By John Seewer
The Associated Press, carried in The News-Herald
May 12, 2006
http://www.news-herald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=
16627020&BRD=1698&PAG=461&dept_id=21849&rfi=6
TOLEDO - For more than two decades, the Rev. Gerald Robinson developed a faithful following in his hometown, especially in the neighborhoods where he delivered sermons and heard confessions in Polish.
He ministered to the sick and dying at nursing homes and hospitals after retiring from three Roman Catholic parishes.
What his followers were unaware of until two years ago was that the priest had been the prime suspect in the slaying of a nun a day before Easter in 1980.
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Court officer Bob Dietrich handcuffs The Rev. Gerald Robinson, Thursday, May 11, 2006, as defense attorneys John Thebes, left, and Alan Konop, right, stand by, after a jury convicted Robinson in a courtroom in Toledo. Photo by The AP |
Robinson, arrested in 2004 after investigators reopened the murder case, was convicted Thursday of choking and stabbing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in a hospital chapel.
He was immediately sentenced to the mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison and led away in handcuffs to the county jail.
None of the jurors looked at Robinson, who wore his priest's collar throughout the trial, when they walked in the courtroom. Some intentionally looked away from him.
Robinson, 68, had worked closely with Sister Pahl as the hospital chaplain and presided at her funeral Mass.
Within two weeks of the slaying, police focused their attention on the priest. They found a sword-shaped letter opener in his desk drawer and he admitted lying to them, making up a story that someone else confessed to the murder.
Yet he was never charged and remained a priest in a city where about a quarter of its residents are Catholic. A year after the killing, he was transferred out of the hospital, and at the time of his arrest he was living no more than a 100 yards from a police station.
Sister Pahl, 71, was killed while she was preparing the chapel for Easter services at Mercy Hospital on April 5, 1980. She was choked and then stabbed 31 times.
Her nephew, Lee Pahl, said his family always had suspicions that Robinson was involved in the killing. "It was conflicting because you don't want to believe a man of God could do something like that."
The case went cold for two decades. The letter opener and a blood-stained altar cloth found in the chapel sat forgotten in a police storage room.
Those items remained locked away until a letter surfaced in December 2003 that accused Robinson and other priests of molestation. Police weren't able to substantiate the allegations of sexual abuse, but it led them back to the nun's murder.
Investigators soon discovered that blood stains on the altar cloth seemed to match the patterns of the letter opener. New technology not available in 1980 allowed them to connect the killing with the letter opener, which had a diamond-shaped cross-section and a dime-sized medallion with an image of the U.S. Capitol.
Forensic experts said the blade was used to inflict the wounds, and that the medallion appeared to be the source of a faint stain on the altar cloth. They also matched up holes in the nun's clothes with the blade.
Robinson was arrested at his house in April 2004.
Tom Ross, an investigator with the Lucas County prosecutor's office, spent 90 minutes interrogating Robinson after the arrest. "He's a hard read," Ross said.
In the interview shown to jurors, Robinson said he was stunned when he walked into the chapel and the hospital's other chaplain accused him of committing the murder. Ross said he knew that was a lie.
Police who searched his home found several hundred photos of caskets and corpses along with a pamphlet about the occult that was written by a Catholic organization.
"A lot of odd things were found," said Chris Anderson, a member of the prosecution team. They decided not to use those items as evidence because prosecutors weren't sure if they had anything to do with the slaying.
"If you say it was some sort of black Mass you lose your credibility right away," Anderson said.
Robinson collected the photos because it was an old Polish custom, said defense lawyer John Thebes. "That is more customary than sinister," he said.
Prosecutors said Robinson tried to humiliate Sister Pahl in her death, her stab wounds in the shape of an inverted cross and a smudge of blood on her forehead meant as a mock anointing.
They said the killing was steeped with religious ritualism because of the pattern of her stab wounds.
The case relied heavily on forensic evidence because prosecutors presented no direct evidence that Robinson killed Sister Pahl, the caretaker of the hospital chapel.
The defense said DNA evidence didn't link Robinson to the crime. The nun's underwear and fingernails had traces of DNA likely from a man but not from Robinson, Thebes said.
The priest's attorneys also said witnesses gave conflicting accounts of where and when they saw Robinson near the chapel no more than an hour before the nun's body was found inside.
Robinson, who had an apartment in the hospital, had told police that he was in his room showering about the time of the killing.
The verdict came after nine days of testimony.
Robinson did not visibly react to the verdict. His friends and family gasped when it was read.
"We shared the same emotion, that was one of shock," Thebes said of the reaction he and Robinson had to the verdict. The priest's lawyers promised to appeal.
Since Robinson's arrest, allegations swirled that police did not pursue the case thoroughly because the main suspect was a priest in a heavily Catholic community.
"I hope this doesn't shake the faith of millions of followers of the Catholic church," said Ross, who took the priest into custody. "This was just one bad person."
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