WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis. (WSAW) - A Port Edwards man is charged with 1st-degree intentional homicide in the 1984 murder of Eleanore Roberts.
John Sarver, 57, was arrested and booked into the Wood County Jail Thursday, facing a maximum of life in prison. The Wisconsin Department of Justice, assistant attorney general Annie Jay will prosecute the case. He makes his initial court appearance Friday afternoon.
“We know the family has been waiting for this moment for many years,” Sheriff Shawn Becker said at a press conference Thursday.
He met with family members a few days ago saying they were very appreciative. He said the family was “very relieved, surreal, a lot of emotions. They’ve been going through this almost 36 years and other points during the investigation, they thought an arrest was going to be made and were let down. It was hard for them.”
Sheriff Becker noted there were several “walls” they hit over the 36 years and investigators got frustrated at times. “No one ever gave up even though investigators have retired during this period,” he said. “Even after retirement, they continued to assist this investigation. They never lost the passion to see things through.”
On Nov. 27, 1984, Roberts’ son, who was 46, told Nekoosa police that he found his mother dead in her home in the town of Saratoga. The Wood County Sheriff’s Office took command of the case because it actually fell in its jurisdiction. Deputy Tom Reichert, who would later become sheriff, met with the son who said he found her in the bathroom with a rug covering her head and when he removed the rug, he saw she was dead with clear head injuries.
The son had to call 9-1-1 from another home because his mother’s dial phone was missing.
He told investigators he talked with his mother the evening before and she seemed fine. He said his uncle, Robert’s brother, called him on the morning of Nov. 27 because he could not get a hold of Roberts. They had plans to meet because Roberts was looking to buy a new car. The son and uncle met at her home, went inside, and found her dead with no lights on in the home. Witness’s last known contact with Roberts was a phone call around 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 26, 1984.
A neighbor reported seeing a car pulling into Roberts’ driveway around 10:10 p.m. Nov. 26.
Investigators at the time saw no signs of forced entry into the home. There were pools of blood and bloodstains in the bathroom where Roberts was found. A piece of a twig was also found near her body. The home was neat and clean except for a phone missing off of a wall jack in the kitchen, a single oak leaf on the floor in that area, a pair of scissors, and a kitchen knife.
The forensic pathologist who did the autopsy determined that she died from a combination of blunt force trauma and numerous sharp force injuries, which based on the shape and other factors, he believed came from her being stabbed with scissors. He noted there were no natural causes related to her death and they were linked to homicide.
Investigators were able to get some finger and palmprints from the bathroom area along with some bloodstain samples. As evidence processing technologies advanced over 35 years, including DNA analysis, the evidence was tested repeatedly. In 1988, three separate palmprints were determined to match Sarver’s right palm. That was confirmed again in 2019.
The wife of the son who found Roberts dead in her home told investigators she had an identical pair of scissors to the ones missing from Roberts’ home.
Nov. 28, investigators found a pair of scissors near an intersection about a mile and a half away from Roberts’ home, which the daughter-in-law confirmed were the same type of scissors missing from Roberts’ home. Roberts’ brother found a butcher knife the day before was in the same area with a bent blade, sticking into the ground, however, he said he had straightened it and cleaned it off before he turned it over to investigators. This knife was the same type of knife missing from Roberts’ home.
Nekoosa Police also found a full-face ski mask along the side of the road across from Roberts’ home in a branch of a tree, like it was thrown there.
A few months later in March, 1985, another witness found a beige phone in the Wisconsin River while launching a boat into the water off of Highway Z. The phone had Roberts’ number on it.
The ski mask had some hairs that the Wisconsin State Crime Lab reports Sarver could have been a source of based off of testing done in 2015, confirming that again in 2020. Investigators said the ski mask, scissors, knife, and telephone were found along a route that led from Roberts’ home to Sarver’s home at the time of the death.
Sarver was first interviewed on Dec. 3, 1984. He told investigators the day before Roberts’ death, he was with another witness shooting pool at Evergreen Lanes. In 1988 when the palmprints were identified as Sarvers, that other witness he claims to have been with was interviewed, and while investigators admit the witness could not specifically remember everything that night, he said he didn’t remember ever shooting pool with Sarver.
Sarver was interviewed again on May 1, 1985, saying his last contact with Roberts would have been in the summer of 1984. When he was interviewed again in 1988, he confirmed his last contact with her was late summer, early fall, which was consistent with other records investigators had. He said he never was inside her home. Investigators said Sarver gave several different alibis in that interview, none of which could be confirmed, in fact another witness he said that he was with told investigators they were by themselves that evening.
Another witness around the time of Roberts’ death told investigators Sarver was having financial difficulties and that he had borrowed $2,000 from him shortly after the murder. That witness said he was never paid back.
In 2005, a confidential informant at the time told an investigator that Sarver had to him 17 years earlier he had killed a lady, including in the conversation a “karate chop to her neck.” Roberts’ injuries were consistent with that motion.
Another pair of witnesses had a conversation they shared with investigators about how Sarver admitted to entering Roberts’ home through the back door to rob her but was surprised by Roberts, who he beat to death by “accident.” One of the witnesses told investigators Sarver told them over the phone that he hit Roberts in the back of the head and neck using some type of weapon to kill her.
The Wood County Sheriff’s Office was assisted by the Nekoosa Police Department, Marshfield Police Department, Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, the Wisconsin State Crime Lab, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Sheriff Becker said they are asking people who have any more information about the case to contact them as attorneys prepare to prosecute the case.
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