The Mysterious Murder of Ellen Robb

On December 22, 2006, someone brutally murdered Ellen Robb, age 49, of Upper Merion Township, just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Around 1:45 that day her husband called police to report the crime. He said he’d found Ellen dead upon returning from work. Rafael Robb, 56, also stated he last saw Ellen alive as he left for work that morning.

Work for Rafael Robb is teaching Game Theory, Industrial Organization, Law and Economics, and Public Economies at the University of Pennsylvania.

For some reason, Rafael Robb’s last name lost a “b” on the UPenn website. This may not make sense, but it does make it easy to differentiate between information about the murder of Ellen Robb and posts online about the professor relevant to his job.

Professor Robb was suspected immediately in his wife’s murder. The police took property, including personal computers, and Bruce Castor, District Attorney for Montgomery County, PA, has stated that Robb cannot be excluded as a suspect.

The Montgomery County D.A. issued a press release about the crime on December 23rd. It read, in part:

… On December 22, 2006, Forensic Pathologist Dr. Ian Hood conducted an autopsy and found that Ellen Robb was struck repeatedly with a long, solid, cylindrical shaped object. This weapon has not been recovered. He also found defensive wounds showing that she tried to fight her attacker. He ruled the cause of death as multiple blunt force trauma and the manner of death homicide.

Investigators are searching for this murder weapon, along with bloodied clothing and footwear they expect the killer discarded. If anyone has information about the killing or any items of potential evidentiary value, please contact Upper Merion Police at (610) 265-3232 or Montgomery County Detectives (610) 278-3368.

Authorities investigating Ellen Robb’s murder have also stated that it was a singularly bloody, gruesome crime, and that the person who bludgeoned Ellen Robb to death staged the scene to look like a burglary.

It became obvious as to what Ellen’s family thought at her funeral. From the Philadelphia Daily News, an article published December 30, 2006:

GAZING at his sister’s coffin, Gary Gregory could barely contain his grief.

“She was an angel on earth,” he said of Ellen Robb, choking back a sob. “She was too good to keep here.”

As the tear-streaked faces of those packed in the tiny Montgomery County church nodded in emphatic agreement - remembering the stay-at-home mother for her warmth, generosity and dedication to her 12-year-old daughter, Olivia - one spectator sat conspicuously still.

Rafael Robb, listening stoically from the front row, had also just given a eulogy to the 150 people in the sanctuary of the Radnor United Methodist Church. But his delivery had elicited discreet, disapproving head-shakes and even a few scoffs and unintelligible mutterings.

A week after Ellen Robb was found murdered in the couple’s Wayne home, it was clear that some of the mourners at the funeral yesterday wondered whether her balding, bespectacled husband - a University of Pennsylvania economics professor - had played a role in her still-unsolved slaying…

An abstract from a paper by Rafael Robb and Huanxing Yang was published online earlier this year. The paper delved into Game Theory, and was titled “Long-Term Relationships as Safeguards.”

Applied mathematics and economics overlap in Game Theory. It is a branch of both where study is focused on how different choices made by players affect, and hopefully increase their returns. The following is from the paper by Professor Robb and Huanxing Yang:

Players are also able to strategically choose whether to continue interacting with the same partner - form a long term relationship - or separate and seek a new partner. We show that the ability to form long term relationships facilitates the achievement of cooperative outcomes without information flows, without instability due to observational errors, and without a central coordinating device to synchronize players’ actions. We also show that the heterogeneity of types helps, rather than hinders, cooperative behavior by inducing players to avoid bad types that inflict low payoffs on them and seek good (or opportunistic) types that bestow high payoffs…

The paper sought to demonstrate (it goes on to further illustrate its point with equations unintelligible to the layperson) that in a certain kind of structured game play, long-term relationships between players were a wiser choice that safeguarded the players’ ability to win.

In many news articles published since Ellen Robb was murdered, one strange element of her relationship with her husband has become clear: the Robbs had been living estranged in the same household for nearly a decade. Married, but separate lives, linked only by their daughter, Olivia, age 12.

Only recently had Ellen Robb finally decided to file for divorce.

I think some will tell you that marriage is a game. Two partners playing against life, and sometimes each other.

If Professor Rob(b) murdered his wife, was it because she’d finally decided she no longer wished to be part of the equation? For years they’d maintained a basic partnership, no more, living that odd existence some couples choose, where they become more like roommates than anything else.

What happened in the Professor’s cool and mathematical mind when his wife Ellen finally told him it was time for her to opt out of this particular kind of “game play?”

There is an ongoing discussion about this case at Websleuths.com. I’ll post more entries here as they are warranted. Finally, here is a short list of links related to Rafael Rob(b):

• Rob(b)’s webpage with the University of Pennsylvania;
• Dr. Robb’s full curriculum vitae;
• Abstract of a paper Robb wrote with Joel Waldfogel — “Piracy on the Silver Screen.”

UPDATE, 11:28 p.m. ET

This insight was achieved in part after I received an e-mail from fellow crime blogger LiLO, webmistress of Lost in Lima, Ohio, a true crime blog.

This online paper; “Gun ownership is not the cause of America’s high murder rate,” is basically a pro-gun ownership argument, but within the paper was inserted the following paragraph — a statement I found relevant to the story of Rafael and Ellen Robb:

A central tenet of game theory is that attackers have the advantage over defenders. A defender must defend against all possibilities of attack, and in doing so defends none of them very well. An attacker has to choose only one line of attack, and therefore can do it extremely well. Attackers have the advantage of surprise, planning and initiative. An example is a careful, well-considered plan to shoot someone in the back, even if the person is openly carrying a sidearm…

LiLO pointed me to this article: “DA: Still analyzing Robb murder.” The following quote is from the piece, published December 29 in the Times Herald:

With no arrest, additional intrigue swirls around the case. Questions at the press conference ranged from Dr. Robb being a flight risk because he was born in Israel to possible attempts to apply what is known as the concept of Game Theory.

According to what Castor has been able to glean, Game Theory is an economic philosophy wherein a person can apply factual scenarios for a desired outcome.

“In a criminal context, somebody applying it would calculate all the angles and then go ahead and commit the crime,” said Castor. “It could also be a coincidence, too (that Robb taught classes on Game Theory).”

An interesting possibility as to who murdered Ellen Robb was also mentioned in the same article:

[DA Castor] also admitted that investigators were initially looking into the angle of a murder-for-hire scheme, as was the case with the Rabbi Fred Neulander murder, but that the investigation has since taken a different course.

“Early on, we considered it,” he said. “We do think it’s possible but, right now, we are leaning away from it.

“The best way for two people to keep a secret is for one to be dead. Rabbi Neulander is in prison.”

This quote was doubly intriguing following the mention of Game Theory. DA Castor was applying some Game Theory of his own. The idea of the killer of Ellen Robb being in cahoots with another would have been rejected by a man with intimate knowledge of The Prisoner’s Dilemma. From the Wikibooks Introduction to Game Theory:

Two men, [X and Y], were arrested after an armed robbery. The police had enough evidence to convict the two for the theft of the get-away car, but not enough to convict them for the actual armed robbery. However, if the police could get a confession from either of the two men they could conceivably convict them both for the armed robbery…

The men are given a set of choices by police: If X confessed and Y did not, X would be freed and Y charged witht he crime and given 10 years in prison — the reverse would be true if Y confessed; X and Y both confessing would net both men 7 years in jail; Neither man confessing would net them both 2 years for lesser charges.

The prisoners can’t communicate, and they are left alone to make their choices.

According to the Wikibooks chapter, the solution is always both X and Y giving confessions and receiving 7 years.

Dr. Robb would have had a more intimate knowledge of this dilemma than any common criminal.

So, if he did have anything to do with his wife’s murder, he did it alone.

Marcia Trimble, Meredith Harris, and Me.

February 25, 1975

Marcia Trimble left her home at 4009 Copeland Drive in West Nashville around 5:30 that day. The first reports about Marcia's disappearance indicated that she'd gone to deliver 4 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to a neighbor across the street. Her mother Virginia told Marcia to take her coat, but Marcia said she wouldn't need it because she would be right back.

Marcia never made it to the neighbor's house.

People began to search for the girl around 7:30 that evening. Her pretty face made it into the local newscasts, into the papers, The Nashville Banner and The Tennessean.

I lived miles away on another side of town, but I can remember Marcia's face on my parents' TV in our living room. Maybe not the night she disappeared, but many, many nights afterwards.

I can recall riding the bus to school early in the morning and thinking of Marcia Trimble, and how much she looked like any girl I might meet at school on a given day. I didn't know what it meant to be haunted then, yet for some reason, the little girl from the Woodmont area, a side of town I barely knew anything about, was beginning to haunt me.

We lived in a small house set well back from the road, and there were no streetlights, only a few yardlamps my father had installed. There was a moment every night, near sunset, when light and shadow were balanced and somehow the world was still visible, but veiled. I'd never feared this time before, I'd never really feared the night that followed.

After Marcia Trimble vanished, to be found dead a month later, on Easter Sunday, I began to fear the twilight. The night outside the window changed, even at my home, far from Copeland Drive.

I think it was then that I realized the boogeyman was sometimes real, and he could lurk in the thickets and shadows found in even the safest neighborhoods.

At 7 I learned that evil was real, and that we might never know its true face, until it was too late.

Meredith

From The Tennessean, February 27, 1975, an article titled "Father Pleads for Girl's Safety":

Mrs. Pat Harris, of 4016 Copeland Drive, said she felt certain Marcia did not go with anyone willingly. Mrs. Harris, whose daughter, Meredith, 6, was with Marcia Dec. 30 when a man exposed himself to them...

Meredith Harris, writing to me on December 1, 2005:

Actually what he was doing was masturbating. I saw none of it ... I was looking at my feet as we were going down a hill and I was learning how to roller skate for heaven's sake! I mean I saw the car and I saw the guy... but I certainly didn't see what he was doing... NOT that I would have known what he was doing even if I'd seen it. ANYWAY, Marcia (who was very quick thinking) herded us all into the closest neighbors yard and in a VERY loud voice said something like I'M SURE MY MOTHER'S BRIDGE PARTY WITH TWENTY WOMEN IS ALMOST OVER AND SHE WANTS US TO COME HOME NOW AND IF WE DON'T GO INSIDE SHE AND ALL OF HER FRIENDS WILL COME OUTSIDE IN JUST A MINUTE! I distinctly remember wondering what was going on, and trying to protest but this was the So-and So's house and I remember Marcia's cousin gripping my arm and hissing at me to hush. Apparently the 'flasher' drove off before we got to the So-and So's porch and the girls dragged me along and I think they were screaming and being all horrified and GROSSED OUT and I don't think I really understood any of it until our mom's started talking to us and the police came and started talking to us. (This little incident is one of the reasons that I was questioned so many, many, many times by the policemen later.)

Again, from the same article in The Tennessean:

Mrs. Harris also voiced the fear that other parents in the quiet residential neighborhood, well populated with children, had spoken of.

"We never worried, we felt relaxed, but that's not the way I feel now," she said.

(...)

Mrs. Harris said she and her children arrived home about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and the two... went to look for Marcia to play...

From Meredith's e-mail:

I should have been with Marcia the day she disappeared (died?). I had helped her take all the other neighborhood orders and I was certainly going to help her deliver them. I had been sick and stayed home from school that day and I couldn't play early in the afternoon -- but mom took us with her to one of her friends' houses and I successfully argued that if I was well enough to play with Nancy and Claire (=friend's daughters) then couldn't I please, please, please, please go help Marcia when I got back. Mom relented and the second the car stopped, I (did my sister go with me?) ran over to the Trimble's. I remember (CLEARLY) the tableau of Mr and Mrs Trimble and Chuck all standing on the porch with Popcorn and Princess flopped down in front. They were calling for Marcia and then they saw me (us? I really think Hayden [Meredith's younger sister] was with me) and wanted to know if we'd seen Marcia. This was confusing because Princess was home. That's how you could tell where Marcia and Chuck were. Popcorn would flop down on the porch of the house where Chuck was and Princess would do the same for the house where Marcia was playing. Like the flags for monarchs in residence or something...

The Italian Street Fair

Sausage cooking, mandolin music, clowns, fallen leaves, flattened grass -- these things I remember.

Was it 1981, or 1982?

It was the 80s. I stood with Mark Clark beside a wagon at the Italian Street Fair, an event that took place each October in Nashville, near the campus of Vanderbilt University.

I was looking for Meredith Harris.

I probably had a crush on her. She was so cute her friend Julia nicknamed her "Button."

I'd been taking acting, singing, and yes, dance classes at the Nashville Academy Theatre downtown for a few years. Through Julie and Noel, two fellow theater students, I'd met Meredith. The girls all attended Harpeth Hall Academy, a private girls' school very close to Copeland Drive, where a girl named Marcia Trimble lived and died.

Somehow, Meredith and I decided we'd go to the Italian Street Fair together. We were too young for it to be a date, and besides, Mark Clark was along. My big galumphing wing man was not the kind of buddy you brought along if you thought you might get a kiss from a girl cute enough to be nicknamed "Button."

I saw her, talking to another girl. The other girl looked at me and Mark as we approached as if we'd grown arms from our foreheads. We all chatted a bit, and I remember that Meredith's friend got on my nerves because she seemed stricken with a case of the giggles. I was relieved when she found something else to do, so me and Meredith -- and Mark -- could hang out. Of course, that friend was the girl who called Meredith "Button," Julia Hatcher. Julia and I would end up seeing each other occasionally into our twenties.

The rest of the day, I don't remember, but I believe we had fun. I know I made a new friend.

We'd talk on the phone after that, even exchange letters when Meredith went to California for the summer to stay with her grandparents. Once I was dating Julia, she would occasionally tell me what Meredith was doing, how she was doing. The Meredith I remembered later was funny and very smart, and sometimes strangely distracted. There was a sadness inside her, a deep vein of melancholy that was usually well-concealed by a high, girlish voice and easy, chatty manner.

I do clearly recall that even through my haze of teenage self-absorption I could sometimes feel, sense that my cross-town friend was somewhere else, inside her mind.

Even though I'm sure the subject came up more than once, I never put it together then that maybe that place was Copeland Drive, 1975. February in Nashville, Tennessee, and Marcia Trimble was missing.

...I remember (CLEARLY) the tableau of Mr and Mrs Trimble and Chuck all standing on the porch with Popcorn and Princess flopped down in front. They were calling for Marcia and then they saw me (us? I really think Hayden [Meredith's younger sister] was with me) and wanted to know if we'd seen Marcia...

November, 2005

The e-mail's subject line read, "From Meredith Harris (do you remember me?)." The author of the message wrote:

I had absolutely the strangest experience!! I've been [online] for approximately 48 hours, and maybe it's just that any new, big, writing jaunt I start always ends up tracking me back to Marcia Trimble, but I Googled her name which I've never done-and I clicked on your article/post from last year (not knowing it was YOURS), and then because the name Huff struck me (as did your description of being a heavy kid-which by the way you already WEREN'T when I met you) - I clicked the follow ups to find your profile and there you were!!!

Anyway... as I was reading your article (before I knew it was you) I was writing to you in my head. Did you remember that I should have been with Marcia the day she disappeared (Feb 25, 1975)? (...) It was so odd to yearn to share my experience with a stranger because he'd thrown his out there and then to find out you were no stranger at all...

When I received the e-mail above from Meredith Harris in late November, 2005, I felt like the synchronicity was striking.

December 28, 2006

On December 28, 2006 Meredith, her best friend Donna, and I went to Copeland Drive in West Nashville. We walked the loop, up to Dorcas Drive and back down the hill to Copeland. The same hill where Meredith was skating on December 30, 1974, when a man exposed himself to her, Marcia, and several other girls. Meredith remembered as we walked that the skates had steel wheels, for outdoor use. I took photos. We talked to people. Steve and DeeDee, a friendly and hospitable couple who now live at 4016 Copeland, where the Harrises resided when Marcia vanished. We talked to Chuck and Patty, a couple who have lived in the same area for years, who have seen the coming of fear to Copeland Drive, to Nashville, and seen in recent years some of the darkness begin to lift.

The Marcia Trimble Project began in reality, yesterday.

I've tried (not always with success) to avoid publicly discussing anything like writing a book in this blog. The reasons are many, among them my own insecurities about being able to make the leap from this screen to the bookshelf. To the question as to whether or not this project will become a book, the best answer at the moment is, "I hope so."

I don't believe anything coming from The Marcia Trimble Project will be the first book I write (in this case, co-write) -- in part, because the nature of the project is already somewhat long-term. There is another story I'm already working on by myself that I fully intend to become a book, and I am reasonably certain that it will be the first book I have on the shelves, if it is accepted by a publisher. (There are a lot of ifs in such a situation, that's just the most obvious one.) This book, this project, will be written by Meredith and myself even as I'm writing other things.

When a crime has been unsolved for 31 years, there is a TON of research to do, not to mention tracking down people to interview -- if any of them are even willing to talk about the case, still.

And neither Meredith nor I think of The Marcia Trimble Project as a straight-up "true crime" book, if we're talking brass-tacks. The story, for two Nashvillians, especially one who was right there when it happened, is simply too personal, and in some ways, too intimate to be a by-the-numbers true crime story.

This blog entry was written to give you some sense of what was up, and how things came together. And it was written to remember Marcia Trimble to a few more people, and in quoting some of Meredith's e-mails to me, give you a sense of a part of the story Meredith Harris and I seek to tell. We learn about the families of murder victims. We learn about the murderers. We pull for the cops trying to solve the case. What of the kids left behind, though?

Across America there are at least a handful of 16-year-olds who at some point in kindergarten encountered a girl named JonBenet. She is forever 6 while they've moved on. Where will these teens be in 20 years, when perhaps JonBenet's murder is still unsolved? What might some of them have to say about Boulder, Colorado, and how that city was forever changed? I don't read much about the Ramsey case anymore, but that'd be a book I'd like to read.

Meredith Harris and I are members of a generation of children from one city who recall the face, and in Meredith's case, the voice and life, of a girl named Marcia Trimble. We're now nearing 40, and some of us are still plagued by the mystery. And the misery.

A final story to give you some impression of the impact the Trimble story had on Nashville, Tennessee.

Not that my hometown is immune to high profile crime -- Janet March's disappearance is proof that it isn't -- but the Trimble case is, well, different.

I'd just pulled into the city limits. In Nashville, that's also the county line. I walked into the lobby to check into the hotel, and began chatting with the night clerk, a pleasant woman named Rheda.

When I told her that I write about crime for a living (such as it is), she asked me, "Have you ever heard of that girl who was killed out in Brentwood, or West Nashville..."

I said, "You mean Marcia Trimble?"

She did.

In Nashville for less than 10 minutes, and an idle conversation with a complete stranger resurrected the ghost of the pretty little Girl Scout who lived on Copeland Drive.

Marcia Trimble has been dead for nearly 32 years, and still, folks in the Music City wonder. They wonder, and they talk.

Like me, I suspect many of them see that night has fallen outside, especially during the Winter months, and they sense somehow that the dark has not been the same since February 25, 1975. The Mystery of Marcia Trimble brought the depth of that darkness home to the Music City. It gave new nightmares to a generation of parents, and their children.

It may be time to mark the coming of that night to my hometown, and to give a voice to the fear. Time to tell the story both of the kids who stood to the side, bewildered and frightened, and the adults who tried to make some sense of it, who desperately sought some justice.

A Christmas Murder Ballad (The Lawson Family Murders)

From TraditionalMusic.co.uk, the "Folk & Traditional Song Lyrics" archive:

The Lawson Murder

It was on last Christmas Evening;
A snow was on the ground.
His home in North Carolina
Where the murderer was found
His name was Charlie Lawson,
And he had a loving wife.
But we'll never know what caused him
To take his family's life...

A while back I was contacted by one of the producers of a documentary titled, A Christmas Family Tragedy. They sent me the DVD of the film, and over the course of the last two days, I sat down and watched it.

I find sometimes I'm torn about reviewing things like this. What's the filmmaker's expectation, for instance, of what I will say? I worry about simply not liking what I review and pissing off someone who has done a lot of hard work and who probably sent me their product with every confidence I'd love it. I've been in that position in one way or another, so my sympathies run pretty deep.

When I reviewed a documentary about a similar subject recently, I was fortunate -- from a crime writer/crime blogger's perspective, I loved Villisca: Living With a Mystery.

I had more "business-like" hats on as I watched Villisca, and my objective feelings were that I was seeing a finely-made piece of work about an historic crime so horrific in its scope that the memory of it still permeates the existence of the town where it happened to this very day.

At first, I have to admit I wasn't so enthused about A Christmas Family Tragedy, produced by Eric Calhoun and produced, written, and directed by Matt Hodges. (Hodges also figures prominently in interviews done in the documentary.)

The main reason I felt this way were the re-enactments. They were well-edited and integrated into the overall storyline, but at several points they simply looked too much like re-enactments.

Perhaps too, one of the first scenes the creators of this documentary chose to dramatize was just too much for me.

It was Charlie Lawson shooting his two younger daughters outside a barn, dragging their bodies back inside and positioning them as if asleep, their heads on rocks Charlie placed there as pillows, their arms crossed.

I responded like it was fiction -- hey, in fiction, you never kill the kids. At least not so boldly. Leave the kids and the dogs alone.

But even though the story of the December 25, 1929 murders of seven members of the Lawson family in Walnut Cove, North Carolina has been re-told in song more than once, even though the story has a patina of age on it now, it was never fiction. It happened. One Christmas 77 years ago a man named Charlie Lawson murdered his family. Then he took his own life. Only Lawson's oldest son Arthur survived. Lawson had sent his 18-year-old boy out on Christmas day, perhaps thinking Arthur would have been the only person in a position to stop him.

I began to respond differently to A Christmas Family Tragedy even as I watched. I moved from watching it with my crime writer's hat on and into watching it as the southerner that I am.

When it was being told by elderly Stokes County residents who were alive at the time, and very aware of what was going on, the story really began to hook me and reel me in.

The strongest portions of the documentary are the faces and voices of the elders from Walnut Cove, from Stokes County, most of them children when the murders occurred. They looked familiar to me, like folks from my own family.

The filmmakers' approach was pitch-perfect in how they incorporated those local voices in their work. They went into peoples' living rooms, into their kitchens. They taped their subjects in natural light and let them ramble. I watched these scenes in particular and I could almost smell the percolated coffee in the kitchen, hear the soft ticking of a ceiling fan. I could hear voices and accents familiar to me. I was taken back to my own relatives' kitchens and living rooms, to sitting on the long front porch at my grandparents' farmhouse in Spring Hill, Tennessee as a summer storm was moving in, listening to my grandpa and my dad talk of similar events, tell dark stories from my own community's past.

In the end, Eric Calhoun and Matt Hodges succeeded in creating a narrative that dug into this viewer's brain and held on. Hodges, a native of the area where the Lawson murders occurred, has been haunted by the crime since he was a child -- this becomes clear in the documentary.

His success was in passing that sense of being haunted on to strangers like me, who have never been through Stokes County.

They say he killed his wife at first,
And then the little ones did cry,
"Please, Papa, won't you spare our life?
For it is so hard to die!'
But the raging man could not be stopped;
He would not heed their call,
And he kept on firing fatal shots
Until he killed them all...

Why did Charlie do it? He'd taken the family to the city to have a photo made in the weeks before the murders. It is the same photo seen here at BODProductions.com, the website run by Break of Dawn Productions, the company Calhoun and Hodges formed prior to making this film. Was this part of his plan? What was he saying, then?

Some explanations have been: Charlie Lawson was mad, his brain possibly damaged either by some undetermined disease or by an accident he'd had with a mattock earlier that year; Charlie was an incestuous psychopath -- his eldest daughter Marie, age 17, may have been pregnant by her father. Marie's face in the photo makes you wonder. She was pretty, but she looked strained, stricken. She looked like a doe pinned in the headlights on a foggy night, on the Interstate.

The real truth might never be known. This article, written in December of 1929, says that a note was found in Charlie's coat pocket after his body was found. According to the article, these words were written on the note -- "Blame no one but I."

Chances are that Charlie's reasons were not too different from the reasons behind similar crimes that happened before and after -- John Emil List was a family annihilator who viewed killing his children, wife, and mother, as a way of wiping the slate clean, starting over. He was a moralistic, rigidly controlling personality, and one of his stated excuses for killing his older children was that they were losing their way. His daughter Patricia, for instance, was becoming involved in drama at school and doing things other normal teens did in the early '70s -- so List seemed sure she was headed straight to hell.

Did Lawson see his oldest son as usurping his place as "the man" in the family? Did this make him feel powerless? In the documentary a confrontation between Arthur Lawson and his father is discussed at length as both the motivation for Charlie sending Arthur away on Christmas day as well as a catalyst towards Charlie's final explosion.

Then again, maybe Charlie saw something he thought was broken, and being the Daddy, he decided it was time do some major fixing.

Charlie may not have even known why he did it, really. But if the content of the note in his pocket was accurately reported, it is as close as we come to understanding what the man was made of -- "Blame no one but I." Don't think anyone else did this. It was me, Charlie. All ME.

Laura James recently wrote a blog entry about this same mass murder -- "The Lawson Family Tragedy in Music and Now Film." And she had a similar idea tonight; "Christmas Murders and the Lawson Christmas Massacre."

In fact, the last entry of Laura's above is only creepily similar to this one because, well, "great minds" and all that...

(Also note Laura's ironic note at the end of that entry -- here I am blogging the same historic crime and documentary. Go figure.)

And when the sad, sad news was heard
It was a great surprise.
He killed six children and his wife,
And then he closed their eyes.
"And now farewell, kind friends and home;
I'II see you all no more.
Into my breast I'll fire one fatal shot;
Then my troubles will be o'er."

They did not carry him to jail;
No lawyers did he pay.
He'll have his trial in another world
On the final judgment day.
They were all buried in a crowded grave
While angels watched above.
"Come home, come home, my little ones.
To the land of peace and love."

From North Carolina Folklore, Henry
Collected from J. C. Folger, NC, 1937...

The story of the Lawson Family Murders still divides Stokes County, in a way -- read the comments on Laura James's first entry about this crime and this film to see what I mean. The crime is even discussed online, theories posed, assertions made. People will never forget.

Because, for one thing, it happened on Christmas. The blood of Charlie Lawson's children laced and splattered the snow.

And like all "family annihilations," it was just plain evil.

I recommend A Christmas Family Tragedy. There are uneven portions, some of the interviews contradict one another, and there's even a secondary "plot" of sorts (in spite of this being a true tale of terror) about ghosts and hauntings.

But for a film that subtitles itself "... a southern documentary," all these things are perfectly appropriate. Down here grannies take old shirts and skirts and turn them into quilts that sell for hundreds of dollars at fairs. Down here we remember, recycle, re-invent. We tell stories and sing songs. There is a reason the South has produced great writers like Faulkner and Capote, and more great singers than I can possibly name.

A Christmas Family Tragedy succeeds because it understands all these things and tells this most tragic true crime story in a way that never loses sight of the place, the people, their words and ways. To an inveterate viewer of crime documentaries it may be jarring at first. To a "Yankee" it might be off-putting. But if you understand just how authentic the voices on the screen truly are, how hard the filmmakers seemed to work to maintain that authenticity, you realize you may be seeing something original in this genre. A visual "murder ballad" of sorts. The rhyme scheme slightly off, the details of the murder re-arranged... but the tune and the story combine to hang on, and they trail you into sleep. The tune and the distinctive lonely call of the singer's voice linger later, and they make you return, sad, and filled with morbid wonder.

*BREAKING NEWS* -- The Vienneau and Springstube Murders

ADDED 12/23/2006

The KFMB-TV report about this development from December 22, 2006 on YouTube:

If you are a blogger or crime blogger please consider posting the video on your own blog. Let's make the man you will read about below an Internet Celebrity.

I've been informed by Dayna Herroz that I can now tell readers the name of the man Dayna believes to be the primary suspect in the murders of her daughter, Tori Vienneau and grandson Dean Springstube. He is 22-year-old Dennis Potts of Bonita, California.

The Herroz family is represented by high-profile attorney Debra Opri, and Dayna only let me know about this development -- being able to make public the name of the man whom Dayna thinks may have murdered Tori and Dean -- after consulting with Ms. Opri. Debra Opri has made frequent appearances on Nancy Grace's show on CNN Headline News and she also currently represents Larry Birkhead in his paternity case against Anna Nicole Smith. When Dayna asked me for names of attorneys who might be helpful, Debra's was one of the first to come to mind. Of the attorneys Nancy Grace has had on her show who tend to work civil cases and high-profile defense, Ms. Opri seemed one of the sharpest and most sincere. She's lived up to her sterling reputation in working for and communicating with the Herroz family, I'm happy to say.

Let Dennis Potts tell you where that is -- from his online profile:

Well what can i say. I live in Bonita, CA. For those that dont know where Bonita is. It is right outside Chula Vista...

Dennis goes on to tell a bit more about himself:

I graduated form [sic] Bonita Vista High School in 2002 and wow has the time flown by. I am a Graphic Design major. I drive a 2006 Ford F150. I like all kinds of music but Country is what I listen to the most. I like going to vegas and love to gamble. Im always down for a game of poker...

Dennis is also into motorcycles, and into girls. Man, is he ever into girls. More about that later.

When Dennis and Tori met in high school they were practically neighbors in Bonita. They became friends and eventually became intimate.

Dennis Potts was the biological father of Dean Springstube. He is the man I referred to as "Jed Stinson" in a previous blog entry. Dennis will, of course, be referred to by his real name from hereon out.

Dennis Potts is 5'11" and heavyset, with blue eyes and brushy blonde hair. In photos he appears to be an affable and easygoing guy, everyone's friend.

On MySpace, he could be found at the following places:

http://www.myspace.com/dp619 [screen cap temporarily unavailable, but not lost;
http://www.myspace.com/mydailypost;
http://www.myspace.com/imageclothing [screen cap temporarily unavailable].

Dennis developed MyDailyPost.com from the middle MySpace listed above. He admits it in the "About Me" section of the profile, and says, "Dont worry, its not a porno site."

I'd beg to differ. I snagged a screen cap from Google of the site before Dennis took it down for refurbishing, and you be the judge as to what kind of site it was, then. Warning -- graphic images to follow -- Screen Capture of MyDailyPost.com[link temporarily broken]. Dennis couldn't disown the site if he wanted to, anyway -- his name is on the registration info:

Domain name: mydailypost.com

Registrant Contact:

Dennis Potts (DENNIS.POTTS@***.NET)

This isn't all, by a longshot, that there is to learn about Dennis Potts, the man who fathered Dean Springstube.

At one time Dennis tried to run an online business: So-CalMoto.com.

Dennis closed that business down, perhaps in part because of what people were writing here: eBay user profile for DennisPotts619. (You all remember Neil Entwistle, don't you? If you do, you'll keep being reminded of him, I imagine.)

If you're the type to dismiss info because it's come from a blogger (and yes, I still get that sort of crap, can you believe it?) then San Diego locals at least should stay tuned to KFMB TV. Producer David Gotfredson is working at that CBS affiliate to put together something about these still-unsolved murders that should air soon, and I imagine the report will contain at least some of the information about Dennis Potts that you've read in this blog entry.

There is more to come, but for now I wanted to emphasize that it is Dayna Herroz's opinion that Dennis Potts is the prime suspect in her daughter's and grandson's murders.

It is, however, a scientific fact that Dennis was the father of the baby police found dead in that San Diego apartment last July, hanging, yes, from a noose in his crib.

Updates will be added below.

UPDATE, 12/23/06, 1:50 p.m. ET

An admonition: Dennis Potts has not been charged with anything. He is, however, the man Tori Vienneau was supposed to see the night she and her son were murdered. According to Tori's mom, Dayna Herroz, her daughter was to tell Mr. Potts that she would be heading to court to seek child support. Dennis Potts was irrefutably the biological father of Dean Springstube.

To see some candid photos Dennis posted on one of his webpages, click the thumbnail above, on the left [image temporarily missing, 1/12/07]. I am grateful to Shadow205 at WebSleuths.com for snagging those images before Potts took them off-line.

At the moment, as might be apparent from trying to reach Dennis's formely active MySpace pages, he is not under arrest. He removed his "dp619" MySpace [link temp. broken] immediately after KFMB visited his family yesterday (link goes to a screen capture I made).

Folks in the comments below are already on Dennis's trail, and there's plenty more stuff out there by him -- message board posts, etc. Some other past screen names he's used: "lexis2nv," "LexusIS4U2NV," "600RRinSanDiego." The guy is as much into cars and bikes as he is into busty girls.

Also in the comments on this entry, KFMB producer David Gotfredson has posted a link to the very interesting piece that station did. They made a yeoman's effort to speak to Dennis Potts, but got his family instead.

Some quotes from the clip (my thanks to David Gotfredson for sending me these quotes):

[Narrator]: Dayna Herroz lost her daughter and grandson that night.

[Narrator]: Dayna says her daughter Tori was supposed to meet with Dennis Potts the night of the murders to tell him she was planning on going to court to make Potts pay child support for his son, Baby Dean.

[Dayna]: "No matter what he said, she was going through the courts. And she still had that plan on Wednesday the day she was murdered."

[Narrator]: Dayna believes that was the motive for murder...

[Narrator]: At his home in Bonita, Dennis Potts's father tells our producer his son is innocent.

[Producer]: Do you think he's involved in this?

[Potts's Father]: Of course he's not involved in this because [we] know exactly where he was at.

[Producer]: Where was he the night [of] the murders?

[Potts's Father]: He was right here.

[Producer]: Didn't he have a date with her that night?

[Door was slammed on camera crew then.]

I added bold emphasis to what was said by Dennis's dad above because I've been informed it may be at odds with another statement made in the past about Dennis Potts's whereabouts the night Tori and Dean were murdered.

Still developing...

UPDATE, 5:21 p.m. ET

If you take a look at the KFMB video (lower quality YouTube video here), you will see what looks like a big Ford F150 in the driveway at the Potts residence. If Dennis was not at home when KFMB visited, then we can only assume he was riding with someone else when left, because there were three vehicles in the video, and the other pickup looked more modest... maybe not Dennis Potts's "style."

I'd bet he was home and too busy trying to delete his webpages when the camera crew came, but that's something we'll probably never know.

UPDATE, 12/25/2006, 4:49 a.m. ET

The YouTube post I made of the KFMB video was "honored" today, one of the top 75 most viewed videos in the "news & blogs" category.

I don't view that as a bad thing, but I imagine Dennis Potts and his family may not appreciate it.