When Satan Wore a Cross

by Fred Rosen

  Satanism was another matter.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Exorcist

  What had stymied the TPD in its first investigation of the Pahl homicide was the deal made with the Toledo Diocese to stop before they could begin building a case against the prime suspect, Father Gerald Robinson. Despite any public statements covering their ass, the TPD was “that close” to indicting Robinson when Schmit and Vetter walked into the interrogation room and shut things down cold.

  During the first years of the millennium, Dave Davison sat with his menagerie in his home on Toledo’s margins, watching as a new group of young Turks took over the Toledo Police Department and replaced the old guard. That didn’t mean there weren’t still lots of Catholics in the TPD; there were. But the idea of masking a murder suspect, simply because he was a Catholic priest, was now abhorrent.

  Because of the sexual abuse scandals across the country, Catholic priests were no longer seen as the holy men of yore. Now they were seen as men, just as capable of murder, child abuse, or sexual abuse as any other person. The cold case squad decided to reinvestigate the unsolved 1980 homicide of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. The detectives were coming after Jerry Robinson. If they didn’t make the case this time, the Pahl murder would probably remain unsolved forever.

  On December 15, 2003, Ross and Forrester went to the diocese. In their hands was a search warrant. They met with Father Michael Billian, who functioned as the diocese’s chancellor, or front man for dealing with the authorities. It happened that he and Forrester, a Catholic, were acquaintances. The warrant, they explained, was for the personnel file of Father Gerald Robinson. Robinson had been the prime suspect in the 1980 unsolved murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, a case they had just reopened.

  Billian went outside his office. A few minutes later, he came back in with a thin folder. It was the entire personnel file the diocese had on Robinson. Opening it, Forrester saw a personnel form with Robinson’s particulars on it. A second form summarized his assignments since entering the diocese in 1964. Last was a head shot of Robinson, smiling. That was it; nothing else.

  The detectives were rather surprised that after more than four decades of service to Toledo’s Catholics, there wasn’t more detailed information, like comments from parishioners regarding his priestly abilities, peer reviews, and some comments from the man at the top, the bishop who was Robinson’s overall supervisor. For a personnel file it was pretty bare, but Billian acidulously assured the police officers that was all they had.

  Something else was happening. Damon’s charges of satanic abuse brought in the supernatural. While she did not place Robinson at any of the alleged satanic ceremonies in which she was the alleged victim, she did place him, and quite persuasively, in Chet Warren’s room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where Warren, she claimed, prostituted her.

  But it wasn’t until Detective Terry Cousino examined the altar cloth lying over her chest that anyone made the charge that the murder of Margaret Ann Pahl was ritualistic. “Ritualistic” is the label homicide detectives and prosecutors like to assign to cases where they suspect satanic involvement.

  Like just about everybody in Toledo who went to college, Cousino’s alma mater was the hometown University of Toledo, where he got his bachelor’s in art education. A member of the TPD’s Scientific Investigation Unit, Cousino was a jack-of-all-trades forensic specialist. He could draw accurate composites of suspects and age them, or make a plaster of a person’s face that had been shot off by a shotgun.

  Cousino had more recently taken courses in a new field of forensics, bloodstain pattern transfer analysis. The theory behind bloodstain pattern transfer analysis was logical enough. A blood-soaked knife, other murder weapon, or anything at the scene coated in the red stuff, will make a distinct pattern when set down on, or when covered with something. While the field held great promise for the future, it has yet to be proven significant in obtaining regular convictions for two reasons.

  First, there are only five people acknowledged worldwide as bloodstain pattern transfer analysis experts. Unless they worked for a super-secret crime-fighting organization like S.H.I.E.L.D. created by Stan Lee, they wouldn’t be able to cover all the cases in one state, let alone fifty of them where their testimony could make a significant difference.

  Second, unlike DNA typing, which is an objective science born out of more than fifty years of steady, dedicated research and results, bloodstain pattern transfer analysis (BPTA) is new and decidedly subjective. No matter how well-trained the specialist in this area might be, the expert must interpret, just as a frontier scout interpreted imprints in the dirt.

  No matter how reliable subjectivity might be, it is not the scientific fact that DNA typing is. While law enforcement organizations try to implement standards in this new area, credible research studies need to be developed and published to answer how a subjective technique can even compare to science in weight given at trial.

  This must all be taken into account, and then thrown out.

  No one knows what a jury will do, and anyone who says he does is lying. A jury can be smart, like the one that convicted Harry K. Thaw in 1906 for murdering Stanford White, the first “crime of the century”; or it can be stupid, like the jury that voted to acquit O. J. Simpson in 1995 for the last “crime of the century.” Despite still being a theory, BPTA could easily be accepted by the jury and lead to conviction. Just as possible was that a good defense attorney could bring out “reasonable doubt” by arguing BTPA was not science but science fiction. Convince even one juror of that and the jury would hang.

  DNA typing is 99.9 percent accurate. Bloodstain pattern transfer analysis is not. But it was all the cold case squad had. Examining the altar cloth further, Cousino noted the grouping of puncture marks in the center. There were eighteen in total, but it looked like the cloth had actually been folded over when the stabbing took place. That meant there were actually nine punctures grouped in the center of Pahl’s chest.

  CSI work sometimes includes using old technology. Taking a piece of tracing paper, Cousino positioned it carefully over the nine holes in the cloth. He drew lines, literally connecting the dots on the cloth that represented where the knife, he figured, had passed through and into the nun’s chest. When he was finished, he announced his results to the cops.

  “It’s a cross,” he opined.

  Cousino figured the killer had used a crucifix as a template. But the stab marks were not just any cross. It was Cousino’s opinion that the stab marks formed an inverted or upside-down cross, and that meant only one thing: Satan.

  Devil worshippers mock Christianity using various symbols to demonstrate their displeasure with Christianity. One of these satanic symbols is the inverted cross. To a Satanist, it represents rejection and mockery of Jesus.

  If such a cross were pierced into Margaret Ann’s chest over her heart, the case could easily be seen as a satanically inspired ritual. Damon’s charges of human sacrifice by the satanic cult could be borne out by hard evidence.

  There is nothing unusual about ritual killing. It is carefully documented in a variety of cultures and is literally as old as time itself, or at least since humans first walked the earth more than one hundred thousand years ago. Many cultures that have long since become history, including the Mayans, the Incas, and others, ritually killed human beings, usually for some sort of sacrifice to appease one god or another.

  The Catholic Church crystallized the concept of the Devil or Satan in Mathew 25:41, “the Devil and his angels,” giving their chief or head fallen angel the name Lucifer. Thereafter, ritual killing involved in many instances worshipping Lucifer. But as time passed and cultures became more and more educated and enlightened, such ideas fell by the transom of history.

  By the twentieth century, ritual killing was practically nonexistent in the United States. Public perception changed with the publication of Ira Levin’s 1967 best-seller Rosemary’s Baby, which brought devil worshipping to the masses. It was a frightening
story of a devil-worshipping cult in modern-day Manhattan, composed of people just like you and me, who just happened to implant a nice girl named Rosemary with Satan’s spawn.

  Under Roman Polanski’s absolutely brilliant direction, the 1968 screen version became an instant classic that transcended the bounds of its own horror genre. Through Rosemary’s travails, it indelibly stamped images of ritualistic sexual abuse on the American consciousness. Then, as if to prove out his own thesis, Polanski showed how easy it was to become a victim of devil worshipping in his own life.

  Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, was the most well-known victim of Charles Manson and his devil-worshipping cult that killed six people on two consecutive nights, August 8 to 9, 1969. The subsequent trial lasted from 1970 to 1971, and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s 1975 account of the case, Helter Skelter, focused the public’s attention once more on ritual killing.

  As the Manson case showed, Satanism is about sex and power. Under the guise of worshipping Satan, felons rape, beat, and psychologically abuse those they make part of their ritual. Charlie Manson, for example, controlled his cult by making them believe he was the Devil incarnate. Yet he was nothing more than a charismatic, insane con man who had spent more than half of his miserable life behind bars.

  David Berkowitz, who in 1977 was arrested in Westchester, New York, for being the self-described serial killer the Son of Sam, admitted he was part of a satanic cult. Though police played this down at the time, evidence developed later that there could have been more than one “shooter,” from Berkowitz’s cult. As late as 1997 during a nationally televised interview, Berkowitz told Larry King that he had belonged to a devil-worshipping cult.

  Sister Margaret Ann Pahl’s death could have been part of a satanic ritual performed by Father Robinson. Evidence of the rituals themselves would help corroborate Damon’s statement. Confusing matters, there were some writers and cops who considered themselves self-styled Satanism experts. If there was even a hint of satanic activity, they never failed to seize the media spotlight and flog the Satanism angle to death in order to sell themselves and their points of view.

  Homicide cops don’t like to admit it, but more often than not, they form a theory of the crime. Then they gather the evidence with an eye toward supporting that theory, rather than going where the evidence leads. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

  Right from the beginning in 1980, the TPD cops formed the theory that Father Gerald Robinson had killed Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. He was the only suspect. The cops figured he strangled her with his hands and then used his letter opener to stab her to death, having laid the altar cloth over her chest first. Tying the letter opener and the altar cloth to the crime was therefore essential.

  Forrester and Ross pulled all the evidence from the 1980 homicide. They asked Daniel Davison of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to see what he could find out about the letter opener. Using contemporary science, Ross could not connect the letter opener to Pahl’s body. He could not say one way or the other whether it was Robinson’s letter opener that punctured Margaret Ann Pahl’s skin.

  “I had Steve Ross call me for a DNA test,” says Dave Davison. “I asked him why and he said they were trying to rule out everyone who was at the crime as being the perpetrator.”

  Davison, though, didn’t trust Ross or the TPD.

  “I refused. He said if I didn’t get my ass down there and give them a swab, he would get a court order. I told him to go ahead.”

  As part of the case he was building against Robinson, assistant prosecutor Dean Mandros subpoenaed the following from St. Vincent’s Hospital Pathology Department:

  “…you are hereby commanded to release tissue in paraffin block and glass slides from the 1995 medical treatment and surgery at Mercy Hospital of Father Jerome Swiatecki to the Lucas Count Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.”

  Father Swiatecki had had some surgery in the mid-nineties at the hospital, which had stored his tissue samples inside paraffin for long-term convenience. The prosecution could use it to type his DNA and compare it to any gathered at the crime scene, and thus rule him out. The cops then asked for voluntary DNA samples from as many of the people who were at the 1980 crime scene as they could find.

  Davison’s reticence to allow the TPD access to his genetic code was well-founded. The department needed to prove to honest veterans like Davison that the go-to boys no longer controlled the department, that everyone, including Catholic priests, was subject to criminal prosecution for felonious acts that not only defied common criminal law, they defied canon law as well.

  None of the DNA typing made a difference anyway. What little blood that was on the letter opener, under where the medallion used to be, had been tested back in 1980, and had proved too little to even blood type, e.g., A, B. By the time they came to Cousino, the TPD cops were running out of options.

  With Cousino’s information regarding blood pattern transfer analysis in hand, they proceeded to get two of the five world experts on bloodstain pattern transfer analysis to agree to testify for the prosecution: T. Paulette Sutton and Dr. Henry Lee. Both experts would say that Robinson’s letter opener pierced the altar cloth, the blood leaving a distinct pattern of an inverted cross on the cloth.

  The meaning of the stab wounds was crucial to the prosecution of the case. If Cousino was right in his interpretation, they needed an expert on ritualistic killings. TPD detectives found themselves traveling to Chicago, just three and a half hours away from Toledo by car, to ask for the assistance of the one man who could help: the exorcist.

  Father Jeffrey Grob is the assistant exorcist and director of canonical services for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

  “I sort of backed into it because of the dissertation I was working on at the time on the rite of exorcism,” says Father Grob.

  The archdiocese had a hole that it needed to fill, and Father Grob got the call. It was not surprising. Father Grob, who also has a Ph.D. in canon law, is the real deal. Warm, eloquent, and self-effacing, he heads up the Office of Canonical Services for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

  “I perform a wide range of activities for the Chicago Archdiocese. Any question pertaining to church or canon law comes to me. An additional duty because of my dissertation on exorcism is that any call regarding matters of the occult, where someone claims possession, is routed to me. I’m the front person for anyone who has a problem regarding evil manifesting itself in people. I backed into the role when I was writing a Ph.D. on the Catholic rite of exorcism in 1999.”

  Regarding calls from people claiming to be possessed or knowing people who are, Father Grob answers, “Usually most problems can be resolved right on the phone. You must understand that an exorcist is trained to be a skeptic. Most of these [possession] situations involve people who are psychotic, exhibit bipolar behavior, schizophrenia. That’s why it’s very important to know what’s actually going on in a person’s life. A great many matters can be resolved quickly.”

  If not, Grob could be called upon to do what he has done in the past—a full-blown exorcism.

  “It’s actually a prayer service where you are praying with the person afflicted. I can tell you that most [cases of possession] are extremely rare,” Grob reveals.

  For the Pahl homicide, the TPD contacted and worked with him as their expert witness on ritualistic killings.

  “I went back and forth to Toledo, a number of times over a period of about three years,” says Father Grob. During that time, the prosecution and defense were building their cases and going through pretrial motions.

  “My primary focus was on working with the team of detectives from Toledo. I viewed all the evidence, the autopsy photos, the piece of linen. At first glance, it looked like random stabbings. But then, it looked like there was something more to it. It was the nature of the stab wounds. It became evident there was a pattern to the markings on the cloth.”

  “Any of these things individually can be just that, what they are. It’s in the cong
lomerate that makes something a ritual. It was the grouping. The mark on the forehead was a mockery of the anointing of the sick. It would be a particular mockery to a Sister of Mercy who is dedicated to extreme unction.”

  Father Grob was very much aware of the hill the prosecution would have to climb with the jury pool.

  “If you think it’s difficult now to grasp the idea of a priest being a man long enough to accept that if he is, he’s capable of murder like anyone else, can you imagine what 1980 was like? It was simply unthinkable,” Father Grob continues.

  While the murder investigation against Father Robinson was reaching its zenith in 2004, a parallel investigation was also going on by the TPD.

  The cops were looking into Sister Marlo Damon’s accusations of physical and sexual abuse by a satanic cult operating in Lucas County. What they needed was hard, prosecutorial evidence. This time, there would be no cover-ups. Police looked at a dilapidated, abandoned house on Raab Road in western Lucas County. It matched the description of the Raab Road house where Damon said in her statement she was gang-raped by a group of Satanists in the 1970s. Police could not find any evidence that the house had been a cult gathering place. There was no blood, no bones, no skin, no graves around the place, no indication whatsoever that the place was anything other than what it seemed to be.

  Police now had all kinds of chemicals and instruments popularized on the TV show CSI that could be used to find evidence of a crime. Police checked the local churches where Damon claimed the group operated. They went into the basement of Pope Pius X, where Chet Warren had been a pastor and led some of his satanic activities, according to Damon.

  They checked out the basement of Holy Trinity Church in Richfield Center, Ohio, another location for the cult that Damon had identified as a satanic site. They also looked at a residence used by Oblates priests on Park-wood Avenue that matched another description from Damon’s statement; again, they could find no evidence to support her claims.