the hole never goes away. there are times you need to have a tissue handy? absolutely. absolutely. and then, a decade after robin s murder our dad committed suicide, and it was devastating for us. it s true he had a terminal illness. he was dying of emphysema but, honestly, he was dying of grief. virgil hoynes was just 61. by 2003 the robin hoynes murder case was as cold as they come, 19 halloweens old, buried in the basement of the torrance police department, forgotten. but, that year the department started reviewing unsolved murders and the hoynes case caught the eye of an aggressive deputy d.a. named john lewin who took special pleasure in cracking unsolved cases. this is my favorite thing to do.
to the torrance police department concerning thefts of cash from the safe. two thefts from the very same safe where robin had left the money, and though they couldn t exactly prove he did it, marshall was a suspect. he had the opportunity. he failed the polygraph when questioned about those previous robberies. and at the time, he knew the combination to the safe. so the night robin was killed, did marshall intend to rob that safe again? he knew the previous combinations. i don t believe he was aware they had changed it because it had happened just recently, several days earlier. so now detectives brought marshall in for questioning, and he was friendly, cooperative, said he was home the entire evening. and he could prove it, he said. all police had to do was go ask his girlfriend, yvonne hargrove, so, of course, without telling her why they were talking to her, they did ask. i told them william was with me that night, because that s what they wanted to know, and what did we do.
kim was the eldest, then robin, tricia and wendy. excited because this was halloween, one of the best days of the year. i loved it. we would trick-or-treat and then sort the candy and we would be trading what we liked. a halloween morning long ago, it was 1984, the morning after the incident in the fast food place. it started warm and sunny, that bubble of innocence, before anyone knew a thing. wendy donned her halloween costume, wore it to school, as did tricia who wore hers to work. kim, the eldest, left early for her job at the nearby mall. robin wasn t home. after working late, she told her family, she had arranged a sleepover at a girlfriend s place. she was due home any minute, as wendy remembers. she was good about reporting in, telling us where she was going to be and when she was going to be home. robin was 21 years old.
she was a redhead, pretty, popular, friendly. she was an assistant manager at a kentucky fried chicken franchise in the nearby town of torrance, had taken that late shift as a favor to a co-worker named cheryl. i had asked robin if she would trade hours with me. i had just started dating somebody, and we had plans. so robin worked the late shift. she had closed the restaurant, count the cash, carried it across the parking lot to the bank deposit box. i knew robin was very cautious about, like when i went to the store, she would always tell me make sure the door is locked. this is not the sort of person who would have let someone in just anyone? no, not at all. so when cheryl arrived at work and pulled into the kfc parking lot i saw robin s car. i thought, did she get mixed up or did she think i wasn t trading? why is she here? cheryl crept through the empty kfc, everything seemed in order. until she entered the kitchen.
once the hoynes house would have been festive. not anymore. they closed the door, turned out the light. just the word halloween unleashed a wave of grief. the investigation into robin s murder was stalled even though police had a suspect in plain sight. william marshall. and the family groped for solace. we had to take comfort in that because we really were probably never going to see any resolution in this. they didn t have enough evidence. years passed. there were other cases to solve, new priorities, of course, and for detective lancaster, retirement. it there are cases that stay with you after your retirement, probably for the rest of your life, at least for me. this was one of them. the hoynes family struggled to move on without robin. there were high school graduations, marriages, children, but