“Friendly” Mom Has No Idea a 21-Year-Old Bite Just Exposed Her and Her Cop Husband

“We are from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in Jacksonville, Florida.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so, excuse me, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, uh, Jacksonville, Florida. Okay, is it—yeah, I’m just like, ‘Wow, okay, why?’ No, I’m just like, I mean, it took me a second to process, like, ‘Florida, okay, anything?’ No, no, no, nothing, just like, kind of…”

This is 50-year-old Melissa Schaefer, an occupational therapy assistant in Jefferson City, Missouri, a mother of two, a member of her home state’s high school softball hall of fame. About an hour ago, police pulled her over. She has no idea why two detectives traveled all the way from Florida to talk to her.

“Now, before I go into anything any further, Melissa, this case is 21 years old.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, um, I know all the players, and thanks to wonderful, wonderful, um, technology, okay, I’ve gotten a lot of great evidence. 21 years ago, on a Monday morning, in Jacksonville, a man was killed in his own garage. His wife fought back, and in the struggle, she bit one of the attackers on the arm. That bite has been sitting in evidence ever since. And this is why I said this is your opportunity, okay? I know you’re there, I know Billy’s there, because of this fantastic technology. And if you watch any TV, you know what’s going on.”

“Mhm.”

“Okay. So, with that being said, I know your role and I know his role. Okay? So what am I talking about?”

What Melissa says next, you will never hear in the recording released to the public. The sound cuts out for almost 50 minutes. But by the time it comes back, the detectives have everything they came for, and the man who was with her that morning turns out to be the last person anyone in Jacksonville would ever have suspected.

Monday, May 17th, 1999. Deerwood, a gated community on Jacksonville’s south side. 39-year-old Assad Kuwaf owns a convenience store, and every week he follows the same routine: he takes the cash to the bank.

At around 9:40 that morning, Assad steps out into his garage. Two people are waiting for him: a man and a woman. The man attacks Assad. It’s fast, and it’s violent. Assad’s wife, Samar, sees what’s happening and runs to help him. The woman grabs her, and in the struggle, Samar does the only thing she can: she bites her attacker’s arm hard. At knife-point, the attackers demand the money. Samar hands over about $53,000 in cash. They tape her mouth and her wrists, and they’re gone. Samar manages to free herself and calls for help. Assad is rushed to the hospital; he dies from his injuries.

Detectives have almost nothing: a white man, a white woman, no names, no car, no witnesses. Just what the attackers left behind—including what Samar’s bite left behind.

The evidence is collected and preserved. In 2003, the lab finally develops two DNA profiles from the scene: one male, one female. But there is no one to match them to. Years go by. Assad’s family keeps waiting for a name. The detectives who work the case move on or retire. The file goes cold.

Then, in 2018, a cold case detective named Margot Ratigan pulls the file again. She sends the DNA back to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, this time for genetic genealogy—the same technique that had just started cracking some of America’s oldest cases. It takes two years. In May of 2020, the genealogy work produces leads, and in June, the lab gives detectives two names. The woman’s name is Melissa Joe Schaefer; she’s living in Missouri now. The man’s name stops everyone in the room cold. But before anyone says it out loud, Detective Ratigan wants to hear it from Melissa.

July 2nd, 2020. The Jefferson City Police Department in Missouri. Detective Ratigan and her partner sit down across the table from her.

“Hi there, Melissa.”

“Yes, hi.”

“I’m Detective Ratigan. This is my partner…”

“Are those reading glasses?”

“They’re prescription glasses. I just put my sunglasses on when the officers pulled me over.”

“Can you see without them?”

“If you take them off, you’re blurry, but I can see.”

“Okay, well, I’ll have you put them back on if you want to slide up to the table real quick. I’ll explain to you what’s going on. Do you have any idea why you would be down here?”

“I do.”

“Okay, thank you. Okay, have you always been in Missouri?”

“No.”

“Where have you been?”

“Uh, I was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Okay. And then in ’95, I moved down to Florida, and I spent most of my adult life down in Florida.”

“When did you leave Florida?”

“I left Florida officially in March of 2016 to move up to help my dad take care of my mother in, in Monroe City.”

“Oh, okay. Okay. And what do you do for a living?”

“Occupational therapy assistant.”

“What is that?”

“What is—um, you know what physical therapy is? Occupational therapy, we deal with like the upper body and functional things in the home.”

“Okay. Okay. How long have you been doing that?”

“25 years.”

“Iowa? Yeah, I graduated and we’ve showed up since ’95.”

“Okay, where’d you go to school at? What was that?”

“Kirkwood. I mean, I’ve been… yep, I went to University of Northern Iowa for a couple years. Okay. Then I got my degree at Kirkwood Community College, and I also have a bachelor’s from Ashbridge University.”

“Children?”

“Two daughters.”

“Oh, yeah. How old?”

“30 and almost 29.”

“Okay. Are you currently married, single?”

“I am divorced.”

“Divorced, okay. Or I like to prefer single. Divorced doesn’t…”

“Divorced is a segment.”

“It does. I don’t know why.”

“Can you just check single? I have actually started checking single. I’m like, married, divorced, single, I don’t like to say that, kind of a sore subject.”

“Just one divorce or…”

“No, I have a few.”

“Me too. The last one is like the worst one, I think. I’ve got four for…”

For the first 20 minutes, the detectives never mention a murder. They just let her talk—about Iowa, about her daughters, about her four marriages. Listen to how she describes husband number two.

“And then, um, I had a boyfriend, he moved in with me, and then we moved in together in Jacksonville Beach. Okay. And, um, eventually we ended up getting married, and we stayed there, um, for a while. And then we, um, had a house built out in, um, Ponte Vedra.”

“Mhm.”

“And we lived there together for—I’m trying to think when I left, maybe in ’06 or… yeah, 2006.”

“The husband in Jacksonville, would that be which husband would that…”

“Uh, Robert, uh, William.”

“Was that number two?”

“Number one.”

“That was number two.”

“Number two, okay, yep. So the girls’ father, I married and divorced in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Um, and we were married three years, I want to say, and then moved to Jacksonville, Florida. And then, um, we always called him Robert, but his first name is William. William. William Robert, yep.”

“How was that marriage?”

“Um, the first five were okay, and the last five were not so okay. So we got along, I mean, I’ll say that we got along. It just wasn’t, um… I just wasn’t happy. And the house was my idea. I thought getting a house would… so it was really, well, you know, keep us active, give us something to, you know, put our energy into. So I put all my energy into it, and you know, you just had other plans.”

“So was he abusive at all?”

“No, not physically, you know, there… no, I wouldn’t say that, just probably not what I wanted or needed, I guess.”

“Mhm.”

“So I mean, we left on good terms. We sold—he sold the house, and we split it. And I think, uh, we’d keep in contact off and on just to check in and see how…”

“Jealous of me, and so I said, ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble for just checking in on me, so, you know, you shouldn’t do that.'”

“So, kind of going down memory lane a little bit, anything jarring you why we would be talking to you from Jacksonville?”

“No.”

“Okay. And you were married to William Baer also? Billy Baer?”

“Correct.”

“Okay, that’s the same as…”

“When I—when I first met him, he introduced himself as Robert.”

“Mhm.”

“So it was actually some time before I realized that it was his middle name then. But honestly, only my family and probably the friends that I had that I introduced him to there knew him as Robert. Like, everybody else just knew him pretty much as Billy, I guess.”

“Yeah, like all the work people knew him as Billy.”

“His work people or, um…”

“Yeah.”

“What did he do?”

“He was a police officer. When I met him, he was on the bomb squad.”

“Okay.”

“And then he, um, went into, I think, the detective department.”

William Robert Baer Jr. Everyone at work called him Billy. He joined the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in 1975—bomb squad, homicide, and then intelligence.

“So when he was a detective, do you remember what kind of cars he would have had?”

“They weren’t obviously marked, right?”

“There were types of cars that we drive. Ford Fusions now, yep.”

“I’m not sure. I’m… I know when we bought the house, he had a… he got a Ford Sport Trac. Like when the Ford first came out with that extended, extended truck, yeah. So I know we had that.”

“What color was that?”

“That was black.”

“And that was a department car?”

“That was a issued car, nope. No, the only issued car that I thought he had… now, if the car that he drove around when I first met him was issued, I didn’t know about it. I just figured it was his.”

“And, um, first he had broke it off with me, and then, um, he came back, and then that’s, um… he broke it off because I had found out that he was married.”

“So, um, and then he said he was still married, but he had moved out and he had been living with a friend of his for the last six months, he just didn’t want to tell me about it. And so I believed him. Yeah. So I imagine with his divorce it worked out, and he was needing money, right? Those aren’t cheap.”

“No, and she didn’t take a lump sum, so he has to pay her alimony. And they still had two kids at the time, so he paid on that as well.”

“Was that stressful during your relationship?”

“Um, no, he didn’t really talk about it. The… I mean, it was a little bit when he was going through the divorce, um, but it seemed to kind of just go through arbitration. It was just going to be whatever it was going to be, cuz he’s got a couple kids, right?”

“He does.”

“So they’re… yeah, they’re alimony and child support.”

“All right. Well, um, so I… I know a little bit about Billy, and…”

“Well, if you’ve been down there for a while, you probably…”

“I’ve been… I’m getting ready to retire, so I’ve been there. I was, uh, just coming on, um, I think when he was leaving. I’ve been on a couple years when he was… he was leaving. So I always heard the name Billy Baer. I was, you know, he’s, um… you know, he was a homicide detective. I think he was an intelligence detective. I know he did the homicide before I met him. He basically did it because of the overtime.”

“Well, um, like I said, I… I know I know him, um, not personally.”

“Still not ringing a bell? Still flabbergasted about Jacksonville?”

“I am.”

“Okay. Well, I’m going to… I… I’ll tell you one thing about me. I’m sorry if I… I do a little bit, so…”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to play games. Um, and quite frankly, I’m just going to come straight to the point. I… I appreciate your honesty. It’s been great reminiscing with you a little bit, but I’m going to go straight to the point. He’s been in homicide for about 18 years. I’ve been in homicide for 16 years.”

“Okay. Okay. So we know all that work. Um, we are currently assigned to a cold case unit, so we look at old cases. Now, before I go into anything any further, Melissa, this case is 21 years old.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, um, I know all the players, and thanks to wonderful, wonderful, um, technology, okay, I’ve gotten a lot of great evidence. Before I get into any evidence and before I get into anything about you, I’m stepping to you, okay? Okay? This here is your opportunity, okay? And I’m… you’re… you’re going to see where I’m coming from. This is your opportunity to tell me everything.”

“Um…”

“Do you remember when Billy was in intelligence? He was on a money laundering task force.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Ringing a bell yet?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. And this is where I said this is your opportunity, okay? I know you’re there, I know Billy’s there, because of this fantastic technology. And if you watch any TV, you know what’s going on.”

“Mhm.”

“Okay. So, with that being said, I know your role and I know his role, okay? So what am I talking about?”

And then the sound stops.

On camera, you can still see the three of them at the table. You can see Melissa talking for almost 50 minutes. But in the recording released to the public, there is no audio at all. We don’t know exactly what she said in that room, but we know what happened five months later, and we know what the detectives already knew before they ever walked in. Because the day before, back in Jacksonville, they had arrested the man: retired Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detective William Baer.

In his own interview, the 64-year-old former homicide detective sits with his arms folded. Detectives show him photographs. He says he’s never seen the man in them before. Then he asks for a lawyer.

But the most disturbing part of this case isn’t that a detective was involved; it’s how he chose his victim. In 1999, Baer was working in the sheriff’s office intelligence division on a team investigating Assad Kuwaf for money laundering. That investigation is how he learned Assad’s routine: the cash, the weekly trips to the bank. He used his badge to pick his target. And after that Monday morning in Deerwood, he went back to work. He put the badge back on, and he kept wearing it for three more years until he retired in 2002.

When the sound finally comes back, the detectives have one more request.

“All right. I’m going to read this as a consent. Read this to you.”

I, Melissa Joe Schaefer, having been advised that a law enforcement officer, pursuant to a lawful criminal investigation—which it is, this homicide investigation—request vehicle swabs, which were swabs of the mouth from my person, authorized Detective M. Ratigan, which is me, and other law enforcement officers as she should be—she may assign to assist them in taking of the samples.

I have not been promised anything, and I have not been threatened or coerced to provide a consent. I’m providing this consent voluntarily, with the understanding that any evidence obtained may be used against me in all criminal proceedings. I have been advised that I have the right to refuse to provide consent.

“Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“And understanding that consent, you wish to submit swabs?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Like I said, I know you’ve got a lot racing through your mind right now. After we do this, we’re going to step out for a little bit. Do you want some water? Who would like some water? Get you some water, um…”

“I’m not going to tell you… I’m not scared to death, no.”

“He has no idea that you’re investigating this?”

“Oh, okay. I’m like, well, that’s going to be… that’s going to be a big shock to him if he doesn’t know.”

“Want to talk to us?”

“If I say anything…”

“So this is just a cotton swab. I’m going to let you take it out of here and slide it back in. One cotton swab for each side of the mouth. When you put this in, kind of firmly swab along your gum line, up and lower in the side of your mouth. We’ll slide it back in, do the other one on the other side, and we’ll put it in here.”

For 21 years, her DNA had been sitting in an evidence file in Jacksonville. Now she’s handing it over herself, one cotton swab at a time.

“Really, thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Need anything other than water right now, Melissa?”

“Well, I’m sure I’m probably going to need a lawyer somewhere along the way.”

“That’s for you, but that’s… we can’t make that choice for…”

“Well, I don’t… don’t I have to have a lawyer?”

“You will eventually.”

“What are you saying? You want one now or you…”

“No, no, no. You’re just saying there is a warrant, and that’s what you were picked up on today inside of our jurisdiction, and it is for armed robbery, and it is for murder.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“I’m going to step out for a little bit. We’ll get you that water, and we’ll be right back in, okay?”

“Okay.”

In December 2020, Melissa Schaefer pleads guilty to second-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and aggravated battery. As part of her deal, she agrees to testify against her ex-husband. She never has to.

In September 2021, facing a possible death sentence, William Bear pleads guilty to first-degree murder. He’s sentenced to life in Florida State Prison. Six months later, Melissa is sentenced to 30 years.

When Baer was arrested, Assad’s brother said he could never imagine that a police officer—someone entrusted to protect people—could do something like this. Two killers walked out of that garage in 1999 believing they had gotten away with it. One of them knew exactly how detectives think. What he never counted on was Samar Kuwaf and one desperate bite that waited 21 years to tell the truth.