As the spring of 1990 began heading into summer, a Native American woman in the Midwestern United States would leave a party with two men and disappear shortly thereafter, only to turn up dead in late autumn of the same year.
Twenty-nine-year-old mother of two Susan “Suzy” Poupart had been spending the evening of Saturday, May 19th out on the town, and as the night wore on, she was seen by several witnesses at an after-hours party on the Makwa Trail that ran through the Ojibwe Indian Reservation in Lac Du Flambeau, Wisconsin.
At approximately four a.m. on the morning of May 20th, other partygoers reported that Susan either got into or was forced into a vehicle in front of the building; the two men who got into the car with her were identified as Joe Cobb and Robert Elm, who had also been attending the party. After the car drove away, Susan was never seen alive again, and it would in fact be six long months before her sad fate would be revealed.
On November 22nd, 1990, which happened to be Thanksgiving Day, two hunters walking through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin noticed something strange hidden underneath a log. This discovery proved to be a woman’s purse, a jacket, and a tribal ID bearing the name of Susan Poupart. When the jacket was pulled out of the hole, the hunters spotted a human jawbone underneath it. A wider search revealed more skeletal fragments in the area, though some of Susan’s remains were never recovered, presumably because the bones had been scattered by animals.
Because duct tape and scraps of plastic were also found at the site, investigators assumed that Susan’s body had been wrapped and stashed beneath the log by her killer or killers. The coroner also stated that she had likely been sexually assaulted.
Joe Cobb and Robert Elm, the two men allegedly seen putting Susan into a car after a party back in May, had testified that they had not kidnapped her, but had instead been giving her a ride home. They both claimed to have dropped her off in front of Lac Du Flambeau Elementary School. Cobb and Elm were never charged, as there was not enough evidence to tie the men to Susan’s disappearance and subsequent murder.
Another local individual, Fritz Schuman, was questioned extensively after an inmate at the Vilas County Jail told authorities that Schuman had admitted to him that he and two other men had taken Susan out into the woods to rape her and beat her to death. But just as in the case of Robert Elm and Joe Cobb, there was insufficient evidence to actually charge Schuman with any wrongdoing, and he has steadfastly refused to answer any and all questions about the slaying.
Law enforcement officers are hoping that DNA evidence might help them to crack the case, but obtaining DNA has been particularly difficult in Susan Poupart’s murder, and what little has been recovered has not been much help. A billboard displaying Susan’s picture and a plea for help in the case has greeted drivers on Route 47 in Lac Du Flambeau for years, and a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for information is still on offer in the unsolved crime.
Crime Immemorial 