zajec's account has been convincingly repudiated. Details in it could not have been true, he said. In California, Rogers' marriage was deteriorating. By 1983, Barnard had filed for divorce, claiming Rogers had burst into her hotel room with a garrote and a gun and acted in a threatening and erratic manner. In 1984, Rogers killed Gary Grady, 29, a dance club owner who had been involved with Barnard. Rogers shot Grady in the back of the head with a handgun while Grady slept in his home outside San Francisco, California authorities said at the time. The 38-year-old Rogers then drove 20 miles and committed suicide on his 28-foot boat by shooting himself in the chest. Meyer went to California to interview Barnard about Pfeil, but nothing came of it. In a 1984 letter written before Rogers' death, state investigators admitted he was the "focal point" of the Pfeil investigation. Miller, now deceased, signed an affidavit saying the same thing. The death of the prime suspect did not appease Pfeil Sr., who felt Rogers never fit the profile of a triggerman and may have had help. Buslee said when he became district attorney in 1994, the Pfeil case was essentially closed, gathering dust in the courthouse. "The sheriff (Meyer) consulted me about it, but unless there was new evidence there was no reason in my opinion to open the investigation. It had come to a dead end and nothing was happening on it," he said. This summer's apparent progress on the case has given Pfeil Sr. some new hope. He swears he'll live to 100 if that's how long it takes to see his son's killers charged. Jessica McBride is a journalism instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin