Priest Convicted in 1980 Ritual Slaying of Nun

c. 2006 Religion News Service TOLEDO, Ohio _ A jury on Thursday (May 11) convicted a Roman Catholic priest for the slaying he’s lived with for 26 years, finding that Rev. Gerald Robinson intentionally killed Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980. Robinson stood as Common Pleas Judge Thomas Osowik read the verdict about 11:30 a.m., […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

TOLEDO, Ohio _ A jury on Thursday (May 11) convicted a Roman Catholic priest for the slaying he’s lived with for 26 years, finding that Rev. Gerald Robinson intentionally killed Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980.

Robinson stood as Common Pleas Judge Thomas Osowik read the verdict about 11:30 a.m., but he displayed the same cool detachment that he had throughout the nearly month-long trial.


The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for a total of six hours over two days. Robinson faces a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life, with parole eligibility after about 10 years.

The state’s case came down to the simple proposition that no one else could have committed the grizzly crime, which involved the ritual strangulation and repeated stabbing of the 71-year-old nun.

Robinson was the only one with the knowledge of ritual, with the animus toward Pahl and with no plausible explanation for his whereabouts, prosecutors said.

The priest’s battery of lawyers had argued that the evidence was thin and contradictory at best, flowing from a botched investigation and rush to arrest in 2004.

Robinson had been the prime suspect from the beginning, but police and prosecutors felt they did not have enough evidence for a conviction.

When a new group of investigators took up the case in 2003, they found new clues among the old evidence that had been in police storage rooms for more than two decades. This included bloodstains on an altar cloth that covered the nun’s body during part of the stabbing frenzy _ and matching Robinson’s letter opener.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Dean Mandros, the assistant prosecutor, told jurors in his closing arguments on Wednesday that no one saw Robinson do it, but said too many people agree on what they did see, and there are too many coincidences and too many lies by Robinson, he said.


The priest claimed that he was in his quarters when Pahl was killed, but three witnesses saw him near the chapel where she died, just before and just after the assault.

Robinson gave two stories about what he was doing when the body was found, denied he had keys to the chapel and claimed that he had heard the confession of the real killer, only to recant when pressed by a Roman Catholic detective.

The possibility of satanic rituals helped rekindle the murder investigation and has dogged the case for at least three years, after a nun complained to church officials that she was the victim of Robinson and other priests who used satanic rites to abuse her sexually.

Mandros said Robinson strangled and stabbed the nun he once described as “dominating,” performed what Mandros called “a bastardized version of the last rites,” anointed her with her own blood, stripped her naked and violated her “to degrade and humiliate her.”

It was a message to Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, “maybe to the church and maybe to God himself,” Mandros said. “`See how angry I am?’ He left a message for everyone to see.”

(James Ewinger is a reporter for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio).

KRE/JM END EWINGER

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