Gerald Robinson (priest) - Murder of Pahl

Murder of Pahl

In 1980 Robinson was the chaplain at the Toledo Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, USA where he ministered to the sick and terminally ill. Sister Pahl was the caretaker of the chapel.

Robinson was convicted of strangling and stabbing Pahl, who was 71 at the time, in the sacristy of a chapel of the hospital where they worked together. The priest presided at her funeral Mass four days after her death. Pahl was stabbed 31 times, including nine times in the shape of an inverted cross. Prosecutors considered that this shape was deliberate and intended to humiliate Pahl in death. Pahl was found covered in an altar cloth, her clothes and body arranged to suggest she had been sexually assaulted, although it was not clear that she had been.

Robinson was questioned about the crime in 1980, but was not charged. Dean Mandros, the chief of the criminal division in the Lucas County prosecutor's office said that as the priest was being questioned by detectives two weeks after the killing, Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter, who later testified that he was a practicing Catholic, interrupted the interview (which is not normal procedure) and allowed a monsignor to escort Father Robinson out of Police Headquarters, which "upset the detectives to no end". Mandros also said that Vetter asked detectives to give him their reports on the case, and that some of those reports were never seen again. A cover-up was alleged.

The case remained unsolved, with no new leads, until 2003 when police received a letter from a woman who claimed that Robinson had sexually abused her when she was a child in a series of Satanic ritual abuse that also involved human sacrifice. The woman, using the name "Survivor Doe", also filed a civil lawsuit against Robinson seeking financial damages for having been a victim of ritual abuse by Robinson and other adults dressed as nuns. The case was dismissed in 2011 due to having been filed too late.

The accusations were sent to the prosecutor's cold case unit. Forensic tests indicated that a sword-shaped letter opener that had been found in Robinson's apartment and stored without detailed examination was not inconsistent with the weapon that inflicted the wounds; in the words of the prosecutor's expert, it could "not be ruled out." The tip of the opener fitted a wound in the jaw of the nun's exhumed body "like a key in a lock," according to prosecutors.

Using new forensic techniques, imprints on the altar cloth were found that closely matched the letter opener, Mr. Mandros said. Prosecutiors also found three witnesses who said they had seen the priest near the chapel around the time of the killing.

The case against Robinson went to trial on April 24, 2006. Robinson was found guilty on all counts on May 11, 2006. This is the second conviction for homicide of a Catholic priest in the United States; Hans Schmidt, executed in 1916, was the first.

The case is described in the book Sin, Shame, And Secrets: The Murder of a Nun, the Conviction of a Priest, and Cover-up in the Catholic Church by Toledo journalist David Yonke.