Unsolved: A true crime podcast

Father Alfred Kunz met Mora Smith at Brian’s Diner, where she often served him breakfast. The two became close, with him helping her spiritually and financially. After Kunz’s death, police interrogated her and her two young sons. Support for this episode comes from Audible. Go to audible.com/un to listen to your favorite books. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder myste...

On the last night of his life, Father Alfred Kunz taped a radio show with co-host Peter Kelly and best friend Father Charles Fiore. Sometime after 10 p.m., Kunz was involved a struggle, which ended with an unknown assailant cutting his throat. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold case...

Father Alfred Kunz was murdered on the night of March 3, 1998. His throat was slit and his body was found in a hallway at St. Michael School in Dane the next morning. Kunz clung to the Latin Mass and the old ways of the Catholic church. His murder remains unsolved. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more...

The body of Fr. Alfred Kunz was found on the floor of St. Michael School in Dane on March 4, 1998. Twenty years later, his murder remains unsolved. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold cases, unsolved cases and true crime detectives, as well as additional true crime stories and invest...

Police investigate Edward Wayne Edwards in connection with Jefferson County’s unsolved deaths. Edwards once worked at the Concord House, where Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew disappeared from while attending a wedding reception. Edwards, a con man who wrote a book in the 1970s about his transformation from criminal to upstanding citizen, ultimately confesses to killing Hack, Drew and three other peopl...

Police investigate Teri Mueller’s husband, Joe, who has a long criminal record and whom police suspect may have been involved in the death of his son from his first marriage. His account of the events surrounding Michelle’s death don’t match Jan’s and the results of his polygraph are inconclusive, but police can never find the evidence to tie him to the crime. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.c...

Tipster Sharon Blasing gives police some of her ex-husband James Dunn’s books, which discuss black magic and the practice of baptizing Satanists with water in which un-baptized children have drowned. Police eliminate Dunn as a suspect in Michelle’s death when they realize he was in jail at the time of her disappearance, but wonder if he was involved in the deaths of 1...

Private investigator Norbert Kurczewski hires a police artist to come up with a sketch of the couple who was with the little girl in the Black Earth Café. One of the waitresses is hypnotized, but she can’t come up with any additional information about them. Teri Mueller tells Kurczewski that shortly after she opened the door for Michelle, she saw the little girl in the back sea...

Jan Manders can’t accept the finding that her daughter’s death was an accident. She walks away on her daughter Jennifer’s fifth birthday and declines into substance abuse and mental illness. Jennifer and her older brother, Christopher, are pretty much left to raise themselves. Jan hires a private detective, Norbert Kurczewski, to investigate Michelle’s disappearance. Kurczewski tracks down a waitr...

A couple of months before Michelle Manders disappeared, her mother Jan befriended a woman named Teri Mueller. Teri stayed at the Manders’ house one night when her husband failed to pick her up at 10 p.m. The next morning, both she and Michelle were gone. Two and a half weeks after Michelle disappeared, Teri tells police she opened the door for Michelle that night. They base their classification of...

Watertown police investigate Michelle’s death on their own for 24 hours and find her mother’s purse about a block away. Police and her family search for the free-spirited little girl. Meanwhile, Michelle’s 4-year-old sister Jennifer tells them that on the night Michelle disappeared, a man came into their bedroom. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, vis...

Two-and-a-half-year-old Michelle Manders disappears from her Watertown home in the middle of the night in October 1981. About three weeks later, her body is found in the Rock River, which winds through town. Hers was the fifth in a series of strange disappearances and deaths in Jefferson County over a seven-year period. At first, police suspect she was abducted. But after her body is found, offici...

Coming Aug. 30: Authorities quickly ruled the death of 2 ½-year-old Michelle Manders an accident. But there were shortcomings in the investigation. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigates: Did Michelle wander off in the middle of the night? Or was she kidnapped? For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more...

A new detective takes over the John Zera homicide investigation and discovers a serial killer with Wisconsin ties. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold cases, unsolved cases and true crime detectives, as well as additional true crime stories and investigative journalism visit  wi...

By 2009, Detective Kent Schoonover fears the chance to solve John Zera's murder has slipped away, in part because the eccentric medical examiner who did the autopsy made a mess of it. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold cases, unsolved cases and true crime detectives, as well as addi...

Two years after John Zera was murdered, an anonymous tip about a Franklin High substitute teacher with an unusual interest in boys' feet would generate a new prime suspect. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold cases, unsolved cases and true crime detectives, as well as additional true...

The day after John Zera's body was found, Daniel Acker was found standing over the crime scene in Whitnall Park. His alibi for the day of John's death was shaky, but police dismissed him. Acker would strike up a correspondence with the Zera family and start his own investigation into the case, pointing the finger at a mental patient at the facility where he worked. For more information on the true...

In 2009, police investigating the 1976 homicide of John Zera catch a break when a swim coach is arrested for child molesting. A search of the man's condo reveals clues about John's case. For more information on the true crime series Unsolved: A murder mystery podcast, visit  http://usatoday.com/unsolved . For more reporting on cold cases, unsolved cases and true crime detectives, as well as a...

Before John Zera, Hales Corners Detective Howard Hingiss had only handled one murder case. While he narrowed down the suspect list, with the help of the F.B.I. and other departments, he would never discover the identity of the murderer. Twenty-five years after his retirement, and almost 40 years after the crime, the question of who killed John remains unsolved. For more information on the true cri...

On Feb. 20, 1976, freshman John Zera disappeared from a high school in suburban Milwaukee. In the early days, John's family hoped for his safe return. Later, they prayed whoever was responsible for his disappearance would be brought to justice. Finally, they clung to hope that advances in technology or someone with a guilty conscience would someday offer an explanation of what happened to their Jo...