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A (12:32)

The next afternoon Sam Wisnevsky, a detective with the Bristol Township police stood in front of a half burned down home on Spencer Drive. The firefighters had come and gone and the place was now swarming with crime scene techs and police officers. Until that morning, everyone had believed that this was an accidental fire with a casualty, a 35 year old woman who had been identified as Joy Hibbs. But then the medical examiner had conducted Joy's autopsy, and even though her body was clearly badly burned, it was also clear that her death was not caused by the fire. Joy had been murdered. She had stab wounds all over her chest, she had broken ribs, and she'd also been strangled. And there was no smoke in her lungs, which meant she died before the fire started. So Wisnevsky was the lead investigator on what was now a homicide case, and he was already 24 hours behind. But he did have an early working theory, and that was since multiple violent methods were used to kill Joy, the attack had to be emotional and frenzied. And in his experience, strangulation and stabbing were common in personal crimes, since they required getting so close to the victim. And so what that told him was that Joy likely had a relationship with her killer. But proving that might be hard, since the case already had some pretty big problems. Not only was Wisnevsky getting to the scene an entire day after Joy was found, but when he actually stepped inside the home, he could see the crime scene itself was completely contaminated. The firefighters obviously had not been focused on preserving evidence. And though parts of the house were untouched by fire, a lot of it was burned and then soaked and trampled all over. Wisnevsky also knew he would not be able to see if this had been a robbery or not, since, you know, missing items could have also just been burned up. And so Wisnevsky did an initial loop of the property to check the doors and windows. And he didn't see any signs of forced entry. So Joy either let her attack her in, or the door or a window had been unlocked. Then Wisnevsky went to the bedroom where the body was found. He'd been told it was the son's room and that Joy had been lying face up on the the bed. And when he got inside, he could see it was by far the most damaged part of the house, which must have been intentional. By this point, the firefighters had confirmed this was indeed arson. They'd actually found four separate fires in different areas of the home. So Wisnepski guessed the killer must have set fire to Joy in this room first, since it was where most of the evidence of the crime would be. After he finished in the bedroom, Wisnevsky looked around the house a bit more and. But he didn't find much else. So he told the crime scene techs to collect what they could. Then he went outside to speak to the neighbors. A few hours later, Wisnevsky jumped into his cruiser and headed back to the station. And he had a lot to do, because while the actual crime scene had sort of been a bust, the neighbors were hugely helpful. Their houses were physically close together, and the weather had been nice yesterday. So a lot of windows and doors were open. And this meant multiple people saw Joy alive and walking the dog at 11am and then right after that, they saw Joy let two men into her home. And they were very noticeable because one of them was a reverend. In fact, one of the witnesses recognized him as the reverend from Bensalem Church. Wisnevsky had been pretty surprised to hear this. These two men were the last known people to interact with Joy before her death, which made them instant suspects. But this was a bizarre lead. Religious figures were not typically involved in murder cases. But the neighbor said the reverend and his partner left before 12, which put them out of the likely range for when the fire started. Joy's son David got home around 1pm and if the house had been burning for over an hour at that point, it certainly would have been way more damaged, and the neighbors likely would have noticed before David got home. Now, the reverend and his partner could have killed Joy, then returned to the scene to cover it up later, but that just felt far fetched. At the very least, though, they could have seen or heard something important while they were there. And so regardless, Wisnevsky knew he had to speak to them. He also wanted to speak to Charlie Hibbs, Joy's husband. In a murder, the spouse was always the first suspect. And even though none of the neighbors had reported seeing Charlie around the time of the murder, Wisnevsky still thought he made more sense as the killer than the reverend or his partner on Sunday, April 21. So two days after Joy's body was found in the fire, and one day after the case was declared a murder, Detective Wisnevsky sat down with Joy's husband, Charlie Hibbs, in an interrogation room at the police station. Some of Wisnevsky's officers were currently at Bensalem Church speaking to the reverend that way. Right now, Wisniewski could just focus on Charlie. Currently, Charlie was hunched over and quiet and his hands were visibly shaking. No one had told Charlie yet that the police knew his wife had been murdered. And so Wisnevsky wanted to see how he reacted when he heard the truth. When the detective broke the news, he watched as Charlie went from shock to confusion and then finally to Horror. And then after that, he just buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Charlie's devastation appeared genuine, but Wisnevsky knew he could just be a good actor. So he waited for Charlie to calm down and then asked him what his relationship with his wife had been like. Charlie's voice shook as he told Wisnevsky that they had been married since high school when Joy accidentally got pregnant with their daughter. Now, the pregnancy was a shock at first, but the decision to get married as a result of it turned out to feel like the right one. And they both agreed that they likely would have gotten married at some point anyways. Charlie said Joy was the best thing that ever happened to him. She was gentle and kind, and she humored his deep love of motorcycles, and he just couldn't believe she was gone. Now, Wisniewski could see Charlie was getting very upset again, so he changed tracks and asked Charlie where He was between 11am and 1pm on Friday, April 19. Charlie said he was at work about 20 miles away at a construction site in Philadelphia. And he had been there until a co worker told him that his house was on fire. So he went home right away, and he saw the flames and the firefighters and then his wife's horribly burnt body being wheeled out on a stretcher. Wisnevsky wrote all this down. He would need to confirm Charlie's alibi, but if he was at work then, he obviously did not kill Joy himself. Now, he could still be involved. It was possible he'd hired someone to do it. But if this were a hit, Joy's murder would have likely been more colder, more efficient, rather than frenzied. So the next thing Wisniewski asked was if Charlie could think of anybody close to Joy that she was maybe fighting with or if anybody had ever threatened her or their family. And this made Charlie frown, like something had just occurred to him. And he said, not really. But in the last two months, there had been some vandalism at their house. Joy's tires had been slashed, and somebody broke their back door. They just sort of assumed it was their daughter Angie's friends. But maybe it was something else. Wisniewski immediately asked Charlie if he had the names of these friends. Now, of course, this could be nothing, but it could also mean that someone or multiple people had been threatening Joy for months before her murder, and Joy simply hadn't realized how serious it was. Charlie told Wisnevsky he could ask Angie himself because his kids were waiting in the lobby. Moments later, David and Angie joined their father And Wisnevsky in the interrogation room. Their eyes were red from crying. And Wisnevsky decided not to reveal the fact that their mom had been murdered. Their dad could eventually tell them that. Instead, he just asked them if they knew of anybody who might have wanted to hurt their mother. Now, what Wisnevsky expected was that these kids would just say no and that he would just start in on Angie, asking about her friends and the vandalism. But that's not what happened. Instead, Joy's son, David, spoke up, and he said yes, he knew someone who would want to hurt his mom. It was their former neighbor, Robert Atkins. After David said this, he sort of froze and looked nervously at his dad, like his dad might be upset with him. But his dad just looked confused and told David to continue. So David turned to Wisnevsky and said that Robert was the scary guy, and his parents bought weed from him a few weeks ago. And he said he knew this because he actually overheard his mom on the phone with Robert asking for a refund, since apparently the weed had been so bad. And when she asked for that, David said he could hear Robert get really mad on the other end and literally threatened to kill her and blow up their house. Wisnevsky couldn't believe what he was hearing. Not only was Joy's life being threatened just before her murder, but it was over a drug deal. It was not what he expected out of somebody he'd assumed to just be a typical suburban moment. And if Charlie or Joy were frequent drug users, that could have put them in touch with a rough crowd. And so now Wisnevsky could kind of understand why David had been hesitant about what he just said. Back in 1991, marijuana was still very much illegal, and David probably did not want to get his parents in trouble. But Wisnevsky said he didn't care about the drugs at all right now. He told David and Charlie that, you know, the weed was not his priority. His priority was figuring out what happened. And so Wisnevsky turned to the dad, Charlie, and asked him to tell him everything he knew about Robert Atkins. Charlie nodded and took a shaky breath. Then he admitted they did buy some weed from Robert. It had been a crappy batch, and he had known Joy tried to return it, but he didn't know anything about the threats that followed. By the end of the interview, Wisnevsky did still want to talk to Angie's friends, who her dad had suspected of vandalism. So he got their information from Angie. But far more pressing than that was tracking down and speaking to Robert Atkins. Later that evening, Wisnevsky sat in his office drumming his fingers on his desk. He had spent the whole day following up on the drug dealing neighbor Robert Atkins. And what he had learned was that Robert definitely had a bad temper. In fact, one of Robert's neighbors had just called into the police station to. To say that Robert had threatened to kill her when she had accidentally left some tree branches in his yard after trimming her hedges. Wisnevsky also found out that Robert had a criminal record, although the charges were all minor. You know, nothing violent like what happened to Joy. But it was all certainly enough for Wisnevsky to consider Robert a strong suspect. And so the detective really wanted to speak to him. Except it turned out that was not going to be possible, because right after he did a background check on Robert, he got a call from a senior officer in the county's narcotics division. And the officer told Wisnevsky to hold off on interviewing Robert Atkins. He apparently was one of their drug informants. They didn't want to scare Robert off and lose him as a source of information. So Wisnevsky was ordered to let the narcotics department handle it. And Wisnevsky was pretty angry about this. But he also understood that he he don't mess with somebody else's informant. So his hands were tied. He had no choice but to wait. Which was especially frustrating because he didn't have any other leads to follow up on. Nothing had come from talking to Angie's friends and classmates. And the crime techs hadn't found anything useful at the house. You know, no fingerprints and no physical DNA evidence. And Wisnevsky also heard back about the meeting with the reverend and his partner. Both of them had alibis for the hour after they left Joy's house, which Wisnevsky had already confirmed. So they could not have been at the house when the fire started. They also hadn't seen or heard anything strange when they were there, although the reverend had said Joy seemed very troubled when he asked her about heaven. And all this was starting to make Wisnevsky want to bang his head against a wall when an officer charged into his office with some news. They'd interviewed some more neighbors, and two of them saw something else. A dark blue Monte Carlo parked in front of the hibbs house between 12:30 and 1:00pm on the day Joy died. They noticed it because it was parked against traffic and far from the curb, like whoever was driving it had been in a hurry. No one took down Its license plate, though, which Wisnevsky knew made things more difficult. Monte Carlos were really common cars in this area. And then more broadly, there were likely thousands of them driving around the whole state. But then the officer said they already checked their suspects. And the husband, Charlie Hibbs, did not own a blue Monte Carlo. However, the drug dealer, Robert Atkins, the former neighbor, did.

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A (26:00)

On April 24, five days after Joy Hibbs was murdered, Detective Wisnevsky sat in an office in the narcotics department with a few other officers. Wisnevsky had been pushing for Robert Atkins to please be brought in as a suspect. And finally, he had gotten his wish. Robert had been formally interviewed, but Wisnevsky was ordered to sit on the sidelines while while investigators on the narcotics team went to Robert's house and spoke to him. So now Wisniewski was being briefed on what they had learned. Apparently, Robert had admitted to selling Joy some weed and getting in a fight over it. But he said he didn't threaten her, he just refused to give her a refund. And anyway, Robert had an alibi since he was on his way to the Poconos with his family when Joy was killed. Two officers had driven to the Poconos, which is a mountainous vacation spot about two hours from Croydon, and to check this out. And they went to the hotel that Robert said he had stayed in. And they showed the front desk a photo of him and they confirmed that he was there around the time of the murder. Wisniewski sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted and still pretty upset that he was being kept away from a murder suspect just to save whatever drug investigation they were working on. But he did have to admit, you know, Robert was looking less and less guilty here. Also, a neighbor who had seen that Monte Carlo in front of Joy's house had been taken to Robert's to identify his car. And when the neighbors saw it, they said it was not the same Monte Carlo. So Wisnevsky said goodnight to his colleagues and then headed back to the office to go over the case file and look for something he could have missed. And sure enough, later that day, as Wisnevsky was sifting through his files, he saw something that he hadn't noticed earlier. One witness had said somebody else in Joy's life outside of Robert Atkins had a bad temper, and it was her own husband, Charlie. Now, one passing comment was not exactly evidence, but it made Wisnevsky think back to his conversation with Charlie. Charlie admitted to being effectively forced into marrying Joy because of a pregnancy. And so maybe he'd become resentful. He'd gotten married so young and wanted to be free. Like all Wisnevsky's suspects, Charlie had a solid alibi. But Wisnevsky also knew from their conversation that Charlie was very into motorcycles and sort of part of the biker scene. So he potentially ran with a, you know, rough biker crowd, and so maybe he asked one of them to take care of it for him. Wisnevsky always thought that Joy's injuries showed a personal level of rage. But maybe they were just the frenzied work of a violent biker who was doing his friend a favor. About a month after Joy's murder, Wisnevsky had Charlie back inside of an interrogation room. And Charlie clearly had not been sleeping because he had dark circles under his eyes and he seemed disoriented. But Wozniewski was not about to go easy on him, because right now, Charlie was his only suspect. And Wisnevsky was ready to ask all the hard questions, like if either of them were having affairs or owed anyone money or if he abused Joy. But when he asked outright if Charlie had killed his wife, Charlie just broke down, shook his head, and sobbed. And when Wisnevsky asked if he would take a polygraph, to his surprise, Charlie said yes, and that he would take as many as they wanted. Over the next few weeks, Wisnevsky repeatedly questioned Charlie, picked apart his alibi, and oversaw multiple polygraphs. But Charlie passed every single one. And even after speaking to his kids again, Angie and David Wisnevsky just could not find anything that directly connected Charlie to the actual crime. So Wisnevsky kept looking for other suspects and conducted dozens and dozens of interviews. But after three months of investigating, it all sort of went nowhere. Wisnevsky had cleared all of his suspects. And so by the end of the year, the case went cold. 23 years later, on an afternoon in April of 2014, a detective named Michael Slaughter sat in a dusty evidence room, sorting through a box labeled Joy Hibbs. The department had just ordered a complete review of all unsolved homicide cases, and Slaughter asked to take on Joyce. He'd heard about the case and couldn't believe that more people were not talking about it or pushing for it to get solved. After all, it was an innocent mother brutally attacked and murdered in her son's bedroom in this classic suburban neighborhood. Like it was so tragic and so unusual. Wisnevsky, by this point, was retired, so Slaughter was working this case as a true fresh slate. Right now, he's. He was just gathering reports and documents, but he intended on re interviewing as many witnesses and suspects from 1991 as he could. And as he got organized, he went over the three original suspects to see if he noticed anything odd in the 1991 investigation that might have been missed. He agreed with Wisnevsky's theory that Joy was killed in an emotional, frenzied crime. But he could see that the closest person to her, her husband Charlie Hibbs, had had passed multiple polygraphs, had an alibi, and fully cooperated with the investigation. Now, it was true that he had had to marry Joy because of an accidental pregnancy, but they'd continued to live together for 18 years and had another kid, so Slaughter really didn't think that was a strong motive. Then there was Robert Atkins, who threatened to kill Joy over a drug deal. But Robert Atkins seemed to make a lot of threats to his neighbors, most of whom did not end up dead. Plus, he had been two hours away at the time of the murder. It did bother Slaughter that the drug cops at the time had blocked Wisnevsky from speaking to Robert. But a cheap weed deal didn't seem like a very good motive for a brutal murder. As for the reverend and his friend, they were literally seen at Joy's house right before she was killed, which was obviously very suspicious. But other than the timing, they never made very good suspects. They had no motive, and both of them had alibis for the period of time when the fire likely started. Slaughter spent the next few weeks following up on leads and conducting interviews. He was determined to talk to everyone, not just the original suspects, but all their friends, their neighbors, relatives, witnesses, and co workers. But the weeks turned into months and then years, and Slaughter still had not found Joy's killer. It was not until two years later, on September 11, 2016, that slaughter finally got the break he'd been desperate for. That evening, he had just sat down to dinner with his family, which, like always, made him think of Joy in this case, because here he was a regular husband and father who also spent his days looking for murderers. Sometimes it felt like he was living multiple lives at once. Just like basically everyone involved in the Hibbs case, Slaughter had spent the last two years trying to understand not just Joy, but everyone in her life. And it had been very hard because no one in this case was who they said they were. Joy was a suburban mom who was afraid she wouldn't go to heaven and smoked pot. Charlie Hibbs was a reliable company man who also ran with a Ruff motorcycle club. Robert Atkins was informing on drug dealers while also working as a drug dealer. All that's to say, Slaughter still had not figured out if any of those people were also killers. And he was starting to worry he never would. But as he sat down to dinner that night, his phone rang. And when he picked it up, a police officer on the other line said somebody was at the station asking for him. And when Slaughter heard who it was, he realized the last two years of research and interviews and getting to know everybody had actually paid off. Because one of the many people he had spoken to was finally ready to come forward. Slaughter leapt up and rushed to the station. And as soon as he got into an interview room with this new witness, that person explained that they had been lying for 25 years. And when they finally told this truth to Slaughter, one of Slaughter's suspect's alibis completely fell apart. Based on the police investigations of 1991 and 2014 and also witness reports, here is a reconstruction of what investigators believe happened to Joy Hibbs on April 19, 19, 1991. On April 19, just after 12pm, the killer sped through Croydon. They were so angry they could barely see. They had been thinking and stewing about Joy all day, getting madder and madder because Joy acted like such an upstanding person. But really, the killer knew she was a double crossing lowlife. When they got to her house, they screeched to a stop and jumped out of the car. Then they took out their knife. The killer stormed to the back of the house and barged in through the kitchen door, which was the entrance the family used. When they got inside, they saw Joy lean out of David's bedroom to look at them. And when she saw the killer and the knife in their hand, she looked more confused than scared. But when the killer rushed towards her, she opened her mouth to scream, but the killer was on her before she could make a sound, stabbing her with one hand and. And hitting her with the other. The killer pushed her onto her son's bed and continued to beat and stab her before grabbing a computer cord and they wrapped it around her neck and they strangled her until Joy stopped moving. Then the killer, who was now panting and totally out of breath, they backed away. They were still filled with adrenaline, and they knew they didn't have a lot of time to cover up their crime. So they searched the house until they found a lighter, and they put magazines and books all around Joy's body. Then they lit them on fire. Then the killer started another fire in the hallway before going to the kitchen, where they turned on all the burners and also ignited the trash. Then the killer left, sped back to their home and told their family to pack their bags. They were going on vacation. It would turn out Joy's drug dealing neighbor, Robert Atkins, had lied about everything. He actually was furious with Joy over the weed incident, which might not have been a big deal to anyone else, but Robert was an incredibly violent person, and he was absolutely enraged after killing Joy. When Robert got back home, he was literally covered in blood. And he told his wife April, that he had just stabbed someone and set their house on fire. And then before his wife could really react to this, he took her and the rest of his family upstate to the Poconos to create his alibi. And Robert's wife April, had lied about this for decades, mostly because she was scared of Robert. However, after Detective Slaughter interviewed her in 2014, she held onto his business card for two years until she finally got the courage to come forward and tell the truth about her husband. And once she did, detectives rechecked Robert's alibi. And they realized that while the 1991 investigation confirmed that the family had checked into a hotel in the Poconos, Robert, they hadn't correctly noted the time. The hotel was about two hours away, and April and Robert did not sign the registry until almost 5pm on the day Joy was killed. Which meant Robert would have had plenty of time to murder Joy first. After coming forward in 2016, April had to work with detectives for years to gather up enough evidence to actually prosecute Robert. He was finally arrested in 2022, 31 years after killing Joy, and he was quickly convicted of murder and arson. He is currently serving a life sentence without parole. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive Produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch Story editing by Karis Pash Cooper Research and fact checking by Shelly Shue, Samantha Vanhus, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schwartz Shumway and Camille Callahan Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Ear Audio editing and post produced by Whit Locasio and Cole Locasio Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain Production coordination by Samantha Collins Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley Artwork by Jessica Claugston Kiner theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more Bone chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studio's podcasts. There's this one, the Mr. Ballin podcast, as well as Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool Redacted, Late Nights with Nexpo and A Twist of History. All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See ya.

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