Just when you think you've heard it all, you find out that there's another conspiracy theory circulating around the Father Robinson case.
To begin with, such theories begin with the presumption that the priest did not get a fair trial. Maybe the jurors were dumb, ignorant, prejudiced, or vindictive. Or maybe the prosecution withheld key evidence. Or the priest's defense attorneys were incompetent.
The new conspiracy theory alleges that a Detroit serial killer named Coral Eugene Watts was the likely culprit. He is an admitted serial killer who stabbed and strangled to death at least four women and claims to have killed many more.
His victims were killed in the late 1970s and early 1980s and he is now serving a life sentence in a Michigan prison.
Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was strangled, then stabbed to death in 1980, but other than the similarities in the way the victims died and the era of the slaying, there is nothing to support this new theory. His victims were young women, and they were all in Michigan.
I reviewed the 1980 police reports from cover to cover and there was never any mention of Watts -- and that covers 600 suspects -- despite some reports to the contrary. Police investigating the slaying of Connie Sue Thompson looked at Watts as a possible suspect but as it turned out she was a victim of the Cook Brothers, two of Toledo's most notorious murderers.
The thin link between Watts and Robinson, however, is enough to keep conspiracy fires burning. If there was any value to this theory, you can be sure that Robinson's defense attorneys would have shouted Watts' name from the rooftops in their effort to raise reasonable doubt. Oh wait, maybe they were covering it up -- I forgot that we're talking about conspiracy theories.
Nevermind that the murder weapon was found in Robinson's locked apartment, and that he lied about his whereabouts the morning of the murder, and that he admitted lying to police during an interrogation, and all the other evidence that built such a solid case against Robinson that the jury deliberated only 6 hours before convicting him.
I once got a call from a reader who said he could identify the thin, neatly dressed blond man seen in the hospital corridor the morning of the murder. That man, the caller said, was Jeffrey Dahmer. He was certain of it. His decision to share that information meant that I had "the scoop of the century," he said.
Jeffrey Dahmer, Coral Eugene Watts ... who's next? Where was Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon only eight months after Sister Pahl's slaying? OK, I've gone too far with the Chapman comment, but I'm amazed at the lengths some people will go to claim that an innocent man was convicted of killing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
The priest does have an appeal in the works, so let's wait and see if his attorney asks for a sample of Watts' DNA.
Sylvania, Ohio, March 19, 2007