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	Ohio Priest Lied about Nun's Murder: Prosecutor By Bill Frogameni Reuters April 21, 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid= 2006-04-21T185430Z_01_N21225081_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-NUN.xml TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) - A Catholic priest on trial for the murder of a nun 26 years ago has lied repeatedly about the case, once telling investigators he had heard the real murderer's confession, a prosecutor said on Friday. The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, later denied he had heard the supposed confession, saying he was pressured by police who considered him the prime suspect in the murder of sister Margaret Ann Pahl on the day before Easter Sunday in 1980. The 71-year-old nun's body was found strangled and stabbed in the downtown Toledo hospital chapel where Robinson served as chaplain. Her body and clothing were posed as if she had been sexually assaulted, though she had not been. Her body was covered with an altar cloth and had 31 stab wounds, some of them on her chest forming an upside-down cross, Lucas County Prosecutor Dean Mandros told the jury in his opening statement. "(There were) nine piercings of her flesh in the shape of an upside-down cross," Mandros told the jury. A letter opener found in Robinson's apartment near the chapel inflicted the wounds, Mandros said. The tip of the opener fit a wound in the jaw of the nun's exhumed body "like a key in a lock," he said. Blood spatters at the crime scene matched the letter opener, though the murder weapon had been wiped clean, he said. The case against Robinson was reopened in 2003 after prosecutors obtained a letter from an unidentified woman who claimed she had been a childhood victim of sexual abuse by Robinson, according to the Toledo Blade newspaper. The woman had sought reimbursement from the Toledo diocese for the costs of therapy. Robinson, who was the chaplain at Toledo's Mercy Hospital for six years before the killing, will be described by hospital employees who are to testify as "a loner, someone who avoided other people," Mandros told the jury. Sister Pahl oversaw the hospital chapel and she was preparing it for special evening services the Saturday morning she was strangled and stabbed. Robinson's apartment was close to the chapel and the adjoining sacristy room where she was killed, Mandros said. Robinson also lied to authorities about not having a key to the sacristy, he said. Defense lawyer Alan Konop countered that the evidence against Robinson was circumstantial and contained important inconsistencies, including old witnesses who had changed their statements since the long-ago murder. Konop also said DNA taken from material under the nun's fingernails did not match Robinson's. Robinson could face life in prison if convicted.
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