Our card this week is Susan "Susie" Poupart, the 7 of Spades from Wisconsin. When 29-year-old Susie went to a house party on her reservation, surrounded by friends and so close to home, she should’ve been safe. But when the mother of two left the party in a car with some younger men, things took a turn for the worse. Susie never made it home, and six months later, her remains were found in a nearby forest. The men Susie was last seen with became immediate suspects, but to this day, there just isn’t enough evidence to charge them with her murder… Or is there?If you know anything about the 1990 murder of Susan Poupart in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, please speak up. You can call the Vilas County Sheriff’s Department at 715-479-4441 or the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Police Department at 715-588-7717. Or, if you’d prefer to remain anonymous, you can call the Vilas County Sheriff’s anonymous tip line at 1-800-472-7290.We found Susie's case back in 2021 while we set out to cover the case of Rhys Pocan, a 35-year-old Indigenous woman who was murdered in Wisconsin in the ‘80s. But while we were in the field, we uncovered a disturbing pattern of murders with similarities to Rhys’ that were just too blatant to ignore, including Susie's. So, we spent the next three years working with local and federal law enforcement to try and get to the bottom of it.Click here to listen to our Crime Junkie episodes WANTED: Justice for Rhys Pocan & MMIW Part 1, and here for Part 2!View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/susan-poupart Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: What happened to Susan Poupart?
Our card this week is Susan Susie Poupart, the Seven of Spades from Wisconsin. When 29-year-old Susie went to a house party on her reservation surrounded by friends and so close to home, she should have been safe. But when the mother of two left the party in a car with some younger men, things took a turn for the worst.
Susie never made it home, and six months later, her remains were found in a nearby forest. The men Susie was last seen with became immediate suspects, but to this day, there just isn't enough evidence to charge them with her murder. Or is there? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.
Chapter 2: How was Susan Poupart's body discovered?
It was Thanksgiving Day in 1990 when the Price County Sheriff's Department in Wisconsin got a call from some deer hunters in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. The hunters said that they were packing up to head home when a red and black nylon jacket hanging from a tree caught their eye. And when they got closer, they noticed something on the ground next to it, a partial jawbone.
The hunters had originally called Price County because it was the closest law enforcement agency. But after one of them reached a hand into one of the jacket pockets, the group decided that they should probably call neighboring Vilas County instead. Because inside, there was an ID bearing the name Susan Poupart. And the hunters knew that name.
Once they saw the ID, they called us because they knew that Susie Poupart was an open missing person case. I think she was the only active missing person at the time.
That was Sheriff Joseph Fath. He was one of the Vilas County detectives that was investigating Susie's missing persons case, which had come to Vilas County six months earlier on May 22nd of 1990.
When the report was filed by Susie's sister Dawn, she hadn't heard from or seen her sister in two days, which was especially alarming because the two weren't just sisters, they were roommates, along with Susie's two young children. Now, 29-year-old Susie was known to go out and maybe even stay out all night.
So when she went to a party on the 19th and didn't come home by morning, it was no big deal. But two days passing with her not so much as checking in on her kids was completely unheard of. And that's how Dawn knew that something was wrong.
We got information that she was at a party on Chicago Street and some people thought she might have been intoxicated, left the party, walked through the woods because there's a lot of trails and then something might have happened to her. So there was a search, a ground search with fire department personnel and volunteers.
It was a rather large area that we ground searched and didn't come up with anything.
Investigators at the time had canvassed the reservation Susie lived on in the town of Locke du Flambeau, and they made a list of other partygoers. There turned out to be a group of around 20 or 30 people who had been at the party that night.
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Chapter 3: Who were the main suspects in Susan Poupart's case?
We tried to interview everybody that we could identify that was at that party. I don't think anybody was afraid to talk, but the intoxication level at that hour of the morning skewed everybody's memories. It was hard to make heads or tails out of what they were telling us.
There was one detail that had come up again and again, though. A handful of partygoers seemed to remember that around 4 o'clock in the morning, they saw Susie leave the party wearing blue jeans and a red and black jacket that a friend had lent her. But she wasn't leaving alone. Per witnesses, she had gotten into a car with two men, 19-year-old Joe Cobb and 18-year-old Robert Elm.
According to detectives, Locke du Flambeau is a small community where everybody pretty much knows everyone else. But it didn't seem like Susie and these men were friends or anything prior to the party. And although Susie was about 10 years older than Joe and Robert, partygoers say that Robert had been flirting with her that night.
That may have been a reason why she got in the car with him. I mean, she was intoxicated, but everything that we knew is that she got in the car voluntarily, and I think she thought they were going to give her a ride home.
It's important to note here that police were already well acquainted with Joe and Robert. They had a history of getting into fights and domestic abuse. Both had been violent toward women. So detectives were suspicious about their potential role in Susie's disappearance right from the jump. Here's our reporter Nicole talking with detectives.
Was it fairly easy for you to track down both of those men?
Well, let's say that they were avoiding law enforcement. We did locate them and have them interviewed to get an initial statement.
And did their statements line up initially? No.
You know, they just weren't explaining why things happened.
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Chapter 4: How did Susan Poupart's disappearance impact her family?
I just kind of bottled up everything, all my feelings, and just became a very angry child. To me, Thanksgiving doesn't hold as much to it as it should, you know what I mean?
Family, this and that, because on that day, to me, it just is a reminder that I know my mom isn't here and that she was taken away and we were denied a life with her that we should have had, that we've seen everybody else have a mom except for us. After my mom was gone, my grandma, she'd tell me every day that she wished she was dead because she wanted to be by my mom.
And hearing that, as a kid growing up, that my grandma was so brokenhearted about it, it hurt. It hurt till today. Another reason why I was so angry is that kids would constantly say stuff to me about my mom being dead or murdered. They would tease. So then I'd have to beat them up. So I got into doing that.
I knew I was wrong, but at the time I was so angry that they'd make fun of me for not having a mother. So then I did what I had to do.
At nine years old, Jared couldn't understand how something like this could happen, especially to his mom. He adored her. Here's Jared talking with his younger sister, Alexandria Poupart. She was only three when they lost their mom.
She was very loving. She always had a smile. I always remember laughing and having a good time with people.
She was, you know, really outgoing and funny and adventurous. She was really into art. She did ceramics.
She had a big heart. I remember going out to other people's houses, and she would always help them clean up their house. She was good in that way, like, help people. If they were having a hard time, she'd go help them in any way she could, whether it be watching the kids cleaning a house or just being there, you know. She was a good person. She didn't deserve what she got.
Unfortunately, after the forest search concluded, it still wasn't clear what exactly it was that Susie got. With the little he had to work with, a pathologist ruled Susie's death a homicide. But there was just no way to figure out her cause of death. Not only were there so few remains, but the warm, swampy condition of the forest had also aided decomposition.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did investigators face in solving Susan Poupart's case?
So detectives began tracking down all three men. They found Joe in Illinois working at a popcorn factory. Apparently, he'd never made it to the Navy. And this time around, he suddenly seemed to recall a bit more about that fateful May night. He told detectives that he remembered going back to his mom's house with Robert after dropping Susie off and having a beer before Robert went home.
Obviously, this sudden recollection matching Robert's story almost five months after his initial interview was suspicious to detectives. It just seemed all too convenient. As for Robert, detectives flew down to Pensacola, Florida to interview him at Navy boot camp. His story didn't change, but something else bubbled up after that conversation.
It had to do with a car crash that Robert had gotten into just a month before Susie's remains were found when he was home from boot camp. A story had begun to spread about the circumstances of the crash because the road Robert was speeding down, Chequamegon Forest Trail, was right next to where Susie's body would be found.
The Quamigan Forest Trail kind of zigzags through the National Forest, and some people believe that he was visiting or checking on the remains. Obviously, we didn't know anything about that at the time. It could have been that he was scared or really upset and trying to get out of there as fast as he could.
He never admitted to that later, you know, but there's a good chance that that may be what happened.
Robert had been driving a friend's car during the accident. But after this conversation, detectives decided to seize his personal car, which he would have used to drive Susie home from the party that night. They brought it to their crime lab, where it was processed and vacuumed. But that evidence was shelved, along with all of the other evidence from the dump site.
Regardless, after this round of interviews, detectives believed that Robert, Joe, and Fritz were likely involved in Susie's murder. But without a confession or DNA evidence, there just wasn't enough for an arrest. Here's Detective Sergeant Cody Remick, who is working Susie's case today.
Pretty much every investigator who's come in on the case, we think what likely happened is that they had left the party together. Robert likely made a move to Susie, which she probably did not like, which either caused an argument or he continued to come on to her. And obviously, when they did not go towards her house, probably asked to get out of the vehicle.
We think that she probably did not get out of the vehicle at that point. And whether a struggle ensued or they continued to drive or if there was an altercation or fight or something in the car, or if she did get out and they did try to force her back in the car, we don't believe that she had ever actually gotten out of the car and left that area.
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Chapter 6: What new information emerged after Susan Poupart's remains were found?
Ultimately, it's hard to determine what effect, if any, the delay in forensic testing had on Susie's case. But the garbage bags, the clothing, soda cans, chip bags, and the mattress pad cutting that were eventually sent to the FBI lab for blood, print, and fiber testing in 1992 didn't actually produce anything of evidentiary value. So after that, the case went cold for about a decade.
The case kind of, it's never not, it's never just like done. It's not done being investigated, but it does ebb and flow with technology information. So there are times where nothing happens for a few years.
In a moment when things were flowing, during a case review in 2003, investigators realized that a detail that they had overlooked could actually hold the key to a breakthrough in Susie's case. And it all revolved around that deer hair that they had collected from the forest where the partial remains were found.
Now, detectives hadn't thought much of the deer hair at first because the area where Susie was found was meant for deer hunting. But eventually, someone put the pieces together that there was also deer hair in the trunk of Robert's car, which had been vacuumed by detectives after his crash.
So we took the deer hair from the scene and sent it to an independent lab down in Mississippi. And we sent the vacuumings of the deer hair from the trunk of the car. And we wanted to do analysis, DNA, identify the deer hair to see if we could connect deer hair from the crime scene to deer hair in the trunk. I remember back then it was very costly to do that with that independent lab.
I mean, we were really hoping. It could have been a big break for us in this investigation. And unfortunately for us, I don't remember which hurricane it was. There was a hurricane that came in and destroyed the lab. It flooded all of our evidence that we sent to them. So that was never done because the evidence that we sent to them was destroyed.
Investigators took this blow hard. It was their first possible break in the case in a decade. And just like that, it got washed away. Another decade would pass before they did any more testing.
But in 2014, the garbage bags, clothing, beer cans, and mattress pad cutting were sent off a second time, along with oral swabs from Robert, Joe, and Fritz with the hope that new technology might bring different results. And this time, the lab was able to find some things. For one, Susie's green underwear had a small amount of what was determined to be male DNA.
And when I say small, I mean very small. Detective Remick actually said it was, quote, pretty much as close to zero as you can get. They tried again in 2024, sending off the underwear for MVAC testing, coincidentally with funding help from the nonprofit I founded, Season of Justice. But unfortunately, there just was too little DNA material to develop any sort of profile then either.
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