Young Woman Murdered Whilst Trying To Repay A Good Deed

On Thanksgiving Day in 1986, 21 year old bank clerk Nancy Ann Hyer, was traveling by train to New York City when she became lost and visibly distressed on the verge of tears.

Noticing her situation, 19 year old Billy Fischer approached her and offered to escort her safely back home to Hicksville, Long Island. What began as a brief act of kindness soon developed into a close friendship between the two.

Nancy later confided in her sister, Debra, that she believed Billy wanted her to be his girlfriend. She told her that while Billy was a very nice guy, she did not feel the same way. Nancy worried about hurting his feelings, especially since he had “been so sweet” to her.

A few weeks later, on a stormy December night, Nancy received a phone call from Billy. He asked if she could give him a ride home from his father’s house at 102 Little Neck Road in Southampton. Despite the worsening weather, Nancy didn’t want to let him down and felt a sense of obligation to repay his earlier act of kindness.

Before leaving, she told Debra about the call. Debra tried to persuade her not to go, pointing out the dangerous weather and reminding Nancy that she disliked driving at night. But Nancy had already made up her mind—she was determined to help her friend.

Their mother, Joan, also shared Debra’s concern about Nancy driving in the storm. As she watched her daughter pull away, she was overcome by an uneasy sense of fear—what she later described as a “mother’s worry.”

Nancy drove off into the downpour, beginning the hour-and-a-half journey to Southampton. What she could not have known was that her simple act of kindness was about to draw her into a deadly family conflict—one that would end in tragedy.

In hindsight, Billy suffered from cystic fibrosis, a hereditary disease that primarily affects the lungs and digestive system. The condition causes the body to produce thick, sticky mucus that can clog the lungs and obstruct the pancreas, making it both debilitating and life-threatening.

In 1959, the average life expectancy for someone born with cystic fibrosis was just six months. By 1990, advances in treatment had extended that expectancy into the late teens.

Even so, Billy’s health was rapidly declining. Facing mounting medical expenses he could not afford, he had decided days earlier to reach out to his estranged father, William Fischer, in hopes of getting help.

William Fischer had abandoned Billy and the rest of the family fifteen years earlier, when Billy was still a child. By the time Billy reached out to him, William had built a successful career as a car salesman, earning around $100,000 a year.

Billy had not spoken to his father in more than a year, but when he finally made the call, William invited him to spend the weekend at his home. Billy arrived on December 10.

Just one day later, on December 11th, Billy called Nancy and asked her to drive him back home.

Billy had recently moved out of his mother’s home and was renting a room in Central Islip. He was unemployed and more than a month behind on his rent. When William remarried, his second wife persuaded him to allow Billy to live with them, but William repeatedly made it clear to his son that he did not want him there.

Despite his rocky relationship with his father, Billy felt he had no other option but to ask him for financial help.

It would later come to light that William had been using cocaine heavily—so much so that it began to affect his performance at work. By 1986, he and his second wife had separated, and his life appeared to be spiraling downward.

That night, Nancy’s mother, Joan, waited anxiously for her daughter to return home. As the hours stretched into the early morning, she tried to reassure herself that Nancy may have stayed overnight at the Fischer home due to the storm or the late hour.

Even so, she remained uneasy—Nancy always called if she wasn’t coming home.

Joan contacted the police, but she was told that Nancy had not been missing long enough to be officially declared a missing person. With few options left, Joan and Debra searched through Nancy’s bedroom, hoping to find some clue as to where she might be.

They came across a phone number for William Fischer. When Joan called him, she asked whether Nancy had been at his house. William said that he, Nancy, and Billy had shared dinner and drinks together at his home the night before. Afterward, he claimed, Nancy and Billy left together. He assumed they were either still together somewhere or had gone their separate ways.

After hearing this, the two women began to fear that Billy might be responsible for Nancy’s disappearance. As another day passed, there was still no sign of Nancy.

When Joan was finally able to officially report her daughter missing, police told her that without evidence of foul play, there was little they could do.

Joan again reached out to William—the last known person to have seen Nancy. She called him repeatedly, pressing for details about that night. With each call, William grew more confrontational and hostile, clearly irritated by the continued questioning. It was then that Debra began to suspect that something was not right.

On December 13th, a Christmas party was held at Good Samaritan Hospital, where Billy was a patient. Police hoped that Billy and Nancy would attend, as Billy had told a nurse that he planned to take Nancy with him.

They never arrived.

Soon after, Joan hired a helicopter to search for Nancy and her car, but the effort turned up nothing.

Then, on December 21st 1986—ten days after Nancy and Billy had vanished—police responded to a report of an abandoned car in the Southampton Elks Lodge parking lot on North Hills Road, just two miles from William’s house. The vehicle had reportedly been there for several days.

When officers opened the trunk of the 1981 Pontiac Phoenix, they were confronted with a horrific discovery…

Inside the trunk, officers found Billy Fischer’s body, covered in a bloodied blanket. Beneath him lay Nancy’s nude body, also wrapped in a blanket. Both had been brutally murdered.

A thorough examination of the car revealed that the killer had meticulously wiped it clean, leaving no fingerprints behind.

Autopsies later revealed the full horror of the murders. Billy had been shot at close range eighteen times with a small-caliber handgun, most of the bullets striking his head. His pants had been torn, and pebbles were found on his back, suggesting he had been dragged across rough ground.

Nancy’s autopsy showed that she had been stabbed twice—once in the liver and once in the heart—by a long, sharp instrument, possibly a kitchen knife.

William Fischer quickly became the prime suspect in the case. Neighbors told police they had noticed “strange activity” in his home in the days following Billy and Nancy’s disappearance. They reported hearing noises late at night—remodeling sounds such as spackling and painting in the master bedroom around 3am.

Police obtained a search warrant and conducted two separate searches of the home, on December 31st 1986 and January 17th 1987.

During the second search, investigators discovered minor indentations on a freshly painted section of the wall. They found a total of three bullet holes and recovered two .22-caliber bullets, each with a single strand of hair fused to it—later identified as Billy’s.

Based on this evidence, police concluded that Billy had likely been shot and killed in the master bedroom.

A vacuum cleaner in the home was found to contain dried blood, which testing confirmed matched Nancy’s blood type.

Paint chips discovered inside the house were later matched to those found on the blanket that had wrapped Nancy’s body. Luminol testing revealed high levels of blood spatter throughout the hallway, consistent with Nancy having been stabbed just outside the master bedroom.

The evidence pointed squarely to William, yet the extreme brutality of the killings left his motive unclear. Investigators believe an argument had erupted between Billy and his father, leading William to shoot his son in the master bedroom.

With Nancy witnessing the murder, police theorise that William then approached her with a knife and fatally stabbed her.

On February 25th 1987, police sought a warrant for two counts of second-degree murder against William. Before it could be served, he vanished—and has never been seen since.

The last confirmed sighting of William was on February 10th 1987, when he visited his stepmother in Farmingdale. On February 27th, his car—a blue Mercedes-Benz—was found abandoned in the parking lot of John F. Kennedy Airport, where it had been since February 11th. Investigators also discovered that he had taken out a second mortgage on his home, totalling $100,000.

In September 1987, the FBI joined the search for William, and he was added to New York’s list of “Twelve Most Wanted Persons.” He has evaded arrest for decades.

As of today, William Fischer remains at large. He would be 81 years old, and it is possible that he is already deceased.

Sadly, Joan Hyer passed away on January 10th 2014, at the age of 72. She never got to see justice for her daughter’s brutal murder.