By David Yonke
(Attribution to Crusade Against Clergy Abuse)
A retired Toledo police lieutenant testified today that the Rev. Gerald Robinson lied during questioning in 1980, telling detectives that another person had confessed to him that he had murdered Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
When pressed, the priest "admitted it was a lie," retired Lt. William Kina said today in Lucas County Common Pleas Court.
He said robbery was ruled out as a motive because he gold chalice and other valuable items were not taken from the sacristy where the nun was killed.
Earlier, a nun who lived and worked with the victim said that although she has seen countless bodies in her work as a nurse and hospital administrator, she was horrified by the sight of Sister Margaret Ann's body lying on the floor of the Mercy Hospital sacristy on Holy Saturday, 1980.
"It was unnatural," Sister Phyllis Ann Gerold testified. The victim was lying "so straight". People usually don't die so straight," she said.
In more than two hours on the witness stand, Sister Phyllis Ann, 76, the hospital's administrator at the time, said the victim's blue jumper had been neatly rolled up to her breasts and her undergarments pulled down.
She said she was shocked that there was no blood visible on the body and felt that Sister Margaret Ann's death was "ritualistic".
Alan Konop, one of Father Robinson's defense attorneys, asked Sister Phyllis Ann during cross examination if she had any experience with ritual killings and she said no.
"I used it as a general term," Sister Phyllis Ann said. "It was strange, very strange."
Sister Madalyn Marie Gordon, the first person to discover Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's body, also testified today that she did not see any blood on the victim.
Speaking softly and sadly when recalling the death of her colleague, Sister Madalyn Marie said she went into the sacristy to use the phone to call Father Robinson about the music for the Holy Saturday Mass when she saw Sister Margaret Ann's body on the floor.
The nurse said her "first thought" was that someone had left a CPR mannequin in the room, then bent down to look and realized it was her colleague and boss, Sister Margaret Ann.
"I was in there a matter of seconds, then I ran out of the sacristy and screamed," Sister Madalyn Marie said. She also said she noticed a black man "in a big hurry" leaving the building around the time of the murder.
David Yonke has written a book about this case, titled Sin, Shame, Secrets.