S1 Ep2: Where do we start?

Unsolved

USA TODAY and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

True Crime

3.9 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2015

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Previously on Unsolved.
0:04.4	Two boys taking a shortcut through Whitnell Park find John Zira, nude face down in the rocks and mud.
0:11.5	Police will say he's been molested and then bludgeon, perhaps with a large rock.
0:17.9	You know, and maybe the police knew from the get-go what they were doing, but I got them
0:21.6	fresh. And I didn't know. I was only 14 or 15 at the time that they were making it up as they went
0:27.5	along. I think the thing that struck me the most when I started working on this case was, number one,
0:34.0	just how complicated it must have been to try to solve a crime like this back in the 1970s,
0:40.7	they didn't have computers where they could scan in all their files.
0:44.6	They didn't have email.
0:46.5	They didn't have texting.
0:47.6	They didn't have cell phones.
0:48.8	They didn't have faxes even back then.
0:52.2	So they had five different agencies trying to keep track of all this information,
0:56.8	and it was not easy to do.
1:00.9	From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this is Unsolved. A Murdered Teen, a 40-year mystery. I'm Gina Barton.
1:09.6	How has the cold case murder of John Zara remained unsolved for so long?
1:14.6	It starts with a series of mistakes, some more serious than others.
1:20.4	14-year-old John Zara disappeared from Franklin High School on February 20, 1976.
1:26.6	His body was found eight days later. And 40 years after the crime,
1:31.1	the killer's identity remains unknown. In this episode, we'll explore the mistakes that were made
1:36.4	early in the investigation and how those errors still affect the case today.
1:41.8	Jurisdiction in this murder was really complicated. First, you had Franklin because
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