The mother of a three-year-old girl left her child alone with her boyfriend for two hours, a decision that would end in the worst imaginable tragedy when the man drugged, sexually assaulted, and killed the toddler before staging her body in her bed and scrubbing her face with bleach wipes to hide his crime. Robert J. Fisher Jr.
, 34, was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison before dying under mysterious circumstances in his prison cell less than a month later, leaving a family shattered and a community demanding answers about what truly happened behind bars.
Josephina Katherine Cunningham, known to everyone as Josie, was born on July 25, 2019, at St. Peter’s Memorial Hospital in Albany, New York, to parents Lakeisha Stewart and Joseph Cunningham. She had three brothers, James, Conway, and Jaequan, who described her as bright, bubbly, and kind, a child who wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up and talked about it constantly.
The labor was hard, with Lakeisha rushed to the hospital and the family waiting for three agonizing days. Jaequan stayed at the hospital the entire time, telling stories and playing cards, holding his breath every time a nurse walked past.
On the third day, a text came through. She is here. Josie’s blood sugar was low and she was shaky, so she was taken straight to the intensive care unit, where she spent nearly three weeks with monitors and tubes attached to her tiny body.
During that stay, doctors found a heart murmur, which meant she would need a cardiologist. According to Jaequan, she was born with a hole in her heart, but she defied the odds when the hole miraculously healed.
Josie’s aunt Dina drove Lakeisha home from the hospital, and the family cleaned up the house while Josie slept in her new car seat. By ten months old, she was crawling, saying yes and no, still on formula, and refusing to go anywhere without her pacifier.
She enjoyed playing peekaboo, splashing in her baby bath, and clapping her hands when something delighted her. Family and friends described her as happy, energetic, and fun-loving, a child everyone wanted to hold.
By the time she was three, Josie attended Victory Day Care in Albany, and Jaequan applied for a job there. He wrote about the day she saw him, exclaiming, that is my brother, a moment he said he would never forget.
She would often call him on their mother’s phone, greet him with hi brother, and ask what he was doing. Whenever he visited, she would run to hug him, and before he left, she would kiss his cheek and say, bye-bye, brother.
Robert J. Fisher Jr. was born on December 18, 1989, in Guilderland, New York, and by 2023, he was living in Rensselaer.
His father died in a tractor accident in 1998 when Robert was about eight years old, leaving his mother a widow with six children.
The family lost their house in 2007 after falling behind on mortgage and utility payments, and it was while living in a nonprofit apartment that Robert was arrested for the first time for menacing behavior. By 2011, he was homeless and had been charged with burglary after stealing from unlocked cars and homes.
Robert was introduced to Lakeisha Stewart by a neighbor in the first week of July 2023, and they quickly entered a relationship. Jaequan met him and immediately felt something was off, describing it as a gut feeling that something was wrong.
He said his mother seemed hypnotized, too deep in love with Robert, which he found strange. On Thursday, July 6, 2023, Jaequan stopped by his mother’s house in Rensselaer to pick up his keys, which would be the last time he saw Josie alive.
Robert had been drinking heavily that day, his eyes bloodshot, and Lakeisha left for Walmart with two friends, Josie staying at the house with Robert for about two hours. When she returned, Josie was asleep and looked fine, so Lakeisha went to bed.
Later that night, she found Robert on the couch with no clothes on, going through her phone. What happened next, between 8 p. m.
that night and 7:20 a. m. the following morning, would destroy the family forever.
According to Assistant District Attorney Antonia Edwards, Robert took medication prescribed to Lakeisha, crushed it up, and put it in a cup for Josie to drink. He drugged her, went into her bedroom, and hurt her while she was alive and awake.
He tried to clean up the crime scene, using Clorox wipes on Josie’s body, and according to Jaequan, he swept, mopped, and used a large amount of bleach throughout the house. The next morning, Lakeisha went to wake Josie for daycare, but she did not respond.
Her hands, feet, and lips had turned blue, bleach was on her body, and she appeared to be foaming at the mouth. Lakeisha called 911, and first responders described finding Josie lying on her back with her hands crossed over her torso as if she had been staged.
Chief Warren Van Meglieti said the scene appeared designed to make it seem like Josie was in a peaceful state, but the reality was far different. Josie was taken to Albany Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, less than three weeks shy of her fourth birthday.
Jaequan was on his way to work at Spirit Halloween when his aunt called him and asked if he had spoken to his mother before delivering the devastating news. He ordered a lift to his mother’s house, finding police cars surrounding the property and yellow tape blocking the door.
His mother was in a car with her friend, and when he asked where Robert was, she told him he had been taken to the station for interfering with the investigation. Jaequan went to Albany Medical Center with his aunt and uncle, where Detective Sergeant Michael Dessoe met them and offered his condolences.
Captain Robert Appleton of the New York State Police walked them through what was being done and drove Lakeisha and Jaequan to State Police Headquarters in Latham for hours of interviews. The next day, Captain Appleton called with an update, telling them the investigation had found that Josie died as a direct result of sexual assault.
Robert was arrested that same day and indicted on August 2, 2023, on two counts of second-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault. He pled not guilty and was represented by public defender Arthur Frost, a decision that set off arguments among family and friends packed into the courtroom.
His trial was scheduled for July 31, 2024, but three weeks before it was due to start, on July 9, he pled guilty instead. ADA Edwards explained the terms, stating that Robert received a sentence of 20 years to life in exchange for his plea to both counts.
She said negotiating a plea in a case like this is normal, but the brutality was not, and Robert gave up details that matched the evidence. Jaequan did not want to see a plea, wanting a trial to expose the full details of what happened that night.
District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly defended the plea, saying Robert received the harshest punishment possible, with life on the back end and a significant sentence in the front. She noted that the death penalty is not an option in New York, though many would like to see something like that happen to someone like him.
Sentencing was set for August 6 but happened on September 10, 2024, in front of Judge Deborah J. Young, with new horrifying details emerging that morning. Some of what came out was too graphic to report, with prosecutors describing photographs of Josie’s face after the attack as mortifying and ingrained in the minds of those who saw them.
ADA Edwards read a statement on behalf of the family, describing how hours before her murder, Josie was seen on video footage at her daycare running around the playground, smiling and laughing with her peers. The court learned that Robert had drugged Josie, gone into her bedroom, and raped her while she was alive and awake, causing her body to shut down from the trauma.
He tried to cover up the crime by scrubbing her face so hard with Clorox wipes that he burned the pigment off her face, even placing wipes inside her body. Investigators found bloody baby shark sheets in Josie’s room, the defendant’s bloody underwear, and countless bloody towels throughout the house.
Robert said almost nothing in court, keeping his head down for the entire hearing and choosing not to speak. Judge Young sentenced him to 20 years to life, telling him he was a threat to society who showed no remorse for what he did to Josie.
Chief Famiglietti called Robert a monster, saying he hoped Robert would never take a peaceful breath on this earth for the damage he inflicted. The District Attorney’s office urged the community to think back on any interactions they may have had with Robert Fisher, suggesting he may have been involved in other crimes.
Robert entered custody of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision on September 23, 2024, and was sent to Elmira Correctional Facility in Chemung County. His parole eligibility date was July 3, 2043, but he served only 29 days.
On October 22, 2024, at 1:27 a. m. , a corrections officer found Robert unresponsive on his bed, leaning against the wall.
Officers entered his cell, and a prison nurse arrived, but the report goes dark with seven entries logged between 1:34 and 1:49, every single one redacted.
At 1:52 a. m. , an ambulance crew arrived and took over his care, and at 1:55, an emergency room doctor pronounced him dead over EMS radio.
The cause of death was listed as unknown despite no autopsy being completed.
About an hour later, at 2:52 a. m. , a second man died at Elmira, William Brand, who had arrived 12 days earlier and was serving ten years for first-degree child sexual 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮.
State police said Brand died of a medical event but have never disclosed what Robert died from.
Two Albany newsrooms, News Channel 13 and CBS 6, went after the story and requested autopsy reports, but were repeatedly denied. The Chemung County Health Department refused to comment or release reports, and a Freedom of Information Law request was denied as exempt by other statute.
News Channel 13 filed with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in March 2025, but the department asked for multiple extensions before finally producing four pages nearly seven months later. Sections were blacked out citing privacy laws, HIPAA, and statutes covering medical records and substance use treatment.
The blacked-out sections covered everything from personal identification to medications and medical visits in his final two weeks. Whether Robert had a cellmate at the time remains unknown.
Chief Famiglietti spoke to reporters after Robert’s death, saying the department did not expect him to have a smooth time in prison given the horrific nature of his crime. He issued a written statement announcing the death of the admitted child murderer and predator, noting he found it impossible to compose a rational argument opposing those expressing relief.
Detective Sergeant Dessio spoke to Josie’s father after the news broke, saying it was tough because nothing would bring his daughter back. Jaequan did not stop after Robert made his guilty plea, and he certainly did not stop after Robert died.
He had called for New York to bring back the death penalty, naming it the Josie Act. After Robert died, he changed his target, announcing he would try to get the death penalty as a federal law in all 50 states.
He wrote a book about his sister and produced a short documentary while starting his first year at the State University of New York Schenectady. He described the work as helping him grieve without crying, focusing on something positive.
Josie’s funeral was held on Friday, July 21, 2023, at 4 p. m. at W.
J. Lyons Jr. Funeral Home in Rensselaer, with family and friends invited an hour before the service.
Her burial location remains unknown, with only a Find a Grave memorial and 47 flowers left in her honor.
Jaequan has written extensively about his sister since her death, describing her as extraordinary and the only one who truly understood him. Every time she hugged him, he said, it felt like power rushing through his body.
And every time he left the house, she would say the same thing. Bye-bye, brother.
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