True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 2: A Mom Murdered, A House Torched & 33 Years of Silence!

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

The fire was only the beginning. In Part 2 of True Crime with Kimbyr, the investigation into Joy Hibbs’ death takes a chilling turn. What first appeared to be a tragic house fire unravels into something far more sinister. Who had motive? What did investigators miss? And how did secrets stay hidden for decades? As timelines tighten and relationships come under scrutiny, this deep dive exposes the cracks beneath a picture-perfect life. After 33 long years, answers finally begin to surface—but will they bring justice, or more heartbreak? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now, I know it's probably not common for you to say those things, but there still are people that say, I'm going to kill you or I could just kill you. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th.

Tickets on sale now at Yamavah Theater, Notter.com, only at Yalava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. I don't know about the blowing up your house part. That seems really specific, like I mentioned. But at the very least, what they needed right now is to hear from Bob Atkins himself. From the beginning, they wanted to make it clear they didn't care about him dealing. But the threats?

That was concerning. They really wanted to know his version of what he was doing on April 19th of 1991. And finding him was really, really. easy. He wasn't some stranger who just vanished. He and his wife kept in touch with their former neighbors. Officers tracked them down to an apartment complex about 15 minutes away from Spencer Drive. It was close enough that even hearing that detail made them, you know, piqued their interest even more because they're like, okay, he doesn't live that far away, you know? And suddenly, I think it's like another little like pink flag that they put down, like, oh, it only takes

them about 15 minutes to drive to and from, maybe faster if you're in a rush. But when detective sat him down, he does not act like he's hiding anything. He kind of came in with an attitude of being irritated, which, you know, wasn't surprising considering they've already been told this guy's impatient. It was almost an inconvenience for him to be there. And he acted like they were blowing the whole thing out of proportion. He admitted right away, I did sell cannabis to joy, especially in the weeks before she died. Yes, I did. He didn't try to hide that part at all. And he even acknowledged they had argued about the quality. The Joy complained, asked for her money back, and Bob said, it wasn't serious.

It was just a misunderstanding with the fact is I could not give her her money back. I didn't have it. He was pissed. He let it be known. And that was it. But when detectives pressed him about what David had told them and what the neighbor had said that he had threatened both Joy and the neighbor with, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to blow your house up, Bob denied it flatly.

Like, flat out. He's like, no, I was mad, but I did not. say that. And he denied threatening to blow up the house. He denied that and he died having anything to do with the murder or the fire. Nothing to do with his death at all. He said that that argument was so small, there's no way to even put it in the same sentence as a murder. It was a small disagreement between friends. The detectives did what they always do in this moment. They ask him, well, fine. Remember, I told you in another case that I heard in the the Brian Walsh case very recently, one of the detectives say they don't doubt people. They actually

believe, but they verify. And that's what they were trying to do. So they're like, where were you on Friday, April 19th? And Bob doesn't hesitate. He's able to tell them exactly what he did that day. He told them him and his wife and his kids were nowhere near the neighborhood that day. They went on a trip. They left shortly before noon on Friday, drove to the Poconos, and they were there all weekend. He said this was a family trip. They stayed with their two kids in a lodge, and they can go verify it. They gave them the information, and detectives did check out his story, and it lined up. The detectives drove to the Poconos themselves.

They spoke with the employees, and the staff confirmed the Atkins family had paid for a room on April 19th. And I mean, you can't argue with an alibi that's pretty much on paper. And people love concrete things. Receipts, registries, confirmation from strangers in a uniform. And what I mean by that is, If it's like a friend clarifying where you were for your alibi or like your partner or your child, that doesn't hold as much weight as a hotel employee that has no connection with this case at all. But of course, the detectives want to ask, do you have any other things that can lock in your timeline?

And Bob added another detail that seemed to seal it. He told detectives, he received a phone call at their apartment. And when he gave them the time, it lined up with the time the murder. or would have been occurring, right? And this wasn't like small talk, he said. He got a call that was connected to his wife. Since they were leaving town, they had to let April's co-worker Tanya know she can't carpool with April because April wasn't going to be there.

So April and Tanya Goldley had two conversations that day from the apartment landline. It's not like a cell phone where it's bouncing off towers. They have a record of the call coming from a place where you have to stand to take said calls. One call was April alert. her work that she wasn't going to be coming in, and the other one was alerting her coworker, she wasn't going to be able to drive her. After the detectives were able to confirm

Bob and April's whereabouts and their alibis and everything was solid, they asked Bob a question that they asked many people because it gives them a direction to pursue depending on the answer. You might guess what this is, because I say it in most cases, they ask them to take a polygraph test, and I feel like a broken record, but we all know.

They're not reliable. They're not admissible in court. they're really just for detectives to use them to gauge somebody's demeanor, whether they're willing to take it or not, mean something to them. And Bob said, he didn't think it would be worth it. The reason being he had carpal tunnel and a damaged nerve, and these were conditions that would skew the results. He was also on some kind of medication

that made him like anxious or his heart rate go up or something. So detectives didn't want to force him into doing it right, but the refusal like that, they're definitely noted in the book. They're tucked away as just like another, pinkish red flag. But they can't hold Bob on anything. He's free to go. And that is when everything shifted to the Monte Carlo.

Because remember, neighbors hadn't just described a car. They described a dark blue 1980s-era Chevy Monte Carlo parked oddly outside the Hibbs home. During the window, when detectives believed that Joy was killed. So investigators want to know, does Bob have this same car? So the next person in the interview was a teenager

named Colleen Kelly. now she's a neighbor and also one of Angie's friends. Colleen had seen the Monte Carlo on the day of the murder. She passed it twice. She remembered it clearly. She drove past it around 1240 the first time and again on her way out at 105 p.m. And she said the car was still there.

Detectives do something a little risky at the time, but they take this teenager in their car and I'm thinking, where are her parents at this point? I don't know, but maybe they had consent. They take her in a police vehicle and they drive this. to Bob's apartment complex. And in the parking lot was in 1987 black, not dark blue, black Monte Carlo, registered to Bob and April Atkins.

And that's the car that police show Colleen. She looks over and she goes, no, she wasn't hesitant at all. It wasn't like she was just not sure, no, no, it was a flat out, no. That is not the car I saw outside the hood's home. Color is wrong, the wheels are wrong, it's not the car. She said she's 100% certain. So now there's a problem. If Colleen's right, then the Monte Carlo outside of the Hibs home wasn't Bob's Monte Carlo.

They don't have a plate. They don't have a driver. They don't have any physical evidence tying Bob to the scene. So the Monte Carlo detail, it stuck out, but it was frustrating. It's just one of those things that can't be proven. It's very frustrating. They can't get a warrant. They can't get a path forward.

And they were expecting that that would all line up and be a smoking gun. You know, the so-called threats, the anger that Bob possessed. They were expecting a match, and then the case just stalled again. And it was like their potential suspect list kept shrinking and shrinking. So that is when they have to do something that they do at this point.

They go inward. You know, it's a circle, and it's always the people that are closest to the victim. But now that they've gone, out of the circle, they have to work towards the inside again, meaning towards family. And it was something that nobody wanted to hear. These children were already holding on by a thread, but they were going to start looking at someone who lived with joy, her own husband.

After all, he was the one giving all these clues and tips. He was the one giving Bob's name, talking about the Monty Carlo, providing leads to detectives, but could it be deflection? De Angie and David, even hearing something like that, it's like grief hit them all over again. Because, yes, their dad actually had a temper sometimes. He raised his voice. He did have, you know, expressions of irritation,

but was he violent? No. Those children knew, without a shadow of a doubt, the only person who adore joy, as much as they did, was their father. Their whole family identity was built around their parents being perfect for one another, in love, that they loved each other so, so much.

So even thinking that their father could do this, it was so shocking. It was beyond that. But of course, detectives don't operate on family feelings. They're operating on what they can prove. And they thought, if David was keeping secrets for his mother, because Joy asked him to, what kind of other secrets was she keeping from her own husband?

They wondered. Charlie was once again in that interview room at the police station, but this time, they were pressing him harder. They were asking him questions not in a gentle and sympathetic way. No, they were asking, were you having an affair?

Was joy? Did you owe money? Were the financial problems? Did you ever put your hands on her? They asked everything about their marriage, the stress, the fights. Were there any cracks showing? Because in their minds,

the brutality of that attack felt very personal. I mean, a stabbing attack in of itself, they always say you're up close and personal with someone. mean you have to be related to them, but there is some kind of rage in that kind of killing. And Charlie was so wrecked. He kept breaking down in this interview. He was crying. He was trembling. These detectives were asking him to relive the worst day of his life and to defend himself,

to prove that he didn't do this all the while he's grieving. And the children were interviewed as well. Even with everything they were going through, they needed to know, did you ever see anything get out of control. Did Charlie ever get violent? It rattled Angie so badly. It actually made her doubt her own father, just for a moment. And that thought alone horrified her because deep down, of course, she didn't believe it, but she was living with him. Can you imagine? It's just like you, you kind of let it cross your mind. But to Angie, she always had this truth in her that she knew in her heart. This was not something that came from inside this family, that her mom was murdered by someone outside of this house.

And of course, Charlie was talking to all of his friends and his family members about why they were targeting him. His explanation was, it was the way he looked, the long hair, the beard, the tattoos, the motorcycle, the fact that he rode with a biker group called a bait, which was described by him as a charity-based riding group, not a criminal riding group. But he felt like the detectives just saw him as a biker dude.

And they had all their own assumptions about him, but still, he refused to, like, that bother him. He showed up. He talked. He didn't disappear and he didn't lawyer up. He cooperated fully. He did things that other people wouldn't do. He took polygraph after polygraph. He took three of them. And he repeated his timeline again and again. He was working at a construction job in downtown Philadelphia 20 miles from his home. He'd been on that job site since 6.30 that morning with all of his coworkers. And when he heard that his house was on fire, he raised home. And when he arrived, People actually saw him collapse, hysterical, devastated, inconsolable.

This guy wasn't the killer, and he was trying to prove that. And eventually, detectives corroborated everything. Co-workers confirmed that Charlie had never left that job site downtown until he left after learning about the fire. All three polygraphs said he was being truthful. So now I was thinking, couldn't they have confirmed all of that before breaking this poor man down? But they have to do that.

They have their ways. Detectives examined everything anyway. including the couple's finances, homeowners insurance policy on the house, and they determined that nothing suggested that this would be a motive, that it wasn't a financial motive with a husband and a wife,

like life insurance and things like that. So Charlie was cleared in practice, but he wasn't in the minds of everyone around. When you're investigated for your wife's murder, even when you're cleared, the damage is already done. People already know. People would look at him with suspicion.

He couldn't go anywhere. without someone whispering, like, I think he might have killed his wife. But what was so hard for this family to think about is while they're being questioned, the killer had time, time to settle their own story, time to blend back into normal life, time to get away, to disappear. And it felt like such a waste of time. And by July of that year of 1991, Charlie tried to do the only thing he could think of that might force the case to move forward. He offered a $5,000 reward for information,

and by then, the fire had destroyed nearly every picture this family owned. And I saw one of their albums scattered around the house with some of the remnants of those pages in the kitchen. They were just blurred and melted into just smears of paint. It was so heartbreaking. So relatives and friends, they gathered what they could from birthdays, snapshots from school portraits

and candid pictures. and they brought them all to Charlie, Angie, and David. It's like they were returning a piece of their life that these flames had stolen away from them. And they knew they could never get joy back. But at least they could have their memories. They could hold onto them again and look at them. Look at all the good times they've had.

And at this point, Charlie's trying to regain control over anything that he could. And that's when he made the decision. He cut his long hair, he shaved off his beard, and he explained, I want to look more decent, not because he was ashamed of who he was, but because he didn't want his appearance to distract from what mattered, and that was them investigating Joy's murder in a different direction, and his children.

He wanted the truth. Even though I hate to say this, but it actually made him look more suspicious at this point because this was not too far after what happened. So now people are thinking, well, why are you changing your looks? Charlie didn't care. Right now, his focus was. on the house and his children. Now, they did have to stay in an apartment for a while, but Charlie wanted to rebuild that house. First of all, because they couldn't afford to move anywhere else,

and because Charlie was in construction. So his construction company gave him pay time off so he could actually work on repairs. And close friends started to help him out. And then something really magical happened. And I felt like this was like the modern day go fund me. I mean, they didn't have go fund me in 1991. So what I'm saying, is all of his biker friends, they started showing up one after the other. There were carpenters, roofers, HVAC, electricians, and plumbers, and they came donating their time to help rebuild this house piece by piece. And to me, that was just so inspiring. I mean, they came out. They put their sweat equity into this. These men, who often were judged by their looks the same way that

Charlie was, they were quietly doing the kind of work that makes headlines, but also holds up this grieving family when they're about to literally fall apart. But it was during that cleanup. When Charlie, he's sorting through with a fire left behind and he finds something else and he stops. He's frozen. He looks at it in a coat closet near the front door. He comes across a piece of fabric. It's black and white flannel material and it looks like it has dried blood on it.

Right away, this pattern is familiar in his mind and it made his stomach drop. He believed that he had seen April Atkins wearing a shirt with a flannel pattern just like it. But again, I just want to point this out. It's kind of like Captain Obvious, but this is 1991. A flannel in the 90s? Even right now, I have a black and white flannel outfit. Almost everyone had something like that in their closet. But Charlie, he wasn't going to hesitate. He did not talk himself out of showing this to police.

He called them immediately. And detectives collected that piece of fabric, and he said, send it to the FBI for testing because you never know. And for the first time in a long time, Charlie felt like he finally had something tangible, something in his hand that he could physically turn over, give to the FBI and get an answer. But when the envelope came back from the FBI, it really didn't look like it was going to provide anything. It was so thin. It was too thin, he thought, for it to carry any weight. And he was right. The result he got back on that scrap, black and white flannel, it didn't have anything significant on it.

No DNA, no blood typing, no clear result that could be held up in a courtroom. Nothing. But it doesn't mean there couldn't have been and the fire could have destroyed it. Could there have been something on that fabric? The truth was, there was a problem. The fire had erased what investigators usually lean on. Extreme heat and thousands of gallons of water wipes out the kind of evidence that tells you you what was in a room and what happened in what order. I know in these deep dives, I like to tell you

everything I found and I can't choose what to leave out sometimes, but I also wanted to tell you what Charlie had said to reporters. He told them he doesn't believe in God anymore because he said, if there was a God, this wouldn't have happened. She never hurt anyone in her life. And then he added the kind of detail that only a real spouse would mention because it was so human. She had me on a diet. she had me not smoking. And then, like, he was confessing how numb he had become, he said, now I'll die tomorrow, and I don't care. It doesn't bother me.

I'm concerned about my children. And that was the thing. That was the one thing he could still hold on to because in the aftermath, he realized something joy had always quietly handled without any praise. Everything. And isn't that the truth?

So many of us are like super moms handling it all without anyone truly knowing everything we do. He couldn't believe it. Joy was the household organizer, the keeper of routines, the one who made sure the bills were paid, the details wouldn't fall through the cracks. And after she was gone, Charlie just had this disorienting reality feeling because basic life task felt very unfamiliar to him. He didn't know how to write a check. He didn't know how to pay the bills. Life without joy there. It wasn't just heartbreaking. It was like, Everything changed overnight for him. And the kids, they weren't handling things very well either.

Teens are already rebellious by nature. They test boundaries, they experiment with attitudes, and hormonal changes are happening. And on top of all that, they lost their mom. So Angie and Charlie, they just start clashing constantly. They were once very close. They had that father-daughter connection, and it started to crack.

And after about a year and a half, Charlie just made another decision. He couldn't live in that house anymore. The structure could be repaired, but the atmosphere inside, it just couldn't. So we ended up selling the Spencer Drive home. And in 1993, he and the kids moved to Montgomery County. I don't have to tell you this.

But Joy's case had gone cold. I mean, I just told you 1993. And after that move, Charlie would call detectives for updates over and over, begging for, for movement, anything. And eventually, one detective told him very bluntly, cases without progress often went on the shelf. Okay, on the shelf is in air quotes.

And that's really sad. That it is just sitting there collecting dust. And years past, life moved forward. David went off to college in New York City, and later he moved to Oregon and built a career as a nurse practitioner. He was trying to create a life that wasn't going to be defined by his mom being murdered. Angie got married, she had a family, she worked in industrial safety, often saying that the hardest part of motherhood was actually doing it without her own mom by her side. Holidays, birthdays, all those milestones, there was always an empty space where joy should have been.

Then, in 2006, yes, we're going to 2006, David was back in the area for a medical conference and he did something that makes so much sense when you've lived with unanswered questions long enough. He walked right into the Bristol Township Police Department in person, and he asked, can my mom's case file be forwarded to the V-Doc Society, the Pennsylvania-based group that reviews very difficult cold cases. Now, this man wasn't trying to pick a fight. He's trying to get help for his mom's case, but he gets resistance. The detective was actually kind of cold to him. And this conversation was very tense, and David wondered why.

he got angry, his temper rose, he said, because this wasn't a file to him. It was his mother. That's all they had left is the answers. He wanted answers. And then the detective did something really unsettling that really upset David. He told him that the detectives believed all along his father, Charlie, had done it. Really? Because we're back at Charlie again. But in that one sentence, 15 years of uncertainty, David's certainty about who his father was, cracked. He was forced to think about it because he was thinking, when the detectives say something like that, you can't help but wonder, do they know something that I don't? Now they've introduced doubt. And that doesn't just disappear. And unfortunately, it caused an estrangement between David and his

father. It made it very hard for him to be close to him unless he knew 100% for a fact that his father wasn't involved. Can you imagine what that was like for Charlie? It was painful. Both of his children had been pulled away from him. Their whole family had been torn apart. Even more. Charlie remained in Pennsylvania until 2012.

2012 I'm going to, okay? Jumping from the 90s, the early 2000s into 2012. And that is when Charlie finally retired. The following year, after his father passed, he moved to Washington State to be even closer to his mother. And even across the country, even decades later, that grief of losing his wife stayed with him. And the Hibbs family made a rule without even calling it a real rule.

They wouldn't let even, you know, a couple years pass, and I still think that's a lot without checking in. Every so often somebody would call, and they were hoping. And when I say call, I mean to the police. Every two years or so, they would check in. and they would ask the same question, hoping there would be a different answer, that they would hear more than, you know, the case is active

because they would always hear that, but there was still no movement. Same answer, so frustrating, nothing was being done. And now I'm going to jump a couple years later to 2014, because there was truly nothing to report until then. David had hit a point where he couldn't be quiet anymore about his mother's case. He agreed to do an interview with the Huffington Post,

and he publicly accused the Bristol Township Police Department of mishandling the investigation from the very beginning. He was angry. But it was desperation, and that timing mattered, because Bucks County had just started a new effort to re-examine cold cases. Now, David's interview did not create this moment, but it hit at exactly the right time to get Joy's case back into the spotlight. And that is how Detective Mike Slaughter enters the story. story, and yes, you heard that correctly, Slaughter. A homicide detective named Detective Slaughter.

He didn't get a sign in the case like routine paperwork, though. He actually requested it. Detective Slaughter had been on the force for 17 years. So we knew something. The longer a case sits, the more people start treating it like a relic instead of a responsibility. But when Joy's case crossed his desk, it bothered him. From the beginning, something about it didn't feel cold. It felt unfinished. And I really like that. I was like, I really like this detective. And I was like, I'm ready because I just knew. I was like, he's starting to do what an investigator should have done from the beginning. Because when he starts looking through, he's expecting organization. He's expecting things checked off. He's expecting to see what has been done. And what he found, he called disturbing.

There were very few recorded interviews. Notes were scattered. Some were handwritten. Some were typed. Some weren't even legible. Major investigative steps were either missing entirely or they were never documented in a way that could be verified. It wasn't just old? This file was incomplete and that's really, really bad. You know back in school when your teacher would tell you

in math class to show your work? Well, it was the same here, except they didn't. It was like someone tried to solve this case but not leave behind a map of how they were doing it. it. Like, why was it cold? Detective Slaughter tried reaching out through the original investigators because he wanted clarification. He was hoping that someone was going to like fill in the missing pieces, but instead, crickets. Complete silence. People who wanted nothing to do with talking about this case. And if you're a detective and you're staring at a homicide file and the people who

are working on it don't want to discuss it, not even casually, that's not just retirement distance. It's avoidance. There was a reason. So if you're a detective, what's going to happen? You're going to get more interested in it. So he did the only thing he could do. He started over from the beginning. Not from 1991 evidence because the fire doesn't preserve much for you, but from the people who lived the case. And obviously that started with the Hibbs family, Charlie Hibbs first. Now, I have to say, it was probably exhausting having to be questioned again. But it had been so many years, and still, it was so hurtful to relive those moments. But it was a really exciting moment that this case was back in a detective's hand again.

Detective Slaughter made Charlie start from the very beginning and go over everything that he had ever told investigators. He even asked questions in three different ways. He pressed him, and still nothing changed. He told him. He went to work. He didn't leave during the time the joy was killed. and he finally left when he heard that his house was on fire. And at this point, and this point only,

Charlie Hibbs was completely cleared. Completely. And then Detective Slaughter kept just clearing people until he came right back, can you guess who? To Bob Atkins. Bob had always been listed as a person of interest, but never changed. In the original investigation,

he didn't go to a second. suspect. He wasn't treated it as a priority. And I think you know why. We got the alibis. He went on vacation. His wife and kids. We know the story, the calls. But by 2014, Bob and April, they had been divorced. And that's when Detective Slaughter thought of something. And you probably know this. A divorce. It can open people up. They can say things they might not have wanted to share before. So he was hoping that distance, time, separation and the fact that, you know, April's no longer living with Bob, no longer with Bob, maybe she would talk and maybe she could provide something she didn't back then. So he decided to surprise her with a little visit, and she was actually

willing to sit down and talk. April told him the same story, though, the same one that was in the file for years. She and Bob left for the Poconos around noon on April 19th. They checked into their hotel. They stayed the weekend. But when Slaughter was listening, you know, detectives aren't just hearing the words. They're listening to your tone. And there was something that really bothered him about the way she was delivering the information. And what he found is that it was so precise.

It wasn't conversational. It was just so fact-based, like this, this, this, like a list. Almost like she was reading something. And then he wondered, why that day? Why did they go away that day? Was this a planned vacation? Because it seemed like pretty impromptu to just go away. And it wasn't planned.

And Slaughter had a lot of experience. He just felt like everything April was saying was rehearsed. It wasn't like she was recalling her day naturally. And then she said something really concerning. She told him that in all the years since Joy's murder, not one detective, not one police officer from the Bristol Township Department had ever spoken to her. Not in 1991 and no time afterward. And if that was true, it meant that even the most basic steps in this investigation never even happened.

So two days later, Detective Slaughter is at Bob's door. And he still had the same energy, the same demeanor, that his neighbors on Spencer Drive remembered, tightly coiled, defensive, impatient. And it was in this way that made you feel like, you know, you had to walk on eggshells. You had to measure every word you used around him because he was just so annoying. Like, he would get annoyed and want to storm out. And everything was like on his terms. But he acknowledged the cannabis dispute as he did before. And he dismissed it just like he had from the beginning. He denied threatening joy. And when Detective Slaughter asked him where he was on April, 19th, 1991, Bob gave the same exact alibi that he'd given decades ago.

Home until noon, phone to April's work and to a coworker Tanya, and then the Poconos trip. And after he talks to Bob about all this, Detective Slaughter goes to verify all the details, and he wondered, had anyone done this before? And sure, we already heard. Detectives went to the hotel. They confirmed that the Atkins had been there. But Detective Slaughter wondered, Where is the notes? Where are the photocopies of the hotel registry? Where are the receipts with times? Because guess what?

They weren't in the files. But the good news is this hotel transferred everything from the past over to digital and the hotel registry showed that April did not sign in until 4.53 p.m. Now that did not match the version that they left around noon, drove up like it was this simple family getaway, that drive was about 90 minutes. It's not the kind of trip that explains this huge gap between the murder window and the check-in time. That's now suspicious. And then Detective Slaughter went after those phone calls. Remember that detail that Bob leaned into saying, well, this will show that I was home because I have a landline. Well, he traced the number back to April's

co-worker Tanya, you know, the woman that April carpooled with sometimes. She said she did remember speaking with Bob on that day, on the day of the murder, but the timing she described didn't support the alibi the way Bob wanted it to. She said the call happened somewhere between 1 o'clock and 1.30 p.m. And you know what I was thinking? So many years have gone by. How could she have possibly remembered this? I can't even recall what time I ate breakfast yesterday, let alone a specific time of a phone call from, I don't know, 23 years ago. But if she was right, the clock in David's room, stopped at 1254. Joy would have been already dead when Bob made that phone call. The drive from the Hibs home to the Atkins was about 15 minutes. And the call that April made to

her boss let him know that she wasn't going to make it at work that day. That was at 2.15 p.m. Well after Joy had been killed. Now, that's three alibi times that don't make sense for Bob. The call that had once supported Bob's alibi now suggested the opposite. There was plenty of time for him to have committed the murder and returned home before answering the phone. But then Bob casually offers another piece of information that made Detective Slaughter even more suspicious of literally this entire investigation. Because Bob says, oh, in 1991,

I was actually working as a confidential informant for the Bristol Township Narcotics Unit, as in the same police department that was working Joy's case. Bob admitted he was also using. He was using meth and he was also using cannabis and he was helping others obtain these substances. But he said, oh, I wasn't a dealer. I was just helping the police.

I don't know if you can see where Slaughter's mind went, but it was in that moment that Joy's case stopped feeling like a case that simply went cold and it started feeling like a case that was kept cold on purpose. And why was he thinking that? Well, when a police department has a conflict of interest, that's a problem. Because if Bob Atkins had relationships inside the department, relationships that benefited

this narcotics unit, then the question became unavoidable. Did that relationship influence how seriously investigators were allowed to treat him in 1991? Because if he was valuable to them, then they might not want to ruffle any feathers. And Detective Slaughter wasn't going to let it go. He dug even deeper. And by December of 2015, he confirmed through an officer at Bristol Township, Officer Tommy Mills, that Bob had been an informant. He purchased substances for the narcotics unit and worked with a handler. And that handler was Detective Al Islack.

I know this is a lot of names. You don't have to remember them. The fact of the matter is, this officer described going with Islack to Bob's apartment two days. after Joy's murder to tell him, hey, Bob, your name came up in this murder investigation. You need to go ahead and contact homicide. Well, guess what? Bob doesn't let them inside the house.

He wouldn't even shake their hand. He claimed his arm and his hand were paralyzed. This was something similar that he later told why he couldn't take the polygraph. Remember, you said he had like carpal tunnel? But here's the significant detail. Officer Mills notices. a dark-colored, late 1970s, maybe 80s,

Monte Carlo parked in the lot. And Bob told them that April's coworkers could confirm, oh, I was home, all the things we've already heard. But through further digging, a detective admitted that back in 1991 he tried to pursue Bob Atkins as a suspect, but was directly ordered by his superiors to, quote, stay away from Atkins, unquote. The reason wasn't lack of evidence.

It wasn't because they cleared him. It was something else that's probably gonna make you mad because I know that I was so upset when I heard this, and it was the way the Detective Slaughter put it. He said, it was because drug information is very valuable. You never trade a homicide case for it. Do you know what that means?

It means that Joy lost her chance of justice because of an internal decision behind closed doors of the same department who promised to find her killer. Her case, her life wasn't as important as ongoing information on dealers and things that could get them higher in the ranks because they were able to solve all these rings

that were happening in the narcotics unit. Slaughter believed that Bob Atkins and possibly even his wife, April, were actually responsible for Joy's murder. People that she called friends. But as we know, a belief is not an arrest, it's not a conviction, But he forwarded everything he collected to the district attorney's office, and he was hoping that they were going to see what he was seeing.

But not long after that, something else happened. On September 11th of 2016, April Atkins herself walked right into the Bristol Township Police Department holding Detective Slaughter's business card that he handed her two years before this. She said she was finally ready to talk. She had kept that little business card in her purse for two years, and she said she would pull it out, she would put it back inside, she would pull it out, she would argue with herself in silence

about whether she should come forward. So you already know, you already know she's been hiding something. They meet for an interview, and she doesn't jump right to Joy Hibbs. She starts way further back. She talks about how her and Bob met. They were in high school together. She was shy.

She was shy. She was bullied. She was desperate for attention and for someone to make her feel safe. And Bob was that person. But she admits that safety didn't last. April described Bob as controlling, violent, and unpredictable. She said she found out he was using meth and steroids in addition to smoking and selling weed. And he had a temper. He had rage. He was dangerous and uncontrollable. The kind of man who didn't need to say I'm dangerous because your body learned it through repetition. And I think you understand what I'm saying. This poor woman was in not just a toxic relationship, but this was a domestic situation. And I think you know what I mean without me having to spell it out. She said she lived

according to his moods, trying to anticipate what version of him she was going to get, whether she would set him off or not. And then she finally took a deep breath and she was like, okay, I'm finally here to talk about what I came here for. She told him that on the day Joy Hibbs was murdered, on Friday, April 19th of 1991, she'd been getting ready for her shift at the school she worked for for students with special needs. It was in late morning when Bob walks through the door

and he wasn't just agitated, he wasn't just worked up. April said he was covered in blood. And she told Detective Slaughter, she froze. Her brain couldn't even attach meaning to what her eyes were seeing at that moment. And before she could even ask, before she even had a chance to question him, Bob looked straight at her and he said, I stabbed someone and I lit a house on fire and he said it just like that. Not something happened, not I need help. It was just this blunt sentence dropped into the middle of their normal morning routine.

Like it was nothing. It was just like, hey, this is what happened today. Then April says, he doesn't explain anything. He doesn't sit her down. He doesn't give her details, but he gives her orders. He says, call out of work, pack the kids, get in the car. And wow. I feel like you probably knew this all along,

or maybe, you know, at least you were hinting at it from all the clues, but their children were only one and four years old at the time. And April tells the detective she obeyed because she was terrified. You know, look what he just said he did. And she might be next if she hesitated. She said, Bob threw his clothes into the wash. He showered and then rushed them out the door. He drove so fast she thought their car was going to flip.

And the whole time, she felt like one wrong word could turn that violence onto her. I don't blame her at all. But I do question why so many years went by, but she's not done. She said they did drive to the Poconos. And at the lodge, they checked in under April's name. And they stay until Sunday. She talks about the next morning, and one detail stuck out so much. It just felt like evidence all by itself.

She said that Bob had brand new shoes on, and she watched him carry a bag behind the hotel towards a wooded area, and when he came back, the bag was gone. April believed, and obviously so did the detectives at this point, he disposed of evidence, bloody clothing, shoes, anything that connected him to what he done. When they returned home from the Poconos on Sunday, April said police were everywhere. And detectives came to the door to question Bob. But she stayed quiet. She told Detective Slaughter, she stayed quiet because she understood Bob's threats in a way that nobody else did unless you

lived with him like she did. He always carried a knife. And he would tap the pocket where he kept it when he wanted to intimidate her. It was like a reminder that he needed to He didn't even need to raise his voice. He didn't even need to speak a word to make her obey. She knew exactly what that little gesture meant. And April admitted something else that made Detective Slaughter's earlier interview with her snapped right into focus, and it was like in this very sickening way. She said she had tried cautiously in the months after Joy's death

to convince Bob to do the right thing. And every time she tried, he would physically harm her. And worse, he told her, if I was, ever get arrested, I'm going to blame you for Joy's murder. So that's when, in 2014, when he was speaking April for the first time, she wasn't actually speaking freely. He was right. She was reciting. She told Detective Slaughter, she repeated exactly what Bob instructed her to say, all the way back those years when they left to go to that hotel and they checked in. Those were the same words that she repeated in her head for all of those years.

It was true. That wasn't her memory. It was his script. So why is she coming forward now? Why is she walking into the station on September 11th of 2016? Years of silence. It's because something happened.

She recently lost a man that she really loved. He was very special to her. He treated her with kindness. And this was right after her mother had passed away and also her niece. So that lost. that she felt, she couldn't live a lie anymore. That grief did something to her for the very first time.

She truly understood what Charlie Hibbs had lived with. She said, I can't carry a lie anymore. And at the end of that interview, Detective Slaughter thanked her for coming forward. He walked her out. And then he took that recording. He labeled it urgent and he sent it straight to the DA's office. And I know what you're expecting. Oh my gosh, they're going to arrest him.

The case is going to go to trial. No. Nothing happened. There was no arrest, no public movement, no explanation. It was literally silence. And can you believe another five years goes by? And this family still doesn't even know that they were so close to an inside confession. And it's sitting in a file since 2016. I mean, this family just assumed everything was stalled. They didn't know about April coming forward. Charlie was living across the country by then, and he believed the investigation had literally gone ice cold. They kept living inside the same pattern

that they were stuck in for decades. They would call for updates. It would hear the same words. And now it was 2021. We've already experienced a pandemic, the new normal. Even that was still lingering by the time Charlie decided he was going to do something. He's 66 years old.

He's retired. He's across the country. country from the street he used to live on where Joy's life ended. And he thought about her every day. And on the 30th anniversary of her death, 30 years to the day, Friday, April 19th, Charlie did something that wasn't small and it wasn't easy. He emptied his entire retirement savings and he posted $25,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. At that point, the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed him. And by June, that money was double. People came forward. The media got more attention to the point where People magazine got interested in Joy's case.

And in November of that year in 2021, they reached out to Charlie and they offered to do a segment on Joy's murder. They needed to interview people close to the case because of that, and journalists were reaching out to everyone, including the Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintrop and the rest of the Hibbs family. And that's when the DA decides he's going to take a closer look at this case. He assigns a new lead detective, David Hanks, and the first thing he does is call April, because why not? You're looking in the case file from 2016

and you're thinking, that's basically an inside confession. He asked her to do something, though, to make a recorded phone call to her ex-husband Bob. They wanted to be able to capture his own words in real time without him knowing exactly what was being built around him. And April agreed. This wasn't just a phone call.

You have to remember this. This was possibly upsetting a man that she knew was violent, and she was hoping that she would be protected by this detective and his team. It's December 2021. Detective Hanks brings April to a hotel room so that it can be safely recorded. And what a moment. Quiet under these fluorescent hotel lights, people speaking softly, all this equipment being set up, and her dialing a number that she wanted to forget. She never wanted to dial Bob's number again. He picks up. April tells him the truth, sort of,

that detectives had been asking her about Joy Hibbs. And she asked him, what do you want me to say? It's pretty smart, right? Like, hey, how to get it out of him. But Bob doesn't respond with confusion. He doesn't reply with sympathy. He responds like a man immediately calculating his risk. He says, I don't know what you're talking about.

I had an alibi. You know your coworker friend called that day. I answered the phone. I couldn't be in two places at once. But then in almost the same breath, he almost is warning her by saying, you already said effing enough. Don't say anything.

You do realize your phone is probably tapped, yeah? That sentence matters. It tells you Bob wasn't just reacting. He was aware. He was thinking about surveillance. He was thinking about being recorded. He was thinking about how this could come back on him. Because why would he be concerned

with a recorded line if he wasn't lying. I know we've been going for a long time. I definitely want to tell you what happens because this case still, it's still wild. There's still things to come. A month later in January of 2022, the Bucks County District Attorney, they convene a grand jury to reexamine Joy's case.

And when David Hibbs was notified, he couldn't believe it. It actually made him physically ill because there was so many emotions. Finally, though, this grand jury means these stakes are. real. It means people are going to go on record. It means someone is about to decide whether this can become an arrest or whether it's going to be another dead end. A lot of people

testified, especially April under oath, repeated everything, that it wasn't a shared memory between spouses. It was a script. She reiterated everything her husband at the time told her to say. And afterward in February, Bob did what he always resorted to in the past. intimidation. He sent April a screenshot of her roommate's Facebook page with the message, you better choose your friends better. So what he was insinuating is that her roommate alerted him to the fact she was cooperating with detectives. Now, Charlie also testified before the grand jury. And this is when he learned by listening to April's testimony that she had already come forward years before in 2016 and admitted that she knew that Bob had murdered Joy

and nothing was done about it. Charlie also learned in that moment that his son David had kept Joy's secret for years and years. That secret, remember? About Bob being filled with rage and threatening her over the phone before the vandalism started.

He kept his mom's secret even after he told detectives all of that time. Charlie also learned the full extent to which the Bristol Township Police let things go. An entire website was made by the Hibbs family, Justice for Joy. It chronicled her life, her family, and her tragic death, and it included news articles, press releases.

A lot of things that I found there were very, very important for this case and for this story I'm telling you. And anything that could possibly lead to an arrest. And finally, on May 25th of 2022, Robert Atkins, Bob, 56 years old, was arrested for first-degree murder, arson, and robbery. 31 years after Joy was murdered. I found that 44-page criminal complaint arrest warrant, and this was on that website made by Joy's family.

It was submitted by Detective Slaughter and Detective David Hanks. And inside, I found out that even Bob Atkins, his own adult son, Gabriel, testified before the grand jury saying that he remembers detectives coming to his door in April of 2022, and his dad turned to him and said, I'm afraid I'm going to get arrested for something that happened a long time ago. And Bob gave his son a story about how it was 30 years ago and involved a lady who was a biker chick. And she died in a fire and was stabbed.

And he was somehow involved in some way. Even though Gabriel pressed him for more, he said, his father only admitted that he might have done it. I mean, I think that's saying enough. In the arrest warrant, I found out that the black Monte Carlo was at one point painted a shiny blue color. Interesting. I mean, I really don't think they need any more.

When he appeared for his arraignment, Bob told the judge he's disabled, unemployed, and living with his son and had prior arrests, but no convictions. And I was thinking, like that made him look any better. While all that tension was boiling publicly, something was actually happening in the background. Something detectives could not manufacture

or force with a subpoena. It came from the place that sometimes hold the ugliest truth. Family. After Bob's Atkins' arrest, members of his extended family living out of state reached out to the DA's office and they had something investigators needed to know.

Something buried so deep in Bob's past. And it suddenly mattered a lot more. Now that his name was attached to a murder case, they told detectives about an incident from when Bob was only 15 years old. He was sent to live with his grandparents in rural Tennessee. And not long after he arrived,

He violently attacked his 35-year-old aunt, his father-sister. She was a widow, living inside a mobile home, and according to what was later described, she was found strangled with a telephone cord. Her ribs were crushed from being stomped on. Her body was wrapped in a rug. Her pants had been pulled down, and to this day, it's unclear whether she had been violated.

Bob had stolen her car and fled, and he was eventually located near the high school and arrested by his own grandfather. who was a constable. Now, luckily, his aunt survived, and it was unbelievable, she forgave him. And she later died in 2016. Now, on its own, that history is horrifying,

especially with the parallels between Joy's case and his aunts, the cord, the crushed ribs, the sudden escalation of violence. But the family wasn't calling just to tell a dark story. They were calling because of what came next. They told investigators, than 19 days before Joy was murdered on Friday, April 19th, there was a family get-together an Easter visit to Tennessee,

and Bob had gone to see the same aunt. And in photographs taken during this visit, pictures that family had in albums for decades, there was one detail that was so important. A dark blue Monty Carlo was parked right outside this aunt's home, Blue Monty Carlo. I told you. It was painted blue at one point.

The same make, the same color, the multiple neighbors had reported seeing outside of Joy's home during the window that Joy was believed to have been killed. I mean, it all fits together. Sometimes it frustrates me so much because I'm like, had investigators done a lot of this differently and not dismiss this man because he was an informant and focused more on the fact that this car had been painted?

This would have been solved so long ago. In 2023, Bob Atkins' stepmother, Barbara, testified at a preliminary hearing. She was 81 years old, but that didn't stop her. She wasn't trying to be dramatic. She was finally saying what families tried to hide because it's embarrassing or complicated or too hard to explain. We all have something like that going on, but this, this was a lot. She and Bob's father had struggled with Bob's behavior since before they were even married.

She described him as having a short fuse. We already knew that. And she said that one month before their 1978 wedding, she and Bob's father were summoned to the court because 12-year-old Bob had been accused of making harassing phone calls to neighbors. And as he got older, they were actually afraid of him and what he might escalate into. And by 15, they worried that he was running with the wrong crowd, possibly. using substances and that his behavior was influencing the seven other children that was in their household. So that's why they sent him to Tennessee. They were hoping that the distance in a rural quiet area was going to straighten him out, but instead, it nearly ended in his aunt's death.

And Barbara described how at the bench trial for that Tennessee attack, I'm talking about the one when he was 15, photographs of his aunt's injuries were shown. It was horrific. But somehow this judge concluded that Bob wasn't a high risk for reoffending and they just placed him on probation. It blows my mind sometimes. I'm like, had someone done something and kept this man off the streets, things would have ended differently. Even his own parents wouldn't take him back. So he ended up in juvenile detention and then later he was placed with other relatives. Eventually he was ordered to live with his grandmother in Pennsylvania and that is how he returned to Bucks County. His father and stepmother had cut ties with him completely. And all of this, all of these things from his past were building into something

the prosecution thought could be very heavy and could hold a lot of weight for this case, a pattern of him being violent, a story of escalation, a possible vehicle link, and a long trail of fear. But of course, the defense had their own strategy. This case was mostly circumstantial, and they started filing motions, ones that they hoped were going to keep out a lot of crucial information. They were arguing that these incidents were too old, it was too prejudicial, and that it would poison the court's ability to fairly judge what happened on Friday, April 19th, 1991. And surprisingly, the judge agreed. That entire Tennessee incident with his aunt?

The one that prosecutors hoped would help establish that Bob was capable of violence. That was too remote. It was ruled out. It could not be heard by. a jury. And then the judge also excluded the most explosive part of April Atkins' account. The moment that she said, Bob came in, covered in blood, and told her, I stabbed somebody and lit a house on fire. And I'm like, what? How are they going to keep that out? That's like the most important part of this case. It's an actual confession that she said she heard with her own ears.

So what did the prosecution really have left? Context, sure, but that's not always enough. On Monday, January 29th of 2024, more than three decades after Joy had been killed, Bob Atkins finally went on trial. But here's what's so surprising and why I wanted to talk about this part. He goes ahead and waves his right to a jury. This is definitely a power move by his defense. And I guess they were thinking, oh, you know what? It's great. This is going to have the judge that's wrapped around their finger, they must have thought. rule in our favor twice. Remember, he excluded the April statement. He excluded the Tennessee incident.

So now they're thinking, this is all going to hinge on one decision by one man, Judge Wallace Bateman. It's called a bench trial. It's when the judge takes all the evidence into consideration and makes a judgment call, not a jury.

But for the Hibbs family, it also meant there was no jury that would maybe connect to this case emotionally. It was going to be evidence, credibility and logic, and nothing else. The prosecution still had to lay out their case and their theory. It was that Bob Atkins killed Joy inside of her home,

set multiple fires to destroy the evidence, and then fled with his family to the Poconos to create an alibi that he relied on for years. The prosecution still calls witnesses. It's everyone that I already told you about, Charlie, Angie, David, and anyone else key to this investigation from firefighters,

to paramedics, to the medical examiner, neighbors, and even investigators. And the defense argues their case. They say everything is built on rumor and coincidence. They called the blue Monte Carlo a myth, and they said this photo that the prosecution is relying on from back in 1991. That's not even a car. It's a reflecting light off of a building. I mean, it was a picture that's not digital.

They also floated alternative theories, suggesting that Joy could have been killed by someone else, There was a murder that happened out in New Jersey, they thought was connected because it involved an arson. But there was something else. They made another strategic move. April Atkins. April was the state's key witness.

But because of what had been excluded pretrial, prosecutors didn't get to put the most damning sentence in front of a judge. Instead, they leaned into what they could, her history of fear, her cooperation later, and that recorded call in December of 2021, where Bob kept repeating his alibi, and talking about how, oh, the phone's probably tapped.

But here's what I was thinking. This is the same judge that already knew about April statement that Bob had come to her that Friday afternoon, told her that he stabbed someone and caused a house fire. He had to take all that in consideration, and he said, oh, it can't come into a jury. But as they say, you can't unknow it, the bell has been wrung. So I thought, was it a better choice to have a bench trial?

Because this judge knew that information, whereas a jury wouldn't have, think about that, just wrap your brain around it. Jury wouldn't have known, Judge does. Judge Bateman left the bench to review all the evidence one final time. There was just the suspense in that courtroom. Two hours of suspense. And then he returned. Everyone stood up and the judge looked directly at Robert Atkins

and delivered the sentence that the Hibs family had waited 33 years to hear. guilty of first-degree murder. And I was like, yes! I know you're not supposed to cheer. You're not supposed to like show any kind of reaction in a courtroom, but if I was there, I don't think I could hold it inside. And there was no dramatic speech because you didn't need one. But the next day on Tuesday, January 30th of 2024,

the judge did hear the victim impact statements. This was the sentencing. And at the end, the judge asked if Bob wanted to make a statement and he just said, no. And that is when Akeye said, when Atkins was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus additional years for arson and related charges. Joy's family chose not to pursue the death penalty, not because they felt merciful towards Bob at all. It was because they thought life without parole was enough. The only outcome that mattered is that that man could never walk free again. But now it was the time

for the judge to speak, not just to Bob, but almost to the entire history of this case. He said the Hib's family had been living the American dream, two hardworking parents raising their kids in neighborhood where they believe they were safe, building a life through effort and love, and he made it clear that Bob stole that in a single act of senseless violence. But what disturbed the judge the most wasn't only the brutality of Joy's death. It was the overwhelming amount of evidence that showed that this system back in 1991 treated this case differently because of a confidential informant, that that a man's usefulness to narcotics mattered more than the truth about a murdered woman. Judge Bateman said,

whether it was ego or corruption, either way, it was disgusting. And with that, it was case closed. Bob was led away in handcuffs, and that family walked out of the courtroom with something they hadn't been given in 1991. It was accountability. It was proof that Joy's life actually mattered enough for the system to finally care. And just think about it. This caring, loving mom died over a $20 bag of weed. It's senseless. The fact that this monster wasn't locked up so much sooner is part of the reason why this happened. This whole thing is just incomprehensible. It's pointless. So the only way to end this story without giving that pointlessness the last word is to end where Joy actually lived in those ordinary moments that she made feel special. David, stepping off that bus

a little after one o'clock on Friday, April 19th, holding his honor roll certificate like a treasure because he knew his mama would be proud of him. The verdict wasn't going to bring Joy back. It didn't give Angie her mom at milestones. It didn't erase David's childhood fear and it didn't restore the years that Charlie was under suspicion and missing his wife. But, but it did one thing that matters in a case like this. It put responsibility where it actually belonged. And after 33 years, that truth means so much. I know this was a long one. And this is why I wanted to cover this case because I can't believe that it just got resolved a year ago. It happened all the way back in 1991, just got resolved in 2024. But most of all, I want you to remember joy. People like her are rare.

Her life was full. Her life mattered. She mattered so much that the people who loved her most, the family never gave up. They refused to let her be forgotten. So I say the same to you. Think about her. And I think I should end there. It's been a long one. Thank you for being here with me. And I will see you in my very next video. Bye.