Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today has been years in the making. It all started when we set out to cover one unsolved case in Wisconsin. But what we uncovered was a possible serial killer at work in the state and 10 eerily similar cases that had never been connected, separated by jurisdiction

and bureaucracy. But sometimes it takes a little podcast and three years of work to get people

working together and thinking outside of the box. So our story today starts with the case that

piqued our interest years ago, and that's the murder of Reese Pocan. On September 2nd, 1989, the non-emergency dispatch line at the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin started to ring.

The caller won't give his name, but he says earlier that morning, like sometime before sunrise, he and his wife were walking in

Nichols Creek, which is this like public hunting ground and they stumbled upon a dead body.

So the dispatcher asked like, are you sure it's a human body? And the man says, quote,

oh yeah, it's been decapitated and it's been there for a while, apparently.

Now, he explains that he saw the body about 100 feet off a public access road.

And when the dispatcher offers to get a detective on the line, the man's like, no, no, no, no, like, I just found it.

I wanted to report it. Like, I don't want anything to do with this, basically, right?

So he hangs up without identifying himself and leaves before authorities actually get to the

scene, where they do find the body that he described.

And it is in a particularly gruesome state.

This victim is severely decomposed, like almost mummified, and the victim's head and hands are missing.

And it appears as if the corpse had been scavenged by animals and insects.

Like the insides are literally hollowed out and the skin is almost like leather.

And other than the body, though, there is nothing else at the scene.

And despite searching far and wide,

they don't find any other body parts, they don't find any clothes, no personal belongings,

which makes identification essentially impossible. But based on the pelvic bone of this victim,

the ME determines that this was a female, and a small scar on her abdomen,

...