Twenty-nine years ago, Susan Poupart vanished from a party on the Lac Du Flambeau reservation, forever altering the lives of her two children in their tumultuous quest for truth and justice.
Alexandra (“Alex”) and Jared Poupart, now older with children of their own, struggled in the immediate aftermath of their mother’s disappearance and long after, left to carry just fragments, photographs and snatches of time as told by others.
Small, but no slouch in a fight, Jared said people told him she was strong-willed.
“She didn’t take s— from nobody and she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.”
And she wasn’t afraid to go out and have a good time.
But “Suzy,” as those who knew her called her, would never have abandoned her children.
So when the 29-year-old left for a party on May 20, 1990 and didn’t resurface for days, her sister and mother reported her missing.
Lac Du Flambeau is a Public Law 280 reservation, which means Vilas County has jurisdiction for serious investigations.
As the hope Poupart might be found alive swiftly slipped away, search parties organized by her family and the Vilas County sheriff’s office went through the summer into the fall in search of Poupart.
Poupart’s scattered bones were found by hunters on Thanksgiving Day in the Chequamegon National Forest of Price County.
Vilas County Sheriff Joseph Fath, who has taken up the case since becoming sheriff in 2013, said, “We knew from the crime scene that she was murdered.”
They found remnants of plastic and tape, in what Fath said was part of an effort to hide her remains.
Moreover, DNA was in its infancy, so material at the scene that might have been successfully tested then has since degraded.
All police did have was a story:
She went to a party for someone going away into the military.
Witnesses last saw her getting into a car with two men between 4 and 4:30 a.m.
Fath said two men, Joe Cobb and Robert Elm, told investigators they began arguing and dropped her off at the Lac du Flambeau Elementary School.
“That was suspicious,” Fath said, adding that their focus remains on the two men she left the party with, Cobb and Elm, as well as Fritz Schuman, another man who became a person of interest later in the investigation.
In other news reports, those three individuals were Robert Elm, Fritz Schuman and Joe Cobb.
Despite messages sent through social media, attempted phone calls and certified letters, none of the men responded to Media Milwaukee inquiries for their sid eof the story.
However, despite multiple interrogations and an open hearing held on her case, none of the persons of interest have ever been charged with a crime related to her disappearance or death.
All that pain, it’s still here.
Alex Poupart
Alex said she understands why Fath and the District Attorney’s office haven’t been able to build a strong enough case on behalf of her mother.
“It was a different time in 1999 or 1990 where you could get away with something like that if it was planned property,” Alex said. “They can’t prove what happened to my mom ’cause they don’t know.”
Jared said he is frustrated and pessimistic about a justice system he believes has treated his mother’s case differently because she is Native American. “The value of a Native American’s life to the government is nothing,” he said. “Look at the white women who got murdered in the surrounding communities; their murders were solved within a matter of months.”
But his mother’s case remains unsolved, because witnesses won’t speak and Susan and no longer can.
“It’s just the hardest part when you lose somebody,” Alex said, her voice breaking. “All that pain, it’s still here.”
Susan Poupart was beautiful, her son said.
He has long believed that beauty may have contributed to her death.
Jared Poupart is the father of a five-year-old namesake who is his world.
He works at a travel building in the tribal economics support office. And in his free time, he goes spearfishing and collects wild rice in the glimmering waterways of Lac Du Flambeau.
But no matter where he is, he said he is always thinking of his mother.
“Every day, I think about my mom,” he said. “I say hi to her and tell her I love her.”
Alexandra, Susan Poupart’s daughter, was much younger when her mother went missing.
Alex never knew her father and has fewer memories of her mother than Jared.
From others, she learned that her mother was an artist, that she was left-handed and that she spent time in New Mexico at American Indian University.
And she remembers how her mother’s death affected Jared: “He was real hurt as a boy.”
They’ve all had a life with their children … Me and my sister, we had that taken away.
Jared Poupart
Jared said he’s always wondered what his life would have been like if his mother had never been murdered.
Before her disappearance, Jared said his mother made sure he and his sister were always taken care of.
“Every morning, I’d wake up and my clothes would be on the edge of my bed,” he said. “She always dressed me up in nice clothes: buttoned up shirts, dress pants, shoes; that’s how she’d send me to school every day.”
“When I was small, she would give me an Eskimo kiss and she’d blow air into my mouth and my cheeks would puff up and we’d always laugh.”
On the night of May 20, Jared’s grandmother begged Susan to not to go out, telling her she had a bad feeling.
When she didn’t come home a few days later, her family grew worried and a nine-year-old Jared went with his aunts and uncles to look for her. But it would be nine months before his grandmother’s intuition was proven right.
There’s people out there that know what happened. I just need them to come forward.”
Sheriff Joseph Fath
“We were going out and looking everywhere in the woods. My uncle David, he pulled me aside … he said Jared, ‘Man, your mom is not coming home, she’s gone now.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘She’s dead. I’m sorry I’m the one who has to tell you this, but your mom is not coming home no more.’”
For years, Jared said he shut down: “I locked my feelings away for a long time,” he recalled.
Jared grew up with his grandmother while Alex was raised by one of her aunts.
Alex said growing up separately changed their sibling relationship.
“Me and my brother weren’t as close as we should have been growing up,” she explained.
Jared grew up with a grandmother wracked with guilt that she didn’t do more to keep Susan home that fateful night.
“That broke my grandmother’s heart and I had to live with that. I lived with my grandma and she cried all the time. She tried to kill herself a couple of times with her insulin; I had to stop her.”
Alex also changed, having grown up without either of her biological parents: “When I was younger, before I had kids, I used to drink a lot and I was restless,” she said.
She dreads the day she has to explain to her children, who are all under nine, why they can’t see their grandmother.
“My kids really are at the age where they don’t know about it yet… so they’ve asked about her and they talk about her, but the murder thing has not come up with them yet,” she said.
Jared also said he wishes his mother could have met her grandchildren. “They’re never going to know her — only through a picture,” he said, adding that it’s unfair that his mother’s killer(s) have not had to live with the consequences of their actions the way he and his sister have.
Photo courtesy of Alex Poupart.
“They’ve all had a life with their children,” he said bitterly. “Me and my sister, we had that taken away.”
“They” are the three men Jared and Alex have heard, through rumors, are responsible for their mother’s death: Elm, Schuman and Cobb.
In fact, it is through rumors that Jared has cobbled together a horrific biography of his mother’s last moments:
That after she was whisked away from the party, she was the victim of an attempted sexual assault and beaten when she resisted; then gang-raped, shot and killed with the pump part of a tire jack.
But the same people who told Jared these tidbits have refused to go to the police.
“I’m not sure, but I believe there are people in that community in Lac Du Flambeau that know something about this case and they have chosen not to come forward,” he said. “There’s people out there that know what happened. I just need them to come forward.”
The case has been notoriously difficult to prove, but Alex has always believed the three men brought before the open hearings were the men who killed her mother.
“It was from people within our community. If the community could get more involved and help out, it would be solved,” she said, her voice strained with anger and sadness.
But that maddening wall of silence has in fact, reached open hearings when only one of the three men, Schuman, showed up — and pled the fifth.
In the Lac Du Flambeau community, Susan Poupart’s death has created a rift between those who knew the suspects and Jared and Alex.
“There’s been nothing but conflict between me and them,” she said.
But he said whoever killed her is carrying a sickness in their soul: “They did some evil s— and I know they feel it every day,” he said.
Jared said he doesn’t have a lot of hope that his mothers’ killers will ever be brought to justice in a court of law.
But he believes talking about it might help.
“Maybe my story will get out and be heard by somebody who is willing to help and do something about it because my family, we deserve some justice,” he said.
Anyone with information about Susan Poupart’s murder can contact the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office at (800) 472-7290 and ask for Lieutenant Carl Gauger or Sheriff Joe Fath.