YOUNGEST SERIAL KILLER SENT TO DEATH ROW

Article BY LORI BELL

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Tales of serial killers have grown commonplace, but adolescent serial killers are rare. Harvey Robinson from Allentown, PA is among them, and he’s currently the youngest contemporary serial killer to be sent to death row in America. His case crystallizes some issues surrounding a growing trend toward leniency with juvenile offenders, even the most violent ones.

 

Early Life

Harvey Miguel Robinson is one of the youngest serial killers in American history. He is also the first serial killer in the history of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Robinson entered the juvenile system for the first time at the age of nine when he was caught shoplifting. Robinson continued committing petty crimes throughout his youth. It was not until 1989 that he was sent to a residential reform program after being convicted of assault.

Robinson’s father, Harvey Miguel Robinson Sr., was said to be an abusive husband and a drunk by friends and family. Despite his violent nature, the younger Robinson worshipped his father. In 1963 Robinson’s father was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after beating his mistress to death with a blunt object.

Elder Robinson’s mistress, Marlene E. Perez, 27, had been severely beaten about the head and face. The detectives said she was nearly unrecognizable. The elder Robinson was 32 when he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to six to 12 years in State Prison.

When charged with murder, the father was a drummer performing with a 6:10 at a New York nightclub, according to York newspapers. The father had a wife and four young children in Pottstown but apparently was seeing Perez socially the newspaper said.

A man told police that the elder Robinson had clothes in the woman’s apartment and may have been living there. The wife in Pottstown was not Harvey Miguel Robinsons’ mother, Barbara Brown. The elder Robinson married Brown years later.

Perez was found naked on the sofa of her York apartment in December 1962. From the appearance of the external injuries or contusions, a blunt object was the striking force. York police speculated that the weapon was a piece of furniture in the apartment.

In statements to police, the elder Robinson said he went to the York woman’s apartment and found it locked. He and another man broke in and found Perez dead. The man who was with him told police a different story. He said he saw Robinson strike Perez in the head and knocked her to the floor where he kicked her several times.

The defense lawyer for The elder Robinson, and the judge in that case, told the defendant he was fortunate to only be convicted of voluntary manslaughter. The district attorney had sought a first-degree murder conviction.

The elder Robinson protested that he was innocent. When the jury returned the guilty verdict in the Elder Robinson’s case in May 1963, he appeared to fight back tears. There are parallels and differences between the crimes of Father and Son.

110 miles away and 31 years later, Robinson’s son Harvey Miguel was convicted of savagely killing and raping three women in Allentown. Most believe that by idolizing his father, Robinson was more likely to accept and commit murder.

 

Crimes

Over a period of two to three years, Robinson raped and killed three women in or near Allentown, Pennsylvania. Police suspect his involvement and several other attacks possibly totaling 6 victims. He was linked to the three murders by DNA evidence and convicted in November 1994.

Because he had a violent role model and a criminal father, he’d understandably relieved his stress with violence. The psychiatrist believe that, with help, Robinson could overcome his violent impulses. However, Robinson did not just make an immature mistake; he was a cold-blooded killer, returning returning again and again to ensure that his targeted victims were dead. He even tried killing a child.

Joan Burghardt, a 29 year old Nurses Aide, was Robinson’s first victim. She was raped and bludgeoned in her East Allentown home in August 1992. Burghardt’s dead and battered body was discovered in her apartment in August 1993, although authorities concluded she had been dead for some time, according to the court documents.

Burghardt was an emotionally handicapped former Courthouse secretary. Found in her nightshirt and on her living-room floor, she had been bludgeoned 37 times. Near her body lay a plate of cookies she had apparently had been eating before heading to bed.

Gladys Burghardt says she can no longer afford to dwell on the murderous specter of a man who killed her daughter. When Gladys and her husband, Stanley heard that Governor Ed Rendell had set an execution date for Robinson of April 4, Gladys said “This is something that’s been waiting to happen, that this monster is put out of this world. “

Robinson’s death penalty verdict for Burkhardt’s murder was changed to a life sentence in 2006, due to his age at the time of the crime. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to prohibit death penalties for juveniles under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes.

In June 1993, Robinson abducted, raped and stabbed 15 year old newspaper carrier Charlotte Schmoyer. One of Charlotte’s regular newspaper customers noticed Charlotte’s car outside her front window, but when she saw no signs of the girl, she called the offices of the Morning Call.

Charlotte supervisors could not locate her, and they contacted the police. That same afternoon Charlotte’s body was found in a heavily wooded area nearby. Robinson abducted the girl early one morning while she was delivering newspapers, stabbed her, and buried her body in the woods at the nearby Eastside Reservoir.

Schmoyer , who lives around the corner from Burghardt , was stabbed 22 times in the back and neck. Robinson’s 1994 death sentence for the killing of Charlotte Schmoyer was vacated in 2001 under the condition that he waive all his appeal rights. The victim’s family requested that outcome so there would be no need for further appeal hearings.

In June 2001, Lehigh County Judge Edward Reibman upheld Robinson’s murder convictions but threw out the death sentences in the Burghardt and Schmoyer killings, saying the trial judge had given improper sentencing instructions to the jury.

Since then prosecutors have been working to re-try the sentencing phase to again seek the death penalty, but the case has been continually delayed because of various appeals and motions.

It was Robinson again, who, 11 days after the Schmoyer murder, broke into a house a few blocks from Schmoyer’s. Detectives believe that Robinson, whose victims were most often big-boned, substantial women, may have been stalking such a woman who lived there.

Once inside, though, for an unknown reason, Robinson grabbed the woman’s 5-year-old daughter from her bed, raped and choked her. He intended to rape (and possibly kill) the child’s mother but changed his mind when he saw her in bed with a boyfriend.

Instead, Robinson crept into a room shared by the 5-year-old and her younger sister. She had been sleeping alone. There he raped and choked her, and left her for dead. It is believed that Harvey had stalked the mother for several days beforehand, as he did his other victims.

Robinson was convicted of raping and trying to kill the 5-year-old girl.

A month after the Schmoyer murder, on July 14, Robinson beat, raped and strangled 47-year-old grandmother, Jessica Jean Fortney, in the living room of the rented row house just across the Lehigh River from the east side.

Her daughter and son-in-law, who had been asleep on the third floor with their four children, found her body on the living room couch beside the TV set early that morning. Besides convicting Robinson of Fortney’s killing, the jury in 1994 also convicted him of raping and murdering Burghardt in 1992, and raping and killing Schmoyer in 1993.

Robinson raped and brutalized Denise Sam-Cali in her home, but she escaped. Robinson returned to her home several nights later and attempted to break in. A police officer was posted at the home, and when Robinson attempted to break in again, the officer called out for him to stop.

Robinson and the police officer exchanged gunfire and Robinson was injured by the glass of a window he smashed through while escaping the scene. He was then tracked to a local hospital, and was arrested.

Robinson was suspected of attempting to kill yet another girl, Leslie Gerhart, in 1990. She was 13 and had a friend staying over for the evening, when an intruder removed the screen from the bedroom window and began beating her with a brick.

He was scared off when the friend began screaming. Leslie escaped with a fractured skull and shattered hand. He was suspected of stalking via telephone and in person for weeks prior to the attack. Leslie is believed to have been Robinson’s first victim, although he has never been charged with the attempted murder.

 

Evidence and Reasoning

After months of analysis, the genetic material, DNA, taken from semen left on all the victims, was found to match DNA taken from Robinson’s blood. Evidence at the crime scenes and later on the autopsy table, spoke clearly about the brutality of the attacks.

Robinsons victims have expressed frustration that his cases and appeals have languished for so long. During his trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified that Robinson suffered from a dependency on drugs and alcohol and had experienced visual and auditory hallucinations. He’d been under severe stress.

Robinson claims he has always suffered from a severe frontal lobe injury. He has long argued his trial counsel was ineffective, and that executing him would be unconstitutional because he suffers from brain damage.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found Robinson’s claims without merit, but said even if they had merit, it is unlikely they would have changed the jury’s minds when it came to imposing the death penalty given the brutality of the crimes.

Chief of Prosecutions noted that Robinson was assaulted in prison in 2006 and suggested that his alleged brain damage could have occurred then. He claimed prison guards beat him up. He had a swollen eye, cuts to his lips, and blurry vision after the attack, and needed spinal surgery after the attack.

A motive eluded Lehigh County District Attorney, Robert Steinberg, and detectives, but they met their objective of making sure Robinson will never kill on the streets again.

 

Sentencing

A jury convicted Robinson and imposed separate death sentences for all three murders, but a county judge vacated two of the death sentences on technical grounds involving the jury’s consideration of aggravating circumstances. A separate jury was picked to consider whether Robinson should be sentenced to death or life in prison for the other two murders.

Since then, prosecutors have been working to re-try the sentencing phase to again seek the death penalty, but the case has been continually delayed because of various appeals and motions. Robinson was sentenced to death for the Fortney murder in Lehigh County on November 29, 1994.

The seemingly endless appeals coupled with the fact that those on death row in Pennsylvania are much more likely to die of old age before they are killed by the state make many believe the death penalty is pointless.

Davis Nichol’s, who had been hired by Robinsons mother, believes death penalty cases in Pennsylvania aren’t worth the cost regardless of the moral issue of whether or not the state should execute someone.

Studies have shown the state ends up paying three times more when a defendant is sentenced to death. That includes money spent for court employees ---- prosecutors, judges, sheriff’s deputies, court reporters ---- and housing inmates on death row.

A Morning Call review of court records and Lehigh County invoices showing bills paid for Robinson’s cases since 1995, reveal that his appeals and post-conviction motions have cost taxpayers more than $200,000 in attorney’s fees and expert costs alone – making it among the most expensive death penalty appeals in Lehigh County history.

Robinson is currently incarcerated in the state prison in Graterford, Montgomery County.

 

Conclusion

This case serves as an example for some that the death penalty is pointless, and too expensive. But prosecutors say some murders --- especially those like Robinson who rape and kill women and children --- must face the ultimate punishment, even if the path is winding and costly. Only three people have been executed in Pennsylvania since the death penalty was re-instated in 1978.