Original subtitles

- Harlan, over here.

- Ladies and gentlemen, Harlan Coben.

- He's the greatest thriller writer.

- Aw, come on.

- Coben's written over 30 "New York Times" bestsellers.

- With over a dozen hit TV shows and movies.

- In all our stories, the same question--

what made the killer cross that line?

I'm Harlan Coben.

I write mysteries because I like answers.

But real life doesn't always work that way.

In the real world, answers are elusive.

They linger in the dark, just out of reach.

Sometimes they just don't come,

which is what caught my attention about

the tragic murder of Joy Hibbs,

a case that went cold for three decades

and left a family unable to move forward, until now.

And that's where our mystery begins.

- Police now suspect foul play in the tragic death

of local woman Joy Hibbs, whose body was found

yesterday in a house fire.

- I was mostly alone throughout all of this.

We didn't really talk about it.

Whoever killed my mom may come back at any point

for me and my sister.

It was terrifying.

- I've lived in Bucks County for my entire life,

knowing that there was a killer out there.

I always felt, is this person coming back?

- My mom was a compassionate person,

and she just had so much life and so much energy.

She taught me to be a man.

I want the world to be outraged.

We have family members that went to their grave

not knowing who the murderer is.

- We wanted answers, so we went to stir the pot.

- It had been 20 years as an unsolved murder.

I was not afraid to set the whole town on fire.

It became almost like an obsession.

Let's get justice.

- A crime happened here.

The past isn't what it seemed.

The story told turns out to be deception.

And just when you're sure you have the answer--

- 911, what is the address of your emergency?

Hello? Anyone there?

- There's one final twist.

- April 19, 1991 was actually a beautiful spring day.

Our neighborhood was very quiet, working class.

I was 12 years old, and that day I had received

an honor roll certificate.

And I was so excited to come home and show my mom.

And I knew she'd be really proud of me.

As I was walking down the driveway,

I started noticing that there was smoke

billowing out of the house.

And immediately, I felt panic.

- Two neighbors came up to school to get me

and said, you need to come home.

There's been a fire at your house.

- It got the attention of a neighbor who was out

doing some lawn work and started screaming,

call 911.

- 911, what's your emergency?

- I got out of the car.

It was absolute chaos.

- I get the call.

My pager goes off.

Spencer Drive, for a dwelling fire.

The house was full of smoke, and I noticed as

we were going low through the kitchen,

I saw the four burners on on the stove.

So I turned them off.

We took the hose line to the back bedroom

when I noticed that there was

something next to me that was odd.

Then I realized that it was a person.

So I tapped my buddy on the shoulder.

I said, there's a body here we have to get out.

- It was actually the ambulance driver

who told me that my mom had died.

She was 36,

maybe 110 pounds, extremely athletic.

In my mind, there was no way

that she wouldn't be able to climb out a window or escape.

- And it didn't make sense.

She was strong.

My mom would have gotten out.

I was 16.

I just kept saying, what happened?

What--what happened?

And then I remember my dad pulling up,

and I remember him approaching the house.

And they were holding him back.

- I thought it was my fault.

My mom's body was found in my bedroom.

And in my brain, I told myself that it was an extension cord

or that somehow the aquarium caught on fire.

- Say something, Mom.

- Those your fishes?

- Mom, get out of my bedroom, please.

- Excuse me for living.

- A bad extension cord or something,

she might have been fussing around with it

and got electrocuted.

But we're in a house that's on fire,

and the stove is still lit.

And there was multiple fires lit

in different rooms that were not connected to each other.

- Working through the scene, it was determined that

the gas burner is on,

and there's a wastepaper basket that is also burning.

Two separate fires in one room--

at that stage, it would be arson.

- The first couple days after my mom died,

I remember as a 12-year-old trying to understand

why the world hadn't stopped.

Kids were still going to school,

that there was still programming on television.

But I felt like my world had completely ended.

I remember at her funeral, a car parked out front,

two detectives with a telephoto lens

just sitting there, taking photos of everybody

going in and out of the funeral.

- A few days later, I overheard my aunts and uncles

and grandparents upstairs talking.

And something--

there was foul play.

- At the autopsy, it was determined the fire had not

been the cause of death, that she'd been stabbed

multiple times, and that there was

also signs of strangulation.

- I remember the detective comes up.

He says, it's a homicide.

I was right next to the body.

It was devastating.

- Fire is the ultimate cover.

Flames consume the clues, the chaos, the truth.

But what they can't erase are our memories.

- This case was mind-boggling.

Who would want to kill Joy?

You start to look at the people closest to the victim

because it's the most logical place to start.

Police officers started with the husband.

- My dad had a temper.

He would blow up.

- My mom was the soft side.

My dad was the hard side.

- Where in the hell have you been?

- I've been trying to get my bike,

and then Mommy beeped at me. - Do what?

You were supposed to be home by 8:00.

You know what time it is?

- I'm sorry.

- Joy's husband, Charlie, has anger issues.

He had a big beard and tattoos,

drank beer and smoked weed,

rode his motorcycle.

He's a biker.

Some people questioned if he was part

of a motorcycle gang.

He had that reputation.

Could this have started out as a small argument?

And then there was the phone call.

A coworker of Joy's gave a statement to the police

that Charlie called her at work in a threatening manner

on the day of the homicide.

- He was questioned several times by the police.

I had all this doubt in my mind that my dad

had something to do with this.

- Within the community and the neighborhood,

there were suspicions on my dad.

Could he have?

Did he do it?

- You ready?

- Detective work isn't just about fingerprints and fibers.

It's about reading people, analyzing their body language,

putting yourself in their shoes.

- Friends of ours decided to set Joy and I up on a date

at the local race track.

I really fell for her right away.

She was outdoorsy.

She loved to fish.

She loved gardening.

Joy had a wonderful job as a medical assistant

with a prominent doctor, and I had a career

with one of the biggest real estate companies

as a carpenter.

Our children were thriving--

the American dream.

We were on top of the world.

- I thought something like this could never happen to us.

I couldn't believe that I was a suspect in this case.

Three of the cops and a detective or two

started asking me questions that day.

Detectives had already started

the "Charlie Hibbs killed his wife" scenario.

After the third lie detector test,

I got pissed off.

They kept hounding me, questioning me.

The detectives were trying to pin me with this murder.

- Although they'd looked at various other people,

it made more sense that Charlie had something to do with it.

But he had an alibi.

- That day, a property manager from work

set my schedule at the Philadelphia Fire Department.

I was there to meet them to make repairs

to their fire alarm system.

I was with another full-time employee

the whole time.

- At the time, investigators found another lead

through the family.

- I told the police, weeks before my mom's murder,

all four tires of her car were slashed.

- The family told detectives

there had been instances of vandalism.

The tires on one of the Hibbs' vehicles had been slashed.

Somebody had tried to kick the back door in.

There was also a brick thrown through the window

in the front of the house.

All three issues happened in the months

leading up to the murder.

- We thought maybe someone tried to break in

and got scared away or neighborhood mischief.

But I just wasn't sure.

- I remember them asking us, were you fighting with anybody?

Would any of your friends do this?

- Who are the shady characters in our neighborhood?

Well, everybody knew Andy Wilson.

- James Andrew Wilson, who went by Andy,

everyone knew that he was transient.

He was seen by multiple neighbors

in and out of a vacant house on the block,

and Wilson was suspected of using drugs.

- My dad really didn't like this guy.

He had been in and out of jail and had a checkered past.

- The detectives tried to track him down,

but he was nowhere to be found until they received a tip.

- James Wilson left and joined the circus.

They actually tracked him down to Madison Square Garden,

went up there and met with the New York Police Department

and polygraphed him.

- And when they went to go interview him,

he absolutely was very cooperative in the interview.

He was with individuals that verified his alibi.

It was heavily vetted.

He had an ironclad alibi.

- The reason behind these three acts of vandalism

at the Hibbs' house is still unknown.

It's like mole whacking, you know?

One investigation goes dead for six months,

something pops up.

- On the day of the murder, I passed the Hibbs' house.

I noticed that it looks like someone just quickly

parked in front of the house.

The car was facing the wrong direction,

and it was not parked properly.

It was a blue Chevy Monte Carlo.

- I told the police right away that our neighbor,

April Atkins, drives a blue Monte Carlo.

- Joy and April were friends, neighborhood friends.

Many, many days I would come home from work,

park my motorcycle, walk in the house,

and April would be sitting there.

And we did buy pot

from April's husband, Bob, once or twice.

- At 12 years old, I had told the police

I heard my mom on the phone with our neighbor,

Robert Atkins.

She had purchased a small amount of marijuana

from Robert, and she had asked for a refund.

The police said they would look into it.

- Detectives looked into the drug deal.

There was a disagreement over the quality.

It was just junk.

Joy complained.

Could there have been an argument over this?

Could the small amount of marijuana have

been the tipping point that just sent him off the edge?

- The darkest mysteries don't always start

in an alleyway or a back road.

They often start at home.

As the investigation widens, so does the radius of suspicion

to our neighbors, our workplace, our community.

When we live in small towns,

soon there are no strangers left to question.

And that's when we realize the horrible truth.

The killer is one of us.

- Detectives look into Robert Atkins

and learned he has this alibi that proves

he could not have committed Joy's murder.

He was in the Poconos, a resort area

about an hour and a half or so north of Bucks County.

- Also, April and Robert Atkins admitted

to having owned a bright blue Monte Carlo,

but Robert claimed it had been a different color,

and he had it painted blue after Joy's murder.

Officers spoke to Atkins on his return from the Poconos,

and he was cleared.

- Meanwhile, another lead came up.

The day of the murder, multiple neighbors saw two individuals

at Joy's front door, invited into her home,

leaving the home 35 minutes thereafter.

- I told detectives my mom was interested in joining

the Bensalem Baptist church,

and this minister was following up on that.

- The pastor, his name was Furie Orlando,

and the second man was a church associate

named Madison L. Day.

Records were showing that Madison L. Day

had an extensive rap sheet, an extensive criminal history,

and had violent tendencies.

The theory was, perhaps, maybe the associate had doubled back

and attacked Joy in her home.

And maybe the motive was sexual.

And the rear neighbor of the Hibbs family recalled

specifically hearing Joy Hibbs and a male individual

getting into some heated argument at Joy's house.

That timeline fits squarely with the timeline we know

when pastor Furie Orlando and Madison Day left Joy's home.

- Evidently, the minister that visited the house brought

an ex-convict with him.

Even if this guy seen the light and changed

and was working with the minister,

that devastated me.

- But it turns out there were two men living

with that same name in Bucks County,

very close dates of birth.

- By some strange quirk of coincidence,

we had two Madison L. Days living in the same area,

and officers mixed up the names

during the investigation.

- Madison L. Day, who was a member of this church,

was a man of average size, not a criminal.

The other Madison L. Day we had a rap sheet for was giant.

He was 6'7".

- The pastor and the church member, Madison L. Day,

went back to the church, signed into the church,

two people together the whole time.

I've never seen somebody sign in or sign out

of a murder before.

- I was so angry to be right back to the beginning.

That just--I boiled over.

- The only thing that buries the truth better than fire

is time.

Each dead end, each year that passes,

it chips away at us.

We stop trusting each other.

We stop trusting ourselves.

- I just kept thinking, this is never going to be solved.

We are never going to get our family justice.

David would come home from college

and go knocking on their door over there

at the police department and say,

is there anything new?

What's going on?

And there was just never anything.

- Over a decade had passed,

and I went to the police department

to plead with them to look at the case

and see if they can develop any new leads.

The detective, he said,

if anybody knows who did this, it's your dad.

Why would the police tell me that?

What do they have that they can't share with me?

- Looks pretty bad, don't it?

- Truth doesn't give a damn about what you want.

It doesn't care about your comfortable little narrative.

Truth just sits there, silent in the shadows,

waiting for your eyes to finally adjust.

- My imagination ran wild.

I told myself that maybe my dad owed somebody money,

or that with his temper, he must have done something

to really anger somebody.

- All of a sudden, David and I quit talking.

I was completely cut off, no communication.

He wouldn't return my phone calls.

Joy's mom, our family,

over the years passed away.

These people died and went to their grave

thinking that I did this,

that I murdered their daughter, their sister.

That really upsets me.

I missed David's graduation from college.

I missed a lot of things that only come around once.

It was devastating to me.

- It was years before I spoke to my dad again.

I had many conversations with my grandfather, his father,

who I loved and trusted.

And he helped me to see that my dad would never have

hurt my mom, and that we all have our own mechanism

of dealing with trauma and grief.

- During that time, all my biker friends,

they were there for me.

After almost three years,

I remember I had a pig roast in the backyard,

and here come David around the corner.

We started talking again.

I found out my children were told

that I knew who did this.

These cops betrayed our family.

I wanted retribution.

- Throughout the years, I was really angry.

There's something left undone,

and you're never going to feel whole

until you figure this out.

So the only thing I could think of to do was go to the media.

- That article David did, it lit a fire.

The case broke wide open.

Power of the pen.

- You can tell by my frankness in that article that I'm angry

and that I'm no longer playing nice with the police,

that I'm actually pointing fingers.

There's something that they're not telling us.

- What's stopping this from being solved?

We wanted answers as to why.

- That put a lot of scrutiny on the police,

and it prompted them to reassign the cold case.

- This case was given a new set of eyes.

Detectives filed and gathered

every piece of information they could

and interviewed as many people as they could.

- The detectives looked at past pieces of evidence

to make sure that they were vetted again,

including the phone call, where David hears

Robert Atkins is threatening his mom.

- I had told the police, I heard my mom on the phone.

I could hear our neighbor, Robert Atkins,

screaming at her.

- I heard that for the first time over 20 years

after my son told the police.

Joy never told me about that phone call

because the temper I had at that time,

she knows it would have been explosive.

- The new investigation team, they said,

let's revisit the Robert Atkins aspect

of this case.

We know that a blue Monte Carlo was parked

right out front of the house on the day of the homicide.

Robert Atkins claimed his car was a darker color

at the time of the murder.

He said he repainted it blue weeks after.

- From an Atkins family photo taken just weeks

before Joy's murder, we discovered that

Robert's Monte Carlo was blue,

so it was repainted before Joy's murder.

So we know that Robert and April lied

about painting the car.

But in an interview, he reiterated this claim

that he had an alibi.

- One of Robert's alibis was April's coworker, Tanya.

Robert claimed that at the time of the murder,

at 12:00, he was at home and spoke to Tanya.

She provided a statement claiming she did telephone

Mr. Atkins's home, but she stated the time

was between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m.

And the original investigators didn't

catch this inconsistency.

- He further then claims there would not have been

sufficient time for him and his wife

and their two children to get to the Poconos

for their weekend trip

and that he could not have been in two places at once.

- The Atkins booked into the hotel in the Poconos

two hours away at 5:00 on the day of the homicide.

So that gave them five hours after the murder

to get up there.

- It was 100% possible for him to have murdered Joy,

packed up his family, had that phone call,

and fled to the Poconos.

The alibi fell apart.

These things were missed by the investigators in 1991.

Then, to everyone's surprise, April Atkins, Robert's wife,

showed up at the Bristol Township Police Department.

What she describes, it was just shocking.

- We're speaking to April Atkins.

- The interview was mind-boggling.

She was the key.

- Over time, suspicion slowly fades into the background.

Silence takes over where laughter once lived.

Grief hardens.

Hope fades.

Then someone speaks, and everything rushes back.

Only this time, the memories look different--

sharper, louder, impossible to ignore.

- In 1991, April was 24 years old.

She had a young child.

And she was living in an abusive relationship.

- It was bad.

The hollering and screaming and the fighting

that came from that house was just beyond belief.

- For decades, she was afraid to speak out against him.

But now, she'd separated from Robert.

It was a whole different world, a whole different person.

She wanted to come clean.

She wanted to clear her conscience.

This was the big break.

This was it.

- Robert Atkins, he admitted that he'd stabbed somebody

and set fire to the house.

He told her to call out of work,

and they drove up to the Poconos.

April's recording was huge.

But we had no DNA evidence.

We had no photographic evidence.

So we tried various forms of electronic surveillance.

We told April to call Robert and say, look,

the police are down here to speak to me

about Joy's murder.

- In the meantime, I made phone calls

to family members and people

who knew Robert in his early life.

- When he was a teenager, Robert had attacked his aunt.

He had attempted to strangle her with a telephone cord

and left her for dead, and then fled.

- It was unequivocal that Robert committed these acts,

and he later was prosecuted in juvenile court

and held responsible for the attack on Aunt Charlene.

- It painted a picture of a very dangerous,

menacing person.

But after the April confession, unfortunately,

that evidence wasn't acted upon.

- These are the details that keep me up at night.

How did they not do anything with April's confession?

- With this case, the first time

when they said they didn't have evidence,

it was believable.

But the second time, you start asking questions.

I thought the police were covering things up.

- There was some things that were pretty suspicious.

We're now trying to seek out information for ourselves.

- My motorcycle club, my biker friends,

all those guys raised a reward for information.

And before I knew it, the reward went to $50,000.

Yeah, them old, no good nasty bikers came through.

And the word got out to this biker dude.

Billy Barker picked me up, and we went to a bar.

And Barker's dad is a retired cop.

He has a lot of connections.

Billy said, I heard on the street

that Atkins was a CI,

a confidential informant.

That was such a gut punch.

Law enforcement buried this whole thing and just let it go.

- We forced our way into the Bucks County

prosecuting attorney's office.

Detective Hanks and Jen Schorn got involved with the case.

- When I became the district attorney,

I wanted to make sure we secured

the outcome for the family

that they deserved and waited for

for so long.

We discovered that

Robert Atkins was a drug informant,

and these 1991 narcotics detectives had

a relationship with him in that capacity.

- Robert Atkins had the benefit of being tipped off

that he was a suspect.

He had that benefit of time and to get his story straight.

- Narcotics detectives,

his handlers as a confidential informant,

sent a message to Robert Atkins

giving him a warning to go get your alibi straight

and to provide ample time and information

to evade the police.

- I became involved with Joy Hibbs' murder in 2021.

What happened prior?

There's a lot of things we don't know.

There was no report generated on this conversation

between the narcotics investigators

and Robert Atkins.

This is not normal.

Unfortunately, the politics

and personalities of police work

interfered with the actual job in 1991.

- This could have been solved within a matter of days,

but they were protecting a drug informant.

- There are some specific things,

having the benefit of hindsight,

I wish would have been done differently.

But now we needed the powers of the investigative grand jury.

We put up the arson investigation

and all of the other strong circumstantial evidence.

- After several months of the grand jury

hearing testimony, it was a unanimous presentment

for murder in the first degree.

Let's get justice.

- It's been more than 30 years since

a Bucks County mother was murdered.

And now a former neighbor, arrested for her death,

is finally on trial.

- Wow, wow.

I remember that day.

- We needed this. This was our win.

This was 30 some years at this point now.

You know, 30 years.

- Robert Atkins, that son of a bitch,

wouldn't look me in the eyes.

He sat there clutching a Bible.

And I just had thoughts of taking

that Bible out of his hand and beating his head with it.

- Robert Atkins never confessed to the crime,

and the arson was set to cover up the evidence.

- In 1991, no one had the wherewithal

to preserve DNA evidence, but we had communications

between Robert Atkins and April Atkins,

an eyewitness admitting that she saw her husband

come home covered in blood.

And the critical piece of evidence that came forward

was when Robert Atkins' son testified.

When confronted with the evidence,

he admitted that his father all but confessed

to having murdered a woman and then fleeing to the Poconos

following her murder.

- 56-year-old Robert Atkins, sentenced to life in prison

today over a cold case from April of 1991.

- The judge says it was Atkins who killed Joy,

fueled with a hot temper in his bitter fight

with her over marijuana.

Prosecutors say he wanted revenge.

- When that guilty verdict was delivered,

we looked at one another, and we knew we did it.

We finally got justice for Joy's family.

- I walked in that shadow for 30 years,

the shadow of doubt.

After being treated as a criminal,

as a murderer,

the day that all that suspicion went away,

I was so happy.

I had a renewed trust in people.

- We are thrilled with the outcome of today's verdict.

We feel like justice has finally been served.

We're sorry that it took 32 years to get here.

- I was glad he was going to jail,

and capital murder means without parole.

I hope when he dies,

they'll wash his lousy remains

down a floor drain in Benner Prison.

But I didn't feel justice.

- Still, I can't sleep at night.

The police, we were being gaslighted for years.

This wasn't just gross incompetence.

This was corruption.

This was years of systemic cover-up.

This is a group of detectives playing prosecutor,

judge, and jury, and determining for themselves

what justice looks like.

- It was a hollow victory.

I will never know why they thought

it was so important to leave Robert Atkins untouchable.

He got to live his life,

where mine was shredded to pieces at the age of 16.

Am I on camera?

- OK, guys, have a good time.

- Bye.

Now all I can do is just be the very, very best person

that I can be to honor her.

- My mom never got to meet her grandchildren.

She never got to meet her beautiful niece

and her amazing nephew.

- Well, this is my bedroom.

There's my shelf.

Say something, Mom. - Your fishes?

- Yeah.

My mom was my best friend.

I would rather be with her

than anybody else in the world.

I'm trying to keep her memory alive.

I feel like I owe her that.

And I wouldn't have stopped for nothing.

- Never stop.

Always pursue the truth.

Here she comes.

- Hello.

New hairdo.

She's going California style now.

All right.

Talk to you later.

- The challenge for law enforcement is

to stay objective and stick to the cold, hard facts.

But what if the facts lie?

What if the clues are scrambled,

and all you have left is gut instinct?

The smart criminal fears the law.

They should fear a family's intuition more.

I'm Harlan Coben.

Good night.