Ohio priest's trial in death of nun will include talk of rituals, cults

James Ewinger, Plain Dealer Reporter
Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Toledo- There are no little murders. But Gerald Robinson is about to go on trial in Toledo for one that is unusually large, judging by the interest.

He is a Roman Catholic priest. The victim, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, was a nun, and the slaying occurred more than 20 years ago, in the chapel of a hospital where they worked.

The crime is anchored to Easter Sunday - the most sacred, defining day in Christendom. It occurred on Holy Saturday 1980, the day before Easter and what would have been the nun's 72nd birthday.

Robinson's murder trial begins Monday, the day after Easter 2006, when a Lucas County Common Pleas judge begins empaneling a jury under the glare of national - and quite possibly international - media attention.

And why wouldn't the media descend?

There are intimations of a ritual killing, satanic cults, organized sexual abuse and an institutional cover-up.

Someone strangled and stabbed Pahl at least 30 times - the wounds defining an inverted cross. Some of her clothes were pulled off, suggesting a sexual assault.

The allegations of dark rituals have aroused interest, and antagonism as well.

"That's just a . . . smokescreen," said Dave Davison, a retired Toledo police officer who was the first to see the body.

It is one of the few points of agreement between Davison and retired Deputy Chief Ray Vetter, who was in charge of detectives at the time.

Davison accuses the heavily Roman Catholic Police Department of colluding with the diocese.

Robinson was a suspect from the beginning - probably the only other point on which the two former cops agree. "This officer [Davison], he's come up with an awful lot of outlandish stuff," Vetter said in a telephone interview. He agreed there were no signs of any ritual and that Robinson emerged as the main suspect.

The suspect list narrowed down to Robinson "because we didn't have anyone else," and because of his close association with the dead nun. Deception by the priest also heightened suspicion.

But the case was weak, Vetter said, and officials didn't want to go to trial and risk an acquittal that would bar any later prosecution.

The evidence - and the allegations about rituals - would surface only a few years ago, when one woman pressed complaints about her own sexual abuse onto a diocese that many think did not want to hear, believe or act on them.

She identified Robinson as one of her abusers, when she was a child, and her claims ran to satanic rituals that involved at least one other Toledo-area priest.

Note that word "ritual," because it is a refrain in this case, sounded by many voices.

Another Toledo woman and her husband filed suit last year against the Toledo diocese, alleging the same kind of abuse and satanic rites.

Catherine Hoolahan is a lawyer representing about two dozen people, half with lawsuits against the diocese and the rest pressing their claims through a mediation process.

Hoolahan had doubts about the satanic and ritual abuse until three people with no connection were saying roughly the same things. Two were her clients, and both linked Robinson to ritualized abuse.

The Rev. Jeffrey Grob is associate vicar for canonical services with the Chicago Archdiocese. He has been called as an expert witness in Robinson's trial and is expected to testify about the significance of ritual in the case.

Grob, contacted by telephone, would not disclose his knowledge of the case, except to say that "some kind of ritual took place." He said that in general, the possibility of satanic ritual is not far-fetched, even where priests are involved.

"A priest is just as susceptible as anyone else," Grob said. "In some ways more susceptible." There is the allure of power, and "if anyone believes in God, there is a firm presumption they also believe in the demonic."

The other component in the Robinson case is the possibility of an official cover-up in one form or another.

There has been testimony and extensive reporting about how the Toledo Police Department had people to whom the diocese could turn when priests were acting inappropriately. The goal was to handle the situation away from public scrutiny, possibly to spare the reputation of the church.

A spokeswoman for the Toledo diocese said Monday that officials would not comment about the Robinson case. The general public posture has been that the diocese has worked to end abuse and to cooperate with outside investigations.

But police came to believe that the diocese was less than honest because it held back documents that were discovered only after two searches of church offices.

The Rev. Stephen Stanberry, a priest in the Toledo diocese who has been critical of its conduct in the abuse scandal, said he asked Bishop Leonard Blair why he did not give police all the documents they sought. "He said, in front of a roomful of priests, that 'we gave them what they asked for.' "

The pattern, nationwide, often has been reluctant contrition by the church - and reluctant cooperation with authorities.

In general, the cover-ups and the underlying abuse were possible because of the level of trust that people had in the church and its priests.

One must also consider the esteem in which the church itself is held. Toledo, like Cleveland, is a complex industrial city on Lake Erie, built up by the sweat of immigrants, and the capital of big business.

The Toledo diocese covers 19 counties and has more than 300,000 in the faith.

Catholic means universal, and in urban America like nowhere else in the world, the Church of Rome earned the universal status.

It was the warm, welcoming hand that sheltered and guided hundreds of thousands of largely European immigrants toward full citizenship.

The church did this with an all-encompassing system that included schools and hospitals, many run by orders of nuns. One of these was Mercy Hospital in Toledo, run by the Sisters of Mercy - which included Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.

Toledo had a robust Catholic community in 1980, so much so that it could assign not one but two full-time chaplains to Mercy. One was the Rev. Gerald Robinson, ordained in 1964.

The nuns have since closed that hospital, but run seven others in northwest Ohio.

Robinson, too, continued to thrive, until 2004, when he was arrested and charged. Bishop Blair visited him in jail and placed him on leave from the priesthood then.

The rest of his story awaits the authorship of 12 jurors.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jewinger@plaind.com, 216-999-3905