Mary and Susanne "Susie" Reker (2 of Hearts, Minnesota) Part 2

What really happened? I guess your guess is as good as mine. But there was no more time for guessing because a little over three weeks after that article ran, another young girl from St. Cloud was attacked in an eerily similar fashion. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the death.

On September 25, 1976, the Thole family was startled when they got a knock at their door. It was late, past dark, and they weren't expecting anyone. What they saw when they opened the door would stay with them for a lifetime. Standing on their porch was a bloodied young girl begging for help, according to an article from Fox 9. They gave her a space to lay down on their couch while they called for an ambulance.

When she was transported to the hospital and stabilized, police learned she was 14-year-old. Sue Dukowitz, and the story she went on to tell police was horrifying. She said she was working at the front counter of her family's convenience store when two teenage boys came in and robbed her at gunpoint. They took money from her and then forced her to leave the store with them and get into their car, where at some point, she was bound with tape. They drove off out of St.

Cloud to the nearby and more rural town of Luxembourg. She said that the two drove her out of the city to a gravel pit, where they pulled over and sexually assaulted her when the assault stopped. In a moment where I am sure she thought the worst was over, they took her out of the car and one of the boys pulled out a knife and began stabbing Sue. I don't know how she was able to do it, but she mustered up every ounce of courage and strength and, through the violence, pretended to be dead. And the boys bought it. They attempted to cover her body in the brush, and then they just left her there.

When their headlights were long gone, Sue rose from the brush and walked toward any light she could see, slowly stumbling, making her way to the foal's door. Now, Sue's father had reported her missing from the store even before Sue escaped. She was able to give police a description of the young men who kidnapped her, along with the car that they were in, and police quickly tracked them down. Seventeen-year-old Herb Notch Jr.

And James Wagner were arrested and charged with six felony counts for robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault and attempted murder. The case bore some eerily similarities to that of the Raker girls, which should have still been top of mind for everyone in St. Cloud when they heard about Sue Dukowicz's attack. But the strange thing is, it doesn't seem like the public noticed, maybe because Sue's case was resolved so quickly.

That resulted in far less coverage, far less details about the crime being shared. I mean, not even the Rakers knew how close some of the ties were. Even though just the day after Sue Dukowicz was abducted, assaulted and stabbed, Fred went to visit her parents as a show of support. But even if the public didn't see it, investigators saw it. Two years, no arrests and damn near the anniversary of the girls bodies being found. You're telling me another teenage girl is abducted and stabbed. They knew that they needed to look into Herb and James.

Now, it turned out James didn't live in St. Cloud until the year after the murders, so it doesn't look like they really dug into him much, though. It's worth noting that there's no mention of where he lived before, or if he had ties to the area that would have brought him there. Before the move. Herb, though he was around, he was a local from Luxembourg, you know, the town.

He drove Sue Dukowicz to the same town that Mary's grandparents live, a.k.a. The same town she was staying. The summer before she vanished, which was the same summer she started showing signs that something was wrong. Herb would have been about a month shy of 16 when the Rakers sisters were killed, the same age as Mary, though they didn't go to school together or anything. Herb went to an alternative school, and Rita said that Herb Notch Jr. wasn't a name she ever heard from her daughter.

But police wanted to check anyway after both Herb and James stood trial as adults and each pled guilty to two charges related to the kidnapping. Police got to work polygraphing Herb and questioning him about Mary and Susie. Now, according to Dudley's book, there was no deception indicated, but Sergeant Bollig told us that his polygraphs were pretty much inconclusive. So this seems to be where herb notch kind of fell off the radar for a while, though. It's not like they had other viable leads. At the time, things were still a mess between departments.

They were each running in their own direction, none of them super great at sharing information. There was a new police chief who came into office in 76, and he was honestly pissed at how the case was being handled. I mean, these were two young girls. For God's sake, they should be the only thing that mattered. Every decision should be based around what was best for them, not what was best politically for anyone involved.

At one point, he, in all seriousness, proposed that all of the agencies get together, lock themselves in a room and just figure it the f out. How were they going to move forward and catch the monster who did this now? This was a nice idea, but it doesn't seem like anyone else was on board because this meeting never happened. A couple more years passed and the girls case got less and less attention. Other unrelated murders were committed in the area. And so what little time and attention.

The Raker case was getting kept getting diverted. It was basically going to take something new to spark movement. And in December of 1978, new is what they got. Investigators got word of a potential new suspect, someone who had never been on their radar, Michael Bartoszewski. At the time, Michael, along with a buddy of his, named Boyd Tarwater, were being arrested and charged with the murder of an 8-year-old girl from Colorado. The two had kind of been bouncing around, found themselves in Colorado and got connected to a guy who needed some manual labor help.

He even let them stay in the basement of his family home as part of the compensation. But at some point, there was a dispute about what the rest of that compensation would be, or whether it was getting paid out. Or who knows? But basically, Michael and Boyd felt ripped off, so Michael cooked up a plan to go steal from the guy. He said he got super drunk, went into the house, stole some guns that he knew the guy had in a closet. And then he doesn't really remember much else. Well, conveniently, the part he doesn't remember is killing the man's 8-year-old daughter as she lay on the couch.

It was a horrific crime involving a knife. And the reason it even got on the radar for law enforcement. Up in St. Cloud was because it turns out that Michael was from there, and more than just from there.

It just didn't add up. So as quickly as hopes raised around this potential new lead, they were dashed. For some, it felt like they were back at Square one, but maybe not for all, because unbeknownst to anyone else. Lawrence Krizak, who'd been off the case in an official capacity for years. By this point, he had never quite given up. And he held on to a piece of evidence that he believed would lead him to the killer.

Why Lawrence never shared this information with anyone else is a mystery. This is complete speculation on my part, but maybe it had to do with all that political nonsense I told you about. Maybe he just wanted to be the guy who solved the case. But either way, it came to light in 83 that he'd never stopped looking at the case. The only reason we know that is because he died that year.

And when they were cleaning out his desk, they found a bunch of files that had all this info about the Raker case and evidence. And I'm not saying info about evidence. They found an actual piece of evidence just in this dude's drawer, it was a pair of gold metal framed glasses with a prescription to correct for nearsightedness. I don't know if there was documentation in Lawrence's file about these glasses or how they determined where they came from. But ultimately, they decided that they were somehow connected to the murders, though no one would say how.

There's still pretty tight-lipped about these glasses today. Here's what Sgt. Bolig would tell us.

I actually don't even know if that's the right question, since I don't know where or when the glasses were found. But it's specific enough of a detail that I think it's worth throwing out for people listening who were there back in the area at the time anyway? Even after these glasses and all those long lost files were found at the bottom of a desk drawer, nothing in them materialized into an arrest. And more and more years slipped by with no movement. Just like the Rakers were left to do their own searches in the early days, sometimes they felt like they needed to find suspects, too.

In the 1990s, they pushed police to look at a local reverend, Fr. Richard Eckroth.

Eckroth was there or not, I can't speak for that. We have no evidence that she ever reported that she was sexually assaulted by Fr Eckroth or any allegations of that either. But he was put on the radar related to possibly having contact with Mary at this church-owned cabin. Where basically, I think they would do like retreats with youth up there.

But that was kind of the problem. They were working with the same names over and over, each one suspicious, but none of them suspicious enough to say for sure they did it. Maybe it would take another new set of eyes to look at the picture in front of them and make it fit after all of these years.

And once again, it was Rita who stepped up to find the new set of eyes. It was 2004. By this point, and in the decades since her children's murder, Rita had become involved with a non-profit organization called Parents of Murdered Children. The organization offers a tremendous amount of resources to people who find themselves part of the worst club imaginable. It is truly an amazing organization that we are supporting in honor of Mary and Susie. And I highly recommend you check them out as well. One of the things that they offer is an annual conference.

That's actually one of the things we're sponsoring, and it's for the parents to come together. And they fill the conference with professional resources for these people in unthinkable positions.

I wrote to him, I sent some newspaper articles and they agreed to hear our case.

So, after some back and forth, the Raker case was presented to the V-Doc Society on May 19, 2005. Mary's Birthday Rita never expected to spend any of Mary's birthdays like this, but here she was continuing to give her the greatest gift a mother could by fighting for her and Susie. A St Cloud Times article reported that after the V-Doc Society reviewed all of the case materials, they agreed with the current investigators, who apparently presented one or more persons of interest to them.

They said they were on the right track, looking at the right people or person. But who was that in the years? Immediately following the consultation, law enforcement still wouldn't name an official suspect they were holding, waiting. Maybe for technology, more evidence. A confession there just wasn't enough.

Even with new tips that came in, none of them brought a fresh perspective to the case. It was more of the same rehashing old rumors or throwing around names that police had known about since the beginning. Then, out of the complete blue, 40 years after the girls had been killed, a brand new name popped up.

It was one of the hardest cases I ever researched and wrote about.

Sheila and Catherine Lyon were 12 and 10 when they disappeared from a shopping center outside of D.C. in 1975.

The investigation into what happened to them unearthed a story so depraved it is hard to speak about again. So I won't, I'll just tell you this. It took decades to get to the truth in that case.

But at the end of the day, the perpetrator was in front of them all along, a man named Lloyd Lee Welch. He abducted the girls and took them back to his family property, he said. His whole family was involved. They say it was just him.

And there are some dark stories that came out of that household, so I don't know what to believe. But there was some evidence found that connected at least one of the girls to the property. So even though their bodies were never recovered, there were answers as to what happened to them. So why was this coming up on Stearns County's radar in 2014??

Well, two sisters gone shopping, abducted and murdered just one year apart. And by the time Lloyd was arrested, he was already suspected in other crimes across the country. So it seems like it's worth taking a look, right? Well, that's not even the thing that got Stearns County's attention. When the Lyons Sisters story started breaking in the news, it garnered national attention.

And along with Sheila and Catherine, Lloyd's picture was published online. It was that picture that caught the eye of a woman in Minnesota named Georgianne. She spoke with CARE, 11, about the encounter she says she had with him all the way back in 1974. According to her, just days before Mary and Susie were killed. She was new to town and eager to meet new people.

So she was excited when a teenage boy rode up to her on his bike. They got to talking and she asked if he knew of any swimming spots. And he suggested the quarry, though no reports ever specifically say what quarry or where at the quarry. Because, remember, Sergeant Bollig said that a lot of people get that info wrong about where the girls were found.

But anyway, this kid suggested a quarry, and they biked off together and went up to this riverbank while they were sitting there. Talking, Georgianne said that this guy pulled a knife on her and assaulted her, she said. All the while, he talked about his fantasies, specifically a fascination with sisters. After the attack, a car pulled up and distracted him, which allowed her to run away. Georgianne showed Care 11, a diary entry from that time, where she recounted the attack.

And she scribbled the man's name down in the entry Lloyd Lloyd. The carnival worker, who was traveling with someone named Helen, now Lloyd Lee Welch, did work for the carnival. He did have a girlfriend named Helen that he traveled with.

Was everyone wrong all these years? Was it truly the traveling psychopath that found his way to a town and committed the worst possible crime and then left as quickly as he'd shown up? Georgianne said that she went to police after the Raker murders and told them about her attack, even suggested that there might be a connection back then. But she came forward again in 2014 when she was sure Lloyd was her attacker.

She figured now, with a name and his story, maybe they'd take her seriously. Sgt. Bolig said he couldn't find any record of her attempt to contact law enforcement back in 1974, but he did seriously look at Lloyd when he was handed the case.

I questioned him about this case and he cooperated with pretty much anything that I asked.

There was carnivals in Minnesota, I have reached out to some owners of those carnivals. And I don't have enough information to confirm that. He ever worked for them or did ever work for them. It's kind of going on people's memory because there was no records.

Again, there's no record of Jorjan's attack, not just her coming forward about a connection to the Raker sisters. But, like, no report at all, which means no evidence at all, according to Bollig, Jorjan says she reported her attack. And he did an extensive search in their records, but was unable to find a report there at the sheriff's office. He's not saying it didn't happen, and maybe she reported it to a different agency, but he said that they're the only agency in the area that keeps records that far back. So back to the matter.

Is there just is nothing we have that we could use? Almost 50 years later to put Lloyd in Minnesota with the Raker sisters? KR11 quoted a 2020 email from a law enforcement official that said the investigation of the Raker homicides points in a different direction than Mr Welch. But Bollig didn't say that outright when we talked to him.

He just said kind of the same thing he did about Eckroth. No one's out until this thing is solved, and I believe that's really how he feels. Because a year or two after that email to KR11, he actually went and spoke with Lloyd. So he's still taking all the investigative steps in all of the directions. But for the Rakers in 2014 15 16, it was still feeling like those steps were all one forward and then two back.

A new name? Great, no arrest, what the hell? Well, two years after Lloyd's name made headlines, everyone, even the family, was about to find out why they kept taking so many steps backwards.

Because maybe the answer to this enduring mystery had been right in front of them all along.

In 2016, a journalist for Fox 9 in Minneapolis came out with an explosive investigative piece on the Raker case. You see. Up to this point, remember, nobody really knew about Sue Dukowitz? I mean, they knew about her, you knew about her attack even. But like I said before, it kind of seemed like no one was making any official connection to the Raker sisters.

But Fox 9 did. Their article published a ton of never-before-known facts about both cases. That drew some scary similarities, like the fact that both Sue and Susie were hidden in brush after their attacks. Like the fact that Mary had her sweater cut down the front and her bra had been cut off. Facts that weren't known before about the Raker case.

And because Sue's case didn't get much media playback, then no one knew that the same thing happened to her. Fox 9 was able to find all of this out through a records request using Minnesota's Open Records law. They got tons of files that were never made public before, some of which brought Herb Notch Jr.'s name back into the spotlight. Though I have no idea what tipped them off to do so in the first place, whatever the reason, this was explosive, and it made the idea of a connection even harder to ignore.

And again, there were some scary similarities. But in 2016, when this news piece came out, the sheriff's office still wasn't willing to call Herb a suspect. All the then-sheriff could be quoted saying was, I can agree with you that there are similarities in both cases. That was from Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtol. Along with just the similarities between the two cases, there were other things that stood out.

Strange coincidences, if that's what you want to call them like, remember? Herb lived in Luxembourg, the town where Mary spent the summer Before she was murdered. Herb would have been just shy of 16 at the time Mary was killed, which is young, like the FBI profile suggested. And here's another fun fact Herb worked in the grocery department at Zare's department store back in the summer of 1974.

That's the store that the girls were at when they were last seen alive by their neighbor. He saw them walking toward the grocery department. If you remember now, the grocery department was closed for Labor Day. And it was in the same direction as the coats, which Mary said she needed. But again, strange coincidence, especially since the department was closed. So we know he would have likely had that day off work. Here's something else I find very interesting.

According to Dudley's book, after Herb was caught and confessed to attacking Sue Dukowitz, he quote told investigators he wanted counseling and acknowledged he had previously been in a mental hospital. In 1974, the same year, the rager girls were stabbed to death. End quote. Now we have zero details on this, and when we asked Bollig about this, he said he didn't recall that information. He did say, though, that herb would have been a minor at the time, so if he was committed anywhere, it would have been with the sign-off of his parents. Not like, forced in by any reason by police or something like that. I don't know if authorities ever collected his DNA, like they did for Eckroth, you know, just in case.

But I do know he was polygraphed at some point, but that didn't help one way or another.

With Herb on his deathbed, dying of liver failure, Rita felt she finally had the chance to get answers now. Rita didn't really want to get into this part of the story when we interviewed her, but she talked about it with Fox 9 back in 2018. She told them that, with a blessing from law enforcement, she went to talk to Herb in his hospital room. Not to get justice, not to be vindicated, but just for answers, to hear him say what she believed for so long to be true. The conversation lasted just over 20 minutes, and she told Fox 9 Quote He was totally in denial. I found him to be very angry, a very hard and bitter person.

There was no sense of remorse at all. End quote. During their short interaction, Herb maintained his innocence, but he did say two things that will stick with Rita for the rest of her days. He asked her quote Why can't you just put it all behind you? And then he said something some might interpret as a confession.

I'm going to hell. Rita said she left that interaction feeling numb. But for her and the rest of the Raker family, what Herb said during those few short minutes was enough. Marty Raker, one of the girl's older brothers, told The St Cloud Times that he doesn't spend much time thinking about who.

He believes he knows who he just wants to know when police will be able to prove it. But if authorities agree on the WHO, they're not saying, is Herb Notch Jr. a person of interest?

Yes, but the sheriff's office isn't using the term suspect for anyone, not even her, who died not long after Rita went to visit him. But if he was involved, I'm not totally convinced. All the answers died along with him. Even though Herb has passed away, Bullig is still working the case. He believes it's his duty to solve it.

And not all the persons of interest we've talked about are gone. And here's the thing. You know, there's always a thing with me when I get this deep into a case. So buckle up and put your speculation hats on with me for just one second.

Now, none of what I'm about to tell you is proven. It's just meant to make everyone think outside of the box a little, because for 48 years, it has been the same names over and over. Usually, there is some truth to rumors that persist that long. There is a reason it's not solved.

So what if we have a piece, but just not the whole truth in front of us? Or at least, we hadn't hear me out.

So say, for argument's sake, only, that Herb Notch Jr. was involved. I couldn't help but wonder how he could have pulled it off alone. If you remember from part one of the story last week, it was reported that the girls had no defensive wounds. Now Bollig gave us a cool no comment on that. So there's a lot of wiggle room on whether this could be off or flat out inaccurate.

But I'm going off what I have. If they have no defensive wounds. How does a 15-year-old boy get control of two sisters long enough to stab them to cut off Mary's top and her bra? I mean, the girls were 12 and 15, they aren't little kids. He could have had a gun like he and James used two years later when they abducted Sue Dukowitz, Sure.

They reportedly used a gun to get her in the car and then still used a knife to stab her. But know what else he had with him when he abducted Sue, an accomplice? And the more you look at Herb's other crimes around the time, even the petty ones. Like some purse snatching stuff that he was implicated in during, like 1976, that all happened with an accomplice. Now, it doesn't seem like police looked into James at all for the Raker case.

Again, he's the one who assaulted Sue with herb, and it seems from the earlier reporting that he didn't live in the area in 1974.

Again, I have loads of questions about where he was, but there are probably reasons police never went down that road. He took a plea in the Sue Dukowitz case and was out within seven years. Fox 9 reported that James stayed totally out of trouble.

Since, and at least as of 2016, he's kept his nose clean. So who else? I'm sure there were loads of people Herb had connections to at one time or another. But there was one person who jumped out so hard at me that it hurt my eyes like staring into the sun. And I can't get him out of my head. So here we go. I'm just going to lay out for you the pieces I'm putting together because I don't know how else to make it make sense or to get you where I'm at.

In Dudley's book, there is a passage that reads. Mary knew two teenage boys who worked in the grocery department. One of them was a friend of a boy Mary was acquainted with. The Other boy was someone she knew from nearby Luxembourg, where her grandparents lived. End quote Now I have other sources that say Herb worked in the grocery department at Zare's, and I know that he is from Luxembourg.

So he's the Luxembourg one. So then we just have this friend of a boy Mary was acquainted with. Okay, cool, someone who knows Mary knows herb works with herb. Herb and the unnamed boy both worked at the place Mary and Susie were last seen.

Great now. Remember that Fox 9 article I mentioned earlier that was all about Rita confronting Herb on his deathbed? Well, it also included comments from James Herb's accomplice. In the Sue Dukowitz case. James said, Basically that Herb had no remorse.

He was a scary dude. And there was one instance back when they were in prison together where quote The guy was hissing like a snake and talking about, He wants to kill everybody. End quote. The article goes on to say that there was someone else who heard this hissing thing that Herb did. And this is who I think is the unnamed boy.

It says this happened right after the girls were killed, and the guy who had that encounter was a man that we'll call Roy.

Roy and Herb went to the same alternative high school back in 1974, and they also worked together at Zayer's. So they had every chance to know each other pretty well. The writer of the article claimed quote He remembers Notch always playing with a knife. He'd sit in his car in the Zayer's parking lot on his days off and just stare at people. One day, he and he, meaning Roy said his gut told him to ask Notch about the Raker girls.

I said, Herb, did you know about this or have anything to do with this? Roy said. I don't remember which way I worded it, but he went hiss and that was the only response I got out of him. End quote The hissing thing is super weird. I'll give you that.

But it's not what I get hung up on. Herb hangs out at the store on his days off. Grocery was closed on Labor Day. that equals days off now. Even before this, Roy said that he was suspicious of herb.

And after the hissing thing, he told police about it and they confirmed that it happened. So based on those things, I'm pretty confident the unnamed boy is Roy. Roy knew herb well, so tell me what the odds are that. By the way, Roy was one of the two boys who found Susie Raker's body in the quarry. That, according to Sergeant Bollig, isn't super well known.

Now, I pieced most of this together after our initial interview with Bollig. So we called him up for a follow up to see if he had ever talked to Roy himself. Was Roy ever considered a person of interest as well? But the answer is no, Sergeant Bollig told us There's more than a few strange coincidences in this case.

And to him, it's not super alarming, necessarily, that Roy knew herb.

We triple confirmed with Bollig that notch definitely was not the other boy with Roy who found the bodies. That boy has never done any interview or been named publicly, so Bollig wouldn't name him either. Now, none of this means Roy had anything to do with the Raker sisters murders, and it certainly doesn't seem like Bollig thinks there's anything fishy there and there.

Very well, might not be, but there's enough that I'd love to talk to him, and he's not the only one. Because, if you remember, Dudley's book brings up a mutual acquaintance, This guy, the unnamed boy who I'm assuming is Roy, had an acquaintance with Mary.

Who's that? Maybe that's the person we should be talking to. We reached out to Roy via Facebook and he actually responded pretty quickly and said he was down to chat. But when we tried to set something up, he ghosted us.

So our reporter, of course, followed up. Maybe he got busy, forgot whatever. She sent a couple more messages and then she was blocked. So was Roy an accomplice of some sort, or, even if he wasn't, does he know something?

I have no idea the guy won't talk to me. There's nothing to prove he was. I just know that he probably has information stored away in his head that I'd love to get at. But is there an accomplice?

In general, I'm almost certain of it.

Rita did tell us that when she talked with Herb on his deathbed, he mentioned a name, someone she thinks could be an accomplice. But when we asked her for the name, she couldn't remember. So we went back to Sergeant Brian Bollig one more time. But he didn't want to comment on the name of the individual. In his earlier interview with us, the idea of multiple perpetrators did get brought up in kind of a less direct way.

And here is what his thoughts were then.

The 49th anniversary of this case is coming up this fall. And we still don't have the answers that we would like to provide to the family about what happened. And no one credible has come forward saying, I know this occurred. This is who did it and provided us with the evidence to show that this actually did happen the way they say it did.

And Susie could have been anything, she was so stinkin smart.

She was a violin player. I don't know if I mentioned that, but that was definitely an interest. All of our family had an interest in music.

But you can't go back. There's no redo button, there's just hindsight, and in hindsight. I think these two girls and their horrific murders got lost in a lot of grown men's egos, and they deserved so much better.

Sergeant Bullard is trying to give them better, to give Rita better.

They're aunts now, you know, and there's just there's a family there that doesn't have answers. What happened to a loved one?

The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve?