MURDERED: Robin Benedict

A discovery in a rest stop trash can leads police to suspect a young artist and sex worker has been brutally murdered by someone close to her. But without a body, will she ever get the justice she deserves?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  And I'm Britt.

• 1:07Ashley Flowers?

  And the story I have for you today is one that I was dead set on telling because I have seen bits and pieces of it before. But when I actually dug in, it was one of those cases where the story reported is not the real story. And I couldn't understand how it got so twisted. So if you think that you know this case, you probably don't. This is the story of Robin Benedict.

• 2:05Ashley Flowers?

  March 6, 1983, is a cold spring morning in Mansfield, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, the kind that makes you feel like winter's never gonna end. But instead of using his Sunday to sleep in, a man named Joseph braves the freezing weather to collect bottles along I-95. Around 9:00 a.m., he meets up with his friend and they go to this rest stop to rummage through some trash barrels. They split up. Joseph takes the left side of the lot, his friend takes the right. And when Joseph reaches inside the first barrel, he pulls out this heavy brown plastic garbage bag. And he's excited because a heavy bag means lots of bottles. Lots of bottles means a big payday. But instead of a payday, he nearly gets a heart attack.

• 2:47Ashley Flowers?

  Because when he tears open the bag, he sees a tan corduroy jacket spattered with blood. The scent of expensive perfume wafts up from the jacket, creating this like weird dissonance between what he's smelling versus like what he's seeing. Now, the jacket is wrapped around something hard and lumpy. And as he peels back the layers, he sees a man's bloodied blue shirt, then a small two-and-a-half-pound sledgehammer, also with blood on it. And stuck to the blood on the sledgehammer is a long strand of dark hair. Joseph calls his friend over, wondering if they should call the police, but the friend is like, "No, we need to stay out of whatever this is. It's not like we found a body here."

• 3:32Ashley Flowers?

  Plus, he's like, "I get that it looks like blood, but it doesn't mean it actually is blood." And listen, if you want too bad enough, you can convince yourself of anything. So they put the trash bag back in the can and they move along, just determined to not get involved.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  I cannot relate to anything less.

• 3:51Ashley Flowers?

  As a crime junkie, no, I know.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  I would want to get the most involved.

• 3:54Ashley Flowers?

  I would make this my whole personality.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:57Ashley Flowers?

  Like, but we are not Joseph, we are crime junkies. But he is human and he does find himself like thinking about this bag, even after he gets home. What if it really was blood? What if someone out there is hurt? He can't just sit with it anymore. So he does end up calling police that same day. It's state trooper Paul Landry who gets sent to check. This out. And when he finds the trash bag and sees everything with his own eyes, he is not as quick to dismiss it. He knows blood when he sees it, and this blood is still sticky, which means that it's pretty fresh. Whatever happened to whoever it happened to probably happened around sometime like the night before. So Trooper Landry collects the items and sends

• 4:41Ashley Flowers?

  them to the state crime lab for testing while he puts out feelers for any crimes in the area that this might be related to assaults, homicides, missing people. Nothing pops up right away, but about a week later, Trooper Landry gets word that there is in fact a missing girl. Someone had apparently heard someone else talking about a newscast that they saw about this missing person. So he literally doesn't even have a name or even a place, but it has to be somewhat regional, right? Like, it's worth a shot. So he starts calling all of the major channels in the Boston area and neighboring Rhode Island, asking about this broadcast. And it takes a few hours, but later that day, he gets a call back

• 5:23Ashley Flowers?

  from a Boston news director confirming that they did run a brief broadcast on a woman who was reported missing by her boyfriend in a town about 40 miles away from that rest stop where the stuff was found. And at first, Trooper Landry's not convinced that this woman is his victim, if there even is a victim, like 40 miles feels kind of far for him. But he looks into the report anyways. And what he finds is that a week before all of this, a guy named JR reported his 21-year-old girlfriend, Robin Benedict, missing after she didn't return from visiting someone she knew in Sharon, Massachusetts. Now, it turns out Sharon, Massachusetts is only about five minutes away from the rest stop. And Robin

• 6:05Ashley Flowers?

  was wearing a tan jacket when she was last seen. So he looks Robin up, and he learns that she is a sex worker in Boston. And JR might be her boyfriend, but he might be more than that. Like JR's official criminal history includes unarmed robbery and receiving stolen credit cards, but he also co-owns a hair salon that's rumored to be a meeting place for traffickers. And it turns out JR's not the only one who reported Robin missing. In fact, he wasn't even the first person. JR's ex, who is also the mother of his son, she actually reported her missing the day that the trash bag was found because Robin never made it to her son's birthday party. And so then it was two days after she had reported her missing that JR went and reported

• 6:50Ashley Flowers?

  her too. And then three days after that, her parents reported her missing. Now, there's already a search underway because the day before he reported Robin missing to police, JR hired private investigators to track her down.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Hold up, he hired PIs before he called the police?

• 7:08Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I assume he did that because police aren't like super fond of him. And as Robin's suspected trafficker slash boyfriend, like he would be a prime suspect. And also like, I'm sure he doesn't want them like poking around into whatever he has going on. But anyways, Trooper Landry decides to start with these PIs. He asked them to come down to the station to talk about what it is they know, what if they found out. And they tell him that they've done a lot of work on the case so far. And in particular, they spent a lot of time looking into this one specific guy that JR believed took Robin. This client who in recent months had become obsessed with her. Now, this man JR was suspicious of is a 41-year-old Tufts Medical School professor named Dr. Bill Douglas.

• 7:53Ashley Flowers?

  And his condensed version of like his history with Robin goes like this. Robin met Bill at a combat zone bar sometime in the spring of 1982, so almost exactly a year ago. When I say the combat bar, like the combat zone is this area in Boston known for sex work, maybe other illegal activity. So he meets her at a bar in this area and he becomes a regular client of hers. Eventually, though, he started paying Robin for more and more of her time so that she wouldn't have to work in the combat zone as much. He started changing his work schedule around just to take her to plays and movies and concerts. And pretty soon, Robin was spending at least two hours a night with Bill. But it never seemed like enough.

• 8:37Ashley Flowers?

  And at some point, Bill's obsession with Robin grew until he was sending her cards and letters almost every day and calling her incessantly if she didn't have time to meet him. He even bought her an answering machine for her birthday so that she would always get his messages. And he put her on the payroll at Tufts as a research assistant. So, I mean, he was like really like trying to bring her, he was trying to be her whole life. And soon, Robin would regularly spot Bill like parked outside of her apartment, watching her comings and goings. And it's strange because police started showing up right as she would bring clients back, as if someone was watching her place and wanting her to get caught.

• 9:21Ashley Flowers?

  And all of that made JR rethink something that had happened like even before this.

• 9:29Ashley Flowers?

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• 10:12Ashley Flowers?

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• 11:48Ashley Flowers?

  So one day back in November, as Robin and Bill were leaving her apartment, police showed up at exactly that moment as they were leaving. But Bill chimed in that there was nothing untoward going on here. Like, she works for me, you have this all wrong. And he like saved the day. And so that is when all the police visits first started. So JR was thinking that Bill called the police on himself. So that way, when he called later.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Oh, and like he could be the hero of the situation.

• 12:18Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and then maybe she wouldn't suspect when all of a sudden like the like she's getting caught with all of these clients later. JR also suspected that Bill would listen to the messages on Robin's answering machine. He even thought Bill stole Robin's answering machine from her apartment, not once, but twice in an attempt to keep her from meeting other men.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  And was Robin suspicious of Bill too? Or was this just like coming from JR?

• 12:43Ashley Flowers?

  So if you would have asked me a week ago, I would have said I couldn't tell you. But literally right before finalizing this script, we were able to get in touch with Robin's brother, Richard. And he told us that, yes, she at least thought Bill was listening to her calls somehow. I mean, it's probably what pushed her to use an answering service instead of her regular machine to begin with. And interestingly, she wouldn't give Bill the number for the answering service. Which, according to her brother Richard, just seemed to make Bill even like more crazy. He started stealing her mail, he started calling her family members.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Escalated.

• 13:18Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, like if he couldn't get in touch with her, he like had to have tabs on her at all times. And that seemed like it marked the beginning of the end of things between them. Robin started actively trying to break things off. And on March 2nd, we're back now in 1983, March 2nd. She even calls Bill's house and told his wife Nancy that she didn't want to see him anymore.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Hmm, did wife Nancy know that Bill was seeing another woman?

• 13:47Ashley Flowers?

  So I don't know, like in that moment when Robin called her, all we know is that Nancy said, okay. Nothing else, which makes me think that it wasn't a total surprise. Also, like, how do you spend two hours every night with someone and your wife like doesn't know something?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:04Ashley Flowers?

  Was up? But what's so interesting is guess where Nancy and Bill live? Sharon, Massachusetts.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Sharon.

• 14:11Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. In fact, Trooper Landry learns that according to JR, that is actually where Robin was going the night of March 5th. She wanted to make it clear to Bill that she didn't want to see him again and she wanted to do it face to face.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  So that could explain the blue men's shirt and the trash bag, couldn't it?

• 14:31Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, mm-hmm.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Why wouldn't JR go with her, though?

• 14:35Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know, so I can see a world where she thought she could handle it herself. Like she's known this guy for about a year at this point.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  And to me, it almost seems separate from JR to a certain extent, like.

• 14:47Ashley Flowers?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Like taking her on these like quote unquote dates.

• 14:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  And stuff and.

• 14:53Ashley Flowers?

  Well, and I think there's this like when you know someone that long and like you do have like very like comfortable intimate, even if it like escalates at some point. I think there's this false sense of comfort that people can be lulled into. Like, you know, when someone wasn't always bad, like someone who says they care about you. And I'm sure we all remember how invincible we felt at her age. Like you don't think anything bad can happen to you. I mean, even her brother said that she didn't seem to be worried about Bill. Like even though he didn't know the full extent of their relationship until after Robin went missing, all he knew was that she was gonna break things off with this professor that she was working with. Like she said that this is what she was telling him, that the professor was getting way too attached, whatever. But he said that his sister just seemed annoyed. She didn't seem scared.

• 15:38Ashley Flowers?

  But according to JR, she goes over there to break things off that night and then she just never comes home. Now JR didn't jump straight to, oh my God, she's been murdered when she didn't come home. I guess Bill had recently been trying to convince Robin to go on a trip to the Virgin Islands with him before she disappeared. So at first he thought, not even that she went willingly, but like maybe Bill abducted her or like whatever, hence hiring the PIs. But they quickly found that Bill definitely wasn't in the Virgin Islands. Cause a couple of days after Robin disappeared, the PIs found him at a hotel in DC where he was staying for a conference. And the second they saw him, they spotted something very suspicious.

• 16:23Ashley Flowers?

  So right away, the PIs notice a bandage over Bill's forehead, which throws up some red flags. And they're like, how'd you get that, Billy? And he's like, oh, I just hit my head on this cabinet door, which is obviously not what happened because this is like a large bandage. Like most likely larger than you would need if you just got a little whack with a cabinet. But Bill was super cooperative. He lets them in, lets them search the room. And Bill's story was that yes, Robin had come over on the 5th. He saw her briefly just before 11pm, but she left around midnight and she said that she was gonna go meet some guy named Joe. Oh, and he said, by the way, his wife and kids weren't home, so no one could confirm that.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 17:07Ashley Flowers?

  So they talked to him, the PIs eventually leave, but there's like something about his answers that aren't sitting right with them. So later that same night, they go back to ask Bill again, like, how is it you got that injury to your head? And this time he gives a completely different story.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Wait, on the same night?

• 17:26Ashley Flowers?

  On the same night. So this time he says that he was mugged at an Amtrak station and that the robbers hit him in the head with his briefcase. And oh, by the way, his wife actually was home the night that Robin came over. So she could corroborate his alibi that she left safe and sound.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Oh, convenient. Now your wife is home late at night when the sex worker you're obsessed with just happens to pop by for a visit.

• 17:50Ashley Flowers?

  Did you have time to call and confirm that?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  No, I feel like maybe you just had the time to line this up. Line up your alibi between, shoot, I lied to them and they're gonna be able to catch me, to like, oh, you're back? Turns out, story's changed.

• 18:03Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so this is all super sus, for sure. But they didn't find anything then that really helped them locate Robin, which is still like priority number one. But Bill did something strange when he got back home from DC. He called Robin's dad and said that he had a message for him from Robin. He says Robin told him that if anything ever happened to her, to tell her family not to let JR keep her jewelry and furs.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Did her dad have any context for who Bill was when he called?

• 18:38Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but same as her brother, like they didn't have the full context. I don't think they had the full context of what Robin's life was like anymore. I think she tried to shield them from that reality. Like only a few years before all of this, she'd been a model student and a President Merit Scholar who never missed a day of class. And when she graduated, she worked in graphic design for a minute, but somewhere along the way, she got pulled into sex work. And I don't know if her parents knew every detail of what she was doing for a living. Now, they did eventually learn that she was a sex worker after police had called them down to the station a few times when she was arrested for sex work, so this is before she goes missing. But they had kept that from their other kids until after she goes missing, which is why her brother doesn't know. And he was so shocked when he finally found out.

• 19:24Ashley Flowers?

  So her parents like knew she was struggling, but this is where Bill comes in. So they actually meet him at one of those times when Robin got arrested. She and Bill were saying, oh, this is all a mistake, and Bill's her boss at the university. And they were saying that he was there to like clear everything up. And like, they wanted to believe it. So at first, they knew Bill in that context, like as her boss. Though he did even, as her boss, like rub them the wrong way. Like he seemed to have a crush on Robin that went way further than the usual professor assistant relationship. And he told them to let him know if anyone ever messed with them or Robin because he had access to chemicals that could dissolve a body.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  The fu- Uh, who goes straight to dissolving a body?

• 20:11Ashley Flowers?

  If someone bothers you or messes with you? This guy, I know, they thought it was- At first, they're like, huh, huh, like, I thought it was a joke, but now, again, everything looks different in hindsight. And with everything that Bill's done since, they're like, oh, like-

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Like, this legitimately could have happened to Robin.

• 20:27Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. So you see why everyone's suspicious of him. But the PIs, as they're talking to police, are telling them all of this. They add one more thing before they leave. They say that they can't be sure if JR is totally innocent in Robin's disappearance. Like, there is a good chance that he might have something to do with it.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Because why?

• 20:47Ashley Flowers?

  Because I don't know. Like, that's the stuff that's conveniently left out. But it might be left out because they don't have a real reason. Other than, like, he's the one who's dating her, if not trafficking her. And the read-between-the-lines thing I see here is that he's black, Robin is a biracial Hispanic woman. And there is, like, when you're looking at the research materials and the reporting, there's like the kind of this whiff of racism and sexism, especially discrimination against sex work in a lot of the coverage on this case. So I think they just kind of, like, plant the seed with Trooper Landry. Here's all this stuff on Bill, but don't totally ignore JR.

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• 23:19Ashley Flowers?

  So Trooper Landry's first move after talking to the PIs is to try and confirm the tan jacket is actually Robin's. Conveniently, Robin's dad had already showed up to the station because somehow he had heard about the tan jacket that had been found on I-95, and he's sure that it's Robin's. But to be extra sure, they contact JR and ask him to come down to the station with a sample of her perfume to compare to the scent that is still clinging to this jacket. And once JR arrives, there is no doubt in anyone's mind. JR recognizes the jacket too, and that perfume still on it is the same one that Robin wears every single day.

• 24:01Ashley Flowers?

  Now Trooper Landry is confident that her dad isn't a suspect, so he sends him home to have time to grieve in peace while he goes in hard at JR. And there are no softball questions. He opens with, "What did you do with the body?"

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 24:16Ashley Flowers?

  But JR is distraught and clear that he would never hurt Robin. He loved her. They were planning to get married. He claims they never even fought, and he says the person they need to be looking at is Bill. And after four hours of the third degree, Trooper Landry starts to believe JR, so he lets him go. Though they do still search the house that he shared with Robin and her new apartment that she had just recently got where she brought clients to. But in both of those places, they don't find anything. They just confirm that no one laid eyes on Robin since the fifth. But strangely, people had heard some weird noises coming from her apartment after the fifth.

• 24:59Ashley Flowers?

  And not weird like, like a struggle or something unexplained. Like, they were legit strange. Like, it was someone playing the flute and singing in a high pitched voice.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Oh, that's weird.

• 25:12Ashley Flowers?

  Unexpected, yeah. Now, Robin actually did play the flute, so maybe could have been her. But the important thing is that none of the neighbors actually laid eyes on her or saw who was in the apartment. So now, Trooper Landry's sights are set squarely on Bill. So on March 16th, police bring him in for questioning. He's condescending and shifty, but he admits pretty quickly that he was Robin's client. The truthfulness ends there, though, because when he's asked about that cut on his head, he gives yet another story.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 25:49Ashley Flowers?

  This time, he says he was mugged by two men who hit him with a metal pipe. Not his briefcase this time, but they stole the briefcase. Now, despite all the inconsistencies, Bill just doesn't strike police as their most likely suspect. Like, they just, they don't feel it.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Right, because stalking Robin isn't a massive red flag.

• 26:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I, I don't think they start to like really understand the depths of that until after their interview with him. So when they talk to him, they end up letting him go, because they don't have anything to hold him on. And it's after that that JR gives them all these letters that Bill wrote to Robin, which painted a picture of a man who hoped their relationship would turn into something romantic. Like, he had convinced himself that someday Robin would stop charging him and even give up sex work to be with him. But then there's this like tone of the letters that like shifts to apologetic. He's apologizing for the way he's acting. Apparently he had insulted Robin and made her uncomfortable and he was promising to be

• 26:55Ashley Flowers?

  better for her. And sometime in between, Bill had also outlined a plan to put Robin on the Tufts payroll by hiring her as a research assistant so she could show some kind of documented income and leave sex work behind. So like the plan was for Bill to submit invoices for artwork and other things that she was doing for his research projects. And even though Robin's brother remembers her being excited about this opportunity, according to Linda Wolf's reporting, no one at Tufts remembers ever seeing her in the lab. So police can't actually confirm whether or not she did that work. And she's not the only one that he put on the payroll. So Bill also put JR's ex on the payroll to somehow pay Robin even more money.

• 27:40Ashley Flowers?

  Like the ex would basically go cash a check from Bill, which was from the payroll. And then that money was given to Robin. And then he would also invoice Tufts himself and use his reimbursements to pay Robin too.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  So along with stalking, he was embezzling money from like a major university?

• 27:58Ashley Flowers?

  All in an attempt to spend more time with Robin. And this is, by the way, after only knowing her, like this started after just a couple of weeks, according to when those letters were written. So Bill is not looking great, but they need solid proof of something. I mean, he admits to being with her around midnight on the 5th, but what happened after that? Where did she go? Was that even true? Was she ever even seen after she saw him? Those are the things they needed to figure out. So using records from Robin's answering service, they put together a rough timeline of March 5th. What they find is that at 3:00 PM, Robin left home to buy a birthday gift for JR's son.

• 28:41Ashley Flowers?

  Around 7:45, she stopped at a bar in the combat zone to let JR's ex know that she would pick her and her son up to go to the son's birthday party the next morning. Around 8:40 PM, Robin meets a client at a Boston high-rise, but the appointment lasted less than an hour. And right before she left, at around 9:30, she called her answering service and she was told that someone claiming to be JR had called to pick up her messages. But when she called JR, he's like, "Nope, wasn't me."

• 29:11Speaker 02

  So we're thinking this is Bill?

• 29:12Ashley Flowers?

  Probably. Now, I'm sure that he shouldn't have had that number. That was, I mean, probably the whole point of going with the service.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:21Ashley Flowers?

  But stalkers can be relentless. And I don't think a number was gonna stand in Bill's way. So we know she left that high-rise client at around 9:45, saying that she was rushing to meet another client, quote, "between the wife and kids." So Trooper Landry thinks that this was likely when Robin left to go see Bill. At 10:07, we know that her answering service got a call from a guy named Joe inviting her to a party. And at 11:42, the answering service has a record of Robin calling in and leaving a message for JR saying that she was on her way to that party. Except, this isn't a true answering machine.

• 30:04Ashley Flowers?

  Like, there, this is a service, so there is a middleman, like, taking down the messages. And the person who took this message says, "You know what? There was actually something really weird about that last message from Robin." That last time that Robin called in to say that she was on her way to Joe's party, the person who took the message said it didn't sound like her. It sounded more like a man. And while the person at the service didn't know whose voice it was, if it wasn't Robin's, they could say for sure that it at least didn't sound like JR's. But someone else working at the service says that one of the messages left by the person claiming to be Robin, sounded like a man disguising his voice to sound like a

• 30:49Ashley Flowers?

  woman. And we haven't touched on this yet, but you know who has a super high pitched voice already?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Hmm, Bill?

• 30:55Ashley Flowers?

  Bill. So after that, there's nothing. At 9:00 AM the next morning, the trash bag with the bloody items are found.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Do we know if she ever made it to that Joe's party?

• 31:08Ashley Flowers?

  Police don't know yet. They're still working to track down this Joe guy. So we'll come back to that. But as Trooper Landry's processing this, JR actually calls him to report that a $200 check that Bill wrote to Robin on March 2nd was stopped. Now, Robin had deposited that check on March 4th. Again, everything, she goes like missing whatever on the 5th. So either Bill or his wife Nancy had to have canceled their endorsement on the check on that day or the day after. Almost like Bill knew.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  They knew.

• 31:38Ashley Flowers?

  Yep, knew that Robin wouldn't need that money. So on March 19th, Trooper Landry questions Bill one more time, asking him to lay out the night of March 5th once again. So Bill claims that Robin stopped by his house at around 10:30 PM to deliver some artwork that she'd been doing for Tufts. Which I'm sure police like automatically believe this is a lie because they already know from JR that he's Robin's client. Like, whatever. So then around midnight, she leaves, he says, to go meet this mysterious Joe. And that was allegedly the last that Bill saw of her. Trooper Landry asked Bill to tell him the whole story again, hoping to catch him in another inconsistency, but Bill just tells him a completely unrelated story, like he

• 32:23Ashley Flowers?

  doesn't even bother. He says, you know, the Tuesday before Robin went missing, I parked my car near her apartment while I went to see a movie. And when I came back from the theater, the car was stolen. And then the next day, after meeting Robin at a motel, Bill says that he was thrown into a van, beaten up by three black men who warned him to stay away from Robin.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  What does his car being stolen have to do with him getting beat up? Have to do with Robin going missing? None of this is connecting?

• 32:52Ashley Flowers?

  It's not. Everyone is confused right now. So here's the thing. So Bill claims that he didn't report this abduction to police because he didn't want his family to know that he had been with a sex worker when it happened.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 33:03Ashley Flowers?

  He's like letting them know now.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  I feel like Bill's living in a completely different, like, reality than the rest of us. How is that something he thinks he can, like, hide at this point?

• 33:14Ashley Flowers?

  I feel you. But Trooper Landry lets Bill talk because it seems like he enjoys spinning a yarn. And what he's shooting for right now is enough to get him a search warrant. So like, let's just let this guy ramble.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:25Ashley Flowers?

  And so he, like, changes the subject and he starts asking Bill about that scar on his forehead. And Bill tells a fourth story about how he got it. And it's kind of the same as the others, but he adds details about his attackers and changes the location again. This time, he says he's attacked by two young black men in DC who hit him on the head and stole his precious briefcase.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Ashley, everyone wants this guy's briefcase.

• 33:50Ashley Flowers?

  I know, literally everyone. And actually, this is, I haven't told you this part yet. So there are literally so many stories and anecdotes in Teresa Carpenter's book called Missing Beauty. I can't even begin to hit all of them. But there's this whole story of a time when Bill, like, called the police saying that Robin stole his briefcase. And according to the police report, the two of them had, like, this heated argument outside of his house where she was like, "Give me what you took from me and I'll give this back to you." And in the end, police were like, "You two need counseling. Figure it out yourselves. Bye." And Trooper Landry actually asks him about this specific incident. And Bill's like, "Oh yeah, that was nothing. We figured it out." So that just kind of gets, like, washed off. But again, like, this, I don't know what was up with this briefcase.

• 34:33Ashley Flowers?

  So then Landry asks him about the stopped $200 check, which Bill explains by saying that he paid Robin the money in cash when she was at his house on the 5th, so that he just, like, canceled the check, which, like, I'm pretty sure wasn't part of his, like, original story, like...

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:47Ashley Flowers?

  But not important, not important. Like Landry like knows he's lying. He's pretty sure at this point that Bill murdered Robin. But for some reason, like in all of the, the reporting on this, like it also seems like he feels sorry for this guy. Which I don't understand.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  It's hard to imagine feeling sorry for a grown ass man who's cheating on his wife, embezzling from a university where he works. And oh, by the way, stalking a 21 year old girl.

• 35:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, it seems like he's like, oh.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  It's like sad sack.

• 35:19Ashley Flowers?

  Well, yeah, well, like this guy really like, ah, got his heart broken. Like he's, and I don't know that it's like, he's like excusing what he's done. But also like.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  I mean, it is kind of sad to think about how important he thinks this briefcase is.

• 35:33Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. It seems like, I like, I don't know. There's a little bit of this idea of like this vixen woman, like. I'm telling you, this is like part of the larger story is like, kind of what gets under my skin here. And it's like, I think maybe my religious trauma showing. Like, we used to be told, like, don't tempt men, right? Like, it's our fault if a man cheats.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the responsibility is ours, not theirs.

• 35:54Ashley Flowers?

  Like that I, that I am like reading between the lines and feeling. Anyway, Trooper Landry gives Bill one last out, one last chance to fess up. What did Robin do to make him kill her? But he still doesn't give Trooper Landry anything. So he decides to move on to Nancy, Bill's wife, and he calls her down to the station for an interview. Now, her story of the night of the fifth goes like this. She got home at around 7:00 PM, found a note from Bill saying that he was out for a walk and that Robin would be coming by at around 7:30. Now Nancy didn't want to be home when Robin was around, like same girl.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:32Ashley Flowers?

  So she went to the mall and then she picked up two of her kids, drove home at around 11:30, where she saw Robin's car still parked in the driveway. So she kind of just drove around in the car until she knew that Robin's car was gone. She said that was around 2:15. And when she went inside, she saw Bill already asleep in his bed, and then she went to sleep in the living room.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Okay, something that occurred to me while you were telling me this was Robin's car. I literally never even thought about her having a car. Do we know where it is now?

• 37:05Ashley Flowers?

  No, so that's actually missing along with Robin. So they're looking for that too, but no leads on it yet. Now, Trooper Landry asked Nancy if she noticed a wound on Bill's head that night or the day after, but she says she didn't because she wasn't really even really paying close attention to Bill anymore. Like, they're on the outs by this point. She said barely even speaking these days.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  I mean, since she found out about the cheating?

• 37:27Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. I mean, when she's like, "found out," it's like in her face, right? And she says that they were, everything that they were doing communication-wise, she says was like happening through note. So it's bad. But even though they're distant, this dude still seems to have a hold on her. Because when Trooper Landry tells her point-blank that Bill is a suspect in Robin's disappearance, Nancy refuses to believe it. So they're not gonna get anywhere with her now. Luckily, though, the search warrant that Trooper Landry wanted to get is approved. But investigators have their work cut out for them because Bill's house is a straight-up mess. And I'm not talking about just clutter. This thing

• 38:08Ashley Flowers?

  is filthy, infested with roaches. There's rotten food on the counters. It is damn near unlivable.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  It's like Lisk vibes.

• 38:19Ashley Flowers?

  What do you mean by that?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Well, wasn't his house just like a hoarder's mess?

• 38:24Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, yeah. I don't remember. Like, I haven't seen the pictures in a while, but it was. Like, I remember them, I remember some of this stuff being said about his house, too. I don't know what that means or what that says about them. And I'm sure there's a ton of psychology behind it, but police in this situation, and maybe this is the thing across the board, is when they looked at this, they said, "This looks like a family in crisis."

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Which it is.

• 38:47Ashley Flowers?

  This is not a happy home.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:49Ashley Flowers?

  And seeing that, they're like, "Oh, maybe Nancy didn't want to talk to us today, but maybe we actually can get her to flip down the line." She may be protecting her husband now, but clearly, like, she's not living a happy life. She's not living in a happy home. We might be able to get her on our side. So Trooper Landry checks the house for places that looked cleaned up or painted over. He beelines for Bill's room, which is just as messy as the rest of the house. But in the chaos of Bill's closet, Trooper Landry finds a treasure trove of evidence. First, there are tape cassettes, which, when played, are recordings of Bill making harassing calls to a massage parlor that Robin used to work at. He ended up getting her fired from that job.

• 39:34Ashley Flowers?

  Second, there is an audit report showing that Bill stole at least $46,000 by conning Tufts.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And that's like 80s money, too.

• 39:44Ashley Flowers?

  80s $46,000, right. And he also finds a long handwritten note that Bill wrote trying to come up with an explanation for his financial crimes.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Was it a briefcase?

• 39:55Ashley Flowers?

  That essentially chalks it up to like, he's under a lot of stress, and he claims that he's using the stolen money to pay off this mysterious girl who drugged him and took incriminating photos of him for blackmail. So he's like, I think, preparing his defense.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:11Ashley Flowers?

  Or testing it out, I don't know. There's also a tape recording where Bill tells his story to another person, this like co-conspirator that police can't identify, and the voice could be a man's, it might be a woman's, maybe Nancy's, maybe a colleague's, even could be Robin's, they don't know. And then they find a lot more love letters and copies of Robin and JR's phone bills with notes in the margins, like, like he was tracking who she was with at all times and working to uncover her other clients' names. They also find a pair of Robin's underwear, two address books that were stolen from her apartment, a stack of her credit cards, a pocketbook that smells like her perfume,

• 40:54Ashley Flowers?

  and chillingly, they find her flute.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Her flute.

• 41:00Ashley Flowers?

  Her flute.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  So he was the one singing and playing the flute?

• 41:05Ashley Flowers?

  In his high-pitched voice.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 41:08Ashley Flowers?

  Every once in a while, the full-body chills still get me.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:11Ashley Flowers?

  And when I read that, I was like imagining him in her empty apartment after he did something to her.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Playing her flute.

• 41:18Ashley Flowers?

  Playing her flute and singing. Chills.

• 41:22Ashley Flowers?

  Now the stuff that they find, the list goes on. Under the kitchen sink, there are trash bags that match the one found at the rest stop. There's also a beeper for Robin's answering machine, which explains how he would listen to her messages. Which like, back in the day, you guys.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  A beeper, you know, I gotta explain that.

• 41:40Ashley Flowers?

  By the way, this is how it used to work. Like, it would beep you when someone left you a message, and then you would call into your machine to get your messages. And since he is the one who got her the machine, he just kept the beeper. So he would know whenever she got a voicemail. And there's even a cop's card in Bill's wallet, which proves to police that Bill was the one tipping them off about Robin every time the cops were showing up at her place. And, wouldn't you know it, all of his shirts are the same size as the one found in the bloody bag. But they actually think they can tie him to that bloody bag more conclusively. Because, listen, so Nancy is there when all of this is going down, and the detectives pull out the bloody blue work shirt

• 42:23Ashley Flowers?

  from this evidence bag, asking, like, "Have you seen this before?" And Nancy's like, "Yeah, like, it could be. It looks like Bill's."

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Wait, if they have this shirt, did they already run all the tests on it?

• 42:35Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, they did. It didn't prove anything. All it did was prove the fact that it was blood, that it was type A blood. The assumption is that it's Robin's blood on everything, but they didn't actually have Robin's blood type. So, that's kind of where the buck stopped. And I assume this evidence got, like, returned after that. But, like I was saying, there is something specific on the shirt that Nancy thinks she might recognize. So there's this stitching in this, like, there was like a tear that had gotten mended in the armpit. And she's like, "Oh, that actually looks like my sewing." And in a move that I think surprises everyone, Nancy hands the detectives a spool of thread, and she's like, "I might have used this to fix it."

• 43:20Ashley Flowers?

  And of all the things that they could have collected at this house, this is one of the most important things. Because one of those spools that she hands them matches the thread. So now, police can conclusively link that shirt to Bill.

• 43:36Ashley Flowers?

  He is more than just a crazed stalker. He is a killer.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Do they think that Robin was killed there in the house?

• 43:44Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know if they know yet. I mean, when they do luminol tests, the only hit that they get is on the pocket of a windbreaker that Bill says might be his. And then inside the pocket, they find this like quarter sized chunk of something gray and gooey. They're not sure what it is. They obviously take it into evidence like, and they're thinking like, you know, if something did happen in the house, they don't know, but they rule out the idea that he could have transported her body in one of the family cars because those cars are both clean. But

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Robin's car is still MIA.

• 44:18Ashley Flowers?

  Robin's car is still missing. And so they're thinking like, okay, if, if he did have to transport something, it could have happened in her car. Now, at some point, they show Bill this avalanche of evidence that they have, like while they're still there in the house. And Bill has to agree, like, things don't look good for him. And he admits that the flute and the pocketbook are Robin's, but he claims he doesn't know why her other things are in his closet. Like, he even suggests like, maybe JR planted them there.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Oh, come on, dude.

• 44:50Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Police call him a liar. They remind him that they believe Robin is dead and that her family deserves to bury her.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:58Ashley Flowers?

  But Bill insists that he told them all he knows. And now Bill wants a lawyer.

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• 46:03Ashley Flowers?

  When police leave Bill's house, they know that they won't get much more out of him. And Nancy and the kids are the only potential witnesses to anything that happened in that house. But despite Nancy's small gesture of help with those spools of thread, like, that's it for her. Like, she's not talking either, and she's not letting the kids talk. Now, with no experience as a district attorney, I can confidently say that I would feel good about bringing this case to a jury. But the district attorney at the time, not so much. There weren't a whole lot of no-body cases back then. Plus, there were some loose ends that they still had to tie up. Like, for one, they had to prove that she never made it to that party.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:46Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, that was Bill's story after all. Like, she left his house to go to a party at some guy named Joe's. Well, guess what? Easy door to close. So Landry learns that Joe never even threw a party the night that she went missing.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  So is he saying he never even left that message for her, inviting her to the party?

• 47:05Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. Joe is real.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 47:08Ashley Flowers?

  But no party.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 47:10Ashley Flowers?

  Means he didn't call her.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  So who left the message?

• 47:13Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. All of a sudden, things are shifting in police's mind because they obviously think Bill left the message, which means this feels like premeditated.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Premeditation, yeah.

• 47:25Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, that he was like all, like, covering up for what was going to happen.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Putting his ducks in a row before he even needed them.

• 47:32Ashley Flowers?

  So they found out that one time, when Robin came to see Joe, she had a man waiting in the car that matched the description of Bill, or like, or the car, Bill's car. So they're thinking that, plus him keeping track of her calls, means that Bill knew about Joe and freaking set the calls up.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Knew about Joe, so he knew who to set up to leave the message, big quotation marks here.

• 47:57Ashley Flowers?

  He was planning. He was planning to kill her and planning to pin it on someone else. There is no question here, especially after the crime lab calls. The results are back after testing that gray glob from the windbreaker. And while there is still no body, there is no question now that Robin is dead.

• 48:22Ashley Flowers?

  The gray substance found in the windbreaker is brain matter. And about the same time Landry learns this, he also finds out from Nancy's police officer brother that her dad had lent her and Bill a sledgehammer not too long ago that looks an awful lot like the one found in the bloody bag. But, just when you think it's over for Bill, the testing said that it was brain matter, but it didn't say that it was necessarily human brain. So, police have to go and rule out the possibility that maybe Bill worked with animals at the university.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I know Bill had hired Robin, hired Robin as an illustrator, but what, what was he a professor of again?

• 49:08Ashley Flowers?

  So, I got confused. It wouldn't make sense. So, he was actually a professor in the anatomy and cellular biology department.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 49:17Ashley Flowers?

  The artwork that he had hired her to do was like, or allegedly do was for scientific illustrations.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:22Ashley Flowers?

  It's not like in the art department.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 49:24Ashley Flowers?

  And he was someone at the university who brought in like hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for his lab, which made him a top fundraiser in his department. And like to give you an idea, most of his colleagues only worked on like one or two projects at a time. Bill worked on eight, including humane alternatives to animal testing. But, the caveat here is that Landry learns none of Bill's experiments involved animal brains, or even human brains for that matter. And ultimately, further testing does reveal that it is human brain matter. But Landry uses this opportunity to dig deeper into Tough's investigation of Bill. And once again, it's not flattering.

• 50:07Ashley Flowers?

  He learns that the colleagues and students who reported to him in the lab call him "the man" because he didn't like to be contradicted or questioned. He took out his anger on subordinates, so they were always on edge around him. And that's probably why Bill was able to hide his like expenses or his embezzling for so long. Like when someone from accounting came knocking, they would like leave with their tail between their legs.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:35Ashley Flowers?

  But eventually it was discovered. Tufts suspended him back in January, but Bill refused to sign anything where he admitted to any wrongdoing, which is why he was able to interview for a new professorship in upstate New York. So please check in with those university officials and learn that Bill visited from February 13th to February 18th to lecture after being offered a tenure-track position. Now, Robin actually went with him on that trip, and he introduced her as a grad student checking out the school. But later, when they saw her face in the papers and realized that Bill was being investigated for her disappearance, they rescinded the offer.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:14Ashley Flowers?

  Now, this is when there is a big shakeup. So Trooper Landry has clearly gotten this far, but it seems like maybe he's been a little sloppy on the back end. Because in a case that clearly needs to be super buttoned up to go to court, turns out the dude hasn't done his paperwork. Like, he's been also super possessive of the case, and he had an upcoming retirement plan before Robin's case fell into his lap. And though he was super invested in her case, he does end up retiring as planned only weeks after Robin's disappearance. So like, there's this big changeover, and the case ends up going to someone else.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Like, basically next available.

• 51:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. And this person's top priority is finding Robin's body. Like, number one priority. So police and private searchers hired by Robin's family searched a lot of land that Bill's family owns, including ponds and wooded areas close to their house, even the Boston Harbor. But Robin is nowhere. Her family even wonders if Bill might have incinerated her body somewhere at Tufts, but they decide that Bill wasn't actually fit enough to carry a body for such a long distance, or certainly not without being noticed.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Well, what about that accomplice we heard on the recording? I feel like we mentioned that. It's a big deal, but, I mean, a possibility?

• 52:34Ashley Flowers?

  So. They're thinking that maybe that person is Nancy. And that's because they also learned Nancy was on the phone with Bill a lot on March 4th. And she was actually the one who stopped that $200 check to Robin.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Which is interesting because prior to this, they were only communicating through like-

• 52:56Ashley Flowers?

  Via notes.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Notes.

• 52:57Ashley Flowers?

  Right. So to police, this proves that she is lying through her teeth about that and probably everything else. And what's interesting is that Bill and Nancy's phone calls didn't stop after Robin's visit to their house. So they can see that Bill made six calls between the evening of March 5th and the morning of March 6th. So we've got a call at 10:07 PM. That is to Robin's answering service, AKA fake Joe message, "I'm having a party." Then at 11:42, he makes a call to the answering service where he pretends to be Robin, saying, "I'm going to the party." Then the next two calls are made just before midnight. They are to Bill's house, likely

• 53:38Ashley Flowers?

  to Nancy, from a payphone right across the highway, from the rest stop where everything was found.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Where are they getting these records from?

• 53:47Ashley Flowers?

  His credit card. He used his credit card to pay for the calls.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  What?

• 53:50Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Now, the next call to his house is at 2:12 AM from Boston. Now, because Boston is in the opposite direction from where Bill dumped the trash bag, police think that Bill was trying to frame the client at first that Robin had just met up with before she was at Bill's house by parking her car near his high-rise. But then they think something happened. The plan changed because at 5:29 AM and then 6:51 AM, he made more calls to his house from Rhode Island. And then at 1 PM, he calls Robin's answering machine again, and this is on her records. And it's a call about meeting someone named John, but like, again, this is totally fake. And then they know

• 54:32Ashley Flowers?

  that he bought an Amtrak ticket from New York to DC at around 8 PM, and he made one last call home at 9:17 PM from Connecticut. And then police do end up getting Amtrak's records, and they confirm that he got on the train to DC at 3:33 AM.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  For the conference where they originally found him.

• 54:54Ashley Flowers?

  The PIs, yeah. Now, his credit card records also show that since Robin disappeared, Bill made a few calls from Rhode Island, which make police think that maybe that's where Robin's body is. And they think that maybe he's gonna go back to visit, or has, or whatever. Like, he's got no other reason to be there, as far as they know.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  I mean, but did they even know where in Rhode Island to start looking?

• 55:19Ashley Flowers?

  They have some theories, like, he made, the calls he made, or at least some of them, were from a shopping mall in Warwick, Rhode Island. And they know that he actually studied at Brown, and the woods near Warwick, or the area around campus in Providence, would probably be familiar enough areas for him to, like, go and bury a body. We know that people tend to go to places they know.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Familiar places.

• 55:40Ashley Flowers?

  So, police are pretty sure that they're gonna find Robin's body within a day. I mean, that, they're confident. But when they check the mall, no one there can confirm that they recognize Bill, and like, they actually end up getting nothing. And as if all of this isn't hard enough for Robin's family, close to Easter, her parents get this weird telegram. Supposedly, it's from Robin. Now, Robin, feel my air quotes, says she's in Vegas. "Don't look for her. Don't tell JR where I am."

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Literally, no one is looking at JR. Bill, just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.

• 56:15Ashley Flowers?

  And immediately, her parents know this is fake. It's not from her, because they know that Robin always signs her notes to them with her nickname, which is Bin Bin. And this one wasn't signed that way.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  This is like, today, a text being from someone else, because they don't text the same way. This is the telegram form of this.

• 56:33Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  And what does Bill have to say about this telegram?

• 56:36Ashley Flowers?

  I don't, honestly, I don't even know if they ever questioned him about it. Like, or I don't, or they might, this might be something they keep in their back pocket, like... But I know right now Bill's life is unraveling. So, he finally resigns from Tufts. He is charged with larceny. The media is now widely reporting his involvement in Robin's disappearance. So, everyone knows who this guy is. But Bill is acting like everything's fine. Like, nothing on fire around him. He even is back at the combat zone, trying to hire sex workers. And this goes on until July, when police finally catch a break. On July 16th, officers in New York City notice a car that is covered in dust parked in a towaway zone. The plates are missing.

• 57:19Ashley Flowers?

  Everything has been scratched off, except for the VIN, which is like, by the way, if you're gonna scratch something off,

• 57:25Speaker 02

  That's the number to scratch, yeah.

• 57:28Ashley Flowers?

  So they run it, they find out that the car has been reported stolen, and it belongs to a missing woman. And when they open the car up, they are hit with the smell that you cannot mistake. Immediately, they get decomp. Now, there's no body inside, but there is lots of blood. And when they look closer, they find more of that gray tissue that they found in Bill's windbreaker.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Brain matter.

• 57:57Ashley Flowers?

  Now, this isn't Robin's body, right?

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:01Ashley Flowers?

  But man, it is close.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  As close as you can get.

• 58:04Ashley Flowers?

  Someone's blood is all over this car. Someone's brain matter. They just have to prove it's Robin's. So they look to a new type of genetic testing used in a nobody case in Oklahoma. They want to prove that this blood in the car belongs to their victim. Now, the state crime lab can't do this yet. We're obviously talking about DNA. So they send the blood samples that they've collected, along with samples from Robin's family to the FBI, who confirm that the blood type is type A and shares traits with samples that police got from the Benedict family. And they definitely rule out that the blood belonged to Bill. So not his. Now, the media had already latched on to this story,

• 58:46Ashley Flowers?

  but once a grand jury is called to decide whether Bill will be indicted, it becomes a full-on frenzy. And that frenzy plays in Bill's favor. Because it gets the attention of a high-profile defense attorney, who is great at manipulating the press. He gets someone to print a quote from him in black and white, calling Robin a, quote, "blackmailing whore."

• 59:13Ashley Flowers?

  And he comes up with publicity stunts, like trying to hire an actress who looks like Robin to walk in the courtroom wearing a veil to show that maybe she's alive out there somewhere.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  How does the court allow that?

• 59:25Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know if they do. There's like the sources conflict. Like, I don't think the stunt ended up happening. It was just like this idea that got thrown out and probably kiboshed before he could. Yeah. But even with all the drama, the grand jury still indicts Bill for first degree murder. His trial is set for April of 1984. But even when they go to trial, there are still so many unanswered questions. Like, even though the grand jury declined to indict her, was Nancy involved? Like, what did Bill's kids see? Note, none of the questions seem to be about Bill's guilt.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  It's like the details of it.

• 1:00:01Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, which like I feel he senses because on the first day of his trial, Bill says that he wants to change his plea to guilty, but of manslaughter. It seems like a little backroom wheelin' and dealin' was done because the prosecution actually okays this.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  What about Robin's family? Are they okay with it?

• 1:00:24Ashley Flowers?

  So, here's the deal. Without Robin's body, prosecutors level with them and they're like, listen, like the best conviction we can hope for even is second degree murder. The maximum sentence for that is only two years longer than manslaughter.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  And if we go to trial, it's a question mark on whether or not we get that.

• 1:00:43Ashley Flowers?

  Question mark whether you get that. And even if you get that, at no point would Bill be obligated to tell them where Robin's body was. But if we make this deal with him, part of what they incorporated into this deal was like, okay, if you plead, if we give you manslaughter and you plead guilty, you have to take us to her body. So, that's what he agreed to. That's what her family agreed to because they just want to bring Robin home. So after the announcement of Bill's guilty plea, the courtroom erupts in cheers that lasts literally so long the judge has to call for a silence. And then the prosecution spends about 45 minutes laying out their case against Bill. And after quickly apologizing to the judge, apologizing to Robin's family and his own family,

• 1:01:27Ashley Flowers?

  Bill is taken away to go make his confession.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

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• 1:02:17Speaker 02

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• 1:02:31Ashley Flowers?

  Now Bill starts from the trip to upstate New York in February, and he proceeds to tell what I believe to be an absolutely bogus story.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:02:42Ashley Flowers?

  What you need to know is that trip to New York, the one where Bill interviewed for that professorship, he claims that Robin was trying to get him to give her $5,000 for going on that trip with him. The briefcase story where he said she stole it, whatever, he says that's a lie, but she kept threatening him for this $5,000. And he was afraid that like, she or someone she knew was gonna hurt him somehow, like, I don't know. But this goes on until finally he gets to the night of March 5. He claims that night, Robin showed up at his house with the sledgehammer, which, yes, was his, by the way, but he had like, let her borrow it. I know what you're gonna say, he let her borrow it for some work on her house? And he says she shows up with it hidden under her jacket,

• 1:03:25Ashley Flowers?

  like, the jacket's like, thrown over her arm. They go up to the bedroom, unaware of this concealed sledgehammer, and he offered her like, whatever money he had, but it wasn't the full $5,000. So he says Robin attacked him with the sledgehammer. He says she hit him several times, which police, to be clear, do not think she could have done. Like, at her height and weight, which they know to be small in both categories, it would have been hard for her to land any blows on Bill. But Bill says one of those strikes led to the head wound that he had lied so many times about.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:04:02Ashley Flowers?

  But by the way, like, to police, that wound looked more like a cut than, like, the wound a sledgehammer would leave by someone attacking you.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Ashley Flowers?

  But anyways, Bill claims he wrestles this sledgehammer away from Robin. They struggled somehow on his bed. No surprise, because he's full of it. He says he can't pin down exactly everything that happened, but she fought back, she bit his leg, so Bill had no choice but to hit her on the head with a sledgehammer, quote, "two or three times."

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  And then, what? He beats her again in her car? Because that seems like where the attack happened.

• 1:04:40Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know if that's the case, actually. So, I know that there's blood all over the car. There's maybe mention of that brain matter, but nobody ever says that is actually where the attack happens. It's certainly not in Bill's story. I mean, there is, the one thing I'll say is there's a possibility that it happened in the house, and the only reason they never found blood there could be because, and to me, this is wild, police never tested the bed itself, because Bill, when they were, like, searching the house, was, like, taking a nap on it. So they just, they just left the bed alone.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  The bed?

• 1:05:17Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Where he killed her?

• 1:05:19Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Or where he says he killed her. But that, but that never got tested, so we don't know.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Okay. Where does all the premeditation fit in, though? Like, the call's pretending to be Joe, the call's pretending to be Robin herself.

• 1:05:31Ashley Flowers?

  He says he only did all of that because he was teasing Robin.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:35Ashley Flowers?

  And he said he did that because she kept him waiting for hours before she finally showed up. And so he's like, you know, if she's gonna waste my time, I'm gonna waste her time.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Just convenient timing to tease her.

• 1:05:45Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. Now, he said after he killed Robin, he was terrified because his wife and kids were gonna walk through the door any minute, so he cleans up the crime scene as best he could, wrapped her body in his comforter, and dragged her to her car before putting her body in the trunk and driving away. Then he made that call home to Nancy, who he claims he didn't tell anything to, before dumping the trash bag at the rest stop and then calling Nancy again.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Let me guess, still didn't say anything to her.

• 1:06:13Ashley Flowers?

  He only told her that he had a problem.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:06:16Ashley Flowers?

  So he ends up pulling into a Rhode Island shopping center near where he and his family lived while he was studying at Brown. So again, still familiar with this area. He said he backed up to a dumpster and threw what he called "the material" inside the dumpster.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  The material is...

• 1:06:31Ashley Flowers?

  It's her body.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  That her body?

• 1:06:33Ashley Flowers?

  It's her body, the material.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:06:35Ashley Flowers?

  And then Bill says something that makes everyone's skin crawl. He says that when police find Robin's body, she'll be wearing her clothes and that there was no, quote, "monkey business." So after leaving her body in the dumpster and dumping more evidence in other ones around Rhode Island, he says he got rid of her car and he only admitted to Nancy what he'd done when he got back to Massachusetts. Now, the whole confession, this thing takes like four hours to get through, but it feels like a waste of four hours because no one thinks he's telling the truth.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  I mean, same.

• 1:07:15Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and guess what is not there when they go looking? They can't find the dumpster at the location that Bill described.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Oh, not even, not Robin, but not even the dumpster.

• 1:07:26Ashley Flowers?

  No. So after this, like when they go back to him and they're like, uh, the part of the deal was, and it's not matching up, he's like, oh, you know what, like, let me be hypnotized to try and remember exactly like where it was and what it looked like. And this hypnosis seems to be conducted by his defense team, which I don't understand. But when he goes under and he's at his point of being at the dumpster, the hypnotist asks him if he sees any letters or numbers. And first he says this like series of numbers and then he whispers, "It's not me by the dumpster. It's not me by the dumpster. It's not me by the dumpster." What does that even mean? Is it, I don't know, because he says it three times whispering like that.

• 1:08:09Ashley Flowers?

  Is it, is it that he, he's got like a, I mean, how many times have you had killers be like, something took over, it was this dark press, is it not him? Is, is there someone else there?

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  Can I be like a true skeptic and be like, was he actually

• 1:08:21Ashley Flowers?

  Hypnotized at all?

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  At all?

• 1:08:23Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  And was he just like throwing this line out there, quote unquote, under hypnosis?

• 1:08:29Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. Nobody seems to ask him. Like, there's no follow-up then or after, which kind of leaves this frustrating loose end to never be tied up. Or to your point, everyone's just like, doesn't believe it to begin with.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Ashley Flowers?

  But the session does lead police to a dumpster with a serial number similar to the one Bill gave them. Now, this dumpster supposedly empties into a massive Rhode Island landfill. So by now, if Robin's body had been taken there, it is probably buried under tons of trash. And a search of the landfill would cost the state something like $150,000. Again, 80s money at the time. So they end up choosing not to approve it, assuming whatever is left of Robin would be too hard to identify anyway. If that's what happened.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Bill's story is actually true.

• 1:09:18Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. Privately, some members of law enforcement aren't even sure that he's telling the truth about the dumpster at all. I mean, like, what has he been honest about so far? Why would he about this? And what I think about is someone who is like this obsessed with possessing her, like, how can they be sure he didn't bury Robin somewhere that he could visit? Like, holding on to this last bit of power over her.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Possessing her through the end.

• 1:09:45Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. So ultimately, he's given the maximum sentence of 18 to 20 years, but he could get paroled as early as 12. He stood a good chance of getting paroled because even after the trial, the media took his side. They republish his version of events. I mean, they interview Nancy about the cutting-edge work that her husband had done to save premature babies. So they're like making him out to be this hero. And then it is like sickening the way that they tried to destroy Robin. Like, I don't know why we're all intent on hating women so much. This man was a monster.

• 1:10:26Ashley Flowers?

  And there was a moment in journalist Linda Wolf's book where she's talking about how Robin's parents say how much she meant to them and how nothing could make them love her less. And Linda actually questions whether that could be true after what they heard during trial. Which like-

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Linda questions-

• 1:10:45Ashley Flowers?

  Her parents.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  The parents' love for their murdered daughter despite anything she did in her life.

• 1:10:52Ashley Flowers?

  As a mother.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Especially as a parent, I'm thinking like, I'm like going through a rolodex of things that we've talked about. Like, if my kids did this, like-

• 1:11:01Ashley Flowers?

  Any of it.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Would it change my perspective of them? Yes. Would it change our relationship? Possibly. Would it change how much I love them?

• 1:11:08Ashley Flowers?

  That's what I'm telling, I'm telling you, the way that people write about this, it's like, I go back to that like moment where in the, in the interview room where like Bill, you know, she broke his heart, man, and he's this like, he's this great guy, like-

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  How he ends up being the sympathetic character in this is like rage-inducing.

• 1:11:27Ashley Flowers?

  But this is, this is the example of how Robin's story somehow has kept getting twisted in her killer's favor. Her family, I mean, would go on to get harassing phone calls where people would call Robin these horrible names. And when they petitioned the court for Robin's case file to use in civil suits, they got denied for no clear reason. And in Don Stradlin's book, Boston Tabloid, there is speculation that denial may have been because of racism. Like I said, Robin was Hispanic and most of her family and friends weren't white. And it seems like almost everyone judged them by what they had heard about the case. And eventually, Robin's family gets tired of having to constantly prove that their

• 1:12:11Ashley Flowers?

  daughter was the victim in this case and not Bill, which is exhausting.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, what happens to poor Professor Bill?

• 1:12:22Ashley Flowers?

  He plays the model prisoner. Nancy visits him three times a week, once a week with the kids. But from what I read in the Boston tabloid, his good streak ends in 1987. So he gets caught engaging in a sexual act with a visitor, not his wife, in case you had any doubts about that.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Shocker.

• 1:12:40Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. Eventually, he and Nancy do divorce. He marries this other woman while still in prison. Oh, and he tries to write a book about what he did to make some extra cash. And then he gets released on June 3, 1993, after less than nine years. When he does get released, Robin's mom asked to meet with him, like, hoping that he would finally tell the truth about what he did to her daughter. Like, now that you can't, you can't be tried for anything else. Like, it's over.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  It's over.

• 1:13:11Ashley Flowers?

  But he stuck to his story.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Is he still alive?

• 1:13:13Ashley Flowers?

  No. So Bill died in 2015 at an assisted living facility.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Did they ever try meeting with Nancy, like, after she divorced Bill, or Bill divorced her, whichever happened first? Or even the kids?

• 1:13:25Ashley Flowers?

  No. So I, it was one of the questions that I asked Richard. So he remembers that it got too hard for his mom to, like, keep rehashing Robin's death. Like, especially knowing that every time she, she would just get hate. Like, it's not even like she had support to do this.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  And...

• 1:13:41Ashley Flowers?

  Or even, it's not like she didn't, like, didn't have the support and was just doing it on her own. She had, like, the opposition of it.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was gonna say, even after it was all said and done, there was nothing, like, she wasn't even instigating anything. She was just existing in this state of, like, constant grief without her child.

• 1:13:57Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. And then she's like...

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  And getting harassment.

• 1:13:59Ashley Flowers?

  And if she tried to do anything, she's like, everyone took Bill's side. And at some point, you're like, I'm, like, I'm living in an alternate universe. And like, why even try? Like, it doesn't make sense.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  The least I can do is lessen the act of harassment against me.

• 1:14:12Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, I think Bill was counting on no one caring about Robin to look into her death when this all started. And if they did, he was counting on the fact that no one would believe her loved ones over him. And it helped him that at the time Massachusetts didn't have any laws against stalking. I mean, I think it's clear now that Bill was a textbook stalker. He was using technology to monitor Robin's movements, money to control her. And as stalking can often do, it escalated into brutal violence. Robin is still missing. Her body has never been found and her story has mostly been told through her killer, erasing who she was in life.

• 1:14:57Ashley Flowers?

  When we talked to Richard, he shared memories with us of her. He remembers her as this artistic little girl who signed her name with like a tiny little bumblebee. She loved music and she played the flute so well. Like you couldn't tell if she was practicing or the song was being played on the radio. She grew into a brave young woman who jumped unafraid into the water for midnight swims. Robin was someone who had her whole life ahead of her. She had big dreams for her future, like owning her own business and having her artwork shown in a major gallery. The last time that Richard saw Robin was just a few days before she disappeared. She stayed with her parents for two days to spend some quality time with him while he was on leave from the Navy.

• 1:15:40Ashley Flowers?

  He says they shopped, they hung out, they laughed, they talked. But before he left, Robin gave him this photo to take back to the ship with him. And he didn't think much of it at the time. He just like hung it up in his locker. But after she went missing, he took that photo out and turned it over. And he saw something that he had never seen before. On the back of the photo, Robin had written, "This is something to remember me by." For Richard, Robin was the family peacemaker, the one who always advocated for her siblings with their parents and knew exactly how to smooth over any conflict. And in many ways, her death tore his family apart. But he said it also kept them close. And all of them are still looking for her.

• 1:16:23Ashley Flowers?

  Like some investigators, Richard believes that Bill did not tell the truth about where he put Robin's body. We know that the night of March 5th, 1983, he drove Robin's silver Toyota Starlet with a black racing stripe through New England, from Massachusetts to Rhode Island to Connecticut and New York. And even though Robin's case is closed, if you have any information about Bill's movements or where Robin would be, her family would be forever grateful. While they declined to comment for this episode, it has always been believed that maybe Bill's kids saw or knew something. But they were minors at the time, so forcing them to testify against their dad wasn't something the prosecution wanted to do. But they would be adults now, maybe with kids of their own.

• 1:17:08Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe they have no idea that something they know could bring a small amount of healing to a family who's been hurting for a very long time. Maybe there are people out there who saw Bill that night or know the location of Robin's body. If so, you can reach out to the Massachusetts State Police with tips. We will have a link to their office in the show notes.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  And if you or someone you know is a victim of stalking, please know that resources are available. You can reach out to the Victim Connect Resource Center by phone or text at 1-855-484-2846, or you can chat online at victimconnect.org. You can also contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or RAINN's National Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. And all of those and more resources will be linked in the show notes as well.

• 1:18:19Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  And you can follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 1:18:28Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 1:19:05Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

• 1:19:15Speaker 04

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• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.