Murder in the Sacristy:Gerald Robinson·Margaret Ann Pahl

Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, looked after the chapel at Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio. Father Gerald Robinson served as a chaplain at the same hospital and led services in that chapel.

On April 5, 1980, the day before Easter, Sister Margaret Ann was found dead in the sacristy beside the chapel. She had been strangled and stabbed many times, and her body was hidden under an altar cloth. Prosecutors later said the stab wounds formed an upside-down cross. Robinson was questioned about two weeks later, but a senior police officer cut the interview short and he was not charged. The case went cold for more than 20 years.

In December 2003 a letter alleging past abuse by several priests, including Robinson, led cold case investigators to take another look at the killing. Forensic experts connected bloodstains on a small cloth found near the altar to the medallion on a sword-shaped letter opener from Robinson’s living quarters. He was arrested in April 2004, and on May 11, 2006, a Lucas County jury found him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 15 years to life. An Ohio appeals court upheld the conviction in 2008, and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Robinson died in a prison hospice in Columbus on July 4, 2014, at 76.