Missing in Milwaukee: A Mother's Quest for Justice

Loving and Hard-Working

Rodgers' family describes him as a loving and hardworking divorced dad whose two children often shared the house with Rodgers and Marzo.

Becky Marzo vanished more than five years ago. Her mother believes that her daughter's boyfriend, Carl Rodgers (left) was responsible for her disappearance. Rodgers' family says he is innocent.

(Courtesy of The Rodgers Family/Karren Kraemer)

"My brother and I live with my father and we never saw them argue or anything else," said Rodgers' teenage daughter Angel. "My father never put his hands on anybody."

In fact, to the Rodgers, it was Marzo who seemed to be the tougher one.

"We thought Becky was a little hard. I don't know another way to put it, but it seemed like she had been through some things and gave her kind of an edge," Jeff Stemper said.

Rodgers told detectives looking into Marzo's disappearance that she probably had returned to Miami, where she had fled to 10 months earlier.

She had retreated there, friends say, to escape the abuse she received from Rodgers.

"She was hoping to get a better start on life," Randall said.

Marzo Goes Missing

"She was a stripper for a short time," said Randall's sister Lisa, who is also a close friend of Marzo's. "She was staying at the hotel with one of the girls that was working."

Related

A Way to Uncover Hidden Prints

Top Law & Justice Stories of 2008

Mom Can't Attend Caylee's Funeral

When Marzo's family filed a missing person's report, the FBI found Marzo working at a strip club called the Goldrush. The investigation also revealed that she may have been "prostituting herself" and had "a substance abuse problem."

But Kraemer disputes those findings, saying that a club manager at the Goldrush told her that Marzo was tending bar.

"They felt sorry for her and gave her a job. They knew that she wasn't, you know, in that lifestyle," said Kraemer.

Whatever she was doing there, Marzo's life in Florida did not seem to suit her, and six weeks later, she returned to Milwaukee, and eventually moved back in with Rodgers.

When Marzo disappeared a second time, Kraemer said police showed little interest in investigating, given her history of abrupt departures.

"They said, 'She's 23 years old. She has the right to go missing,'" said Kraemer. "So I hired a private investigator."

A Campaign to Find the Truth

Kraemer's efforts yielded little information. Marzo had left behind a paycheck at a Target store where she was a cashier. There was also no activity on her Social Security number, driver's license or any of her charge cards.

"It was as though she just no longer existed," said Kraemer.

Kraemer says she was convinced her daughter had been murdered and she began a campaign to find out what had happened. She began hanging posters around Rodgers' neighborhood and near his place of business at all hours of the night. She left trinkets that belonged to Marzo on Rodgers' car.