March 13, 2024 • 26 mins
It’s just before Thanksgiving in the upper middle class suburb of Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a young man named Jimmy Robertson is standing in the den of his parents’ home, contemplating the unthinkable. After squandering all the opportunities he’s been given in life, and freshly kicked out of an elite college, he has a diabolical plan for those who love him the most.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Murder Homes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
People were like, oh, these people were murdered, and then
I was like, that's Chip's parents. When I found out
that it was Chip's brother with Meredith Moon, I was like,
that is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Two days before Thanksgiving, the pleasant suburb of rock Hill,
South Carolina, had the quiet feel of a neighborhood firmly
preparing for the holiday. Neighbors that swept leaves off roof gutters,
rake dead leaves off trim lawns, and hung festive fall
wreaths on their doors as the sun crept up behind
some maple trees and slemmed it through the picture window
of two five oh six Westminster Drive, a red brick
(00:45):
ranch home set just off the quiet street, a twenty
two year old man named Jimmy Robertson was standing in
the basement of the home next to his girlfriend Meredith,
listening very carefully to the sounds upstairs. It was five
in the morning, and he listened to an alarm clock
go off. It was the kind of house where you
could hear everything, and you could imagine the couple upstairs
(01:08):
slowly rising, rubbing their eyes, drawing a curtain back He
heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway, A
toilet flushed, and then a shower was turned on. He
quickly tapped out another line of riddlin from a vial,
tightened a dollar bill, and snorted it off a chipped
coffee table. His pupils dilated to dime size. He pulled
(01:31):
two athletic socks over his hands, so wired that he
could see his t shirt twitching over his heart. He
took one last look at that Denny was in filled
with the kind of games some doting parents buy for
their sons. A foosball table, a ping pong table, old
board games stacked in a corner under a flat screen,
a tattered VHS library of action movies. My whole fucking
(01:53):
body's shaking, he told Meredith. She was too tense to
say a word. She was just as high as him.
Jimmy had gone with a plan one hundred times, but
Meredith had never thought he was really serious. With thirty
six hours awake now and twelve hours of snorting, riddling
with Meredith, his teeth locked tight and his heart pumping,
nothing on earth was going to change his mind now.
(02:15):
Jimmy had even called his younger brother at three am,
when he felt he was turning into a nervous wreck.
It always good to hear his reassuring voice. The brilliant
and calm chip always knew exactly what to do, Jimmy,
Meredith said, as if she were trying to shake him
awake from some terrible dream. He picked up a knife
and walked up the carpeted stairs. This is murder Holmes.
(02:38):
I'm Matemarinovitch. As Jimmy walked down the first floor hallway
(03:09):
with a knife, he noticed the closed bathroom door and
could hear the shower. He knew he only had a
few minutes. He opened the door to the master bedroom
and saw a middle aged woman still lying in bed.
When she heard his footsteps, she raised her arm slightly
and began to turn toward him, eyes slowly opening. He
closed the distance before she could even scream, cutting her
(03:31):
throat so viciously that blood leapt on the bed sheets.
He could hear her rasping for breath as he stabbed
her again and again until the knife blade broke off.
Straddling her, he tried to catch his breath. He walked
over to the bedside table and carefully took the phone
off the hook, then hurried back to the basement to
get another weapon. Meredith stared up at him in shock
(03:53):
as he passed her and grabbed a claw hammer and
a baseball bat from a defel bag. Went down. Jimmy said,
one to go. Earl Robertson was drying himself off, running
the towel over his thinning hair as he ran through
a mental checklist of all the things he'd have to
get done before Thanksgiving. He thought he heard a noise
downstairs and figured it was his son, Jimmy up Early.
(04:16):
Earle was fed up with a kid, tired of bailing
him out. He was a fuck up, a disappointment, kicked
out of Earl's alma mater, Georgia Tech for poor grades
and drug use, the complete opposite of his younger brother, Chip,
who seemed to succeed at everything he did. Earl had
been the proudest dad on Westminster Dry One Ship had
been accepted to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Recently,
(04:40):
Earl and Terry had drawn the line they were cutting
Jimmy off financially. He wasn't getting a dollar until he
got his act together. It was going to be tough
love rock Hill style, refusing to write him another rent check.
They had recently helped him pack up his stuff and
moved back into his old bedroom at home. As Earl
wiped the condensation off the mirror and prepared to shave,
(05:01):
he saw the knob of the bathroom door turning. When
the door swung open, Jimmy was standing there. Before his
naked father could react, he squirted tylex in his eyes,
and as his father winced in pain, Jimmy sank the
clawheimmer deep into his skull again and again until he
collapsed to the ground. Then he grabbed the baseball bat
and swung it viciously again and again until the walls
(05:24):
were covered with his father's blood and brain tissue. Meredith
could hear it all. An autopsy will later find that
Earl had been bludgeoned a total of two hundred times.
All this happened while Meredith Moon sat trembling in the
den downstairs, listening to the thumps and thuds and cries
for help as her boyfriend murdered his parents upstairs. The
(05:47):
sickening noises had finally stopped, replaced by an ominous, buzzing
silence that seemed to flow through the house like some
kind of malignant electrical current. When Jimmy reappeared in the
sitting room, his shirt was covered with blood. He took
a seat next to her, trying to catch his breath,
his hands trembling from the riddleman. He told her to
get him a knife from the kitchen drawer. As Merreadith
(06:10):
walked toward the kitchen, she could to hear the rasping
breaths and knew that one of his parents was still alive.
She'd never be able to erase the sound of that breathing.
As she walked into the bright kitchen and found a knife.
She walked back down to the den and handed it
to Jimmy, who ascended the stairs a second time and
then made sure Terry and Earl were dead. Before Jimmy
(06:33):
and Meredith walked out of the house, he punched in
a window to make it look like a break in
one of a series of amateur moves he'd make after
the killing was done. Because he broke the glass from
the inside, detectives would easily be able to figure out
that the murderer had ineptly attempted to stage the scene.
Then they climbed into his red moss to protege and
(06:54):
began the nine hour journey to his younger brother's home
near the University of Pennsylvania. They took turns dry and
Meredith Moon, who had just witnessed her boyfriend slaughtering his
two parents, listened to him talk endlessly, his eyes darting
back and forth as they flew up Interstate eighty one.
He couldn't stop talking about his younger brother, Chip and
how impressed he was going to be when he told
him the news. A two point two million dollar inheritance
(07:18):
was at stake, and now there was nothing standing in
between the money and the two brothers. They both discussed
Earl's dream of spending all the money on a golf course.
Parents get to a certain age and they get wildly
scratch you out of the wheel on a whim. You
could sit there and take it like a chump, or
do a little risk management. Meredith nodded her head as
Jimmy motormouthed on the highway, noticing the dried flicks of
(07:41):
blood on his hand as he gripped a steering wheel.
They refilled the car gas stations along the way using
his father's credit card. Unknown to Jimmy, police were already
tracking him at a gas station outside West Philadelphia. He
called his own home, wanting to be reassured that the
phone was off the hook and no one had discovered
the bloodbath. But it rang and he immediately hung up,
(08:05):
realizing that someone was in the house, a concerned neighbor maybe,
or a swarm of cops detectives dusting the walls for evidence.
His heart felt like it was pumping a thousand times
a minute, and all he could do was ask a
petrified Meredith Moon for reassurance that everything was still going
according to plan, because this was the one time in
(08:25):
his life that fucking up was very much not an option.
But his younger brother, Chip wasn't answering his calls either now,
as if he changed his mind. Jimmy began to feel
like he was being cut loose once again and drove faster.
It never made it out of Philly. At forty first Street,
they were pulled over by cops who had been tracking
the credit card purchases and had a description of the vehicle.
(08:48):
Jimmy and Meredith were taken into custody. We'll be back
after a short break. We're back with Murder Holmes. Tommy
Pope is the man who ended up prosecuting Jimmy Robertson.
(09:10):
The first question I had for him is whether the
thirty six hour riddle in Bender could in any way
be blamed for the horrific murders.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It may have, ultimately, and this is a broad brush
I'm painting with now, but it may have finally given
him the courage to do the thing that he had
discussed and told people and thought about and talked about. Obviously,
this was a knife and bat assault, not a gun,
but to finally pull the trigger, to finally make the jump.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
And so I think he was there, you know, psychology wise,
he was there. He planned well, because what he did
was he waited till Dad was in the show, and
he goes in and kills Mom, who's still sleep because
Dad had to get up early and go to work.
So Dad's in the shower, so he's not going to
hear any of this.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
And as best I recall, I think he broke one
of the knives off in terry when he was doing that.
So now Mom's dead, so now he could hear, you know,
the shower, and that's when he's waiting outside the shower
and sprays Dan in the face with talons and then
you know, beats him down with the bat. And he
even said in his statement that he felt like his
(10:20):
dad just would and died. He was considered going downstairs
to get a drill to trill into it, you know,
confident knew what he was doing and chose to do it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Chip Robertson was also called in for questioning and a
constant by reporters outside the police station afterwards. He was
in shock, he said. He said his parents were the
best in the world. His mother, before she died, had
even sent him a honey baked ham to enjoy it
for Thanksgiving since he wouldn't be able to make it home.
I have no appetite for it now, he added sadly.
(10:53):
But many questionships involvement. There was that phone call on
the landline that Jimmy made a few hours before kill
his parents, and Chip was always a smart one, so
charming and unflappable. Most people in rock Hill who knew
them both believed that if anyone was going to be
the mastermind, it would be Chip. Stephanie Hinson, whose voice
(11:14):
you heard at the beginning of this podcast, was friendly
with Meredith in school and knew both Jimmy and Chip.
She says that most people in town and knew Chip
and Jimmy believe that Chip helped plan the murder.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I remember when this happened. They didn't know where Jim
and Meredith were until they caught them that weekend and
they were driving to Pennsylvania to Chips, and I.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Always thought that that was weird.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Rock Hill was a much smaller town when this happened
in nineteen ninety six or seven, and you knew people,
and people were like, well, some people think that Chip
made him do that. And I was like, well, that's
even more weird. And I do remember after the funeral
(12:00):
they had some sort of party in the house, but
they arrested Jim and Meredith quite quickly, so it was
just Chip having this party.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
In the house. A number of things do point to
Chip's involvement. First, there was the fact that Jimmy and
Meredith were driving up to chips off campus house right
after the murders to establish an alibi. And as Stephanie
pointed out, there was also the fact that Chip, who
couldn't bear to eat his mother's post mortem honey, baked
Ham held a rager at two five oh six Westminster
(12:35):
Drive a few months after the murders wasted. He clicked
on a block light UV flashlight to show everyone at
the house party the remnants of all the blood spatters
on the walls. I asked Tommy Pope, the prosecutor who
put Jimmy on death row, if you thought Chip had
something to do with the murders.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
You know, even as a former prosecuter, I want to
be careful with my words, because if we had had
sufficient evans to prosecute Chip, then we would have prosecuted Chip.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I remember, and.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I think this was a statement either to the psychologist
or that Jim made the Meridith that Chip was going
to be so proud of him.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I don't remember the specifics now, but for whatever reason,
the three o'clock call had the flavor for us of
Chip goading Jim into finally doing what they'd always talked about.
And the whole deal was that We're going to jump
in the car go visit Chip. Jim left the fake
note to say Chip needs me. They tried to make
(13:37):
it look like a break in. I firmly think Chip's involved.
And then you know, the irony, obviously is that Chip
ultimately gets inherre that squanders it, gets the house. We
heard reports of Chip having parties, you know, drug parties, raves.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Whatever you would have called it. And with the black light.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
With the black I was going to ask you, Yeah,
the black light like eliminating the blood. Diuld you believe
that or is that sort of like more of a guest.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I believe it. I believe it. I mean, I know,
we hear weird things in the world.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
But everything I saw, and again I want to be fair,
I didn't deal with Chip directly, but everything I saw
indicates Chip is maybe.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
More shrewd, smarter version of Jimmy, but has many of
the same motivations.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
There's a little doubt that Jimmy and Chip Robertson grew
up in a home where things were expected, accomplishments, rewarded
bad behavior, and not taken lightly. But in court a
year later, even the defense attorney for Jimmy Robertson failed
to make headway when he tried to portray Earl as
a control freak and Terry is suffering from mental breakdowns.
The truth, which kept bubbling to the surface was that
(14:47):
the two boys had grown up in a privileged world.
Their family was well respected in the community, and they
were sent to the best colleges. If Earl Robertson had
ever laid a hand on his sons, it might have happened,
maybe once twice. Mostly neighbors remember a father he used
to play football with the sons in the yard, and
a mother who jumped in her car with the boys
and their friends to make last minute trips to the
(15:09):
video store. Both parents, by all accounts, had deeply loved
their sons, and Earle had whether Jimmy's self destructive behavior
for years, even bailing him out of gambling debts and
paying rent for him and homes his roommates would inevitably
kick him out of. As Tommy Pope points out, Jimmy
always seemed to have two sides to him. He could
(15:30):
be quite charming. The family pastor remembers Jimmy helping his
wife with plant shrubs in his garden. This is a
kid we knew, he said. He was in Sunday School
youth group. He wasn't scouting. Then he added, everybody that
knew him well knew. There were some issues. There were
some rough edges, but no anticipation of anything like this.
Stephanie Hinson agrees.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Chip and Jim were both really smart. They were always
in the ap classes and graduated with honors, and Jim
went to Georgia Tech and Chip went to Wharton School
of Business. Jim was always he seemed nice, but a
lot of people thought that he was a bit strange,
but just everybody's strange in high school and kind of awkward.
(16:14):
But Chip was always really kind of charming and all
the teachers really liked him. And Jim was taller and
sick something, and he was super clean cut.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
In high school, Jimmy Robertson, tall and thin, was often
picked on his younger brother. Chip never had to endure
this kind of hazing. He fit in. He was popular,
excelled at school. He didn't fuck up, which only set
him apart from the Sun, who seemed to take more
and more pleasure in underperforming. At Georgia Tech, where Jimmy
was studying engineering, his grades were sliding. In two years,
(16:52):
he'd flunked out. He was high half the time, then
all the time hanging out with stone losers. And then
Earl roberts And let it be known that Jimmy wasn't
getting another dime until he turned his life around. His
frustration with Jimmy had turned to anger after his son
broke into a neighbor's house. People they liked and were
friendly with. Jimmy stole their car and credit cards. To
(17:14):
make it worse, The neighbors thought they knew Jimmy. They'd
watched him grow up, seen him catch passes on the
front lawn with his father, mow the lawn, exchange pleasantries
with them. He was almost timid. But it's always the
kid who's a little nicer than the rest, isn't it
the one who seems to blend in and almost fade away.
That's the one who's always crackling with resentment and keeping
(17:36):
one eye on your happy home. We'll be back after
a short break. We're back with murder. Omes Earl and
(17:56):
Terry made that long, painful walk to their neighbor's home
apologize for their son's break in and wrongdoing. It was
an act of contriteness. The neighbors never forgot. Jimmy, meanwhile,
spent a year in prison and emerged with an even
bigger drug problem. Being a parent is a funny thing.
No one really gives you credit for the executive decisions
(18:17):
you make the first time you ground a kid, the
first time you draw a line, the first time you
have to have a serious talk about drugs or breaking
into a neighbor's home. Earl and Terry Robertson, in some
ways could have been any parent on Westminster Drive. They
had a problem, and you have to imagine as they
lay in bed at night and discuss their prodigal son,
(18:39):
they felt they knew the best way to solve it.
After all, Jimmy was a good kid at heart, wasn't he.
What would you do? What would I do? Do you
turn your back or do you forgive everything and invite
more abuse? If they had to make a dramatic point
about not financing a drug habit. In the end, it
was the only way they could truly show their love
(19:00):
for him, especially before he really got into serious trouble,
so they cut him off. Decision made pain for Jimmy
in the short term and hopefully a better life for
him in the end, a son they could finally be
proud of a happy ending on Westminster Drive. In the end,
they might have thought he might even thank them for it.
But fuck ups get to decide when and where they
(19:22):
stopped fucking up. Maybe Jimmy felt that his parents dream
of him as a success was more sickening in the end,
sleep deprived, signapses, rattled with a half life of sordid pills.
At least he was determining, in some small way what
his path was in life. And a few days before Thanksgiving,
he knew he couldn't sit at that table passing green
(19:44):
bean casserole and listening to them talk about how great
Chip was again if their parents only knew that their
golden boy was plotting against them too. Jimmy had a
plan now, and the boldness of it excited him so
much he could barely keep it to himself. Here's Tommy
Pope again.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
You know, Jimmy Robinson was you know, upper middle class family.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
He and his brother grew up in a good home,
you know, with a stay at home mom, she worked
part time, a working dad. Jim was an eagle scout.
But there was some strangeness almost behind the scenes. Jim
loved disappointing his parents. I mean in almost malicious ways.
I mean Jim got into Georgia Tech, which is a
(20:26):
tremendous engineering school and flunk down. Now he might have
flunked out partly because he's partying and partley because he's lazy,
But he claimed to his friends he took great joy
in the disappointment that Earle particularly fell of him failing.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It almost seemed to come.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
To a boil that the more Jim shipped to but
Jim in particular screwed up, the more he screwed up,
the more upset it made Earl, the more pleasure Jim
seemed to take from being a goof for a disappointment.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But as much as Tommy Pope thinks he understands the
family dynamic and this son who was perpetually prodigal, grateful
for nothing, always scheming, he doesn't have any sympathy for
Jimmy Robertson. He tore apart the testimony of the court
appointed psychiatrist, shot holes in the defense's assertion that Jimmy
was too high on riddle and to know what planet
he was on and what he was doing, rebuffed any
(21:19):
claims that Earl and Terry had cultivated this maniacal and
dangerous little shit. Jimmy Robertson was found guilty in under
four hours in the penalty phase. Friends and neighbors openly
wished for the death sentence. The neighbor whose home was
rob said he just wants publicity. Another neighbor said if
nobody gave him attention, he'd just shut up and die.
(21:40):
And then it was Jimmy's term before the judge. In
his button down shirt and khaki's hair, freshly cut, face
slightly pale, he looked as attentive as a freshman on
the first day of a seminar, all politeness again as
he addressed the judge. I missed my parents, he said,
I must live with this every day of my life.
(22:01):
His lips quivered and his voice broke. What happened that
morning remained so vividly in my mind. I'll never be
able to explain. I'll never know why, or how or anything,
Robertson said, reading from handwritten notes and looking the jurors
in the eyes. I know that it happened, and I
can't even explain to my attorneys what happened today. Jimmy
Robertson sits on death row in Columbia, South Carolina. He's
(22:23):
still screwing up, earning punishments for drug use in prison
and other infractions. But the other side of him, the charming, polite,
deferential side is also there, This side of him, ever diminishing,
but not erased completely, that thinks, against all reason, he
can still be liked. Tommy Pope for a long time
received Christmas cards from the man he put on death Row.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yeah, he used to.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
If I showed you the cards that he would send me,
even post condiction. It could come from a kid that
grew up next door to you that called you mister Pope.
But Jim's pretty slick now because he got.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
You know, you've probably got younger viewers. But the old
Leave at to Beaver Eddie Haskell was always great, you know,
to mom and dad and then you know, tried to
get Wally of the Beaver and trouble behind the scene.
Jim's kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
So when I fairly retired as solicitor, he sent me
one final letter from death Row that said stot that
you know, he had heard that I was retiring and
everything that, you know, something to the fact that I
was going to have to go out and get a
real job finally or something.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
So you know, we always had that kind of banter.
But he's an interesting fella for Shure.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And what of Mereth Moon. Even Tommy Pope has sympathy
for her, as did the jurors sentencing her to twenty
years in prison. She was recently paroled.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
I think what you saw is who she was. I mean,
she was a young girl.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
She had again upward middle class guy paying her some attention,
somebody to hang with, somebody to have fun with. I
think really she got she got caught up in it.
Jim's a great manipulator, but again he likes an audience,
you know. I mean that was evident again from how
much detail he went in with his psychologist that I
(24:07):
Miss Cassio, that I cross examined.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
He enjoyed recounting and he enjoys the limelight. And I
think sometimes to do.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It you have to have a witness, you have to
have somebody with you. And truthfully, she was critical to
the case from the standpoint of the evidence that we've
recovered under the dumpster on the interstate up around Maryland.
She was, you know, very helpful and very remorse. I
think she got swept along and unfortunately, you know, for her,
(24:36):
she went to jail and served her sentence and for
Jimmy's actions.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Basically, Stephanie Hinson has sympathy for Meredith as well, and
points out that Meredith was at least seven years younger
than Jimmy, which may have contributed to her actions.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
She was really sweet and quiet, and she was way
younger than him by at least seven years. That's a
lot of difference between So maybe she was just like, well,
this is what I should do. Like, she wouldn't go
do that by herself. She wouldn't have done it alone.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
In the five bedroom, three bath red brick ranch with
the red shutters to match. It just recently sold for
a very steep discount of two hundred and seventeen thousand
dollars in twenty seventeen. Jimmy is still waiting for an
execution date. Since there's a scarcity of legal drugs for
lethal injection in South Carolina, he will also be able
(25:37):
to choose electrocution or firing squad. He's never apologized for
the murder of his parents and isn't convinced that God
is even on their side. Just being good, he says,
from death row doesn't buy you a spot in heaven.
This is murder Holmes. I'm Matt Marinovich. Murder Holmes is
(26:09):
created by and executive producer by Matt Mrinovich. Executive producers
are Jennifer Bassett and Taylor Chakoine. Story editor is Jennifer Bassett.
Supervising producer is Carl Ktel. Producer is Evan Tyre. Sound
design by Taylor Chicoine, Evan Tyre and Carl Katle. Special
(26:30):
thanks to Ali Perry and Nikiatore. Murder Holmes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Murder Homes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
People were like, oh, these people were murdered, and then
I was like, that's Chip's parents. When I found out
that it was Chip's brother with Meredith Moon, I was like,
that is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Two days before Thanksgiving, the pleasant suburb of rock Hill,
South Carolina, had the quiet feel of a neighborhood firmly
preparing for the holiday. Neighbors that swept leaves off roof gutters,
rake dead leaves off trim lawns, and hung festive fall
wreaths on their doors as the sun crept up behind
some maple trees and slemmed it through the picture window
of two five oh six Westminster Drive, a red brick
(00:45):
ranch home set just off the quiet street, a twenty
two year old man named Jimmy Robertson was standing in
the basement of the home next to his girlfriend Meredith,
listening very carefully to the sounds upstairs. It was five
in the morning, and he listened to an alarm clock
go off. It was the kind of house where you
could hear everything, and you could imagine the couple upstairs
(01:08):
slowly rising, rubbing their eyes, drawing a curtain back He
heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway, A
toilet flushed, and then a shower was turned on. He
quickly tapped out another line of riddlin from a vial,
tightened a dollar bill, and snorted it off a chipped
coffee table. His pupils dilated to dime size. He pulled
(01:31):
two athletic socks over his hands, so wired that he
could see his t shirt twitching over his heart. He
took one last look at that Denny was in filled
with the kind of games some doting parents buy for
their sons. A foosball table, a ping pong table, old
board games stacked in a corner under a flat screen,
a tattered VHS library of action movies. My whole fucking
(01:53):
body's shaking, he told Meredith. She was too tense to
say a word. She was just as high as him.
Jimmy had gone with a plan one hundred times, but
Meredith had never thought he was really serious. With thirty
six hours awake now and twelve hours of snorting, riddling
with Meredith, his teeth locked tight and his heart pumping,
nothing on earth was going to change his mind now.
(02:15):
Jimmy had even called his younger brother at three am,
when he felt he was turning into a nervous wreck.
It always good to hear his reassuring voice. The brilliant
and calm chip always knew exactly what to do, Jimmy,
Meredith said, as if she were trying to shake him
awake from some terrible dream. He picked up a knife
and walked up the carpeted stairs. This is murder Holmes.
(02:38):
I'm Matemarinovitch. As Jimmy walked down the first floor hallway
(03:09):
with a knife, he noticed the closed bathroom door and
could hear the shower. He knew he only had a
few minutes. He opened the door to the master bedroom
and saw a middle aged woman still lying in bed.
When she heard his footsteps, she raised her arm slightly
and began to turn toward him, eyes slowly opening. He
closed the distance before she could even scream, cutting her
(03:31):
throat so viciously that blood leapt on the bed sheets.
He could hear her rasping for breath as he stabbed
her again and again until the knife blade broke off.
Straddling her, he tried to catch his breath. He walked
over to the bedside table and carefully took the phone
off the hook, then hurried back to the basement to
get another weapon. Meredith stared up at him in shock
(03:53):
as he passed her and grabbed a claw hammer and
a baseball bat from a defel bag. Went down. Jimmy said,
one to go. Earl Robertson was drying himself off, running
the towel over his thinning hair as he ran through
a mental checklist of all the things he'd have to
get done before Thanksgiving. He thought he heard a noise
downstairs and figured it was his son, Jimmy up Early.
(04:16):
Earle was fed up with a kid, tired of bailing
him out. He was a fuck up, a disappointment, kicked
out of Earl's alma mater, Georgia Tech for poor grades
and drug use, the complete opposite of his younger brother, Chip,
who seemed to succeed at everything he did. Earl had
been the proudest dad on Westminster Dry One Ship had
been accepted to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Recently,
(04:40):
Earl and Terry had drawn the line they were cutting
Jimmy off financially. He wasn't getting a dollar until he
got his act together. It was going to be tough
love rock Hill style, refusing to write him another rent check.
They had recently helped him pack up his stuff and
moved back into his old bedroom at home. As Earl
wiped the condensation off the mirror and prepared to shave,
(05:01):
he saw the knob of the bathroom door turning. When
the door swung open, Jimmy was standing there. Before his
naked father could react, he squirted tylex in his eyes,
and as his father winced in pain, Jimmy sank the
clawheimmer deep into his skull again and again until he
collapsed to the ground. Then he grabbed the baseball bat
and swung it viciously again and again until the walls
(05:24):
were covered with his father's blood and brain tissue. Meredith
could hear it all. An autopsy will later find that
Earl had been bludgeoned a total of two hundred times.
All this happened while Meredith Moon sat trembling in the
den downstairs, listening to the thumps and thuds and cries
for help as her boyfriend murdered his parents upstairs. The
(05:47):
sickening noises had finally stopped, replaced by an ominous, buzzing
silence that seemed to flow through the house like some
kind of malignant electrical current. When Jimmy reappeared in the
sitting room, his shirt was covered with blood. He took
a seat next to her, trying to catch his breath,
his hands trembling from the riddleman. He told her to
get him a knife from the kitchen drawer. As Merreadith
(06:10):
walked toward the kitchen, she could to hear the rasping
breaths and knew that one of his parents was still alive.
She'd never be able to erase the sound of that breathing.
As she walked into the bright kitchen and found a knife.
She walked back down to the den and handed it
to Jimmy, who ascended the stairs a second time and
then made sure Terry and Earl were dead. Before Jimmy
(06:33):
and Meredith walked out of the house, he punched in
a window to make it look like a break in
one of a series of amateur moves he'd make after
the killing was done. Because he broke the glass from
the inside, detectives would easily be able to figure out
that the murderer had ineptly attempted to stage the scene.
Then they climbed into his red moss to protege and
(06:54):
began the nine hour journey to his younger brother's home
near the University of Pennsylvania. They took turns dry and
Meredith Moon, who had just witnessed her boyfriend slaughtering his
two parents, listened to him talk endlessly, his eyes darting
back and forth as they flew up Interstate eighty one.
He couldn't stop talking about his younger brother, Chip and
how impressed he was going to be when he told
him the news. A two point two million dollar inheritance
(07:18):
was at stake, and now there was nothing standing in
between the money and the two brothers. They both discussed
Earl's dream of spending all the money on a golf course.
Parents get to a certain age and they get wildly
scratch you out of the wheel on a whim. You
could sit there and take it like a chump, or
do a little risk management. Meredith nodded her head as
Jimmy motormouthed on the highway, noticing the dried flicks of
(07:41):
blood on his hand as he gripped a steering wheel.
They refilled the car gas stations along the way using
his father's credit card. Unknown to Jimmy, police were already
tracking him at a gas station outside West Philadelphia. He
called his own home, wanting to be reassured that the
phone was off the hook and no one had discovered
the bloodbath. But it rang and he immediately hung up,
(08:05):
realizing that someone was in the house, a concerned neighbor maybe,
or a swarm of cops detectives dusting the walls for evidence.
His heart felt like it was pumping a thousand times
a minute, and all he could do was ask a
petrified Meredith Moon for reassurance that everything was still going
according to plan, because this was the one time in
(08:25):
his life that fucking up was very much not an option.
But his younger brother, Chip wasn't answering his calls either now,
as if he changed his mind. Jimmy began to feel
like he was being cut loose once again and drove faster.
It never made it out of Philly. At forty first Street,
they were pulled over by cops who had been tracking
the credit card purchases and had a description of the vehicle.
(08:48):
Jimmy and Meredith were taken into custody. We'll be back
after a short break. We're back with Murder Holmes. Tommy
Pope is the man who ended up prosecuting Jimmy Robertson.
(09:10):
The first question I had for him is whether the
thirty six hour riddle in Bender could in any way
be blamed for the horrific murders.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It may have, ultimately, and this is a broad brush
I'm painting with now, but it may have finally given
him the courage to do the thing that he had
discussed and told people and thought about and talked about. Obviously,
this was a knife and bat assault, not a gun,
but to finally pull the trigger, to finally make the jump.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
And so I think he was there, you know, psychology wise,
he was there. He planned well, because what he did
was he waited till Dad was in the show, and
he goes in and kills Mom, who's still sleep because
Dad had to get up early and go to work.
So Dad's in the shower, so he's not going to
hear any of this.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
And as best I recall, I think he broke one
of the knives off in terry when he was doing that.
So now Mom's dead, so now he could hear, you know,
the shower, and that's when he's waiting outside the shower
and sprays Dan in the face with talons and then
you know, beats him down with the bat. And he
even said in his statement that he felt like his
(10:20):
dad just would and died. He was considered going downstairs
to get a drill to trill into it, you know,
confident knew what he was doing and chose to do it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Chip Robertson was also called in for questioning and a
constant by reporters outside the police station afterwards. He was
in shock, he said. He said his parents were the
best in the world. His mother, before she died, had
even sent him a honey baked ham to enjoy it
for Thanksgiving since he wouldn't be able to make it home.
I have no appetite for it now, he added sadly.
(10:53):
But many questionships involvement. There was that phone call on
the landline that Jimmy made a few hours before kill
his parents, and Chip was always a smart one, so
charming and unflappable. Most people in rock Hill who knew
them both believed that if anyone was going to be
the mastermind, it would be Chip. Stephanie Hinson, whose voice
(11:14):
you heard at the beginning of this podcast, was friendly
with Meredith in school and knew both Jimmy and Chip.
She says that most people in town and knew Chip
and Jimmy believe that Chip helped plan the murder.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I remember when this happened. They didn't know where Jim
and Meredith were until they caught them that weekend and
they were driving to Pennsylvania to Chips, and I.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Always thought that that was weird.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Rock Hill was a much smaller town when this happened
in nineteen ninety six or seven, and you knew people,
and people were like, well, some people think that Chip
made him do that. And I was like, well, that's
even more weird. And I do remember after the funeral
(12:00):
they had some sort of party in the house, but
they arrested Jim and Meredith quite quickly, so it was
just Chip having this party.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
In the house. A number of things do point to
Chip's involvement. First, there was the fact that Jimmy and
Meredith were driving up to chips off campus house right
after the murders to establish an alibi. And as Stephanie
pointed out, there was also the fact that Chip, who
couldn't bear to eat his mother's post mortem honey, baked
Ham held a rager at two five oh six Westminster
(12:35):
Drive a few months after the murders wasted. He clicked
on a block light UV flashlight to show everyone at
the house party the remnants of all the blood spatters
on the walls. I asked Tommy Pope, the prosecutor who
put Jimmy on death row, if you thought Chip had
something to do with the murders.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
You know, even as a former prosecuter, I want to
be careful with my words, because if we had had
sufficient evans to prosecute Chip, then we would have prosecuted Chip.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I remember, and.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I think this was a statement either to the psychologist
or that Jim made the Meridith that Chip was going
to be so proud of him.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I don't remember the specifics now, but for whatever reason,
the three o'clock call had the flavor for us of
Chip goading Jim into finally doing what they'd always talked about.
And the whole deal was that We're going to jump
in the car go visit Chip. Jim left the fake
note to say Chip needs me. They tried to make
(13:37):
it look like a break in. I firmly think Chip's involved.
And then you know, the irony, obviously is that Chip
ultimately gets inherre that squanders it, gets the house. We
heard reports of Chip having parties, you know, drug parties, raves.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Whatever you would have called it. And with the black light.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
With the black I was going to ask you, Yeah,
the black light like eliminating the blood. Diuld you believe
that or is that sort of like more of a guest.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I believe it. I believe it. I mean, I know,
we hear weird things in the world.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
But everything I saw, and again I want to be fair,
I didn't deal with Chip directly, but everything I saw
indicates Chip is maybe.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
More shrewd, smarter version of Jimmy, but has many of
the same motivations.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
There's a little doubt that Jimmy and Chip Robertson grew
up in a home where things were expected, accomplishments, rewarded
bad behavior, and not taken lightly. But in court a
year later, even the defense attorney for Jimmy Robertson failed
to make headway when he tried to portray Earl as
a control freak and Terry is suffering from mental breakdowns.
The truth, which kept bubbling to the surface was that
(14:47):
the two boys had grown up in a privileged world.
Their family was well respected in the community, and they
were sent to the best colleges. If Earl Robertson had
ever laid a hand on his sons, it might have happened,
maybe once twice. Mostly neighbors remember a father he used
to play football with the sons in the yard, and
a mother who jumped in her car with the boys
and their friends to make last minute trips to the
(15:09):
video store. Both parents, by all accounts, had deeply loved
their sons, and Earle had whether Jimmy's self destructive behavior
for years, even bailing him out of gambling debts and
paying rent for him and homes his roommates would inevitably
kick him out of. As Tommy Pope points out, Jimmy
always seemed to have two sides to him. He could
(15:30):
be quite charming. The family pastor remembers Jimmy helping his
wife with plant shrubs in his garden. This is a
kid we knew, he said. He was in Sunday School
youth group. He wasn't scouting. Then he added, everybody that
knew him well knew. There were some issues. There were
some rough edges, but no anticipation of anything like this.
Stephanie Hinson agrees.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Chip and Jim were both really smart. They were always
in the ap classes and graduated with honors, and Jim
went to Georgia Tech and Chip went to Wharton School
of Business. Jim was always he seemed nice, but a
lot of people thought that he was a bit strange,
but just everybody's strange in high school and kind of awkward.
(16:14):
But Chip was always really kind of charming and all
the teachers really liked him. And Jim was taller and
sick something, and he was super clean cut.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
In high school, Jimmy Robertson, tall and thin, was often
picked on his younger brother. Chip never had to endure
this kind of hazing. He fit in. He was popular,
excelled at school. He didn't fuck up, which only set
him apart from the Sun, who seemed to take more
and more pleasure in underperforming. At Georgia Tech, where Jimmy
was studying engineering, his grades were sliding. In two years,
(16:52):
he'd flunked out. He was high half the time, then
all the time hanging out with stone losers. And then
Earl roberts And let it be known that Jimmy wasn't
getting another dime until he turned his life around. His
frustration with Jimmy had turned to anger after his son
broke into a neighbor's house. People they liked and were
friendly with. Jimmy stole their car and credit cards. To
(17:14):
make it worse, The neighbors thought they knew Jimmy. They'd
watched him grow up, seen him catch passes on the
front lawn with his father, mow the lawn, exchange pleasantries
with them. He was almost timid. But it's always the
kid who's a little nicer than the rest, isn't it
the one who seems to blend in and almost fade away.
That's the one who's always crackling with resentment and keeping
(17:36):
one eye on your happy home. We'll be back after
a short break. We're back with murder. Omes Earl and
(17:56):
Terry made that long, painful walk to their neighbor's home
apologize for their son's break in and wrongdoing. It was
an act of contriteness. The neighbors never forgot. Jimmy, meanwhile,
spent a year in prison and emerged with an even
bigger drug problem. Being a parent is a funny thing.
No one really gives you credit for the executive decisions
(18:17):
you make the first time you ground a kid, the
first time you draw a line, the first time you
have to have a serious talk about drugs or breaking
into a neighbor's home. Earl and Terry Robertson, in some
ways could have been any parent on Westminster Drive. They
had a problem, and you have to imagine as they
lay in bed at night and discuss their prodigal son,
(18:39):
they felt they knew the best way to solve it.
After all, Jimmy was a good kid at heart, wasn't he.
What would you do? What would I do? Do you
turn your back or do you forgive everything and invite
more abuse? If they had to make a dramatic point
about not financing a drug habit. In the end, it
was the only way they could truly show their love
(19:00):
for him, especially before he really got into serious trouble,
so they cut him off. Decision made pain for Jimmy
in the short term and hopefully a better life for
him in the end, a son they could finally be
proud of a happy ending on Westminster Drive. In the end,
they might have thought he might even thank them for it.
But fuck ups get to decide when and where they
(19:22):
stopped fucking up. Maybe Jimmy felt that his parents dream
of him as a success was more sickening in the end,
sleep deprived, signapses, rattled with a half life of sordid pills.
At least he was determining, in some small way what
his path was in life. And a few days before Thanksgiving,
he knew he couldn't sit at that table passing green
(19:44):
bean casserole and listening to them talk about how great
Chip was again if their parents only knew that their
golden boy was plotting against them too. Jimmy had a
plan now, and the boldness of it excited him so
much he could barely keep it to himself. Here's Tommy
Pope again.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
You know, Jimmy Robinson was you know, upper middle class family.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
He and his brother grew up in a good home,
you know, with a stay at home mom, she worked
part time, a working dad. Jim was an eagle scout.
But there was some strangeness almost behind the scenes. Jim
loved disappointing his parents. I mean in almost malicious ways.
I mean Jim got into Georgia Tech, which is a
(20:26):
tremendous engineering school and flunk down. Now he might have
flunked out partly because he's partying and partley because he's lazy,
But he claimed to his friends he took great joy
in the disappointment that Earle particularly fell of him failing.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It almost seemed to come.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
To a boil that the more Jim shipped to but
Jim in particular screwed up, the more he screwed up,
the more upset it made Earl, the more pleasure Jim
seemed to take from being a goof for a disappointment.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But as much as Tommy Pope thinks he understands the
family dynamic and this son who was perpetually prodigal, grateful
for nothing, always scheming, he doesn't have any sympathy for
Jimmy Robertson. He tore apart the testimony of the court
appointed psychiatrist, shot holes in the defense's assertion that Jimmy
was too high on riddle and to know what planet
he was on and what he was doing, rebuffed any
(21:19):
claims that Earl and Terry had cultivated this maniacal and
dangerous little shit. Jimmy Robertson was found guilty in under
four hours in the penalty phase. Friends and neighbors openly
wished for the death sentence. The neighbor whose home was
rob said he just wants publicity. Another neighbor said if
nobody gave him attention, he'd just shut up and die.
(21:40):
And then it was Jimmy's term before the judge. In
his button down shirt and khaki's hair, freshly cut, face
slightly pale, he looked as attentive as a freshman on
the first day of a seminar, all politeness again as
he addressed the judge. I missed my parents, he said,
I must live with this every day of my life.
(22:01):
His lips quivered and his voice broke. What happened that
morning remained so vividly in my mind. I'll never be
able to explain. I'll never know why, or how or anything,
Robertson said, reading from handwritten notes and looking the jurors
in the eyes. I know that it happened, and I
can't even explain to my attorneys what happened today. Jimmy
Robertson sits on death row in Columbia, South Carolina. He's
(22:23):
still screwing up, earning punishments for drug use in prison
and other infractions. But the other side of him, the charming, polite,
deferential side is also there, This side of him, ever diminishing,
but not erased completely, that thinks, against all reason, he
can still be liked. Tommy Pope for a long time
received Christmas cards from the man he put on death Row.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yeah, he used to.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
If I showed you the cards that he would send me,
even post condiction. It could come from a kid that
grew up next door to you that called you mister Pope.
But Jim's pretty slick now because he got.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
You know, you've probably got younger viewers. But the old
Leave at to Beaver Eddie Haskell was always great, you know,
to mom and dad and then you know, tried to
get Wally of the Beaver and trouble behind the scene.
Jim's kind of like that.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
So when I fairly retired as solicitor, he sent me
one final letter from death Row that said stot that
you know, he had heard that I was retiring and
everything that, you know, something to the fact that I
was going to have to go out and get a
real job finally or something.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
So you know, we always had that kind of banter.
But he's an interesting fella for Shure.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And what of Mereth Moon. Even Tommy Pope has sympathy
for her, as did the jurors sentencing her to twenty
years in prison. She was recently paroled.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
I think what you saw is who she was. I mean,
she was a young girl.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
She had again upward middle class guy paying her some attention,
somebody to hang with, somebody to have fun with. I
think really she got she got caught up in it.
Jim's a great manipulator, but again he likes an audience,
you know. I mean that was evident again from how
much detail he went in with his psychologist that I
(24:07):
Miss Cassio, that I cross examined.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
He enjoyed recounting and he enjoys the limelight. And I
think sometimes to do.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It you have to have a witness, you have to
have somebody with you. And truthfully, she was critical to
the case from the standpoint of the evidence that we've
recovered under the dumpster on the interstate up around Maryland.
She was, you know, very helpful and very remorse. I
think she got swept along and unfortunately, you know, for her,
(24:36):
she went to jail and served her sentence and for
Jimmy's actions.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Basically, Stephanie Hinson has sympathy for Meredith as well, and
points out that Meredith was at least seven years younger
than Jimmy, which may have contributed to her actions.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
She was really sweet and quiet, and she was way
younger than him by at least seven years. That's a
lot of difference between So maybe she was just like, well,
this is what I should do. Like, she wouldn't go
do that by herself. She wouldn't have done it alone.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
In the five bedroom, three bath red brick ranch with
the red shutters to match. It just recently sold for
a very steep discount of two hundred and seventeen thousand
dollars in twenty seventeen. Jimmy is still waiting for an
execution date. Since there's a scarcity of legal drugs for
lethal injection in South Carolina, he will also be able
(25:37):
to choose electrocution or firing squad. He's never apologized for
the murder of his parents and isn't convinced that God
is even on their side. Just being good, he says,
from death row doesn't buy you a spot in heaven.
This is murder Holmes. I'm Matt Marinovich. Murder Holmes is
(26:09):
created by and executive producer by Matt Mrinovich. Executive producers
are Jennifer Bassett and Taylor Chakoine. Story editor is Jennifer Bassett.
Supervising producer is Carl Ktel. Producer is Evan Tyre. Sound
design by Taylor Chicoine, Evan Tyre and Carl Katle. Special
(26:30):
thanks to Ali Perry and Nikiatore. Murder Holmes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Matt Marinovich
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