Case Update: Bob Christian DNA Results

Summary

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Blood Trails – Case Update: Bob Christian DNA Results

Podcast Host: Jordan Sillars | MeatEater
Date: March 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode of Blood Trails revisits the decades-old disappearance of Bob Christian, an 18-year-old bowhunter who went missing in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1977. Host Jordan Sillars provides a long-awaited update: the results of DNA tests seeking to connect Bob Christian to one of John Wayne Gacy’s unknown victims. The episode details the emotional impact on Bob’s family, especially his sister Amy, and covers fresh leads in the ongoing investigation with Detective Tyler Pointon. The story is told with deep empathy for the family and a sense of urgency as memories fade and witnesses die.

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Key Discussion Points

Case Recap: The Disappearance of Bob Christian

Timestamp: 01:34–03:12

• Bob Christian left home on the eve of Wisconsin's 1977 deer opener but never arrived at his buddy’s house in Baraboo.
• His car was found abandoned and stripped, with several strange clues: a nearby nun’s home had been burglarized, Bob's car seen with a suspicious man, and hubcaps found at a quarry.
• Despite multiple leads and local searches, the trail went cold for decades until Detective Tyler Pointon reopened it years later.

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The Gacy Connection and DNA Testing

Timestamp: 03:12–04:47

• Serial killer John Wayne Gacy worked in the region as a pharmacy remodeler in mid-1977.
• Given Gacy’s presence and his profile as a killer of young men, authorities compared DNA from Gacy’s unidentified victims to Bob Christian’s family.

Det. Tyler Pointon:

"We had information that he had been in our county doing pharmacy remodel jobs...in July of '77." (03:12)

DNA Result:

"Unfortunately...they did not find a match with the remains from Gacy's house...did not match the DNA profiles of the Christian family." — Det. Pointon (04:23)

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Interpreting the DNA Results

Timestamp: 04:47–06:53

• The negative result doesn’t totally eliminate Gacy as a suspect—his true victim total remains unknown, and not all were taken home.
• Some of Gacy’s victims were disposed of far from Chicago; Bob could theoretically have been among them but not among the remains found at Gacy’s house.

Det. Tyler Pointon:

"He may have committed more down there that they don't know about...there's suspicion he didn't give up all of his victims." (05:01)

On local search challenges:

"Devil's Lake...lots of divers, it's very clear water. ...The Wisconsin River, Lake Wisconsin, very dark-stained water...like diving in coffee." (05:45, 06:14)

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The Family’s Perspective

Timestamp: 07:16–09:52

• Amy Christian, Bob’s sister, expresses relief that her brother was not one of Gacy’s identified Illinois victims, but also disappointment at the continuing lack of answers.

Amy Christian:

"Some of it was relief...at least he wasn't a victim of that situation. But then there's again the disappointment of not knowing. ...it just means it wasn’t one of the four victims that were found in Illinois. So it doesn't really discount him completely, but it doesn't point right at him either." (07:33)

• She reflects on the impossibility of ever getting further confessions from Gacy, who was executed, and questions whether he could have revealed more if he'd lived.

"He was executed, so there's no way, even if he was alive, would he answer it? ...with somebody like him, it might have been worth keeping him around a little longer. I don't know." (08:18)

• The family’s grief reopens with new investigative activity, likened to “having a band aid ripped off.” (09:52)

"It's opened some of that up." (09:52)

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Reflection on the Initial Investigation

Timestamp: 10:17–11:02

• Amy criticizes the original handling of Bob’s disappearance, noting missed interviews and the presumption that Bob ran away.

Amy Christian:

"It's the shoulda, coulda, would haves...I know that certain people...never were interviewed. ...It kind of reinforces what we felt before—that it wasn't investigated and handled well." (10:23)

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Remembrance and Family Bonds

Timestamp: 11:02–11:55

• Amy shares memories of Bob and reflects on learning more about her surviving brother Mike and the Christian family’s experience after Bob went missing.

"Mike shared his experience of him getting his first buck and Bob never getting a buck...he was one of my first heroes...somebody that I looked up to." (11:15)

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New Investigative Developments

Timestamp: 14:18–16:46

• Detective Pointon has uncovered and interviewed a previously unknown individual from the community around the time Bob vanished.
• This person, tracked down after painstaking research, was able to provide context about others in the area and expand the detective’s list of people to interview.

Det. Tyler Pointon:

"A person who we hadn’t really known about before...was living up there at the time and was able to track that person down...they had a whole lot of good information that we didn’t know about before." (14:32, 16:02)

• Time is the enemy of cold case investigations: “Time’s a killer for this stuff. ...It’s 50 years ago next year.” (16:46)

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Call for Community Information

Timestamp: 17:21–18:39

• The episode closes with an appeal for listeners to share any knowledge, however small, tied to Bob Christian’s disappearance.

Amy Christian:

"If anybody remembers anything...give them a call. It's the only hope we really have anymore." (18:02)

Contact:

• Detective Tyler Pointon – Sauk County Sheriff’s Office: 608-355-3205
• Sauk County Crime Stoppers (anonymous): 1-888-847-7285

"You don’t need to have seen Bob’s abduction to have important information. ...If you saw something a little out of the ordinary, heard a rumor from a neighbor, or just had a bad feeling about a stranger walking down the road, get in touch..." (17:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My faith in God is he took care of him. You know, I have to believe that.” — Amy Christian (09:22)
• “Having a band aid ripped off...it opens other things back up again.” — Amy Christian (09:52)
• “Time’s a killer for this stuff...good luck trying to get anybody [in] another 10 years who was alive at that time.” — Det. Pointon (16:46)
• “He was one of my first heroes...somebody that I looked up to.” — Amy Christian (11:15)

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Structural Summary: Major Segments and Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamps | Content Summary | |------------------------------------------|--------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Case Recap | 01:34–03:12 | Background on Bob Christian’s disappearance and initial investigation | | Gacy Theory and DNA Results | 03:12–04:47 | Gacy’s ties to the region; DNA comparison update | | Interpreting the Results/Barriers | 04:47–06:53 | Why results don’t rule out Gacy; search obstacles in local geography | | The Christian Family’s Response | 07:16–11:55 | Amy Christian’s emotional journey, family remembrance and frustrations | | New Investigation Leads | 14:18–16:46 | Detective Pointon’s new findings, ongoing search for witnesses | | Call to Action for Public Information | 17:21–18:39 | Plea for any information from the community |

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Tone and Style

The episode is reflective and compassionate, blending investigative rigor with the raw, unresolved emotions of a decades-old case. Quotes and commentary from Amy Christian and Det. Pointon keep the story human, urgent, and grounded in the unique pain of not knowing.

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This episode is essential listening for those interested in the intersection of true crime and outdoor life, and for anyone who believes that cold cases still deserve new light—no matter how much time has passed.

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Transcript

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[Amy Christian]

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No purchase necessary. VGW Group voidware prohibited by law 21 terms and conditions apply. There's been an update in the Bob Christian case we covered last season, and I have all the details. But first, if you missed it, here's a quick recap. Bob Christian was an 18 year old bow hunter from Wisconsin. On the eve of the opening day of deer season in 1977, Bob drove from his home in Madison to his buddy's house in Baraboo. Or at least he was supposed to. When he didn't show up, his family, friends and local law enforcement launched a search effort to try to find him. But all they really found were more questions. His car had been abandoned and stripped of its wheels and tires. A nun who lived nearby said her her home had been burglarized, and a friend of that nun said she talked to a man driving Bob's car who said he was looking for his friend. In some tellings of this encounter, he said his friend's name was Bob. Authorities found the hubcaps from Bob's car at a nearby quarry. And another witness said he saw a car with stacked headlights parked next to Bob's car the night he went missing. But none of these clues led them to the missing teenager and the case went icebox cold. Until just a few years ago. Detective Tyler Pointon with the Sauk County Sheriff's Office reopened the investigation and he made a startling and disturbing discovery. John Wayne Gacy, the famous Chicagoland serial killer, had worked near Baraboo just a few months before Bob went missing.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

We had information that he had been in our county doing pharmacy remodel jobs. Basically his trade was he would go around to pharmacies and update them to a more modern look and a city in our county, Reedsburg, which is about 20 minutes from Baraboo. They had had him at their pharmacy in Reedsburg in July of 77. We also found a news article that he was in Mawaston, which is to the next county north of us, about 40, 45 minutes from Baraboo, doing a pharmacy job there.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

If a serial killer who targeted young men was in the area around the same time a young man inexplicably went missing, it made sense to follow that lead as far as it went. Several of Gacy's victims found in the basement of his Chicago home have yet to be identified. So Detective, Detective Pointon requested that the DNA from those victims be compared to the DNA from Bob's relatives. When we released this episode back in November, the detective was still waiting for those results. Now we have them.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

So I requested they do a direct side by side comparison with the remains from the Gacy case and then Amy and her father's profile. And unfortunately they, they did not find a match with the, with the remains from Gacy's house did not match the DNA profiles of the Christian family.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Of course, this doesn't mean that Gacy wasn't involved in Bob's disappearance. That's because to this day, no one knows exactly how many people Gacy killed. We also know that he didn't bring all of his victims back to his home.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

You know, he may have committed more down there that they don't know about. He wasn't very forthcoming and cooperative when they questioned him. And some of the Gacy victims I know were, were disposed of in the, the Des Plaines river in Illinois. But there, there also too is suspicion he didn't Give up all of his victims. So, I mean, still a possibility again, but not, not one of them that was in the house.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

I asked Detective Pointon whether Gacy could have abducted Bob and then, like some of his other victims, dumped him in one of the rivers or lakes in the area. The detective said it's possible, but without any specific information about where to look, it would be incredibly difficult to find him.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

Devil's Lake was at the time, and still is to this day, a pretty heavily Dove Lake. Lots of divers, it's very clear water. Given its popularity as a tourist destination, there's a lot of divers out there. There was actually a diving school that was out there for many years.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

With so many people in the water, you'd think someone would have found something by now if Bob was there. But that's not the case with the other water bodies in the area.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

The Wisconsin River Lake, Wisconsin, very dark stained water. You know, it'd be about like diving and coffee. You know, it's that color. So, yeah, without really any information that he'd been disposed in a body of water, it'd just be really hard to like. Where do you start at?

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

You know, Detective Point is following other leads, which we'll get to in a minute. But at the end of the day, the Gacy theory was always going to be a bit of a long shot. Gacy wasn't known to kill people outside the Chicago area. And while Bob was in the right age bracket, he didn't fit other aspects of Gacy's movie.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

He didn't fit, like the socioeconomic or the type of kid that Gacy was after, like disadvantaged kids he'd find, you know, basically on the streets or at bus depots or train stations in the Chicagoland area. And clearly this was up here and was kind of outside of that mo.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

When Detective Point emailed me with this update, the first person I wanted to talk to was Amy, Bob's sister. In our previous interview, she told me she'd had some mixed feelings about the results of that DNA test. And I was curious to hear what she thought and felt when she got this latest update.

[Amy Christian]

Well, some of it was relief that, well, in a way at least he wasn't that a victim of that situation. But then there's again the disappointment of not knowing. And the reality is that it doesn't mean John Wayne Gacy wasn't involved. It just means it wasn' one of the four victims that were found in Illinois. So it doesn't really discount him completely, but it doesn't point right at him either. And, you know, I just feel like, okay, it's back to square one again.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Gacy was never very forthcoming to law enforcement, but Amy wonders if time would have eventually cracked that shell.

[Amy Christian]

And unfortunately, there's no way of confirming any of his activities in Wisconsin. They don't know if he had committed murders or not because he's. He was executed, so there's no way, even if he was alive, would he answer it? Who knows? But the. The bottom line is, since they executed him, there's no way of ever getting any more information from him again. You know, I. I'm not saying that he didn't deserve what he got, but, you know, it was the investigation full. You know, he wasn disclosing much more. I don't think maybe time would have made him want to spill the beans more too. You know what I mean? Maybe after sitting in jail for. How many people do we have sitting in jail for how many years? You know, with somebody like him, it might have been worth keeping him around a little longer. I don't know.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Thinking about what happened to Bob at the hands of a man like Gacy is extremely difficult. But finding Bob's remains would have provided some closure and allowed Amy to put her brother to rest.

[Amy Christian]

If John Wayne Gacy did have something to do with it and he disposed of his body, there's probably never going to be any kind of recovery. That was the only thing. If it had been one of the four, there was a chance to get part of his remains put to rest, so to speak. But again, my faith in God is he took care of him. You know, I have to believe that.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

As this case has attracted more and more attention, Amy and her family have been forced to confront realities that had been smoothed over by the passage of time.

[Amy Christian]

You know, I think I described it before as like having a band aid ripped off. You know, you've had a wound that's been covered and healed over and you have it ripped back again. Not necessarily as raw as it was before, but it opens. It opens other things back up again. You know, I think my brother Mike and I both feel kind of like it's opened some of that up.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

One of those band aids has been the fact that the investigation into Bob's disappearance should have been handled much differently.

[Amy Christian]

It's the shoulda, coulda would haves kind of back then, and they didn't do the things that, you know, now it would be just standard procedure. So it's a little disappointing when you go back and know that certain people that were Right in that area. Never were interviewed. They never really looked into these people and really tried to find out. So it's, like I said, kind of reinforces what we felt before that it wasn't investigated and handled well. They really thought he just took off. I think that's what they wanted. Wanted to believe and. And our family was adamant that that's not what happened. He wasn't. That wasn't the type of person he was.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

It hasn't been all bad, though. Amy said remembering Bob has given her a different perspective on her other brother Mike. She's learned more about how difficult it was for Mike when Bob went missing and heard stories about Bob that were new to her.

[Amy Christian]

You know, Mike shared his experience of him getting his first buck and. And Bob never getting a buck and being so exc. Brother, you know, and just. That was the kind of person my brother Bob was. He wasn't jealous or mad or anything like that. He was happy for Mike, but he's like, man, are you lucky, you know, to be as young as he was to get his first buck. So, I mean, Mike shared that with me and it just. It just reiterated the way I felt about my brother. You know, being eleven and a half, he was one of my first heroes, you know, he was somebody that I looked up to.

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[Amy Christian]

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[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Time has made solving Bob's case exponentially more difficult. But Detective Point told me he recently caught a break. Since our last episode aired, he's made contact with someone else from the area who was previously unknown to law enforcement.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

A person who we hadn't really known about before was living up there at the time and was able to track that person down and talk to them and got some more information of other people that were kind of hanging around that area up there at the time and got more of a better picture, I would say, into the goings on up there. Not necessarily anything, you know, suspicious or illegal, but just kind of the people that were hanging out up there in that neck of the woods. So I got a bunch of names of people I'm trying to run down to talk to from that time period.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

This person had been living in a house close to where Bob's car was found, but they didn't own it. Detective Pointon told me that several people had rented that property over the years, but he was finally able to track down the resident at the time of Bob's disappearance.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

They weren't living there very long, only a couple years around that time, and it was kind of a common name. So then that kind of threw a wrench into things trying to figure out who exactly this person was. The other problems were like, addresses have changed. Like that road was Albrecht Road at the time now it's Tower Road. So it took a little sifting through and finding out this person lived there. Okay, who lived there before you, who lived there before them, who lived there before them, and finally narrowing down who was there at the time and tracked that person down.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

This person now lives out of state, so Detective Pointon flew out to meet them rather than have a phone conversation.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

This person I went and talked to knew that it had happened, but just had never had contact with law enforcement about it. And so they had a whole lot of good information that we didn't know about before, good info about the goings on up there at the time, and, again, other names of people who were up there and would have been in that area at the time.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

None of this information was the proverbial smoking gun the detective is looking for, but it will allow him to expand the web of possible witnesses, people who may have seen or heard that small detail that will blow the case wide open. Amy said she's appreciated the way detective Point has taken on this case, and they both know that time may be running out.

[Detective Tyler Pointon]

Time's a killer for this stuff. I mean, like I said, everybody, you know, a lot of people are deceased, or like you said, memories fade. It's 50 years ago next year. So even people that were, you know, in their 30s, you know, they're. They're 80, in their 80s now, and. And so, yeah, it's getting harder and harder, but that's the reason I want to try and, like, in another 10 years, good luck trying to get anybody, you know, who was alive at that time.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

If you think you know something about Bob's disappearance, no matter how minor, get in touch with Detective Pointon at 608-355-3205. You can also reach out anonymously to the Sauk county Crime Stoppers at 1-888-847-7285. You don't need to have seen Bob's abduction to have important information. If you saw something a little out of the ordinary, heard a rumor from a neighbor, or just had a bad feeling about a stranger walking down the road, get in touch with detective Pointn. Bob disappeared on September 16, 1977, just south of Baraboo, Wisconsin, off of Tower Road, near Durward's Glen.

[Amy Christian]

If anybody remembers anything or any kind of information that would be useful to detective Poynton to certainly call Sauk County. You know, that's the only. The only thing we can count on is if somebody that knew something back then and still alive can. Can share that, you know, it's the only hope we really have anymore is is anybody that might have been involved or saw or knew somebody involved with it or heard about it, then they should give them a call.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

We'll let you know if there are any updates in Bob's story or any of the other cases we've covered so far. To make sure you don't miss one of these special episodes, be sure to follow blood trails on iHeart, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. As always, if you have a tip about another case or a theory about this one, shoot me an email@bloodtrailsmeate eater.com See you next time. And stay safe out there.

[Amy Christian]

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