TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
Father Gerald Robinson, accused of strangling and stabbing to death an elderly nun in 1980, “failed” a first of two polygraph tests in the weeks after Sister Margaret Ann Pahl’s body was found, according to documents released this morning.
A second test was administered later, and police said results were inconclusive or “of marginal utility for diagnostic purposes,” according to the documents released today in Lucas County Common Pleas Court.
Asked about the polygraph results, Father Robinson’s attorney, Alan Konop, said only “that’s not true.” He declined to elaborate, citing a gag order on the case.
The papers were among those released after The Blade revealed on Feb. 20 that authorities searched the downtown church offices twice last year. Cold case detectives reopened the 1980 murder case after a woman came forward with several allegations of sexual abuse. Among her abusers, she said, was Father Robinson.
Investigators said they were seeking the church’s “secret files” that were kept under canon law. The files, they said, might provide more information about the long-time cleric and any investigation the church may have conducted into the murder, according to the papers.