Crime Weekly - S1 Ep32: Death By The Bay: What Happened to Robin Pope? (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Kent Island, Maryland, located in Queen Anne County, is the largest island in Chesapeake Bay, and it is a picture perfect place, surrounded by water and large expanses of beaches. It’s a historic place that really embodies coastal living, with so much to do from biking, to swimming, to hiking through lush woods and tidal marshes. It is a place you would want to live if enjoying life is your main objective, and it is where 51 year old Robin Pope was living with her husband and two daughters when she went missing along with her beloved Great Dane Bella in March of 2013. Bella washed up on shore the next day, but it would be another twenty-two days before Robin’s body was found. The last person to see her alive was Robin’s estranged husband, Wayne Pope, but although the police have never been able to say conclusively whether Robin’s death was a result of foul play, or a simple tragic accident, those close to Robin believe they know the truth.  Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Kent Island, Maryland, located in Queen Anne County, is the largest island in Chesapeake Bay, and it is a picture-perfect place, surrounded by water and large expanses of beach, it's a historic place that really embodies coastal living, with so much to do, from biking, to swimming, to hiking through lush woods and tidal marshes. It is a place you'd want to live if enjoying life is your main objective. And it is where 51-year-old Robin Pope was living with her husband and two daughters when she went missing, along with her beloved Great Dane Bella, in March of 2013. Bella washed up on shore the next day, but it would be another 22 days before Robin's body was found. The last person to see her alive was Robin's estranged

husband, Wayne Pope. But although the police have never been able to say conclusively whether Robin's death was a result of foul play or a simple tragic accident, those close to Robin believe they know the truth. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are talking about a case that I actually got really into when I was researching it. And I know I kept calling you and asking you questions about it because you had actually covered this on Breaking Homicide. And so I figured, you know, you probably knew more about it than I did. But it's a very interesting case and it's

frustrating. And I'd never heard about it before I saw the Breaking Homicide episode. Yeah, you come across cases and we received thousands of submissions, but you come across cases where sometimes people will submit a case, but they word it in a way that makes you want to investigate it, but they leave out a lot of facts. And it's funny because when I first heard about this case, it was submitted through multiple people, family members, friends of Robin. I said to myself, there's got to be more to this story. We got to look into this because there's no way

what they're telling me is what actually occurred. There's got to be something they're leaving out. And sure enough, as we started to peel back the layers, it was basically what they told us. And it's one of these situations where it's kind of like the Cody Joyce case where it definitely leaves you believing one thing. And yes, it's always possible. It's something different, but it was enough where I said, you know what? I want to go find out for myself because maybe it's going to change my opinion on what I think happened. And so that's why we decided to highlight the case. We're glad we did. We brought in some different people that hadn't been brought in on the case before. This was one of those circumstances where the law enforcement actually was willing to cooperate. And I will even go out on a limb, and I love all the guys

that I've worked with, but Sergeant Sexton from Maryland State Police worked with us, and he was incredible. I'm still friends with him to this day and just a really good guy. And the guy that we all hope that all cops are, which is like no ego. He checks it out the door. All he wants to do is solve this case. He doesn't care who does it or how it's done. As long as it's done ethically and legally, he will open his doors and take in any help

he can. And this is not a small department. This is the Maryland State Police. They know what they're doing. And yet he's humble enough to say, hey, if you can take a look at this and see something that I haven't, I'm all for it. And you have to respect that. Yeah, he seems like a really great guy, actually.

Super nice. He seems to genuinely care about the people involved in this case. And not only him, I mean, there was the sheriff in Queen Anne's County who also seems very invested in this case. So you really do like to see that law enforcement working with the community, law enforcement working with the people that are around them to help solve the case instead of blocking them. Yeah. And even, and even, and I'm sure you're going to bring this person up, attorney Lance Richardson, he was willing to come on the show. He gave us some of the facts surrounding the case. Actually gave us some information that we didn't have that we're going to talk about, I'm sure. So again, it was nice to have that type of cooperation. We didn't impede the investigation in any way. And it was just a bunch of people working together for a common goal. And it's always nice. Well, Robin Pope was, to everyone who knew her, an absolutely beautiful woman inside and out. She was a dedicated mother to her two daughters, Priscilla and Rachel.

She was a valued friend to many. And most of all, she was a strong and independent woman who'd been through many hardships, but she'd never let anything break her spirit or stand in her way. Her oldest daughter, Priscilla, remembered that when she was young, it had just been her and her mother, Robin, and Robin had worked multiple jobs to keep them afloat. But despite having nothing, Robin made sure that Priscilla always had a good life. When Priscilla was seven years old, Robin met Wayne Pope, and within a year, they were married, and she and Priscilla moved into his home in the small coastal community of Stevensville.

That's located on the western shore of Kent Island, Maryland. Priscilla said that at first, Wayne was great. He was good to Robin. He was nice to Priscilla. He was fun-loving. It seemed like he was going to be a great addition to their family. Priscilla said that Wayne appeared to really love her mother. He was almost obsessed with her. But after a while, he started showing his true colors. Friends of Robin's remember observing the couple together and being stunned at some of the things that Wayne would say to Robin.

Robin's best friend, Debbie O'Malley, said that Wayne would treat Robin very badly, saying, quote, he was very degrading. He wasn't physically abusive to her at all. He would say, you look terrible. You look gross. He was always that way with her. He would just say little things to degrade her, end quote. Another close friend of Robin's, Kathy Ulrich, said that

Wayne would say things to hurt Robin or to make her feel small. He would tell her she looked ugly or that her dress made her look fat. He was also very jealous and possessive and would actively show his anger and resentment if they were out together and he thought his wife was getting a little too much attention or having a little too much fun. Wayne would tell Robin to find her own way home and then he would leave her there. Robin's daughter Priscilla said that Wayne had a dark side that would often show when he was interacting with his wife, but he also took his anger out on her dog, Bella.

Kathy Ulrich remembered that Bella was terrified of water. She didn't like to swim and she was afraid of the pool. But one day, Wayne picked up the 100-pound Great D swim and she was afraid of the pool. But one day, Wayne picked up the 100-pound Great Dane and threw her in the swimming pool. Obviously, Bella panicked and started frantically churning her legs and arms through the pool water, but she was unable to stay afloat and she immediately began to sink. When Kathy asked Wayne why he had done this, he just laughed and said he wanted to see if Bella could swim. Even though her marriage was not perfect, Robin seemed to never let anything get her down

or stop her. She was vivacious, social, friendly, and larger than life, even though she weighed only 105 pounds and stood at only 5'2". When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she never lost her positive outlook, and this inner strength helped her tackle her disease head first and come out on the other side cancer-free. She was known for her amazing unfiltered sense of humor, and that is illustrated in a letter that she wrote before undergoing a double mastectomy. This letter was addressed to her breasts, and she wrote, Dearest Tatas, I regret to inform you in light of your recent activity and bodily harm against to her breasts, and she wrote, And I feel that this lighthearted letter, in the light of something that can be incredibly traumatic for many women, it shows us exactly who Robin Pope was.

She was a woman who had taken on single motherhood as if it was easy. She was a woman who worked full-time as a dental hygiene assistant. She was a woman who opened her own business, Island Fence LLC, while still maintaining and nurturing her relationships with her daughters and her friends. She was a woman who had taken on cancer, who had won, and then made a promise to herself to become fit and healthy, working out at the gym every day and getting into the best shape of her life in her late 40s. She was a woman who knew how to take care of herself. And although she loved her husband, Wayne, when things began to go downhill, she knew that as much as she didn't want to lose him, if she had to, she'd be okay. She faced life with a sense of logic and reality.

She didn't spend a lot of logic and reality. She didn't spend a lot of time getting emotional about the things in her life that had run their course, like her breasts and her husband, Wayne. At some point towards the end of her life, Robin began an affair with her personal trainer, Rob. Rob was a pilot in the Air Force, but Rob was also engaged to another woman. So the situation was precarious. One day, Robin's husband, Wayne, he said he accidentally took her phone to work with him. And it was then that he discovered Robin had been seeing someone else. And he reacted in the way that we would expect someone who was jealous and possessive and a little obsessed to react. He got a gun and he went over to Rob's house. But Rob's

fiance answered the door. And when she told Wayne that Rob wasn't home, Wayne informed her of what her soon-to-be husband had been up to with his wife. Sergeant David Sexton, who we've talked about with the Maryland State Police, told True Crime Daily, quote, He may have brought a gun to the house, but when he saw the fiance there, he didn't point it at anybody. He didn't pull it from his waistband. He was asked to leave and he left. There was no real crime, end quote. So do you think that he accidentally brought her cell phone to work or do you think he purposely brought her cell phone to work because he had a suspicion of something? Because I think that how do you accidentally bring somebody else's phone to work?

No, I definitely think he brought it intentionally. And even when Priscilla, Robin's daughter, was talking about this, if you see the Breaking Homicide episode, she kind of rolls her eyes when she talks about it because- Oh, yeah. Did she? Yeah. She rolled her eyes because, again, is it possible it was an accident? Yeah. Highly unlikely, especially with his behavior leading up to that point.

He probably suspected something. She was starting to dress a little better. Working out a lot, right? Taking care of a little better. Working out a lot, right? Taking care of herself. Yeah, working out a lot. Maybe saw her on her phone a little bit more frequently and decided to accidentally take her phone. I'm doing air quotes here, guys, for the audio people, to work, to kind of go through it and not have to worry about her walking in on him. So yeah, I definitely think that he took it intentionally. You're talking about Priscilla. And what I find very odd is when

Wayne found out about Robin's relationship with Rob, he called his stepdaughter Priscilla. And something she remembered from the conversation was kind of how calm and matter of fact he was when he broke the news to her that her mother had been having an affair. I guess he said, you know, it looks like your mother's cheating on me. I guess we're going to split up. I feel like he did this on purpose to, you know, why would he call his stepdaughter and say that? But he wanted his stepdaughter to know what her mother was doing. He was trying to kind of paint Robin in a bad light. So Priscilla called Robin, who did feel badly that Priscilla had found

out about everything in that way, but she didn't love Wayne anymore. So there wasn't really much that she could do about it. So you actually covered this case on Breaking Homicide. You interviewed Robin's oldest daughter, Priscilla. She's a beautiful, beautiful young woman. And she said something to you in this interview that stood out to me. Priscilla said that after the affair, Wayne's behavior changed completely and he seemed constantly angry and full of rage. And then you asked her if her mother had been afraid of Wayne and Priscilla said no. She said her mother wasn't afraid of anything, especially not a man. And to me, this really shows Robin's independent streak. She was running her own successful business.

She had a strong group of loyal friends. She had the love of her daughters. She was confident in herself and her abilities, even after years of her husband trying to make her feel small and ugly. And I've known people like Wayne and I've known people like Robin and I've known of these two different types of people to be in relationships together and without fail, it usually ends badly. Someone like Wayne is going to try to fill his partner with self-doubt. He's going to try and crush her self-confidence because he has such low self-worth and he wants his partner to feel lucky to be with him instead of realizing how great she is and that there might be someone out there who's better for her. Someone like Robin is going to tolerate these kinds of attacks on her self-worth for a time, but it's not going to affect the way she feels about herself

because she knows who she is and what she's capable of in the end. Her partner's attempts to make her hate herself will just end up making her hate him, and she'll reach a limit where she no longer has any respect for him. From what you know about Robin and from what you know about Robin and Wayne's relationship, does that sound pretty accurate to you? Yeah, it sounds pretty spot on to me. We're going to have some moments during this episode and during next week's episode where we speculate on Wayne and his reasoning behind doing something or not doing something. But I do think based on what we've learned from friends, what we've learned from family members, that everything you just said is true. There's one thing we can say about Wayne, and that's that he was a very insecure person. He was very possessive. And exactly what you said,

he was playing a head game with Robin where he felt like, and this is a lot of relationships where he feels like if I put her down enough, you know, she'll shoot. She won't feel worthy of anybody else. And maybe I can kind of keep her in my little box. And, you know, at some point, you know, if you're not giving the girl the attention or the guy, the attention, they're going to find it from someone else. And it's not going to take much if they're not getting anything at home. So, you know, she starts going to the gym and this guy shows interest in her. He treats her with respect.

You know, I don't even know what their relationship was, but it was clearly better than what she was getting at home. And so she started to stray a little bit. And now when that happens, now he's like, oh, wait, this isn't how it's supposed to be. So I think everything you just said about Wayne and his characters, his character, as far as how he treated Robin is spot on. Yeah, man, I've known way too many Waynes, way too many Waynes. OK, these guys, they like they see something beautiful. They're like, oh, look at that beautiful butterfly. I love this beautiful butterfly. But then they want to take that little beautiful butterfly and put it in a cage

or like a jar so that nobody else can see the beautiful butterfly. So I do want to talk more about this dynamic, but let's go to a quick ad first. OK, we're back. So, you know, I don't want people to look at this situation and be like, oh, Robin's so bad because she cheated on her husband. Like, of course it sucks. You shouldn't like cheat on your husband and wife. But like at the same time, if your husband's telling you you look fat in a dress and telling you that, you know, you look ugly, it's bound to happen. Right. Something's bound to happen. Nobody can really deal with that for too long.

So Robin does start up with somebody at the gym wayne finds out he lets priscilla know priscilla calls robin she's like yeah you know that's what it is i almost kind of feel like i kind of feel like robin was just sort of waiting for her wayne to find out you know like she was kind of done mentally like she really didn't care yeah she probably wasn't trying to hide it too much, right? No, it doesn't seem like, and she didn't really, and you're going to get into what happened after this all went down. But for me, the reason why I think we're talking about this right now and why it's important is our, our job isn't to judge people based on personal decisions, whether it's ethical or not, or moral.

Honestly, for me as an investigator, I don't care. The reason I found it to be important and why I looked into it so much when I was out there, because I did try to talk to Rob, clearly was unsuccessful. He wanted no part of talking to me because from what I understand, he's still with that woman that he was in in this incident. He is a pilot still, and he just didn't want any part of it. I can understand why. However, it's important because when we talk about these types of cases that involve an unexplained death, we're looking for a motive. And adultery is a pretty damn good motive. So understanding what happened, how it went down, and most importantly,

how the person of interest reacted to finding out about said adultery is very important. So when you tell our audience, and when I find out while I'm out there that not only did he not take it well, but he brought a gun to this guy's house, it does give you a little peek into what he's capable of, because you have to ask yourself, what if this guy Rob didn't just kind of cower to him? Because from my understanding, what actually this guy, Rob, didn't just kind of cower to him? Because from my understanding, what actually happened was the fiance came out. And again, this is all alleged.

The fiance came out and kind of got in between them and was like, listen, this isn't happening right now. Go away. You're not supposed to be here. But I asked myself, what would have happened if the conversation escalated, if it became physical, all of a sudden, you know, Wayne's pulling out the gun and he's going to claim self-defense later, but it could have gone that route. So I wonder if the gun was loaded. I wonder what his, what his plans were going there. Initially, did they change when he found out that there was a witness there? You know, the guy's fiance, what would have happened? So this is very important and very relative, relative to what we're talking about because we're

looking at Wayne as a possible suspect of murder. So yeah, this is why we got to talk about it. That's a really good point. I mean, I think it's pretty clear why he brought the gun there. He wanted to be threatening, right? And whether he was going to plan to do more with it, to me, is irrelevant because if you're walking around with a gun trying to get your way and threaten people you kind of suck to begin with so uh but would he have done more if the fiance wasn't there like you said a witness that's a very good point but

it speaks to his character right a hundred percent and it's it's very important when you're developing a you know a person of interest and again as you're going to get into the list of suspects is very short so when we're looking at Wayne, we really want to understand who Wayne is. And this you know, the reason he brought a gun was because he doesn't have self-confidence because he does feel like this small little man who needs something to wave around and threaten people with. And he does this, as we'll see, a lot with people, you know, kind of holding things over their head. This is another sign of somebody who has low self-confidence. So this is the person who is going to be in a relationship with a woman and he's going to buy her like a computer for work, you know, like they buy it together, but he puts it on his credit card.

And then, you know, suddenly she does something he doesn't like. And he's like, well, that computer I bought you, you can say goodbye to it. This is the kind of person like he has to bargain and barter to keep people in his life because he doesn't feel like they're going to want to be there just for him. And that's sad. But at the same time, like work on it, man, it's nobody else's problem. Go to therapy, work on yourself. You got to stop torturing people and, you know, walking around with guns like you're going to do something. Yeah, no, it's definitely important to the story and definitely important to Robin Pope's death and understanding, or at least trying to understand, what happened to her. And was this an accident or was this a murder?

All right. So let's talk about what happened when Wayne found out about the affair. So obviously there was probably an argument of some kind. And allegedly he locked Robin out of the house. And then three weeks before she went missing, after he basically kicked her out, Robin moved into a condo that was owned by a woman named Jennifer. And this is the daughter of Robin's best friend, Debbie O'Malley. The only problem with this condo was that animals weren't allowed, so she couldn't have pets. And Robin had to leave her great Dane Bella behind at Wayne's house, something that was very hard for her because she and Bella, the dog, had an incredibly close bond. Everyone

knew that Robin was very anxious about being separated from Bella and having to leave the dog with Wayne, who apparently was not Bella's biggest fan. Kathy Ulrich remembered that aside from callously throwing Bella in the pool, Wayne would constantly complain about the dog. And he'd be like, I hate this dog. You know, I hate this damn dog, stuff like that. And then a phone technician who was working at Robin's condo during this time, he remembered her being on the phone with Wayne and she was crying. And then obviously this phone technician asked her, you know, what's wrong? Are you OK? And Robin responded that her husband had put her dog down. So this story is not super clear, but apparently Wayne later told her that he had not done this.

But once again, it does speak to his character, right? Because everyone knew how much Robin loved Bella. Wayne now has a chess piece in his house. This very important creature to Robin. He's mad at Robin. He wants to hurt Robin. So he's going to call her and tell her this to hurt her because at this point, he doesn't feel like he has any power or any control over her. And this is how he manipulates her. This is how he continues to control her. This is how he keeps her still thinking about him and coming over and calling

and stuff like that. It's very manipulative. Yeah. And talking to friends, and I'm sure a lot of people put two and two together, she was in the transition of moving into a more permanent place. This condo was temporary and she couldn't have a great Dane, for those of you who don't know, is a huge dog. So she couldn't bring Bella with her. So it was a temporary thing where the intention was to eventually take Bella from Wayne permanently, but you know, this, this had just happened. So again, it wasn't expected. So she was kind of transitioning slowly. She still had mail going to the house. She still had clothes there. So it was a process, but yeah, you're right. We knew that, that that was really the main thing that he had over her, which really had an impact on, you know, he knew it affected

her emotionally when he did things like this. And like you said, that was his chess piece. That was his ace in the hole. And he tried to take full advantage of that. Because someone like Robin, you know, he's going to call her and be like, I hate you. You're a whore, blah, blah, blah. And she's going to be like, okay, dude, whatever. Like, I know who I am. I don't need your, you know, like, I don't need you to build me up. I don't need your vote of approval. Like, I know who I am. But to hold that dog over her head, he knew it was the only way to elicit an emotional response from her. And so he used it, I think, more than once. And like you said, she still had mail going there. She still had some of her things at the house.

This was just a three-week period. And it's believed that on March 1st, 2013, Robin Pope went to Wayne's house to pick up some of these things, but to also check on Bella, who she was very worried about, most likely from the conversation where Wayne said he was going to put Bella down. Now, earlier that evening, Robin's friend, Debbie O'Malley, called Robin around 5 p.m. This was a daily ritual for them. They'd been best friends for over 20 years. They talked at least five or six times a day. And Debbie would usually call Robin around five because this is the time that Robin would be getting out of work. But on this day, Robin did not answer her phone. At 645, Debbie got a text from Robin saying that she was sorry she hadn't been able to answer the phone. She was at a job

interview and she would call her back later. but she didn't call her back later. This was the last time Debbie would hear from Robin. And from what I can tell, Robin had been in Annapolis for a job interview that day. And afterwards, she got dinner and drinks with a friend in Annapolis before heading back over the Bay Bridge to Kent Island. I think it's about a 30 minute drive from Annapolis to Kent Island. Yeah, about 25, 30 minutes. Yep. I don't know much about this job interview, but I was looking through the phone records that you had sent me earlier, and it looks like Robin texted Wayne at around that same

time and said, what's up? I'm in a job interview. So she definitely was, right? According to Dave Sexton, yeah, they did a lot more research. And again, Dave was very cooperative throughout this whole, very cooperative throughout the entire time that we worked down there. He never gave me complete access to all the reports his word, which I do, um, it was confirmed that she did have a job interview earlier in the day and that she did go out to dinner with a friend. It may have even possibly been an actual date.

It was with another man. Um, I remember, I can't recall the name of the guy right now, even though I wouldn't say it, but they did speak to this man as well, because again, he was the last person she was with before this incident all went down. And according to Dave sex,, he was completely ruled out. He had an alibi for where he was immediately after that dinner. Yes. And I mean, we're just kind of going on an assumption here, but we kind of figure that

once everything blew up with Robin and Rob and Wayne, Rob was probably like, listen, I need to make things work with my fiance. I can't see you anymore. So it's very likely that Robin was on another date. And at this point, I mean, she's single. There's no reason why she shouldn't be meeting gentlemen out for drinks and dinner. Yeah. And I'll even go on a limb and I have nothing to substantiate this, but looking at the call records, it was always odd to me that Robin would decide to go out to her old house or

Wayne's house house however you want to put it uh at this time of night for mail or even to see the dog did she do it often it doesn't seem like it seemed like it was odd again this had only been three weeks that they were separated so there wasn't a lot of time where she was visiting the house a house she lived in for they were married almost 20 years yeah over i think 22 years. Yeah. So this was a, this was a new territory for both of them, but I almost feel like based on the text messages, based on the, like the missed call that,

you know, something transpired where the dinner was cut short. This date was cut short. I don't know if it was intended to be that way, but something made Robin want to go out to, to the house that night and for that clearly, in her opinion, couldn't wait. Yeah, I can't imagine why she would really... I don't think she spent a lot of time there. I mean, her youngest daughter still lived there with Wayne. Her oldest daughter had

moved out by now, but her youngest daughter was still there. So maybe sometimes to see her daughter, but I don't think that she would probably ever go out there very often late at night like this. Maybe she just happened to be coming back from Annapolis and she was like, I'm out already. Might as well just stop by. I really think she wanted to check on Bella, really, at the end of the day. Yeah, there's something there. There's something that drove her out there. And even that night, to your point about the daughter, she was allegedly supposed to be in Annapolis. So it wouldn't have been to go see her. So I do agree with you that it would have. You know, I don't think mail would have been enough of a reason to go out there at that time of the evening, especially when you're out having a good time.

So it would have to be for something that was important to Robin. And that would be Bella. Yes. And when Derek says mail, it's because these texts that Robin sent Wayne. And it's actually, it's kind of complicated, but she was texting him as she was driving from Annapolis back to his house. And she was saying, you know, that she wanted to get her mail. So there was several texts and calls between Wayne and Robin that night as she was driving back.

And I think even before she started driving back. So we're going to talk about those right after this next break. OK, so we're back from break. We're going to go over some calls in texts that were happening between Robin and Wayne on her way from Annapolis. And even before she left Annapolis. Right. And according to Sergeant Sexton, she left the restaurant. What did he say?

930. 930 and 10 o'clock. He said that she left the restaurant and started making her way toward Wayne's house. Yeah, because he actually says due to her cell phone records and easy pass records, it shows that she was texting Wayne as she traveled along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. And this was about 10.05 p.m. that Friday evening. So she was texting him to let him know she was on her way to the house to pick up the mail. I guess there was a poll digger that she wanted to pick up that she needed for work the next day because remember, she has a fence company. This is what Wayne says, allegedly. So

we don't actually know what transpired between them. Right. And just for context, so you guys know, so you're not like, well, why aren't they going the other side of it? I was limited in the information I was able to obtain. Sergeant Sexton gave me access to a very limited amount of records from Wayne's phone. We have no records from Robin's phone. So if you're going to say, well, as we're talking about this, what did Robin's phone say? We don't have it. It's an unfortunate thing. We wish we did. We're only going with what we have. And unfortunately in this business, that's a lot of what we're all doing, right? We only have a couple pieces of the puzzle to try to put this thing together. So anything you hear

about from this point forward, as far as timestamps, they're all the source of this information is from Wayne's carrier, not Robin's. So it looks like the first text she sent him that evening was around 5 54 PM. So she's still in Annapolis and she texts him and says on a job interview, what's up? And then at 6 42 PM,

she texts him. Did you call? Then there's an outgoing call from Wayne to Robin at 9.05 p.m. that lasted for 41 seconds. There was also a call between Robin and Wayne at 10.12 p.m., and this lasted for about 12 minutes and 38 seconds. And at the time of this call, she was only about 15 minutes away from where Wayne lived. Right. And that's extremely important, guys, because, and we're going to get into it, but you got to think about it from this perspective, right? We know she was on the highway around 10.05. We know this call started at around 10.12. So if it started at 10.12, you add 13 minutes to it, that puts it at 10. at 10 25 so again why that's important is what stephanie's going to talk about next because

From that point there's some other conversations some other text messages that are going to be exchanged that would Kind of give you a window in which this all occurred and based on what wayne had to say This small window becomes very important. So keep these time stamps in mind Maybe write them down as we're talking about them So we assume she made it to the house around 1030. At 1059, at different parts of the minute mark of 1059, three texts happen to at least hit Wayne's phone simultaneously. It says, can I get my mail? Can I get my mail? Can I get my mail? Now, we were talking about this a little bit before off camera. And what Derek and I think happened here is there was some sort of glitch.

It's very common. It still happens to me. Like my mom will text me and it'll be she'll be like, where are you? And it'll be three. Where are you? And I'm like, yo, lady, chill out. I told you I'm on my way. And she'd be like, no, I only sent that once.

So I'm sure there's lots of people out there who can attest to the fact that this does sometimes happen because how those texts came through, there's no way she could have typed them all out identically over and over again in that short amount of time. So we think she only sent it once and it just hit his phone three times. Yeah. And to put that in perspective, the exact times are we have 1059.51, 1059.53, 10-59-53, 10-59-56. So again, physically impossible to type those three messages exactly the same in less than, we're talking less than three seconds, four seconds. And then at 10-59-59, she texts him, Wayne, dot, dot, dot, I would like to get my mail while I'm here. Now she actually wrote, I would line to get my mail while I'm here, but we can only assume that she meant to type like, otherwise it doesn't make sense. And again, this one's at

10 59 59, as you just said. So I think the same, I, you know, theory, as far as like, maybe all these messages hit at once, including this one, I think that's a very good possibility because if she couldn't type those three exact messages in three seconds, she definitely couldn't write out this entirely different message in, again, three seconds. As you just said, this next message came in at 10.59.59, and I think it's reasonable to assume she didn't type this message in that short period of time. So whether it was a glitch, we also talked beforehand as we were talking amongst each other, could it have been bad service? Could his phone have been off? There's a few different possibilities, but to have these four messages in less than eight seconds in total, I think it's reasonable to assume that there was something going on there,

where there was a technical glitch, lack of service, whatever it may be. It doesn't seem like she wrote these all simultaneously. Yeah, I agree. I think it's very likely that his phone was probably off because if his phone had been off, those messages wouldn't have come in and registered until he turned it back on and then they would have all come in at once. Also, Robin's friend Debbie O'Malley, who does run a website with the goal of finding out what happened to Robin, she said that cell phone records confirmed that Robin and Wayne were on the phone at around that 10 o'clock mark where we said, but the call was dropped within a minute when Robin was on Oregon Road, which is at the most about two minutes away from where Wayne lived. So chances are

also that there was bad service maybe. She typed the phone, the messages out, she hit send, but they wouldn't actually send until her phone went back into service and got service again. So there's a couple of different things that could have happened, but I think those are the two most likely ones. Yeah. And so you guys know the area in which this happened, because I was fortunate enough to go out there, a place called Kent Island. And it's a nice area. It's a vacation area. I would love to go out there with my family. I don't want to say it's rural, but it's not very high tech. Not a lot of towers out there.

The reason why it's so attractive to go to for vacation homes is because a lot of that's not there. It's very spread out. And more specifically where Wayne's home was, it's kind of not out in the middle of nowhere, but it's off the beaten path. Isolated a little bit. Yeah. in the middle of nowhere, but it's off the beaten path. So to think that the cell phone towers weren't that close to the area is very possible because I will tell you that you go down the main

roads and then you take this side road that literally this one road is the only road that leads to their house and it's right on the water. To your right is grass and to your left is the water. So it's kind of out there a little bit, which makes it attractive to live, but absolutely understandable why the service wouldn't be good. And I'm trying to remember how my service was when I was there, but unfortunately, I just don't. But now I'm like, damn, did we have service while we were out there? But I can't remember.

For some reason on the water, the service is always bad too. I don't know why. Because my dad used to have a cottage on the water and you would go there and it would be like, forget it, screw it. You're out of contact with everybody for the next however long you're there. You're just not going to be able to reach anybody unless you have a landline. Yeah. So they were in the middle of a city or a metropolitan area. This was out in the middle of nowhere. So us making this assumption that maybe there wasn't any service or more specifically that the phone was just off, it's completely possible. p.m. And none of these calls lasted over a minute except for the 1246 p.m. call, which lasted for a minute and 15 seconds. So this may have been one of the calls that the Debbie was referring to,

where she said the call dropped because that the 905 p.m. call only lasted 41 seconds. We're not quite sure. The fact is he was trying to get a hold of her for something. And those last texts that she sent him, I want my mail, can I get my mail? He doesn't respond to those texts. So it is very likely that his phone was off when she was sending them. And we'll find that Wayne claims he wasn't even awake when this happened. And, you know, Sexton had an issue with that. I remember in the Breaking Homicide episode, because they did talk, Wayne and Robin talked at 1012. And at that point, she was only about 15 minutes away from his house. So Sexton said to him, like, what are you talking about? You fell asleep at 1030 and you woke up at

1130? Why would you fall asleep when you knew she was 15 minutes away? How could you fall asleep so quickly knowing that she was coming? But that is Wayne's story that he fell asleep between that hour of 1030 and 1130. And when he woke up, he walked outside and he saw Robin's car in the driveway and she was inside of it, according to him, sleeping. So he knocked on her window. She woke up and he said to her, hey, you know, you can go inside. You can get your stuff. But my lawyer has advised me that we shouldn't be alone together. So I'm not going to be here. I'm going to go to my parents' house. And then according to Wayne, he got in his car and he drove away and he left her there. And he said, I'll be back in two hours.

And that was the last time that he saw her, according to Wayne. So if we look at this time limit, she gets there or we look at this timeframe, she gets there at 10.30 and at 10.59, if that's the accurate time, I don't think it was. I don't think that she sent those texts at 10.59. I think his phone was off. She probably sent them shortly after getting there, but his phone did not turn back on until 10.59

and that's when those texts came in. But she's saying, hey, can I get my mail? So he's probably not answering the door when she goes up to it. He's removed her from the house. She doesn't have a key. She can't get inside. She's there specifically to get something. She told him that she was coming and then she gets there and he's not answering the door and she can't get inside. So she's going to go and sit in her car. You know, what's interesting about what you're saying there, and she can't get inside. So she's going to go and sit in her car. You know what's interesting about what you're saying there? And I don't even know if you know you're saying it right now, but it's important to bring up because it's a really important thing

you're saying. And it's the fact that we know they were talking at 10, 12, they talked for 13 minutes, right? Well, then his, according to him, he's saying, hey, I fell asleep and didn't wake up till 1130. Well, if you're right, Stephanie Harlow, if you're right in the fact that this wasn't a service issue and that these timestamps, what are we talking right now? 1059? Yeah. From her text. If they're right.

Yeah. Yeah. Her text. If you're right in the sense that these timestamps all coming in at once do not represent bad service, but in reality represent him turning his phone on. What are you also saying? He's lying. He wasn't asleep till 1130, right? Definitely not. Pretty important, right? And this is something that was discussed,

but it's a point of contention. And again, I wanted to talk to you about it because I was unsure, but someone who worked at Verizon for a very long time, this is his side of the conversation, right? So this is when it's hitting his phone. So could it happen where for anybody who doesn't know, because I don't know, if she sent the messages at, let's say 1057, right? Two minutes earlier, or that's even a bad example. Let's say 1050, 10 minutes earlier.

Would it still show when she sent them or would it show when they were received by his phone? Like, like you're saying here from her phone, it would show when she, if we had her records, it would show when she sent them when she sent them. But from his, it would only show like, even if his phone was off, would it only show when he turned his phone on? Is that how it works? Or would it show when they were sent to his phone was off, would it only show when he turned his phone on? Is that how it works? Or would it show when they were sent to his phone on the phone records?

On his phone records, it would show when the message was received to his phone. Because technically, I mean, like imagine you're you're trying to throw something through a door. If the door is open, you can throw it through the door. If the door is closed, it's not going through the door until the door opens. And then the thing gets inside you know so that's that's kind of that that would definitely make more sense to me because we both already established that we don't think she could text all of that in that short amount of time no it seems like it all hit his phone at once and so i just want to make that

clear for anyone who's hearing what she's saying here, because I think it's important. I think we have to bring it up. If this theory is correct and this represents not necessarily a missed text message, but in reality, activity by Wayne Pope on his phone, even though it's being portrayed to look as inactivity because he didn't respond, the fact that it all hit at the same time may actually suggest that Wayne was on his phone and that's when he turned it back on to check his messages. And how's he going to turn it on when he's asleep till 1130? Bingo. Yeah. Bingo.

And if he's trying to tell us, oh, I didn't run into Robin until 1130 when I went out to the car. So you mean to tell us that after you turned on your phone and she said she was there, you didn't go outside for a half hour? I don't know, Wayne. I don't know, buddy. That doesn't sound too good to me. Yeah.

So on that note, with some food for thought, something to chew on, let's take a break. And it's our last one of the episode. So come back and join us for the rest of the story. So it was around 1.15 a.m. when Debbie O'Malley's daughter Jennifer woke her up, telling her that Wayne Pope was at their house asking about Robin. Wayne told Debbie that Robin had come to his house to get some of her things. He'd left, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found, and neither was the dog, Bella. Wayne told Debbie that things had been going well with Robin and that they were going to go to therapy, but he had no idea where she and Bella could be.

Debbie asked if Wayne had checked with his neighbors, and he said no, because most of them weren't home, and Robin didn't know the neighbors anyways, which we also find out later is not true. Debbie picked up her phone and she attempted to call Robin, but the call went to voicemail. So Debbie suggested that her daughter Jennifer, who owned the condo that Robin had been renting, and Wayne go over to the condo to see if Robin was there. They returned around 2.30 a.m. with the news that Robin was not there. Before they had gotten back, Debbie had gotten a text from Robin's

19-year-old daughter, Rachel, who was also looking for her mother. Both of Robin's daughters were in constant contact with her every single day. They were very close. And Rachel told CBS, quote, I get about 10 phone calls from her, and if I don't get right back to her within the hour, she freaks out and is worried that something happened to me, end quote. At this time, Robin's oldest daughter, Priscilla, had moved to Los Angeles, and while Priscilla was sleeping, she was getting texts from her sister, panicked texts that caused Priscilla to fly to Maryland the first thing the next morning. Back at Debbie's house, Wayne continued repeating that he didn't know where Robin was,

and he didn't know what to do, so Debbie told him to go home and call the police. After he had left, Debbie looked at her daughter and said she had a really bad feeling. Back at home, Wayne called the Queen and County Sheriff's Office. Queen 911. Yeah, I'd like to report, I don't know what to call it, maybe suspicious activity or abnormal activity. I'd like to know if you could send an officer up to my house. I will do, Dress. 145 Beach, B-E-A-C-H Road, Stevensville.

And your name? Wayne Pope, P-O-P-E. And your turnover? 410-O-P-E. And your phone number? 410-960-9048. And what's going on? My wife and I are separated for about a month now. And she came by the house to get some clothes and a post hole digger and see the dog. And when she got here, I left.

And I came back. I just showed up to Graysonville once my dad's house came back. And her car is still here, but she is nowhere to be found. And our dog is missing too. Now, I don't know if she stole the dog and went to, I mean, I would have given her, I would give her the dog. She doesn't need to do that. But anyway, so I don't know what's going on.

I've been to all her friends. I've been calling everybody, and I don't know what I should do. Is that worth spending the office around for? I don't know. I mean, I hate to waste somebody's time, but... I guess I'll stop writing things up to you. Are you home now? I am home. And she doesn't have any weapons on her, does she?

No, I can't imagine that now. I mean, I'm in the house now, and she's – I haven't seen her in the house. I guess send an officer just so we can – I don't know. All right. What does she look like? She is 51-year-old. What was she wearing? I have no idea.

Is she white or black? White. What kind of hair does she have? Dark hair. She crossed it, you know. So about 5'3", 105 pounds. Her name is Robin Pope, P-O-P-E. All right.

Well, I'll get somebody down here. If you find out where she is or they get more information, just call back. I'll call back. Do you like to call 911 back? Yeah, that's fine. Okay, thank you. Uh-huh. Bye.

He called Debbie around four in the morning to let her know that deputies were at the house, and they wanted to talk to her to find out when she'd last heard from Robin. Because remember, Debbie and Robin are best friends. They talk every day, all day. When the sun rose and it was morning, Debbie and Jennifer drove over to Wayne's house, and that was when Debbie discovered that although Robin was missing, most of her things were not. So this was something that Wayne had failed to tell her, according to Debbie. Robin's car was still parked in Wayne's driveway.

And sitting on the front seat was her purse, her car keys, her makeup bag, some clothes, and her cell phone. And that was when Debbie began to see red flags. She remembered how the night before, Wayne had let her call Robin, and she wondered why he had had her do that when he knew that Robin's phone had been left in her car. Debbie also knew that Robin would never go anywhere without her cell phone, and where would she have even gone without her car? So this is like March. It's Maryland. It's on the water. It was very cold, like mid-30s. It was windy. It's the water. Like I said, it's colder by the water than it ever is

anyplace else. And this is Maryland in March. So Debbie's thinking, what's Robin going to do? Walk someplace, you know, in the middle of the night when it's cold like this? No. That afternoon, which was March 2nd, Robin Pope was entered into the National Crime Information Center database as a missing person. And a lot of people were just, you know, going out and looking for her, but not Wayne Pope. This same afternoon, the body of a Great Dane was found just a few houses down from where Wayne lived. Bella, the Great Dane, was found by Wayne's neighbor, a woman named Elaine Jerry, who had been walking down the pier in front of her house when she saw the dog in the water. Elaine said that everyone in the area knew Bella. She was

like the neighborhood dog and she'd come over to see Elaine sometimes. So it was very hard for her to see that Bella had seemingly drowned. So she was crying. She walked over to Wayne's house and she brought him back to the spot where Bella was in the water. Elaine said that Wayne took one quick look at the dog and then told her, it's worse than you even know. My wife and dog went missing last night. Elaine felt that Wayne's behavior was odd because when he saw Bella, he had no reaction at all. And

she literally said that to you in the show. You were like, was he upset? Was he mad? Like what? And she's like, no reaction. She said it three times. Absolutely no reaction. And she found it strange also that he would refer to Robin and Bella as my wife and dog when Elaine knew who Robin and Bella were. She said they all knew who Robin and Bella were. Another interesting piece of information about the discovery of Bella's body is the fact that Wayne did not make any attempt to remove the dog from the water. But later, when it was discovered that Wayne had some bruising on his chest and some scratches on his side, he explained that he'd sustained these injuries from the pier while he was trying to get Bella out of the water.

But Elaine Jerry, she told you, Derek, that he never did that. He looked at the dog once quickly and then he walked away with her and he did not try to get the dog out of the water. Yeah, this was a very important moment in the show because there were a couple things where Wayne was caught in a lie by police. And this was something where, you know, we'll throw this up for people who are watching on YouTube right now. We have the photo. You can see these injuries to Wayne's side. And as Stephanie just said, he told police that he obtained these injuries or he sustained these injuries while he was laying on the dock on his side, trying to reach for Bella to get her out of the water. So what I remember going to see Elaine and it was important to hear about the dog and it was important to hear about, you know,

Wayne's reaction. But what I really couldn't wait to ask her was, did he reach over to try to pull Bella out of the water? And as you saw in the episode, I asked her like two or three different ways. I even gave options. I'm like, did he lean down to at least look at her? Did he reach down to try to anything? And she was adamant, nope, never looked at her, walked away. And I was like, okay, so that's clearly not true what he's saying. He did not reach down to grab Bella. and the person the only other person that was there with him that could have confirmed his his alibi as far as his reasoning for sustaining that bruise discredited it emphatically she had no doubt in her mind and it was a pretty big bruise right it looked pretty big like it's right on kind of like i don't know what you call that like his

solar plexus sort of it's on his ribs it's on his ribs but it went on his ribs stretched out his front a little bit yeah i'm interested to hear what everyone thinks because i remember with the team when we were talking about this we really you know you sit around with your production crew at night and you start to really like again your mind can play tricks on you but you look at the um the photo and we had some different things but the one thing that we all agreed was that his reasoning for sustaining the bruise. And I'm looking at it again right now. It's like right where you're the bottom of your rib cage is on your side there. But, you know, it's I don't see how you would get that from leaning on a

leaning on a pier. I don't see how you would get that from wood unless you were literally like rubbing your body on the wood itself. Like if you just laid on it, I don't think the mere pressure of it would cause this type of bruising. And to me, take it with a grain of salt. I think it looks like scratches. That's just my opinion. I think it looks like scratches. I mean,

in my opinion, it's irrelevant if you could get those injuries that way or not, because he didn't do that. So right. So yeah, according to lane. So I thought that was significant, but I strongly recommend we'll have an YouTube video, but you didn't do that. Yeah, according to Lane. So I thought that was significant, but I strongly recommend, we'll have them in a YouTube video, but you can Google it

too. Take a look at the photos. Although I don't know if this photo is readily available on everything. I know I got it from Sergeant Sexton, but I think it is out there in some of the deeper web, right? I did not see it online. I saw it in Breaking Homicide and then I saw it when you sent it to me. We'll include it. We'll include it in the YouTube version. John, you're hearing this. Definitely include it. I will send him these photos to make sure they're in there. But we definitely want to hear from you guys in the comments on that one because maybe there's someone out there who has an expertise or experience with these types of injuries and may look at this and say,

I know exactly what that is. I'm really hoping there's someone out there that can do that. Oh, I can. I know exactly what that is. What is it? Well, it's not from leaning down on a dock and trying to get a dog out. Okay. Allegedly don't come for me, but let's just say, but let's just say that he, for the sake of argument, that he did not try to get the dog out because we know at least while Elaine was there, he didn't. And this is her house and this is her dock so i mean i think if if this dude came back and was like you know struggling to try to get a soaking wet 100 pound dog out of the water she'd probably notice right so i don't think it, but this is the afternoon after his wife goes missing. So what could those injuries possibly be from?

I don't know. Maybe some sort of conflict, some sort of fights. Who knows? But they're not from what he said they were from, in my opinion, allegedly. I will say I discussed this with Sergeant Sexton and he pushed back a little bit, but I think he was being open minded because I just said, you know, it looks to me like these injuries could be from an assault, right? Or could be from someone defending themselves from an assault.

And he said, yeah, but wouldn't you expect to see more injuries maybe to his face, maybe to his chest? And, you know, she was five to 102 pounds. No, you're not going to, he's a big guy. He's a big guy. You're not going to expect to see that to's a big guy too. He's a big guy. You're not going to expect to see that to his face. He's a big guy. Especially if he's got her hands pinned. So really the only way she could kind of bend her elbows and maybe start like scratching and hitting him on his sides if her hands and her arms are pinned, but she's not going

to be able to lift them to his face. She's much shorter than him. You know what else someone said? I can't take credit for this. This is for one of my producers because if you look at it it just reminded me of it one of my producers said that he thought it looked like something he would sustain from like his dog when he tried to pick it up like and it didn't want to be picked up and it would like use its legs to try to like brace itself and scratch against your ribs shout out to my producer josh kessler because he actually i think he listens to these but um

he was like that looks like you know if he had picked up a big dog and was trying to bring it over to the the pier you know the dog would try to like push off or whatever from his his ribs and it kind of looked like that a little bit i'm like hmm you know what that's possible too for sure yeah maybe like a hundred pound dog who had been thrown into the water by Wayne before. And now that Wayne has her in his arms and is walking towards a body of water, this dog has PTSD and remembers what happened the last time Wayne had her in his arms and walked towards a body of water. And she started freaking the hell out.

Yeah. Right. Sorry, kicking him. Yeah. Trying to get away. She didn't want to go in the water. Oh, he's such a dick, allegedly. So definitely check that out because we want to hear you guys weigh in on it because we've definitely, I've had a lot of conversations about this long nights

in the hotel while we were working this one. We're having it right now as well. It's open to interpretation, but I definitely think it's something worth you guys looking at and kind of coming up with your own opinions and sound off and let us know what you think. Yeah, let us know in the comments. That's our question for the week. For sure. So Wayne was interviewed by the police headed by Sergeant David Sexton, who came right out in this interview. And he said that he believed Wayne knew what happened to Robin. In fact, I think he said, like, you killed your wife, right? In this interview. Oh, yeah. He called them right out on the table. They were talking for a little bit.

And then basically he looked at him and said, you killed your wife. Look me in the face right now. You tell me you had nothing to do with your wife. And to Wayne's defense, he did. You know, no, I did not. No, I did not. And then he even said. To Wayne's defense what?

What he said he didn't have a he didn't kill his wife? He responded immediately. I'm not. Listen, trying to give him a little, little, little something here. Try to be objective at least. Right. And so. Thank you so much for being that person today.

I'm trying to be objective, but then, then even Sexton dug, dug a little deeper, which I thought was incredible, you know, in the interview and interrogation skills where he starts, he tries to strike a chord with him where he says, she betrayed you. She cheated on you. Right. He's trying to give him an, you know, he's trying to enrage him to get him to a point. Cause it happens where sometimes the person goes, yeah, but they ain't cheating on me anymore. Are they, you know, it's something like that where, you know, he's trying to build up some rage in him.

So he, he says something that gets him in trouble, but he didn't take the bait. Wayne did not take the bait. No. And I mean, if you think back, he Wayne had told her friend Debbie, like, oh, we're going to counseling. We're trying to work it out. Like, I can't imagine what universe Robin would be trying to work things out with Wayne. So there is this kind of narrative that I feel he may have been planting, which is like, no, we were we were not estranged, you know, because an estranged husband is definitely going to be more of a suspect than a husband who's just trying to work things out and like stay together with his wife. Right. So these are little seeds that he planted for Debbie, like, oh, we're going to counseling. And Debbie's Robin's best friend. You know, if they were going to counseling, this is something that she probably would have known. But I don't know if he didn't know how often they talked or if he just thought she would believe him because Robin wasn't around to set the story straight.

I don't know if the police ever looked into this to see if they were actually going to counseling or if there were any plans to do so. But in no world or universe exists where I think Robin Pope was trying to work things out with with Wayne was possibly on another date that night. So, yeah, I would agree that she was she was she was moving on. She was done. She was done with Wayne. So Wayne told Sergeant Sexton, like, no, I didn't do this. I have no idea what happened to her. I would never hurt my wife.

But Sexton wasn't buying it because there were some things about his story that just didn't add up. Sergeant Sexton thought it was odd that Wayne would know Robin was coming over, but then fall asleep just minutes before she arrived. And he actually says this in the interview. He's like, you talk to her at like, what, 10, 12. You knew she was coming over. She was going to be there in 15 minutes. And somehow you fell asleep within that 15 minute period and you were asleep for an hour. Like, how does that happen? And I think in the interview, Wayne's like, yeah, that is odd. You know, he's like, yeah, that is odd. You know, so he wasn't like arguing with him,

but he didn't really explain like how physically that would happen. Wayne had also told the police that he went to his parents' house that night, but his parents, who had thrown a get together with some friends that evening, they had not seen him. When he was confronted with this, Wayne claimed that he hadn't gone inside or alerted his parents to his presence at their home. He had just switched his car out for his truck because he was keeping his truck at their house and he needed it for work the next day. And you did verify that Wayne did, in fact, switch out his car for that truck. Yep. That was verified. Not only I made the actual drive because I just wanted to put myself into Wayne's shoes. So I went to Wayne's house at the same time of night that he would have done it. And I drove, I believe it was 18 miles all the way out to the parents' house.

And then from the parents' house, again, trying to put myself in his perspective, why I would stop at a 7-Eleven after that. i wanted to try to make the drive myself but it was confirmed well we'll get into that in about 10 seconds i'm sure but 7-eleven you know there was a path that he took that night that that was became a a big topic as far as the show was concerned and a part of as far as the investigation but sex and did confirm that they were able to track him through gps through his phone that those were the the locations that he went after leaving his residence so from wayne's story he leaves around 11 30 after he wakes up sees robin in his driveway he leaves he goes to his parents house to switch the vehicle out. The next we know of him,

he's at a 7-Eleven in Graysonville at 1.07 a.m. Now, Graysonville is two towns over from Stevensville where Wayne lived, and all he purchased at the 7-Eleven was a cup of coffee, but you can see him on surveillance at 7-Eleven. You can see him walking in the door. You can see him purchasing the cup of-Eleven. You can see him walking in the door. You can see him purchasing the cup of coffee. This is all he buys. And as I'm watching this, you know, you voiced my

exact thoughts about this purchase during the Breaking Homicide episode. Why in the world would Wayne Pope be drinking a cup of coffee at one in the morning? You know, like you just woke up. You were so exhausted that you fell asleep within 15 minutes of your wife coming over, your estranged wife coming over. Then you wake up and you're planning to be back at the house in two hours. Two hours from 1130 is 130, right? Yep. So you're planning to be back at the house by 130. And at 107, you're buying a cup of coffee. Was he pulling an all-nighter? Was he staying up all night? He had to work the next day, allegedly, because he had to pick up the truck. Why was he behind coffee at 1.07 in the morning? Yeah, that's definitely something at the end of the show I bring up to

Sergeant Sexton, because if you're to believe that this was all done to create an alibi to show that he wasn't home and that there was a window of opportunity where there could have been an accident or someone else could have killed Robin and thrown her in the water. He can't be there the whole time, right? He has to leave at some point. So, you know, if you're to believe that that's what he was doing, he goes out to his parents' house, he grabs the truck. That's one layer to show like I did something. I left the house. But when I drove to the 7-Eleven, I was looking at it like, again, like I would, it's right off before

you get back on the main road to get home. It'd be kind of like the last big thing you would see. And the one thing I saw immediately from pulling in the parking lot was this big security monitor where you can clearly see from even sitting in the parking lot that if you walk into the convenience store, you're on camera. So what I said to Sergeant Sexton was, well, he's got to go inside the store so he can be seen on camera, but you just can't walk in, wave at the camera and walk out. That's too obvious. So my theory is that muscle memory kicked in. You know, he's probably been to this convenience store or something similar like that in the

morning. On his way to work. So he goes in there and he does what he always does. He grabs that cup of coffee. He might've threw that cup of coffee out the window halfway down the road for all we know, but it doesn't line up with, Hey, I wasn't planning on going to do this, but my ex wife showed up or soon to be ex wife showed up. I'm going to give her some space. My plan is to come back home. Like you said, around one 30 and go back to sleep. Let me have a cup of Joe before

I do that. That's not what a normal person would do. And I told Sexton and it's a stretch, but I feel like this was a momentary lapse in judgment where Wayne was trying to plan out an alibi. And this is where, like I said, muscle memory took over and he carried out an activity that wasn't conducive to what he was doing or why he was there. And I felt like it's a minor thing, but in a situation like this, you got to look for those little things because they could be the difference in the case. Yeah. And I mean, if you look at the timeline, and we talked about this earlier, but I was saying to you, like Debbie said that Wayne showed up at her house around 1.15 a.m.

So Graysonville is about an eight-minute drive away from Stevensville. If he's buying that coffee at 1.07 a.m. and he's showing up at Robin's house at 1.15 a.m., when is he figuring out that Robin's missing? When's he figuring out that Robin and Bella aren't there? So that timeline doesn't add up as long as what Debbie is saying is accurate.

I mean, even if it was off by 15 minutes and he got there at 1.30, that still doesn't leave him a lot of time to buy the coffee at 1.07, go back to his house, realize that Robin and Bella aren't there and look for them because he didn't even text around that time. Now, he did send a text to Robin at 1.28 a.m. And it says, call me. Call me. Yep. But even if he'd gotten back to his house from getting the coffee at 1.15 and he sees

she's not there, he's not looking very long, right? He's looking for about 15 minutes before he texts her and says, call me. And then he heads over to Debbie's house if that's what happened. So there's not. It's a very small window. Very small window. Came to a quick conclusion. Who?

Wayne. Wayne. Yeah. He was like, well, she's not here. Like her car is there. Not at her car. Her purse is there. Her cell phone's there.

Where would she be? You know, like you didn't even look around for her for very long. And where do you think she's going to be without her car and her phone? Yeah. It makes you wonder if he even looked in the car because again, we talked about it a couple minutes ago where he's asking other people to text or call Robin and he's doing the same. And yet at that point, her phone's still in her car, which allegedly he looked in and saw that that was there.

Those items were there. So what is it, Wayne? Is it that you saw and you were having people make calls when you knew they were going to a phone that was stuck in her car? Or did you ever even go back to the house? You know what I mean? What are we doing here? Or exactly right. Or you went back to the house, saw she was missing, but didn't bother to check her car for any clues or to see where she was like any version of this story doesn't add up. Kind of makes sense why I went down there, huh? It makes sense why I went to Berlin.

That's what I'm saying. Like it just doesn't make any sense because you wouldn't say I can't find her and she's missing without like opening the door to her car and being like, okay, what's in here? Like, is there any sign of where she went in here? Did she leave a note saying like, you would not go around and go to her friend's houses

at 1.15 or 115 or 130 in the morning before checking the car to see if there's some indication of where Robin had gone, period. Right. But it makes sense when we opened this episode, I said to you, like, I was reading things and saying to myself, this can't be right. And I was like, let's look into it. It's got to be, there's got to be a typo here or something. But as we're going through this and this is what it is, you can see why you would initially read this and be like, nah, this can't be sounds kind of, kind of obvious. No, I mean, maybe. And then that's why we went out there for the, for these exact reasons.

It's just the, the story doesn't add up. And like you said at the, at the start of the episode, like this is a very slim pool of suspects, right? There's, she was very well loved. She didn't have enemies. Everyone loved her. The police looked into Robin's lover, Rob, you know, as well as his fiance to make sure that they weren't involved.

They spoke to Rob's supervisors who informed them that Rob had been in Kansas at the time that Robin went missing. His fiance had a solid alibi as well. They talked to the guy she had drinks with that night. He had a solid alibi. Neighbors. Neighbors. Neighbors, which she knew the neighbors, by the way, even though Wayne says she didn't know the neighbors. She did. Of course she did. She lived there for years. And if the timeline, yeah,

it's just, it doesn't make sense. And it's bugging me that he thought it would. Yeah. Well, Sergeant Sexton would agree with you. That's why they brought him, you know, they definitely brought him in and treated him as a suspect. He wasn't treated as a witness. And if you guys, we're going to try to throw a couple clips in here of the interrogation. Before she could step into your house, something happened. Maybe she's playing with the dog. I don't know. And what do you think? She was playing with the dog near the water and they both fell in?

That's a thought I had. Maybe Bella fell in the water and Robin went to get her. I don't know. And do you think Robin fell in? That's a thought I had. Maybe Bella fell in the water and Robin went to get her. I don't know. And do you think Robin fell in the water? Robin wouldn't fall in the water, but if Bella fell in the water... If Bella fell in the water, she's going to go after her, right? Absolutely. I think she's a strong enough swimmer, she would have probably been able to save her.

I don't know if Bella's 100 pounds. I'm just trying to come up with any scenario that works. That's the only other scenario. Your wife betrayed you. She did. And there's a lot of bad feelings when somebody does that to you. No, sir. You killed your wife.

No, sir. No, sir. That is not true. Are you sure? I am positive, sir. You can look at me right now and tell me you didn't have anything to do with your wife's death right now so i had nothing to do with my wife's death and i had nothing to do with hurting our dog i would not do that did we spoil the surprise we have for the next one right i mean i guess we could say it right here no she's shaking her head we for anyone. We didn't spoil it.

You want us to? But what we're going to do next episode, why don't you tell them? What we're going to do next episode is we're going to go over the theories, right? Because we think we know what happened. It seems like from the story we know what happened, but there's a lot of possible things that could have happened. We're also going to bring on

Sergeant David Sexton so we can ask him questions and clear things up because he's agreed to talk to us. I'm super excited about it. I have a list of questions I want to ask him. This guy's going to be like, shut this girl up. He's going to text me on the side and be like, dude, what'd you do to me? Because I definitely hit him up. He's a great guy.

He's one of the good ones. And he's more than willing, like I said, to talk about it as much as he can, because ultimately he wants the same thing as everyone else, which is to find out what happened. And if there's someone responsible for it, have them, you know, answer for what they did. That's simple. Doesn't have to be deeper than that. Yeah. And David Sexton also told you something in the Breaking Homicide episode that you had not known before because it was also discovered that the night Robin had vanished, she was not the only one who had been in Annapolis.

That's right. Law enforcement found out through GPS on Wayne's phone that he had also been in Annapolis that evening. He told them that he'd gone there to get food for his daughter, Rachel. But Rachel told the police,

what food? No, he never brought me any food. So it's far more likely that Wayne was in Annapolis because he was following Robin, right, to never brought me any food. So it's far more likely that Wayne was in Annapolis because he was following Robin, right, to see who she's with. What is she doing? Because he's already chased her first boyfriend away. He's ruined that for her. But instead of going back to him, which is what Wayne was probably hoping, like, oh, let me scare Rob and his fiance with a gun. And then, you know, what's Robin going to do? She's just going to come back to me instead of going back to Wayne.

Robin got herself a new man. Robin got a groove back. So he was following her, probably watching her that night while she shared a few drinks with another man, getting pissed, getting steamed up, you know, probably stroking the gun in his freaking waistband. And he's in Annapolis. For what reason? There's no other reason but the fact that Robin was also there that night.

Yeah, you guys can, you know, it was funny how it came up because I genuinely did not know that he was in Annapolis that night. And in fact, I remember telling this to Priscilla, her daughter. I was under the impression she did. Maybe I just didn't know and I missed it. And she didn't even know. And this is someone who's very invested in the case. And it was funny, you can see my genuine reaction because I was speaking with state's attorney, Lance Richardson. He brings it up kind of passively. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, go back five seconds. What did you just say? He was in Annapolis that night. He wasn't at his house. And he's like,

oh yeah, we had him on GPS. And then I went outside and called Sergeant Sexton and was like, can you confirm just to make sure I'm hearing this right? And he's like, oh yeah, he was there. He was down there and he might've been out for dinner for a little while. All he said was, let's just say he was there longer than the dinner would have been. And he was in the immediate area of where she was. So they it was I read between the lines that they all whether it's from the state's attorney's office or from the law enforcement side, they all believe that Wayne was spying on her that evening. And that's coming from me. That's just my interpretation. Well, I mean, it makes sense that that's what he was doing right and i mean additionally you can see because you have pictures from from the house

the crime scene pictures technically even though we can't tell tell for sure if a crime happened there but you got pictures the police took when they went in the house wayne's house and robin had texted him that she wanted to get her mail but you can see that her mail is still sitting there stacked neatly on a table inside the house so she's's texting Wayne like, I want my mail. She's there to pick it up, but she seemed to have left without even touching it. Did she even go inside to see the mail? Because she didn't take the mail. Yeah. And that was something we were looking for, you know, even signs of struggle. Again, the place could have been cleaned up. So it doesn't hold a ton of weight because Wayne was there for hours before the police showed up. So it's not like what you

would normally have with a crime scene where nobody has tampered or had time to tamper with the area. This is not that situation. The place could have been in complete disarray and the police wouldn't know by the time they show up because you would assume if this was all planned out, he would clean up beforehand if that is in fact what happened. Yeah. So we've got Bella now, right? And she's brought to Dr. Marion Shaw at the Humane Society in Queen Anne County. And this was actually Bella's regular vet. So Dr. Shaw was familiar with the dog. And Dr. Shaw noticed that Bella had some bruising on her paws, which was consistent with an attempt to claw at the tall rocks on the shore in order to get out of the water. So if you look at where Bella was found, if you look at this area around

the Pope home, there's not just like water and then sand that you could just like get washed up on. There's huge rock walls almost. They're wave breakers and they're slimy. You know, they're covered in algae. icy there's some ice on yep so if if bella went into the water and she was trying to get out it would have been very difficult for her to get out she's a dog she can't climb up those rocks that's right and so they they definitely believe she was alive when she went in they definitely believe it's sad they definitely believe she struggled to try to get back on shore but unlike a human being you know she wasn't able to climb up them and again she was an older dog too so uh there was a lot of things working against her and and it didn't help out i don't want to skip around because

you might have it coming up but do you because we have the timeline where bellow was found but do we also have in there at some point about the blouse? Okay, great. So it's because this all adds up at all. It all tells a story without supposedly supposed to tell a story, but it does. It does. It paints a picture. So Dr. Shaw believed that Bella had died from hypothermia, but that still left the question, where was Robin Pope? If they went missing together, where was Robin?

So for the next 22 days, an intensive search was carried out for Robin. They searched fields, woods, yards. The Charles County dive team was brought in to search the bay waters around Wayne Pope's house. Police brought in cadaver dogs, helicopters, sonar-equipped police boats, and dozens of local and state police scoured the area relentlessly, while Robin's friends and community did the same, but not Wayne Pope. No one saw him while they were all out looking for his wife and setting up like a command base at each other's houses and kind of checking in, trying to get the word out. No one saw him.

And according to Robbins' friends, he didn't even call anyone to see how the search was going. Two weeks after Bella was found, Debbie O'Malley and another friend of Rob's were walking along the shore looking for clues, and they found one. They pulled a blouse out of the water, a blouse that they were sure had belonged to Robin. It was intact. There was no holes or tears, but it was inside out. So as Robin's friends, this is not an encouraging sign, right? No, it's not encouraging at all. And I'm sure they were starting to think that they were going to find Robin, but it wasn't going to be under good circumstances.

And without going too much into theories right now, because we're going to save that for the next episode, just keep in mind here that this blouse, and again, John, I'll send you the picture. I'll throw it up. I have a picture of Robin wearing the exact blouse. It was a very tight fitting blouse. It had small sleeves on it. So this wasn't like a baggy shirt that she was wearing. And I think that's important for me because if you think about it, it would be very difficult, even if she was

dead in the water, for this blouse to not only come off of her body because she would have to pull her arms out of the sleeves. It was very tight fitting. She would not only have to pull her arms out of the sleeve, but then pull them out in a way where the two sleeves would now be inside out. That doesn't sound like something, especially after speaking to multiple people, including an oceanographer, Dr. Stepp, that that's something that would occur even if she was stuck on the bottom. And you would expect that if the blouse had been turned inside out naturally, caught on something, a rock or some type of object that was in the water that shouldn't have been there, it would have caused a hole or a tear in the process of turning it inside out and ripping it off her body. And that was not the case. It was, like you said, completely intact. But yeah, inside out, kind of strange.

But this blouse was found closer to the pope home if i'm correct that's right that's right right right it was found not only close to the pope home but almost exactly where bella was found which again if you're to assume bella was alive when she went in which we all believe she was you know it does suggest that this blouse was maybe not on robin when she went in, which we all believe she was, you know, it does suggest that this blouse was maybe not on Robin when she entered the water and it followed the same current and path that Bella did, you know? So again, these are all little breadcrumbs, but it starts to lead you down a path. Well, on March 23rd at around 3.30 in the afternoon, Kent Island resident Kurt Wall was fishing with his daughter off a pier

about three quarters of a mile down shore from where Bella, the Great Dane, had been found several weeks earlier. Kurt said that they had been there for about an hour when he looked down and saw the lower portion of a body caught on some rocks. The upper part of the body was wedged under the rocks. He called the police and just just like that, the massive, several-week search was called off. Robin Pope had finally been found. Unfortunately, she'd been in the water for so long, her body was badly decomposed, and it was difficult for the medical examiner to determine what exactly had caused Robin's death. Robin was wearing jeans and high heels when she was pulled from the water. There was also a ripped piece of t-shirt.

It was kind of wrapped around her arm and around her hand. The autopsy could only conclude that there was no physical signs of trauma. She hadn't been stabbed or shot. She didn't appear to have been beaten, but there was water in her lungs, which indicated that she'd gone into the water when she was still alive. The police involved in this case admit that it looks very suspicious. If Robin wasn't murdered, then what was she doing by the water? When her body was found, she was still wearing high heels, right? And you said something about the blouse, like it would be kind of hard

for the blouse to come off in the water. I agree. I think it would be pretty hard for the blouse to come off in the water, especially considering that her shoes were still on her feet when she was found. So obviously her body didn't go through some serious battering while in the water because you'd think that the shoes would have come off. And I'm sure they had straps on them that like fastened. They're not just like heels you slip your feet into. But still, if the blouse is going to come off the body and come inside out, then I can't imagine that the shoes would be left intact on her feet.

Sergeant Sexton, he told you, he doesn't believe she would have gone for a walk on the beach with that kind of footwear, especially in March. And she doesn't have a coat on. You know, she's just wearing that small shirt. And there have been some theories that maybe Bella fell into the water and Robin jumped in to save her. But Robin was in great physical shape and an avid swimmer. So it's hard to believe that, you know, if this happened, Robin would have jumped in to save the dog and not been able to get Bella back to the shore. But we are going to discuss this further in part two.

We're going to talk to David Sexton. We're going to clear up some questions we have. Maybe we'll get some more information. Maybe we can round this picture out a lot better. And I would say that, you know that we had talked on the phone today and we had kind of gone over at least four different theories, four different versions of events of how this could have gone down. So we're going to go over that too next time. Yeah. There's definitely a few things that we can leave you on with that as well, because let's go back to the t-shirt first, right? So the shirt

that was wrapped around her hand, I did a lot of digging into that. So first the t-shirt itself, it could be a shirt that she was wearing underneath the blouse. That's, that's what I believe it possibly is. And that shirt was extremely tattered and tethered and ripped all up to shreds. And we'll have that photo in the YouTube video as well. And again, if you're to believe that's a t-shirt that she was in the water for 23 days. So for any of you guys who've done cases before, it was in real, her body was in really bad shape. But if you're to believe that's the t-shirt and when you guys see the t-shirt itself and

see how destroyed it is again, to think that that t-shirt looks like that, but her blouse had not a single tear in it, only gives more credence to the idea that she wasn't wearing the blouse when she entered the water. It's that simple because in order to tear up that under t-shirt, it's going to have to go through the top t-shirt first, the top outer garment first. The thing was completely intact. So I think it's a very safe assumption to assume whatever happened, she was not wearing the blouse when she went in the water. Although somehow the blouse ended up in the water.

How would that be? How would the blouse get in the water if Robin was already in? The second thing that you said, which I think is important because there are people that believe maybe she jumped in after Bella. You're a woman. I'm not a woman, but I think can still weigh in on this one. I'm going to jump in to save anyone. Probably the first thing I'm going to do is remove my high heels. Just a guess. Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess it depends. Like Bella meant a lot to, I don't think, I don't think Robin jumped in to save the dog,

first of all, but if, if that was, let's play the, let's play devil's advocate. Give me, give me, let's play devil's advocate. I that knowing that bella was afraid of the water knowing that bella did not know how to swim she may have just made that instinctual you know it's kind of like when you're that close to your pad that's like your baby so like if my daughter falls into the water i'm not gonna take off my high heels before i jump in and save her i'm just not thinking logically like that i'm thinking like something somebody i love is in the water. I need to go in and save this person or this dog. Fair enough. I'll tell you what though, those high heels would make it awful hard to swim. It's not like a pair of sneakers. I mean, it's going to completely, it's going to,

it's going to really hurt your ability to not only swim to get the dog, but then to be able to swim back with, you know, this isn't a dog. When only swim to get the dog, but then to be able to swim back. You know, this isn't a dog. When you guys think about this dog, you guys, I'm sure everyone knows what a Great Dane is essentially treated as another human being because the dog weighed as much as she did. Exactly. So that's she's trying to swim back with her own body weight in a current. It's not going to be an easy task. She was a really good swimmer.

She knew the area. So she knew that going into the water, if she went in there, um, are we saving the oceanographers breakdown, all that stuff that there's a lot there. You guys really want to check that part out. We went into some science stuff that may explain a lot of this. So you're right. We definitely have a lot to cover. We have more to talk about in part two. We're going to hear from David Sexton, who I'm sure is going to have a lot of great insight. And I'm definitely excited to have a conversation about the theories and kind of go over what possibly could have happened.

Even if you go with the main theory that Wayne Pope did this to her, there's still several different scenarios of how that could have happened. So there's a lot to talk about. And we're going to use evidence and fact to kind of support our theories. But still, at the end of the day, they're just speculation because nobody knows what happened that night except for Wayne and Robin and Bella. And Wayne is the only one who's alive still out of those three. And he ain't talking. That's for sure. We tried to reach out to him during the show, gave him multiple opportunities. I actually went to his lawyer's office. That's in the episode. We kept it in there so he couldn't say we didn't because you are speculating a lot and you want to give him a chance to answer. I went down there. They kicked me essentially out of the office. They didn't want me there. And I never heard back from him or the lawyer. So as far as he's concerned,

he's moved on from this, whether he did it or not. If he didn't do it, he's just like, hey, listen, I'm not going to be able to change their minds. And if he did do it, the best thing he can do is not say nothing at all. Right. Because to this point, he's gotten away with it. Right. I think that the latter is probably more accurate because if he didn't do it, he's going to at least make an attempt to change someone's mind, right? And he has not done that. I would think so. Yeah. I would think so for sure. So this case is very dynamic. I'm glad you were the one that said, hey, we should cover this. And I'm really glad you did because it's a good case. And it just shows that even though sometimes you can have a lot, just minor things like the being able to determine a cause of death, manner of death,

the whole case can be predicated on that and hinged on that. So it's an unfortunate set of circumstances, but at least we're putting it out there. So a lot of people who probably aren't familiar with this case, like you said, Stephanie now will be, and Robin Pope's name will be a lot more known throughout the true crime community,

which is our goal is to get this information out there and maybe someone can do something with it. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for being here. We will see you next time. Make sure you don't miss it. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you follow our YouTube channel so you can leave comments and let us know what

you think about the episode. You know, listen to it when it comes out and then come and watch us. Come and watch us when it comes out. You definitely want to on this one, right? This is if you're going to if you're ever going to check us out on YouTube. Now, this is the one you want to do it because we have access to photos and video and stuff that I'm going to make sure John's going to be a trooper and get it all in there for you guys. And the visuals are really going to give you a better understanding of this case.

And the only way to do that is to see it visually. Yes. Thank you guys so much. So make sure you follow us on YouTube. The videos come out every Wednesday after the episode comes out on podcast form. We will see you guys there. Thank you so much. Bye. Take care.