Women Tell How Crime Intruded Into, Shattered Their Lives

It’s a moment she will never forget, that day late in the afternoon 15 months ago when a stranger knocked on Elaine Robinson’s door and changed her life forever. The man was a coroner. He wanted to tell her first, before she saw it on the television news.

Her husband, William Robinson, 57, ex-Navy captain and affluent developer, was dead. His body had been found in an open field in North Park, where he had gone to look at property that was for sale. He was found in some bushes, his throat slashed and his chest stabbed several times.

Robinson shut out the world for the next six hours. She remembers running screaming down the street. She recalls comforting her 10-year-old daughter, Stacie. But mostly she recollects the numbness.

Utter Shock

“It was an utter and undescribable shock . . . the end of (our) family structure as we knew it,” Robinson said on Thursday.

She described her experience for the first time publicly at a luncheon sponsored by San Diego Crime Stoppers called “Enough Is Enough.” Robinson was one of several women who told how crime had suddenly intruded into and shattered their lives, turning them into victims.

Joining Elaine Robinson were Joyce Knott, mother of Cara Knott, the 20-year-old woman killed by California Highway Patrolman Craig Peyer two years ago; Jean Alliece Colston, whose son and daughter were killed by gangs in Southeast San Diego and who is chairwoman of MAGIC (Mothers Against Gangs in Our Community), and Sharon Rogers, who escaped death in March when her van was sabotaged by a bomb on Genesee Avenue. That incident generated international attention because she is the wife of the skipper of the Vincennes, the Navy ship that mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf.

They appealed for citizens to help stop crime by working with groups such as Crime Stoppers, which offers cash rewards for information and tips--made anonymously--that lead to the arrest and conviction of criminals.

Much of what they said was personal and poignant, delivered with the emotion of strained voices and, sometimes in the briefest of moments, tears. None riveted the audience of 500 into silence as did Elaine Robinson.

She began slowly and nervously, apologizing for her inexperience in front of large crowds. In haunting simplicity, she described her adult life as in a cozy cocoon. She was the kind of wife who gladly let her husband run the household and take care of the family finances. Crime was something that happened to other people. She didn’t know any cops; she knew the court system existed, but not how it worked. “I didn’t even know the correct spelling of the word homicide ,” Robinson said.

World Was Shattered

That world was shattered on Feb. 9, 1988. The brutal killing of her husband remains unsolved. She has found a strength inside herself she never knew existed. She has dealt with 14 attorneys, other people more interested in advancing their welfare than hers, and has tried to explain the perspective of the good and bad in life to her young daughter. Once, her daughter became hysterical when she walked past a store with a window display of knives.

Each time Stacie is late, Robinson wonders--even though she says she should know better--whether Stacie has met an ill fate. It’s part of what Robinson says has at times made her think that maybe she’s “a little crazy.”

There’s one notion she can’t dispel. She admires the detectives who have worked on her husband’s case, who she says have treated her with dignity and sensitivity. But she always thought the police would “wrap up the case quickly.” That was a remnant of her cocoon, that police would find the bad guys and justice would prevail. Reality, she now knows to her bitter disappointment, can be wrenching. The killer or killers are still out there.

“There are no witnesses, no suspects, no clues, no anything . . . how could that happen?” she said.

Also making a public speech for the first time was Joyce Knott. She severely criticized some judges for what she claimed was their emphasis on “criminal justice” over “victim justice.” Without naming him specifically, Knott chastised Superior Court Judge Bernard Revak for recently releasing a 17-year-old convicted of second-degree murder so the youth could attend the birth of his child and be with his family.

“We should vote judges out of office who are soft on crime,” she said. “The majority of the public is outraged and disgusted (about crime and criminals) . . . and (we) have to do something to change it.”

Changes in the Law

Knott also called for changes in the law so that evidence of past crimes and information about a person’s character can be entered at trials.

Sharon Rogers appealed to people to become involved and fight crime by calling police and Crime Stoppers with information, however slight, about crimes they see. Rogers was guarded by several plainclothes Naval Investigative Service agents, who checked purses and people attending the luncheon in the Mission Ballroom of the Town & Country Hotel.

Explaining how one objective of terrorists is the “mental torture” left in victims and society after an overt action, such as the bombing of her van, Rogers said she doesn’t plan to give in.