Priest Found Guilty of Nun's 1980 Murder, by Christopher Maag, The New York Times, May 12, 2006

Priest Found Guilty of Nun's 1980 Murder

By Christopher Maag
The New York Times
May 12, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12priest.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

CLEVELAND, May 11 — A priest was found guilty on Thursday of murdering a nun 26 years ago in what another priest testified was a ritual intended to defile the nun.

The defendant, the Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, showed no emotion as the jury verdict was read in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in Toledo. Judge Thomas J. Osowik sentenced him to 15 years to life in prison.

Father Robinson's lawyer said he would appeal the verdict, which the jury handed up after seven hours of deliberations.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, was sentenced to 15 years to life.
Photo by Andy Morrison

The body of the nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, was found on April 5, 1980, in the chapel at Mercy Hospital in Toledo. She had been preparing the Eucharist for Easter services. Her killer laid an altar cloth across her body before stabbing her 31 times. Nine stab wounds to the chest were in the shape of an upside-down cross.

The killing was committed by someone with deep understanding of church symbols and rituals, the Rev. Jeffrey Grob of Chicago, an expert on the occult, testified. Sister Pahl had a smear of blood across the forehead, Father Grob said, a mockery of the Last Rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

"All these things were done to have her die in the most humiliating, degrading way possible for a nun," said Dean Mandros, chief of the criminal division in the Lucas County prosecutor's office.

Prosecutors said Father Robinson had been angry about Sister Pahl's domineering personality and her complaints about how he had conducted a Good Friday service the night before the killing. Father Robinson, who presided over Sister Pahl's funeral Mass, was the primary suspect from the beginning, the authorities said.

As the priest was being questioned by detectives two weeks after the killing, Mr. Mandros said, Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter interrupted the interview and allowed a monsignor to escort Father Robinson out of Police Headquarters.

"That upset the detectives to no end," Mr. Mandros said.

Deputy Chief Vetter also requested that detectives give him their reports on the case, Mr. Mandros said. Some of those reports were never seen again. Within a month, the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Mr. Vetter, who retired in 1986, testified this week that he was a practicing Catholic but had not been involved with the investigation.

The investigation was reopened in 2003 after a woman from Toledo approached the Toledo Diocese with accusations that a number of priests, including Father Robinson, had molested her as a child in a series of rituals, Mr. Mandros said. The accusations were sent to the prosecutor's cold case unit.

Using new forensic techniques, the authorities discovered imprints on the altar cloth that closely matched a letter opener belonging to Father Robinson that had an emblem of the United States Capitol on the side, Mr. Mandros said. They also found three witnesses who said they saw the priest near the chapel around the time of the killing.

Victims of sexual abuse accuse the diocese of a long-running effort to shield priests from prosecution.

"I'm relieved by the verdict today," said Claudia Vercelotti, who was molested by a Toledo priest as a child and is now a member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "But the murder happened 26 years ago. You can't talk about this case without talking about the Catholic Church's cover-up."

Father Robinson maintained his innocence throughout the trial. With a number of the original witnesses dead and many original documents missing, his lawyer, Alan Konop, argued that prosecutors did not have a case. "The initial police investigation was very poor, and there was so much conflicting testimony," Mr. Konop said.

When Father Robinson was arrested in April 2004, he told the police on a videotape that was shown at the trial that he had been shocked to find the nun dead and shocked again when the other hospital chaplain accused him of murder.