Gerald Robinson (priest)

On May 11, 2006, retired Roman Catholic priest Gerald Robinson (April 14, 1938 – July 4, 2014) was convicted of the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl (1909-1980), a Sister of Mercy, a Catholic religious order of women on Holy Saturday, April 5, 1980. Robinson repeatedly appealed, but without success as of April 2013^[update]. On July 4, 2014, Robinson died in prison.

In 1980 Robinson was the chaplain at Toledo Mercy Hospital, Toledo, Ohio, United States, where he ministered to the sick and terminally ill. Sister Pahl was the caretaker of the chapel.

Robinson was convicted of strangling and stabbing Pahl, who was 71 at the time, in the sacristy of a chapel of the hospital where they worked together. The priest presided at her funeral Mass four days after her death. Pahl was stabbed 31 times, including nine times in the shape of an inverted cross. Prosecutors considered this shape was deliberate and intended to humiliate Pahl in death. Pahl was found covered in an altar cloth, her clothes and body arranged to suggest she had been sexually assaulted, although it was not clear she had been.

Robinson was questioned about the crime in 1980, but was not charged. Dean Mandros, the chief of the criminal division in the Lucas County prosecutor's office said as the priest was being questioned by detectives two weeks after the killing, Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter, who later testified he was a practicing Catholic, interrupted the interview (which is not normal procedure) and allowed a monsignor to escort Father Robinson out of Police Headquarters, which "upset the detectives to no end". Mandros also said Vetter asked detectives to give him their reports on the case, and some of those reports were never seen again. A cover-up was alleged.

The case remained unsolved, with no new leads, until 2003 when police received a letter from a woman who claimed that Robinson had sexually abused her when she was a child in a series of Satanic ritual abuse that also involved human sacrifice. The woman, using the name "Survivor Doe", also filed a civil lawsuit against Robinson seeking financial damages for having been a victim of ritual abuse by Robinson and other adults dressed as nuns. The case was dismissed in 2011 due to having been filed too late.

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