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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with a name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [00:21]
B
Goodbye New Year, new you. This season, Ollie is here to help you embrace a slower pace. The kind where you cozy up at home with your dog tucked right beside beside you. After the holiday rush and all the spending, you're probably craving those quieter moments, soft blankets, a comfy couch, and the kind of emotional reset that only happens when you're curled up with your pup. Spending intentional time with your dog isn't just comforting. It's proven to support your mood, reduce stress, and help you feel more present during the winter slowdown. If you're leaning into that slower, more intentional rhythm, Ollie can help support it with fresh human grade food, slow cook recipes, tailored meal plans, and an app that lets you tap real experts whenever you need peace of mind. Visit olly.com wondery and use code wondery for 60% off your first box. This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
- [01:24]
A
All right, Jeff, any idea why you're here? No idea. No idea. It's a game. You go into that room and your sole purpose is to retrieve whatever he's hiding. You're playing a dangerous, dangerous game out there with these girls. You're working so hard to get this information out, and then when it finally comes, it's like, oh my God, he's got to admit to it right now. Where are you? Daring, daring garbage bags. Random would indicate to me just free stabbing, no pattern. And looking at this, that's not random at all. I don't even believe they're freehand. This would indicate to me that something was used as a template. They would have been on her chest with the cross in an upside down position going up to her left shoulder.
- [02:09]
B
There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. On July 27, 2004, Officer Steve Fairley heads to the Rhode Island State landfill with a team of officers and a backhoe.
- [02:37]
A
Basically, what we were looking for was several black bags wrapped several times with yellow ties. And that was supposedly, you know, dismembered body parts in those bags.
- [02:49]
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For seven days, officers dig for the remains of three women. Then finally, Fairleigh gets a break.
- [02:57]
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When I did open it, it Was kind of, you know, a little shock to me. I saw the remains of a scalp, a crushed scalp, I believe it was two forearms. Skin was removed, the bones were crushed.
- [03:09]
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The discovery will seal the fate of a serial killer. One who found his first victim in the spring of 2003.
- [03:18]
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Right now I'm on Main Street. I'm heading to the corners of Hyo Nado. That's an area where prostitution activity is extremely high in this city.
- [03:28]
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Paul Sevigny is a detective with the Woonsocket, Rhode Island Police. In April of 2003, he works a missing persons case of a local prostitute.
- [03:39]
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Her name was Audrey Harris. She was in her 40s, a black female. I interviewed and spoke to several prostitutes that worked that area that I was familiar with. The reason I did that is because prostitutes are street people. They're out on the road 24 7. They're the best source of information a police officer can have in trying to solve a case. But with this case, it was totally different. Nobody had seen her or heard of her for a week or so.
- [04:10]
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The lifespan for a prostitute working a street corner and Woonsocket is typically five years. It's a punishing business and many simply don't survive.
- [04:21]
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John will pick him up and you don't know the individual. They don't have no clue who this individual is. They just jump in a vehicle with this guy, perform what they have to do just to get the money to go back out on the road and buy their narcotics. It's an extremely dangerous lifestyle that they're living. But this one here was like just a dead end street. No matter what leads we got to investigate, it always came up empty handed.
- [04:49]
B
A month after Audrey Harris goes missing, her case remains unsolved and a second woman disappears off a Woonsocket street corner. Lt. Kyle Stone takes the case.
- [05:01]
A
My partner and I were assigned a missing persons case on a Christine Dumont. She was a 42 year old white female reported missing May 3rd of 2004. One of the problems we ran into was her sister that reported her missing had last seen her April 23rd. So we had about a 10 day span from when she was last seen to when it was brought to our attention that she was missing and there might be something, you know, something gone
- [05:32]
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wrong like Audrey Harris. Christine Dumont is a woman on the edge of the A drug user who has worked the streets for years and is now missing.
- [05:44]
A
You're not getting a feeling like there's going to be a happy ending to this, but there's just nothing to go on.
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Lt. Stone investigates the streets where Dumont worked.
- [05:54]
A
This was an area that Christine frequented throughout my years on the job. It wasn't uncommon to see her walking these streets, perhaps, you know, going from bar to bar. You know, as each day went by, the longer a case goes, you know, the colder and colder the trail goes, and you became less and less optimistic that you were gonna, you know, get anything solid to go on. It was very frustrating, very sad.
- [06:25]
B
And like Audrey Harris, her disappearance finds its way into the cold files. Fourteen months later, Debbie Berger worries about her daughter Stacy, a good girl who fell in with the wrong crowd.
- [06:39]
A
And I used to tell her, like Stacy, you better be careful. You know, think about what you're doing. But like, all kids went in one ear and out the other. I think she was looking for fast money and got up in the wrong situation and liked the cash, but didn't like what she did.
- [06:56]
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In July of 2004, a mother's worst fears are realized when Stacy's boyfriend files a missing persons report with police.
- [07:05]
A
He says, stacy's missing. I says, what are you talking about? He said, yes, she didn't come home last night. That's it. It's like she disappeared off the face of the earth.
- [07:14]
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Sergeant Edward Lee is assigned to the case.
- [07:17]
A
It was actually July 4th. There was a fireworks display, and she was with her boyfriend there, and he last seen her walking up east school street towards North Main street, and he had not seen her again by now.
- [07:35]
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It's a sad yet familiar story. Three women working on the streets in the city of Woonsocket vanished in less than two years.
- [07:45]
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Could this be a serial killer? You hear the word thrown around a lot and everything, but you never think it could happen in a community like this.
- [07:54]
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Lee shares his suspicions with his partner, Sergeant Steve Nowak.
- [07:59]
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The people who were missing, we knew that they were arrested before for prostitution. We know that's a high risk endeavor.
- [08:06]
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The pair dig into the three cases and quickly ID a pool of suspects.
- [08:12]
A
We really had no other suspects other than a potential John. We want to know everyone that's coming into the city picking up these prostitutes. You know, it was going to be a long, tedious process.
- [08:23]
B
On July 15, Lee and Nowak hit the streets and set up a sweep for Johns.
- [08:30]
A
This is an area that we decided that we would send decoys out, undercover police women to try to pick up. Johns wants to party. I love to party. What are you looking for? Everything.
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Within just a few minutes, prospective Johns begin to approach the undercover officers.
- [08:53]
A
There was probably 15 or 20 contacts. Within an hour or two, I'm working, so I gotta make my money. What do you want? She was wired so we could monitor her. We had a couple of guys in one vehicle across the street from her with tinted windows. We could hear everything that was said between the two. When we heard that a transaction had taken place, we would radio them. They would move in and stop the car and take into custody of the customer.
- [09:25]
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Although the sweep amounts to little, an anonymous call to the police gives detectives a fresh lead.
- [09:32]
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Jocelyn Martell was attacked by a guy. She fits the same category as the girls out of Mississippi. Probably has information that you might want. Maybe you should get a hold of it. The information was a phone call, an anonymous phone call that said we might want to speak with Jocelyn Martell. Some people get $20 for a blow job. You get $50 for a LA. It all depends on who you're with and what you're doing.
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Jocelyn Martel worked as a prostitute for more than eight years.
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I had a heroin addiction. I did it because I needed the money for my drug addiction.
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In July of 2004, Martell talks about the night that almost turned deadly.
- [10:10]
A
He pulled up, I was walking on the sidewalk and he's like, you want to make some money? And I was like, yeah, you know, we went into the house, we spoke about money for sex. I asked him where he wanted to go, and as soon as I turned my back to him, he put his arm around my neck and started choking me. What I did was I banged my head back on his head and we both fell backwards. And when we both fell backwards, I stuck my thumb in his eye and he let me go and I ran out the door.
- [10:42]
B
Jocelyn survived the assault but never reported it to police.
- [10:47]
A
It's unfortunate. A lot of times they think that the police aren't going to help them because of the lifestyle they're in. That's certainly not the case. We were happy to get the tip and obviously with having nothing else to go on at the time, we were just happy to have something to follow up on.
- [11:03]
B
Jocelyn doesn't know her attacker's name, but she remembers where he lives, the color
- [11:09]
A
of the house, and she described the shutters, the trim. She described how she got in. We were able to get that address. Run it through our computer system, find out who lives there.
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The house is rented by 33 year old Jeff Mailhot.
- [11:25]
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He's nowhere to be found in our database. Not a ticket, not an arrest.
- [11:30]
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Mailhot seems clean. Then detectives run his home address through their system.
- [11:36]
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We did A computer check. And then Eddie found that there was another case at that house that had happened several months earlier with another prostitute.
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Tis Morris tells detectives about a john who tried to kill her.
- [11:50]
A
He seen me walking and he asked me if I wanted to go have a drink with him. And I was like, fine, no problem. It was my birthday. So, I mean, he seemed very nice. He was clean cut man, you know what I'm saying? Very friendly, the way she described. She was kind of excited because she was actually with a clean cut guy, A guy that seemed like to be a nice guy. He said, all right, you know, come in, have a drink. So I sat at the kitchen table, you know, and we was talking and everything like that. I opened up a can of beer and I grabbed a napkin and. And when I went to turn back around, he was behind me. Gets her in a chokehold and she has a violent struggle with him. She remembers to the point of almost losing consciousness. The man grabbed me with his forearm and had me like this in a choke hold. I could not breathe and I couldn't scream. So I'm thinking, oh, my God, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. She just screams and pleads for her life. Please, please, please, please let me go. I won't say anything to anybody. He didn't say not one word to me. And I knew at that point my life was over.
- [12:56]
B
And I started crying.
- [12:57]
A
I'm saying, sir, please, I have a baby. My money's in my pocketbook. Please just don't hurt me. She says this, gives him this cold stare and just tells her to leave. And she walks out the apartment. I don't know why he didn't kill me. I don't know why he let me go. He just said, get the out of here. I don't want to see you around here.
- [13:17]
B
No more tiess. Morris is the second woman to allegedly be attacked by mailhot and live to tell about it.
- [13:25]
A
This guy's playing this game. He's already choked two girls. I mean, chokehold is a very, very dangerous move. He tried it on these two, obviously he might have tried it on other girls and maybe they didn't get away. And that was our whole theory. So, yeah, we had our arrest warrant and our search warrant and we, you know, very hopeful to get it in.
- [13:47]
B
On July 16, Sergeants Lee and Nowak head to 221 Cato street and put Jeff mailhot in handcuffs.
- [13:56]
A
This is great anticipation. You're hoping he's going to talk. You hope he's not going to lawyer Up. You hope he's going to go in there and tell us the truth or just, hey, even if you're not going to tell us the truth, we want you to talk to us.
- [14:07]
B
On July 16, 2004, cold case detectives sit down with Jeff Mailhot.
- [14:13]
A
You ever have a problem with a prostitute in your house? I've never had a serious problem with a prostitute in my house, no. It's a game. You go into that room and your sole purpose is to retrieve whatever he's hiding. You get this off your conscience. It's got to be like someone less than a fucking car back. I've been seen a thousand times. What is it? I'm sorry, what? I've gotten. I've gotten a little physical.
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B
Okay.
- [14:39]
A
What do you usually do? I choke him a little bit. That's all I'm trying to get at. Okay. I'm sure you feel better getting that
- [14:49]
B
off your chest, but Mailhot admits to choking prostitutes, but won't go any further.
- [14:56]
A
It's never going too far. It's never going. It's never going that. I've never. I've never killed anybody. You never choked someone that didn't wake up? No.
- [15:09]
B
Detectives aren't buying Mailhot's story. Lee switches tactics and slides pictures of three girls across the table.
- [15:18]
A
I don't know any of these girls. No, none of these is the ones that I. That I had. You're positive? That was a pretty quick look. When I threw those three photos down there, the three victims, he had an immediate reaction. You could see it all over his body. His body language, his expressions. He was very nervous and he knew there was something there. I've never killed anybody. That's what you're getting at.2 cents of these girls are killed. He told us. You guys think I killed these girls? We had never told them that the girls were dead. We didn't know the girls were dead. So that was a red flag for us. That's when we really started hitting them a little harder with, you know, the questions we were asking. I hope you tell the truth because you claim stuff in your apomino. You know all about DNA and all that stuff now, right?
- [16:12]
B
Detectives are walking Mailhot closer and closer to a triple homicide.
- [16:18]
A
It was apparent that he was going to give it up. I mean, he was starting to cry. He was shaking. He would pause. Long, unnatural pauses, like he was thinking about, what should I do? You're playing a dangerous, dangerous game out there with these girls. Any one of these girls could have ended up that a whole week, the State police resources are going to be put into this. We will scour your apartment. We will scour the neighborhood. We'll scour every. We will talk to everybody. We will get to the bottom whether or not you had these girls in your house. Tears start to well up in his eyes that you can't see on the videotape. But sitting there, that's when you realize, you know, oh, my God, he's going to confess to this.
- [17:01]
B
A little more than an hour into the interview, Mailhot breaks.
- [17:06]
A
Jeff, your life will be over, over unless you get this off your chest. I know you're not a fucking bad man. I know. You just pushed it too far. What happened? What happened, Jeff? What happened? You pushed it too far one night, right? Things got out of hand, huh? Yes. All of them. All three. All three. All right. Good job. Where are they? Where are they, Jeff? You're working so hard, and then when it finally comes, it's like, oh, my God, he's really done this. A million things are going through your mind. Your heart's racing, your adrenaline's flowing. Where are you? Daring. Daring. Garbage bags. Garbage bags. Where? In tra. I just dumped him in trash containers. How did you fit him in trash bags? Cut him up. He described how he did it. He did it in a careless, careless manner. That time, stopping, going to have a beer, going back in, finishing the job.
- [18:11]
B
Mailhot says he cut up each victim in his bathtub, wrapped their bodies in black plastic bags, and threw them in dumpster.
- [18:22]
A
I wanted to choke them myself. I mean, I could not believe that some human being could do that to another human being. But they did not deserve this. They were somebody's daughter. They were somebody's mother. They had family. They had friends.
- [18:35]
B
Just before 9pm Mailhot is handcuffed and led to a jail cell. With a confession in hand, detectives believe their case is complete. That is, until the district attorney decides. Decides the state needs more to make their case.
- [18:50]
A
It's not enough to just say for somebody to say, I did it. You have to give some evidence that it occurred and we didn't have the bodies.
- [19:02]
B
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- [21:27]
A
Where are they? Where are they, John? It's just where are they? Daring.
- [21:33]
B
Daring Garbage Bags within minutes of Jeff Mailhot's confession, crime scene technicians, including Jerry Durand, work their way through his apartment.
- [21:44]
A
You walk into the scene and it doesn't seem like it's going to support a triple homicide with a dismemberment. You know, it's an orderly scene. You know, everything's in its place. And as you keep going through the scene, it's just strange. You know, his sock drawer, his socks are Separated by color and folded up, and everything just is. It's just odd that this was the scene of a triple homicide.
- [22:06]
B
But when detective Duran heads to the bathroom, he uncovers the first pieces of a murder.
- [22:12]
A
Now it starts to fit. Now we start looking closer and, you know, small stains on the floor that just looked like dirt or some sort of grease. You know, you look closer and you do a presumptive test, and it's a blood stain. And we also did luminal tests on two mops in the linen closet, and we tested one of the mops, and it just fluoresced.
- [22:32]
B
In the evidence room, Detective Timothy Paul stands in front of the bathtub Mailhot used.
- [22:39]
A
This is the tub taken from Mailhot's apartment. In this tub, you can see where the actually the kerf marks or the saw marks are located. Where the cutting was done upon the body part and went down into the tub. This is where the faceplate would have been.
- [22:58]
B
Underneath the faceplate, detectives find more traces of blood determined to be from two of the victims.
- [23:05]
A
We knew we had hit the jackpot forensically, so to say, when we located blood.
- [23:10]
B
Still, detectives need more.
- [23:13]
A
So we were interested in whether we could recover any evidence from the sewer pipes, from the the house.
- [23:20]
B
For two days, detectives tear up the street and snake cameras through the pipes, looking for human remains. In the end, the search uncovers nothing.
- [23:32]
A
I just dumped them in trash containers. Where? All around. In one socket? Yep. Where is she? She's. I don't know right now where she is, probably.
- [23:46]
B
If Jeff Mailhot dumped his victims like trash, their remains should be at the local landfill. On July 19, 2004, cold case detectives begin to search for the bags.
- [23:59]
A
It's kind of hard to believe, the magnitude of what's behind me, but the size of the landfill, the amount of trash that was here, Just realizing, I mean, you're kind of in essence looking for a needle in a haystack, I guess you can say.
- [24:10]
B
In Rhode Island, 96% of the state's waste ends up at the central landfill.
- [24:16]
A
We were digging deeper and deeper in different areas, and we're able to spread that out amongst, say, a football sized field area and just sift through it one by one. It was a tedious task. And it was hot, dirty, it smelled. I mean, it was the worst of working conditions. I can say that.
- [24:33]
B
For six days, the team searches, but comes up empty. Then on the seventh day, Detective Fairleigh unearths a small black bag wrapped in duct tape.
- [24:45]
A
When I did open it, it was kind of a little shock. To me, I saw the remains of a scalp, a crushed scalp. I believe it was two forearms. The skin was removed, the bones were crushed. But I was able to decipher what was what distinguish those amongst other body parts.
- [25:01]
B
The remains are eventually ID'd as Stacey Goulet, the last of Jeff Mailhot's victims. The remains of Audrey Harris and Christine Dumont are never recovered.
- [25:13]
A
It's a somber thing that, you know, what you find, you're finding human remains. And, you know, it's sad and it's an awful thing, but we were happy. You know, we celebrated because we knew we were bringing closure to this case. He was an atypical defendant, certainly an atypical serial killer.
- [25:36]
B
Patrick Youngs prosecutes Jeff Mailhot for murder. On February 15, 2006, Mailhot pleads guilty to three counts of first degree murder and two counts of assault.
- [25:49]
A
So he got life plus life plus 10 years. That's how it broke down.
- [25:55]
B
At sentencing, Mailhot addresses the packed courtroom.
- [25:59]
A
There's nothing I can do that's gonna take away the pain of the action that I've done. I just hope that God can give families, and not only the victim's families, but my family also, peace to be able to move on from this. He did apologize. I think that was sincere. I don't know that he knows why he did these things. So I think he wanted to get a patient behind him as well. Due to my drug addiction, I was out trying to make money, and he picked me up and we went to his apartment.
- [26:31]
B
Jocelyn Martell could have been Melhot's fourth victim. Instead, she survived and helped put him behind bars.
- [26:40]
A
Martell is still trying to come to grips with the fact she escaped and her friends didn't. There's three women that are my friends that are dead right now. You know what I mean? And one of them could have been me. I think I got away so I could put a stop to it and help all the girls and give the parents closure and the kids closure against what he had did so I could testify and make things right. To be truthfully honest, that's what I believe in my heart. I believe God spared my life so I could be here today and testify against Mr. Mealhart. She was just like a guiding age, just sent to save us all. Otherwise, I wonder if he would still be out there. That's scary. All families are here today so we can get some some type of closure by seeing you rot in prison for the rest of your pitiful life.
- [27:31]
B
One by one, friends and family of the three victims stand in open court and speak their peace. For Debbie Berger, it's a chance to express the loss of. Of her only daughter.
- [27:44]
A
My daughter and I may not have always agreed on everything, but I never thought her life was going to be cut short by a vicious man like you. Getting a chance to talk to him that day was just kind of like closure for me. Just to say, you know, you're a dog, you know, I was like, how dare you? You know, who made you God and decide that you're going to take someone's life? And he stated that he took these girls lives because he felt they didn't have nobody that cared about them. I tell you, when we went to the courthouse that day, was he wrong? Because these women had families, they had lives, they had kids. What he did was horrendous to me. I look at him, he's just a monster. I was satisfied for what he received. I'm confident that he'll never see the light of day again and he'll spend the rest of his remaining years behind bars where he belongs.
- [28:49]
B
In 2006, an unusual murder trial is underway in Toledo, Ohio. One in which the victim is a Catholic nun and the defendant is a priest. Dean Mandros is a Lucas county assistant prosecutor.
- [29:05]
A
We were always pretty confident about the nature of our evidence, but what we were mostly concerned about was the intangibles, if you will. How's a jury going to react to being asked to convict a Roman Catholic priest? This case is about perhaps the most common scenario there is for a homicide. A man got very angry at a woman and the woman died. The only thing different is the man wore a white collar and the woman wore a habit.
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B
It's an investigation that begins with two detectives inside the cold case department of the Toledo police.
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We're headed to the detective bureau at the safety building here in Toledo where we utilize a part of this.
- [29:55]
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Tom Ross and Steve Forrester are cold case investigators. In 2003, they reopened the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Paul.
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This is Sister Paul and this is Father Robinson. This was at the dedication of a
- [30:11]
B
new intensive care unit on Easter Saturday 1980. 23 years earlier, Sister Paul's body was discovered on the floor of a chapel with an altar cloth covering it. Lt. Bill Keena was the original detective assigned to the case.
- [30:30]
A
She was stabbed 31 times in the chest and in the neck and face area, even in the ear. To slaughter a person in that manner, there had to be a deep seated hatred attempt to defile the victim. Besides killing her to defile her There were lots of people that they looked into. After the first week, the focus was clearly on the priest.
- [31:00]
B
Father Gerald Robinson was considered a prime suspect at the time of the murder. Found inside his quarters was a letter opener shaped letter like a dagger.
- [31:11]
A
We were at the desk and I'm right next to Art, and he opened up the center drawer and he said, oh, what do we got here? And he reached in there with his fingers and pulled out this dagger type letter opener with a knuckle guard and blade about 8 inches, 10 inches long.
- [31:31]
B
Father Robinson was given a polygraph in 1980 and showed a such signs of deception. Before charges could be filed, the Catholic Church in the form of the local monsignor stepped in and the case was dropped.
- [31:46]
A
The deputy chief in charge of the detective bureau was standing there and behind him was a monsignor from the Catholic Church diocese. And behind him was a defense attorney. And all of them walk out of the interrogation room arm in arm and out of the safety building. We had no charges against him at that time. And I asked Father Switecki, I said, hey, I said, what are they gonna do with him? And Switecki says, they'll put him on a funny farm someplace and you'll never see him again. He said, that's what they do with wayward priests. When we opened this up in 2003, we had access to both of these. We had known that this came from his room and we knew that this was not looked at since 1980.
- [32:35]
B
Detectives Ross and Forrester pick up where Bill Keena left off two decades earlier with the altar cloth that covered Sister Paul's body and the dagger shaped letter opener pulled from Father Robinson's quarters.
- [32:50]
A
When we've made a comparison here, what startled us at first was you can see this finger guard on this letter or this dagger shaped letter opener matches this and the blade matches this. Now, obviously we're not experts, but we can see that there's some great similarities there. It was startling, really. I mean, we looked at each other and said, you know, we were just shocked.
- [33:13]
B
Ross and Forrester bring in Detective Terry Cuzno, an expert in the analysis of blood transfer.
- [33:20]
A
With this pattern, you have sort of a ribbed pattern. You look at the letter opener, it has a ribbed handle. Size and shape are consistent. Right off the bat, eyeballing some preliminary measurements, I told Sergeant Forrester that these blood transfer patterns to me appeared to be consistent with this letter opener. Immediately then I began to look at the puncture defect defects that were in the cloth.
- [33:47]
B
The killer stabbed Sister Paul, through the
- [33:50]
A
altar cloth, these puncture defects had a very distinctive shape to them. I call it a Y type puncture rather than a straight slit or a rounded hole. They have a very distinctive Y shape to them. The Y shape is pretty unique. I measured these puncture defects. They. They are consistent in size and shape with the letter opener.
- [34:16]
B
Next, Kuzno turns his attention to the overall layout of the stab wounds on the altar cloth. To Kuzno's eye, they seem anything but random.
- [34:26]
A
Random would indicate to me just free stabbing, no pattern. And looking at this, that's not random at all. Three sets of two pairs. Okay. And then when you have these two on the outside that are exactly six inches apart and equidistant from these, not only are we talking about no longer being random, but I don't even believe they're freehand. In other words, this would indicate to me that something was used as a template.
- [34:57]
B
The template Kuzno suspects might have been a crucifix.
- [35:03]
A
They would have been on her chest, basically with the cross in an upside down position going across her chest this way up to her left shoulder. It was a startling find to be able to say that there's definitely a pattern, it appears to be a cross type pattern, and that an object was used as a template. It was surprising. It was a shocking find.
- [35:29]
B
The chapel altar cloth provides detectives with fresh insight into perhaps the ritual underpinnings of the murder. Their next step is to exhume Paul's body and examine her bones for clues.
- [35:44]
A
We wanted to see if any of the puncture wounds to her flesh would uncover any markings to her skeletal remains that we could perhaps used to firm up our theory that the letter opener was the murder weapon.
- [36:05]
B
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- [38:54]
A
This is where we brought Sister Margaret and Paul the day that we exhumed her.
- [39:01]
B
Dr. Diane Barnett is the Deputy Coroner for Lucas County, Ohio. In May of 2004, she opens the waterlogged casket of Sister Margaret Ann Paul.
- [39:13]
A
When we first took her out of this disintegrating casket, I was really worried about what the condition the body was going to be in. She had been down about 24 years, so basically I didn't know what I was going to find. I didn't know if the body was going to be helpful, once we got her here in good light, we saw that she was actually better preserved than I anticipated.
- [39:41]
B
Sister Paul was stabbed 31 times in the neck and chest. Dr. Barnett examines the victim's bones, looking for evidence of the wound.
- [39:52]
A
You could actually still see some of the stab wounds in the chest and neck area, which made me pretty excited because I didn't think we were going to be able to see that. When we brought the skin flaps back over the sternum, over the second right rib, there was a characteristic almost triangular type stab wound. And then the anthropologist happened to pick this piece back up out of the body bag and examine it. And sure enough, right in the piece that we had cut out, there was a stellate diamond shaped defect right here in the mandible that one of the stab wounds had made. There it is. This was the defect in the bone, diamond shaped.
- [40:40]
B
The diamond shape appears to be consistent with the the letter opener found 24 years earlier in the desk drawer of Father Gerald Robinson. Barnett makes a physical comparison between the letter opener and the bone.
- [40:56]
A
I very gently placed the letter opener into the defect. It was a perfect fit. There it is, close up.
- [41:07]
B
Sister Paul's bones have provided detectives with a tangible link to the suspected murder weapon. Meanwhile, investigators confront their suspect, Father gerald Robinson.
- [41:20]
A
Between 1974 and 1981, you were one of the two chaplains assigned to Mercy hospitals at Krexner.
- [41:30]
B
Father Robinson is asked to come down to the station. At the time of the murder, he denied any involvement in. In Sister Paul's death. Now he says he walked into the chapel just as another priest, Father Swiateki, was performing last rites on Sister Paul.
- [41:48]
A
He advised at this point that Father Swiateki looked up at him and asked him why he did this to the sister. He said that right in the saraste. Yeah, in front of everybody, the sisters and everybody else, he says, you did this. And I just looked at him because it's the first time I'm seeing Sister. And for him to say something like that, I had no idea what he was doing. When Father mentions it during the taped interrogation, I asked him how he responded to that. And he said that he was kind of a meek and mild type personality. That was his character. And that he couldn't respond at all concerning that. Holy cow. You had to say, Father, what are you saying? Well, that's what you know, but I'm not one to answer. I'm not a forceful person, and that's my trouble. Well, you didn't stand there and Take that, did you? I took a lot. And we felt that that was quite unusual due to the fact that you just enter a murder scene and you're being accused of murdering another. None. Why? When you respond to something like that, what made him think you did it? Why did he get it? I couldn't answer him. I didn't have anything to answer him. And I had no idea why.
- [43:05]
B
Detective Ross believes Father Robinson is lying, playing a game with detectives, although the reason why remains unclear.
- [43:15]
A
Later in the interview, I asked him a direct question when he kind of had his mouth in kind of a smirking fashion. I says, father, you're smirking and this is quite serious. I wanted to see how he would react to that. And he immediately came back to me. I'm not smirking, Father. Why do you smirk at me? I mean, this is serious. I'm not smirking. I just. I don't know how this talk. And I thought, okay, you responded to my question concerning smirking. Why wouldn't you respond to an accusation concerning a homicide? Sister had 31 stab wounds, thereabouts. That is an act of rape. That's somebody that's angry. Did she ever make you angry? No, she did not. He's a hard person to explain because he's never fully, really, I think, showed himself to any individuals as to who he actually is. I think he's a secret. I'll be back.
- [44:13]
B
Father Robinson does not confess to killing Sister Paul, but he doesn't deny it either. The interview ends and Father Gerald Robinson is arrested for first degree murder.
- [44:26]
A
Father Robinson is not guilty. He's not guilty. And that's solely and simply because this table, the state of Ohio has not proven to you beyond a reasonable doubt that this letter opener is the murder weapon.
- [44:50]
B
For Father Robinson's attorney, John Thebes, this trial turns on one piece of evidence. The letter opener and its alleged links to the wounds that killed Sister Paul.
- [45:03]
A
They talk in the language of cannot exclude, ladies and gentlemen. That is not reasonable doubt. And I would tell you, you don't need an expert to come in here and tell you about blood transfer. All you need is a pair of eyes, a pattern, an object, and a vivid imagination. Not one expert, not one with any credibility anyway, came in here and said, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is the weapon. Not one. They can't make their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Forensically, you listen to this evidence. You heard what took place in that sacristy. Is this some sort of satanic cult killing?
- [45:48]
B
The prosecution offers a broader focus, including speculation on the Motive behind this murder.
- [45:55]
A
We felt that the real reason was perhaps the most common reason for most of the homicides that occur in this country. A man got very angry at a woman, and the woman died. He had had enough. The man had decided he had had enough. And he got behind her and he choked her down, either with his arm, like Dr. Barnett had described, or with a ligature, that altar cloth that we find in the hallway. And he choked her, and he choked her down. And it would have taken a minute or two to get her to the point where she's very, very near death. What do you do over the dead or dying? You perform last rites. And that's what he did. Oh, a bastardized version of last rites, to be sure, but that is what happens. He covers her with that blessed altar cloth and he marks her with the sign of the cross. But an upside down cross. Why? Father Grob told us why. To degrade her, to mock her, to humiliate her, to bring her down to the lowest point he possibly could. What's a more humiliating way for another to meet her maker and to be branded with an upside down cross on her chest. What's a more humiliating way for a nun to be discovered than to be stripped naked in front of the Eucharist? And what is it that he has left there on the floor? He's left a message. A message to Sister Margaret Ann Paul, to be sure. Maybe to the church, maybe to God himself. See how angry I am? See what you have made me do? This is how angry I am. One of the things that I argue to the jury is that if Gerald Robinson believed anything in terms of what that white collar represented is that he always knew that one day, one way or another, he was going to have to answer for. For what he had done. And that he had been spending most of the past 26 years waiting to be held to account. And finally, the jury held him to account.
- [48:14]
B
The jury deliberates for six hours and returns with a verdict. Guilty of first degree murder.
- [48:22]
A
You always want people to be held accountable for their criminal conduct. You hope that, that. That happens sooner rather than later. But later is better than never.
- [48:33]
B
That very same day, the judge sentences Father Robinson to 15 years to life in prison. Robinson died in prison in 2014. Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.
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A
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B
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