The Murder of a Nun, the Arrest of a Priest, and Cover-up in the Catholic Church.
Centre stage of Sin, Shame and Secrets is the media-frenzied murder charge against Reverend Gerald Robinson. In 1980, on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, an elderly nun was strangled to death in the chapel of a Catholic hospital in Toledo, Ohio. The killer then wrapped the her body in an altar cloth and stabbed her 32 times in the face, neck and torso. Police reports described it as a 'ceremonial killing'.
The intense, high-profile police investigation in the months that followed the murder included interviews with more than 600 people, including the slain nun's colleagues in the Sisters of Mercy convent, relatives, hospital staff, patients, and visitors, and a number of suspects ranging from convicted criminals to Satan worshippers, from co-workers to members of the clergy. No arrests were made.
Until now. On April 23, 2004, Toledo's cold-case squad arrested a slight, mild-mannered 66-year-old priest, Father Gerald Robinson, and charged him in the 24-year old murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
The book details not only the particular and bizarre circumstances of the nun's death and the arrest of a local priest decades later, but also the myriad factors that caused law-enforcement and criminal-justice officials to come up empty-handed, despite an exhaustive investigation and compelling evidence pointing to Father Robinson as a prime suspect.
