A discovery in a rest stop trash can leads police to suspect a young artist and sex worker has been brutally murdered by someone close to her. But without a body, will she ever get the justice she deserves?If you have any information on the disappearance of Robin Benedict in 1983 in Massachusetts, please contact the Massachusetts State Police at 508-820-2300. If you or someone you know is a victim of stalking, you can reach out to the VictimConnect Resource Center by phone or text at 1-855-484-2846, or you can chat online at victimconnect.org. You can also contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or RAINN’s National Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.For more resources and information about stalking & stalking awareness, especially for those not directly impacted by stalking, please visit the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC) website. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-robin-benedict/ Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies. Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: What happened to Robin Benedict?
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one that I was dead set on telling because I have seen bits and pieces of it before. But when I actually dug in, it was one of those cases where the story reported is not the real story. And I couldn't understand how it got so twisted. So if you think that you know this case, you probably don't.
This is the story of Robin Benedict. March 6, 1983, is a cold spring morning in Mansfield, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, the kind that makes you feel like winter's never going to end. But instead of using his Sunday to sleep in, a man named Joseph braves the freezing weather to collect bottles along I-95.
Around 9 a.m., he meets up with his friend and they go to this rest stop to rummage through some trash barrels. They split up. Joseph takes the left side of the lot. His friend takes the right. And when Joseph reaches inside the first barrel, he pulls out this heavy brown plastic garbage bag. And he's excited because a heavy bag means lots of bottles. Lots of bottles means a big payday.
Chapter 2: Who discovered the evidence of a crime?
But instead of a payday, he nearly gets a heart attack because when he tears open the bag, he sees a tan corduroy jacket spattered with blood. The scent of expensive perfume wafts up from the jacket, creating this like weird dissonance between what he's smelling versus like what he's seeing. Now, the jacket is wrapped around something hard and lumpy.
And as he peels back the layers, he sees a man's bloodied blue shirt, then a small two-and-a-half-pound sledgehammer, also with blood on it. And stuck to the blood on the sledgehammer is a long strand of dark hair. Joseph calls his friend over, wondering if they should call the police. But the friend is like, no, we need to stay out of whatever this is. It's not like we found a body here.
Plus, he's like, I get that it looks like blood, but it doesn't mean it actually is blood. And listen, if you want to bad enough, you can convince yourself of anything. So they put the trash bag back in the can. And they move along, just determined to not get involved. I cannot relate to anything less. As a crime junkie? No, I know. I would want to get the most involved.
I would make this my whole personality. But we are not Joseph. We are crime junkies. But he is Joseph. And he does find himself like thinking about this back even after he gets home. What if it really was blood? What if someone out there is hurt? He can't just sit with it anymore. So he does end up calling police that same day. It's state trooper Paul Landry who gets sent to check this out.
And when he finds the trash bag and sees everything with his own eyes, he is not as quick to dismiss it. He knows blood when he sees it, and this blood is still sticky, which means that it's pretty fresh. Whatever happened to whoever it happened to probably happened around sometime like the night before.
So Trooper Landry collects the items and sends them to the state crime lab for testing while he puts out feelers for any crimes in the area that this might be related to. Assaults, homicides, missing people. Nothing pops up right away. But about a week later, Trooper Landry gets word that there is, in fact, a missing girl.
Someone had apparently heard someone else talking about a newscast that they saw about this missing person. So he literally doesn't even have a name or even a place, but it has to be somewhat regional, right? Like it's worth a shot. So he starts calling all of the major channels in the Boston area and neighboring Rhode Island asking about this broadcast.
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Chapter 3: What were the initial police findings?
And it takes a few hours, but later that day, he gets a call back from a Boston news director confirming that they did run a brief broadcast on a woman who was reported missing by her boyfriend in a town about 40 miles away from that rest stop where the stuff was found. And at first, Trooper Landry's not convinced that this woman is his victim.
If there even is a victim, like 40 miles feels kind of far for him. But he looks into the report anyways. And what he finds is that a week before all of this, a guy named J.R. reported his 21-year-old girlfriend, Robin Benedict, missing after she didn't return from visiting someone she knew in Sharon, Massachusetts.
Now, it turns out Sharon, Massachusetts, is only about five minutes away from the rest stop. And Robin was wearing a tan jacket when she was last seen. So he looks Robin up and he learns that she is a sex worker in Boston. And J.R. might be her boyfriend, but he might be more than that. Like J.R. 's official criminal history includes unarmed robbery and receiving stolen credit cards.
But he also co-owns a hair salon that's rumored to be a meeting place for traffickers. Hmm. And it turns out J.R. 's not the only one who reported Robin missing. In fact, he wasn't even the first person. J.R. 's ex, who is also the mother of his son, she actually reported her missing the day that the trash bag was found because Robin never made it to her son's birthday party.
And so then it was two days after she had reported her missing that J.R. went and reported her too. And then three days after that, her parents reported her missing. Now, there's already a search underway because the day before he reported Robin missing to police, J.R. hired private investigators to track her down.
Hold up. He hired PIs before he called the police?
Yeah, I assume he did that because police aren't, like, super fond of him. And as Robin's suspected trafficker slash boyfriend, like, he would be a prime suspect. Right. And also, like, I'm sure he doesn't want them, like, poking around into whatever he has going on. But anyways, Trooper Landry decides to start with these PIs.
He asks them to come down to the station to talk about what it is they know, what have they found out. And they tell him that they've done a lot of work on the case so far. And in particular, they spent a lot of time looking into this one specific guy that J.R. believed took Robin, this client who in recent months had become obsessed with her. Now, this man J.R.
was suspicious of is a 41-year-old Tufts Medical School professor named Dr. Bill Douglas. And his condensed version of, like, his history with Robin goes like this. Robin met Bill at a combat zone bar sometime in the spring of 1982, so almost exactly a year ago. When I say the combat bar, like the combat zone is this area in Boston known for sex work, maybe other illegal activity.
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Chapter 4: Who were the primary suspects in Robin's case?
J.R. also suspected that Bill would listen to the messages on Robin's answering machine. He even thought Bill stole Robin's answering machine from her apartment not once but twice in an attempt to keep her from meeting other men.
And was Robin suspicious of Bill, too, or was this just, like, coming from J.R. ?
So if you would have asked me a week ago, I would have said I couldn't tell you. But literally right before finalizing this script, we were able to get in touch with Robin's brother, Richard. And he told us that, yes, she at least thought Bill was listening to her calls somehow. I mean, it's probably what pushed her to use an answering service instead of her regular machine to begin with.
And interestingly, she wouldn't give Bill the number for the answering service. Which, according to her brother Richard, just seemed to make Bill even, like, more crazy. He started stealing her mail. He started calling her family members. It escalated. Yeah, like, if he couldn't get in touch with her, he, like, had to have tabs on her at all times.
And that seemed like it marked the beginning of the end of things between them. Robin started actively trying to break things off. And on March 2nd, we're back now in 1983, March 2nd, She even calls Bill's house and told his wife, Nancy, that she didn't want to see him anymore.
Did wife Nancy know that Bill was seeing another woman?
So, I don't know. Like, in that moment when Robin called her, all we know is that Nancy said, Okay. Nothing else. Which makes me think that it wasn't a total surprise. Also, like, how do you spend two hours every night with someone and your wife, like, doesn't know something was up? But what's so interesting is guess where Nancy and Bill live. Sharon, Massachusetts.
In fact, Trooper Landry learns that according to J.R., that is actually where Robin was going the night of March 5th. She wanted to make it clear to Bill that she didn't want to see him again and she wanted to do it face to face.
So that could explain the blue men's shirt and the trash bag, couldn't it?
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Chapter 5: What role did Bill Douglas play in Robin's life?
And I'm sure we all remember how invincible we felt at her age. Like you don't think anything bad can happen to you. I mean, even her brother said that she didn't seem to be worried about Bill. Like, even though he didn't know the full extent of their relationship until after Robin went missing, all he knew was that she was going to break things off with this professor that she was working with.
Like, she said that this is what she was telling him, that the professor was getting way too attached, whatever. But he said that his sister just seemed annoyed. She didn't seem scared. But according to JR, she goes over there to break things off that night, and then she just never comes home. Now, J.R. didn't jump straight to, oh, my God, she's been murdered when she didn't come home.
I guess Bill had recently been trying to convince Robin to go on a trip to the Virgin Islands with him before she disappeared. So at first he thought, not even that she went willingly, but like maybe Bill abducted her or like whatever, hence hiring the P.I.s. But they quickly found that Bill definitely wasn't in the Virgin Islands.
Because a couple of days after Robin disappeared, the PIs found him at a hotel in D.C. where he was staying for a conference. And the second they saw him, they spotted something very suspicious. So right away, the PIs notice a bandage over Bill's forehead, which throws up some red flags. And they're like, how'd you get that, Billy?
And he's like, oh, I just hit my head on this cabinet door, which is obviously not what happened because this is like a large bandage, like most likely larger than you would need if you just got a little whack with a cabinet. But Bill was super cooperative. He lets them in, lets them search the room. And Bill's story was that, yes, Robin had come over on the 5th.
He saw her briefly just before 11 p.m., but she left around midnight, and she said that she was going to go meet some guy named Joe. Oh, and he said, by the way, his wife and kids weren't home, so no one could confirm that. Cool. So they talk to him. The PIs eventually leave. But there's, like, something about his answers that aren't sitting right with them.
So later that same night, they go back to ask Bill again, like, why? How is it you got that injury to your head? And this time he gives a completely different story. Wait, on the same night? On the same night. So this time he says that he was mugged at an Amtrak station and that the robbers hit him in the head with his briefcase.
And oh, by the way, his wife actually was home the night that Robin came over. So she could corroborate his alibi that she left safe and sound.
Oh, convenient. Now your wife is home late at night when the sex worker you're obsessed with just happens to pop by for a visit.
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Chapter 6: How did Robin's disappearance unfold?
So I think they just kind of like plant the seed with Trooper Landry. Here's all this stuff on Bill, but don't totally ignore JR. Thank you. So Trooper Landry's first move after talking to the PIs is to try and confirm the tan jacket is actually Robyn's. Conveniently, Robyn's dad had already showed up to the station because somehow he had heard about the tan jacket that had been found on I-95.
And he's sure that it's Robyn's. But to be extra sure, they contact J.R. and ask him to come down to the station with a sample of her perfume to compare to the scent that is still like clinging to this jacket. Mm-hmm. And once J.R. arrives, there is no doubt in anyone's mind. J.R. recognizes the jacket, too, and that perfume still on it is the same one that Robin wears every single day.
Now, Trooper Landry is confident that her dad isn't a suspect, so he sends him home to have time to grieve in peace while he goes in hard at J.R. And there are no softball questions. He opens with, Oh, wow. But J.R. is distraught and clear that he would never hurt Robin. He loved her. They were planning to get married.
He claims they never even fought, and he says the person they need to be looking at is Bill. And after four hours of the third degree, Trooper Landry starts to believe J.R., so he lets him go. Though they do still search the house that he shared with Robin and her new apartment that she had just recently got where she brought clients to. But in both of those places, they don't find anything.
They just confirmed that no one laid eyes on Robin since the 5th. But strangely, people had heard some weird noises coming from her apartment after the 5th. And not weird like a struggle or something unexplained. Like, they were legit strange. Like, it was someone playing the flute and singing in a high-pitched voice. Oh, that's weird. Unexpected? Yeah.
Now, Robin actually did play the flute, so maybe could have been her. But the important thing is that none of the neighbors actually laid eyes on her or saw who was in the apartment. So now, Trooper Landry's sights are set squarely on Bill. So on March 16th, police bring him in for questioning. He's condescending and shifty, but he admits pretty quickly that he was Robin's client.
The truthfulness ends there, though, because when he's asked about that cut on his head, he gives yet another story. Of course. This time he says he was mugged by two men who hit him with a metal pipe Not his briefcase this time, but they stole the briefcase. Now, despite all the inconsistencies, Bill just doesn't strike police as their most likely suspect.
They just they don't feel right because stalking Robin isn't a massive red flag.
Yeah, I don't think they start to like really understand the depths of that until after their interview with him. So when they talk to him, they end up letting him go because they don't have anything to hold him on. And it's after that that J.R. gives them all these letters that Bill wrote to Robin. Which painted a picture of a man who hoped their relationship would turn into something romantic.
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Chapter 7: What evidence linked Bill to Robin's case?
And it's kind of the same as the others, but he adds details about his attackers and changes the location again. This time he says he's attacked by two young Black men in D.C. who hit him on the head and stole his precious briefcase. Ashley, everyone wants this guy's briefcase. I know, literally everyone. And actually, I haven't told you this part yet.
So there are literally so many stories and anecdotes in Teresa Carpenter's book called Missing Beauty. I can't even begin to hit all of them. But there's this whole story of a time when Bill called the police saying that Robin stole his briefcase.
And according to the police report, the two of them had like this heated argument outside of his house where she was like, give me what you took from me and I'll give this back to you. And in the end, police were like, you two need counseling. Figure it out yourselves. Bye. And Trooper Landry actually asks him about this specific incident. And Bill's like, oh, yeah, that was nothing.
We figured it out. So that just kind of gets like washed off. But again, like this, I don't know what's up with this briefcase. So then Landry asked him about the stopped $200 check, which Bill explains by saying that he paid Robin the money in cash when she was at his house on the 5th so that he just like canceled the check, which like I'm pretty sure wasn't part of his like original story.
Like, yeah, but not important. Not important. Like Landry like knows he's lying. He's pretty sure at this point that Bill murdered Robin. But for some reason, like in all of the reporting on this, like it also seems like he feels sorry for this guy. Mm.
Which I don't understand. It's hard to imagine feeling sorry for a grown-ass man who's cheating on his wife, embezzling from a university where he works, and, oh, by the way, stalking a 21-year-old girl.
Yeah, it seems like he's like, oh, man.
It's like sad sack.
Well, like, this guy really, like, got his heart broken. Like, he's...
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of the investigation?
Oh, yeah. I don't remember. I haven't seen the pictures in a while, but it was like I remember them. I remember some of this stuff being said about his house, too. I don't know what that means or what that says about them. I'm sure there's a ton of psychology behind it.
But police in this situation and maybe this is the thing across the board is when they looked at this, they said this looks like a family in crisis. Which it is. This is not a happy home. Yeah. And seeing that, they're like, oh, maybe Nancy didn't want to talk to us today, but maybe we actually can get her to flip down the line.
She may be protecting her husband now, but clearly like she's not living a happy life. She's not living in a happy home. We might be able to get her on our side. So Trooper Landry checks the house for places that looked cleaned up or painted over. He beelines for Bill's room, which is just as messy as the rest of the house.
But in the chaos of Bill's closet, Trooper Landry finds a treasure trove of evidence. First, there are tape cassettes, which when played are recordings of Bill making harassing calls to a massage parlor that Robin used to work at. He ended up getting her fired from that job. Second, there is an audit report showing that Bill stole at least $46,000 by conning Tufts. And that's like 80s money, too.
80s, $46,000, right. And he also finds a long handwritten note that Bill... wrote trying to come up with an explanation for his financial crimes. Was it a briefcase? That essentially chalks it up to, like, he's under a lot of stress, and he claims that he's using the stolen money to pay off this mysterious girl who drugged him and took incriminating photos of him for blackmail.
So he's, like, I think preparing his defense or testing it out. I don't know. There's also a tape recording where Bill tells his story to another person This, like, co-conspirator that police can't identify. And the voice could be a man's. It might be a woman's. Maybe Nancy's. Maybe a colleague's. Even could be Robin's. They don't know.
And then they find a lot more love letters and copies of Robin and JR's phone bills with notes in the margins. Like, he was tracking who she was with at all times and working to uncover her other clients' names.
They also find a pair of Robin's underwear, two address books that were stolen from her apartment, a stack of her credit cards, a pocketbook that smells like her perfume, and chillingly, they find her flute. Her flute. Her flute. Her flute. So he was the one singing and playing the flute? In his high-pitched voice. Oh, my God. Every once in a while, the full-body chills still get me.
And when I read that, I was, like, imagining him in her empty apartment after he did something to her. Playing her flute. Playing her flute and singing. Now, the stuff that they find, the list goes on. Under the kitchen sink, there are trash bags that match the one found at the rest stop. There's also a beeper for Robin's answering machine, which explains how he would listen to her messages.
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