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Tonight on Dateline. It was so smoky. I could see flames. I was hysterical. My house was on fire.
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My mom's in there. I wanted to save her. She was dead before the fire was set. This was not an accident. This was a murder.
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I couldn't think of anybody that would want to hurt her. We have the clock's frozen. It's burned in the fire.
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There's our timeline. Boom. Did you ever ask your dad if he was involved? Nope. Why?
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I didn't want to believe that that could even be true. I'd ask him a lot of very sensitive questions, a lot of painful questions.
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They cast a wide net on suspects. He had a explosive temper. You could hear him from our house.
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He's done some really horrible stuff. Did you think that April was putting the blame on her husband to try and save herself?
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You have to. It was a complete cover-up. Somebody's not telling me something. Some things are very challenging to prove because they're just so bad.
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and make no sense. It becomes an obsession to provide your mom justice. A victim with no enemies,
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a police department with no answers, and a pair of siblings with no shortage of determination.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Blaine Alexander with Justice for Joy
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Here we go, we're going to get a family portrait Everybody smile, wave If only they could freeze this moment in time
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David, Joy, and Angie Hibbs That's dad, Charlie, behind the camera A young family facing a future they never saw coming.
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Just 11 months after they took this home video, joy would be gone. Just life itself had been changed forever for me.
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And cut! Cut! Bristol Township, Pennsylvania. April 19th, 1991. The day David Hibbs can never forget.
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This is a normal morning. You have a new puppy in the house. Walk me through that morning.
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My dad woke up and he put the puppy in bed with my mom. And then he came and scooped me out of bed and put me in bed with my mom so that we had a chance to play with the puppy for a little bit before we had to get up and get ready for school.
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David's dad, Charlie, left early for work. His big sister, Angie, headed off to high school.
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David took the bus to his elementary school and had a pretty good day. I was actually issued an honor roll certificate.
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I was so excited to get home and show my mom. School was out early that day, and 12-year-old David rushed home, hoping to catch his mom before she left for work.
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What's the first thing that you noticed when you stepped off the bus? I saw my mom's car in the driveway, and I was thrilled because I knew we didn't miss each other.
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As I was headed down the driveway, I noticed black smoke coming out of the vent on the side of the house there.
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Right at the top. Yeah. It wasn't until I ran around the back and opened the back door that I was met with that big plume of black smoke.
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Sure. And I saw flames. David couldn't see his mother anywhere. He ran, screaming for help.
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As a neighbor called 911, David raced back to the house, hell-bent on saving his mom.
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A neighbor grabbed me and held me. I was kicking and punching and trying to escape her grasp.
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Once the fire trucks and the medics arrived, a medic grabbed me and put me in the back of an ambulance.
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Firefighters Tom Tryon and Kevin Brannigan were quickly on the scene. We're down on our knees. We're starting to crawl. So as I'm going in the kitchen, past the stove, I notice that the four burners are on. So I turn them off.
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Sixteen-year-old Angie was still at school when she heard about the fire. She hurried home, having no idea how serious it was.
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My mom and I just purchased my prom gown. And that's what I was thinking about on the ride home.
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You're thinking, is my prom dress okay? Yeah. Yeah. Did you have any idea that your mom was still home?
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No, not at all. That didn't even cross my mind. No. Back inside the house, firefighter Brannigan had made his way into David's room.
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And you turned and you saw something. All I saw was a body charred. So I tapped my buddy on the back.
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I said, Smook, there's a body. He shut the hoops down and we got out. Why did you get out immediately?
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Well, because there was a body there, so there's going to be an investigation, so we didn't want to interfere with anything.
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They don't prepare you for that when you're going through training, you know. You never expected that?
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No. It changed the dynamics of that fire real quick. Could you tell it was a woman?
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No. It was that badly burned? Yeah. Yeah. The second that you started talking about it, you got emotional.
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Yeah. I can see that affects you. It affects you still today. Yep. David was still locked in the ambulance when the driver broke the news.
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Do you remember what he said to you Something to the effect of your mom didn make it When you heard that did you even believe him in that moment I didn believe him No
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David finally got out of the ambulance, found the puppy, and then his sister. He was frantic and said, Mommy is still in there.
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And I thought to myself, how? How do you have this puppy? How did the puppy get out of this house?
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And not my mom. It didn't make sense to me. None of it made sense. And I remember my dad coming and him walking up towards our house.
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I think he tried to get up the side of the house to go that way. He was trying to go in the house.
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I believe so, yeah. But her father and everyone else stopped cold when first responders brought out Joy's body.
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I remember him leaning up against her car and he was sobbing. And I had never seen my dad cry before.
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What did you think when you saw your dad crying for the first time in your life?
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I was scared. That fear would grow as David and his sister learned the true cause of their mom's death.
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I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Like, it wasn't true. It was the beginning of a journey that would haunt them for decades and reveal a world of betrayals on the road to justice.
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I mean, there were lies upon lies upon lies. We're going to go pedal and metal. They're going to be scorched earth behind me so bit.
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Do you believe that this was just gross incompetence, shoddy police work, or that they intentionally looked the other way?
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There's only one explanation. It's one of the last videos ever taken of Joy Hibbs.
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She's in David's room. It's a simple, silly kind of moment. There's Joy playing with the hamster
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and David just being a kid. Well, this is my bedroom, Mom. Get out of my bedroom, please.
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Excuse me for living. Here is that same room after the fire. I just thought, no, there's no way.
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She would have climbed out a window. She would have did anything to get out. She's strong. She can do this. She can get out.
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I thought it was the computer or the aquarium or something that I had plugged into my room had caught fire and that she died trying to put out a fire that essentially I had caused.
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You're sitting with this unbelievable guilt thinking that you, in some way, were responsible for your mom's death.
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Yes. and yet as firefighters moved from room to room they spotted something suspicious it looked like
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that there was multiple fires like fire here fire there that was the only thing that seemed odd to
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me fire investigators combing through the wreckage noticed the same thing chief fire marshal kevin
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dipolito talk to me about that walkthrough what did that show it showed there was no physical
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connection between the fire in the bedroom, the fire just inside the kitchen at the trash can,
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and the fire on top of the stove. That means that they were all set separately. Absolutely.
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They paid particular attention to the stove, where all four burners had been left on.
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How was the fire set on the stove? The stovetop was set by piling normal combustibles
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on top of one of the burners. So somebody piled a whole lot of flammable stuff on top of the stove.
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Correct. This was arson. And when the autopsy results came back, they confirmed something even more horrifying.
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It wasn't the fire that killed Joy. She was murdered. The autopsy revealed no smoke in the lungs, which indicated that Ms. Hibbs had passed away prior to the fire being set.
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The details were brutal. Her ribcage was crushed. She was stabbed five times and was likely strangled.
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I remember the adults talking and overhearing things that were being said amongst them.
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What did you overhear? That she was murdered. And the house was set on fire intentionally to cover it up.
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That room was burnt pretty bad. The only evidence I saw there was just that body.
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I mean, there wasn't going to be no fingerprints, no footprints. You knew there wouldn't be much for investigators to work with.
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Murder, arson, and a victim who was beloved by family and friends. Who would do this?
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None of it made sense, especially to her children. Beautiful smile. The smile. It's everything.
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The kindest person you would ever meet. She was from the South, and she had a beautiful, charming Southern accent that everyone just adored.
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Everything outdoors. Fishing, camping, all our vacations were outdoors. Gardening.
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She didn't wear a whole lot of makeup, but she did like doing her hair. Her hair had to be perfect with the hairspray She took time on her hair Yes she did David says he and his mom were inseparable
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Some of my earliest memories, I would follow her around the house. I would grab a hold of her nightgown and just follow her wherever she went.
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I never left her alone. You were like her shadow. I was a shadow. You were stuck to her.
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Joy and their dad, Charlie, met in high school in Florida. They got married after graduation, had the kids, and settled in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania.
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By 1990, they had come a long way. She had various jobs in the past, and she made a choice to go back to school to become a medical assistant and get a certification.
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And my sister and I were so proud of her. What about your dad? What did he do for work?
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My dad worked in construction. Talk to me about the dynamics between your mom and your dad.
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They loved each other. She loved him. He loved her. There she is, coming home from work.
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Charlie, again, manning the camera. Here she comes. Hi. Hell, she's in a good mood, too.
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I got you a stress. Baby, I got all kinds of stress. Say hi to grandma and pop pop.
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All right, here we go. She got changed and then we'll get back to this. There we go.
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Look at that body. 35 years old. Look at that body. New hairdo. She's going California style now.
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What do you think your mom saw in your dad? All of the things that my mom enjoyed doing.
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my dad also enjoyed doing. So fishing, being outdoors. She loved riding on the back of his
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motorcycle with him. Charlie was an avid biker, and back then he dressed the part.
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Long hair, very long beard, jeans, flannels, t-shirts. On the occasion that my mom would make
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him get dressed up to go to a family function or, you know, he wasn't thrilled about having
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the dress stop because he liked his normal look. He sure did. Who would you say was in charge
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between your mom and your dad? My mom. Your mom? Absolutely. Hands down. 100%. But now Joy was gone and her murder was fast becoming more than one family's tragedy.
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The whole town was reeling as investigators frantically searched for the killer in their
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You didn't know if the murderer was right here in your neighborhood. We had no idea who the murderer was.
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When David Hibbs' mother was murdered, his childhood all but ended. I was terrified for my own life.
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Thinking that whoever had done it could possibly come back. Yes. I mean, it changed my entire life. Nothing was ever the same after that.
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This isn't something that pieces of it become less clear over time. No, that day has burned in my memory forever.
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News of the murder quickly spread. Sunday morning, my mom came in to wake me up with the local newspaper in her hands.
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and she said, Colleen, Angie's mom was murdered. Colleen Kelly was a friend of Angie's
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and just 16 years old when she watched the house burn. This was something that went beyond the Hibbs family.
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This hit everybody. It did. It caused a sense of fear in the entire town that I don't feel we've ever felt before.
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You know, you didn't want to walk down the street at night by yourself because there was a murder that happened right on the same street that
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I grew up on. And you didn't know if the murderer was right here in your neighborhood.
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We had no idea who the murderer was. Investigators didn't have much to go on. They found no sign of forced entry, although they did find Joy's empty wallet in the living
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room, which led them to believe the killer also took her cash. But between the water damage and the overwhelming heat, forensic evidence was almost non-existent.
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How intense was this? The bedroom reached what's called full involvement, meaning it was flames from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, venting out the windows and also extending down the hallway.
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That room would have easily exceeded a thousand degrees. Joanne Chiavalia with the Bucks County Courier Times has reported extensively on the Joy Hibbs case.
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To have been murdered in the way that she was murdered, that's a lot of anger to take out on someone who didn't appear to have an enemy in the world.
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This was a community where people knew each other and cared about each other. And for one of their own to be murdered in such a way and then the house set on fire, people were frightened.
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Joanne has examined the last hours of Joy Hibb's life. Joy had to be at work at 2 p.m., so she ran her errands in the morning.
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She went to the bank and got some cash. Then she went grocery shopping. From shopping, she came home about 11 o'clock a.m.
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the neighbors know this because they saw her walking around 11 o'clock in the neighborhood.
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And then just after 11 Joy had some visitors a pastor and his assistant from a local Baptist church A few weeks earlier Joy had attended the Easter services at that church and she was thinking about joining
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and she had signed a card saying that she would be open to having a visit. They were coming to talk to her about joining their church and about her religious faith.
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They were the last people known to have seen Joy alive. I don't know who they were. I never had met them that I recall. Nothing.
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Do you remember that ever being something that police asked you about? They did. They asked me, but I didn't have much to offer them.
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The ministers told police they left around 1145. By the time David got home, more than an hour later, his mother was dead.
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So investigators were able to narrow this down to a pretty specific time frame. Yes, using receipts and neighbor witnesses.
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And there was something else. David's clock was stopped at 1254, the time burned in from the heat of the fire.
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Police believed Joy was killed between 1150 and 1250. Given that the ministers had been at the Hibs' home close to that time frame,
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police wanted to know more about them. How much were they in police crosshairs? My understanding is they were eliminated pretty quickly because they both had tight alibis.
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The pastor said he had a dentist appointment right after. So, you know, the alibis checked out.
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A dead end. Police continued to search for people who might know something about Joy's murder. A neighbor. A friend. Colleen Kelly saw something earlier that morning. She brushed it off then. But now? What did you notice? What stood out to you?
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The car that was parked in front of the house was parked in an odd way. Whose car was it? And what was it doing there?
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What do you remember about Joy, Angie's mom? She was an absolute sweetheart. Just someone you knew you could always go to and talk to if you needed to.
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Everyone says they loved Joy Hibbs. But police were hearing about a series of troubling incidents that suggested otherwise.
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It all began two months before the murder, when someone threw a brick through the Hibbs window.
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At the time, Joy and Charlie thought, maybe it's just kids. I think my dad at one point thought it must have been one of my sister's friends that had a beef with her.
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They shrugged it off, but the vandalism didn't stop. One day, my mom came to my school and got me out of class.
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And what I learned was that she had come home from work and our rear door had been kicked in and it was hanging on its hinges.
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And she came home to find this? Yes. And she was afraid to enter the house and came to my school to ask me if I knew anything about this or what happened.
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What did you tell her? I didn't have a clue. I was asked by my parents if I was feuding with any of my girlfriends or any friends that would want to do this.
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We came up empty-handed. No answers. Just a few weeks later, someone vandalized Joy's car.
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We awoke one morning to find that all four tires of her car were slashed. And this happened overnight?
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Yes. Did you ever find out who did this? No. Now police wanted to know if there was a connection between the vandalism and Joy's murder.
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They asked for a list of names of my friends, first and last names. anything about my mom and dad's relationship.
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At that time, did you have much to tell them? Not really, no. She's never hurt anybody or anything.
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I couldn't think of anybody that would want to hurt her. Bristol Township Police pulled together a list of potential suspects.
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In addition to those classmates of Angie's, police investigated a sanitation worker
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who was seen walking toward the back of the Hibs' home before the murder. They interviewed and did background checks on people who might have seen Joy at the grocery store and followed her home.
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Detectives also looked into other people who may not have known the family personally,
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but had been in the area of the home at the time that this happened. Vinnie Vella is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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He's covered the case for years. Through that line of investigating, they found that there was a mailman who was filling in for the usual mail carrier on the day of Joy's murder.
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So as they're pulling at all these different possible strings, they're quickly ruling out a number of people.
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Police interviewed more than a dozen people. None of them seemed to rise to the level of suspect.
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But there was something Colleen Kelly saw around the time of the murder. So when you're driving down this street, you know this is Angie Street.
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What did you notice? What stood out to you? The car that was parked in front of the house was parked in an odd way,
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and it was facing the opposite direction, and the tail end was sticking out from the curb.
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As if someone had been parked in front of the house, pulled up to the house in a hurry, too rushed to park correctly.
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What kind of car was this? It was a blue Monte Carlo. When you saw that, did you think, something's off?
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Did you think something was wrong, or did you just think, ah, that's strange, and just kind of brush it off?
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I thought, that's strange, and I brushed it off. But later, as she watched the house burn, she thought she should say something.
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David was huddled there with his sister. I was standing with her and several of her friends,
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And one of her friends had mentioned that just before the fire, they saw a blue Monte Carlo parked outside of the house.
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Without even thinking much of it, I said, April drives a blue Monte Carlo. Colleen also told the police, who learned that April was April Atkins.
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She was a close friend and former neighbor of Joy's who used to live two doors down.
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The two women spent hours together in Joy's kitchen, just talking. They would hang out.
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I remember her and April. My brother would be sitting at the table. April had a small child.
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I think he was about two years old at the time. And my mom loved children, loved babies.
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I can remember her holding April's son. And it was just a natural connection, I think,
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as two women neighbors hitting it off. David remembers as a kid, he liked April.
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Her husband, Robert Atkins, not so much. When you think back to that time as a young boy,
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do you remember much about her husband, Robert? I remember that he had a explosive temper.
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You knew that even as a child? Oh, yes. Had you seen it? Yes. You could hear him.
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you could hear him from our house. And David remembered another time when he heard that voice
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in a mysterious phone call between Robert Atkins and Joy. That's when I said, what's going on?
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And she couldn't not tell me because I had heard it and she knew she had to, you know,
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tell me what was happening. As they continued to chase leads that went nowhere, detectives turned their attention to Robert Atkins.
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He knew Joy Hibbs, and a car similar to his had been seen near the burning house.
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But it was David's story about a phone call he overheard just weeks before the murder
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that really caught their interest. She was standing in the kitchen. She had the receiver a couple inches away from her ear.
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And I knew right away, I could tell who it was because, you know, I used to hear Robert Atkins screaming at April, you know, two houses down.
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I knew his voice. You could tell immediately. Oh, yes. Yeah. Screaming at my mom.
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She was shaken by this. And that's when I said, what's going on? And she couldn't not tell me because I had heard it and she knew she had to, you know, tell me what was happening.
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It had to do with marijuana, which was a delicate subject for Joy and David. They had talked about it before.
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She described it as sort of like drinking, like it's not okay to drink, but sometimes parents do that.
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And she just sort of normalized it for me. After hearing that phone conversation, David said his mom told him she and Charlie had bought some marijuana from Robert.
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There was a dispute over the quality of the marijuana they received. And I can specifically remember hearing my dad say something to the effect of it's all seeds and stems.
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And then she told me that your dad wanted me to return this marijuana that wasn't good.
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And now Robert Atkins is threatening me. And this is somebody that you're already scared of.
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Yes. You knew he had a temper. What did you think when you heard that conversation?
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I knew my mom was shaken, but I don't think she took it serious because it's a $20 marijuana deal.
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She didn't think it would escalate beyond that. Right. And that's how he communicated. That's how he spoke to April.
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He was somebody who yells. That was just normal. Yes. When they asked me, is there anybody who would want to harm or hurt your mother?
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He's the only person that came to mind. So you told police all of this? Right from the start.
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By then, homicide investigators knew a little about Robert Atkins. According to the people who knew him, Robert Atkins was a fairly straightforward guy,
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somebody who kept to himself, had certain interests, and didn't really venture far outside of them.
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At various points, he was a bouncer. He drove trucks. He had sort of a fledgling sports memorabilia business.
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Police learned that Robert had a criminal record, but it looked like a few minor offenses.
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and killing someone over a $20 weed deal did seem unlikely. But still, they wanted to talk to him.
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Police initially approached Robert Atkins and he said that it was true that he had sold marijuana to Joy Hibbs
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and that in the weeks before she had been killed, there was a bit of a dispute between the two of them
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over the quality of the marijuana. But at that point, he was very adamant that he had nothing to do with the fire and her murder.
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By the time of the killing, Robert and April had moved to an apartment eight miles away.
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Robert told police that during the window of the crime he received a phone call on his landline at home Then he and april took the kids on a trip to the pocono mountains about two hours away the atkins is provided an alibi they said that there
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was no way they could have been near the scene at the time that the fire and the murder occurred
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because they were up in the pocono mountains at a hotel police went to the poconos to check out
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their story. Turns out they were there Friday afternoon, just like they said. But what about
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that blue Monte Carlo, the one that was parked so haphazardly in front of the Hibs home?
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Was it April's? The police came to my house and interviewed me. And in the interview,
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I did mention the car. That same day, they took me to a parking lot to look at a car.
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and the car that they showed me was not the car that I saw outside of the house.
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It was a Monte Carlo, but it was not the color of the car that was out front of the house.
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That Monte Carlo police showed to Colleen was black and it belonged to Robert and April Atkins.
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Police figured the blue Monte Carlo she saw in front of the Hibbs home must have belonged to someone else.
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just one more reason to remove the Atkins from the list of possible suspects. And as that list continued to dwindle, police narrowed their focus to one particular person.
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My dad. Did you ever ask your dad if he was involved? Did you ever ask him directly?
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Nope. Why? Because I didn't want to believe it. Charlie Hibbs was about to find himself in the crosshairs of the investigation.
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One of the things that came up during the investigation was that you could have a temper, but sometimes you had a short fuse.
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Would you consider yourself someone with a temper at times? Police investigating Joy Hibbs' murder had hit a wall as leads dried up.
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They had already questioned Joy's husband, Charlie, but in the absence of other suspects, he became the focus of their investigation.
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Get ready to give a grand tour of your bedroom or garage. Let me straighten it up, okay?
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Tell me how you found out that police were possibly looking at him. The way it was explained to me at the time was that the husband is always the first suspect and that they were doing their due diligence and that was just a normal process.
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but I never thought more of it. Did you have any thought that maybe my dad had something to do with this?
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No. But detectives discovered something about Charlie, his anger. When you look back, Angie, on growing up, did you ever fear your dad sometimes?
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I think there was a healthy fear. That means what? You didn't dare step out of line?
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I tried not to. She said her mom shielded her. She was kind of stepping in, defending you when necessary.
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Correct. Would your dad ever have a temper sometimes? Yes. What did that look like?
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Hollering, the voice, the tone, the eyes was enough. The way he'd look at you? Do you remember the types of questions police were asking you?
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This is Charlie Hibbs. They asked me about extramarital affairs. They wanted to know if there was anyone that we owed money to.
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Was there anyone that Joy made extremely mad? During all this time, what are you telling them?
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Everything they want to know. He felt police zeroed in on him because they didn't like the way he looked.
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What did you look like back in those days? Some people would say a scary looking guy, scruffy.
00:34:11
With lots of tattoos. So you had a biker look about you. Well, I did. Even though Charlie and his biker buddies did charity work, he wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy.
00:34:23
One of the things that came up during the investigation was that sometimes you had a short fuse.
00:34:29
Would you consider yourself someone with a temper at times? I probably did have somewhat of a temper, but, you know, tried to control it around family especially.
00:34:39
He struggled to keep his temper in check as the police never seemed to let up. I was taken back in for more questioning.
00:34:49
I believe I had three polygraphs and weeks of questioning. About your work, about what you were doing that day.
00:34:57
That was a continuing question was your timeline of that day. Charlie said at the time of the murder, he'd been doing construction work about 20 miles away in downtown Philly with co-workers.
00:35:11
What you're saying is you had a very strong alibi. It couldn't be any stronger. Names, times, people to talk to.
00:35:18
Absolutely. What's more, he insisted he loved Joy. And as soon as he heard about the house fire, he raced home.
00:35:27
I was hysterical for many, many hours. I can't remember what I thought at that time. I was devastated.
00:35:36
How did you finally realize that Joy didn't make it? When they brought her body out.
00:35:46
With no evidence against him, Charlie seemed to be off the hook and the investigation stalled.
00:35:53
By about the three mark anybody who was considered a person of interest had been cleared All of their alibis had been checked Everybody seemed to be solid And there was little they could do beyond that
00:36:07
Gradually, the Hibbs family picked up the pieces of their lives. Charlie rebuilt their burned-out house and gave himself a makeover.
00:36:18
I cut my hair shaved. I wanted my appearance to be a little bit more decent. Why'd you do that?
00:36:27
Just to represent our family and maybe not be so scary. I don't know. You were stepping into a different role, essentially.
00:36:36
It was a whole different world. I didn't even know how to write checks and pay mortgages.
00:36:41
Joy handled all that. Yeah, everything. The weeks dragged into months, then years.
00:36:48
Charlie stayed in Pennsylvania and kept working. David went off to college in New York, then moved to Oregon and started a business as a nurse practitioner.
00:37:00
And Angie got married, started a family, and got a job with an industrial safety company.
00:37:07
All without joy. There's not a holiday or a celebration that went by that wasn't affected with her not being there.
00:37:18
raising my kids. Just life itself had been changed forever for me that day. You have to put all of this behind you at times
00:37:36
in order to move forward, but you never forget. And it always comes back to the fact that police couldn't solve this.
00:37:47
At this point, were you frustrated with Bristol Township Police? I was always frustrated with them.
00:37:56
David's frustration would compel him to keep looking for answers. Answers that years later would recast doubt on a familiar figure.
00:38:07
What could my dad have gotten into to cause this? So you started to think that my dad could have been involved in my mom's death.
00:38:15
Yes. Did you interview Charlie Hibbs yourself? Yes. And then you get a call? I get a call.
00:38:34
2006 marked 15 years since Joy Hibbs' murder. The case had gone cold, and her son, David, by then 27 years old, had lost faith it would ever be solved by the Bristol police.
00:38:52
So he decided to try and solve it. On a trip home, he stopped by the police department and asked for a copy of the case file.
00:39:01
What I was urging them to do was to release some of that information. I wanted somebody else to come in and take a look at the evidence that they had.
00:39:10
He said the police rejected his request. But a lieutenant did tell David something that turned his world upside down.
00:39:21
The name of the person he thought was responsible for killing Joy. In his opinion, it was my father.
00:39:31
he was certain that it was my father's fault how did you feel when you walked away from that
00:39:40
conversation i was angry i was angry at my dad because i never thought my dad killed my mother
00:39:49
never but now i had this new piece of information that made me question everything i thought i knew
00:39:58
about my father. Now you thought this might be possible. Did you ever rationalize in your mind how you thought your dad could have possibly been involved?
00:40:11
All the time. What did you think? That he pissed somebody off or had a beef with somebody.
00:40:17
It was never him directly, but it was always like, what could my dad have gotten into to cause this?
00:40:26
Did you ever ask him directly about it? He pulled completely away. We barely communicated. I didn't know that it was the police that was causing the problem.
00:40:38
Did you see that rift between the two of them? Yes. Yes. It wasn't good. Of all times, we needed to be together and stick strong. And that's not what we were doing at that moment. No.
00:40:54
desperate for answers david decided to shake things up in 2014 23 years after the murder
00:41:06
he gave an interview to the huffington post and accused the police of botching the investigation
00:41:13
you get to a point where you're just willing to put everything on the line and hope that the criticism towards the police would kind of create some kind of movement at this
00:41:24
point, you really are the biggest advocate in this. Yeah, it becomes an obsession. It becomes
00:41:31
your mission, and you're just driven to provide your mom justice. The story, also covered by
00:41:40
Dateline's Cold Case Spotlight digital series, happened to coincide with new county efforts to
00:41:46
solve cold cases. The police department assigned a new detective, Mike Slaughter. I understand you
00:41:54
You really wanted to take this case Yes What was it about this case specifically that really interested you Here was this working class family living the American dream
00:42:06
Wife, mom gets murdered. I don't even know about it. Many of us didn't even know about it.
00:42:12
Slaughter, who is now a sergeant, had been on the force for 17 years and worked narcotics before becoming a detective.
00:42:21
He spent weeks pouring through the old files and said much of the case was solid police work.
00:42:31
However, surprising to me, there were no recorded interviews. There were no cassette tape interviews.
00:42:39
There were some documented interviews of people typewritten and handwritten, but there weren't many.
00:42:47
Also surprising, the lack of cooperation he received from the original detectives.
00:42:53
A few did speak with me. Most did not want to speak with me. They didn't want to talk about it at all.
00:42:59
Correct. Why? You'd have to ask them. Slaughter began working through the list of potential suspects.
00:43:07
First up, Joy's husband, Charlie. Did you interview Charlie Hibbs yourself? I did. I had to ask him a lot of very sensitive questions.
00:43:15
A lot of painful questions, a lot of graphic questions, a lot of questions regarding other people, other adult lifestyles.
00:43:24
Charlie answered them all. And Slaughter could find no connection between Charlie and the murder.
00:43:31
Charlie Hibbs was thoroughly vetted, multiple sources. And Charlie Hibbs is totally clear of this case.
00:43:40
Did you feel that the attention was finally starting to shift away from you? Yes, with Slaughter, I did. Yeah.
00:43:50
So what about Robert and April Atkins? Slaughter needed to look at them, too. And that part of the investigation would take the detective into a maze of blue walls, forcing him to confront former cops and bosses.
00:44:07
I don't need a mess. Okay. I'm sorry about that. No, it's okay. Why did you have to take a break?
00:44:14
It's cops on cops. Sergeant Mike Slaughter was working his way through the list of potential suspects in the Joy Hibbs murder case.
00:44:36
Next up, April Atkins and her husband Robert, who had that dispute with Joy over marijuana.
00:44:43
They were now divorced, so Slaughter had to track them down individually. When you first got this case, did you interview Robert Atkins?
00:44:53
We did. Robert gave him the same alibi he'd given detectives back in 1991. He said he had proof he was home at the time of the murder.
00:45:03
He talked about how somebody had called him or he had a phone call and then how they went up to Poconos that day.
00:45:12
When he interviewed April, she confirmed her ex-husband's story. But there were things about their conversation that raised the detective's alarm.
00:45:22
She minimized her friendship acquaintance with Joy Hibbs, stating that they hardly knew each other.
00:45:29
we knew then that her relationship with joy hibbs was much more than a neighbor two doors away
00:45:35
and then she says i had nothing to do with joy's demise which i just thought that was that was odd
00:45:41
how did you leave things with her try to leave on a polite note just as we did robert gave my card
00:45:46
phone number slaughter wanted to know what april had told police years earlier But strangely, it appeared she'd never been interviewed back in 1991.
00:46:01
For there to have never been an interview of April, was that a failure in this initial investigation?
00:46:07
It's easy for me to go back in time and critique somebody else's work, but I would have liked to think that April would be one of the main people that they would have interviewed and would have documented for it.
00:46:17
What's more, he discovered that Robert's 1991 interview was done by two narcotics detectives, not homicide detectives.
00:46:29
It seems to me like the narcotics unit was running this investigation. That's a problem.
00:46:35
Is that unusual? It's not usual. It's a problem because this is a homicide investigation.
00:46:41
He wondered what was going on. slaughter reached back out to one of those former detectives who'd brushed him off
00:46:50
someone who years after the murder became bristol's chief of police and was now retired
00:46:57
i put the word out that i needed to speak with him and would not speak with me i said one way
00:47:04
or another we have to talk i'll go there every day i'm going to the house every day i'm knocking
00:47:08
on the door knocking on the window until he talks to me and he was that resistant to talking with
00:47:12
This is somebody who was the police chief that I was hired under. So imagine I'm a little bit terrified of this.
00:47:17
And there's still a power grip. So finally, one day, another retired officer brokers that meeting.
00:47:26
This is after many, this is almost a year, I believe. The former detective told Slaughter that he started to pursue Robert Atkins back in 1991.
00:47:36
But then something happened. He got an order from his boss. He said that he was told to stay away from that person, from that suspect.
00:47:46
He was told to stay away? Yes. From Robert Atkins? Yes. Why? Robert Atkins wasn't a formant.
00:47:55
A police informant? Correct. No. Robert Atkins had been working with police on drug cases.
00:48:07
And he was instructed not to go down that road, not to pursue him as a suspect. Correct. I don't need a minute.
00:48:13
Okay. You're a cop and soldier. No, I'm good. Sorry about that. No, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
00:48:25
I can see it impacts you today. Yep. Why did you have to stop? Why did you have to take a break?
00:48:30
It's cops on cops. And I have an affection for these officers before me who trained me, taught me, hired me.
00:48:38
I live here now. We're invested in my family and I here. We love this township. Love the police department.
00:48:44
To hear that this may have been a murder suspect that was traded in exchange for drug deals, which are not a dime a dozen.
00:48:55
They're a penny a pound. We get drug intel all the time. It doesn't make sense in my brain.
00:49:05
In 1991, they knew that Bob Atkins was an informant for our police department. They were told to stay away from Bob Atkins, and they did.
00:49:14
And they have to look in the mirror at that. That seismic revelation brought into question the entire investigation.
00:49:23
Slaughter discovered the original detectives hadn't investigated Robert Atkins thoroughly.
00:49:28
He says they never pulled phone records that could have confirmed his alibi or figured out if he drove a blue Monte Carlo in addition to the black one he owned.
00:49:39
I think after that interview, I realized we're going now. This is it. We're going to solve this.
00:49:43
Pedal the metal. Whether it ends up in an arrest or something else, it's not important.
00:49:47
We're going to go pedal the metal. And they're going to be scorched earth behind me so bit.
00:49:52
Slaughter set out to check Robert and April's alibi himself, that phone call and the trip to the Poconos.
00:50:01
It didn't take much investigating to discover the alibi had a big hole. Joy was thought to have been killed shortly before 12.50 p.m., but it turned out Robert didn't have proof he was home during that time.
00:50:16
The person who called him on that landline said the call could have been as late as 1.30.
00:50:22
There's still plenty of time for the violent murder to have occurred at his hand, for him to set fire to the home of the Hibbs family, and then for him to be back at the village of Pembroke Apartments receiving this landline phone call.
00:50:37
As for the Poconos, yes, they'd gone there that afternoon. But April didn't sign the hotel register until nearly 5 p.m., more than four hours after the murder.
00:50:50
How long of a drive is it from his house to the Poconos? It's less than two hours.
00:50:57
So neither the Poconos trip nor the landline phone call accounted for the couple's whereabouts at the time of the murder.
00:51:05
They're not alibis. they're not alibi, they're post-crime Robert and April's alibi
00:51:11
was falling apart but if the detective was going to crack the case he was going to need
00:51:19
help let me ask you this April why did you want to sit down with us today Sergeant Mike Slaughter had worked the Joy Hibbs murder case for the better part of two years.
00:51:45
He was convinced that Robert Atkins and perhaps his wife April were responsible.
00:51:52
They rose to the top of your list of persons of interest. As the case starts to thaw out, they're the only two names left up at the top.
00:52:01
slaughter wrote up his findings including what he learned about atkins being a confidential
00:52:08
informant and about his lack of an alibi he handed the case off to the district attorney's office
00:52:15
not knowing if he had enough for an arrest and then you get a call you get a call
00:52:20
it was september 11th 2016 a few months after he'd passed off the case an officer at the station
00:52:28
had urgent news. He says, hey, there's some woman here that says it's really important.
00:52:34
Her name's April Atkins. I said, I'm on my way. You run down to the station. So 15 minutes later,
00:52:41
I get there. Inspector Slaughter, Bristol Township Police. I am in the conference room with April
00:52:46
Atkins. April, are you here by your free will? Yes. And you have something in your hand there.
00:52:52
What's that in your hand? This is your card. I've been keeping it. Yes. April was there to tell the
00:52:58
detective a secret she'd been keeping for 25 years a story she also agreed to tell us you
00:53:07
were ready to tell the truth you're darn right April said she met Robert in high school where
00:53:13
she was bullied she hoped he would protect her but she said it didn't work out that way even
00:53:21
after they got married and had kids I've been through a lot with this man you know he's done
00:53:27
some really horrible stuff to me. Still, she said, she was not prepared for what he told her the day Joy died.
00:53:38
She was getting ready for her shift at a special needs school when Robert walked in the door around lunchtime.
00:53:44
I'm in the kitchen, and he comes to the top of the stairs. And when I looked at him, I said, what happened to you?
00:53:54
He was covered He was covered in blood He was covered in blood Yes he was filthy He was absolutely filthy And then she said he said something that stopped her cold
00:54:08
He said, I stabbed somebody and lit a house on fire. He says he stabbed somebody and he had set a house on fire?
00:54:16
Yep. Did you ask him, like, what do you mean? What happened? No, no, I did not. I was very scared.
00:54:23
What are you thinking as you're hearing this? This is a eureka moment. This is a big, big moment.
00:54:30
Then what happened? Told me I had to call out of work, get the kids ready. We're going to the Poconos.
00:54:38
April said her husband threw his clothes in the wash and showered. Then she packed the kids into the car.
00:54:46
He drove so fast it was road rage all the way. It was so scary. Did you ask who he stabbed?
00:54:54
No. No. I couldn't say very much of anything. Because if he did that, who's next?
00:55:01
Me and my children. After a night at the hotel, she said Robert bought a new pair of sneakers.
00:55:09
Then he took the family on a walk. We followed him straight into these trees. He said, stay there.
00:55:19
And he left. And he was carrying a bag. When he came back, that bag was gone. She thought he'd gotten rid of evidence, maybe his bloody sneakers.
00:55:31
It wasn't until she got home and two detectives showed up to question Robert that she learned Joy had been murdered.
00:55:40
You knew, Joy. You all were friends. You had spent time in that house. What did you think when you found out that that was the house that had been burned down?
00:55:50
I was disgusted. Even so, April didn't say anything to police. She said she was afraid.
00:55:59
He carried a knife on him all the time. He would tap and I would know. So he would tap on his pocket where he kept his knife.
00:56:08
To remind me, right? Was that his way of threatening you? No. When you put that together, April, and you realized the person who had been killed was Joy,
00:56:17
Did you have a hard time with that, with staying silent? I would have discussions with him trying to tell him, why don't you turn yourself in and do the right thing.
00:56:27
It would get to the point where he would say, I'm going to tell him that it was you.
00:56:32
Every time I would get beaten. Oh, geez. What about when Slaughter interviewed her in 2014?
00:56:41
Why hadn't she said anything then? At this point, the two of you were divorced. Yes, it didn't even matter.
00:56:47
It didn't even matter. He still had control over you. Of course. What did you tell the detective?
00:56:52
I gave him Bob's story. You knew it was a lie. Oh, yes. One thing I don't like to lie.
00:56:59
Lies are not me. Someday I needed to make that right. April said she finally decided to come forward after she lost someone she loved.
00:57:10
It made her think of Joy's husband, Charlie. I can imagine what that felt like for Charlie.
00:57:18
You know, that pain. You started to really feel for Charlie Hibbs. I felt for them the whole time.
00:57:24
I was always on their side. Always. In here and in here. Mm-hmm. My heart. Even with all of that, I have to ask,
00:57:35
did you ever think that April was possibly just putting the blame on her husband to try and save herself?
00:57:41
You have to. We have to explore that she was possibly the person who had done this.
00:57:45
But when Slaughter considered all the evidence, he was convinced April was telling the truth.
00:57:52
She wasn't the drug dealer. She wasn't the one heard on the phone by David Hibbs.
00:57:58
It's a robber. April, I want to thank you for coming in, okay? You really believe me?
00:58:06
I believe you. After April left the station, Sergeant Slaughter sent the interview to the prosecutor's office, marked urgent.
00:58:15
This just happened. This sounds pretty, pretty damn important. He was confident he had done everything he could.
00:58:23
He left the case with the DA's office and trusted they would act quickly. But nothing happened.
00:58:30
The Hibbs family was in the dark about the investigation and April's confession.
00:58:36
One year passed, then two, then five, with David believing Sergeant Slaughter's investigation had gone nowhere.
00:58:47
I just assumed that he hit a dead end. Again? Again. During this time, were you angry with the Bristol Township police?
00:58:56
I don't think angry is the right word. Totally frustrated. it. By 2021, Charlie had retired and moved to the Northwest. He and David had reconciled,
00:59:11
but the years without joy had taken a toll. There were just too many moments that were lost. I would have been a happier person,
00:59:22
a better person having her with me. But he never gave up on solving the case. On the 30th anniversary of her murder,
00:59:36
he used his retirement savings to post a $25,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.
00:59:44
The Hibbs family agreed to a TV interview, which led to a meeting with the district attorney.
00:59:51
When you show up to the DA office with an entourage and a camera crew the doors open for you They start to feel some pressure Things started moving Yeah
01:00:06
Soon, Robert would face new questions, not from police, but from April. And detectives would secretly record every word.
01:00:17
This is Bob. Hey, we need to talk about something. For five years, there had been no movement in the case since Sergeant Slaughter handed off his findings to the DA's office.
01:00:43
But he never stopped hoping. I have the utmost confidence in their office that it'll happen when it happens.
01:00:50
Then, in the middle of 2021, it finally happened. Come to find out that they're investigating Robert Atkins.
01:00:59
The Bucks County DA's office assigned their own detective, David Hanks. Everything looked like it was pointing towards Robert Atkins.
01:01:08
So now you just needed to prove it. We needed something to push it over the edge.
01:01:12
So the detective reached out to April, who agreed to help. The next step was to ask her if she would consent to making a recording with Robert.
01:01:25
which she agreed to do. In December 2021, Hanks accompanied April to a hotel to secretly record phone calls with Robert.
01:01:36
This is a person who has spent years terrified of this man. Was she fearful during this process?
01:01:42
Obviously, it was in the back of her mind. Getting evidence against a former police informant
01:01:48
could be tricky. Are you hoping that Robert Atkins would in some way implicate himself?
01:01:54
Yes. You ready? I am. Good for it. Okay. Um, this is Bob. Hey, um, we need to talk about something.
01:02:07
Right from the start, Robert seemed combative. Are you paying attention to me? I wasn't, but I am now.
01:02:14
We try and tickle a conversation. Tickle a conversation? Tickle a conversation. You have to tee it up.
01:02:18
You have to, yeah. Especially if somebody hasn't spoken about an event for years and years and years.
01:02:25
The tickle was a made-up story. The police from Bucks County are in the parking lot downstairs.
01:02:32
April told Robert police had shown up asking about Joy Hibbs, and she wanted him to tell her what to say.
01:02:39
I'm asking you because you helped me last time what to say. I didn't do anything. I don't know what the f*** you're talking about.
01:02:47
You could hear his anger coming through on those tapes. You could really hear it coming through.
01:02:51
What would you like me to tell you? Robert continued to deny that he had coached April in the past.
01:02:56
I didn't say anything last time. What the f*** are you talking about? I don't know what the f*** you're talking about.
01:03:03
Do you think he knew that he was being recorded? He was very suspicious. You didn't realize your phone's probably tapped, right?
01:03:10
No. And he warned April while demeaning her. You don't even have to say anything.
01:03:15
You've already said a f***ing nothing. You know they got the Fifth Amendment for a reason.
01:03:19
I can't help that you're mentally disabled. I mean, you just tell them that you f***ing don't want to be bothered with the f***ers.
01:03:26
To see how far that takes me. You still f***ing got rights, you know. You see the f***ing China.
01:03:34
Robert yelled that he had an alibi. Your friend called and I'm the one that answered the f***ing phone.
01:03:40
And that was before we even f***ing left. We went upstate to the Poconos. If you can't remember that you were upstate, well, I don't know what to tell you.
01:03:48
I keep telling you, you can't be at two places at one time. It's f***ing possible.
01:03:54
You were hoping that in some way he would implicate himself. Did he ever directly implicate himself in those tapes?
01:03:59
No. But he did say this. The district attorney's office is the one that would file for a warrant.
01:04:08
He said that they're probably preparing a warrant. And he gave his children the impression that he was getting arrested for something that happened 30 years ago.
01:04:19
The next month, January 2022, prosecutor Jennifer Shorn, now the Bucks County District Attorney,
01:04:27
empaneled a grand jury to hear the evidence against Robert Atkins. We in Bucks County have been very successful at breathing life into some unsolved cases.
01:04:38
She would later add Deputy DA Kristen McElroy to her team. Old cases can be notoriously difficult to prove in court.
01:04:46
I mean, it's been 30 years. A lot of people forget things, forget details, have passed on.
01:04:50
Exactly. When you found out that this was going before a grand jury, what was that moment like?
01:04:56
I was excited, but there was still a lot of information I didn't know. David was a witness and got access to key testimony from the DA.
01:05:06
And that's when he got this revelation. I learned that in 2016, April Atkins came forward on her own accord and confessed that her husband, Robert Atkins, murdered my mother.
01:05:22
I was angry. He was even more angry to learn that Robert Atkins had been a police informant and that his alibi was no good.
01:05:33
He says in the past, he'd begged the lead investigator to check into it. He repeatedly said that we thoroughly investigated Robert Atkins, but that he had a solid alibi.
01:05:46
We now know that he had absolutely no alibi. These are easy mistakes. Simple things that could have been checked.
01:05:53
You don have to be a detective You don have to have any training to see that this timeline makes no sense Do you believe that this was just gross incompetence shoddy police work or that they intentionally looked the other way
01:06:11
For years, I always suspected that this was just gross mishandling and that they botched this case.
01:06:20
And now there's only one explanation, that they turned the other way and they covered this up.
01:06:29
They covered up whatever they needed to, to have their informant. Do you think they were protecting him?
01:06:36
I do. How did you feel? Betrayed. In May 2022, after five months of testimony, the grand jury recommended first-degree murder, arson, and robbery charges against Robert Atkins, and he was arrested.
01:06:54
Journalists hit the then district attorney with the two big questions the Hibbs family had.
01:07:02
Why did it take so long for the DA to take the case? And what happened with the investigation back in 1991?
01:07:08
one? Was his alibi checked out thoroughly at your time? That's a fair question, Joe. Perhaps other
01:07:16
people that were situated differently back then accepted his alibi and maybe didn't look under
01:07:21
every rock as thoroughly as we have now. Can you explain why it took from 2016 to last year for
01:07:27
this to sort of start in motion if you had a statement sort of directly implicating Atkins?
01:07:32
There is no great reason, no specific reason, Vinny. We have many cases and some tend to take
01:07:38
priorities over others. There's no perfect answer as to why we didn't pursue this in 2016,
01:07:43
but we're here now and I'm grateful for that. When Robert Atkins was finally taken into custody,
01:07:49
talk to me about how that was received with your family. We were only partially relieved because
01:07:54
we kept wondering, like, how is the system going to fail us again? David's instincts turned out to
01:08:02
be right. Another big blow was just around the corner. It felt like a make or break moment
01:08:09
and that this was going to break the case. After Robert Atkins was arrested, the news made its way to his family living down south.
01:08:31
Our office started to receive calls from family members. And they had quite a story for Detective Hank's investigation.
01:08:41
They said when Robert was 15 years old, he was sent to Tennessee to live with his grandparents.
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His aunt Charlene lived nearby. One day, according to his brother, he went to Aunt Charlene's trailer,
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strangled her with a telephone cord, and then stomped on her chest, knocking her out. She was found naked and wrapped in a carpet and left, in my opinion, for dead.
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Robert Atkins was arrested for the attack and convicted as a minor, spending time in a juvenile
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facility on probation. Because of his age, his record was sealed, which is why police didn't know
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about the assault on his aunt. We're talking about the same type of brutal attack, almost down to a T.
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Always down to T on the same type of victim. But even with the new evidence, David wasn't feeling confident.
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How did you feel approaching trial? I was very nervous. We're sort of just kind of waiting for the carpet to be ripped out from underneath us.
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And that's what happened. In pretrial motions, Robert Atkins' attorney convinced the judge to throw out significant pieces of evidence,
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including what Atkins had done to his aunt. The judge ultimately ruled that was too prejudicial to come in in the trial.
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The judge also threw out part of April's story. Those critical words Robert said just after the murder.
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And when he came home covered in blood, disheveled and said, I just stabbed a woman and set her house on fire.
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I mean, that is the confession that prosecutors obviously are going to want it in the trial.
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It was not admissible in court. How devastating was that for you? It felt like this was going to break the case.
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There was no eyewitness putting him at the scene. No DNA, no fingerprints. A lot of the initial investigators had since passed on.
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How were you going to win this case? It was, bar none, the most challenging prosecution, you know, I have ever encountered.
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On January 29th, 2024, Robert Atkins went on trial in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
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He opted for a bench trial, a judge, but no jury. Prosecutors laid out their theory of the crime, that Robert killed Joy after that marijuana deal.
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David testified about overhearing Robert on the phone in a rage. Screaming at my mom.
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Do you remember what he was saying? I specifically heard, I will kill you and blow up your house.
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Charlie Hibbs, once a suspect himself, testified about those incidents of vandalism before Joy's murder.
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He suspected Robert Atkins, who was facing him in the courtroom, clutching a Bible.
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If eyes could kill, I'd have burned a hole right through them then. I looked them in the eyes and called them a bad name, and the judge reprimanded me on it.
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I wanted to walk over and rip the Bible out of his arms and beat his head with it like a meatball.
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And you can cut that if you want, but that was just my feelings. The man never touched a Bible in his life.
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The prosecution argued that after the murder, Robert Atkinson, drove home where he found April and took his family to the Poconos.
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Thinking he got away with it because all news media reports say family loses their mother in a house fire and discarded evidence and prepared a story.
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That story became Robert Atkins' alibi. There were lies upon lies upon lies. And what he claimed to be an alibi was clearly not an alibi.
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Back in 1991, his alibi wasn't thoroughly checked. The lead homicide detective testified he was ordered to leave Robert Atkins alone.
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What impact did that have in the courtroom? It felt tense and heavy. And I could see the judge had a visceral reaction to that.
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What's more, according to the prosecution, there was evidence that placed Robert Atkins at the scene of the crime.
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There's one car that keeps coming up in this, a blue Monte Carlo. It was so specific in that multiple people had seen this car outside the house.
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In spite of those witnesses, back in 1991, police did not link a blue Monte Carlo to Robert Atkins, only a black one.
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But multiple sources who didn't know one another knew that Robert Atkins had access to or his grandmother owned this blue Monte Carlo.
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Robert's cousin testified she saw him driving a blue Monte Carlo. She even said that a family photo, taken about two weeks before the murder, showed his blue Monte Carlo in the background.
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The Monte Carlo just became such a focus that it's clear it's his car. Even though parts of April's story were excluded from trial, she was still the prosecution's star witness.
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When you took the stand in the courtroom, did Robert ever look at you? He had this death look that he has.
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And that was intimidating. She described seeing Robert come home in filthy clothing and that rushed trip to the Poconos.
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It's not an exaggeration to say that April Atkins' testimony might be the strongest evidence against him.
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You call me with this. The prosecution also played those recorded phone calls. You've already said a f***ing nothing.
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It just crystallized what April said. You know, he's a menacing, threatening, violent individual.
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But did Robert have a motive to murder Joy? You're asking a judge to believe that a man committed this unthinkable crime over a $20 marijuana deal.
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Yeah. That's a pretty steep hill to climb. There are some things that are very challenging to prove because they just so bad and make no sense The defense attorneys would also argue that the case made no sense
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What's more, they were about to say they knew who was really to blame. 33 years after Joy Hibbs was murdered, Robert Atkins was on trial, facing life in prison
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or even the death penalty. His defense attorneys set out to demolish the prosecution's case by attacking the investigation,
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starting with the crime scene. They said that for the first 24 hours, investigators believed Joy had died in a house fire.
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Joanne Chiavalia. Firefighters were in there tromping all around. Evidence could have been,
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you know, tampered with or washed away. I think at one point the defense attorney
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said that he's never seen such little forensic evidence in a murder case. As for that blue Monte Carlo, the defense argued prosecutors invented it because they needed to
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place Robert Atkins at the crime scene. Did police ever find that car? No, the police never found that
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car. And the defense said that family photo proved nothing. The blue object in the background
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wasn't a car at all and was more likely a nearby building. I am not a forensics expert. I
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struggled to see the car in the photo myself, which was an argument that the defense attorney
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made vigorously. The Monte Carlo is always going to be a little bit of a mystery. But the defense
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saved its strongest firepower for the police investigation, turning the tables on the prosecution.
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A key strategy from the defense was to try to discredit Bristol Township Police as a whole,
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including Sergeant Slaughter, who was reinvestigating what had happened. In an extraordinary turnaround, Sergeant Slaughter,
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the detective who'd broken open the case and called out the 1991 investigators for backing off a murder suspect,
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became the defense's sole witness. I was taken aback when I was named as a defense witness.
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I was called as a defense witness. The defense used Slaughter to argue Robert Atkins didn't get a fair shake
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precisely because the 1991 investigation and subsequent investigations were so badly done.
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The 500 or 600 questions I prepared for they threw four or five at me that I never saw coming and I left that stand going oh my gosh this is I mean that how intense this case was Among the forensic evidence that
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the defense attorney criticized was a cigarette butt that survived the fire that was never tested
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and still to this day has not been tested for any remaining DNA. And the defense insisted police in
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1991, failed to pursue other possible suspects. One of the potential suspects that the defense
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highlighted was a suspect in a house fire and domestic murder in New Jersey around the same
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time that Joy Hibbs was killed. He was never questioned or even looked into at all by the
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Bristol Township detectives. The investigation wasn't just botched, said the defense. It was worse.
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The defense attorney was cross-examining one of the lead detectives from 1991 and essentially asked him, why did you feel like you were able to not do your job?
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Intimating that police corruption was involved. Did that feel like a turning point in this trial?
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It just raised questions. We were going away. And as for those secretly recorded phone calls?
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We went upstate to the Poconos. If you can't remember that you were to that upstate, well, I don't know what to tell you.
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Rightfully, they said he never implicated himself. In fact, he denied it and denied it and denied it.
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While the defense attorney didn't cross-examine April, he said she wasn't credible.
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She'd admitted that she'd lied, so how could anyone believe her now? He argued there was so much reasonable doubt that his client should be found not guilty.
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The defense rests. Now the case is in the judge's hands. Do you feel that your team has done enough?
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I do. I feared, you know, what degree of homicide, even though second degree would have been a life sentence
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we wanted for the family first degree. After just two hours, the judge came back with his verdict.
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We were all holding hands, and I just emotionally started crying. Robert Atkins was guilty of first-degree murder.
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When you heard the guilty verdict, what was that moment like? I still don't believe it.
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I think it's going to take me some time to even acknowledge that this is real. My mind just froze there.
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It just froze. Nothing else mattered at that moment. Thank goodness. There's still a big hole in my heart.
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But I felt justice for joy, finally. The following day the judge sentenced Robert Atkins to life without parole plus up to 30 years for setting fire to the home Your family could have asked the DA to pursue the death penalty
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You decided not to. Why? I was done. He's not getting out of jail. We came here to fight a fight.
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We fought it. We won. Robert Atkins denies ever-threatening or abusing April. His lawyer says his three children stand by their father.
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Even though Adkins is now behind bars, troubling questions hang over the 1991 Bristol Township police investigation.
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Even the judge in sentencing Robert Adkins said he felt that the police at that time had prioritized a confidential informant over a murder victim.
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Dateline asked the former lieutenant, who'd overseen the case in 1991, why the lead detective was told to back off of Atkins.
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He declined to comment. I feel like there's still so much that needs to be explained and so much that needs to be answered for.
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Do you know why, even with that story from April Atkins, still, for several years, nothing happened?
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I don't. Detective Hanks, who investigated the case after Sergeant Slaughter, says he doesn't know either.
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I'm just happy we are where we are, and I have no explanation for the Hibs for many things.
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Do you think that they will ever get those answers? No. No? No, I think they're going to be playing it through their minds for years and years and years.
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Wave bye! But a weight has finally been lifted. How are you all doing as a family?
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Today I can tell you we are stronger than ever. Nothing brings a family together than fighting for a cause you can all get behind.
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When you think about your mom, how do you feel when her smile comes to your mind?
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I miss it. What do you miss the most about your mom? Her love and support. I miss my partner.
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What do you think she would love to do today? We'd be working in the garden, running the dogs on the beach.
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digging for clams. David, your story in so many ways is really about fighting for her,
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about never giving up. Do you think your mom would be proud of you? I do. I think she would also say,
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move on, get a life. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.
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you