Town note
The town's motto is 'Where Wisconsin begins'. It covers 1.89 square miles, area code 608.
about 0:08:23The story
Small Town Murder episode 64 visits Mineral Point, Wisconsin, a former lead-mining town in Iowa County, in the south-west of the state about an hour from Madison. First settled by Europeans in 1827, it grew on galena, drew Cornish miners in the 1840s, lost 700 people to the California Gold Rush and 100 more to cholera, and now trades on its stone buildings and historic district. It has 2,494 people, is overwhelmingly white, older than average and fairly safe.
The story begins in 1968 with Linda Zawarski, an 18-year-old from the Chicago area who became pregnant after what she described as a date rape. Her mother sent her to a Catholic group home, where she cared for disabled children while pregnant, and told friends she was studying in England. Her son Paul was born, she held him twice, and the nuns took him for adoption.
They adopted a second boy, Perry, four years later. He later said his father was cold and abusive, although nobody in the family saw evidence of it. Hans lost his job in March 1983 and the family moved to a farmhouse outside Mineral Point, where Hans worked for Sally's brother at Sokol Crystals. It was not taken seriously.
Kansas City police asked the Iowa County Sheriff's Department to check on the family. Deputies found Hans, 48, shot five times on the back porch; Sally in the tool shed, stabbed 25 times with a rosary placed on her body, one blow penetrating her skull; and ten-year-old Perry upstairs in his bedroom, stabbed more than 20 times and covered in defensive wounds. Sheriff's officer Bob Hill later said it was the only crime scene that gave him nightmares.
He refused counselling at the Ethan Allen School.
He had a daughter, Nicole, with Belinda, a counselling volunteer he met at Ethan Allen, but left her. He attended college, served eight months in the Air National Guard in 1990, and married in 1993, divorcing in 1995. In 1994 he married Leah (Lee) and moved to Indiana, where they had a son and ran failing businesses. He told people his parents were killed by a drunk driver and even took his family to their graves. Leaving Lee, he went to St sburg, Florida, where in late 2005 he met the second-grade teacher Candy Williams and moved in within three months, while still seeing Lee and others.
In 2004 Linda used the Illinois adoption registry to look for her son. About a year later Lee, wanting a medical history for their son, contacted her, and mother and son met at an Atlanta hotel. In April 2008 Lee phoned Rob and told him the truth. A private investigator, Robin Martinelli, confirmed it. Linda and Rob kept up appearances, slept with guns and then got his belongings out and changed the locks. Linda cut off all contact.
Collier told Candy that his mother had insulted her, lost his job in August 2008 and moved back in with her. She threw him out after finding his dating profiles. He stalked her with hundreds of emails, some from invented friends and a fake therapist, a dead piglet, vandalism and fake online profiles that sent strangers to her home. She got an injunction.
He is believed to be in Orange County, California.