Killer Receives $250,000 From Victim’s Estate

Robert Frisbee, a private secretary convicted of the bludgeon slaying of his employer, has been awarded $250,000 tax free from her will.

Frisbee, 59, was sentenced Saturday to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Muriel Barnett, 80, whose body was found in the blood-spattered luxury cabin the two San Franciscans shared on the Royal Viking Star cruise liner shortly after it left this British Columbia city Aug. 19, 1985, on the homeward leg of an Alaskan cruise.

Theodore Kolb, Barnett’s lawyer, said in an interview Tuesday it was agreed Frisbee would get the money after a settlement was reached between Frisbee and the University of San Francisco, the major benefactor of Barnett’s will.

In San Francisco, U.S. Superior Court Judge Isobella Grant signed an order giving Frisbee $250,000 from Barnett’s will. Frisbee had signed a waiver relinquishing his right to two-thirds of Barnett’s estate. The prosecution had contended a codicil typed by Frisbee and signed by Barnett giving Frisbee two-thirds of the estate was the reason he killed the woman.

Kolb said that the university, which was the alma mater of Barnett’s husband, Phillip, who died in 1984, promised it would not contest Frisbee’s $250,000 bequest in order to avoid delaying receipt of about $4 million from the estate.