SIN, SHAME AND SECRETS The Murder of a Nun, the Conviction of a Priest, and Cover-up in the Catholic Church

Hardback. In 1980 on Holy Saturday - the day before Easter - Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, an elderly nun, was strangled nearly to death in the sacristy of a chapel in a Catholic hospital in Toledo, Ohio. The killer then covered the nun's body with an altar cloth and stabbed her 9 times over the heart, in the form of a perfectly shaped upside-down cross. He then removed the altar cloth and stabbed the nun 22 more times on the face, neck and torso. The intense high-profile police investigation in the months that followed included interviews with more than 600 people, ranging from the slain nun's colleagues in the Sisters of Mercy convent to hospital staff, convicted criminals, and Satan worshippers. No arrests were made until April 23, 2004, when Toledo's cold-case squad went to Father Gerald Robinson's home next door to the police station and charged the 66yr old mild-mannered Catholic priest in the 24yr old murder. Father Robinson's dramatic trial in April and May 2006, believed to be the first in which a US Catholic priest was charged in the murder of a nun, was covered gavel to gavel by the world's media. Father Robinson was convicted May 11 and is now serving a 15yrs-to-life sentence in the Ohio penitentiary. The author details not only the unique and bizarre circumstances of Sister Margaret Ann's death and the arrest and conviction of a Catholic priest decades later, but also the myriad factors that caused local law enforcement and criminal justice officials to come up empty handed in the original 1980 investigation, as well as the cold-case squad's investigation, the findings of leading forensic experts, and courtroom testimony that led to Father Robinson's arrest and conviction. Illus. 228pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in F. dw.