Donna Fisher escapes an abusive relationship

Donna, when she was 21 years old, had her one and only child with a man named Robert Cooley. Young and in love, they left Rhode Island for Colorado. She lived with him and their baby boy, but in 1971, after a tumultuous three years of abuse and alcoholism, she left Robert suddenly and definitively.

Bobby: “My true father was a complete jerk. She left him when I was at a very young age. She moved [us] back to Rhode Island and did her best to support both me and her at the same time. For many years it was just me and her.”

Donna, when her son was old enough to understand, explained her fear that his dad might show up one day and take him away. But fortunately that day never came.

Donna and her son, Bobby, who still bore the last name of his father, settled back into Rhode Island, near Donna’s family in Warwick.

Donna and Bobby

From the time Bobby was 3 until about 11 years old, it was just him and his mom.

Bobby: “Growing up we had the typical single-parent apartment with [a] cinder block and wood plank entertainment center... Milk crates for storage bins. I think if she could have found one of those big electrical wire spools, that would have been our [dining] table.”

Bobby and his mom supported one another.

Bobby: “I could also talk to her like a friend, and that was the most important thing to me. That’s what I took away the most. She was always there for me—always understood me. And she would come to me with her problems, too. We had that bond. And I think it was because we were together—just me and her—so long that that bond just grew and grew.”

Donna was practical and down-to-earth; unfussy and unflappable.

Bobby: “My mother was a complete plain Jane. She hardly ever wore makeup unless it was a big event. But she had such a magnetic personality that everyone flocked to her. She was the cool mom on the street. All my friends that met her really loved her. She would give you the shirt off of her back.”

Even when Donna was a kid, she attracted interest from boys because of her winning personality. Bobby remembered a story that she would sometimes tell: though she didn’t know it at the time, she had rejected the offer of a boy destined to become a famous actor.

Bobby: “She actually rejected a date to the prom from James Woods. He asked my mother and she said, “Ahh..... No. ‘Cuz you’re kinda creepy.’”

James Woods later played the character Hades in the animated Disney film Hercules.

Bobby remembered her love for the unlovely, fighting for the underdog.

Bobby: “My mother was a hippie—a hippie and a half! Loved animals... Loved nature... Loved being out IN nature. She found a sapling on the side of the road one day and had to stop the car, dig it up (I guess they were mowing or something)... this little Charlie Brown of a tree... put it into a pot—a ginormous pot because it was a pine tree—and we decorated that tree every Christmas. She named it Andrew, and she would talk to Andrew The Tree all the time.”

A new man in their life, Bill Fisher

When Bobby was 10 years old, his mom’s best friend, Linda, who was like a second mother to Bobby, set up Donna with one of her childhood friends: Bill Fisher. Donna was 30 years old at the time in 1978, and Bill was going through a divorce. They hit it off. Linda later said, “Occasionally, he'd go off fishing without her, but other than that, they did most everything together.” By 1979 they married and were living together. And though Bill had two children of his own from a previous marriage, they primarily stayed with their mother. Bobby and Donna now had a plus one.

Bobby: “It was just me and my mother for a very long time, so when he first came into the picture I carried a lot of resentment because now there’s another guy here... he’s living here... he’s eating breakfast with us... trying to discipline me... trying to set me on the right path, which I didn’t know then, but do know now. But I resented him a great deal.”

Bill and Donna were both living in Warwick at the time, and together they moved to Cranston in 1981 into an apartment, a bit closer to the big city. Bill had his own business—Sterling Offset Negative—in Providence, which had to do with signage and photography and print developing, and he was doing well for himself.

Donna continued to work, doing mostly bookkeeping and secretarial work. One of her employers was a drill bit manufacturer called Cleveland Twist and another was Lang Jewelry.

78 Prospect Street (Cranston, RI)

In 1982, when Bobby was 14, they moved into a house that was just a block away from their apartment—78 Prospect Street. Around this time, Bill decided to take on the full responsibility of being a father to Bobby by legally adopting him, and Bobby soon changed his last name to Fisher, abandoning Cooley, the surname of his biological father.

During his teenage years, Prospect Street became the nexus of his youth. He knew kids in the neighborhood and they all played together. Bobby’s house was a safe place and a hub of the community.

Bobby: “We were living on Prospect Street in Cranston, Rhode Island, last house on the left. That area was a little bit tougher of an area, but the neighborhood we were in was pretty nice. We had large crowds of people that would come down for Halloween, and everybody decorated their house for Christmas. It was a good neighborhood. Everybody looked out for everyone else.”

Prospect Street was surrounded by a dense, mixed used area with big box retail and other businesses, but it backed right up to Fenner Pond and some wild woods that kept its connection to nature. In fact, Bobby’s backyard was literally the pond. They had campers in the yard and a boat called “My Sweetheart” and all three of them enjoyed being outdoors.

Bobby: “We would go canoeing and do a lot of fishing. And the pond would freeze over in the winter so we’d be out there ice skating. The backyard itself was a pretty decent size, so me and my friends would play hide n’ seek in the woods behind the houses.”

Bobby lived on his bike. He had a BMX style trick bicycle. He used it as his main form of transportation and entertainment with his friends.

Bobby: “Basically dancing on a bicycle. Flat-land tricks, spinning the bars, whipping your body around the bike. Always trying to push ourselves do that one trick that was unachievable.”

Bobby and his friends saved up money for and built an 8-foot-tall quarter-pipe ramp that was positioned right in the front yard of his house. Bill hated it. But it was a huge draw—kids would come from all over to hang out and ride it.

An unsettling burglary, 1985

One time, in 1985, when Bobby was 16, he came home from school and found the house ransacked. Someone had broken in. Things were a mess—especially the bedroom upstairs. He called his parents right away and the police came to investigate. He remembered that the dog was, quote, “a wimp” and had run to hide in the basement. The radio, the television, jewelry, was stolen. But most galling of all was the fact that the thieves had drank orange juice from the fridge and left the half-empty carton in the upstairs bedroom.

As a result of this deeply unsettling crime, they got a home security system and upgraded the locks. All of the windows and doors had contact sensors, and they installed motion sensors for the interior.

Bobby drops out of high school

Around this same time, Bobby was struggling in school in a big way.

Bobby: “I did not pay attention at all in high school. I had much bigger and better things to do than go to high school. Education was not [as] high on my priority list as it should have been. But as a 17-year-old know-it-all kid the last thing I wanted to do was sit in class all day long every day. I didn’t apply myself as much as I should have in school, which frustrated all of my teachers. They all thought I was intelligent enough to do the work. I just didn’t dedicate myself to doing it. I stayed back in the 11th grade and was about to stay back in the 11th grade again (due to lack of effort), when my father said to me, ‘I’m going to take you out of school. Your head’s not there.’ They signed the paperwork and had me pulled out. The following day he brought me to his work and sat me down with the newspaper. He said, ‘Just because you’re out of school doesn’t mean you’re gonna sit around and do nothing. You’re going to work.’ And that began my working career.”

Bobby got his first job at McDonald’s and even though he was no longer at his local high school, the schedules worked out well for him to be able to finish his shift, clock out, and meet back up with his friends, who had just gotten out of school.

Donna found unconscious, barely alive

It was Friday, December 5th, 1986. Bobby had just turned 18 five days prior, and Donna’s birthday was coming up in just a few days. By this point, Bobby had moved on from McDonald’s and was working at a company called Polychem. Bill had left for work already at 7:00AM, and Bobby left for work that morning sometime between 7:30AM and 8:00AM, leaving Donna alone in the house.

The security system could be armed in two modes—active or passive. The active mode would turn on the motion sensors, and would be appropriate to use if there was no one home—not even the dog. The passive mode would have armed the contact sensors on the doors and windows.

Bill and Bobby, as usual, locked the doors when they left—the memory of the recent burglary still weighed on them—but it’s unknown if they armed the security system as well.

Bobby: “That day was just a normal day. I was working, she had the day off, and my stepfather was also at work. I said goodbye to her [Donna], have a great day. At 18 years old, I had no idea what her plans were for the day—who at 18 thinks about what their mom is doing? I figured I would catch up with her later when I got home from work. At that time I had worked for my next-door neighbor. He was the manager of a chemical and dye plant not far from the house. I was sitting on the loading dock having a cigarette when the neighbor pulls up [in his vehicle] and said to me, ‘Something’s wrong with your mother. You need to come with me... RIGHT NOW.’ So I got into his car and we took off (back to the house).

Bobby: “We found the rescue was already there. So we went around to the back of the house and found the two rescue workers at the back door. The dog was barking. They weren’t sure if the dog was friendly, but he was barking, protecting the house. And from there is just became a blur. I told them, ‘Get into the house!’ The dog’s not going to hurt you. Which they did. They went to the upstairs bedroom to find her. I had stayed behind because I didn’t know what I was going to be walking into. All I knew was my mother was hurt... You don’t know what to expect. I later went up the stairs as they were working on her. She was on the floor under a comforter, partially naked. One of the EMS workers turned back to my direction and blocked my view of her.

Bobby: “In that instant, your whole world comes crashing down. She wasn’t just my mother... She was my best friend. She was my confidant. She meant the world to me. At some point during this Bill returned home. Bill had gotten the phone call... Something’s wrong... He had a much longer trip to get home than we did. And he got to the house as they were loading my mother into the ambulance. The three of us then followed the ambulance to Rhode Island Hospital.”

This is the current detective on the case explaining what happened that morning, based primarily on the account of Donna’s neighbor and friend, Joanne Michin.

Detective Santagata: “Approximately 9:00 that morning... a neighbor who they were very friendly with... in the 80’s, unlike today, most people talk to their neighbors I’m sure... They became close, and everybody had a key to everybody’s house... And the neighbor next door [Joanne] had called Donna and said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go shopping for the day. Do you wanna come with me?’ Donna told her, ‘Yeah, I’m just finishing ironing. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be ready.’ Twenty minutes later Donna called the neighbor and said, ‘Hey I just need a little more time.’ Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, the neighbor decided to leave and got in her car, backed up, and went into the Fisher’s driveway, rang the bell, and there was no answer. She went [back home] next door and called, but there was no answer. So she said to her father-in-law, who lived with them, ‘Hey, something’s not right. Donna’s not answering the door.’ So he said, ‘We have the key. Just go in the house.’ The door was locked. It didn’t appear [later to police] that there was any forced entry. She went in. The father-in-law stayed behind. And she was calling out her name. She noticed the phone was hanging [off the wall] in the kitchen. And when she went upstairs, she found Donna laying on the floor. She immediately left the house and went back to her house next door and told her father-in-law, who went back to Donna’s by himself while Joanne called 9-1-1. I think she called everyone—her own husband [at Polychem], and Bobby was notified, and they all responded to the house. Joanne had actually mentioned the time of 9:41 when she got into the car to go get Donna. And she remembers that because she had a digital clock on her radio, and I guess in 1986 that was a big deal. It was fairly new, so it stuck out to her.”

Bobby’s life was forever changed.

Bobby: “You walk into your house. That’s supposed to be your safe haven. And... this is what you walk into. You don’t really know what to do... what to think... One of the worst memories I have is watching them carry her out of the house on a gurney. It was horrendous.”

Rescue workers rushed to get her the care that she needed. She was lying unconscious upstairs under a quilt, wearing only a bra, a sweater, and underwear.

Bobby: “So they put her into the ambulance. She was unconscious. They were able to get a pulse, but she still wasn’t breathing on her own. So they took her to Rhode Island Hospital. During this time, my stepfather Bill had gotten the call and came racing back to the house, and he met us at the house as the ambulance was pulling away. Myself, Bill, and my next-door neighbor followed the ambulance to Rhode Island Hospital.”

The hospital quickly developed a theory of what was wrong with her and related it to Bobby and Bill.

Bobby: “They put her on life support. They got her breathing through a machine. The pulse was still there. They started to evaluate what was going on with her. At first it came back as a brain aneurysm. That was what we [all] heard on the first day. She had a brain aneurysm, the pain was so intense that she tried to call for help downstairs. That’s when she ripped off the phone. Then she tried to leave, but she had another attack where she moved the couch and ripped out her earrings, which were found on the [ground level] living room floor. Then when that didn’t work she went upstairs and probably had another attack and tried to call from the bedroom phone. And that’s where they found her.

Bobby: “We have doctors telling us this... And you kinda believe it.”

After a long day at the hospital, doctors told Bill and Bobby to get some rest.

Bobby: “There’s really nothing else that you can do here for her. So you might as well just go home. And the first thing that you do when you get into a house that’s all in disarray, is you start putting it back together.”

A coma that ends in tragedy

The next day they returned to the hospital, and Linda, Donna’s best friend, made a shocking discovery.

Bobby: “Her best friend was a nurse at Kent County Hospital. They were lifelong friends. The two were inseparable. Her friend is like my second mother... WAS my second mother... a saint of a woman. But she was the one that noticed ligature marks on my mother’s neck. And she was the one that pressed to [have police] investigate it and to do a rape kit. And sure enough that’s when it became an active investigation.”

Donna was in a coma. She was hooked up to machines that controlled her breathing and IV’s that fed her intravenously. On Monday, December 8th, three days after she was found, her family faced a difficult decision.

Bobby: “So while she was in the hospital on a ventilator, it was determined that she was brain-dead longer than the 8 minutes she would be able to come back out of. Doctors told us that if she were able to come out, she would probably have the mentality of a 10 year old... If anything at all. And the question was asked, what is it that we wanted to do? I can remember the doctor asking me at 18 years old as the only biological relative, what was it that I wanted to do? My mother was very big on NO machines. She had made it known—even at 38 years old—she did not want to be hooked up to any machines... she did not want machines controlling her life... so when the doctor asked me, I said, ‘No. We have to let her go. We have to honor her last wishes.’ (which was not an easy decision). So... on what would have been her 39th birthday, December 8th, 1986, my stepfather, her best friend [Linda], her best friend’s husband... I couldn’t go to it... There’s just no way I could be there... They pulled the plug on her, and she slipped away.”

Autopsy reveals a hidden truth

Despite the hospital’s diagnosis that it was a medical event, there was enough suspicion surrounding her death that an autopsy was ordered. And the next day, the medical examiner issued her findings: she ruled the manner of death, homicide. Donna had been strangled.

Bobby: “And that’s when the investigation really started to kick in. They found the broken bone inside of her neck which indicated strangulation. Her fingernails were dirty even though she had just gotten out of the shower. So they were able to gather up all that evidence.”

In addition to the broken bone in her neck, the medical examiner also found two bruises on the back of her head. It was shocking to everyone who knew her.

Bobby: “It was so surreal. This person that would never hurt a fly was taken out in such a violent way. It was unimaginable. And 36 years later I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. You just can’t. You lose someone that meant the world to you and that you tried to model yourself to be like... You can lose someone to illness. You can even understand an accident. But this was intentional. Somebody came into my house and strangled the life out of my mother.”

Before the autopsy, Bill told the police of his suspicions of foul play based on the condition of the house, but they dismissed his concerns.

Detective Santagata: “The phone in the kitchen had been hanging from the wall so it was believed due to her medical issue, she had knocked the phone off the wall. It wasn’t really that suspicious at the time. And then the following day her husband, William [Bill], called the department and said ‘Hey, there’s some things that look out of place to me.’ He was referring to the phone in the bedroom on the second floor that had been removed from the wall and that the couch had been moved downstairs. But investigators thought that maybe the fire department, since they had been in there first, they had a habit of moving furniture to get people out. After they [the fire dept] had verified that they hadn’t touched anything, they [Cranston PD] decided something wasn’t right, and they started investigating it, and she hadn’t passed yet. And once she passed a couple of days later and the autopsy was performed, they discovered she had been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted. That [caused it to be] listed as a homicide and kicked off the investigation from that point forward.

Bobby believed that the attacker had to have been strong.

Bobby: “She wasn’t a petite woman. She was built similar to me: very tall, stocky, could handle herself. It would take someone large to overpower her.”

Both Bill and Bobby regretted that they had cleaned up when they got home on Friday.

Bobby: “We wanted to put the house back in order for when she got home because she would’ve liked that. And that’s when we discovered that the phone line had been pulled out of the wall upstairs, and the earrings were on the floor [downstairs], and the couch had been moved. So without knowing it, we basically contaminated the house by our own actions. The house wasn’t treated as a crime scene because it wasn’t a crime scene in the hospital’s eyes. It had rained a few nights previous, so outside was all muddy, and there were footprints in the mud. That kind of stuff could’ve been used. Put the phone back up on the wall... that could’ve been used. Just putting your house back in order because she’s gonna be coming home in a couple of days... Let’s make sure everything is nice. I don’t blame us for going back and trying to return the house to, quote-unquote ‘normal’, because you have to find some sort of normalcy in what just happened.”

Saying goodbye

On the morning of Thursday, December 11th, less than a week after the violent attack, Donna’s funeral was held in Cranston at Butterfield Chapel, just a mile and a half from her home. She was later cremated at Swan Point Crematory, and her ashes were spread at Warwick Light House.

It was so sudden and shocking. Linda, who spoke to Donna daily, couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary in their conversations leading up to her death.

Bobby: “The day of her funeral I went outside and picked some of her flowers because I didn’t know whether or not there was going to be flowers at her funeral. I was just NOT in my right state of mind. It changes a person, and people that I knew from high school say that all the time—how much of a different person I am now versus how they remember me in high school. And well, yeah... Because this shit happened.”

Bill and Bobby are looked at closely

Even before the funeral, the police immediately turned their sights on the most likely suspects: the husband and the family. Bill and Bobby were closely scrutinized.

Bobby: “When the investigation first started, me and Bill and the two male next-door neighbors were all main suspects. It’s just like what you see on Law & Order... They bring you into a little room... Try to interrogate you... Try to get you to say something that will help their investigation... Which I don’t blame them! This is their job. This is what they’re supposed to do, but I’ll never forget the detective standing straight up out of his chair and slamming his fist into the table in front of me saying, ‘I know you did it! You’re gonna rot in jail! I know you killed your mother!’ And I’m just uncontrollably crying because it couldn’t be further from the truth. But it’s scenes like that that play through my memory. It was just like what you see on television. You start to doubt yourself, too. Was I really at work? Well, yes, I was. But how can I prove that I was at work? Because I know that I didn’t do anything, but I also know that the police don’t believe that, so now what do I have to do to MAKE the police believe that? It’s that type of stuff that drives you insane.”

Though Bobby knew he had nothing to do with his mom’s death, the police investigation planted seeds of doubt of whether Bill could have been involved.

Bobby: “Bill was a suspect, so you start playing through your head, could he have done this? Is what they’re suggesting true? Well, he had to go and get a polygraph. Did he pass? Was he able to trick the system? And I’m sure people thought the same for everybody else. Me and Bill both cooperated with the police 100%. Anything that they asked us to do, we did.”

Against, quote, “the advice of his lawyer,” Bill cooperated completely with the police and volunteered to take a polygraph exam. He passed. Bobby, too, took one and passed. Ultimately, it was physical evidence that later definitively cleared both Bill and Bobby as suspects in the eyes of the police. Bill and Bobby were both blood-typed and the results were compared to the blood type that was determined from the semen that was collected from Donna’s body.

Bobby’s tumultuous life

Bobby’s life was transformed after his mom’s death. He described her as “the glue that held the (extended) family together.” They often had big gatherings for the holidays, but that all ended with Donna’s death.

Bobby: “Right after my mother passed away, he was there for a few months, but left. He joined a group called “Family and Friends of Murder Victims,” which I was not invited to or did not partake in. From there he met his next girlfriend, and they moved in together. He moved me out of the house so that he could sell the house and all the property: the boat, her car, stuff like that. He had me move in with my grandmother, who had helped raise me. My grandfather had since passed. From the point where he moved out until seven or eight years later, I didn’t have any contact with him whatsoever.”

The next Christmas, Bobby was with his grandma, but the anniversary brought up difficult memories.

Bobby: “My grandmother took it extremely hard. When I had moved in with her she told me that she didn’t want to do anything for Christmas. So I went out and set up a small tree for her while she was sleeping on Christmas Eve and left her a note from Santa Claus saying, ‘I flew by the house and noticed that it was very depressing that nobody was celebrating Christmas here, so I thought I would cheer up the day.’ And she absolutely loved it.”

That Christmas would be the last Christmas he got to share with his grandmother.

Bobby: “When I moved in with my grandmother, we were both just going through the motions and she passed not long after that. I want to say it was a heart condition. So at that point I was still somewhat of a suspect. So when I called for the ambulance the very first people to show up were two Warwick detectives asking me where I was. I was like, ‘Seriously?!’ It was a weird time.”

It’s hard for me to imagine Bobby’s situation. His mother was murdered, his biological father was absent, his stepdad was estranged, his grandmother had died. He had almost nowhere to turn.

Bobby: “I went down a dark path during that time, and wound up wherever I could lay my head down any given day. It was hard to lay down any roots anywhere because at that point it was hard to find a place that you could call home.”

He found support from his mother’s best friend, Linda, who was his only anchor. Linda was forever bound to Bobby because she was so close to Donna. They had been inseparable since seventh grade at Aldrich Junior High School, and were, quote, “Closer than best friends. Closer than sisters.”

Bobby: “She was always my second mother, and that didn’t change for one second after my real mother passed away. In fact it just intensified, it just solidified our relationship. She was that one person that I could go to and talk to about anything and everything and I did. I turned to alcohol at a very young age and stayed that way for a little while. I snapped myself out of it thankfully. But the person that swooped in that really saved me was my mother’s friend, Linda. She brought me in to her household with her two kids and took me under her wing. She was always a very big part of the family back then. It was nothing to come home and find her there cooking dinner or talking with my mom or whatever. My mother’s sister who was living in New Hampshire at the time sold the grandmother’s house out from underneath me—said I had a month to find another place and you can’t come here, so see ya later. It was like being a pinball in a machine. You’re just bouncing back and forth. *bing-bing-bing-bing-bing* So I did move in with my mom’s friend and I stayed there until I was able to get on my feet and move out on my own.”

Modern investigation

Other than a $5,000 reward offered by Bill and another $1,000 offered by Cranston Crime Stoppers in 1987, the case was out of the news for the next 26 years.

In 2012, detective Jaime Cahill with Cranston PD spoke with the Providence Journal and announced that he was creating a Facebook page for Donna.

And then in 2019, a new detective was assigned to the case.

Detective Santagata: “My name is detective Robert Santagata of the Cranston Police Department in Rhode Island. Twenty year veteran. Currently assigned to the detective division, Major Crimes. Investigating cold cases also when I have time. I was reassigned this case in 2019 I believe, and quite a lot has been done in that time. It was exciting and it was time-consuming, and it still is. Unfortunately, most agencies don’t have time to dedicate 8 hours a day to these cases because we all know crime happens every day and it doesn’t take a break. So on top of getting assigned my day-to-day work, I try to look at this case as much as I can. And then when COVID happened it shut everything down and became very difficult to do anything with this. So it’s been nice to pick it back up and at least two or three times a week I go through the file and try to see if I missed anything and constantly making phone calls, trying to solve it. Hopefully before I retire I can close this for Bobby, for his family, because I know how important it is for him and it’s been thirty-some-odd years, and I’d like to say I became pretty close to Bobby. He’s a great guy. And I’d like to be the one to solve it for him.”

We asked Detective Santagata when he had learned about this old unsolved Cranston case.

Detective Santagata: “So interesting enough, before I got on the job, a family friend, who was a retired detective from my department, I worked for him prior to being hired as a police officer. And he was the original investigator in this case in 1986. And I probably started hearing about this case when I was maybe 19 years old about how it haunted him until the day he died in 2013. So I was quite familiar with it before I started investigating it. And then when the case got reopened in 2008/2010 (somewhere in that timeframe) another detective who had opened it reached out to me to get in contact with the original investigator [William Grady] to speak about the case. So, [as I said], I was pretty familiar with it before I was handed it and started to actually be involved with it because I was hearing about it for so long and it kinda had a special place in my heart and I want to solve it for him because he died with it never being solved.”

Detective Santagata has the highest regard for the original detective, William Grady.

Detective Santagata: “And I’m not just saying this because he was a really close friend of mine (the original investigator), but he had a reputation around here of leaving nothing unturned. And he was very dedicated. He was probably the smartest investigator to ever roam the hallways up here. You mention his name around here and, I don’t want to say he’s a legend, but he is. He handled every major case and was one of those guys who you could throw a name at him and he would remember every single thing they did for the last 30 years. Which, to me, is amazing. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday morning, and some of these guys can remember what color underwear you had on a certain day. That’s just how he was. But he was tough, too. So I can just imagine in ’86, him sitting in a room with Bobby, smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke in his face and trying to intimidate him. I can totally see that happening. And then [later] becoming friendly with him.”

Bobby, too, respects that work that the original detective has done on the case, but wonders how things have taken so long.

Bobby: “I fully understand that Cranston isn’t devoting 100% of their attention to my mother’s case. I get that. Things happen. It’s been 36 years and other cases pop up. And they need to be solved, too. And I get that. So basically for the past 36 years they’ve been waiting for someone to come forward and say, ‘Hey, guess what I did!’ Deep down inside, I don’t know for a fact, I don’t know 100% sure, but I know who did it. And I can take you to their house. And it’s just frustrating that nothing can be done, 36 years later.”

And though it was through no fault of Detective Grady, he also questions if Cranston PD would have ever looked in the case if it hadn’t been for the astute observations of her best friend, Linda.

Bobby: “Honestly, if it wasn’t for her, none of this would’ve happened. The brain aneurysm theory would’ve stuck. But she was the one that pointed out to the doctors and nurses, ‘Look, she’s got bruising on the side of her neck.’ And after she pointed it out, you could clearly see fingertip impressions/bruising. So she was the one that really spearheaded the whole start of this is something other than natural causes.”

In December of 2012, the detective then launched a Facebook profile for Donna and told the Providence Journal that within a week, she had gained 138 friends. He was optimistic that the publicity could garner some new information from the public. But since then, Cranston PD lost access to the profile, and they haven’t been able to get in for years.

But Bobby has confidence in the current detective.

Bobby: “I firmly believe that Detective Santagata is going to be the one that cracks the case. I can see the frustration in his face whenever we talk. I know that he’s personally invested in this case. He’ll accept my phone calls whenever I call him. He texts me back as soon as I text him. He’s not absent one bit.”

Physical evidence playing a major role

Detective Santagata explained that some of the nation’s best labs were involved in this case from the very beginning because of a scary coincidence.

Detective Santagata: “A series of killings that happened up and down the east coast [Highway 195]. They were finding women raped and killed. It was kind of a hectic time in the Providence area from ’86 to ’88. So the FBI became heavily involved in these cases, and all the evidence was sent to them.”

But this was at the dawn of the DNA era. The first man to be convicted with DNA was in England in 1986—the same year of Donna’s death. The FBI was focused on blood-typing, which did eliminate Bill and Bobby as suspects.

Physical evidence has been a huge focus in this case from the beginning, and as technology improves, more becomes possible.

Detective Santagata: “So that’s been most of the case. Going through the file and seeing what’s been tested and what hasn’t been tested. Seeing what can be retested. Unfortunately, some of the stuff we have sent to be retested has been used up, so they couldn’t get any samples out of it. For me, when I took it over, it’s definitely not who they thought it was in ’86, so how do I move forward from this point? Things were resent to the lab. We do have active evidence at the lab as we speak that was recently discovered, because in ’86 they handle the evidence with an eye for the evidence that I’m now looking for today. And it just sat in the box and we looked it all over and said, ‘Hey, we can send this stuff to be reexamined, and maybe we can get something out of it.’ And ironically, we have our fingers crossed, that maybe we have something that has been overlooked for the past 35 years. So it’s been a little more exciting the past couple of weeks, knowing that I either have something or I have nothing.”

Even without the results yet from the current testing, Detective Santagata already has DNA evidence.

Detective Santagata: “DNA is playing a huge part in this case. It’s just a matter of finding a match for it, which is in the process. But there’s a process with the whole genealogy. There’s been a lot of cases nationwide that have been broken that way, and I’m hoping that maybe I have enough to go down that avenue and maybe it will produce suspects that we’re not even thinking about.”

He believes he knows who did it.

Detective Santagata: “I have my own theory on the case. And I have a person in mind of interest. Being such a close window of time there’s not too many people that could’ve been involved unless it was just some random person that nobody’s thinking of that nobody would know about except Donna. And that would be tragic.”

Bobby shares Santagata’s belief.

Bobby: “I’ll never know why, but I have a good idea of what happened. Not only do I know the what, but I also know the who. And I know where they live. And to wake up every day and make a conscious choice not to do something... Sometimes it’s very hard not to do that, because you want to go and make things right. But I keep the faith that the police are going to come through and this is gonna be solved. And everything will fall into place. Knowing that person [will be] marred for life... that his name [will be] run through the mud because of what he did 36 year ago... that’s justification enough for me. And if he spends the rest of his life in jail because of what he did to me and my family, then so be it. Because I’ve been in jail and locked up, the key thrown away, for the past 36 years, and it’s not fair.”

I asked Detective Santagata if he believes that the case will be solved.

Detective Santagata: “It haunts me. It haunts me every night. I go to bed some nights and I don’t fall asleep because if I look at this case for two hours during my workday and I go home, my brain start spinning. Bobby always likes to say, ‘I’m glad it haunts you.’ ... Because he knows that I’m working on it. I think that it is solvable. Out of the few cold cases that I have, this is the one that does haunt me because it is that close to being solved. And it’s eventually gonna happen.”

Tick tick tick...

Bobby continues to wait for that day. In the meantime, he clings to memories of his mother.

Bobby: “I don’t even remember the sound of her voice, which disturbs me. That bothers me greatly. I remember pictures. I can thumb through a photo album and say, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that.’ But I’m not sure if I remember the pictures themselves, or if I remember the instances that those pictures were taken. It’s tough.”

I asked him about a memento that he has kept for his entire life that is symbolic of his mom.

Bobby: “It was just one of those things that was carried around from house to house to house. I’m looking at it right now. It’s about 3 foot tall and maybe a foot wide at its widest point. It’s nowhere near cut level, but it’s just a tree stump. And this tree stump has been in the family for over 50 years. It doesn’t have to have a significance. It just meant something to her [Donna], and now it’s mine.”

This time of year is hard on Bobby. But he is resilient and strong—like Donna. His daughters are, too, and they are his only living connection to his mom.

Bobby: “October comes around, which was always a big month for her, and I start getting into a funk. And then November is my birthday and I get into a bigger funk. And then December 8th hits, and now I’m at my funkiest. Every year I gather the kids and anybody else that wants to come along. It’s not like an event... But her ashes were spread in the water off of [Warwick Lighthouse]. For whatever reason he picked that lighthouse, I’ll never know. But it’s not accessible to the general public, so you can’t actually go to that lighthouse. But we go to a different lighthouse in the same area and light off three (very much illegal) fireworks in her memory because she loved fireworks. She always had a pack of Faloots (sp?), the little firecrackers, on top of the refrigerator. And whenever she was running low she would ask me, ‘Hey, see if any of your friends at school are selling fireworks.’”

Donna Fisher was 38 years old when her life was cut short by a man who still remains free. For nearly as long as she was alive, Bobby and Bill have waited for justice. Linda passed away in 2019, never seeing the culprit convicted. Linda said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could tell her something or show her something. It's a huge hole in my heart.” Before her death, Linda told reporters, “I thought about having a cup of coffee with her that Friday morning. And I've kicked myself for 26 years for not going.” With such a narrow window of time in which the crime was committed, the lack of any signs of forced entry to the house, and the abundance of physical evidence, it appears that Bobby won’t have much longer to wait.

Detective Santagata: “I hope you’ve been sleeping easy for the past 36 years because the clocks ticking on you. And, eventually, I’m gonna be face-to-face with you, and you’re not going to be sleeping so easy any more. I hope that day comes, and I hope I’m the person to actually be able to put a pair of handcuffs on him and sit in front of him and ask him how he’s lived with himself all this time knowing what he did.”

If you have any information about the murder of Donna Fisher from 1986, please call detective Robert Santagata of the Cranston Police Department at (401) 477-5169 or submit an anonymous tip at (877) 747-6583.

Connect with Murder, She Told on instagram @MurderSheToldPodcast

Click here to support Murder, She Told

Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles from the Providence Journal and the Journal-Bulletin, here.

Written by various authors including John Castellucci and Amanda Milkovits.

Photos

Photos from Google Maps, various newspaper articles, and Bobby.

Interviews

Special thanks to Bobby Fisher, and Cranston Police Department Detective Robert Santagata.

Credits

Vocal performance, audio editing, and research by Kristen Seavey

Written by, research, and photo editing by Byron Willis

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey