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[Music] during an evening church service 38-year-old Steve Robards fell ill he died later that night of a heart
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attack one year later while reading Hamlet Steve Robards daughter studied the lines of Claudius the King when he
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says the following about death jealousy guilt and revenge my words fly up my thoughts remain
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below words without thoughts never to Heaven go in these words a clue to her father's
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death [Music] the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth Texas locals call it the Metroplex it's the largest Consolidated
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metropolitan area in the state known for the assassination of President John F Kennedy in D Plaza in
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1963 official now the president is dead 38-year-old Steve Robards was a Texas native recently divorced and
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worked as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service very proud of his job which was just a Ru route Postman
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but he liked his job he liked being outdoors and felt some pride in it his 16-year-old daughter Marie had recently
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moved in with him after a disagreement she had with her mother's new husband so
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they were living in a one-bedroom apartment at this time and he was on the list to get the next available larger
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apartment and uh he was very happy about having his daughter in his life at this
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point Marie enrolled in Eastern Hills High School where she was a popular straight A student quiet studious
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elegant the kind of girl that sort of you looked at twice and always wanted to get to know because she seemed so
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reserved so poised so intelligent there was never a flaw about her I mean her face complexion was perfect by all
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accounts both father and daughter enjoyed living together but their lives changed Forever on the night of February
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17th 1993 just after dinner Steve robarts attended an evening church service when he returned home he told
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his girlfriend and daughter he wasn't feeling well after a little while he started getting stomach cramps severe
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stomach cramps and they became more severe as the night progressed are you feeling any better feel terrible after a
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few hours ultimately um 911 was called and he went into what appeared to be a a comike state right there in the living
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room he began to foam at the mouth and became nauseous and by the time the ambulance guys got there he was dead an
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autopsy revealed the death was caused by cardiac arrest and I didn't want to
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believe how could it be that bad he was 38 how could it be how could it be that serious he was
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38 his heart was mildly enlarged it was probably 25% too heavy for a man his age and size and somewhat
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uncomfortably I signed it out as a natural death after Steve roar's death Marie went to live with her grandparents
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and transferred to Mansfield high school for a new start so for one year Marie lived the kind of perfect life every
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parent would hope their child would live she was an excellent student she never got in trouble she always turned in her
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homework uh she dated some but she was never in any way regarded as a wild girl after graduation Marie used the $60,000
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she received from her father's life insurance policy to attend the University of Texas
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she majored in Premed her dream was to become a pathologist even then she was just one
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of the most talented of the many freshmen at that sprawling University there was nothing that suggested
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anything except she was headed for this kind of excellent life that um seemed her
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Destiny Midway through her freshman year Marie learned that police were investigating her father's death they
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questioned how a 38-year-old man could have died of a heart attack so young it was by all accounts The Perfect
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[Music] Crime After Steve Robards Unexpected death his daughter Marie transferred to
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a new high school and made a new friend Stacy high I would have to say we are best
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friends you know we kind of fell in love with each other you know just um it was
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we had so much in common Stacy sees and Marie she sees something in Marie she sees through her in a way she realizes
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that that Poise and that Perfection is disguising something during senior year Stacy and
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Marie were both required to read Shakespeare's Hamlet for English class as they read the play together Stacy
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happened to begin with claudius's Soliloquy in act 3 in which Claudius agonizes over his decision to repent for
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killing Hamlet's father my fault is passed but oh what form of pray serve my forgive me my f
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murder that cannot be since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the
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murder so Stacy reads the line goes Isn't that cool Marie how that's written and Marie standing there Frozen
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in tears begin to stream down her face she asked me Stacy do you think people can go through life without a conscience
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and there was Stacy with her questions you have a secret yes you've done something yes and
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you know Stacy's first question oh my God you're pregnant Marie went no it's
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worse so after a while guessing I said did you kill someone she nodded her head yes and that's when Marie broke down and
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cried I can't talk about this right now Marie then admitted the unthinkable that she murdered her own
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father she said she did it with a poison she stole from her chemistry class A year
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earlier hey everybody quiet working on our last reports today be very careful with this
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stuff now everyone get your notebooks out Marie said that she took the poison when the teacher's back was turned
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placed it in a paper towel and hid it in her backpack one week later while preparing
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dinner Marie mixed it into her father's Mexican food with which concealed the
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taste of the poison there you go thank you sweetie mhm the poison she used mimicked the
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signs of a heart attack and her father died a few hours later the autopsy never detected the
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poison in his system [Music] after the confession Marie swore Stacy to secrecy if the pledge was broken Stacy
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knew her best friend would spend the rest of her life in prison Stacy is tormented however by the
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secret she too is trying to keep and she begins to have these nightmares in one of these recurring nightmares
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Stacy hears the voice of Marie's father calling from the grave [Music] in another Stacy sees Marie chasing her
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endlessly through the night she begins to lose her ability to focus she can't concentrate in school
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her grades go down she begins to drink too much at high school parties at one point she she asked her mother if she
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can check into a psychiatric hospital for adolescence and no one can figure out what had happened to Stacy it seemed
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like the classic meltdown Stacy knew if she said anything it would be her word against Marie since Steve robarts death
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was ruled to be from natural causes however the pressure on Stacy high was too great she told her mother
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the school guidance counselor and eventually the police so for 8 months Stacy kept the
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secret and it nearly destroyed her and she finally had to confess but Marie never
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would and like Claudius she seemed stuck trapped in her own private hell when Stacy hey told police that
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Steve Robards had been poisoned the police searched the chemistry lab where his daughter Marie said she stole the
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poison that killed him in the lab safety manual the page describing the chemical
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Marie allegedly used had been torn out it also tells you what precautions you need to take when using the
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substance it also tells you what to do in case it's swallowed or your eyes coming in contact with it if Marie used
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a poison to kill her father why hadn't it shown up during the autopsy it's not a normal procedure
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unless there's some indication that we need to do that uh it's it's it's a test
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testing that we don't do here at the facility and we have to send out for and
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the investigation did not lead us to suspect anything of that nature at at the time of the death the chemical she
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used the only way it could be detected is if the medical examiner in Fort Worth had a machine that cost
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$150,000 that could detect the trace of this chemical during an autopsy which they didn't have and which they never
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even thought of using the technology which confined rare chemicals in human tissue is called a mass spectrometer gas
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chromatograph since Marie planned to attend medical school and become a pathologist prosecutors suspected she
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was familiar with the screening test used by the local medical examiner she also knew which poison
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wouldn't be detected investigators hoped that Steve robarts tissue samples were still in
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storage since his death 18 months earlier the medical examiner's office was within days of destroying the tissue
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samples and the blood samples um as they do when there's there's nothing a Miss
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they don't suspect play or homicide the tissue samples were sent to an independent forensic laboratory in
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Pennsylvania where they were analyzed with the mass spectrometer gas chromatograph the poison they were
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looking for was a metallic substance and very rare we will not reveal the name of
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the poison on this program the gas chromatograph Mass spectrometer directs a beam of electrons
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on the sample breaking it component molecules apart for analysis the results are charted on a
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graph each Peak is a separate compound the size of the peak is proportional to the amount present the number is the
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exact time in minutes it took for the compound to travel through the column from the moment of its injection to
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detection in Steve robard sample scientists found a metallic compound with a retention time identical to the
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poison his daughter Marie admitted stealing from the chemistry lab and the amount found in Steve
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Robards body was massive 28 times the lethal dose with this news Fort Worth homicide
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detective Thomas Boer went to the University of Texas and Austin to see Marie robarts she came out in the hallway and
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I introduced myself I told her she was under arrest for the death of her father Steven Robards years earlier she had no
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response um there was no reaction and Marie quietly went with them poised as ever and once they got in that little
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room they barely had to ask a question and she confessed and broke down and she was pretty forth forthcoming with
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information um fairly quickly she didn't try to hide she apparent ly was uh either guilt-ridden or had thought a lot
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about what she had done and came forward with the information the most fascinating aspect
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for both the police and for journalists covering the case was Marie's explanation of her
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motive what was it that made you want to kill your father and she said I wanted to be with my mom but in
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an ironic twist like some out of a Shakespearean tragedy it was all in vain because Marie Robards mother
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and her new husband were planning to move to Florida and didn't tell her until after her father's
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funeral Marie had no choice but to move in with her grandparents so she could finish High School in Texas and thus
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began this tale that in many ways is a kind of Twisted modern parable of teenage girls in the suburbs these girls
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that are have those Mercurial emotions but also many of whom are girls of divorce who are trying to grow up with
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parents who have split up and seem often preoccupied with rebuilding their own lives and forget about the needs of
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their own children despite her confession Marie robard surprised Everyone by deciding to
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plead not guilty she now said she hadn't planned to kill her father at [Music]
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all in 1996 Marie Robards went on trial for the murder of her father Steve she pleaded
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not guilty her defense was that she had no intention of killing him get your notebook
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Marie admitted that she stole the poison from her high school chemistry lab and she also admitted that she put
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the poison in her father's Mexican food but she said she only planned to make
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him sick not to kill him of course that doesn't make that much sense if he just
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got sick she wouldn't get to go back with her mother prosecutors said Marie was a straight a chemistry student and
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the amount of poison used was 28 times the lethal dose anybody who's going to
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go to a local medical school to study is probably if they're a high school student is probably above average as far
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as in the science um department and as a matter of fact I mean that was part of my investigation I collected her grades
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and she had very high marks in school and in the Sciences are you feeling any better I feel ly did you get me some
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ginger they also pointed out that Marie stood by and watched her father die without saying a word to her father's
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girlfriend or the ambulance crew that tried to resuscitate [Music] him 18 months later the gas
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chromatography found what the first autopsy did not that Steve Robards had died of a massive dose of
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poison the prosecution presented Marie Robards signed confession as evidence did you know that this stuff is
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dangerous yes or no yes sir how did you know that cuz my chist teacher said said what that it was
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danger Stacy testified that Marie told her that she always knew that enough of that chemical would have killed her
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father and that was this defining moment that her best friend admitted that Marie
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had the knowledge about what that poison would do the forensic evidence the confession
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and the testimony of her own best friend all worked against her the prosecutor in the case called
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her a Relentless predator another prosecutor called her society's worst nightmare a girl who kills her dad
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uh but some people saw her as a kind of Lizzy bordon of Texas this sweet Charming successful
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industrious young girl who suddenly did something inexplicable and in this surprising
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twist at least for me I began to sense a sympathy developing for her because in many ways she was the symbol of what
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modern divorce has done to our society the medical examiner says Marie was a very clever killer I just tell you
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she was good enough to fake me out initially because I you know went for the head fake and did couldn't find
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anything on May 9th 1996 it took the jury less than an hour to find Marie Robards guilty of Murder
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She was sentenced to 27 years in prison I don't know what we do about it but
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they are kids they don't think exactly like adults and that do mean you can you
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know they can get by with something like this with a slap on the wrist but 27 years seems a little excessive to me
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what she had done was commit the perfect crime it was by all accounts The Perfect
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Crime had Dorothy Marie not uh mentioned it to a friend she probably would have gotten away with it I mean almost
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certainly would have gotten away with it Marie has never spoken about what's
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happened since what is known is that Marie is the model prisoner at this women's unit in East Texas where she's
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going to be staying for several more years that she has never complained that she always volunteers
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for the worst chores that one day a psychologist went to see her and she was wearing this paper thin
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prison guard and a cold fret had come through Texas and she was shivering and the psychologist said why
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don't you ask for something warmer she said I don't deserve to she Shrugged she smiled and she said
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I'll be okay [Music] more [Music] [Applause] [Music]