Sin, Shame, and Secrets: The Murder of a Nun, the Conviction of a Priest, and Cover-up in the Catholic Church – True Crime Book for Mystery & Religious History Enthusiasts

In 1980, on Holy Saturday - the day before Easter - Sister Margart Ann Pahl, an elderly nun, was strangled nearly to death in the sacristy of a chapel in a Catholic hospital in Toledo, Ohio.The killer then covered the nun's body with an altar cloth and stabbed her nine times over the heart, in the form of a perfectly shaped upside-down cross. He then removed the altar cloth and stabbed the nun 22 more times on the face, neck, and torso.The intense, high-profile police investigation in the months that followed included interviews with more than 600 people, ranging from the slain nun's colleagues in the Sisters of Mercy convent to hospital staff, convicted criminals, and Satan worshippers.No arrests were made until April 23, 2004, when Toledo's cold-case squad went to Father Gerald Robinson's home next door to the police station and charged the 66-year-old, mild-mannered Catholic priest in the 24-year-old murder.Father Robinson's dramatic trial in April and May 2006, believed to be the first in which a U.S. Catholic priest was charged in the murder of a nun, was covered gavel to gavel by Court TV and internationally by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the BBC. Father Robinson was convicted May 11 and is now serving a 15-years-to-life sentence in an Ohio penitentiary.Sin, Shame, and Secrets details not only the unique and bizarre circumstances of Sister Margaret Ann's death and the arrest and conviction of a Catholic priest decades later, but also the myriad factors that caused local law enforcement and criminal justice officials to come up empty handed in the original 1980 investigation, as well as the cold-case squad's investigation, the findings of leading forensic experts, and courtroom testimony that led to Father Robinson's arrest and conviction.David Yonke, Religion Editor for the Toledo Blade, takes an examined look into instances of violent and sexual crime and cover-up in the Catholic Church that ranges from the Father Robinson case to questions about church hierarchy and canon law.