DNA tests fail to clear priest convicted of nun's murder

TOLEDO, Ohio -- DNA tests conducted at the behest of a suspended Toledo diocesan priest have failed to clear him in the 1980 murder of a Mercy sister.

Attorneys for Fr. Gerald Robinson had asked for a DNA test for material found on the fingernails of Mercy Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl, contending that it could have come from convicted serial murderer Coral Eugene Watts, who died in prison two years ago. Watts had confessed to killing a dozen women in Texas and was suspected in as many as 80 more murders throughout the United States and Canada.

The test results, disclosed in late August, ruled out Watts as the murderer, reported the Toledo Blade daily newspaper.

In July, Robinson's attorneys paid for a test on the same DNA, contending it could have come from Fr. Jerome Swiatecki, a deceased Toledo priest. Swiatecki, who died in 1996 at age 82, served with Robinson as a chaplain at the since-closed Mercy Hospital in Toledo, where the nun was slain. Those tests cleared Swiatecki.

In addition to the two DNA tests not clearing him, Robinson has lost two appeals. His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. In a separate legal effort, an amended petition for post-conviction relief is pending in Common Pleas Court of Lucas County, which includes Toledo.

The 1980 murder was considered unsolved until Robinson, now 71, was arrested in 2004; he was suspended from active ministry upon his arrest. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Pahl, then 71, was slain on Holy Saturday. Attacked in the hospital chapel's sacristy, she was grabbed from behind, choked nearly to death, covered with an altar cloth, and stabbed 31 times.

The Ohio Innocence Project has taken up Robinson's cause in asserting his innocence in the crime.

Diane West of Toledo, a Catholic who was one of the jurors in the trial, said in an Aug. 19 talk sponsored by the Polish-American Council of Toledo that the case still haunts her, since she had felt in her heart that a priest or a nun could not have committed such a crime. She added that she and others were ultimately swayed by the evidence presented during the trial.

Still, West told an audience of about 60 in her first public comments on the three-year-old trial, "I cried myself to sleep many nights, and others on the jury did, too," over the prospect of putting a priest behind bars. She added that she prays that "if I made the wrong decision that God forgives me."

Shortly after Robinson's arrest, Pahl's great-niece, Angela Kessler, wrote an essay for the Catholic Chronicle, Toledo's diocesan newspaper, in which she sought to calm the "frenzy" surrounding the sensationalist aspects of the decades-old slaying.

"It is easy enough to search on the Internet and find a list of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but to live them is a greater challenge. In the 50-some years Sr. Margaret Ann was a vowed Religious Sister of Mercy, there is no doubt she performed thousands, if not millions, of these acts," Kessler wrote.

Recalling the storm that took place during her great-aunt's funeral, Kessler also remembered the sunshine and rainbow that greeted mourners once they left the church. "One newscaster asked if the arrest of Robinson brought closure for our family," she said. "I think it needs to be said that God provided closure 24 years ago in those beautiful signs."