Dateline NBC - The Night Before Halloween

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

In this Dateline classic, a detective and a deputy district attorney work to solve the 1984 murder of Robin Hoynes at a fast food restaurant that left few clues, except for a strange and unexplainable piece of foam left at the crime scene. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on April 15, 2011.

For lovely Robin, the late shift was her last. She was laying face down, a pool of blood under one side. Just one tiny clue. A piece of curved foam rubber. There was a suspect, but he had an alibi. Until this revelation. I said, I have something that you need to know. Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lester Holt. Sometimes it takes a special eye to look at a crime scene and spot the thing that's out of place, the clue that will crack the case. In this story, that thing was so inconsequential looking, no one even knew what it was, let alone what it meant. It took almost two decades, a team of determined investigators and a detective with an unusual background to find out. Here's Keith Morrison.

It was the night before Halloween, October 30th, late midnight approaching. It happened in one of the middle-class suburbs that sprawl across the Los Angeles basin. Inside, a fast food franchise closed for the night. A frantic scrabbling, running feet, then silence. The next morning, not far away, the Hoynes family daughters prepared for a favorite celebration. Kim was the eldest, then Robin, Tricia, and Wendy, excited because this was Halloween, one of the best days of the year. Oh, loved it. We'd trick orreat, and then we'd sort the candy, and we'd be trading what we liked. A Halloween morning long ago.

It was 1984, the morning after the incident in the fast food place. It started, warm and sunny, that bubble of innocence, before anyone knew a thing. Wendy donned her Halloween costume, wore it to school, as did Tricia, who wore hers to work. Kim, the eldest, left early for her job at the nearby mall. Robin wasn't home. After working late, she told her family,

she'd arranged to sleep over at a girlfriend's place. She was due home any minute, as Wendy remembers. She was good about reporting and telling us where she was going to be and when she was going to be home. Robin was 21 years old. She was a redhead, pretty, popular, friendly. She was an assistant manager at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in the nearby town of Torrance, had taken that late shift as a favor to a co-worker named Cheryl. I had asked Robin if she would trade hours with me. I had just started dating somebody and we had

plans. So Robin worked the late shift. She'd close the restaurant, count the cash, carry it across the parking lot to the bank deposit box. I knew Robin was very cautious about, like when I went to the store, she would always tell me, make sure the door's locked. This is not the sort of person who would have let someone in, just anybody. No, not at all. So when Cheryl arrived at work and pulled into the KFC parking lot... I saw Robin's car.

I thought, did she get mixed up, or did she think I wasn't trading it? You know, why is she here? Cheryl crept through the empty KFC. Everything seemed in order until she entered the kitchen. And as I came around the corner, I looked, and I thought, why did Robin spend the night here? That was my first reaction. And then when I looked closer, I saw that she didn't spend the night here? That was my first reaction. And then when I looked closer,

I saw that she didn't spend the night, that she had been killed. She ran out of the place. Someone called 911. Detective Jeff Lancaster was among the first to arrive at the crime scene. She was laying face down. She had a pool of blood under one side.

She had some slash marks to the left side of her face and neck injuries from a slashing type wound from a knife. It didn't take Lancaster long to figure out what happened. This was no accident. She had two knife wounds to her back, the right side, lower area near the spine. It looked, frankly, elementary. Robin had been murdered in what appeared to be an attempted robbery. The top cover of the safe was removed, and there were some paint chips missing off a new combination lock. There were a few drops of blood on the safe,

but no fingerprints, no murder weapon. But there was something rather odd lying near Robin's body. It was just a piece of foam rubber. We kind of speculated that it came from some padding, maybe for a backpack or a handle for a briefcase. Whatever it was and wherever it came from, the mysterious piece of foam wasn't much to go on. Still, they bagged it, put it with all the other evidence. Robin's wallet told them who she was, where she lived. An officer went to the house to notify the family.

No one home. He left a note which said, Call the police department. It was something about Robin. So I called back. I said, Is she all right? And he said, No, she's not. So now Kim, the eldest of the four daughters, had to reveal the news. She started with their mother.

The first words out of her mouth are, you're lying to me. You're lying to me. She couldn't, you know, she couldn't believe that. So once she realizes really that I'm telling her the truth, we know we have to talk to my dad. We called him and told him. He said, okay, I'll meet you at the house. Wendy, the youngest, heard at school that Robin had been stabbed. My immediate response was, did she die? Because I want her to still be alive. But she said, no, she's dead.

Trisha didn't hear a thing until she got home from work. I had dressed up for Halloween as well, and I was wearing Robin's Flagster costume, and I looked down, and I see that I'm in her clothes and I lost it. I was like, get it off me. I mean, I was like screaming that I needed to be out of, I just freaked out. Time doesn't wait, of course. Darkness fell, Halloween, laughing kids came to the door. The Hoyne sat in the dark and tried to get used to the idea of what grief feels like. Policemen buzzed around the KFC all day, Halloween day, looking for something to go on.

But all they came up with, really, was what didn't happen. There was no signs of forced entry. She had let somebody into the business, so we felt, you know, she knew somebody. And she felt comfortable enough to be working on her paperwork while that person was in the business. But who killed Robin Hoynes? A former friend, a customer, a colleague from work? Could it be that Robin Hoynes had been murdered by someone she knew? Coming up. He was going to come back and return his uniform. that Robin Hoynes had been murdered by someone she knew.

Coming up. He was going to come back and return his uniform. Who was he? And did he know anything about what happened to Robin? When Dateline continues. The 1980s were violent years in L.A. Drug wars, gang shootings. The dismal average was nearly four killings a day. But this was different.

The murder of the KFC, Halloween 1984. This was certainly not a crime-infested neighborhood, and Robin Hoynes was a careful, safety-conscious, church-going young woman, not an enemy in the world. But she was stabbed in the back by someone she might have known. Didn't make sense. The kindest-hearted person you'd probably ever meet. Yeah. So now the four sisters were three. I just was completely lost. At 16 you don't have

the capacity to really understand grief let alone to understand grief that comes from your best friend. The person that you, you know, she sleeps in the bed next to you every night. And that bed is empty now.

Yeah, is not there anymore because she was murdered. The hardest thing then and now was to imagine who would do such a thing and why. Someone deliberately took her life. This was a heinous crime. In the days after the murder, the police cast around for clues, motives, suspects, and there wasn't much to go on

beyond that one puzzling piece of foam they found on the floor near Robin's body. Though none of the detectives could figure out even what it was, let alone what use it could be as a clue. But as they looked hard at the crime scene, tried to piece together what must have happened, they began to develop a rather troubling theory that might lead them to a suspect. It appeared this was not the work of a random stranger.

There was no indication of forced entry. There was no indication of forced entry. There was no indication of a struggle. That seemed pretty clear from the autopsy. Robin had been stabbed to death, attacked with a knife. But there wasn't a mark on either of her hands. No defensive wounds. That suggested she never saw it coming. When she answered the door, must have been what?

That she had money out on the counter, and then she saw somebody coming, so she put it in the safe? That's the information I received from her manager. He last saw her, money was on the counter, and she was doing her night paperwork. So she had enough time, if somebody knocked on the door, to identify them, maybe not trust who they were, and put the money in the safe, and then allow them to come in.

There was one way to start confirming that. Cheryl, the young woman who had switched shifts with Robin, knew the safe's combination. When I opened the safe, the money was still in there. I thought it was weird that it was in there, because we normally would take to the bank at night. $600, along with all the night's receipts, were neatly stacked inside, untouched, and left behind by the killer. There were those scratch marks, as if someone tried to pry the safe open. Was it possible the killer intended to open the safe after disposing of Robin? And if that was the plan, then something obviously went haywire. So did it seem to you as if he had gone there to rob the place,

that he knew that she knew him, so he had to kill her before he robbed the place? Yes. But then he got nothing anyway. And he got nothing out of it. Not one thing. It's such a cold-blooded situation. But who would Robin have let in late at night?

It was after hours. The KFC was closed. She was all alone. I knew William was supposed to come back that night. William? Who was William? He used to work there. Earlier that day, William called me.

He was going to come back and pick up his briefcase and return his uniform. And so before I left that day, I just told her, William's going to be by later. She said, okay, no problem. William was William Marshall, a former KFC assistant manager who worked alongside Robin for several months. He was young, just 23, ambitious, known to be friendly, quite religious, just like Robin. Did he know anything about her murder? Well, it turns out he did. But it would

take detectives some 23 years to find out just what, what he knew that night before Halloween. Coming up, the case finally feels like it's heating up, and then it stopped cold. I felt like I'd been kicked. When Dateline continues. It was a start. The first lead in the Robin Hoyne's murder investigation, a name had surfaced, William Marshall. Marshall was a former KFC employee who had worked with Robin

at the very same restaurant where she was killed. In the night of the murder, he was supposed to stop by the store. He was due to return some equipment or a uniform and also pick up a briefcase that belonged to him. A KFC uniform, which William Marshall didn't need anymore, and for a very good reason. William Marshall had been terminated because of missing cash and failed polygraphs.

They'd had two situations reported to the Torrance Police Department concerning thefts of cash from the safe. Two thefts from the very same safe polygraphs. They'd had two situations reported to the Torrance Police Department concerning thefts of cash from the safe. Two thefts from the very same safe where Robin had left the money, and though they couldn't exactly prove he did it, Marshall was a suspect. He had the opportunity. He failed the polygraph when questioned about those previous robberies. And at the time, he knew the combination to the safe. So, the night Robin was killed, did Marshall intend to rob that safe again? He knew the previous combinations.

I don't believe he was aware that they had changed it because it had happened just recently, several days earlier. So now, detectives brought Marshall in for questioning. And he was friendly, cooperative. Said he was home the entire evening. And he could prove it, he said. All police had to do was go ask his girlfriend, Yvonne Hargrove. So, of course, without telling her why they were talking to her, they did ask. I told them William was with me that night because that's what they wanted to know.

And what did we do? I said we cooked spaghetti dinner. Yvonne seemed credible, never wavered in supporting Marshall's story. It was a solid alibi. So maybe the Marshall idea was a dead end. As they were leaving, the cops had one more question, though. Did she know anything about that mysterious piece of foam found at the crime scene? And they brought out this thing.

Had a funny shape, funny color. And they said, do you know what this is? I said, no, I've never seen that before. So what could they do? They let William Marshall go. The cops had nothing on him. Robin Hoyne's funeral was a big event in this part of town. And because Robin was well-known and so well-liked, much of the neighborhood attended, and friends and colleagues, except for one, Cheryl, the girl who had switched shifts with Robin the night the murderer came to call. I had heard that they were really upset with me

and that they didn't want me at her funeral, and I didn't go. I mean, I felt really sad that I traded hours with her, and, you know, that should have maybe been me, and I just felt very guilty for her. A few days after Robin's murder, the case seemed to be going sideways. William Marshall remained only a person of interest.

No new leads had emerged, and that odd clue the piece of foam was still just a mystery. Then came a break. Police got a call from an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet 30 miles away from the one where Robin was killed. He claimed somebody in army fatigues, wearing a cap, gloves, and boots, had been casing the store after hours. Detective Lancaster showed the employee pictures of several suspects who might have been prowling at the KFC that night. He picked out William Marshall as being the person that was acting suspicious around his business at 11, 11.30 at night. Marshall was put under surveillance and followed for a few days.

And where did he go? Back to the very same KFC where he was prowling the week before. Employees there wouldn't let Marshall in, so he drove off, and cops followed. A few miles later, they pulled him over. And after removing him from the car,

we found what we felt was the weapon that he had used in our homicide, which was a seven to nine inch boning knife that was in the backpack that he had been carrying. There was no usable evidence on that knife, but it was the right size and shape, so it looked, to the cops at least, like they had their man. William Marshall was arrested. His knife, clothes, and boots found in the car were booked into evidence. Under California law, Detective Lancaster had two days, either charge him or release him. He took the case to the DA, made his best argument. I felt going in, we had a good case. You know, maybe a tough case, a circumstantial case,

but a good case. Going in? Going in. Coming out? Coming out, I felt like I'd been kicked. Nobody showed any interest, a complete rejection on prosecution. Too circumstantial, said the DA, and no incriminating evidence even on those items seized from Marshall's car. Marshall was released from jail. His girlfriend Yvonne picked him up. Once again, Detective Lancaster had to deliver the news to the Hoynes family. The only suspect he had was back on the streets. Maddening.

His life goes forward, and, you know, Robbins is snuffed out, and she never gets to meet her potential because of what he did. They all suffered. All the Hoynes. Perhaps Mr. Hoynes most of all. Our dad felt like he had not done what he was supposed to do as a father because he didn't protect her. He didn't keep her safe. Our dad

would sit at the edge of his bed and just think about Robin and wait for her to walk down the hall every day. Of course, they didn't know, none of them did, that the solution was sitting right there, hidden in plain sight, until someone closed the lid and filed it all away. Coming up, nearly 20 years would go by without a break until a fresh pair of eyes focused on one particular photograph and saw something new. As it could be, could be. When Dateline continues. October 1985, another Halloween.

Once the Hoynes house would have been festive. Not anymore. They closed the door, turned out the light. Just the word Halloween unleashed a wave of grief. The investigation into Robin's murder was stalled, even though police had a suspect in plain sight, William Marshall, and the family groped for solace. We knew ultimately whoever it is, the answer to a higher power.

We just had to take comfort in that because we really were probably never going to see any resolution in this. They didn't have enough evidence. Years passed. There were other cases to solve, new priorities, of course. And for Detective Lancaster, retirement.

There are cases that stay with you after your retirement, probably for the rest of your life, at least for me. This was one of them. The Hoynes family struggled to move on without Robin. There were high school graduations, marriages, children. But... The hole never goes away. There are times when you need to have a tissue handy.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then, a decade after Robin's murder. Our dad committed suicide. And it was devastating for us. It's true, he had a terminal illness. He was dying of emphysema. But honestly, he was dying of grief. Virgil Hoynes was just 61.

By 2003, the Robin Hoynes murder case was as cold as they'd come, 19 Halloweens old, buried in the basement of the Torrance Police Department, forgotten. But that year, the department started reviewing unsolved murders, and the Hoynes case caught the eye of an aggressive deputy DA named John Lewin, who took special pleasure in cracking unsolved cases.

This is my favorite thing to do. If I won $3 billion tomorrow, I'd be coming to work because I'm doing what I love. And when Lewin read about the original suspect, William Marshall... My response was, wow, there's no question this guy did it. I mean, there is just no doubt whatsoever. But did he have enough to prove it? The job of finding some new evidence fell to a detective with an unusual pedigree, Jim Wallace. I was in architecture school for a while. I tried, you know, design. I have a bachelor's degree in design.

Odd combination, but actually it helps, said Detective Wallace. A lot of these cases, this case in particular, are very visual, and I'm inclined that way. I see the kind of structure of the cases, this case in particular, are very visual, and I'm inclined that way. I see the kind of structure of the space, the crime scene, and every little detail in the crime scene sticks out to me a little more. So Wallace looked at the photos and the fragments of evidence still preserved. And I said, wow, the anomaly in the room is right here. If I can solve this, I can probably put the whole thing together. The anomaly. Well, that would be the puzzling piece of evidence which haunted investigators for almost two decades. That odd,

oblong hunk of foam. I knew that it was either going to come from Robin, the victim, or it's going to come from the suspect in the case. And once I was comfortable that this didn't come from Robin's purse, it didn't come from Robin's clothing, it's not part of Kentucky Fried Chicken's restaurant, it doesn't belong there. Which left only one other possibility, the murderer. Wallace poured over those pictures of the one suspect, Marshall, when he was pulled over by the cops a few weeks after Robin's murder. And suddenly, a light went on. He's wearing his clothing, still of course, and he's got a pair of work boots.

And these work boots, sure enough, I can see just enough from the pants being hiked up that I think, whoa, I wonder if these are the kind of work boots that have that big fat. I said, it couldn't be, couldn't be. Could it be the phone? Wallace rushed down to the evidence storage room and searched for the box with William Marshall's boots inside. And amazingly, after two decades, they were still there in a plastic container intact. And sure enough, when I pulled them out, one of the boots had the brown leather casing for that part of the boot that was so worn that the foam was missing from the casing.

Come on. When I'm sitting there looking at that shoe, I gotta tell you, there was a tingle for sure up the back of my neck. Wallace thought he had hit the jackpot. The foam from the KFC appeared to match the remaining foam in William Marshall's boot. Even the color and curvature looked identical. That foam, he thought, must have fallen from Marshall's boot. Even the color and curvature looked identical. That foam, he thought, must have fallen from Marshall's boot right at the scene of the murder. Wallace rushed the news to Assistant D.A. John Lewin. I could have looked at that foam for six years, those shoes, and I never would have put that together, ever.

But, you know, Jim saw it, and then we took it to the FBI. The FBI crime lab in Virginia, where the foam from Marshall's boot and the foam from the KFC would be compared to confirm they matched. It was obvious to the detective that they did. The test, really, was just a legal routine. No problem. I can remember getting the call from the FBI analyst because my expectation was she's going to tell us I have a match. And it was like a needle going through a balloon.

There was a problem. She was not willing to say, I can't say with any certainty this is from the same shoe because let's face it, one's got phthalates and one doesn't. Phthalates? What in the world are those? For one thing, they were certainly trouble for the case against William Marshall. Phthalates are substances used in plastics to make them more flexible and durable, in everything from plastic bags to containers. If that chemical turned up in the foam on Marshall's boots but not in the foam of the crime scene, wouldn't that exclude

Marshall as a suspect? The detective protested the phthalates must have gotten into the boots because they'd been stored in a plastic container all those years. But to the scientist, facts are facts. All she could say was those two bits of foam did not share the same chemical signature. To hear her say that, no, one's got phthalates and one doesn't, so I think unless you've got some way of explaining this, I'd have to exclude it. I've got to tell you, it was devastating. Not your best day. Not the best day. Because it really was the piece that we needed to do something more than we had from 1984.

And without the connection to that boot, I don't think we really had a case. Coming up, investigators make one last-ditch effort to talk to their suspect. They track him down, leading a surprising life. When Dateline continues. The San Jacinto Mountains, just two hours east of Los Angeles. Rugged, rural, isolated. The perfect place to get lost. It was there that William Marshall, suspect in the 1984 murder of Robin Hoynes, had settled. What was he doing way up there in the wilderness? He was a firefighter and worked his way up to fire captain at the station in 2000.

A fire captain with the California Department of Forestry, according to former Chief Dale Hutchinson. By the year 2003, Marshall had been there almost 15 years, lived quietly in a rustic community known as Mountain Center. People called him Bill, respected him, trusted him to keep them safe. Terry Quinn made friends with Marshall soon after he moved in. He was a very good person. He was very well respected. He fit in real well up here on the mountains.

Back in Torrance, the case detectives had revived after almost 20 years was not fitting together so well. They had hoped that key piece of evidence, the foam, would tie Marshall to that long-ago crime scene, but the lab wouldn't definitively back it up. Without some break, the case would stall again. What to do? Well, it was perhaps a long shot, but Deputy D.A. John Lewin had always figured that the alibi Marshall got from his old girlfriend, Yvonne Hargrove, was a little shaky. So he had an idea. What if detectives interviewed both Yvonne and Marshall on the very same day? Would they trip themselves up with divergent stories? Two teams went out the day that Mr. Marshall was contacted.

One team contacted him, and a second team went to Ohio and contacted her. Yvonne was living in Cleveland by then. And they say, we need to talk to you about something that happened 20 years ago. And my brain went, doop! And I'm like, okay. So they tell me they're reopening up the one about William and the KFC. They asked me, was he with you? I said, yes, the whole night.

All those years later, Yvonne insisted the story she told then and now was absolutely positively true. William Marshall's alibi remained rock solid. Meanwhile, 2,500 miles away, high in the mountains, detectives pulled up to William Marshall's house, not knowing what to expect. But for whatever reason, he was comfortable enough with us to

let us in. Things unfolded slowly. Marshall was cooperative and even-keeled, though in full denial of any guilt whatsoever. I had nothing to do with this. No, I wasn't there. Yes, he knocked on my door to say he opened up a chapter of my life that I thought I had closed.

Then Detective Wallace tried a different approach. They got talking about shoes. Why that distinctive wear pattern on the shoes police seized from Marshall back when he was first arrested after the murder of the KFC? He did explain to us that his pattern of shoe wear was such that he typically wore out his shoes in this fashion. He wouldn't untie his shoes to get them off. He'd just kind of kick them off. And that rubbing on the heel, constantly rubbing, coming out of the shoe, eventually wears his shoes. And he actually showed us several pairs

of shoes that had the exact same pattern of wear. Then detectives surprised Marshall. They revealed the existence of that strange piece of foam found at the crime scene. They told him one of the boots seized from him was so worn it was missing a piece of foam, and the remaining foam in the boot seemed to match it just about perfectly. The cops ask Marshall, can we take some pictures of those old worn-out shoes? But that's when Marshall put on the brakes. I had some very negative experiences with this case. I feel like I'm going down the viral and away here quake. I didn't have to speak to him. I didn't have to go into anything.

And with that, the interview was over. Interesting, sure, but usable evidence? Well, none, really. Back in Cleveland, it hadn't gone so well either, and the cops were wrapping up their meeting with Marshall's former girlfriend, Yvonne Hargrove, and then, just before they left, almost as an afterthought, she offered something, a strange story about William, about something he said when she picked him up from the police station

when he was first a suspect in Robin's murder. He's crying and he's saying, how am I going to get to heaven? How am I going to get to heaven? How am I going to get to heaven? How am I going to get to heaven? He just keeps saying this over and over and over. That's as far as she would offer. It sounds like this is a statement made by somebody who feared because he had done something. Intriguing, but not exactly incriminating. The cops needed more.

So Wallace returned to the fire captain's house, this time with a search warrant. When I got back the second time, he'd gotten rid of all the shoes. The closet was completely cleaned. All those shoes were missing. Now, interestingly, on the back porch, he left one pair of shoes, though, the one pair he didn't get rid of. And they had the same pattern of wear. So I did collect those as well. And we used those to demonstrate that William Marshall was somebody who would wear his shoes this way. More circumstantial evidence, but nothing definitively connecting William Marshall to the crime. That afterthought from Yvonne had been interesting, but really it might have meant nothing. And then, back in Cleveland after the visit from the cops, Yvonne got to doing a little soul-searching.

Coming up... I know what that thing was on the crime scene floor. What was it? And would she at long last tell the police? When Dateline continues... There it's at, that circumstantial cold case from the 1980s, so close to being filed, yet so close to being frozen on a shelf forever. D.A. John Lewin and Detective Jim Wallace needed something, anything, just one more piece of solid evidence so they could charge prime suspect William Marshall with Robin Hoyne's murder.

But what? Back in Cleveland, Ohio, after those detectives left, Yvonne Hargrove got to wrestling with her own soul. She started thinking back, deep into her past. How all those years earlier, William had given her a beating so severe, she thought he'd kill her. So she fled, and a cold fear set in. If she said anything, would he come after her, finish the job?

After all, she alone knew the story he told her when he said that time he might never get to heaven. Dangerous knowledge. I was thinking, what's going to happen to me. Because I know this now. Yes, yes. Does he realize he's put a time bomb in my hand? Why me? Yeah. My life could be in danger and I'm thinking what do I do with this? Of which I did contact an attorney. That attorney, all those years ago, told her to say nothing, stay out of the investigation.

So she did, buried it. But now, after that visit from the cops, the turmoil was back, gut-wrenching as ever. She needed fresh advice. One of the professors that I had was an attorney. I called him, and he said, when they asked you what happened 20 years ago, did you tell them the truth? I said, no, sir. I told them the same story that I told them 20 years ago, but it wasn't the truth. He said, you know, maybe you should tell the truth. So she picked up the phone and called the Torrance PD. And I said, I have something that you need to know. What happened 20 years ago with William being at my house was not true. He wasn't at my house that night. And now here it was, the awful secret she'd kept all those years. I said, the next thing is, he killed that lady,

and he did not get a dime. He did it. Yvonne was his confessor, and now she recited it all, every murderous moment of that night before Halloween at the KFC. Yvonne is a force and when she started going and it just sounded credible and then it was supported by the physical evidence we had which she knew nothing about. He did tell her that he went out and he went to a Kentucky Fried Chicken. He did tell her that he wanted to get the money that the employee allowed him in but had put the money in the drop box or someplace he couldn't get the money. He did tell her that he stabbed this victim. He did tell her that after he couldn't get the money, he cut the victim's throat.

But Yvonne wasn't finished coming clean. There was one more piece of business. The foam from the crime scene. She knew instantly what it was and how it got there. So did William Marshall, she said. I guess he looked at his shoes and all of them had the backs worn off. So, the most crucial moment of his life, that's when that little piece of foam

in the back of that boot popped out and was on the floor. The foam, the murder, the cover-up. Yvonne's 20-year secret was finally out. When you were telling him those things, what was going on in your tummy? A feeling of relief that I can finally get it out. I would think you'd be pretty darn nervous. I was, but I was tired.

I was tired of having that in my gut. I want to be normal again. I want my life back. And then in 2006, up in the San Jacinto Mountains, a delegation of policemen arrived at the fire station of the popular captain known as Bill. So I was totally surprised when I got the word that he'd been arrested, and then even more surprised when I heard what it was for. Even to this day. I find it hard to believe. Worried about the arrest, traveled fast to the Hoynes home. Very exciting. Relief.

It sounds terrible, but thrilling, because you know what? It was the beginning of the ball rolling that he is going to stay in prison for the rest of his life and never get out. The trial finally began in 2007, 23 years after Robin's murder.

William Marshall was now 46. He arrived in court each day carrying a Bible. His troubled youth, early drug addiction, brief rap sheet were decades behind him. This was a man who looked incapable of cold-blooded murder. He said nothing, just watched Prosecutor John Lewin make the case against him. William Marshall knew before he walked in to the restaurant that night, he knew that Robin knew him. So he knew that if he was going to do this crime, he was going to kill her. So this was just a heartless, horrific, unconscionable crime.

The motive? Drug money. Then eliminate the witness, said prosecutor John Lewin. Marshall had been arrested before Robin's murder for possession of PCP, a man who needed cash, who knew, he thought, where to get it. Then Yvonne Hargrove told her story, looked over at Marshall with his Bible, hadn't seen him in two decades. I wanted to walk over to him and say, you hurt me. You not only hurt this family, but you hurt me, but I wasn't allowed. So once I gave my testimony, I guess you could say it was a done deal.

Two days later, the jury agreed. They found William Marshall guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. I always knew he was going to pay for what he did, but I'm mean enough that I wanted to see him pay here on Earth. So I hope he lives to be 100, and he spends a lot of years in that little six-by-nine cell. Robin deserved to see justice. And, you know,

it's true that the trial didn't bring her back, but now Robin's murderer is accountable. And there was someone else who'd been worried about accountability. The woman who traded shifts with Robin on the day she was murdered. She'd believed all those years that the family blamed her for it. And now, finally, learned that she was wrong. I remember

her mom said something to me. That Robin was a nice person and that's why she changed hours with me. And she said, and I believe you're a nice person and that's why she changed hours with me and she said and I believe you're a nice person too and you would have done the same thing and that just that changed everything then because I thought you know she's right I would have I would have changed ours too how did it feel to be absolved by that family that day? They never, ever blamed me in any way. And for Yvonne Hargrove, the woman who in the end finally did the right thing,

did the Hoynes family harbor any resentment toward her for not coming forward so many years earlier? I can't remember if it was her older sister, but one of them looked at me and she gave me a little smile and that was enough to let me know I'm okay with them. They sent me a thank you card of their gratitude. It made me feel good. And I think about the young lady because I keep that in remembrance of her. And I'm so sorry that happened to her. Just a few hours after the trial, it was Halloween once again,

the always dreaded anniversary of Robin's death. But that year... My mom says, Halloween once again. The always dreaded anniversary of Robin's death. But that year... My mom says, well I guess we need to buy some Halloween candy. You know, that might not sound like very much to anyone, but that is like, huge. I, you know, and we did.

And you know, we do hand out candy now. And, um, just things that you can't even imagine change in ways that seem very small, but really are monumental. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, thanks for joining us.