Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - ‘Worst Parents’: 7 Children Starved in Most Disturbing Neglect Case

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Shane and Crystal Robertson have learned their punishment after they pleaded guilty to neglecting their seven children. The children, who ranged in age from 4 to 16, were found living in squalor in a trailer with their parents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The children were malnourished and sick as the Robertsons' pet lizard ate salmon and enjoyed trips to see the Easter Bunny. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through what the children endured with Deputy District Attorney Brittney Kern in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Brittney KernCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It's horrifying what these kids were living through. And the more we investigated and the more we found, it seemed to only get worse and worse. A mother and father from Pennsylvania are going to prison for the horrific abuse and neglect of their seven children. The prosecutor is here with the disturbing details about the couple that fed their pet lizard better than their own children. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. This is really one of those cases that just makes me shake my head. It's practically unbelievable.

In fact, the judge who sentenced the parents in this case told them they were two of the worst parents she had ever seen. Shane Robertson and his wife, Crystal Robertson, were living in a filthy trailer in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with their seven children. Those children were six girls and one boy, and they were between the ages of four and 16. The child abuse and neglect committed by the Robertsons really makes you wonder if you ever really know the people living right next door to you. Well, Truthfinder.com is a website that can help you research the people living next door or the people you meet each day. Just put in a person's name and you will get past criminal

records, traffic tickets, addresses, and the names of potential relatives. And what's really great about Truthfinder, it will give you the addresses of sex offenders who live in your neighborhood. If you want to try Truthfinder, I have a great deal for you. You can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. Police discovered the children after a neighbor saw two of them going into another trailer. When police arrived, the children were dirty and one was in bare feet. The kids told police they went into the trailer to get a blanket to keep their rats warm. That's when officers discovered

the virtual house of horrors. The Robertsons were living in the rundown trailer in West Rock Hill Township until April of 2023. The conditions at the home were not even fit for an animal. And there were definitely animals living in this home. And you're gonna see one of those animals. It's an exotic lizard who was treated quite well. You'll see it in just a moment.

The house was absolutely filthy and there was little, if any, food. Dirty clothes were everywhere, along with animal feces. Here's Bucks County Deputy DA Brittany Kern. She prosecuted the case and she told me what happened when police first discovered the children. So initially when police went to the residence and ultimately when, well, when police first discovered the children? So initially when police went to the residence and ultimately when, well, when police went to the residence and sort of all of this started to unfold, the dad had originally said that there were only three children and pretty quickly within an hour or two, it was discovered that there were four additional children in the residence and that belonged to this, these set of parents. In terms of what

they were doing to survive, I mean, in some ways, it's, it's horrible that there were seven of them. But I do think there was some reliance definitely on each other. They were really the only people they had were their siblings to rely on. And, you know, I do think the older siblings took sort of parental roles to the extent they could with the younger kids. The other thing I've learned in, you know, certainly in this case, but also other child abuse cases that I've prosecuted or have learned about in my career as a prosecutor is that children are very resilient. And so to them, this was normal. This was what they were used to. This wasn't, you know, something that changed one day and went downhill very quickly. This was normal. This was what they were used to. This wasn't, you know, something that changed one day and went downhill very quickly.

This was something that was normal for them. And so unfortunately, they were accustomed to it and they were able to adapt to do the best they could to, I don't want to say thrive in that situation, but at least live in that situation and keep themselves and their siblings going. How did they ever get food? That's one of my big questions. There's no food in the fridge. I mean, they had to have been able to eat somehow to be alive. Right, right. Our understanding is that, um, so dad did have employment, um, and mom would stay home generally with the kids throughout the day. So my understanding

is that occasionally there would be things like pop-Tarts brought for them or hot dogs brought for them. But what the kids told investigators through the course of the investigation is that anytime there was any sort of what they called good food, for example, the salmon that was being fed to the lizard or fruits and vegetables, things like that, that would be for the animals or it would be for mom and dad that they weren't allowed to have the quote good food. There's also the kids talked a lot about having to what they called steal food from the refrigerator, which ended up with a padlock on it. You heard Brittany Kern, right? The refrigerator was actually padlocked. So the children had to sneak around to basically steal food from their own parents. But they would go into the refrigerator, go into the freezer and take, you know, sometimes mom

would have ice cream treats in there for herself and they would steal them. And we have messages from mom being upset that the kids, again, quote, stole her ice cream sandwiches. Can you imagine children feeling like they actually have to steal food? But that happens. And this isn't one of those cases where the kids were maybe not getting enough to eat at home and only getting food at school. You know who wasn't going without food? Shane and Crystal Robertson. They appear well fed in their mug shots. And there was a creature in that house that was also eating quite well.

The couple's pet lizard was dining on salmon as the children went hungry. It's right there on video. In fact, Crystal is the one feeding the salmon to the lizard with a fork. Meanwhile, she called her children, who were not getting food, garbage disposals and messages with her husband. Brittany Curran played the video of that lizard eating salmon for the judge. That lizard actually had its own TikTok account, and that's where police found the video along with others. Now, you might be wondering, how did the school not see a problem here? How did these kids fly under the radar for more than a year and maybe even longer than that? Unfortunately, a lot of times when we get reports of child abuse, it comes from teachers or comes from other school officials, and none of these kids were in school.

And so that was not an option in this case. And for the most part, what we've learned is that the parents really kept them in the trailer. So they didn't socialize with other kids. They didn't really have a lot of interaction with other people. And so the way the parents were keeping them, they just, there weren't individuals who came in contact with them, you know, who missed this.

This is something that, you know, the parents were keeping them so isolated that there just wasn't really a lot of opportunity for finding them. So even the 16 year old, I mean, were there any signs that that 16 yearyear-old child had been to school? So the records we have indicate that the 16-year-old went to kindergarten and was pulled out of kindergarten, maybe went a little bit further than that. But that child had not been

to school in years, many, many years, and certainly not anything past elementary school. Ultimately, when the child was placed into the school program they're in now, their reading and math was at about a fifth grade level for a 16-year-old, and their reading and math level was far above any of the other children's. So these children, one of them age 16, none of them were in school and they were basically caged in the house and kept away from other people. As I mentioned earlier, the house was filthy. You can see it in the photos. And if the children weren't in school, you can only imagine that they weren't being cared for much at all. And they all had social anxiety. But on the Lizard's TikTok account, you can see that Crystal Robertson was brushing the lizard's teeth.

I mean, the condition of the home was horrific. There were no cleaning products that were located. There were no toothbrushes or shampoo or anything like that located. And like you said, yeah, the one TikTok shows this lizard who was very important to mom in particular, having its teeth brushed, I believe by mom. And the kids didn't have toothbrushes. And in fact, when the kids were removed from the residence, two of the kids needed oral surgery almost immediately. The second youngest child, who was six at the time, had 13 visible cavities, had to have multiple extractions, multiple crowns, and, you know, a surgery with anesthesia within a month or two of being removed from the residence because his

dental condition was so poor. And then we find these videos of this lizard and just are even more horrified than we already were. Not only is the lizard getting its teeth brushed, you know, it's going to see the Easter bunny, I mean, on TikTok. So, I mean, this is something you should be taking your children to do. But instead, it seems like the priority is the lizard and having fun and doing cool things with the lizard on TikTok. That's certainly what it looked like to us. And that's what our investigation showed. You know, we didn't find pictures or videos of the kids going to see the Easter bunny, but we did find two separate videos of this lizard being taken to see two different Easter bunnies and going to Halloween stores and having Halloween costumes being taken on walks

and things like that. So it definitely was quite a dichotomy between how the animals and in particular the lizard, but really the animals as a whole were being treated compared to the children. So the lizard was getting its teeth brushed, it's eating salmon, and it's actually going to see the Easter bunny and getting Halloween costumes, but not the children. The lizard was well cared for while the children were ill. some had COVID, and one girl had maggots in her hair. When police searched the home, they found animal cages. The DA's office says the Robertsons had two dogs, two turtles, two rabbits, snakes, toads, and a four-foot tegu lizard and two dozen rats. The Robertsons pleaded guilty to seven counts of child endangerment. In sentencing the Robertsons to between eight and 16 years in prison, Judge Carissa Liller said,

and I mentioned this earlier, that they were two of the worst parents that she had ever seen in her entire life. She went on to say, It is appalling that you would live in these conditions with your seven children. You treated your animals better than you treated your children. You kept them caged up like animals, but you weren't treating them as good. Now, to be clear here, the children were not actually kept in cages. Those were for the animals. I clarified that. But the children were being kept in the home. Each parent had a separate defense attorney. They both presented argument. I presented argument. But ultimately, the sentence was up to the judge. So I just presented her information about what their conditions were,

presented her some of the videos and some pictures of the residents and other things that we learned through the course of our investigation. We also had other days leading up to this where we had litigated some legal issues. And in the course of doing that with this judge, she did learn a fair amount about the case more than she would if it hadn't had any litigation associated with it at all. How are the children doing now? Because I know they're with Children's Services, so they're at least in a better environment. I mean, are they together at least? It would be hard, I would think, to find somebody to foster that many children. So they are with extended family and family members are appropriate.

They did not know what these conditions were. The kids were being kept from them, so they were not complicit in this in any way. They're with two separate family members in two separate households, four in one, three in the other. Those two households, though, are very close in proximity to each other, in one, three in the other. Those two households, though, are very close in proximity to each other, I think a mile or two apart. And so the seven kids get to see each other very, very often, multiple times a week, if not daily. And they're healthy and maybe doing better. I don't know if thriving would be the right word at this point. Under the circumstances, I would say they're flourishing. They are definitely doing better.

They have started to have their own personalities, if you will, which they didn't really have an opportunity to sort of develop interests or things like that. So they all completed school last year, a full year of school. That was the first year of school for many of them. They're, I believe, due to start school or maybe just started school for this new school year. And they are, they're doing well. They're making friends. They have gained weight, which was good. They have, they certainly, their medical conditions are better. They're getting treatment for a host of different things. So under the circumstances, I would say that they're doing remarkably well. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed in the courtrooms in Pennsylvania, so I can't show you exactly what happened. But I asked Brittany Kern whether the Robertsons offered an apology or any type of explanation for how they had treated their children. to the judge during their sentencing, apologizing for what happened and trying to show that,

you know, attempts to fix things or, you know, be different moving forward. So that was presented to the judge. Thankfully, now these children are doing much better and they are with people who love them and they are making friends and going to school and doing all of the things that children do. Judge Lillard ordered that the Robertsons not have any contact with their children until they turn 18. They also have to have mental health and drug and alcohol abuse assessments. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.