A Body in the Woods
Six months later, on Thanksgiving Day, deer hunters in nearby Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest stumbled upon a tribal ID and clothing buried under a log. They pulled on a jacket and discovered decomposed human remains wrapped in plastic, including a jawbone, according to WJFW Newswatch. Dental records confirmed the victim was Poupart.
Police believe Poupart was sexually assaulted then murdered and dumped in the woods. Over the last three decades, investigators interviewed hundreds of people, including every attendee at the house party. They keep coming back to Joe Cobb and Robert Elm, the two men who gave Poupart a ride. They maintain that they got into an argument with Poupart and wound up dropping her off in front of a school, which was farther away from her home than the party.
Native American tradition is wrapped around stories. History, custom and news has been delivered this way among the Chippewa people since before the United States was founded. Assigned storytellers pass along tales from one generation to another, which can include legends or giving spiritual meaning to events.
Today, news continues to be disseminated orally among the tribe. Sometimes stories circulate as rumors, which is how Poupart’s kids, Jared and Alex, pieced together an account of their mother’s last days. Those rumors served as leads to investigators. One of those rumors led to Elm’s cousin, Francis Schuman, who became a third suspect.
Reminders of Poupart’s death are everywhere. Jared and Alex sought Ojibwe spirituality ceremony for healing and solace only to find Cobb and Elm there, too. "We have to travel far away from home if we want ceremony," Alex told ICT News. Jared told the outlet that one of the suspects’ daughters used to “ holler at me, ‘Hey, my dad didn’t kill your mom.’” "Every time I saw those guys I would flip out," he added.
Alex lives right near the location where her mom was last spotted. "Where she got abducted from is right down the road from my house," Alex told NBC News. "It's like three doors down. I live on the same street."
Residents have been hesitant to cooperate with authorities because they fear Cobb and Elm, who have a criminal history. Many adopted a deeply embedded code of silence necessary for survival over generations. "We know that they've committed violent crimes against women in the past. So they have not changed their stripes,” Vilas County Sheriff Joe Fath told local TV station WSAW of Cobb and Elm “Both of them moved off the reservation right after this happened. Particularly after we found Susie's remains."
Repeated interviews of the three suspects hadn’t been fruitful, so investigators took an extraordinary step: They requested a John Doe hearing, which involves a judge who convenes a proceeding to determine whether a crime was committed. If there’s probable cause, the district attorney’s office can file charges. The three suspects were subpoenaed. Schuman invoked the Fifth Amendment of not incriminating himself. Elm didn’t have a lawyer, so questioning stopped, and Cobb never showed.
Ongoing DNA Testing
DNA testing to solve crimes was still in its infancy in 1990. Only large cities had the necessary funding, equipment and training and even then yielded limited success. Still, investigators gathered evidence and sent it to an FBI lab in 1992, producing nothing of evidentiary value.
Knowing that Cobb and Elm were deer hunters and that Poupart’s body was left in a common hunting area, investigators sent deer hair they found in the Buick to a private lab in Mississippi in 2003 for analysis with the hope that it matched hair found at the crime scene. A hurricane swept through and destroyed the entire lab, wiping out DNA evidence.
Undeterred, investigators sent samples in 2014 and learned that Poupart’s underwear contained male DNA, although it was not enough evidence to pin the crime to anybody.
With new hope from advances in DNA testing and additional funds raised, in 2024, the Sheriff’s Office sent samples to the state’s Wausau Crime Lab. The lab employed the M-Vac system, which works like a miniature carpet cleaner that sprays a solution on an object and sucks it back up along with DNA that’s collected through a sterile filter. Thus, more DNA is picked up than with earlier extraction methods. However, the samples weren’t complete enough to create a profile.
In April of 2025, another batch of DNA was sent for testing. Detective Cody Remick tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Cobb, Elm and Shuman are still suspects, but that he “can not really touch on DNA results at this time due to the integrity of the case and pending results.” The state’s department of justice also declined to comment.
David Gurney, Director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College, has helped solve cold cases in the past, including one in Wisconsin. He tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Even very old evidence that was left in non-ideal conditions can sometimes provide enough DNA to generate a SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) profile.”
The challenge is not on the science front. “The cost to extract DNA and use next-generation sequencing to develop a genetic profile can be anywhere from $1,200 to $20,000,” he says. “The federal government and state governments have not stepped up to provide sufficient funding for even a fraction of the work that needs to be done.”
Many cold cases are likely sitting on evidence shelves, waiting to be solved. All they need is a lucky break or generous benefactor.
