Original subtitles

Sister Margaret Ann Pahl,

her job is to prepare the chapel.

It's hard to imagine thinking you're in a safer place.

An altar cloth was placed over her chest.

Nothing was really missing.

They interviewed 600 people.

And a nun comes forward.

She said, "I had been abused by a group of priests

in these really wacky satanic rituals."

[narrator] In April 2004,

66-year-old Catholic priest, Father Gerald Robinson,

sits down with Toledo police detective, Tom Ross.

[narrator] The woman at the centre

of Detective Ross's questions

is Sister Margaret Ann Pahl,

a Catholic nun.

@ On Holy Saturday, 1980,

the day before Easter Sunday,

@ she's preparing the chapel for the Easter vigil.

@ Sister Margaret Ann Pahl,

@ she's going to be laying out all the cloths,

getting all of the sacraments ready,

@ and all the materials ready

that the priest will use to conduct this service.

There's no services on Saturday,

@ and then the chapel isú reopened on Easter Sunday

when Christ rises from his death.

We saw her in theú cafeteria at about 7 a.m.

and then about 8 a.m., little after that,

a different nun had gone into the chapel.

She went in there and she saw Sister Margaret Ann

lying on the ground.

Pretty quickly, she realized that she was dead.

She went running out of the chapel.

It was determined that she had been stabbed 31 times

in the face, neck, and chest.

It appeared that she had actually

been choked from behind.

The medical examiner of the time believed that it had to be

somebody with very large hands that had choked her.

She was strangled and then an altar cloth

that she was using to prepare for this service

was placed over her chest and she was stabbed.

@It's hard to imagine thinkingú you're in a safer place

@ than inside of a hospitalú with a thousand employees,

a place whereú you've lived for years.

You're in a chapel, which is a sacred place,

and you're in a sacred place within that chapel.

To go in and find one of your sisters

who has been just brutalized would be horrifying.

[Brian] She was lying on the sacristy floor.

Her underwear was actually pulled down,

but, I mean, she was lying very straight

in a very unnatural position,

even unnatural for somebody that had just been killed.

[narrator] Even beyond the apparent violence

of Sister Margaret's murder,

one of her fellow nuns is disturbed

by things she notices at the crime scene.

Sister Phyllis had the perspective of being a nurse,

and she's also very familiar with Catholic rituals

and signs of respect and disrespect.

And when she saw the body the way that she saw it,

I think it immediately occurred to her

that something very unnatural had happened here

to Sister Margaret Ann.

Clearly, it doesn't take 31 stab wounds to kill them.

So when we see that level of violence

that is inflicted towards somebody,

the message may be, I hate you,

I want to destroy you.

or it may be I'm sending a message to law enforcement

that you can't catch me.

[narrator] Police launched

one of Toledo's largest investigations.

The first couple of detectives that arrived on the scene,

they knew right away that this was going to be a huge deal,

and they started to notice some things right away

that they wanted to preserve

and make sure that they took note of.

When you see that the underwear was pulled down,

you might have-I think they initially thought

it could have been a sexual attack,

and if that wasn't the case,

they thought it was certainly a robbery.

But then when it went on and they began looking into it,

they realised that nothing was really missing.

And ultimately, when they did a autopsy of her body,

they discovered that she had not been sexually assaulted.

So that was very unusual.

The only thing that seemed to be missing

was her scissors that she used to cut

the wicks of the candles off.

And there was some initial suspicion

that perhaps the murder weapon were these scissors.

[narrator] Beyond the missing pair of scissors,

there are few clues inside the sacristy

to explain the brutal attack.

So investigators begin delving into Sister Margaret's past

in search of answers.

@ Sister Margaret Ann wasú born in April of 1908.

She grew up on a 200-acre farm near Edgerton, Ohio.

From a very young age, she knew she wanted to be a nun.

She served the Catholic Church as a nun for 53 years.

She taught for a short time.

She had many supervisory positions

in a lot of different hospitals over the years.

She wasn't ready to retire.

So she took the position of sacristan in 1971

at the Mercy Hospital in Toledo,

which basically you just take care of the chapel.

She was loving with her family,

but also took her duties very, very seriously

and she could kind of be a taskmaster in some respects.

Though she may have been small in stature,

she was mighty in what she knew

and how devoted and disciplined she was

and the tight ship that she ran.

She was known for being very detail-oriented.

That did not always go well

with everyone else's personality.

[narrator] Investigators consider

whether this attack is deeply personal

or perhaps the work of someone disturbed.

I think that law enforcement initially, you know,

really cast a pretty wide net.

So they were looking for people at the hospital

who might have mental health challenges,

who might have done something kind of strange.

They interviewed 600 people, witnesses,

people who, you know,ú who were in the hospital

or were in theú neighbourhood or whatever.

[Joni] And there are 1,000 people who work at the hospital,

so they are diligently trying to figure out

who could have done this.

And they were really struggling.

[narrator] As investigators search for answers,

Sister Margaret is laid to rest

just three days after her murder.

Leading the service is the hospital's head priest.

Father Gerald Robinson was the main celebrant

for Sister Margaret Ann's funeral.

And somewhere during the mass, a storm blew up.

It was a unbelievable, horrific storm.

There was a glass dome up on top

and that was shaking and rattling.

[narrator] Father Gerald Robinson,

the priest who conducted Sister Margaret's funeral,

is one of only two priests serving at the hospital.

She worked a lot with the two priests at the hospital,

Father Gerald Robinson and Father Jerome Swiatecki.

Father Robinson was very small, diminutive.

I think he may have only been 5'4", 5'5",

and Father Swiatecki was well over 6 feet,

kind of a hulk of a man, and he had very large hands.

Father Swiatecki is the big, burly, cuddly priest

that I think everybody would love to be around.

And then you have Father Robinson,

who is a small, quiet, kind of cold man.

Usually if a priest ended up going to the hospital,

it was usually they were in the hospital because

they had problems in their past.

Now when it came to Father Jerome Swiatecki,

we know that he had alcohol problems.

He was an alcoholic.

He was often angry.

He had a bad temper.

But what we don't know about Father Robinson

is why he was there.

I remember my one aunt,

which would have been a sister to Sister Margaret Ann,

mentioning how aloof he was at the funeral.

Just didn't interact with the people afterwards.

[narrator] As police interview potential witnesses,

they learn that Sister Margaret didn't always see eye to eye

with the hospital's priests.

[Brian] She was very upset because the Good Friday services

got cut short.

And she had told a witness that,

"I can't believe they took from God what belonged to God."

So when detectives are looking for a motive,

you know, they theorize that,

"Look, she was very angry with one of the priests."

[Chris] Father Robinson did not do the Good Friday services.

It was the other priest, Father Swiatecki,

who performed that, but Father Robinson

was the head priest at the hospital at that point in time.

[Brian] Now in the police reports,

it actually does say that Father Swiatecki

was in the cafeteria

with Sister Margaret Ann at the same time,

but then he ended up getting an alibi.

But when it came to Father Robinson,

he was very inconsistent about where he was

at the time of the murder.

At one point he said, "I was in the shower,"

but there were other people that had said

they had seen him near the chapel.

[narrator] 24 years later,

in a Toledo police interview room,

investigators will return to the inconsistencies

in Robinson's account.

[narrator] Though Father Robinson

says he was in his room

when Sister Margaret was murdered.

Leslie Kerr, a hospital worker in 1980,

tells a different story.

[narrator] Lab worker Grace Jones places him

near the murder scene as well.

@ A witness came forward,

@ you know, four or five days after the murder

and said, hey, I was downstairs

@ and I heard somebody runningú really frantically upstairs

in the hallway.

And the detectives determined that these footsteps ended

at Father Robinson's doorway to his personal residence.

He had a dorm or two-room suite

at the very end of the hallway

@ on the same floor where the chapel was, OK?

@ So he could walk over a pathú from the two buildings.

They heard running at 7:30 before the body was discovered.

It would have been towards Father Robinson's room.

@The more that they investigated,

they started closing all these doors

@ to these other potentialúsuspects or persons of interest.

And the only one that seemed to be left

was that of Father Robinson.

[narrator] Inconsistencies in Father Robinson's statements,

combined with witness accounts placing him near the chapel

and reports of footsteps running toward his room,

lead investigators to bring him in for questioning.

We did not interview him until the 18th of April,

13 days after the homicide.

Sergeant Marks took Father Robinson

to the police station one evening

@ and were interrogating him,

@ and they interrogated him for like eight hours.

One of the key momentsú that stood out to detectives

@early on in their conversations with Father Robinson

@ is that he tells them thatú someone had come to him

@ to confess to the murderú of Sister Margaret Ann.

And the lead detective was Catholic,

and so he didn't believe that because

he could be excommunicated

for violating the sanctity of the confessional.

Detectives pushed Father Robinson on that a little bit.

He said, no, that's not true.

I lied. That's not true.

[Chris] He said, you guys are putting a lot of pressure on me.

And so I got nervous. And so I made up that lie.

If you're law enforcement,

you do not want to think that a priest is lying about anything.

And now you have somebody who is a suspect

who has made a statement

that they are now acknowledging is false.

[narrator] After more than six hours of questioning,

Father Robinson consents to a search of his apartment.

As detectives escort him back to the hospital,

they encounter fellow priest, Father Jerome Swiatecki.

When they came out of the interrogation room,

the other chaplain, Father Jerome Swiatecki,

was there and came up to Father Robinson angry.

Father Swiatecki confronts Father Robinson

and says, "How could you do this?

How could you do this?"

I mean, he outright accused him of killing Sister Margaret Ann,

and the interesting thing is that there is

almost no reaction from Father Robinson.

[narrator] In April, 1980, when police take Father Robinson

back to his apartment at Mercy Hospital,

they're looking for clues.

Pretty early on in their search

of Father Robinson's room,

they find this very long letter opener

that had a very specific design.

It almost looked like a sabre or a mini sword.

And the point on that letter opener was very unique.

It was a diamond shape or kind of like a Y shape.

So if someone were to use this type of weapon

to stab someone, it would create a different wound pattern

than just an everyday knife.

[narrator] In 1980,

the coroner found many of Sister Margaret's wounds

could have been caused by the missing scissors,

but her facial injuries were likely inflected

with a different object.

[Joni] And after they saw that,

they started really wondering if maybe it isn't the scissors.

They began wondering if perhaps these injuries were made

by this letter opener.

The next day or shortly thereafter,

they did some preliminary exams to determine whether or not

there was a presumptive for blood,

even back then, they were using a substance called luminol,

which would fluoresce blue if it came into contact

with certain things, including blood.

And it actually fluoresced very briefly, very shortly.

And so after that, they put it in to the evidence locker

with the altar cloth, and he never looked at it again.

[narrator] With the letteropener sealed in evidence bags,

police bring Father Robinson in for further questioning.

So they took him back down to the police station,

and there was a polygraph test administered,

a lie detector test.

[Joni] Polygraphs, they're not admissible in court, generally.

And they're often used to rule out suspects, I think,

more than rule them in.

We know that polygraphs are measuring emotion and stress.

They're not measuring guilt or innocence.

And so if somebody does fail, of course,

you're going to look at what questions are they failing over.

[Chris] And they put him on a polygraph.

It showed deception,

and they couldn't prove truthfulness in his statements

and so on about the murder and so on.

So they brought him from there back into the interrogation room

to start interrogating him for a second time.

At this point, they just basically

want him to unburden his soul and tell them what happened,

give the confession.

And it's about an hour and a half, two hours,

I believe they were talking to him

and there was a knock on the door.

And they opened the door

and it's Assistant Police Chief Ray Vetter,

along with the diocese attorney

Henry Herschel and Monsignor Jerome Schmit,

who's one of the most powerful figures in the community.

They're like, "We want to talk to Father Robinson."

That really breaks one of the cardinal rules

within the Toledo Police Department for investigators,

which is never interrupt an interrogation

as it's happening.

And so they went into the interview room

and they basically walked Father Robinson out

and he was never spoken to again.

[Brian] Father Robinson never said, "Hey, I need my attorney."

But the church just kind of inserted itself

into the investigation and said, "We're bringing the attorney

and we're bringing Monsignor Schmit."

Back in Toledo in 1980,

the Catholic Church was a dominant force.

[Brian] It was a very Catholic town.

And the detectives at that time later said

that it was impossible

for them to arrest a priest,

someone of that high in the church.

[narrator] Just weeks after Sister Margaret's murder,

and days after Father Robinson is interviewed by police,

the investigation begins to lose momentum.

The Toledo police had kind of an outpost at Mercy Hospital

when they were investigating this case.

Well, soon after this final interview,

they shut that post down.

There was no longer a Toledo police presence

in the hospital investigating the case.

Police really didn't have anywhere to go

because at this point, Father Robinson

wasn't talking to them.

And so they really felt stonewalled

by the Catholic Church and again,

by their own police administrators.

They don't have a confession.

They don't have very much physical evidence.

They found some blood on that letter opener,

but it was such a minuscule amount.

[narrator] Detectives believe they were closing in

on answers in 1980

only to see the investigation stall.

20 years later, however, a cultural change

may bring with it an opportunity.

@ [news] We begin tonight with new information

from the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

@ It released the names of 22 additional priests

and other clergy members accusednof sexual abuse against minors.

[Melissa] In the early 2000s,

the church sex abuse scandal has happened.

And people are much more willing to listen

when people say that there's been sex abuse by a priest.

So here we are in the 2000s and a nun comes forward

and she's decided that it's time to reveal her story

of sex abuse by a couple of Toledo priests.

[narrator] More than two decades after

Sister Margaret's murder,

another nun comes forward with allegations of abuse

involving Toledo priests.

She reaches out to a group that advocates for survivors.

She had come to me and said,

"I want to get this information out there.

@ What I went through wasú ritualistic in nature.

@ It was horrific abuse."

And she implicated several priests,

including Father Gerald Robinson.

[narrator] The allegations of ritualistic abuse

made by the Toledo nun are shocking.

She had said thatú she was sexually abused

@in satanic rituals and cults,

satanic cult that murdered children

and all these really wild allegations.

She said, "I had been abused by a group of priests

in these really wacky, satanic rituals."

She talked about being put in a coffin at a area cemetery

and cockroaches being filled there

and then being abused by different priests.

@When I got on Youth Council,úone of the repeated workshops

@ that the Toledo Catholic Diocese would put on,

@one of them was on the occult,ú how to recognize the signs

@ and how to avoid the occult.

So you have to ask yourself, if there was no problem

with ritualistic abuse or the occult,

then why were we having workshops

and how to spot the dangers of the occult.

[narrator] Reports of clergy abuse prompted

the nun to make allegations,

some based on memories that had previously been repressed.

So the idea behind repressed memories

is that a person goes through a trauma,

often as a child, when it's so traumatic

that it's like theirú psyche cannot handle it.

And then as an adult, when it's safe,

it somehow comes back.

So if you're in a clinical setting

and somebody's coming in

and they're reporting these recovered memories,

your goal is to help this person get better.

You're not there to say, well,

is this real or is this not real?

If you're looking at a forensic setting, it's different.

You're going to be looking for evidence.

You're going to be thinking, OK, if these memories are true

and there were sacrifices,

then there should be missing babies.

There should be missing children.

[narrator] Though the diocese decides against

referring the claims to police,

allegations of a murdered baby

spur Claudia Vercellotti to take the case to prosecutors

outside of the diocese.

They investigated a lot of this stuff,

@ but there was nothing toú corroborate that stuff.

There was no sacrifices of the humans that they found anything.

[narrator] While some allegations

cannot be substantiated or dismissed,

one detail in the nuns' allegations

keeps detectives digging.

The name she mentions, Father Robinson.

@ We have police officersú who recognize that name

@ and they recognize that he was once a suspect

in the murder ofú Sister Margaret Ann Pahl

back in 1980.

We decided to open that case at that point in time

because we knew there was an unsolved homicide

where he was the primary suspect.

[narrator]ú Two detectives are assigned

@ to review the evidence inú Sister Margaret's murder,

including Tom Ross,

@ who worked for the ToledonPolice Department back in 1980.

They decide to open up the dusty boxes that contain

what little there was

of the Sister Margaret Ann Pahl investigation.

And they discover the letter opener.

And they also discover this altar cloth

that had been placed over the body of Sister Margaret Ann.

[narrator] The new allegations linking

Father Robinson to satanic abuse

sheds an unexpected new light on the evidence.

Jane Doe asked the detectives pointedly,

was she stabbed in the shape of an upside down cross?

Now she didn't know if Father Robinson

had killed her or not, but she said,

@ you just need to look for an upside down cross.

So then one of the investigators,

like was able to take the altar cloth and kind of look at it.

And then he compared it to holes in the clothing.

And he could match up the nine holes

to a template of an upside down cross over her heart.

They believe that the killer placed a cross on her chest

in an inverted position, so upside down,

and then stabbed around the cross

to create this inverted cross symbol,

which is really an ultimate sign of disrespect

to a Catholic nun.

It was, you know, part of a satanic ritual.

The prosecution team, they went to Chicago

and talked to the Catholic church's top guy

on ritualistic ceremonies,

because they really did believe that there was something to it.

[Chris] And we didn't interview the exorcist.

We interviewed his assistant, who is a canonical lawyer.

He went over a lot of details, and when they asked him,

"What made you think it was a ritualistic killing?"

He said, "Well, where does one begin?"

It happened on Holy Saturday that she was stabbed to death,

that she was, the Paschal candle was in the sacristy,

that the Holy Eucharist was there,

that she had been covered with an altar cloth

before she was stabbed.

So all those things made it look like

a black mass ritualistic killing.

[narrator] Prosecutors, however, are mindful

of how such extraordinary claims might be received by a jury.

It's one thing for people to accept

that priests committed sex abuse,

but the stories of satanic rituals

were a whole 'nother level.

[narrator] So the cold-case detectives looked to

more of the physical evidence preserved from 1980.

After Sister Margaret Ann, was killed,

and the medical examiner was examining her body,

they clipped her fingernails,

and they put those fingernails in a baggie,

and they kept it for 24 years, something like that.

[narrator] A Y-STR profile would tell investigators

if the DNA on Sister Margaret's fingernails

belonged to a male,

and potentially, if it does, which male.

[Chris] And so we got a full profile on the Y-STR.

But they were able to determine that it was male DNA,

and there was enough of a profile

to show that it was not Father Gerald Robinson's DNA.

And I was the main DNA expert

in the office at that point in time

and trying to figure out what are we going to do.

And so my first thought was, we've got to explain this.

We've got to find out who it is.

So we got a hold of every male that came in contact

with the investigation.

[narrator] Investigators test more than 20 men

who were involved in theoriginal investigation in 1980.

It was nobody's DNA.

So we couldn't explain it.

In 1980, they didn't even know that DNA evidence

was really going to be a thing

that could help them decades later.

There was contamination of the crime scene,

and there was no DNA at that point.

[Chris] I said, at the coroner's office,

how did you get the fingernails off the fingers?

They said, "No, we took the fingernails off her fingers

at the autopsy, the original autopsy,

and we did it with scissors.

And I basically said, "Did you sterilize those scissors

in 1980 between autopsies?"

They said, "No."

[narrator] Investigators refocused their efforts

on the letter opener found in Father Robinson's apartment

in 1980.

[Brian] So they still had this letter opener at this point

that they believed was the murder weapon.

And the police and the prosecutor's office

are hearing from their experts saying,

well, the best way to prove that it's a murder weapon

is to actually exhume the body.

So that's what they did.

@ [Chris] It also gave usú the opportunity to then

@ take pictures of her bodyú and all the injuries to it.

We had to get her DNA.

I mean, you know where you get DNA from a dead body.

You get it from the teeth.

When they did that, they noticed that there was a defect

or a hole in the mandible.

And our forensic anthropologist said

that the mandible is one of the hardest bones in the body.

It's actually one of the last bones

that actually turns to dust.

[Brian] They're able to see the defects in there from the weapon

that killed her in the jaw bone.

And they were able to take the letter opener

and put it into this wound.

[Chris] And she said, I put it in,

and it was a pretty snug fit.

And I turned it 180 degrees,

and it clicked in like a key in a lock.

[Claudia] Fit like a key to a lock?

How could you-how could you argue with that?

The wounds in the altar cloth that was found at the scene,

the defects in the cloth and in the skin

also matched the unusual shape of the letter opener

that was Father Robinson's.

It was an odd-shaped thing,

which was consistent with the letter opener.

They'd sort of had a spine on it.

[narrator] The possibility thatFather Robinson's letter opener

could be linked to the murder

prompts investigators to take a bold step.

Detectives head to his family home

and bring him in for questioning

about every aspect of Sister Margaret's death.

Tom Ross, who knew about it

from the very beginning, interviewed him.

He's kind of a mousy type guy,

@ and you don't really thinkú of him-the rage killing

@or the frenzied 31 stab wounds.

They left him in an interview room by himself,

and he actually prays to Sister Margaret Ann Pahl

to come back and clear his name.

[narrator] 24 years after

Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's death,

on the 26th of April, 2004,

66-year-old Father Gerald Robinson

is charged with her murder.

@ There were parishionersú who leveraged their homes

@ as collateral to keep himú out of jail pending trial.

I mean, they had fundraisers for him.

[narrator] It takes two years of pretrial hearings,

forensic challenges, and legal motions

before Father Robertson's trial

is set for the 24th of April, 2006.

And we actually took almost a week to pick the jury

because do we want Catholics on there?

Do we want to exclude them?

Do you want them to believe in Vatican I or Vatican II?

When I went to jury selection,

there was one guy who was adamant.

He said, "I don't care if you had a video

@ of him killing the nun,

I wouldn't believe it,

@ a priest could never do anything like that."

[narrator] Prosecutors and defence attorneys

settle on a jury that includes

four Catholics, two Lutherans, and a Baptist.

And they seek to connect the crime scene

to something more sinister.

The prosecution brought in Father Jeffrey Graub

to testify about all the ritualistic signs and evidence.

But about halfway through the trial,

the prosecution decided to change their tactics

and not pursue the satanic angle or the ritualistic angle.

@It was going to be hard enoughú to get a jury to accept

that a priest murdered this nun,

but that he did it in a sadistic manner

was just going to be a step too far.

@ [narrator] Prosecutors call

@ renowned forensic scientist Henry Lee

and blood transferú expert Paulette Sutton,

@ who tell jurors that bloodú patterns on the altar cloth

are consistent with the distinctive shape

of Father Robinson's letter opener.

I did issue a preliminary report stating that I felt

that some of the stains, some of the transfer stains

that I could see on the altar cloth

were consistent with the dagger.

[Chris] On one side of the letter opener,

it has a medallion of the capital of the United States.

And she found a transfer pattern that looked like that.

And it looks like it is from the Capitol building.

[narrator] Bone expert Dr. Steven Syms tells jurors

that the damage to Sister Margaret's mandible

closely matches the tip of the suspected letter opener.

@ I feel these tests indicateú that the mandible defects--

@ defect was created by a toolú similar in size and shape

to the tip of theú suspected letter opener.

[narrator] And forensic scientist,

Casey Agosti also testifies

that blood was found onFather Robinson's letter opener.

[lawyer] And what was the results

of your swabbing the medallion area?

That was presumptively positive for blood.

[news] However, DNA was not on the opener.

The defence put into question DNA on the altar cloth

and Sister Pahl's underwear.

[narrator] DNA evidence provides ammunition for the defence.

The presumed male DNAú sample from the underwear

@ was not enough to test.

@ Prosecutors claim that DNAú might have been skin cells

@ that anyone who came inú contact with Sister Pahl

could have left.

[narrator] Even in 2026,

defence attorney John Thebes

maintains DNA evidence found

beneath Sister Margaret's fingernails

raises unanswered questions about the case.

@ It was a male, male DNA.

Now think about this.

A nun who lives at theú hospital with other nuns

gets up in the morning,

no interaction with a male whatsoever,

and we have male DNA underneath their fingernails.

And you know what?

It's not Father Robinson's.

[narrator] Defence attorneys

point jurors back to reports from 1980,

which raise the possibility

that scissors were used in the attack,

not a letter opener.

[lawyer] But you never even had, in your scientific method,

a pair of scissors to review or look at, correct?

No, sir, I was not given a pair of scissors

as a piece of evidence.

[narrator] John Thebes maintains that prosecutors

built their case around the wrong weapon.

To this day, I believe that was a scissors that,

you know, imprinted that pattern on that altar cloth.

I saw a unique long blade, I saw a handle,

and more importantly, I saw a very round dot

where normally a scissors would be.

They were trying to say that the hole

was the fulcrum device on the pair of scissors,

but if that's the case, it's too close to the handle,

you would not be able to get enough torque

to use the scissors properly.

We also had one of our experts have his class

get every type of scissor they have

and stab it into corkboard,

either with one blade or both blades,

and match it to what we had, and none of them matched.

@ The prosecution kept putting pieces in, pieces in,

and pretty quickly,ú there was a picture there,

@ an undoubtable picture.

[narrator] After nine days in court

and six hours behind closed doors,

the jury returns with its decision.

[Claudia] The judge started to read the verdict,

and you could have heard a pin drop.

And he stops himself and then says, oh, you should stand.

And he tells the-you know, Father Robinson to stand.

And he reads the jury's verdict.

And they found him guilty

and it was-- and it was surreal.

I just kind of remember standing there

when I heard the verdict and just, you know,

just trembling a little bit 'cause it was just,

it was just a, like a, you know, weight off your shoulders

and it was amazing.

@[narrator] Father Robinson isúsentenced to 15 years to life.

He appeals his conviction twice.

@During the second investigation,úthere were early police reports

@about a unknown Black man seenú near the chapel at the time.

Now, those police reports never made it to the prosecutors

or the defence team whenever Father Robinson went to trial.

So it certainly became part of their appeals.

And they tried to claim this individual

by the name of Carl Watts,

who was a serial killer out of the state of Texas.

He also killed people in Michigan.

[Brian] He was somebody that would strangle them,

stab them in the heart, but not sexually assault them.

So that kind of fit the M.O.

of the person that had killed Sister Margaret Ann.

And so we got his DNA when he was put back in jail

and he was excluded.

[narrator] Investigators test the DNA of others,

including fellow priest Father Jerome Swiatecki,

but those results are negative as well.

@ Father Robinson dies in prison in July 2014,

aged 76, afterú suffering a heart attack,

@ never admitting responsibilityúfor Sister Margaret's murder.

Father Robinson did never admit guilt.

He had full funeral rights when he died

and that caused a lot of controversy.

It seemed that Sister Margaret Ann

was lost in all of this.

We have spent 20 years trying to get honours removed

from Monsignor Schmit.

@[news] A controversial Toledoústreet sign has been removed.

The sign outside Fifth Third Field

honoured Monsignor Jerome Schmit,

a man many people believe interfered

with the Sister Margaret Ann murder investigation.

That is largely the story,

is that this priest was able to get away with this nun's murder

for decades and decades.

Why is the nun's life less valuable than the priest's life?

It seemed to a lot of people that Sister Margaret Ann

was a forgotten victim in all this.

[Lee] She served people, served God,

served the Catholic Church

for 53 years as a nun.

Did a lot of things, served a lot of people.

And her life counted too.

Her life counted.

You know, she dedicated her life to the church

and for caring for people.

She was a good person.