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.