Raw Meat Fell From a Clear Sky - Episode 49

The Watch Stopped at 3:25: The Double Murder of Mary and Suzanne Raker

A 15-year-old girl wrote in her diary that if she was murdered, someone should find her killer. Days later, she and her 12-year-old sister vanished from a department store on Labor Day. Mary's watch was recovered from forty feet underwater, frozen at 3:25 — and nobody has ever been charged. This homicide investigation spans fifty years, four agencies, and one man who answered a direct question about the murders with nothing but a hiss.

In this episode, we explore why a teenage boy who worked in the exact store where the girls were last seen was never formally named a suspect, despite a nearly identical attack two years later involving the same methods — a knife, a remote pit, and brush used to cover the body. We examine the gold-rimmed glasses found locked in a dead investigator's desk drawer in 1983, and the moment a key witness found one of the bodies — the body of a girl whose killer he may have asked about directly. Was this the work of someone the girls already knew, or a stranger who chose them at random on a holiday afternoon?

Case Details

Victim: Mary Raker, 15, high school sophomore; Suzanne "Susie" Raker, 12, middle school student and violin player.

Date: September 2, 1974 — bodies recovered September 28, 1974.

Location: St. Cloud and Stearns County, Minnesota, USA.

Case Status: Unsolved cold case. No arrests have ever been made. The Stearns County Sheriff's Office maintains an active investigation with a $50,000 reward currently offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

Episode Key Points

- Mary's diary, found weeks after her disappearance, included a specific written request that if she were murdered, someone should find her killer — suggesting she feared a specific threat before Labor Day.

- A witness working beside a key person of interest directly asked him whether he was involved in the murders; the person of interest did not deny it — he hissed.

- Gold-rimmed prescription glasses were discovered locked in the private desk drawer of the lead investigator after his death in 1983, and their connection to any victim or suspect has never been publicly confirmed.

- Two years after the Raker murders, the same person of interest was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and stabbing a 14-year-old girl — driving her to a remote pit and covering her body with brush, an identical disposal method.

Mary Raker, Suzanne Raker, St. Cloud Minnesota murder, Stearns County cold case, 1974 unsolved homicide, true detective, forensic science, criminal minds, murder, investigation, homicide, unsolved mysteries, true crime English.