When Satan Wore a Cross (14 page)

“Accordingly, appellant’s souvenir sword, which is unquestionably a thick dull instrument on both sides of the blade, and which gradually increases in width as measured from the tip of the blade, could not have caused these wounds.”

The only “souvenir sword” found among Robinson’s possessions during the police searches was the letter opener in the shape of a sword; yet later, in his conclusions on page 23 of the same report Dr. Lee appears to contradict himself again:

• 5. Microscopic examination of the victim’s clothing and later cloth indicated that the defects or holes were consistent with a sharp instrument, not a typical flat, straight bladed knife.
  The unique shape of these cuts is consistent with having been created by the letter opener or a similar type of instrument
  . [Author’s emphasis.]
  

However, on the stand, the affable Dr. Lee explained that after all his tests, he could not say for certain that the letter opener was the murder weapon, just that “I cannot exclude it.” On cross examination, the defense did not challenge the inconsistencies between what Dr. Lee wrote in his report and subsequent trial testimony.

Next up was the exorcist, Father Jeffrey Grob. Mandros had decided before trial not to get too involved in the ritualistic murder aspect of the case. But he couldn’t very well ignore the signs at the scene either. Neither could Father Grob. On May 1 Father Grob testified that based upon his expertise, the murder of Margaret Ann Pahl was a ritual murder indeed.

He went on to tell the jury the same thing he had been telling the cops for the three years he had gone back and forth between Chi-town and Toledo. Given that the murder happened in the sacristy and on Holy Saturday, plus the arrangement of the body at the scene—obviously posed as if sexually violated, “whoever did it had an extensive knowledge of Roman Catholic ritual,” the priest testified. “The blood on the forehead and the chest piercing in the shape of an inverted cross were an inherent mockery to Sister Margaret Ann and her religion.”

At the defense table, Father Robinson rolled his eyes. As the trial had progressed, Robinson’s image of a frail man besieged by the system was gradually replaced by a moody man who sometimes put his eyes in motion when he disagreed with a particular piece of testimony. It was the kind of image that would not ingratiate him with the jury.

But the prosecution was not looking so great either. On May 1, they were ready to close their case. They had not presented one bit of direct evidence linking Father Robinson to the murder. It was still all circumstantial evidence. That would not change, something both sides had reminded the jury at the outset.

“Call Dr. Lincoln Vail to the stand,” said Mandros, who was already on his feet.

Back in 1980, Dr. Vail was a thirty-four-year-old resident at Mercy Hospital and one of the first doctors on the scene after Margaret Ann Pahl was discovered. In 2006 he was sixty years old, his intense eyes framed by wire-rimmed spectacles, with a receding hairline of silver-colored hair that made him look distinguished. Blue seemed to be his favorite color. His shirt, tie, and suit were in various shades and hues of blue.

In the twenty-six intervening years since the crime, Vail had become a much liked and respected family practitioner in the Everglades. When investigators contacted and questioned him, Vail had some new information.

He told the jury that it was around 8:15
A.M
. when he heard the Swift Team call over the PA system for an emergency down in the chapel. On his way, Vail saw a priest. “He was within ten feet of me, looking over his shoulder and going in the opposite direction.”

They locked eyes for a moment.

“I’ll never forget the stare that just kind of went right through me. He didn’t say a word and continued in the opposite direction.”

“Did you recognize Father Robinson?” Mandros asked.

“I didn’t know him at the time of the murder,” Dr. Vail answered. “But the priest I saw was a match for Father Robinson’s appearance.”

“Did you tell this to the detectives in 1980?”

“Yes, I did, but they seemed interested in other things. They never asked me about it again.”

Defense attorney Alan Konop was ready. He showed Dr. Vail a copy of the officers’ report. Vail looked at it.

“Is your sighting included in that report?”

“No,” answered Vail.

“Did the detectives in 1980 show you photographs of Father Robinson?”

“Yes.”

“Did you identify him as the priest you passed in the hallway?”

“No, I didn’t.”

It was brilliant work. Konop had taken what at first glance seemed like an almost positive ID and turned it into a “maybe,” trying to raise reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds.

When the prosecution concluded their case late on May 1, they had called thirty-one witnesses. Besides all the cops involved in the investigation from 1980 to the present, Mandros had called his celebrity forensic experts. The question was what effect their testimony would have on the jury’s final deliberations. Before that could happen, of course, the defense got its turn.

Calling the investigating officers as defense witnesses, Alan Konop tried to bring out inconsistencies in their testimony. Marx, Forrester, et al. had to stand up to Konop’s aggressive examination. At first glance, it looked like they all did; none of them made a fool out of himself.

Arguably the most fascinating testimony came when the defense called former Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter to the stand. Contradicting Marx’s testimony, the now eighty-two-year-old Vetter denied interrupting the Robinson interrogation in 1980. Vetter insisted he had nothing to do with putting the kibosh on the investigation, that his being Catholic did not affect his conduct. In fact, Vetter claimed, the reason the investigation didn’t continue was that the Lucas County attorney told the TPD they just didn’t have the evidence to indict Father Robinson.

Next up, the defense had a forensic expert, Meghan Clement, who testified that the only DNA found under clippings of Margaret Ann Pahl’s nails was not Robinson’s. It was an unknown male’s. The prosecution on cross pointed out that DNA can get transferred any number of ways under a person’s fingernails, not only by scratching your murderer in the throes of death.

The defense had their own celebrity, and they called her now—Dr. Kathleen Reichs. Her novels and experiences are the basis for the 2005 Fox TV series
Bones.

“Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for Quebec, Canada. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern,” says her Web site, kathyreichs.com.

During her testimony Reichs candidly acknowledged that the line between entertainment and reality had been crossed. “Who’s really an expert?” she testified. “Because we’re very popular right now, we’re really hot. We’re on all the airwaves, TV, radio, and books. And a lot of people are calling themselves forensic anthropologists. By establishing board certification, we are policing ourselves.”

Reichs went on to testify that in her opinion, Dr. Scala-Barnett’s lock and key mandible theory had some problems. After examining photos of the tests Scala-Barnett had run, Reichs noticed the tests were conducted on dry bone, that is, all the tissue had been removed. Under John Thebes’s patient questioning, Reichs explained that by stripping the bone, there is the possibility of “the potential for damage to the defect. There could be modification of the edges of the defect.”

The defense rested on May 8, and the prosecution put on for rebuttal retired TPD detective Lieutenant Bill Kina. They had really saved the best for last. Kina claimed that sometime in the early 1990s, he had been to a formal function with Vetter. The deputy chief “asked me what the nun’s name was. He said he could never remember her name. He said it was ‘the biggest mistake of my life,’” Kina testified.

May 10

It was time for closing arguments, and as usual, the state got to go first. Mandros chose to concentrate on motive. It was a smart decision. Besides the circumstantial nature of the case, it distinctly lacked motive, which the jury expected. Mandros addressed the issue by stating that he thought, despite the ritualistic nature of the slaying, it was done by Robinson in a fit of anger.

That was it. Anger, at life, and the way it had turned out for him. He had once had a dream of being a military chaplain. When that didn’t work out, he became bitter and disappointed, dissatisfied with whatever his lot in life was.

Reviewing all the major pieces of evidence the state had presented, and the overwhelming amount of circumstances pointing to his guilt, Mandros told the jury that Father Gerald Robinson was the killer of Margaret Ann Pahl. As for the ritualistic aspect of the murder, Mandros downplayed the satanic stuff, at the same time using words like “mockery” and “humiliation” to make his point about how she was killed.

Alan Konop was supposed to deliver the defense’s closing argument. As he began, it became clear that his voice was too weak to continue. John Thebes then stepped in to deliver the closing. He mocked the prosecution’s forensic experts, harping on reasonable doubt, calling into question Dr. Scala-Barnett’s testimony. If she wasn’t a forensic anthropologist, like the defense’s witness, why was she testifying at all regarding bone trauma? Blood transfer pattern analysis? In the defense’s view, it was not science as much as judgment based on suppositions and interpretations.

Why was Father Robinson’s DNA not found at the scene or on the victim? Because he wasn’t there! Someone else had done it, the other guy.

Judge Osowik did not waste any time after the closings. He immediately charged the jury, explaining once again what the charges were that the defendant was on trial for, and what “reasonable doubt” was. He also offered lucid explanations for direct and circumstantial evidence.

Most importantly the judge made it crystal clear that Father Robinson did not have to testify on his behalf. The jury was not to read anything into that. It was the prosecution’s job to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, not for the defendant to prove his innocence. It was almost 4
P.M
., May 10, by the time the twelve-member jury was ushered into the jury room, after the two who had been alternates were let go. The jury then deliberated four hours before calling it a night. The jury got back together at about 9
A.M
. the next morning to continue their deliberations at the courthouse.

At 11
A.M
. on May 11, 2006, after being out for a grand total of six hours, the jury filed back into Judge Osowik’s courtroom. At the defense table, Robinson’s face was an emotionless mask. Despite the diocese order that he no longer wear his collar, there it was, as it had been throughout the trial. His attorneys fidgeted like they all needed to go to the bathroom. At the prosecution table, Mandros was calmer. He figured they had either done a really good job, or a really bad one.

Judge Osowik was the calmest. Calm, cool, collected. He looked as cool and collected as a political candidate, which he was. Osowik was running for county judge on the Democratic line.

“The verdict form please,” the judge requested of the bailiff.

The bailiff took it from the foreman, walked the few steps to the bench, and handed it up to the judge, who opened it and began reading.

“We the jury—”

Osowik interrupted himself.

“Would the defendant rise?”

Watching the verdict in his home on live TV, just as he had the Beatles on
Ed Sullivan
in 1964, Dave Davison heard the loud scraping that echoed off the walls of the courtroom as Robinson and his four attorneys got to their feet. There was a moment of silence and then…

“We the jury find the defendant
guilty
of murder.”

The observers in the courtroom let out an audible gasp. Sitting in one of the front rows with the AP reporter busily jotting down notes next to her, Claudia Vercellotti blinked. She had been in the courtroom all along, every day, watching the proceedings. Even though she felt the defense had presented a weak case, she was still overwhelmed by the verdict.

“I just want Father Robinson to live through all of his appeals. If the sentence were vacated, it would be as though he was never convicted. This case represents justice by proxy, or vicarious justice for the rest of us. It’s the closest thing any of us will ever have in terms of justice as our statutes have expired. It’s the closest to accountability this diocese has ever faced.”

Robinson was taken out a side door in handcuffs. As Vercellotti began to file out with the rest of the observers, Barbara Robinson, the priest’s sister-in-law, “confronted me in open court, as her row was filing out. She stopped the entire row to say, ‘I hope you rot in hell.’ When I looked up, she added, ‘I hope you burn in hell.’”

June 5, 2006

It had been a long sleep. I awakened to the same gray city, only it was day, and time to meet the players in court.

Dressing quickly, having trouble as usual knotting my tie, I went downstairs to the front desk. It was the same clerk who had checked me in. I asked him directions.

“You want the county courthouse or the federal courthouse?”

“The Lucas County Courthouse.”

It was about a five-block walk, he answered, giving me convoluted directions I would never remember.

“The priest’s trial is over, isn’t it?” the clerk asked doubtfully.

The murder trial was over all right. Robinson was sentenced to fifteen to life and was currently serving his sentence someplace in the Ohio prison system. He was also appealing his conviction. But conviction for the murder of Margaret Ann Pahl didn’t exempt Robinson from other charges of rape and Satanism. What the clerk didn’t know was that a new accuser had come forward.

Her name in civil court papers filed on April 20, 2005, was “Jane Doe”; her husband was identified as “John Doe.” Because criminal trumps civil, her case was put on hold until the criminal case was adjudicated. With that over, Doe’s had been free to go forward.

In court documents, Jane Doe claimed that Robinson raped, sodomized, and did all kinds of unspeakable acts to her during a satanic ceremony for a number of years when she was a child. She had journals and drawings documenting her abuse.

“Jane Doe had been trying to get me on the phone all weekend before she went public. My phone had been blowing up all weekend with calls from a lot the TV stations, and everyone national, and the
Blade
and everyone else after the indictment [of Robinson],” says Claudia Vercellotti. “When I finally got her message, I thought, If this is someone making things up…I was prepared not to be cordial at all…”

Vercellotti got in her Toyota and drove to Jane’s house. After listening to Jane tell her story, “I didn’t think the stuff was made up,” Vercellotti says. “It was the old journals and drawings. I was sleep deprived because of the long weekend, but the drawings were old and tattered. This was something that had happened long ago that she was dealing with now.”

Vercellotti empathized. She too had been abused by a priest. Here are Jane Doe’s specific allegations from her Complaint to the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas:

“48. While Survivor Doe was vulnerable, and or in Father Robinson’s care…Survivor Doe was kidnapped and held either against her will or through beguilement in the basement of St. Adalbert’s.”

Beguilement, a beautiful word to describe what in this case was an alleged act of seducing an underage child.

“49. While held in the basement Father Robinson and other clergy colleagues including Jerry Mazuchowski and their cohorts referred to each other with the first name of a woman and then their own name. For example, Jerry Mazuchowski was named or referred to himself and by his colleague as ‘Carrie’ and ‘Carrie Jerry.’ Father Robinson was named or referred to as ‘Mary Jerry.’ Another yet unknown and unnamed John Doe defendant was referred to or called himself ‘Sue’ and Survivor Doe recalls suppressed memories of him as ‘the man named Sue.’

“50. The clergymen, including Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski, dressed in nun drag, circled around Plaintiff Survivor Doe while she was on a table and chanted satanical verses and ‘Son of Sam,’ and their female names. They intoned that Jesus was Satan’s SON. They cut Survivor Doe with a knife as a sacrifice to Satan and drew an upside down cross on her stomach. They forced Survivor Doe to drink blood of a sacrificed animal. At each instance, clergymen forced Survivor Doe to masturbate the clergymen in the circle. Furthermore, the clergymen would rape and or sodomize her, engage in sexual touching, demand and force her to suck their cock. She would try to escape, but they pulled her back into the circle and hit her. Afterwards, they would intimidate her, tell her she was Satan’s child, force her to clean the blood off the floor, and threaten to kill her if she told.”

In the kind of scenario Doe is describing, the defendants are classic con men. Satanism is a simple con, someone using a belief in Satan to control someone else.

“51. At other times, the same defendants and their cohorts would engage in the same or similar rituals and sexual abuse which escalated dramatically. In addition to the basement, she was placed on a table and tied down. They killed rabbits and made her drink the blood and then vaginally raped her with a dead snake that had its head cut off. They would also burn her feet and light matches, blow them out, and burn them into the corner of her eyes.”

While most of Doe’s account sounded like a movie, the part about the snake is strikingly similar to Sister Marlo Damon’s statement to the Diocesan Review Board: “At age twelve in another initiation ritual, I was given to Satan. They used a snake and inserted it into my mouth, rectum and vagina to consecrate those orifices to Satan.”

Damon’s statement was not yet public at the time Doe filed her brief. There is no apparent connection between the two women, adding to their credibility.

“52. The rituals and abuse continued even after Survivor Doe left St. Adalbert’s because defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski had a close relationship with Survivor Doe’s mother, who also participated in the ceremonies in the woods and was becoming a high priestess.”

The MO Doe alleges the defendants used was, again, very similar to the one Damon alleged Chet Warren used on her and her family.

“53. During all this time, Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski were employed by the Diocese and Oblates as priests and teacher providing religious education and counseling for Plaintiff Survivor Doe and other Roman Catholics, Defendant Diocese assigned Robinson and Mazuchowski to swerve at other parishes and/or schools under it supervision and control of, and within its geographical confines.

“54. On information and belief, defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski abused children while serving at St. Adalbert’s and his different assignment with Defendant Diocese.

“55. Defendants Diocese and Oblates knew or should have known of Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski sexually abusive behavior yet continued to conceal their abuse and to move him from parish to parish and school to school.”

The latter two paragraphs established who the alleged satanic priests worked for; time to go for the gold.

“56. Plaintiff was raised as a devout Roman Catholic and was baptized, confirmed, regularly celebrated Mass and received the sacraments through the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, Plaintiff developed great admiration, trust, reverence, and respect for, and obedience to, the Roman Catholic Church and its priests and other agents.”

The word “agents” made the Church sound like it had many minions at its disposal, to do its bidding. Of course, that was the way the word was intended.

“57. Plaintiff came to know Defendant Warren as a priest and teacher; as such, Plaintiff came to admire, trust, revere and respect him as a person of great influence and persuasion as a holy man and authority figure.

“58. Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski used his [
sic
] position of authority, trust, reverence and control as a priest to enable him to engage in illegal and harmful sexual contact with Plaintiff.”

The heart of the suit was this last paragraph. The Catholic Church has, to say the least, large coffers. If anything could open them up, it would be an accusation, proved in court, that a Catholic diocese allowed “sexually abusive behavior” by a priest and or/lay teacher under its control.

To nail the point home, the brief added this:

“59. Prior to Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski’s sexual abuse of plaintiff Survivor Doe, Defendants Diocese, Oblates and St. Adalbert’s had actual knowledge of Defendant Robinson and Mazuchowski’s criminal propensities and behavior towards children, as well as a reasonable suspicion that he would repeat such criminal pedophile behavior in the future with other children. Nevertheless, Defendants Diocese, Oblates and St. Adalbert’s failed to report Defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski’s past criminal pedophile behavior and their own reasonable suspicions to Plaintiff, as required by Ohio statutory and/or common law.”

This was the first time anyone had ever called Robinson a pedophile in a public document. If he had sexually abused Doe in the way she described, then he certainly could add pedophile to a résumé that included murder.

“62. Further, the conduct of Defendants Diocese, Oblates and St. Adalbert’s [the guys with the money] communicated to the Plaintiff and other victim and their families that defendant Robinson’s and Defendant conduct was proper. Therefore, Defendants knew or should have known that their actions would silence plaintiff and other possible victims; prevent them from discovering their injuries; prevent them from discovering Defendants’ roles in conspiring to conceal Defendant Robinson and Mazuchowski’s criminal sexual conduct; and ultimately exacerbate the resultant emotional distress and trauma.”

Doe was alleging a wide-ranging conspiracy between the defendants, intended not just to silence her, but to silence everyone else who had been a victim of one rogue priest and one lay teacher.

“63. The sexual abuse of Plaintiff and the circumstances under which it occurred caused Plaintiff to develop confusion, various coping mechanisms and symptoms of psychological disorders, including great shame, guilt, self blame, depression, repression and dissociation. As a result, plaintiff was unable to immediately perceive or know that the conduct of defendants Robinson and Mazuchowski was wrongful or abusive, the existence or nature of her psychological and emotional injuries and their connection to the sexual abuse perpetrated upon her by said defendants.”

This paragraph not only established the real damage to Doe, it reiterated her repressed memory contention to get around the statute of limitations.

“64. Defendants Diocese, Oblates, St. Adalbert’s, Robinson and Mazuchowski not only fraudulently concealed and/or failed to report the criminal nature of the abuse of Plaintiff, despite a statutory and/or common law to do so, but also conspired to conceal said conduct.”

Once again, the conspiracy charge surfaces, along with an added charge of fraud against the defendants.

“65. Upon information and belief, since approximately 1950 through the present, Defendants have conspired to and have engaged in conduct including intentionally, reckless, and/or negligently concealing criminal conduct of its agents, including Defendant Warren; aiding and abetting the concealment of criminal conduct.” This included “…obstructing justice; obstructing state and/or local criminal investigation; evading civil and/or criminal prosecution and liability; perjury; destroying and/or concealing documents and records; witness intimidation; bribing and/or paying money to victims in order to keep their criminal conduct secret; violating the civil rights of children and families; engaging in mail and/ or wire fraud; and committing fraud and/or fraudulently inducement of its parishioners in furtherance of its scheme to protect predatory priests and other clergy and/or agents from criminal or civil prosecution in order to maintain or increase charitable contributions and/or to avoid public scandal in the Catholic Church.”

Jane Doe’s attorney, Mark Davis, had thrown in everything but making the defendants responsible for John Kennedy’s assassination. It was a laundry list of charges that rose to the federal level. Mail and wire fraud and violating civil rights of children and families are all federal criminal charges. And Davis wasn’t pulling any punches, an interesting metaphor when you consider that he is a karate black belt and is probably the only attorney in Toledo who can break five blocks in a row with his hand.

Writing that the Church has a scheme “to protect predatory priests,” furthered by “charitable contributions” was saying that the Catholic Church, specifically in Toledo, was defrauding its members by taking their contributions and using those monies to hide priests and Catholic lay teachers guilty of an extensive laundry list of local, state, and federal charges.

“66. Plaintiff Survivor Doe only recently came to know of the ongoing conspiracy and/or conduct and Defendant Robinson’s involvement therein, through the news coverage of Father Robinson’s arrest and/or investigation as reported on April 23, 2004. Upon seeing his picture on the evening news on April 23, 2004, Plaintiff recognized and identified Robinson as one of her abusers, and further recognized him as ‘Mary-Jerry’ from the basement and the woods.

“67. Furthermore, Plaintiff Survivor Doe only recently came to know of the ongoing conspiracy and/or conduct, and Defendant Mazuchowski’s involvement therein, through
Toledo Blade
’s article of February 20, 2005 whereby she recognized Mazuchowski as one of the abusers and further recognized him as ‘Carrie-Jerry’ from the basement and the woods.”

Again, by stating the memory of her abuse was repressed, Doe hoped that that her suit would be allowed to go forward despite the fact that the statute of limitations for the crimes she describes in her statement had long run out. The charge that Robinson was also a cross-dressing priest who favored nun garb was a new one, but allegations that he worshipped Satan or raped a girl had been voiced before.

The ritualistic behavior the prosecution alluded to during the priest’s trial, the bizarre way Sister Margaret was stabbed, seemed to indicate that Father Robinson had allied himself with the Devil, the fallen angel of God. That jibed with Jane Doe’s claims. If that could be proven in court, then Gerald Robinson would finally have been linked by direct evidence to satanic behavior.

Plus, Doe had named as a fellow satanic conspirator Jerry Mazuchowski, the church lay teacher, who had founded the nun drag group, the Sisters of Assumed Mary. It all came down to what could be proven in court. First up would be pretrial motions in Judge Ruth Ann Franks’s wood-paneled courtroom.

After I’d walked for about a quarter of a mile, the Lucas County Courthouse just seemed to appear, a late nineteenth-century gray, three-story Greek Revival structure in the middle of a green oasis of a park. On the National Register of Historic Places, the courthouse has beautiful stained glass windows inside depicting the various stages of justice. Too bad someone had decided to cover the original oak and mahogany interior molding with cheap, chipping white paint.