Forensic Files - Season 6, Episode 5 - Death Play - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] during an evening church service 38-year-old Steve Robards fell ill he died later that night of a heart
attack one year later while reading Hamlet Steve Robards daughter studied the lines of Claudius the King when he
says the following about death jealousy guilt and revenge my words fly up my thoughts remain
below words without thoughts never to Heaven go in these words a clue to her father's
death [Music] the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth Texas locals call it the Metroplex it's the largest Consolidated
metropolitan area in the state known for the assassination of President John F Kennedy in D Plaza in
1963 official now the president is dead 38-year-old Steve Robards was a Texas native recently divorced and
worked as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service very proud of his job which was just a Ru route Postman
but he liked his job he liked being outdoors and felt some pride in it his 16-year-old daughter Marie had recently
moved in with him after a disagreement she had with her mother's new husband so they were living in a one-bedroom
apartment at this time and he was on the list to get the next available larger apartment and uh he was very happy about
having his daughter in his life at this point Marie enrolled in Eastern Hills High School where she was a popular
straight A student quiet studious elegant the kind of girl that sort of you looked at twice and always wanted to
get to know because she seemed so reserved so poised so intelligent there was never a flaw about her I mean her
face complexion was perfect by all accounts both father and daughter enjoyed living together but their lives
changed Forever on the night of February 17th 1993 just after dinner Steve robarts
attended an evening church service when he returned home he told his girlfriend and daughter he wasn't
feeling well after a little while he started getting stomach cramps severe stomach cramps and they became more
severe as the night progressed are you feeling any better feel terrible after a few hours ultimately um 911 was called
and he went into what appeared to be a a comike state right there in the living room he began to foam at the mouth and
became nauseous and by the time the ambulance guys got there he was dead an autopsy revealed the death was caused by
cardiac arrest and I didn't want to believe how could it be that bad he was 38 how could it be how could it be that
serious he was 38 his heart was mildly enlarged it was probably 25% too heavy for a man his age and size and somewhat
uncomfortably I signed it out as a natural death after Steve roar's death Marie went to live with her grandparents
and transferred to Mansfield high school for a new start so for one year Marie lived the kind of perfect life every
parent would hope their child would live she was an excellent student she never got in trouble she always turned in her
homework uh she dated some but she was never in any way regarded as a wild girl after graduation Marie used the $60,000
she received from her father's life insurance policy to attend the University of Texas
she majored in Premed her dream was to become a pathologist even then she was just one
of the most talented of the many freshmen at that sprawling University there was nothing that suggested
anything except she was headed for this kind of excellent life that um seemed her
Destiny Midway through her freshman year Marie learned that police were investigating her father's death they
questioned how a 38-year-old man could have died of a heart attack so young it was by all accounts The Perfect
[Music] Crime After Steve Robards Unexpected death his daughter Marie transferred to
a new high school and made a new friend Stacy high I would have to say we are best
friends you know we kind of fell in love with each other you know just um it was
we had so much in common Stacy sees and Marie she sees something in Marie she sees through her in a way she realizes
that that Poise and that Perfection is disguising something during senior year Stacy and
Marie were both required to read Shakespeare's Hamlet for English class as they read the play together Stacy
happened to begin with claudius's Soliloquy in act 3 in which Claudius agonizes over his decision to repent for
killing Hamlet's father my fault is passed but oh what form of pray serve my forgive me my f
murder that cannot be since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the
murder so Stacy reads the line goes Isn't that cool Marie how that's written and Marie standing there Frozen
in tears begin to stream down her face she asked me Stacy do you think people can go through life without a conscience
and there was Stacy with her questions you have a secret yes you've done something yes and
you know Stacy's first question oh my God you're pregnant Marie went no it's worse so after a while guessing I said
did you kill someone she nodded her head yes and that's when Marie broke down and
cried I can't talk about this right now Marie then admitted the unthinkable that she murdered her own
father she said she did it with a poison she stole from her chemistry class A year
earlier hey everybody quiet working on our last reports today be very careful with this
stuff now everyone get your notebooks out Marie said that she took the poison when the teacher's back was turned
placed it in a paper towel and hid it in her backpack one week later while preparing
dinner Marie mixed it into her father's Mexican food with which concealed the taste of the
poison there you go thank you sweetie mhm the poison she used mimicked the signs of a heart attack and her father
died a few hours later the autopsy never detected the poison in his system [Music]
after the confession Marie swore Stacy to secrecy if the pledge was broken Stacy
knew her best friend would spend the rest of her life in prison Stacy is tormented however by the
secret she too is trying to keep and she begins to have these nightmares in one of these recurring nightmares
Stacy hears the voice of Marie's father calling from the grave [Music] in another Stacy sees Marie chasing her
endlessly through the night she begins to lose her ability to focus she can't concentrate in school
her grades go down she begins to drink too much at high school parties at one point she she asked her mother if she
can check into a psychiatric hospital for adolescence and no one can figure out what had happened to Stacy it seemed
like the classic meltdown Stacy knew if she said anything it would be her word against Marie since Steve robarts death
was ruled to be from natural causes however the pressure on Stacy high was too great she told her mother
the school guidance counselor and eventually the police so for 8 months Stacy kept the
secret and it nearly destroyed her and she finally had to confess but Marie never
would and like Claudius she seemed stuck trapped in her own private hell when Stacy hey told police that
Steve Robards had been poisoned the police searched the chemistry lab where his daughter Marie said she stole the
poison that killed him in the lab safety manual the page describing the chemical
Marie allegedly used had been torn out it also tells you what precautions you need to take when using the
substance it also tells you what to do in case it's swallowed or your eyes coming in contact with it if Marie used
a poison to kill her father why hadn't it shown up during the autopsy it's not a normal procedure
unless there's some indication that we need to do that uh it's it's it's a test testing that we don't do here at the
facility and we have to send out for and the investigation did not lead us to suspect anything of that nature at at
the time of the death the chemical she used the only way it could be detected is if the medical examiner in Fort Worth
had a machine that cost $150,000 that could detect the trace of this chemical during an autopsy which
they didn't have and which they never even thought of using the technology which confined rare chemicals in human
tissue is called a mass spectrometer gas chromatograph since Marie planned to attend medical school and become a
pathologist prosecutors suspected she was familiar with the screening test used by the local medical
examiner she also knew which poison wouldn't be detected investigators hoped that Steve
robarts tissue samples were still in storage since his death 18 months earlier the medical examiner's office
was within days of destroying the tissue samples and the blood samples um as they
do when there's there's nothing a Miss they don't suspect play or homicide the tissue samples were sent to
an independent forensic laboratory in Pennsylvania where they were analyzed with the mass spectrometer gas
chromatograph the poison they were looking for was a metallic substance and very rare we will not reveal the name of
the poison on this program the gas chromatograph Mass spectrometer directs a beam of electrons
on the sample breaking it component molecules apart for analysis the results are charted on a
graph each Peak is a separate compound the size of the peak is proportional to the amount present the number is the
exact time in minutes it took for the compound to travel through the column from the moment of its injection to
detection in Steve robard sample scientists found a metallic compound with a retention time identical to the
poison his daughter Marie admitted stealing from the chemistry lab and the amount found in Steve
Robards body was massive 28 times the lethal dose with this news Fort Worth homicide
detective Thomas Boer went to the University of Texas and Austin to see Marie robarts she came out in the hallway and
I introduced myself I told her she was under arrest for the death of her father Steven Robards years earlier she had no
response um there was no reaction and Marie quietly went with them poised as ever and once they got in that little
room they barely had to ask a question and she confessed and broke down and she was pretty forth forthcoming with
information um fairly quickly she didn't try to hide she apparent ly was uh either guilt-ridden or had thought a lot
about what she had done and came forward with the information the most fascinating aspect
for both the police and for journalists covering the case was Marie's explanation of her
motive what was it that made you want to kill your father and she said I wanted to be with my mom but in
an ironic twist like some out of a Shakespearean tragedy it was all in vain because Marie Robards mother
and her new husband were planning to move to Florida and didn't tell her until after her father's
funeral Marie had no choice but to move in with her grandparents so she could finish High School in Texas and thus
began this tale that in many ways is a kind of Twisted modern parable of teenage girls in the suburbs these girls
that are have those Mercurial emotions but also many of whom are girls of divorce who are trying to grow up with
parents who have split up and seem often preoccupied with rebuilding their own lives and forget about the needs of
their own children despite her confession Marie robard surprised Everyone by deciding to
plead not guilty she now said she hadn't planned to kill her father at [Music] all in
1996 Marie Robards went on trial for the murder of her father Steve she pleaded not guilty her defense was that she had
no intention of killing him get your notebook Marie admitted that she stole the poison
from her high school chemistry lab and she also admitted that she put the poison in her father's Mexican food
but she said she only planned to make him sick not to kill him of course that doesn't make that much sense if he just
got sick she wouldn't get to go back with her mother prosecutors said Marie was a straight a chemistry student and
the amount of poison used was 28 times the lethal dose anybody who's going to go to a local medical school to study is
probably if they're a high school student is probably above average as far as in the science um department and as a
matter of fact I mean that was part of my investigation I collected her grades and she had very high marks in school
and in the Sciences are you feeling any better I feel ly did you get me some ginger they also pointed out that Marie
stood by and watched her father die without saying a word to her father's girlfriend or the ambulance crew that
tried to resuscitate [Music] him 18 months later the gas chromatography found what the first
autopsy did not that Steve Robards had died of a massive dose of poison the prosecution presented Marie
Robards signed confession as evidence did you know that this stuff is dangerous yes or
no yes sir how did you know that cuz my chist teacher said said what that it was
danger Stacy testified that Marie told her that she always knew that enough of that chemical would have killed her
father and that was this defining moment that her best friend admitted that Marie
had the knowledge about what that poison would do the forensic evidence the confession
and the testimony of her own best friend all worked against her the prosecutor in the case called
her a Relentless predator another prosecutor called her society's worst nightmare a girl who kills her dad
uh but some people saw her as a kind of Lizzy bordon of Texas this sweet Charming successful
industrious young girl who suddenly did something inexplicable and in this surprising
twist at least for me I began to sense a sympathy developing for her because in many ways she was the symbol of what
modern divorce has done to our society the medical examiner says Marie was a very clever killer I just tell you
she was good enough to fake me out initially because I you know went for the head fake and did couldn't find
anything on May 9th 1996 it took the jury less than an hour to find Marie Robards guilty of Murder
She was sentenced to 27 years in prison I don't know what we do about it but they are kids they don't think exactly
like adults and that do mean you can you know they can get by with something like
this with a slap on the wrist but 27 years seems a little excessive to me what she had done was commit the perfect
crime it was by all accounts The Perfect Crime had Dorothy Marie not uh mentioned
it to a friend she probably would have gotten away with it I mean almost certainly would have gotten away with it
Marie has never spoken about what's happened since what is known is that Marie is the model prisoner at this
women's unit in East Texas where she's going to be staying for several more years that she has never
complained that she always volunteers for the worst chores that one day a psychologist went to see
her and she was wearing this paper thin prison guard and a cold fret had come through Texas and she was
shivering and the psychologist said why don't you ask for something warmer she said I don't deserve
to she Shrugged she smiled and she said I'll be okay [Music] more [Music] [Applause]
[Music]

Brief Summary

Marie Robards poisoned her father, Steve, leading to his death and her eventual arrest and conviction for murder.

Key points

Confession and Consequences. Marie confesses to her best friend about the murder, leading to turmoil.
Trial and Sentencing. Marie Robards is found guilty of murder and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
The Perfect Crime. Marie Robards poisons her father, leading to a shocking investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How could it be that bad? He was 38.

Steve Robards' sudden death shocks his loved ones.

4:04WatchSep 16, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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