Episode 552: Marie Robards
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This is morbid. I almost did the thing where I say, and I'm Alayna. I almost said I'm Ash. No, you didn't. No, I really did because we were just talking about names. What? Yeah. That's weird. I really almost did. I really almost did too. I believe you now. I believe you now. Like I'm being

real. Yeah, because we were saying one of my biggest pet peeves in life, and Elena was saying hers too, I will introduce myself to somebody and say like, hey, I'm Ash. My name's Ash. And they'll be like, oh my God, Ashley, so nice to meet you. Yeah, and you're like, that's not what I said. Suck my butt. My name is Ash. Like, of course, legally in the government. Mm-hmm.

In the eyes of the government, it's Ashley. See, mine has been my entire life. And it's been like, hi, I'm Alayna. And they're like, Alana, that's great. Okay, see you later. And you're like, that's a different name. That's a completely different name. That's spelled different. It's said different. It's different. It's a different name. Yeah, that's stupid. There are people named Alana. Correct. There are people named Alayna.

I'm one of the ones that are named Elena. So why are you calling me? That's like being like, oh, hi, Carl. It's like, that's a different name. I wish they would just send a different name. Hi, Elena. What's up, Carl? Yeah. Essentially, that's what you're doing. It's a totally different name. I love that a lot. I never understood it. I will never understand it. No.

And that's, you know. That's the that on that. I've even had people ask me like if my name is like Ashly because of the way that it's spelled. And I'm like, that's stupid. Ashly. That says Lee. Or Ashly. Ashly. It would be Ashly. I like that. Ashly. Imagine if we had to start this podcast and I would have to say, hey, weirdos, I'm Ashly. I'm Ashly. No one would continue listening. They'd be like, mm.

Wrong. I don't think so. Not with the way it's spelled. It's like, no, that's Ashley. I'm Ashley. It's like, are you trying too hard? I think you are. No. No. I also was thinking the other day, one day I'm probably, hopefully, going to be a grandma, and I'm going to be Grandma Ash. Your grandma's name should not be Ash. There's going to be a whole chunk of people who are going to be wild grandmothers.

Like, I have no problem with this name, but Grandma Brittany? No. Yeah, right? It sounds funny. That's not a grandma name. It's a very normal name. Of course. But when you think of a grandma name, you think of, like, those very classic, you know, very, you know, of a certain time names. Because that's all we've all ever had. Yeah. But we are entering a phase where we're going to be getting some grandma and some grandpas. Yeah. Like, we're going to have, like, Grandpa Cruz. Yeah.

Stop it. Floating around in there if we're going with the same family there. Wait, Grandpa Cash? Because people would name their kids Cash, which honestly is pretty flex. Well, that's the thing. These names are fine. Yeah, I love them. Name your child whatever the hell you want. But Grandpa Cash, I'm obsessed with that actually. I think it's going to be awesome. It's going to

a whole new world it's gonna be a fun generation of grandparents if we make it that far we will i'm not gonna continue i'm not gonna elaborate because i have a therapy appointment tomorrow to talk about my end of the world anxiety i'm taking care of it that's right self-care you know but yeah we're gonna be fine but grandma ash grandma ash that's crazy grandma elena's not that crazy no it kind of sounds like you love it all day no i'm just kidding no i think it just works it

Yeah, I know. I think it's just... Elena's like a timeless name, I feel. Wow, thanks. You're welcome. I like that. I'm just named Ashley for no fucking reason. Literally none. My middle name doesn't even mean anything. Who named me? Dad, Mom, what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? Truly, what the fuck? But yeah, all that to say... Yeah, names, you know. Nothing really. Nothing really. It was like an echo. Nothing. It was like an echo. That's what I was going to say.

All right. Well, it's my case today. It's Ash-centric. It's Nana Ash-centric. Nana Ash-centric. And I have a wild case. I have been loving Texas lately. You have? I know. You've been in a place of Texas. I'm a Texas whirl, and today we're going crazy. We're going to be in Texas and Florida. What a fucking trip. Wow.

What a fucking trip we're taking together. You didn't prepare me. I didn't. I didn't, but here we are. So yeah, I don't want to say too much about it right off the bat because if I say too much, it'll just kind of give it away. So I'm just going to start. Just go in there. I'm just going to go right into it. Yeah.

So it starts with Dorothy Marie Robards. She was born in Texas in 1977 as the only child of Stephen and Beth Robards. Stephen and Beth, they were high school sweethearts. That's where they met. And they were both super duper popular in high school. Oh my gourd. Oh my gourd. Beth was a standout athlete and also the president of the school's National Honor Society. So she was young and doing it.

And then when they graduated and each of them turned 18 in 1974, they decided to get married right before Stephen entered the Navy and actually started a four-year tour of duty that would end up relocating him to a base in San Diego and then eventually Florida. Okay. So they got married. They did the whole...

Yeah.

Cute. Speaking of names, hey, look at that. Names everywhere. People go by their middle names sometimes, such as Marie. It's true. Now, once Stephen was finished with the Navy, finished up his time there, the family moved back to the Fort Worth area. But within just a few years, things between Stephen and Beth became very strained. Beth ended up saying Stephen's behavior had always been a little erratic, but I was a naive Catholic girl caught up in this whirlwind teenage romance with this suave guy.

But not long after they moved back to Texas, Stephen started going through a bit of a mental health crisis. He was experiencing kind of periodic bouts of depression, but they started getting more and more frequent and lasting longer. He was getting jealous over Beth a lot. Like if she was talking to other people or just like going off and doing her own thing, he was getting jealous of that. Yeah. And

Really just he overall seemed to be struggling emotionally. Okay. So Beth said, there came a point when I didn't know how to act around him anymore. He had temper tantrums. He couldn't hold on to a job. And then there were times where he would get so tired and feel like everything was so bleak and dark and that nothing was worthwhile. Jeez. Which that's awful. And you have to think this is at a time where, again, and we say it all the time, but people aren't necessarily going to therapy. Men especially are not going to therapy.

taking it upon themselves to sign up for therapy willy-nilly. So it's not like this is an easy fix here. Exactly. So by 1980, the mental health crisis had really taken a toll on the two of them. And they actually decided to separate and ultimately ended up divorcing.

The next year, Beth got remarried to a man named Frank Burroughs. He was also a Navy officer. And she had actually met Frank while she and Stephen were stationed in Florida. Oh. When they met, they were just friends. There was, like, nothing weird about it. Yeah. Because obviously they were both married. Like, no affair or anything. Yeah.

But Frank had also been recently divorced and moved back to Texas and taken a job as a police officer. So they kind of like rediscovered each other. Yeah. And he also had a young son of his own and he kind of really relished in his protective fatherly authority figure identity. So he happily and eagerly took on the role of a father figure, like a bonus father figure to Marie. Okay. Because Marie was only four years old when Stephen and Beth ended up getting divorced. Oh, geez.

Stephen, meanwhile, he ended up moving into a one-bedroom apartment in Fort Worth. And at this time, because remember, he's really trying to get his mental health in check, during this time, he was only seeing Marie like twice a month, once or twice a month. Okay.

So after the divorce and all the custody matters had been settled and we're behind them, it became clear that separating was actually really the best thing that Stephen and Beth had done for their family. That's good. It took some time, but by the late 80s, Stephen really prioritized his mental health. He started taking medication and that made his symptoms of depression really easily manageable. He like really figured it out. Oh, nice.

Yeah. So once his mental health was in check, he also started dating a new person. Her name was Sandra Hudgens. And she also had children. They actually met at a Parents Without Partners meeting. Oh, my God. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. It took, I feel like it was like a little detail in one of my old cases. And I think that was- I was going to say, because it sounds a little familiar, but- Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. I think it was like another case that I did, but I think it-

I think it like was a bad, like not the organization, but I think it ended up like not being great that these two people met there. Didn't work out. I'll let you know. And then this time it's great. Like it's cool that they met. Yeah.

They realized that they had a lot of things in common, so things really blossomed between them from there. But most importantly, Stephen had also managed to find a really steady and sustainable job with the postal service. Sandra, his girlfriend, said he was very proud of his job, which was just a rural route postman, but he liked his job and he liked being outdoors and he felt some pride in it. Nice.

So he really found his stride. Yeah. Although he definitely struggled some after the divorce, he had finally pulled his life together by like, I would say the early 90s. Oh, good. But unfortunately, at Beth and Frank's house, things weren't really going as well as one would hope. Daily life had become much more of a struggle as Marie entered her teen years.

A private psychologist that his name is Randall J. Price and Marie ended up seeing him later. He said, when Marie has described those days, I've sensed there was some jealousy or possessiveness about her mother's relationship to Frank.

And according to the psychologist Price, Marie seemed to perceive Beth's marriage to Frank as a way of taking her mother away from her. Like Frank taking her mom away. Yeah. And that jealous feeling really only deepened the older she got. And I think it had a lot to do with...

You know what? I'm actually going to save it. I think you'll see what it has a lot to do with. Huh. And you can form your own opinion. I love that. But at the same time, according to Price, Frank also likely harbored some of his own jealousy when it came to Marie and Beth's relationship, which had always been a really strong relationship. He elaborated, Wow.

Okay. Beth had always been really, really proud of Marie and would always gush to friends and family about how intelligent Marie was, how well-liked she was, just really spoke her up, of course, which, like, you want to do that. It's your daughter. Of course. But whether he was conscious of it or not, Frank seemed to have some kind of resentment due to how close Marie and Beth were. Like, there was some jealousy of the relationship, which, in my opinion, is strange because...

She should love her daughter and you should love that she loves her daughter. Yeah. That's my opinion on that. But the tension between Frank and Marie came to a head in the summer of 92 when Marie came home one afternoon and actually discovered Frank with another woman. So this is like she's finding her stepfather with another woman. So she literally just found her stepdad cheating on her mom, who she's super close with. Whoa.

So she's fucking outraged and immediately goes to tell Beth, her mom. But Marie was surprised when she didn't really get the reaction she'd been expecting. Beth was obviously deeply hurt and upset when she found out that Frank was having some kind of affair. But if Marie thought that was going to be the end of her mom and Frank's relationship, she was about to be very disappointed. Later, Beth told journalist Skip Hollinsworth, who he writes about a lot of Texas cases, and I love his writing, that,

But Beth told Skip Hollinsworth, I loved Frank, and I knew that he just didn't have his head on right. He felt neglected because of all the time I was spending with my own job, and this was his way of reacting. Wow.

Yeah. So Beth was willing to give Frank's indiscretion there, but Marie... To each their own. Marie had no intention of doing so. She was insolent. She talked back. She disobeyed him constantly. At this point, she was like, you don't respect my mom. I don't respect you. Yeah. And I mean, she lost respect for him. Absolutely. Like that's...

That's just the way it is. Yeah, I mean, I think. I can understand that. I can understand that. I feel like I would probably feel the same way. Yeah. And again, she's also a teenager. So now she's just like kind of going out of her way. Yeah. To defy his rules. She's already in that phase anyway. Yeah, she already didn't really love you to begin with or like you very much at least. And this just gave her all the more reason. Exactly.

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So finally, after a few months, Marie just couldn't stand living with Frank any longer. And she told her mom that. Beth said she withdrew from all of us. And then one day she came to me and said, I think you should divorce him. And I said, but Marie, I love Frank. I know him. I know he'll change. Marie looked at me and she said, I have to leave.

So it literally got to the point where Marie was like, I don't know how you're with this man and I'm not going to stand around and watch you get treated like this. So I got to go. And like, I don't really like him. Damn. So not wanting to make the situation any worse, Beth didn't really challenge Marie's decision to move out.

And instead, she just helped her make arrangements to go live with her grandparents about 45 minutes away in Fort Worth. And she enrolled her in a new school district. But it wasn't long because she's a teenager. She just made a pretty rash decision. It wasn't long before she regretted that decision. And after just about five days of living with her grandparents, Marie used all the money she had saved to get a cab back to Beth and Frank's house in Granbury. She's like, I want to come home.

Of course. Now, as a strict disciplinarian and the usual target of Marie's teenage attitude, Frank wasn't necessarily excited to see his stepdaughter returning so soon after Beth had gone out of her way to accommodate what he saw as Marie's demands.

And he had actually established this house rule a long time ago, like right when they first met and became a family. And this rule was that it was set up with both Marie and his son. And he said, should either one of them leave the house, move out of the house to go live with another parent, they were not going to be allowed to move back with him and Beth. Like once you made that decision, it was a done deal.

Okay. Yeah. Later in his court testimony, he explained the rule was an important tool for two divorced parents trying to meld two families. He said he didn't want the kids to think they could go back and forth between parents whenever they wanted to get their way. Okay. Which I totally understand. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it's like to have to navigate that kind of household. And like two families, so...

I'll withhold any kind of judgment on that because I don't. Yeah. Seems like when he what he's saying is logical. It seems. Definitely. You know, I feel like if it were me because I like I dealt with divorced parents. Yeah. If it were me, I feel like it should be situational.

That was kind of my thought, but again, I've never experienced my parents aren't divorced, I am not divorced. So it's like I'm speaking from a place of total inexperience. So I will rely on you for this one to know. I don't know what it's like to be the parent of a divorced child. I just know what it's like to be the child. And I feel like, I mean, I wouldn't say that my parents did a great job at it. No offense if you're listening. I think they know. I think they probably know. It shouldn't come as a surprise.

I don't know. I think that if I ever found myself as a parent in this situation, one, it would be situational and two, I could see it working better as like a one strike and you're out. Like you got one chance to do this and if you don't like it, you don't get to make that decision again.

I could see that. You know what I mean? Yeah, that makes sense to me. Like, you get to come back this one time, but if this ever happens again, you don't get to come back and do this again. I can definitely see that being a smart way to go about it. Yeah. Yeah. So... Feels less harsh. It does feel less harsh, in my opinion. Because everybody's... Again, I'm just going off of what I'm looking at. It's like...

Feels like everybody's trying to navigate a situation that nobody really should know how to navigate. Right. Divorce is, I imagine, not easy. Messy. On anyone. Yeah. So it's like everybody's just trying to navigate it, including the kids. And the kids are trying to navigate it while also being kids and having a million different hormones and other emotions and all this going on. So they're not going to be able to make like...

rash decision, you know, or excuse me, rational decision. Yes. You know, so it's like there needs to be a little bit of bending, I feel. And also, might I point out, Frank, you got another chance. Well, thank you. That was going to be my next thing was like,

Pretty rich coming from Frank. Right. Like Beth gets to give you another chance, but then you get to decide together that she doesn't give her daughter another chance. That's pretty shit. The kids don't get two chances, but you get two chances. I don't know about that. After what could be construed as a much bigger...

In discussion? But I will say, just to give you all of the facts, Frank wasn't just taking out some maybe like feelings of yuck on Marie. Actually, his own son had moved out to live with his mom a few years earlier. And Frank did the same thing. He wouldn't let him move back. So he was like, I'm not going to treat... So he was at least consistent. He was consistent. Oh, he's consistent. Oh, good. And he said, I'm not going to have Marie be treated differently like when I did this to my own son. You know? Okay.

Whether it's good or not. Exactly. Consistent. Totally opinion-based. But Beth, this whole thing was a nightmare. She remembered the day that Marie tried to come home and said, it was this terrible scene, all of us outside screaming and crying at one another. Marie was crying for me to take her back, and Frank was shouting at me, you know the rule, you can't break it. The same thing that applied to my son should apply to her.

So this was just a fucking mess. Yeah. And a therapist should have been involved. Yeah. And again, I don't know. It just sounds it's like screaming at, you know, at the mother. Like, this is what you're going to do with your kid. Yeah. Because I did it with mine. It's like, I feel like you guys like and obviously like.

I don't know. I don't know. It's rubbing me the wrong way, but I'm not going to... No, I agree. You know? The other thing is... Who knows? But it doesn't feel good. You're allowing children to make life decisions...

And like helping them make those life decisions by like saying like, okay, if you want to move out, I'll help you figure it out. But then you're not allowing them to be the child one and making those decisions or deciding they regret those decisions. That's okay. That's part of the thing that always gets me. And for like the portion of people who like can't stand when I talk about parenting. Trigger warning. But I, but because like, I don't know everything. What the fuck? I'm just doing the best I can. Nobody does. But.

It bothers me when parents don't realize that their kids are human beings as well. Yeah. And when they don't look at your kid and go, well, me as an adult, sometimes I get to say, well, fuck, that was a stupid decision. I'm going to go do this now. Yeah, like, let me fix it. But I'm not going to allow you to ever have that luxury. That's not fair. Why is that fair?

Like, to me, personally, you do whatever you want to do. Totally. Again. But to me, personally, I don't get that. Like, I'm like, it's the same thing of, like, you know, small little things, like, you know...

You're hungry close to bedtime. I get hungry close to bedtime. So like, again, do what you want with your own kids. But I never, if the kids are hungry close, like last night, for example, this is funny that this came up last night, for example, all three of them, literally we got through bath time, brush teeth, and then all three of them were like, I'm kind of hungry. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was like, do you want like toast with butter or something? Like, do you want toast? Like, what do you want? Like, we just made something small. Right. But I was like, you're hungry. That's what you would do for yourself. Sometimes I'm hungry before bed. You know what I mean? It's like, I just, to me, I'm not, I'm of the mind of like, why to, you're...

You're not allowing your kids to change their mind. Yeah. And you are allowed to change your mind. Obviously, you want to teach them to make wise decisions and to think through decisions. Right. To think of all the consequences of those decisions. Right.

Hopefully 90% of the time those are good solid decisions that they are going to stay with because in life sometimes you don't get to change your mind. True. And I think that is what like maybe he was trying to set up. I'm sure that's maybe the mindset he was coming from. It was so all or nothing. That's the thing and it's like life isn't all or nothing. So it's like there does need to be a little gray area. But again parenting is hard.

And it's hard to figure out. And it was so different. And it's such a different time. And it's like, so this is all very like, it's easy to look back and be like, that's wild. And like, and it is. It is. But like, it's hard. And I think especially. Not everybody's going to get it. I think especially in like the 70s and 80s, it was probably even harder for divorced parents because.

there weren't a lot of divorced people. Like, there wasn't really a blueprint. You know what I mean? No, it's so true. It's not like it is now where there's support groups and there's divorced people. You know, like, divorce is very high. It's more common than not, really. More marriage. More common than staying married. So it's like,

You have a lot of things to look at as, like you said, a blueprint. Right. But they didn't necessarily have that. But I never get the, like, all or nothing. I don't either. At least in my house, that's not... Yeah. Not how I understand the thing to be. Things can fluctuate. Yeah, that's the thing. Again, you want to make them stand on their own two feet and, like, make decisions, but...

At least have a little wiggle room. And this just created like a really tension-filled, awful relationship between everyone. Yeah, it kind of feels like it's just a lot of...

Yuck. Negative energy that doesn't need to be spent this hard. You know what I mean? Like you could maybe figure out a way to make stuff work. And honestly, talking about blueprints, this was the blueprint for like a fucking disaster. Yeah. I'll tell you. Like ultimately this results in disaster. Well, it sounds like it's kind of eking up to that. Yeah. Yeah.

So Beth obviously felt terrible for her daughter Marie, but ultimately she did stand by Frank's decision. And she called Stephen, her ex-husband, and was like, can Marie come and live with you? And he was like, oh my God, totally. Like, I have this great job. I've gotten my mental health in check. I love Marie. I would love to see her more. Totally. Totally.

To Beth, it seemed like the best decision at the time because, one, it would allow some space for everyone to cool down. And two, she also hoped that Frank would eventually change his mind and let Marie come move back in with them. But Marie would...

Maybe she wasn't having the best time at her grandparents' house, so she was like, maybe she'll have a better time at Stephen's in the meantime, and we can all figure this out. Yeah, and we can get to something that makes sense for everybody. I do feel for Beth at this point in time, because I think she was just between a rock and a hard place. Well, and that's tough when you're married to someone who is making decisions for the entire family. Yes. Like, that's tough. And like I said, he really...

reveled in his position as an authority figure. Yeah, and see, and it's like, that's not marriage, man. No. Like, marriage is making decisions together. Together, 50-50. So you need to be comfortable with those decisions, and if one of you isn't, then you need to figure out a different way. Exactly. Like, that's how it needs to be. It can't be, I'm uncomfortable with this decision, but he's dead set on it, so I just have to go along with it. It's like, no. And again, different times, so like, this is just... Yep. It's us looking at it in hindsight with our 2020 glasses on. Yeah, it's true. But...

To Marie, this felt like the ultimate betrayal. Yeah, of course. One, she wasn't allowed to move back into her home. Like, she was like, what the fuck? And Frank had already betrayed her mom, and now her mom, in her eyes, realistically, was siding with Frank. Well, I think that is the big...

Thing here is also you put, like you said, put together that she walked in on him cheating on her mom. Disrespecting her mom. So it's like, so then for this guy to be making proclamations about your family. Right. After he has betrayed your family. Yep.

That's rough. That is rough. I imagine as a kid that would be a rough pill to swallow. And imagine you're looking at this through the eyes of, I think she was like 15 or 16 at this point. Oh my God, I was a nightmare. Yeah. I was a nightmare. I was a nightmare of just emotions and just like being a shit. Totally. You're hormonal as fuck. So it's like I can't fathom that.

Right. So Randall Price, the psychologist, said that Marie thought that Frank was relieved to have her gone, which I do wonder if part of him was. Yeah. And he said Marie's constant presence and her friendship with her mother were hindering him from putting his marriage back together with Beth.

That's how Marie felt. Okay. So there's that. But even though the circumstances for Marie's move were not the best, Stephen Robards was super happy just to have more time with his daughter and immediately started looking for a better living situation. He was looking for a two-bedroom apartment so that she could have her own space and like they could coexist together. Oh, that's nice.

Now, after all the positive changes he'd been making to improve his life, his sister, Stephanie Elder, told Skip Hollinsworth, Marie's coming back to him was like the icing on the cake. Oh, that like really, I hate that there's going to be a bad thing happening here because I'm like, this sounds nice. Yeah, it sounds awesome.

Marie, on the other hand, was obviously far less enthusiastic about this move. She hated her new school. In the meantime of Stephen looking for a new apartment, she had to sleep on a rollaway bed in the dining room. And she was constantly frustrated with just her father's lack of domestic skills. He's a man. He's a single man who's been living on his own. Yeah.

he wasn't great at cooking, he wasn't great at cleaning, and that's not what she's used to. No. She's grown up with, you know. With a mama. Yeah. But most of all, she missed her mama. Yeah. She missed being with her mom and now being so far away from her. So Stephen did his best to make the transition easy for Marie, but his attempts typically fell flat or were somewhat unwelcome. Remember, this is a teenage girl. Well, and it

Very angry teenage girl. A very angry teenage girl. This transition didn't happen because everybody decided it was going to happen together. It came out of nowhere. It came out of anger and her feeling like she wasn't welcome in her own home. So she's going to be angry no matter what he did. Exactly. I don't think that guy had a chance at making this okay. He sure didn't.

Steve's girlfriend, Sandra, told Hollinsworth he was very anxious about pleasing her. But I know that those first few weeks, Marie was constantly on the phone calling her mother. She was pleading to get back home, which is really sad. That is really sad. It breaks your heart.

So the first few months after the move obviously were difficult for both Marie and Stephen. But eventually Marie did appear to adjust to the new living situation. Okay. When she got settled in her new school, her grades went right back up. She was once again a straight-A student. She started making friends. She started becoming more sociable. Her chem teacher, Tracy Arnold, said, "'I do remember hearing her say she wanted to move back in with her mother, but she was always a nice, bubbly girl.'"

A few months later, Marie actually even started to warm up to Stephen's new girlfriend, Sandra, and the quote-unquote tantrums and desperate pleas to return back to Beth and Frank's home became more infrequent as 1992 came to a close. It was only later that the adults around Marie would learn that what they thought was an adjustment was really just an act. She was putting on an act like everything was okay, but inside she was still frustrated

absolutely depressed and absolutely desperate to get back to her mom. Oh no. So in reality, her desire to return back to her mother was just as strong as it had ever been, like I just said. And now desperate to get out of the situation that she put herself in by challenging Frank's authority, she started brainstorming ways that she could get out of her living arrangement. And at one point, she actually even considered burning down the apartment complex while her dad was out.

And she figured that if the apartment no longer existed, her mom would have no choice but to let her move back in. Oh, wow. So she got... This is desperation. She got beyond desperate. She...

I think she had somewhat of a break. Yeah. I mean, if you're thinking that far. Like, that's on another level. The psychologist she later saw said, it's one of those mysteries, a teenager's desperation. For whatever reason, Marie did feel permanently trapped. And being a teenager, she had little regard for the consequences. Oof. But of course, arson would cause a great deal of destruction and would most likely be easily traced back to her. So...

What she started to feel she needed was a plan that would be disruptive enough to reunite her with her mother, but seem to everybody else like an unfortunate fluke. And in February of 1993, she got an idea that seemed like the perfect plan. I don't think it's going to be. It's not.

On the evening of February 18th, Stephen Robards sat down at the dinner table with his daughter for a quick little Tex-Mex dinner before he had plans to head out to an evening church service at the nearby Christ Church. Okay. He returned less than an hour later, though, after he had finished dinner and gone out to the church. He came back and he said he was having severe, severe stomach pains. Oh, no. Not long after returning home, he started vomiting. Oh, no.

And in the hours that followed, the cramps got increasingly more painful. So unsure what to do, Marie ran to Sandra Hudgens' apartment. That's his girlfriend who actually lives in the same apartment complex. Okay.

She told Marie, just stay put here in my apartment. And she went over to find Steve in a terrible state. Sandra said, he said he couldn't swallow well, and I saw saliva coming up through his mouth. I went into the other room and called an ambulance. As she was on the phone with the paramedic, she could hear Steven struggling in the other room. And when she looked in on him, she saw that now he was foaming at the mouth, and his eyes had become fixed and glassy, and he was staring off at nothing. Oh, my God. Yeah.

It was an incredibly bleak, violent situation. Like, he was violently ill. Holy shit.

By the time the paramedics arrived, Stephen had slipped into a coma and wasn't breathing. They tried to get an oxygen tube down his throat to keep him alive, but his throat had completely closed at that point. Oh my gosh. In the meantime, Marie, who was supposed to be waiting at Sandra's apartment, had wandered over and was watching as the paramedics tried in vain to save her father's life. Sandra later said she didn't tell the paramedics anything. She only stood there.

What? In an interview with the Associated Press a few years later, Marie recalled the incident. She said, I was in shock. My whole body just heated up.

My God. So the paramedics, they rushed Stephen to the hospital with Sandra and Marie following behind them in Sandra's car. But despite the doctor's best efforts, Stephen was in horrible shape by the time he got to the emergency department and he did die a short time later. Oh, that's awful. Yeah. Like just when he had gotten his life really together. And was thinking that he was getting, you know, his daughter. Yeah.

On, like, the right, like, feeling good, feeling comfortable. Yeah, being a bigger part of her life. Oh, that's so sad. It is. It really is. Oh, that, like, breaks my heart. I know. Sandra recalled in an interview with CBS, I didn't want to believe it. How could it be that bad? He was 38. He's my age. 38 years old. Holy shit. Isn't that crazy? Wow. That's so young. That's really... Thank you. You're welcome. That is very young. Like...

And to die that violently. And to honestly have gone through everything that he got through to get to where he was getting, you know? Yeah, 38 years old. He's had a whole career with the Navy. He's got, he's had a child. He's gotten divorced. He's gotten his, gone through depression, battled depression. Yeah, like. Got it in check. Got his life back on track. Like. Was like moving forward. Got a new girlfriend. Welcoming his child into the home to like really like get her back on track. Yeah. Like, it just feels like everything was falling into place and.

Damn. And then it... And what a horrible end. It all just exploded, essentially. Ugh. But the medical examiner, Dr. Mark Krause, declared Stephen's death a heart attack. Very unusual for somebody so young, but not unheard of. The doctor recalled his heart was mildly enlarged. It was probably 25% too large for a man his age and size. Somewhat uncomfortably, I signed it out as a natural death. And he acknowledged the somewhat unusual circumstances, but...

Something was pulling at him. He signed off on it as a natural death, but something in the back of his mind was like, I'm not so sure. Yeah. But it feels a little suspish. Yeah, but we'll leave that there for now. Okay. Funeral services were held for Stephen Robards on February 22nd, and during them, Marie stood by her father's graveside in an absolute daze.

Once the service ended, Beth took her aside to tell her some news. She said she really hoped that her and Frank could work things out, but they were still having issues and they decided to separate. And Beth said, I found a good job in Florida. I know it's not ideal timing, but I'm going to take you and move to Florida. She said when she shared that news with Marie, Marie stared at me like, you had this plan all along to take me to Florida? She looked like she couldn't breathe.

That's rough. That's rough. Especially if you catch what's going on here.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So a month later, Beth and Marie had settled into a new apartment in Panama City where Beth started a new job as an administrative assistant at the State Division of Motor Vehicles. Marie, meanwhile, was enrolled at a new high school, but she was going through her own mental crisis. Some days she was so depressed and despondent that she couldn't get out of bed, much less go to school. Damn. So now worried that Marie had inherited some kind of...

Wow.

Now, despite her worst... There's some decisions happening. There are some decisions. As Tatiana says, choices. Choices. So despite her worsening depression, the loss of her father, and the disruption of the move, Maria actually seemed happy for her mom, and she was even willing to make amends with Frank for the sake of the family.

Huh. But unfortunately, it wasn't long before Marie found a note from Frank's mistress among his fucking belongings, which proved that he was still carrying on a goddamn affair. Dude. That had caused her to move out in the first place. What the fuck? So he goes all the way to Florida and is like, I want to work on this, and actually never ended things with a mistress, or at the very least got a new one while he was there. I will never understand these people.

The way I'm going to junk punch this man. Who go out of their way to try to get back someone while they're cheating on them still. It's like, no, just be, go off. Be who you want to be. Go be single. Why are you constantly trying to drag this other person into your shit? Why are you fucking up other people's lives? It's so wild to me. I don't get it.

Marie didn't get it either. No. And at that point she was like, listen, I've actually really never felt at home in Florida because we moved here so suddenly. I also really miss my friends back in Texas. And she pretty much went and told her mom that. She said, mom, you can put up with him if you want to, but I don't have to. I miss Texas. I'm going home.

So once again, Beth chose to stay with Frank and helped Marie make arrangements to return to Texas, where she moved in with Stephen's father, Jim Robards, to Mansfield, a small city near Fort Worth. So once again, in Marie's eyes and the eyes of I'm sure many others, Beth has chosen her husband over her daughter. Yes.

That's just... That's the unfortunate truth here. That's what's happening. Damn. So back in Texas, Marie enrolled in Mansfield High... I was going to say high school. High school. High school to finish her senior year, where by all accounts, she flourished socially and academically. She joined the yearbook staff. She actually, like her mom, ended up becoming president of the school's National Honor Society. Jeez. And also quickly became the star of the volleyball team. Look at her go. Yeah, she started doing a bunch of stuff.

The school's yearbook advisor, Leonidas Patterson, said she impressed all the teachers because here she was, a brand new student, and she had this hunger to get involved. But when it came to her father, Marie became unusually cagey, if not outright bizarre, whenever he got brought up. She told her grandfather and the rest of the Robards family that she couldn't visit Stephen's grave because she, quote unquote, couldn't handle it emotionally. Which you can understand. Absolutely.

But when anybody at school would ask about her family, she would make up a lie about her background, specifically like where her dad was. Okay. Like sometimes she would say he died. Other times she would say like he lived somewhere else. She would – it was always a different story. Yeah. Yeah.

When it came to friends, Marie was generally friendly, but she didn't really go out of her way to make new friends. But there was one girl who Marie actually formed a really close relationship with, and that relationship in her life would become very consequential. Like Marie, Stacey High had also lost her father under different circumstances. He was still alive. He was just incredibly absent from her life. Oh, that's sad. So they kind of bonded over the fact that they didn't really have a father figure. Yeah.

Stacey said,

Yeah. So senior year, they meet each other. They come from different backgrounds. They get close. They bond over it. Sounds like a nice reason to get close to someone. You're like, I've been through it. Yeah. Kind of help you get through it without going down a bad path. Exactly. So not long after arriving in Mansfield, the two girls became really inseparable. Stacey said, I would say we were best friends. We kind of fell in love with each other. We had so much in common. And she just means in like a friendship way. Yeah.

They would spend afternoons working together on yearbook. They would drive around town. Remember when you were a teenager and you would just drive around? I miss that. I miss that so much. Sometimes you would like go to Wendy's. Yeah, that's really the only part I miss. Drive around listening to music. Yeah. On the weekends, they would use their fake IDs to get into local country Western bars. They were just doing like typical teenager shit. Yeah.

And throughout that time, Stacey could sense that something was weighing on Marie, like weighing very heavily on her. And she would try to get her to open up. But every time it just went nowhere. The attempts were completely unsuccessful. But Stacey said, I pride myself on asking really good questions. And I tried to get Marie to talk about her past and her dad's death, thinking it might help her. But it was like a dead end street trying to get her to talk. Wow. So she's like completely closed up. Yeah. Yeah.

But toward the end of the school year, a secret Marie was keeping was starting to weigh on her in ways she had likely not anticipated. But it wasn't Stacey's persistent questioning that moved Marie to share her secret. It was actually a passage from one William Shakespeare that finally brought the truth to light.

One day, while they were rehearsing Hamlet together for school, Stacey was reading out of her copy of Cliff Notes, and she turned to Marie, and she started a dramatic reading of Claudius' soliloquy from Act 3, Scene 3. "'My fault is my past, but oh, what form of prayer can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder. That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder.'"

Oh. So turning to her friends, Stacey expected a positive reaction from Marie. She was like, I just slayed that passage. Yeah. But in turn, Marie seemed very lost and dazed.

The scene where Claudius expresses his very deep remorse over his blind ambition and impulsive decision to murder the king seemed to affect Marie very deeply. Kind of hit her. Kind of hit her in a place she hadn't been hit in a while. Whether she was inspired by the text, as she would later claim, or she just simply couldn't carry the burden of her secret anymore, she turned to Stacey and asked her, Stacey, do you think people can go through life without a conscience?

And as if to confirm, Stacey pointed out that there were a lot of people in the world who were capable of killing somebody without remorse. And Marie backed up to the wall and then collapsed to the floor and started sobbing uncontrollably. Oh my goodness. So Stacey's like, what's wrong? Like, I don't understand what's going on here. And all Marie could say in response was, guess. So without hesitation, Stacey just ran through a list of

teenage fear. She was like, are you pregnant? Did you wreck the family car? Yeah. Coming up with every teenage crazy thing you could possibly do. And when she had run out of all the hypothetical tragedies she could possibly think of, she said jokingly, well, you didn't kill somebody, did you? And in between her sobs, Marie answered, my father, I poisoned him. Holy shit. Yeah. I mean, I like sensed this a little bit, but hearing her, it's like,

And the fact, it's just so haunting to me that that scene in Hamlet was like what finally broke her. My whole body is just chilled. Same. And it just makes you think like,

Oh my God, you're a fucking teenager. Yeah. Like I remember senior year having to go up in front of the class and reading Hamlet. Yeah. Can you imagine it hitting home like that? Like I didn't relate to Hamlet in any way back then. I still don't actually. And the whole thing with like her mom being like, I'm going to take you to Florida. This is the plan. And she's like, you had this plan. It had been the plan. She just hadn't had a chance to, she was finishing it up, like finishing the plan up.

But if she had told Marie a little bit sooner, this wouldn't have happened. And it's like... And that's not on Beth, obviously. No. I'm not saying that. What a fucking mess. What a mess. What an absolute mess. Oh, that's awful.

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Holy shit. And it only gets worse. And she did it in such a horrific way. Yeah. And also, and I know I'm hoping we're going to find out, why did you choose him? I mean, you shouldn't poison anyone, but why did you poison that man? We find out, but it still doesn't make sense. But we don't really? Like, it's so... You want to say it's like such a teenage decision, but then it's not at the same time. No, it's a very... But the...

The rationale behind it? The rationale behind it is such teenage rationale, but you're like...

You killed your father. Because was she, and again, I'm sure I'm skipping ahead, but it's like, all I can think of is that she was thinking like, well, if I don't have a place to stay with him, then I have to go back to. That's pretty much what it was. And it's like, oh my God. But that is not the way. No. And we'll get to it. Holy shit. There is debate over whether or not she intended to kill him. But we'll get to it. I...

We'll get to it. Okay. So she just admits this horrible secret to Stacey while they're literally just getting together practicing Hamlet. And Stacey is completely taken aback. And Marie made her swear that she wouldn't tell a soul and reminded her that if she told anybody, Marie herself would get arrested and sent to jail for the rest of her life. So she's like, you can't tell anybody. Like, I can't go to jail for the rest of my life. And because they're seniors in high school, Stacey was like, okay, I'll keep quiet. Right.

Had they been adults in the same situation, I'm sure Stacey probably would have gone to the police with this information more or less immediately. But they're children, teenagers. Damn. And they, you know, teenagers live by their own set of rules that's different from adults. So...

Stacey would later tell Skip Hollinsworth, when you're in high school, it's like so important not to betray your friends. Yeah. So while it pained her to do so, she kept Marie's secret like she promised. Sort of. Sort of. We'll get there. Okay. Keep going.

Keeping Marie's terrible secret had never been easy. But the more and more time passed, the more completely unbearable life became for Stacey. She started having these vivid and incredibly distressing nightmares where she would hear Stephen calling out to her from the grave. Or she would have nightmares where Marie was chasing her through the night. Damn. The stress...

Had her doing poorly in school. She started. That's intense. It's intense. I can't fathom that. That's the wild. I never had to go through that. I can't imagine. No. Being 17, 16, 17 years old. And having a whole. So your friend breaks down and tells you they poisoned their father.

Like, what? The fuck do you do? My brain would not be able to handle that at 16. No. So she's doing horrible in like every part of her life. And now she's drinking heavily. I don't remember if I said that part, but she's drinking heavily to cook. Okay.

She also at the same time was trying to put some distance between herself and Marie. So she quit the yearbook. She started spending time with new friends. But everything was getting to be too much. And now thinking that she was pretty much headed toward a nervous breakdown, she took it upon herself to start going to an after school program at a private mental health clinic. But even there, she couldn't bring herself to tell them the truth. So it really didn't do much good.

Damn. But finally, after eight months, Stacey couldn't stand the strain any longer, and she went to the school counselor for help. Wow, good. I mean, I'm glad she did something, but I feel bad that she had to go through all that. You're about to feel even worse. Yeah. Incredibly, the guidance counselor actually wasn't the first person that Stacey told about this. Oh. The night that Marie had told her, Stacey went home and told her mom, Libby, what Marie had confessed. Oh.

At first, Libby was like, no, Marie's probably making things up until, like, you know, she's feeling all this grief over her father's death. There's no way that she could have killed him. But then she started thinking more and more about it and was like, well, could she have? So she called a poison control center to ask whether barium acetate, which is the chemical Marie claimed to have poisoned her father with, could have caused the symptoms like those that killed Stephen. And the operator confirmed, yep, there were several that could have. Oh, boy. Yeah.

So while she knew that now it was definitely possible that Marie was telling the truth, Libby did nothing to help her daughter, who was clearly suffering as a result of keeping Marie's secret. Later in an interview, she explained that she wanted Stacey to be ready for the real world and said, I wanted Stacey to know that I trusted her to make her own decision about Marie. I guess I knew this was the moment in which Stacey was going to have to grow up.

She's 17, 18 at the oldest. What's happening with these parents? You're her fucking mother. You're not preparing your kid. You're traumatizing your kid. Her brain is not fully developed. If her friend came to her and said, I cheated on my boyfriend.

At 16 years old. You guys figure that out. And she's like, I'm really struggling with this secret, Mom. I don't know what to do. That's when you go, honey, you got to figure that out. I can give you. I'll give you some advice. I'm going to listen to you. We can talk this through, but you're going to ultimately have to make that decision of what to do here.

When her friend comes to her and says, I murdered my father in cold blood. The only correct decision is we're calling the police. And it's like to be like, hmm, I don't know. I feel like she couldn't have done that. Let me call poison. That's not on you, man. That's not up to you to call poison control and find out if that would actually kill a man. You call the police and you say, I don't know if this is true or not. Here's the information we got. You go do your investigation because that's what they're fucking paid for.

What are you doing? Colin trying to find out if things actually can kill people? No, call the police. What's going on here? What real world are you preparing your daughter for? Never in my life has someone confessed murder to me. That is not the real world. Sure, it's possible. But I'm sure hoping that your daughter isn't walking out into a real world where people are openly confessing murder to her on that regular of a basis that she's going to have to have a set

way of dealing with it. Right. And also, I'm going to be honest, I'm 38 years old. If someone confessed murder to me, I would lose my mind, call the police, and then I'd probably call my mom. Yeah, 100%. I'd call your mom too. Like, let's... Come on. What? I'm just like...

I can't get, I mean, whoa. Yeah. Whoa. So while Stacey's mom didn't necessarily help the situation in any way, shape or form. She didn't have it going on at that time. Stacey's mom did not have it going on at this point in time. That's the main takeaway from that. The only levity you can find out of that whole situation. Damn. Yeah.

I have a feeling. Stacey, like she said, that she had gone through a lot at this point. I have the feeling she probably didn't have the best home life and I feel really hard for her. Yeah, I feel for her. That's the thing. I feel for Stacey here. Same. That's too much. Your child. Too much to have on you. So luckily, like I said, she went to the school counselor after she went to her mom eight months later. Because that's the other thing. She's like, okay, so am I supposed to keep this secret? Like I have no fucking idea what to do because I had zero guidance. You need guidance. That's what your parents are for.

Well, apparently that's what the school counselor was for. The guidance counselor. The guidance counselor took her seriously and together they contacted the police. Finally. Which should have happened in... Far before this. We won't harp on it, but it should have fucking happened. Finally an adult made a smart decision here. Yes. So the police were actually skeptical, but they did take the report and said they would investigate. Everyone's

stop. If someone's saying they killed someone, skepticism shouldn't be your first thought. It's like, investigate it. Like, I understand being skeptical, but... Investigate it! And they do. They do. They're skeptical, but they investigate. But...

While they had the blood and tissue samples that could have been tested for the barium acetate, they didn't have the gas chromatography mass spectrometer, GCMS, necessary to do the tests. But you don't just have one of those? I also really wanted to say it more like gas chromatography mass spectrometer. You don't just have one of those lying around? Why don't you have that?

But, fortunately, the medical examiner, who was just days away from destroying the blood and tissue samples per protocol, because it's been like over a year at this point, was

He remembered the case being somewhat suspicious and agreed to find a lab in Texas that had the equipment and expertise to test these samples that literally were days away from being thrown. The ME coming through. Like these were going to be destroyed in a matter of days. Damn. Tell me that's not some kind of fucking divine intervention. That's something. That's something. I think that's like Steven from wherever he was being like, please figure this out. Please. Please.

But it took the medical examiner actually almost three months to find a lab that had the GCMS technology and another three months for the test results to come back. So in the meantime, Marie and Stacey had both graduated from high school. They'd gone their separate ways. Marie used the $60,000 she got from Stevens Life Insurance Policy to enroll at the University of Texas in hopes of becoming a medical pathologist.

someone who would literally study bodily tissue. Wow. It's also said that she may have wanted to become a medical examiner. Wow. Yes. But Stacey went to Sam Houston State University about three hours away, so they didn't talk really ever again. Okay. But after months of no contact with either Marie or the police, Stacey assumed nothing had come of the report, so she just refocused on her schoolwork and tried to put that entire part of her life behind her.

But then one day in October, she got a call from a detective in Mansfield. The test results of Stephen Robart's blood had finally come back and showed that he had 250 times the amount of barium acetate typically found in a person's blood, which was 28 times the amount necessary to kill. Holy shit.

Based on those results, detectives were opening an investigation into his death as a possible homicide. You don't say. And they wanted another statement from Stacey. Oh, man. So they got one. And on October 18th, 1994, detectives arrested Marie on the UT Austin campus on suspicion of murder.

Tarrant County Prosecutor Mitchell Poe said, Wow. She told detectives, and this blows my mind, she told detectives that she had actually stolen the barium acetate from her high school chem class. What? After the teacher had warned the students how dangerous and toxic the chemical could be.

She said, I took the chemical because I knew it would make him sick. I just wanted to be with my mom so bad that I would do anything to be with her. I'm also like, why wasn't the barium acetate under better controls? Why was it possible that she could just take that much barium acetate? Yeah. What? Adults do better. Wow. So in the night,

Of her father's death, Marie offered to prepare his plate for dinner, and she mixed the barium acetate in his food, which he ate, then went to church, where he started experiencing those terrible stomach cramps. She later told a jury,

Wow. That's sick. She claimed it's sick. She claimed she only wanted to make her father too sick to care for her, which she believed would have allowed her to move back in with her mom, and that at no time had she intended to actually kill him. She said, I think for a long time I did a good job of pretending it didn't happen. For a long time I tried not to think about it. This is so fucked up. It is. In so many ways. Like, I don't even know how to...

This is just wild. It is because all of the things that we've previously said are true. Like she was in this terrible situation. She felt rejected by her mom. All of these, she's going through all of these awful teenage things. But then at the very same time, she makes a decision to murder someone. A very adult. A very adult decision. Monstrous decision. And it's premeditated. It is. It is.

Like completely premeditated. And she admits that she wanted to make this poor man violently ill. Yeah. Too ill to care for her. That's sick. That's twisted. And it's also, that's also the amount of desperation there for her mother. Yeah.

And it's like, that's sad. It is sad. There's so much here. There's so many layers of like, that's monstrous what she did. And it's monstrous what even her intention was, if her intention was to make him sick, that's monstrous. But it's also so sad. It is. That this is a child desperate for a different situation. For their mother. Yeah.

So while Marie had framed the murder as the impulsive act of a desperate teenager, the district attorney disagreed. There's a lot of debate here, like I said there was going to be. That's the thing. There's so many layers. And honestly, I don't know where I sit at the end of the day. Yeah. I mean, this is fucked up regardless. Yeah, I know I sit in the seat of holy shit, this is fucked up. I do wonder whether or not she intended to kill him or make him sick. I can't really make a decision either way. Yeah, I don't know.

So far, I'm where you are. Right? I can't decide that either. But the district attorney said, anybody who is going to go to medical school is probably above average as far as the science department. And as a matter of fact, that was part of my investigation. I collected her grades and she had very high marks in school and the sciences.

Yeah. So you see that. And that's the thing. You see that side of it. She's intelligent. And you said yourself, your teacher told you how dangerous this particular poison is to a human. And yeah, that's the thing. Because it's like, you know, there's a potential. And you also don't.

Like he said, if you're planning on going to medical school, it's like you're advanced in science. You know that every body is different. Right. And that every body takes differently to different poisons or toxins or illnesses or diseases. Everyone handles it different. And remember, there was 28 times the amount in his body. So you gave him way too much. You gave him a lot. And it's like, if you were thinking you were going to make him sick, it would have been this tiny little dip. That's what I would think. You would start with a little. No matter what, this is monstrous. Because you...

You claim you wanted to make him sick, but you overdid it 28 times. And either way, that's monster behavior. So despite her having been forthcoming upon her arrest, the district attorney told reporters that Marie knew exactly what she was doing when she poisoned her father. And had she not told her best friend about it, she would have committed the perfect murder. He said, in my opinion, she gave him a death sentence and she fully intended to do what she did.

So following her arrest, Beth used her portion of Stephen's life insurance payout to hire Bill Magnuson, I believe, and Ward Casey, veteran criminal defense attorneys from Fort Worth. She had confessed to the murder Marie had. When she appeared for her arraignment the next day, though, she pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. So she confessed but then pleaded not guilty. Instead, her lawyers argued she was a confused teenager and had no idea that the chemical would have been fatal.

So because she was still a minor at the time that the crime was committed, she was no longer a minor, but she was when the crime was committed. She was held in a juvenile detention center for nearly two weeks until a judge did agree to release her on bond. Wow. Once out of the facility, she got a job at a local TGI Fridays and even ended up in one of their commercials. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Roll back that tape. Excuse me, what? She got a job in a restaurant? At the TGI Fridays. When she's out on bond? For poisoning food. For poisoning somebody with dinner? Yeah, the irony is not lost on me. The reckless abandonment is not lost on me. I don't know, Texas. I'm without. Wow. I don't know. She ended up on one of the TGI Fridays.

In Texas. I think they're closing right now, actually. What the fuck? They're like under new ownership or something. I should hope so. Why do I know that much about TJM Fridays? I don't know, but my goodness gracious. Yeah. That's not great. Yeah. Holy shit. Imagine knowing that she was your server. Knowing you went to that place during that time. Yeah. And being like, oh, that was my waitress.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Okay. Didn't see that one coming. On the days when she wasn't working inside of a restaurant where she had access to food, Beth brought Marie to work with her at the Granbury City Hall, quote, so she could keep watch on her. I think she was worried that she might have done something to herself, you know? Yeah.

Whatever her intention, Marie's presence was a big disruption to the office workplace. And city manager Bob Brockman had to limit Marie's presence in the office. He said, I just think it could be a disruptive force, noting that some city employees were very disturbed by her constant presence. Yeah, if I'm working and somebody's like, oh, here's my daughter, she might have killed her father.

I don't want to do that. She's just going to hang out today. I'd be like, no. I'm going to work from home. Like, it's just, like, I don't know about that. That would be a little distracting. Yeah. I think we can all agree. I think we can all see the distraction there. But more than a month passed before Marie was back before a judge on January 26, 1995, where she was certified to stand trial as an adult for the murder of her father.

If she was found guilty, she could face as many as 99 years in prison. Her lawyers indicated to the judge and to the press that she intended to plead her innocence, which presented a challenge seeing as she had already confessed to the crime. But as a result, her lawyers knew that their only viable strategy was to convince the jury that Marie's actions were those of an emotionally distraught teenager, which they hoped would inspire some sympathy among the jury and lead to a lesser sentence. Mm-hmm.

Her defense team knew that before setting foot in a courtroom, they needed to win over the public, though, and convince the public that Marie was no criminal. So in order to do that, they actually arranged for her to be interviewed by the Associated Press, which would go out on the wire and be published in newspapers all across the country.

Wow. Like what a fucking choice. I was just going to say choices. Tatiana. But Marie told the reporter, I never thought anything through. I didn't realize what I was doing. She explained that her father had never abused her, generally treated her very well, but she had always been much closer to her mom and desperately wanted to move back in with her. She said, I feel so guilty about what happened. I know I hurt a lot of people.

That's what's even sadder is like my father did not, he did not abuse me. He did not mistreat me. He treated me very well generally. But I violently murdered him. Violently. Like this man did nothing wrong. That like really breaks my, like thinking of that, like really, that's the part that really gets me. And that's the scary part of like, okay, rash teenage decision, uh, okay.

You killed the one man that was willing to take you in in your time of need. This is the parent that is actually like, you know, putting everything aside and being like, I want to concentrate on you. And it's like...

And I'm sorry, like rash, it's like poisoning someone is not a rash teenage decision. No. You know, like her logic behind this thing, like I was just so desperate for my mom. Yeah, that's really sad. You don't fucking kill someone for it. No. And you should know better.

Right? Like, why don't you know better? Right? Like, that should never be part of your choices is, or I could kill him. That should never be up for thought. No, there's got to be something missing. Something's off. Something off. Yeah, there's something off there. Because I've been upset. I've been sad. I've been desperate. I've been this. I've been that. Never has...

Murder. Been on the docket for a possibility. I've been. And the fact that it was and then she followed through with it makes, there's an issue. Absolutely. I've been in a very similar situation. Yeah. And never thought of murdering anyone involved. Ever. Yeah. But that's just me.

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But perhaps anticipating the defense's intentions, the prosecutor's office actually gave their own interview to the press where they emphasized their belief that Marie hadn't simply acted impulsively, but had in fact planned to kill her father. District Attorney Poe told reporters she was fascinated with figuring out how people die, pointing to her dream of becoming a medical examiner. And he emphasized the same points in his opening statements when the trial did end up beginning in May of 1996. Wow.

Reminding the jury that she was a very intelligent girl who excelled in science class and all in all her other classes and had been present and alert when her chemistry teacher gave a very clear warning of the dangers of this specific barium acetate. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know what what's to be confused here. Right. Marie's awareness of the dangers of barium acetate became the linchpin to Poe's case.

To support the argument, he played a section of her confession to investigators where she admitted to knowing the dangers of the chemical. In the recording, the interviewing detective asks her whether or not she knew what the effect the poison would have, and she said it would make him sick. But when the detective pressed her for a more detailed response, Marie admitted the chemistry teacher explicitly told them it would close up someone's throat. I mean, you know someone's going to die.

You know that. Yeah. When she was cross-examined by the defense, Marie's chemistry teacher, who now had to fucking testify in all of this, Tracy Arnold, claimed she never informed the class that barium acetate would have that effect. So the defense is like, oh, cool. Like, she never said that. But rather than help the defense, this admission only supported the argument that Marie had to have done her own research of the drug. Otherwise, she never would have known that effect. Yeah.

Oh, shit. Fuck. Fuck. Exactly. So according to the prosecution, this is also really haunting. The page on barium acetate poisoning in the emergency handbook that was kept in the classroom had been torn out of the book. Wow. Which they believed also supported their theory that Marie had fully intended to kill her father. Holy shit.

This is so sad. It is. So her lawyers rejected the prosecution's theory, pointing out that Marie always maintained she did not intend to kill her father. She just wanted to make him sick. And they played their own section of the taped confession where Marie tells a detective she put the barium in her father's food because it was the only thing, and this is from her, she said, it was the only thing I could think of to be able to move back to where I wanted to be.

They said, far from the cold-blooded killer the prosecution was making her out to be, that she had never been properly warned of the dangers of barium acetate, and if she truly knew what she was doing, she, quote, would not have put so much barium in her father's food, since he would be far more likely to taste the salty substance and not eat it.

But this argument doesn't work because she did put so much on and he did eat it. That doesn't work at all. I guess that's probably why they're retired at that point. Yeah, probably. Now, after a relatively short trial, the jury retired for deliberation on May 9th and returned less than an hour later to deliver their verdict.

The jury found her guilty. I saw that coming. I would have too. Yeah. When the judge asked if she had anything to say to the court, Marie broke down just saying, I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry, before bursting into tears and pushing the microphone away from her. Once she composed herself, she continued her statement explaining that she'd become so scared once her father had become so seriously ill and was just too frightened to say anything.

But Mitchell Poe, the DA, interjected to ask whether she was scared for herself or her father. It was like, who were you really afraid for? And she said, I was scared for both. So he stood silent for a few seconds and then said, but more scared for yourself, right? So, yikes. Shit. But the next day during the penalty phase, Poe argued for a harsh sentence for Marie, despite her age and her displays of remorse. He said, if she gets probation, she can go down on the elevator and serve your next meal.

I was like, shit. Wow. Ultimately, the judge sentenced her to 28 years in prison with eligibility for parole after seven years. So Ward Casey, one of her defense attorneys, after the sentencing told reporters, of course we were disappointed. I just kept thinking about my own kids. And she really is a real, real, real nice girl. She was just in a hell of a trap.

I just got chills saying that. Yeah. So while serving her sentence, which she did, Marie was by all accounts a model prisoner. She was fully compliant with all the guards, all the staff. She volunteered to do chores in prison. She helped out where she could. And they said she did seem to express a great deal of remorse for having killed her father.

And after serving seven years in prison, she was granted parole and has since changed her name and gone out of her way to start her life over in complete obscurity. And there's nothing crazy related to her like this ever happened again. Wow.

But the case completely captivated the public, due at least in part to the fact that it actually seemed to be a larger trend in the United States in the 1990s. Parasite, which is the murder of a parent by their child, obviously is pretty exceedingly rare and rarer when the child is a girl, actually. In a study completed in the mid-1990s, only about 10% of children who killed one or both of their parents was female.

But because the bond between parents and children is so strong in Western culture, obviously these killings are incredibly taboo. Yeah. According to Paul Bones, who studies the phenomenon, it only occurs in extreme situations and often after years of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. But she said her father had never been abusive to her. That's why this one's so shocking. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And in the case of Marie Robards, Skip Hollinsworth believes she was the symbol of what modern divorce has done to our society. Desperate to hold onto the attention and affection of a mom who pretty much always seemed preoccupied with her own life and very fragile marriage, Marie resorted to extreme measures without regard for the consequences of her actions and just only cared that she would maintain her position of significance in her mother's life. This is such like...

There was such a disconnect. There really was. Where there needed to be a connect. And there was such a crazy series of events where, and I think we talked about this in my most recent case that I covered the society murders, where had one thing not happened, maybe this person wouldn't have ended up being killed. It wouldn't have set into motion.

And it really is just absolutely bonkers how like one, and it's not a small decision in this case, the fact that she wasn't allowed to move back, but one decision can completely alter the course of multiple people's lives. Yeah, because then it goes back into like...

you know, her stepfather and her mom's marriage, where it was like a marriage where he got to make the decisions regardless of, you know, what she thought. Yeah. And she went along with it. And, like, he betrayed that family. Yeah. And...

Marie was angry. Super angry. And like, you know, obviously not respecting him and to see her mother putting him on such a higher pedestal than her relationship with her. Yeah. It's tough. And it's like, that's not to say what she did was okay. That is anyone's fault. No. Like anyone's fault outside of Marie's for doing that because it's like you make a decision to do that and you're old enough to know that that is not a decision that you even consider. Yeah.

But it's like so many things led up to this moment that should have been handled differently. And then if you think about it, actually, like, because obviously, like,

You want to say you're old enough to make a decision, to know that that's right from wrong. But then if you look at it like psychologically, her brain was not developed. Like don't they say like the hippocampus is the part of your brain where like decisions are made and like you say like yes or no. Because she was what, 15? When this happened, she was either 15 or 16. Yeah. So it's a weird argument that you can make. And then you look at the fact that

She went to prison and then went about the rest of her life and then nothing like this ever happened again. But I mean, like, yeah, you have, you know, you're not fully ready to make decisions at that time. You're ready to make a decision of whether to murder someone or not. I think so, too. Like, that decision should be a fully formed one. I definitely think so, too. By that point, like, at 15 or 16, like, that shouldn't be one of those gray areas where it's like... But isn't it weird how, like... Yeah. That...

That can be part of it, you know? Yeah. And like people can make that argument. Well, they can make that argument for sure. Right. I don't know if I fully buy into it. I think they can make that legal argument. Legally, it's an argument too. And it is interesting that if you look at. It is. There are cases where like teenagers do these fucking horrible things and you're like, holy shit, how did you do that? And then they go and they serve time and then nothing like that ever happens again. No, it's so true.

It's so true. And I think that's why like it does need to be studied more. For sure. Yeah.

And there was like the cloud of desperation on this. There was the cloud. And it's like. So many influencing factors. I can't state enough that the decision that was made should have never even been a decision that was considered. Never, ever, ever, ever. So there's no overstating that. There's not. I can't say that enough. That there's no way that you can justify that in any way, shape, form, nothing. No. Especially to this man who didn't do anything.

That's the other thing. It's not like he was abusing you and like you were at a point of no return. Those are the times when you can be like, you know what, like obviously you don't murder someone, but it's like you can almost understand that someone's been pushed so hard. To a point, right. And it's like, but this is just one of those things that I think there was so many factors outside of this man. Completely outside of this man. That led to him being the one to get killed.

That, it was, as soon as I found this, I was like, we have to tell this story because it's just one of those stories that I think should be told. Yeah, you just can't wrap your brain around it. And that's the, like, it makes absolutely no sense that he was the one that got. I mean, I hope she had true remorse. I hope, again, it doesn't change the fact of what she did or that she's taken this man out of this world. Yeah, that can't bring him back.

This man who did nothing to her. Yeah. Except take her in. And it's like, so it's like, I hope, yeah, I'm glad she's, you know, that she went through and hopefully. Nothing like this ever happens again. But that's a really fucked up case. It is. That's really fucked up. I don't even know what my closing thoughts are on that. That's the thing. I don't even really know what my closing thoughts are. And I've like, I've been going over this for the past few weeks.

That you can't take back. Yeah. You've taken someone out of the world permanently.

Because of a rash decision that came together through many, many other shit decisions around you and by you. That were made for you. Like made for you and made by you. All of them together. It was like such a shit storm of shit. It was the complete opposite of a perfect storm. No, it was a horrible storm. But I think it's good that we can't wrap our brains around this and that we don't have any... We don't need to wrap up with thoughts because there's no thoughts. This is just...

Wild and awful. No, that's just bad vibes. And sad and tragic and shocking. Very shocking. Wow. But yeah, that is the case of Marie Robards and the very tragic death of Stephen Robards. Wow. So we hope that you keep listening. Yeah, we do. And we hope you keep listening.

But not so weird that any of this. And definitely not so weird that if your kid comes to you with like a crazy ass confession, you're just like, yeah, figure that out on your own, hon. Like, come on, help out. Don't keep it that weird. Do a little work. Do a little something something. Yeah. Bye.

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