Justice for Joy

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Speaker 5 Tonight on date line.

Speaker 6 That was so smoky. I could see flames.
I was hysterical. My house is on fire.
My mom's in there. I wanted to save her.

Speaker 8 She was dead before the fire was set.

Speaker 9 This was not an accident.

Speaker 10 This was a murder.

Speaker 12 I couldn't think of anybody that would want to hurt her.

Speaker 13 We have the clocks frozen. It's burned in the fire.
There's our timeline. Boom.

Speaker 14 Did you ever ask your dad if he was involved?

Speaker 15 Nope. Why?

Speaker 12 I didn't want to believe that that could even be true.

Speaker 13 I had to ask him a lot of very sensitive questions, a lot of painful questions.

Speaker 16 They cast a wide net on suspects.

Speaker 6 He had an explosive temper. You can hear him from our house.

Speaker 17 He's done some really horrible stuff.

Speaker 19 Did you think that April was putting the blame on her husband to try and save herself?

Speaker 5 You have to.

Speaker 12 It was a complete cover-up.

Speaker 6 Somebody's not telling me something.

Speaker 21 Some things are very challenging to prove because they're just so bad and make no sense.

Speaker 6 It becomes an obsession to provide your mom justice.

Speaker 22 A victim with no enemies, a police department with no answers, and a pair of siblings with no shortage of determination. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 22 Here's Blaine Alexander with Justice for Joy.

Speaker 25 Look, we're going to get a family portrait. Everybody smile, wave.

Speaker 27 If only they could freeze this moment in time.

Speaker 29 David, Joy, and Angie Hibbs.

Speaker 30 That's dad, Charlie, behind the camera.

Speaker 26 And I am coming over there.

Speaker 35 A young family facing a future they never saw coming.

Speaker 27 Just 11 months after they took this home video, Joy would be gone.

Speaker 12 Just life itself had been changed forever for me.

Speaker 41 Bristol Township, Pennsylvania, April 19th, 1991.

Speaker 43 The day David Hibbs can never forget. This is a normal morning.

Speaker 45 You have a new puppy in the house.

Speaker 39 Walk me through that morning.

Speaker 6 My dad woke up and he put the puppy in bed with my mom.

Speaker 6 And then he came and scoofed me out of bed and put me in bed with my mom so that we had a chance to play with the puppy for a little bit before we had to get up and get ready for school.

Speaker 27 David's dad, Charlie, left early for work. His big sister, Angie, headed off to high school.

Speaker 50 David took the bus to his elementary school and had a pretty good day.

Speaker 6 I was actually issued an honor roll certificate. I was so excited to get home and show my mom.

Speaker 51 School was out early that day, and 12-year-old David rushed home, hoping to catch his mom before she left for work.

Speaker 14 What's the first thing that you noticed when you stepped off the bus?

Speaker 6 I saw my mom's car in the driveway and I was thrilled because I knew we didn't miss each other.

Speaker 6 As I was headed down the driveway, I noticed black smoke coming out of the vent on the side of the house there.

Speaker 39 Right at the top.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 6 It wasn't until I ran around the back and opened the back door that I was met with that big plume of black smoke. Sean.
And I saw flames.

Speaker 18 David couldn't see his mother anywhere.

Speaker 56 He ran, screaming for help.

Speaker 52 As a neighbor called 911, David raced back to the house, hell-bent on saving his mom.

Speaker 6 A neighbor grabbed me and held me. I was kicking and punching and trying to escape her grasp.
Once the fire trucks and the medics arrived, a medic grabbed me and put me in the back of an ambulance.

Speaker 41 Firefighters Tom Tryon and Kevin Brannigan were quickly on the scene.

Speaker 58 We're down on our knees. We're starting to crawl.
So as I'm going in the kitchen, past the stove, I noticed that four burners are on. So I

Speaker 59 turned them off.

Speaker 35 16-year-old Angie was still at school when she heard about the fire.

Speaker 34 She hurried home, having no idea how serious it was.

Speaker 12 My mom and I just purchased my prom gown.

Speaker 12 And that's what I was thinking about on the ride home.

Speaker 14 You're thinking, is my prom dress okay?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Did you have any idea that your mom was still home?

Speaker 12 No, not at all. That didn't even cross my mind.
No.

Speaker 52 Back inside the house, firefighter Brannigan had made his way into David's room.

Speaker 14 And you turned and you saw something.

Speaker 5 All I saw was a body

Speaker 1 charred.

Speaker 58 So I tapped my buddy on the back. I said, Smoke,

Speaker 1 there's a body.

Speaker 58 And he shut the hooves down. We got out.

Speaker 20 Why did you get out immediately?

Speaker 58 Well, because there was a body there, so there's going to be an investigation, so we didn't want to interfere with anything.

Speaker 7 They don't prepare you for that when you're going through training, you know.

Speaker 63 You never expected that. Yeah.

Speaker 7 It changed the dynamics of that fire real quick.

Speaker 46 Could you tell it was a woman?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 51 It was that badly burned? Yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 14 The second that you started talking about it, you got emotional.

Speaker 10 Yeah. I can see that affects you.

Speaker 27 It affects you still today.

Speaker 59 Yep.

Speaker 43 David was still locked in the ambulance when the driver broke the news.

Speaker 14 Do you remember what he said to you?

Speaker 6 Something to the effect of your mom didn't make it.

Speaker 14 When you heard that, did you even believe him in the middle?

Speaker 6 I didn't believe him. No.

Speaker 42 David finally got out of the ambulance, found the puppy, and then his sister.

Speaker 12 He was frantic and said, mommy is still in there.

Speaker 69 And I thought to myself, how?

Speaker 12 How do you have this puppy? How did the puppy get out of this house and not my mom?

Speaker 12 It didn't make sense to me. None of it made sense.
And I remember my dad coming and him walking up towards our house. I think he tried to get up the side of the house to go that way.

Speaker 14 He was trying to go in the house.

Speaker 12 I believe so, yeah.

Speaker 57 But her father and everyone else stopped cold when first responders brought out Joy's body.

Speaker 6 I remember him leaning up against her car

Speaker 6 and he was sobbing.

Speaker 6 And I

Speaker 6 had never seen my dad cry before.

Speaker 14 What did you think when you saw your dad crying for the first time in your life?

Speaker 6 I was scared.

Speaker 46 That fear would grow as David and his sister learned the true cause of their mom's death.

Speaker 12 I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Like, it wasn't true.

Speaker 50 It was the beginning of a journey that would haunt them for decades and reveal a world of betrayals on the road to justice.

Speaker 21 I mean, there were lies upon lies upon lies.

Speaker 73 We're going to go pedal the metal.

Speaker 13 If you're going to be scorched earth behind me, so be it.

Speaker 14 Do you believe that this was just gross incompetence, shoddy police work, or that they intentionally looked the other way?

Speaker 6 There's only one explanation.

Speaker 48 It's one of the last videos ever taken of Joy Hibbs.

Speaker 47 She's in David's room.

Speaker 38 It's a simple, silly kind of moment.

Speaker 41 There's Joy playing with the hamster, and David just being a kid.

Speaker 21 Well, this is my bedroom. Mom, get out of my bedroom, please.

Speaker 21 Excuse me for living.

Speaker 48 Here is that same room after the fire.

Speaker 12 I just thought, no, there's no way. She would have climbed out a window.
She would have did anything to get out. She's strong.
She can do this. She can get out.

Speaker 6 I thought it was

Speaker 6 the computer or the aquarium or something that I had plugged into my room had caught fire and that she died trying to put out a fire that essentially I had caused.

Speaker 14 You're sitting with this unbelievable guilt thinking that you,

Speaker 14 in some way, were responsible for your mom's death.

Speaker 54 Yes.

Speaker 51 And yet, as firefighters moved from room to room, they spotted something suspicious.

Speaker 24 It looked like that there was multiple fires, like fire here, fire there.

Speaker 58 That was the only thing that seem odd to me.

Speaker 43 Fire investigators combing through the wreckage noticed the same thing.

Speaker 78 Chief Fire Marshal Kevin DiPolito.

Speaker 79 Talk to me about that walkthrough.

Speaker 77 What did that show?

Speaker 64 It showed there was no physical connection between the fire in the bedroom, the fire just inside the kitchen at the trash can, and the fire on top of the stove.

Speaker 81 That means that they were all set separately.

Speaker 75 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 They paid particular attention to the stove where all four burners had been left on.

Speaker 82 How was the fire set on the stove?

Speaker 64 The stovetop was set by piling normal combustibles on top of one of the burners.

Speaker 37 So somebody piled a whole lot of flammable stuff on top of the stove.

Speaker 82 Correct.

Speaker 46 This was arson.

Speaker 48 And when the autopsy results came back, they confirmed something even more horrifying.

Speaker 38 It wasn't the fire that killed Joy.

Speaker 84 She was murdered.

Speaker 64 The autopsy revealed no smoke in the lungs, which indicated that Miss Hibbs had passed away prior to the fire.

Speaker 69 being set.

Speaker 19 The details were brutal.

Speaker 55 Her rib cage was crushed.

Speaker 72 She was stabbed five times and was likely strangled.

Speaker 12 I remember the adults talking and

Speaker 12 overhearing things that were being said amongst them.

Speaker 14 What did you overhear?

Speaker 12 That she was

Speaker 12 murdered.

Speaker 12 And the house was set on fire intentionally to cover it up.

Speaker 24 That room was burnt pretty bad.

Speaker 58 The only evidence I saw there was just that body. I mean, there wasn't going to be no fingerprints, no footprints.

Speaker 43 You knew there wouldn't be much for investigators to work with.

Speaker 66 Murder, arson, and a victim who was beloved by family and friends. Who would do this?

Speaker 72 None of it made sense, especially to her children.

Speaker 12 Beautiful smile. The smile.

Speaker 70 It's everything.

Speaker 6 The kindest person you would ever meet. She was from the South and she had a beautiful, charming southern accent that everyone just adored.

Speaker 12 Everything outdoors.

Speaker 12 Fishing, camping. All our vacations were outdoors, gardening.

Speaker 61 She didn't wear a whole lot of makeup, but she did like doing her hair.

Speaker 70 Her hair had to be perfect with the hairspray and she took time on her hair.

Speaker 20 Yes, she did. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 87 David says he and and his mom were inseparable.

Speaker 6 Some of my earliest memories,

Speaker 6 I would follow her around the house. I would grab a hold of her nightgown and just follow her wherever she went.
I never left her alone.

Speaker 89 You were like her shadow.

Speaker 6 I was the shadow.

Speaker 90 You were stuck to her. Yeah.

Speaker 34 Joy and their dad, Charlie, met in high school in Florida.

Speaker 78 They got married after graduation.

Speaker 87 had the kids and settled in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 15 By 1990, they had come a long way.

Speaker 6 She had various jobs in the past and she made a choice to go back to school to become a medical assistant and get a certification.

Speaker 6 And my sister and I were so proud of her.

Speaker 14 What about your dad? What did he do for work?

Speaker 6 My dad worked in construction.

Speaker 14 Talk to me about the dynamics between your mom and your dad. They loved each other.

Speaker 12 She loved him.

Speaker 70 He loved her.

Speaker 65 There she is coming coming home from work charlie again manning the camera here she comes

Speaker 25 well hell she's in a good mood too

Speaker 21 i got you a stress

Speaker 25 baby i got all kinds of stress

Speaker 25 say hi to grandmom and pop-pop

Speaker 25 All right, here we go. She got changed, and then we'll get back to this.

Speaker 25 There we go. Look at that body.
35 years old. Look at that body.

Speaker 25 New hairdo. She's going California style now.

Speaker 14 What do you think your mom saw in your dad?

Speaker 6 All of the things that my mom enjoyed doing, my dad also enjoyed doing. So fishing, being outdoors.
She loved riding on the back of his motorcycle with him.

Speaker 66 Charlie was an avid biker.

Speaker 38 And back then, he dressed the part.

Speaker 66 Long hair, very long beard, jeans, flannels, t-shirts.

Speaker 12 On the occasion that my mom would make him get dressed up to go to a family function, or, you know, he wasn't thrilled about having to dress up because he liked his normal look. He sure did.

Speaker 14 Who would you say was in charge between your mom and your dad?

Speaker 59 My mom.

Speaker 14 Your mom.

Speaker 10 Absolutely. Hands down.

Speaker 12 100%.

Speaker 47 But now, Joy was gone.

Speaker 29 And her murder was fast becoming more than one family's tragedy.

Speaker 41 The whole town was reeling as investigators frantically searched for the killer in their midst.

Speaker 79 You didn't know if the murderer was right here in your neighborhood.

Speaker 70 We had no idea who the murderer was.

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Speaker 99 When David Hibbs' mother was murdered, his childhood all but ended.

Speaker 6 I was terrified for my own life.

Speaker 14 Thinking that whoever had done it could possibly come back.

Speaker 59 Yes.

Speaker 6 I mean, it changed

Speaker 6 my entire life.

Speaker 6 Nothing was ever the same after that.

Speaker 14 This isn't something that pieces of it become less clear over time.

Speaker 6 No, that day has burned in my memory forever.

Speaker 99 News of the murder quickly spread.

Speaker 76 Sunday morning, my mom came in to wake me up with the local newspaper in her hands, and she said, Colleen, Angie's mom was murdered.

Speaker 47 Colleen Kelly was a friend of Angie's and just 16 years old when she watched the house burn.

Speaker 81 This was something that went beyond the Hibbs family.

Speaker 17 This hit everybody. It did.

Speaker 76 It caused a sense of fear in the entire town that I don't feel we've ever felt before.

Speaker 76 You know, you didn't want to walk down the street at night by yourself because there was a murder that happened right on the same street that I grew up on.

Speaker 79 And you didn't know if the murderer was right here in your neighborhood.

Speaker 91 We had no idea who the murderer was.

Speaker 27 Investigators didn't have much to go on.

Speaker 83 They found no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 75 Although they did find Joy's empty wallet in the living room, which led them to believe the killer also took her cash.

Speaker 51 But between the water damage and the overwhelming heat, forensic evidence was almost non-existent.

Speaker 37 How intense was this?

Speaker 64 The bedroom reached what's called full involvement, meaning it was flames from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, venting out the windows and also extending down the hallway.

Speaker 80 That room would have easily exceeded a thousand degrees.

Speaker 46 Joanne Chiavalia with the Bucks County Courier Times has reported extensively on the Joy Hibbs case.

Speaker 8 To have been murdered in the way that she was murdered, that's a lot of anger to take out on someone who didn't appear to have an enemy in the world.

Speaker 8 This was a community where people knew each other and cared about each other. And for one of their own to be murdered in such a way and then the house set on fire, people were frightened.

Speaker 27 Joanne has examined the last hours of Joy Hibbs' life.

Speaker 63 Joy had to be at work at 2 p.m., so she ran her errands in the morning.

Speaker 100 She went to the bank and got some cash.

Speaker 8 Then she went grocery shopping. From shopping, she came home about 11 o'clock a.m.
The neighbors know this because they saw her walking around 11 o'clock in the neighborhood.

Speaker 27 And then, just after 11, Joy had some visitors, a pastor and his assistant from a local Baptist church.

Speaker 8 A few weeks earlier, Joy had attended the Easter services at that church and she was thinking about joining and she had signed a card saying that she would be open to having a visit.

Speaker 8 They were coming to talk to her about joining their church and about her religious faith.

Speaker 67 They were the last people known to have seen Joy alive.

Speaker 12 I don't know who they were. I never had met them that I recall.

Speaker 12 Nothing.

Speaker 14 Do you remember that ever being something that police asked you about?

Speaker 12 They did. They asked me, but I didn't have much to offer them.

Speaker 44 The ministers told police they left around 11.45.

Speaker 55 By the time David got home, more than an hour later, his mother was dead.

Speaker 55 So investigators were able to narrow this down to a pretty specific timeframe.

Speaker 8 Yes, using receipts and neighbor witnesses.

Speaker 19 And there was something else.

Speaker 48 David's clock was stopped at 12.54,

Speaker 9 the time burned in from the heat of the fire.

Speaker 18 Police believed Joy was killed between 1150 and 12.50.

Speaker 50 Given that the ministers had been at the Hibbs home close to that timeframe, Police wanted to know more about them.

Speaker 82 How much were they in police crosshairs?

Speaker 8 My understanding is they were eliminated pretty quickly because they both had tight alibis. The pastor said he had a dentist appointment right after.

Speaker 8 So, you know, the alibis checked out.

Speaker 15 A dead end.

Speaker 56 Police continued to search for people who might know something about Joy's murder.

Speaker 101 A neighbor, a friend.

Speaker 15 Colleen Kelly saw something earlier that morning.

Speaker 38 She brushed it off then, but now?

Speaker 60 What did you notice?

Speaker 53 What stood out to you?

Speaker 76 The car that was parked in front of the house was parked in an odd way.

Speaker 15 Whose car was it?

Speaker 46 And what was it doing there?

Speaker 37 What do you remember about Joy, Angie's mom?

Speaker 74 She was an absolute sweetheart.

Speaker 76 Just someone you knew you could always go to and talk to if you needed to.

Speaker 67 Everyone says they loved Joy Hibbs.

Speaker 71 But police were hearing about a series of troubling incidents that suggested otherwise.

Speaker 51 It all began two months before the murder, when someone threw a brick through the Hibbs window.

Speaker 18 At the time, Joy and Charlie thought, Maybe it's just kids.

Speaker 6 I think my dad at one point thought it must have been like one of my sister's friends or, you know, that had a beef with her.

Speaker 45 They shrugged it off, but the vandalism didn't stop.

Speaker 6 One day my mom came to my school and got me out of class. And what I learned was that she had come home from work and our rear door had been kicked in and it was like hanging on its hinges.

Speaker 14 And she came home to find this. Yes.

Speaker 6 And she was afraid to enter the house and came to my school to ask me if I knew anything about this or what happened.

Speaker 14 What did you tell her?

Speaker 6 I didn't have a clue.

Speaker 12 I was asked by my parents if I was feuding with any of my girlfriends or any friends that would want to do this.

Speaker 12 We came up empty-handed. No answers.

Speaker 18 Just a few weeks later, someone vandalized Joy's car.

Speaker 6 We awoke one morning to find that all four tires of her car were slashed.

Speaker 62 And this happened overnight? Yes.

Speaker 8 Did you ever find out who did this? No.

Speaker 60 Now, police wanted to know if there was a connection between the vandalism and Joy's murder.

Speaker 12 They asked for a list of names of my friends, first and last names. Anything about my mom and dad's relationship.

Speaker 14 At that time, did you have much to tell them?

Speaker 61 Not really. No.

Speaker 12 She's never hurt anybody or anything.

Speaker 70 I couldn't

Speaker 12 think of anybody that would want to hurt her.

Speaker 48 Bristol Township police pulled together a list of potential suspects.

Speaker 53 In addition to those classmates of Angie's, police investigated a sanitation worker who was seen walking toward the back of the Hibbs home before the murder.

Speaker 67 They interviewed and did background checks on people who might have seen Joy at the grocery store and followed her home.

Speaker 7 Detectives also looked into other people who may not have known the family personally, but had been in the area of the home at the time that this happened.

Speaker 44 Vinnie Vella is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Speaker 41 He's covered the case for years.

Speaker 7 Through that line of investigating, they found that there was a mailman who was filling in for the usual mail carrier on the day of Joy's murder.

Speaker 7 So, as they're pulling at all these different possible strings, they're quickly ruling out a number of people.

Speaker 71 Police interviewed more than a dozen people.

Speaker 27 None of them seemed to rise to the level of suspect.

Speaker 15 But there was something Colleen Kelly saw around the time of the murder.

Speaker 34 So when you're driving down this street, you know this is Angie Street.

Speaker 43 What did you notice?

Speaker 45 What stood out to you?

Speaker 76 The car that was parked in front of the house was parked in an odd way and it was facing the opposite direction and the tail end was sticking out from the curb.

Speaker 15 As if someone had pulled up to the house in a hurry, too rushed to park correctly.

Speaker 76 What kind of car was this? It was a blue Monte Carlo.

Speaker 48 When you saw that, did you think, something's off?

Speaker 60 Did you think something was wrong or did you just think, ah, that's strange and just kind of brush it off?

Speaker 76 I thought that's strange and I brushed it off.

Speaker 27 But later, as she watched the house burn, she thought she should say something.

Speaker 46 David was huddled there with his sister.

Speaker 6 I was standing with her and several of her friends, and one of her friends had mentioned that just before the fire, they saw a Blue Monte Carlo parked outside of the house.

Speaker 6 Without even thinking much of it, I said, April drives a Blue Monte Carlo.

Speaker 51 Colleen also told the police, who learned that April was April Atkins.

Speaker 18 She was a close friend and former neighbor of Joy's, who used to live two doors down.

Speaker 46 The two women spent hours together in Joy's kitchen just talking.

Speaker 65 They would hang out.

Speaker 12 I remember her and April.

Speaker 14 My brother would be sitting at the table.

Speaker 6 April had

Speaker 6 a small child, like I think he was about two years old at the time. And my mom loved children, loved babies.
I can remember her holding April's son.

Speaker 6 And it was just a natural connection, I think, as two women

Speaker 6 neighbors hitting it off.

Speaker 66 David remembers, as a kid he liked april her husband robert atkins not so much

Speaker 6 when you think back to that time as a young boy do you remember much about her husband robert i remember that he had a explosive um

Speaker 59 temper you knew that even as a child oh yes had you seen it yes you could hear him You could hear him from our house.

Speaker 38 And David remembered another time when he heard that voice in a mysterious phone call between Robert Atkins and Joy.

Speaker 6 That's when I said, what's going on? And she couldn't not tell me because I had heard it and she knew she had to, you know, tell me what was happening.

Speaker 10 As they continued to chase leads that went nowhere, detectives turned their attention to Robert Atkins.

Speaker 18 He knew Joy Hibbs, and a car similar to his had been seen near the burning house.

Speaker 46 But it was David's story about a phone call he overheard just weeks before the murder that really caught their interest.

Speaker 6 She was standing in the kitchen. She had the receiver a couple inches away from her ear.

Speaker 6 And I knew right away, I could tell who it was because, you know, I used to hear Robert Atkins screaming at April you know two houses down I knew his voice you could tell immediately oh yes yeah screaming at my mom she was shaken by this and that's when I said what's going on and she couldn't not tell me because I had heard it and and and she knew she had to you know tell me what was happening it had to do with marijuana which was a delicate subject for joy and David.

Speaker 27 They had talked about it before.

Speaker 6 She described it as like sort of like drinking, like it's not okay to drink, but sometimes parents do that. And she just sort of normalized it for me.

Speaker 83 After hearing that phone conversation, David said his mom told him she and Charlie had bought some marijuana from Robert.

Speaker 6 There was a dispute over the quality of the marijuana they received. And I can specifically remember hearing my dad say something to the effect of it's all seeds and stems.

Speaker 6 And then she told me that your dad wanted me to return this marijuana that wasn't good. And now Robert Atkins is threatening me.

Speaker 14 And this is somebody that you're already scared of. Yes.
You knew he had a temper. What did you think when you heard that conversation?

Speaker 6 I knew my mom was shaken, but I don't think she took it serious

Speaker 6 because it's a $20

Speaker 6 marijuana deal.

Speaker 14 She didn't think it would escalate beyond that. Right.

Speaker 6 And that's how he communicated. And that's how he spoke to April.

Speaker 14 He was somebody who yells. That was just normal.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 6 When they asked me, is there anybody who would want to harm or hurt your mother? He's the only person that came to mind.

Speaker 104 So you told police all of this right from the start.

Speaker 27 By then, homicide investigators knew a little about Robert Atkins.

Speaker 7 According to the people who knew him, Robert Atkins was a fairly straightforward guy, somebody who kept to himself, had certain interests, and didn't really venture far outside of them.

Speaker 7 At various points, he was a bouncer. He drove trucks.
He had sort of a fledgling sports memorabilia business.

Speaker 43 Police learned that Robert had a criminal record, but it looked like a few minor offenses.

Speaker 50 And killing someone over a $20 weed deal did seem unlikely.

Speaker 29 But still, they wanted to talk to him.

Speaker 7 Police initially approached Robert Atkins, and he said that it was true that he had sold marijuana to Joy Hibbs, and that in the weeks before before she had been killed, there was a bit of a dispute between the two of them over the quality of the marijuana.

Speaker 7 But at that point, he was very adamant that he had nothing to do with the fire and her murder.

Speaker 87 By the time of the killing, Robert and April had moved to an apartment eight miles away.

Speaker 27 Robert told police that during the window of the crime, he received a phone call on his landline at home.

Speaker 100 Then he and April took the kids on a trip to the Pocono Mountains about two hours away.

Speaker 7 The Atkins provided an alibi.

Speaker 7 They said that there was no way they could have been near the scene at the time that the fire and the murder occurred because they were up in the Pocono Mountains at a hotel.

Speaker 44 Police went to the Poconos to check out their story. Turns out they were there Friday afternoon, just like they said.

Speaker 71 But what about that blue Monte Carlo, the one that was parked so haphazardly in front of the Hibbs home?

Speaker 18 Was it April's?

Speaker 76 The police came to my house and interviewed me.

Speaker 76 And in the interview,

Speaker 76 I did mention the car. That same day, they took me to a parking lot to look at a car.

Speaker 74 And the car that they showed me was not the car that I saw outside of the house.

Speaker 76 It was a Monte Carlo, but it was not.

Speaker 12 the color of the car that was out front of the house.

Speaker 36 That Monte Carlo police showed to Colleen was black, and it belonged to Robert and April Atkins.

Speaker 18 Police figured the blue Monte Carlo she saw in front of the Hibbs home must have belonged to someone else.

Speaker 28 Just one more reason to remove the Atkins from the list of possible suspects.

Speaker 38 And as that list continued to dwindle, police narrowed their focus to one particular person.

Speaker 103 My dad.

Speaker 14 Did you ever ask your dad if he was involved? Did you ever ask him directly? Nope.

Speaker 26 Why?

Speaker 12 Because I didn't want to believe it.

Speaker 34 Charlie Hibbs was about to find himself in the crosshairs of the investigation.

Speaker 14 One of the things that came up during the investigation was that you could have a temper, but sometimes you had a short fuse.

Speaker 27 Would you consider yourself someone with a temper at times?

Speaker 69 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

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Speaker 18 Police investigating Joy Hibbs' murder had hit a wall as leads dried up.

Speaker 51 They had already questioned Joy's husband, Charlie, but in the absence of other suspects, he became the focus of their investigation.

Speaker 109 Get ready to give a grand tour of your bedroom or garage.

Speaker 84 Tell me how you found out that police were possibly looking at him.

Speaker 6 The way it was explained to me at the time was that the husband is always

Speaker 6 the first suspect and that they were doing their due diligence and that was just a normal process. But I never thought more of it.

Speaker 14 Did you have any thought that maybe my dad had something to do with this?

Speaker 33 No.

Speaker 100 But detectives discovered something about Charlie.

Speaker 41 His anger.

Speaker 14 When you look back, Angie, on growing up, did you ever fear your dad sometimes?

Speaker 27 I think there was a healthy fear.

Speaker 52 That means, what?

Speaker 14 You didn't dare step out of line?

Speaker 12 I tried not to.

Speaker 78 She said her mom shielded her.

Speaker 14 She was kind of stepping in, defending you when necessary.

Speaker 54 Correct.

Speaker 14 Would your dad ever have a temper sometimes?

Speaker 69 Yes.

Speaker 20 What did that look like?

Speaker 72 Hollering, the voice, the tone, the eyes

Speaker 12 was enough.

Speaker 14 The way he'd look at you?

Speaker 14 Do you remember the types of questions police were asking you?

Speaker 18 This is Charlie Hibbs.

Speaker 25 They asked me about extramarital affairs. They wanted to know if there was anyone that

Speaker 25 we owed money to.

Speaker 25 Was there anyone that

Speaker 25 Joy made extremely mad?

Speaker 14 During all this time, what are you telling them?

Speaker 25 Everything they want want to know.

Speaker 41 He felt police zeroed in on him because they didn't like the way he looked.

Speaker 86 What did you look like back in those days?

Speaker 25 Some people would say a scary-looking guy, scrufty.

Speaker 45 With lots of tattoos.

Speaker 86 Say you had a biker look about you.

Speaker 96 Well, I did.

Speaker 27 Even though Charlie and his biker buddies did charity work, he wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy.

Speaker 14 One of the things that came up during the investigation was that sometimes you had a short fuse.

Speaker 27 Would you consider yourself someone with a temper at times?

Speaker 25 I probably did have somewhat of a temper, but, you know, tried to control it around family especially.

Speaker 72 He struggled to keep his temper in check as the police never seemed to let up.

Speaker 25 I was taken back in for more questioning. I believe I had three polygraphs and weeks of questioning.

Speaker 1 About your work, about what you were doing that day.

Speaker 25 That was a continuing question. Was your timeline of that day?

Speaker 53 Charlie said at the time of the murder, he'd been doing construction work about 20 miles away in downtown Philly with co-workers.

Speaker 14 What you're saying is you had a very strong alibi.

Speaker 25 It couldn't be any stronger.

Speaker 14 Names, times, people to talk to.

Speaker 25 Absolutely.

Speaker 35 What's more, he insisted he loved Joy.

Speaker 27 And as soon as he heard about the the house fire, he raced home.

Speaker 25 I was hysterical for many, many hours. I can't remember what I thought at that time.
I was devastated.

Speaker 14 How did you finally realize that Joy didn't make it?

Speaker 25 When they brought her body out.

Speaker 50 With no evidence against him, Charlie seemed to be off the hook and the investigation stalled.

Speaker 7 By about about the three-month mark, anybody who was considered a person of interest had been cleared. All of their alibis had been checked.

Speaker 7 Everybody's seemed to be solid and there was little they could do beyond that.

Speaker 41 Gradually, the Hibbs family picked up the pieces of their lives.

Speaker 18 Charlie rebuilt their burned-out house and gave himself a makeover.

Speaker 25 I cut my hair shaved. I wanted my appearance to be

Speaker 25 a little bit more decent.

Speaker 14 Why'd you do that?

Speaker 25 Just to represent our family and

Speaker 25 maybe not be so scary.

Speaker 24 I don't know.

Speaker 14 You were stepping into a different role, essentially.

Speaker 25 It was a whole different world. I didn't even know how to write checks and pay mortgages.

Speaker 14 Joy handled all that.

Speaker 25 Yeah, everything.

Speaker 83 The weeks dragged into months, then

Speaker 104 years.

Speaker 27 Charlie stayed in Pennsylvania and kept working.

Speaker 31 David went off to college in New York, then moved to Oregon and started a business as a nurse practitioner.

Speaker 27 And Angie got married, started a family, and got a job with an industrial safety company.

Speaker 5 All without joy.

Speaker 12 There's not a holiday or a celebration that went by that wasn't affected with her not being there,

Speaker 12 raising my kids.

Speaker 12 Just life itself

Speaker 12 had

Speaker 12 been changed forever for me that day.

Speaker 6 You have to put all of this behind you at times in order to move forward, but you never forget.

Speaker 6 And it always comes back to the fact that police couldn't solve this.

Speaker 14 At this point, were you frustrated with Bristol Township Police?

Speaker 6 I was always frustrated with them.

Speaker 67 David's frustration would compel him to keep looking for answers.

Speaker 104 Answers that years later would recast doubt on a familiar figure.

Speaker 6 What could my dad have gotten into to cause this?

Speaker 14 So you started to think that my dad could have been involved in my mom's death.

Speaker 54 Yes.

Speaker 27 Did you interview Charlie Hibbs yourself?

Speaker 79 Yes. And then you get a call.

Speaker 13 You get a call.

Speaker 18 2006 marked 15 years since Joy Hibbs' murder.

Speaker 27 The case had gone cold, and her son, David, by then 27 years old, had lost faith it would ever be solved by the Bristol police.

Speaker 27 So he decided to try and solve it. On a trip home, he stopped by the police department and asked for a copy of the case file.

Speaker 6 What I was urging them to do is to release some of that information. I wanted somebody else to come in and take a look at the evidence that they had.

Speaker 27 He said the police rejected his request.

Speaker 20 But a lieutenant did tell David something that turned his world upside down.

Speaker 37 The name of the person he thought was responsible for killing Joy.

Speaker 6 In his opinion,

Speaker 6 it was my father.

Speaker 6 He was certain that it was my father's fault.

Speaker 14 How did you feel when you walked away from that conversation?

Speaker 6 I was angry.

Speaker 6 I was angry at my dad

Speaker 6 because I never thought my dad killed my mother, never.

Speaker 6 But now I had this new piece of information that made me question everything I thought I knew about my father.

Speaker 14 Now you thought this might be possible.

Speaker 14 Did you ever rationalize in your mind how you thought your dad could have possibly been involved?

Speaker 1 All the time.

Speaker 14 What did you think?

Speaker 6 That he pissed somebody off or had a beef with somebody.

Speaker 6 It was never him directly, but it was always like, what could my dad have gotten into to cause this?

Speaker 14 Did you ever ask him directly about it?

Speaker 24 He pulled completely away.

Speaker 25 We barely communicated.

Speaker 25 I didn't know that it was the police that was causing the problem.

Speaker 14 Did you see that rift between the two of them? Yes.

Speaker 12 Yes. I don't know.
It wasn't good.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Of all times, we needed to be together and stick strong. And that's not what we were doing at that moment.

Speaker 105 No.

Speaker 6 desperate for answers david decided to shake things up in 2014 23 years after the murder he gave an interview to the huffington post and accused the police of botching the investigation you get to a point where you're just willing to put everything on the line and hope that the criticism towards the police would kind of create some kind of movement.

Speaker 14 At this point, you really are the biggest advocate in this.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it becomes an obsession. It becomes your mission, and you're just driven to provide your mom justice.

Speaker 38 The story, also covered by Dateline's Cold Case Spotlight Digital series, happened to coincide with new county efforts to solve cold cases.

Speaker 50 The police department assigned a new detective, Mike Slaughter.

Speaker 63 I understand you really wanted to take this case.

Speaker 54 Yes.

Speaker 18 What was it about this case specifically that really interested you?

Speaker 13 Here was this working-class family

Speaker 13 living the American dream. Wife, mom, gets murdered.
And I don't even know about it. Many of us didn't even know about it.

Speaker 53 Slaughter, who is now a sergeant, had been on the force for 17 years and worked narcotics before becoming a detective.

Speaker 19 He spent weeks poring through the old files

Speaker 27 and said much of the case was solid police work.

Speaker 5 However,

Speaker 13 surprising to me, there were no recorded interviews.

Speaker 13 There were no cassette tape interviews. There were some documented interviews of people typewritten and handwritten, but there weren't many.

Speaker 40 Also surprising?

Speaker 55 The lack of cooperation he received from the original detectives.

Speaker 13 A few did speak with me. Most did not want to speak with me.

Speaker 79 They didn't want to talk about it at all.

Speaker 54 Correct.

Speaker 59 Why?

Speaker 13 You'd have to ask them.

Speaker 48 Slaughter began working through the list of potential suspects.

Speaker 18 First up, Joy's husband, Charlie.

Speaker 27 Did you interview Charlie Hibbs yourself?

Speaker 13 I did. I had to ask him a lot of very sensitive questions,

Speaker 13 a lot of painful questions, a lot of graphic questions, a lot of questions

Speaker 13 regarding other people, their adult lifestyles.

Speaker 32 Charlie answered them all.

Speaker 19 And Slaughter could find no connection between Charlie and the murder.

Speaker 13 Charlie Hibbs was thoroughly vetted, multiple sources.

Speaker 13 And Charlie Hibbs is totally clear of this case.

Speaker 14 Did you feel that the attention was finally starting to shift away from you?

Speaker 25 Yes, with Slaughter, I did.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 29 So what about Robert and April Atkins?

Speaker 63 Slaughter needed to look at them too.

Speaker 38 And that part of the investigation would take the detective into a maze of blue walls, forcing him to confront former cops and bosses.

Speaker 54 I'm going to need to move. Okay.

Speaker 39 Sorry about that. No, it's okay.

Speaker 86 Why did you have to take a break?

Speaker 13 It's cops on cops.

Speaker 94 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 69 It's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 108 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 23 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 89 Fox.

Speaker 94 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 85 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 48 Sergeant Mike Slaughter was working his way through the list of potential suspects in the Joy Hibbs murder case.

Speaker 5 Next up, April Atkins and her husband Robert, who had that dispute with Joy over marijuana.

Speaker 38 They were now divorced, so Slaughter had to track them down individually.

Speaker 27 When you first got this case, did you interview Robert Atkins?

Speaker 2 We did.

Speaker 32 Robert gave him the same alibi he'd given detectives back in 1991.

Speaker 40 He said he had proof he was home at the time of the murder.

Speaker 13 He talked about how somebody had called him or he had a phone call,

Speaker 13 and then how they went up to Poconos that day.

Speaker 27 When he interviewed April, she confirmed her ex-husband's story.

Speaker 18 But there were things about their conversation that raised the detective's alarm.

Speaker 13 She minimized her friendship acquaintance with Joy Hibbs, stating that they hardly knew each other. We knew then that her relationship with Joy Hibbs was much more than a neighbor two doors away.

Speaker 13 And then she says it had nothing to do with Joy's demise, which I just thought that was that was odd.

Speaker 27 How did you leave things with her?

Speaker 13 Try to leave on a polite note, just as we did, Robert, gave my card, phone number.

Speaker 104 Slaughter wanted to know what April had told police years earlier.

Speaker 20 But strangely, it appeared she'd never been interviewed back in 1991.

Speaker 63 For there to have never been an interview of April, was that a failure in this initial investigation?

Speaker 13 It's easy for me to go back in time and critique somebody else's work, but I would have liked to think that April would be one of the main people that they would have interviewed and would have documented for it.

Speaker 50 What's more, he discovered that Roberts' 1991 interview was done by two narcotics detectives, not homicide detectives.

Speaker 13 It seems to me like the narcotics unit was running this investigation.

Speaker 73 That's a problem.

Speaker 75 Is that unusual?

Speaker 54 It's not usual.

Speaker 13 That's a problem because this is a homicide investigation.

Speaker 101 He wondered what was going on.

Speaker 107 Slaughter reached back out to one of those former detectives who'd brushed him off. Someone who, years after the murder, became Bristol's chief of police and was now retired.

Speaker 13 I put the word out that I needed to speak with him and would not speak with me. I said, one way or another, we have to talk.
I'll go there every day. I'm going to the house every day.

Speaker 13 I'm knocking on the door, knocking on the window until he talks to me.

Speaker 81 And he was that resistant to talking with you.

Speaker 13 This is somebody who was the police chief that I was hired under. So imagine I'm a little bit terrified of this.
And

Speaker 13 there's still a power grip.

Speaker 13 So finally one day, another retired officer brokers that meeting. This is after many months.
This is almost a year, I believe.

Speaker 42 The former detective told Slaughter that he started to pursue Robert Atkins back in 1991, but then something happened.

Speaker 35 He got an order from his boss.

Speaker 13 He said that he was told to stay away from that person, from that suspect.

Speaker 82 He was told to stay away.

Speaker 79 Yes. From Robert Atkins.

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 59 Why?

Speaker 54 Robert Atkins was an informant.

Speaker 82 A police informant. Correct.

Speaker 47 Robert Atkins had been working with police on drug cases.

Speaker 81 And he was instructed not to go down that road, not to pursue him as a suspect.

Speaker 90 Correct. I don't even know.
Okay.

Speaker 13 You're a carpet, Sergeant. No, I'm good.

Speaker 40 Sorry about that. No, it's okay.

Speaker 66 It's okay. It's okay.

Speaker 27 I can see it impacts you today.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 77 Why did you have to stop?

Speaker 86 Why did you have to take a break?

Speaker 13 It's cops on cops.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 13 I have an affection for these officers before me who trained me, taught me, hired me. I live here now.
We're invested in my family and I here. We love this township.

Speaker 88 Love the police department.

Speaker 25 To hear that

Speaker 13 this may have been a murder suspect that was traded in exchange for drug deals,

Speaker 13 which are not a dime a dozen or a penny a pound.

Speaker 13 We get drug intel all the time.

Speaker 13 It doesn't make sense in my brain. In 1991, they knew that Bob Atkins was an informant for our police department.
They were told to stay away from Bob Atkins, and they did.

Speaker 88 And they have to look in the mirror at that.

Speaker 71 That seismic revelation brought into question the entire investigation.

Speaker 45 Slaughter discovered the original detectives hadn't investigated Robert Atkins thoroughly.

Speaker 27 He says they never pulled phone records that could have confirmed his alibi or figured out if he drove a blue Monte Carlo in addition to the black one he owned.

Speaker 13 I think after that interview, I realized we're going now. This is it.

Speaker 54 We're going to solve it. Pedal the metal.

Speaker 13 Whether it ends up in arrests or something else, it's not important.

Speaker 73 We're going to go pedal the metal.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 there's going to be scorched earth behind me, so be it.

Speaker 83 Slaughter set out to check Robert and April's alibi himself, that phone call and the trip to the Poconos.

Speaker 27 It didn't take much investigating to discover the alibi had a big hole.

Speaker 44 Joy was thought to have been killed shortly before 12.50 p.m.

Speaker 44 But it turned out Robert didn't have proof he was home during that time.

Speaker 65 The person who called him on that landline said the call could have been as late as 1:30.

Speaker 13 There's still plenty of time for the violent murder to have occurred at his hand, for him to set fire to the home of the Hibbs family, and then for him to be back at the village of Pembroke apartments receiving this landline phone call.

Speaker 36 As for the Poconos, yes, they'd gone there that afternoon.

Speaker 40 But April didn't sign the hotel register until nearly 5 p.m., more than four hours after the murder how long of a drive is it from his house to the polonos it's less than two hours so neither the polconos trip nor the landline phone call accounted for the couple's whereabouts at the time of the murder they're not alibis they're not alibis they're post-crime Robert and April's alibi was falling apart.

Speaker 18 But if the detective was going to crack the case,

Speaker 18 he was going to need help.

Speaker 27 Let me ask you this, April. Why did you want to sit down with us today?

Speaker 18 Sergeant Mike Slaughter had worked the Joy Hibbs murder case for the better part of two years.

Speaker 46 He was convinced that Robert Atkins and perhaps his wife April were responsible.

Speaker 82 They rose to the top of your list of persons of interest.

Speaker 13 As the case starts to fall out, they're the only two names left up at the top.

Speaker 83 Slaughter wrote up his findings, including what he learned about Atkins being a confidential informant and about his lack of an alibi.

Speaker 45 He handed the case off to the district attorney's office, not knowing if he had enough for an arrest.

Speaker 79 And then you get a call.

Speaker 13 You get a call.

Speaker 84 It was September 11th, 2016, a few months after he passed off the case.

Speaker 52 An officer at the station had urgent news.

Speaker 13 He says, hey, there's some woman here who says it's really important. Her name's April Atkins.
I said,

Speaker 13 I'm on my way.

Speaker 55 You run down to the station.

Speaker 13 So 15 minutes later, I get there. The Collective Slaughter, Bristol Township Police.
I am in the conference room with April Atkins. April, are you here by your free will?

Speaker 70 Yes.

Speaker 13 And you have something in your hand there. What's that in your hand?

Speaker 69 This is your card I've been keeping that I gave you.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 56 April was there to tell the detective a secret she'd been keeping for 25 years, a story she also agreed to tell us.

Speaker 82 You were ready to tell the truth?

Speaker 17 No, you're done, right.

Speaker 19 April said she met Robert in high school where she was bullied.

Speaker 38 She hoped he would protect her,

Speaker 35 but she said it didn't work out that way, even after they got married and had kids.

Speaker 17 I've been through a lot with this man. You know, he's done some really horrible stuff

Speaker 38 to me.

Speaker 18 Still, she said she was not prepared for what he told her the day Joy died.

Speaker 84 She was getting ready for her shift at a special needs school when Robert walked in the door around lunchtime.

Speaker 17 I'm in the kitchen and he comes to the top of the stairs and when I looked at him, I said,

Speaker 17 what happened to you?

Speaker 89 He was covered.

Speaker 17 He was covered in blood.

Speaker 52 He was covered in blood.

Speaker 17 Yes, he was filthy.

Speaker 21 He was absolutely filthy.

Speaker 52 And then she said, he said something that stopped her cold.

Speaker 17 He said, I stabbed somebody and lit a house on fire.

Speaker 13 He says he stabbed somebody and he had set a house on fire? Yep. Did you ask him like, what do you mean?

Speaker 89 What happened?

Speaker 17 No, no, I did not.

Speaker 53 I was very scared.

Speaker 45 What are you thinking as you're hearing this?

Speaker 13 This is a Eureka moment. This is a big, big moment.

Speaker 65 Then what happened?

Speaker 17 Told me I had to call out of work, get the kids ready. We're going to the Poconos.

Speaker 41 April said her husband threw his clothes in the wash and showered.

Speaker 48 Then she packed the kids into the car.

Speaker 17 He drove so fast it was road rage all the way. It was so scary.

Speaker 48 Did you ask who he stabbed?

Speaker 75 No. No.

Speaker 17 I couldn't say very much of anything, because if he did that,

Speaker 70 who's next?

Speaker 17 Me and my children.

Speaker 19 After a night at the hotel, she said, Robert bought a new pair of sneakers.

Speaker 43 Then he took the family on a walk.

Speaker 17 We followed him straight into these trees.

Speaker 17 He said,

Speaker 17 stay there.

Speaker 17 And he left and he was carrying a bag. When he came back, that bag was gone.

Speaker 47 She thought he'd gotten rid of evidence, maybe his bloody sneakers.

Speaker 60 It wasn't until she got home and two detectives showed up to question Robert that she learned Joy had been murdered.

Speaker 19 You knew Joy.

Speaker 82 You all were friends.

Speaker 77 You had spent time in that house. What did you think when you found out that that was the house that had been burned down?

Speaker 17 I was disgusted.

Speaker 47 Even so, April didn't say anything to police.

Speaker 18 She said she was afraid.

Speaker 17 He carried a knife on him all the time. He would tap and I would know.

Speaker 27 So he would tap on his pocket where he kept his knife.

Speaker 17 To remind me.

Speaker 82 Was that his way of threatening you?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 46 When you put that together, April, and you realized that the person who had been killed was Joy, did you have a hard time with that, with staying silent?

Speaker 17 I would have discussions with him trying to tell him why don't you turn yourself in and do the right thing.

Speaker 75 Would get to the point where he would say, I'm gonna tell him that it was you.

Speaker 17 Every time I would get beaten.

Speaker 75 Oh, geez.

Speaker 19 What about when Slaughter interviewed her in 2014?

Speaker 41 Why hadn't she said anything then?

Speaker 63 At this point, the two of you were divorced.

Speaker 17 Yes, it didn't even matter. It didn't even matter.

Speaker 27 He still had control over you.

Speaker 75 Of course.

Speaker 27 What did you tell the detective?

Speaker 70 I gave him some Bob's story.

Speaker 75 You knew it was a lie.

Speaker 17 Oh, yes. One thing I don't like to lie.
Lies are not me.

Speaker 17 Someday I needed to make that right.

Speaker 9 April said she finally decided to come forward after she lost someone she loved.

Speaker 82 It made her think of Joy's husband, Charlie.

Speaker 75 I can imagine what that felt like for Charlie. You know, that that pain.

Speaker 27 You started to really feel for Charlie Hibbs.

Speaker 105 I felt for them the whole time.

Speaker 59 I was always on their side.

Speaker 75 Always in here and in here.

Speaker 54 My heart.

Speaker 27 Even with all of that, I have to ask, did you ever think that April was possibly just putting the blame on her husband to try and save herself?

Speaker 5 You have to.

Speaker 13 We have to explore that she was possibly the person who had done this.

Speaker 52 But when Slaughter considered all the evidence, he was convinced April was telling the truth.

Speaker 13 She wasn't the drug dealer. She wasn't the one heard on the phone by David Hibbs.

Speaker 59 It's a robber.

Speaker 13 April, I want to thank you for coming in, okay?

Speaker 34 You really believe me?

Speaker 59 I believe you.

Speaker 38 After April left the station, Sergeant Slaughter sent the interview to the prosecutor's office, marked urgent.

Speaker 13 This just happened. This sounds pretty, pretty damn important.

Speaker 50 He was confident he had done everything he could.

Speaker 38 He left the case with the DA's office and trusted they would act quickly.

Speaker 34 But nothing happened.

Speaker 18 The Hibbs family was in the dark about the investigation and April's confession.

Speaker 53 One year passed, then two, then five.

Speaker 27 With David believing Sergeant Slaughter's investigation had gone nowhere.

Speaker 6 I just assumed that he hit a dead end.

Speaker 31 Again.

Speaker 6 Again.

Speaker 14 During this time, were you angry with the Bristol Township Police?

Speaker 25 I don't think angry is the right word.

Speaker 25 Totally frustrated.

Speaker 19 By 2021, Charlie had retired and moved to the Northwest.

Speaker 34 He and David had reconciled, but the years without joy had taken a toll.

Speaker 25 There were just too many moments that were lost. I would have been a happier person, a better person

Speaker 25 having her with me.

Speaker 36 But he never gave up on solving the case.

Speaker 27 On the 30th anniversary of her murder, he used his retirement savings to post a $25,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.

Speaker 68 The Himps family agreed to a TV interview, which led to a meeting with the district attorney.

Speaker 6 When you show up to the DA's office with an entourage and a camera crew,

Speaker 6 the doors open for you.

Speaker 36 They start to feel some pressure.

Speaker 14 Things started moving.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 52 Soon, Robert would face new questions, not from police, but from April.

Speaker 18 And detectives would secretly record every word.

Speaker 112 This is Bob.

Speaker 17 Hey, we need to talk about something.

Speaker 94 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 69 It's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 108 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 23 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 89 Fox.

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Speaker 111 I'm Senator 25 Message.

Speaker 38 For five years, there had been no movement in the case since Sergeant Slaughter handed off his findings to the DA's office. But he never stopped hoping.

Speaker 13 I have the utmost confidence in their office that it'll happen when it happens.

Speaker 29 Then, in the middle of 2021, it finally happened.

Speaker 13 Come to find out that they're investigating Robert Atkins.

Speaker 100 The Bucks County DA's office assigned their own detective, David Hanks.

Speaker 106 Everything looked like it was pointing towards Robert Atkins.

Speaker 27 So, now you just needed to prove it.

Speaker 106 We needed something to push it over the edge.

Speaker 47 So, the detective reached out to April, who agreed to help.

Speaker 106 The next step was to ask her if she would consent to making a recording with Robert, which she agreed to do.

Speaker 18 In December 2021, Hanks accompanied April to a hotel to secretly record phone calls with Robert.

Speaker 52 This is a person who has spent years terrified of this man.

Speaker 84 Was she fearful during this process?

Speaker 106 Obviously, it was in the back of her mind.

Speaker 84 Getting evidence against a former police informant could be tricky.

Speaker 81 Are you hoping that Robert Atkins would in some way implicate himself?

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 33 You ready?

Speaker 17 I am.

Speaker 112 Okay.

Speaker 112 Um, this is Bob.

Speaker 17 Hey, um, we need to talk about something.

Speaker 38 Right from the start, Robert seemed combative.

Speaker 17 Are you paying attention to me?

Speaker 112 I wasn't, but I am now.

Speaker 106 We try and tickle a conversation.

Speaker 5 Tickle a conversation.

Speaker 106 Tickle a conversation. You have to tee it up.
You have to, yeah, especially if somebody hasn't spoken about an event for years and years and years.

Speaker 44 The tickle was a made-up story.

Speaker 17 The police from Bucks County are in the parking lot downstairs.

Speaker 29 April told Robert police had shown up asking about Joy Hibbs, and she wanted him to tell her what to say.

Speaker 17 I'm asking you because you helped me last time what to say.

Speaker 112 I didn't do anything.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the f you're talking about.

Speaker 27 You could hear his anger coming through.

Speaker 106 You could really hear it coming through.

Speaker 112 What would you like me to tell you?

Speaker 52 Robert continued to deny that he had coached April in the past.

Speaker 112 What the f are you talking about? I have no clue what the f you're talking about.

Speaker 82 Do you think he knew that he was being recorded?

Speaker 6 He was very suspicious.

Speaker 112 You didn't realize your phone's probably tapped, right?

Speaker 44 And he warned April while demeaning her.

Speaker 112 You don't even have to say anything. You've already said enough, and you know, they got the Fifth Amendment for a reason.
I can't help but you're mentally disabled.

Speaker 112 I mean, you just tell them that you don't want to be bothered with the

Speaker 112 see how far that takes sweet. You still got rights, you know.
You see the f ⁇ ing shining.

Speaker 89 Robert yells that he had an alibi.

Speaker 112 Your friend called, and I'm the one that answered the phone.

Speaker 112 And that was before we even left. We went upstate to the Poconos.
If you can't remember that you were at upstate, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 112 I keep telling you, you can't be at two places at one time. It's f ⁇ ing possible.

Speaker 52 You were hoping that in some way he would implicate himself. Did he ever directly implicate himself in those tapes?

Speaker 73 No.

Speaker 45 But he did say this.

Speaker 112 The district attorney's office is the one that would file a

Speaker 112 for a warrant.

Speaker 106 He said that... They're probably preparing a warrant.
And he gave his children the impression that he was getting arrested for something that happened 30 years ago

Speaker 37 the next month january 2022 prosecutor jennifer shorn now the bucks county district attorney impaneled a grand jury to hear the evidence against robert atkins we in bucks county have been very successful at breathing life into some unsolved cases She would later add Deputy DA Kristen McElroy to her team.

Speaker 82 Old cases can be notoriously difficult to prove in court.

Speaker 16 I mean, it's been 30 years. A lot of people forget things, forget details, have passed on.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 14 When you found out that this was going before a grand jury, what was that moment like?

Speaker 6 I was excited, but there was still a lot of information I didn't know.

Speaker 29 David was a witness and got access to key testimony from the DA.

Speaker 72 And that's when he got this revelation.

Speaker 6 I learned that in 2016, April Atkins came forward on her own accord and confessed that her husband, Robert Atkins,

Speaker 6 murdered my mother. I was angry.

Speaker 78 He was even more angry to learn that Robert Atkins had been a police informant and that his alibi was no good.

Speaker 18 He says in the past, he'd begged the lead investigator to check into it.

Speaker 6 He repeatedly said that we thoroughly investigated Robert Atkins, but that he had a solid alibi. We now know that he had absolutely no alibi.

Speaker 10 These are easy mistakes, simple things that could have been checked.

Speaker 6 You don't have to be a detective. You don't have to have any training

Speaker 6 to see that this timeline makes no sense.

Speaker 14 Do you believe that this was just gross incompetence, shoddy police work,

Speaker 14 or that they intentionally looked the other way?

Speaker 6 For years, I always suspected that this was

Speaker 6 just gross mishandling and that they botched this case.

Speaker 6 And now there's only one explanation that they turned the other way and they covered this up.

Speaker 70 They covered up whatever they needed to

Speaker 12 to have their informant.

Speaker 14 Do you think they were protecting him?

Speaker 12 I do.

Speaker 62 How did you feel?

Speaker 14 Betrayed.

Speaker 37 In May 2022, after five months of testimony, the grand jury recommended first-degree murder, arson, and robbery charges against Robert Atkins, and he was arrested.

Speaker 50 Today, journalists hit the then-district attorney with the two big questions the Hibbs family had.

Speaker 52 Why did it take so long for the DA to take the case?

Speaker 27 And what happened with the investigation back in 1991?

Speaker 96 Was his alibi checked out thoroughly at your time?

Speaker 113 That's a fair question, Joe. Perhaps other people that were situated differently back then accepted his alibi and maybe didn't look under every rock as thoroughly as we have now.

Speaker 103 Will you explain why it took from 2016 to last year for this to sort of start in motion if you had a statement sort of directly implicating Atkins?

Speaker 113 There is no great reason, no specific reason, Vinny. We have many cases and some tend to take priorities over others.

Speaker 113 There's no perfect answer as to why we didn't pursue this in 2016, but we're here now and I'm grateful grateful for that.

Speaker 14 When Robert Atkins was finally taken into custody, talk to me about how that was received with your family.

Speaker 6 We were only partially relieved because we kept wondering:

Speaker 6 how is this system gonna fail us again?

Speaker 52 David's instincts turned out to be right.

Speaker 37 Another big blow was just around the corner.

Speaker 6 It felt like a make-or-break moment, and that this was going to break the case.

Speaker 43 After Robert Atkins was arrested, the news made its way to his family living down south.

Speaker 106 Our office started to receive calls from family members.

Speaker 55 And they had quite a story for Detective Hank's investigation.

Speaker 52 They said when Robert was 15 years old, he was sent to Tennessee to live with his grandparents.

Speaker 19 His aunt Charlene lived nearby.

Speaker 106 One day, according to his brother, he went to Aunt Charlene's trailer, strangled her with a telephone cord, and then stomped on her chest, knocking her out.

Speaker 21 She was found naked and wrapped in a carpet and left, in my opinion, for dead.

Speaker 52 Robert Atkins was arrested for the attack and convicted as a minor, spending time in a juvenile facility on probation.

Speaker 46 Because of his age, his record was sealed, which is why police didn't know about the assault on his aunt.

Speaker 52 We're talking about the same type of brutal attack, almost down to a T.

Speaker 106 Almost down to T on the same

Speaker 1 type of victim.

Speaker 50 But even with the new evidence, David wasn't feeling confident.

Speaker 14 How did you feel approaching trial?

Speaker 6 I was very nervous. We're sort of just kind of waiting for the carpet to be ripped out from underneath us.

Speaker 51 And that's what happened.

Speaker 27 In pretrial motions, Robert Atkins' attorney convinced the judge to throw out significant pieces of evidence, including what Atkins had done to his aunt.

Speaker 16 The judge ultimately ruled that was too prejudicial to come in in the trial.

Speaker 45 The judge also threw out part of April's story.

Speaker 31 Those critical words Robert said just after the murder.

Speaker 16 And when he came home, covered in blood, disheveled, and said, I just stabbed a woman and set her house on fire.

Speaker 16 I mean, that is the confession that prosecutors obviously are going to want in the trial. It was not admissible in court.

Speaker 14 How devastating was that for you?

Speaker 6 It felt like this was going to break the case.

Speaker 62 There was no eyewitness putting him at the scene, no DNA, no fingerprints.

Speaker 27 A lot of the initial investigators had since passed on.

Speaker 53 How were you going to win this case?

Speaker 21 It was, far none, the most challenging prosecution, you know, I have ever encountered.

Speaker 37 On January 29th, 2024, Robert Atkins went on trial in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 101 He opted for a bench trial, a judge, but no jury.

Speaker 67 Prosecutors laid out their theory of the crime, that Robert killed Joy after that marijuana deal.

Speaker 15 David testified about overhearing Robert on the phone in a rage.

Speaker 6 Screaming at my mom.

Speaker 14 Do you remember what he was saying?

Speaker 6 I specifically heard,

Speaker 6 i will kill you and blow up your house

Speaker 43 charlie hibbs once a suspect himself testified about those incidents of vandalism before joy's murder he suspected robert atkins who was facing him in the courtroom clutching a bible

Speaker 25 if eyes could kill i'd have burned a hole right thrown then i looked him in the eyes and called him a bad name And the judge reprimanded me on it.

Speaker 25 I wanted to walk over and rip the Bible out of his arms and beat his head with it like a meatball.

Speaker 25 And you can cut that if you want, but that was just my feelings. The man never touched the Bible in his life.

Speaker 60 The prosecution argued that after the murder, Robert Atkins drove home where he found April and took his family to the Poconos.

Speaker 21 Thinking he got away with it because all news media reports say family loses their mother in a house fire and discarded evidence and prepared his story.

Speaker 45 That story became Robert Atkins' alibi.

Speaker 21 There were lies upon lies upon lies, and what he claimed to be an alibi was clearly not an alibi.

Speaker 36 Back in 1991, his alibi wasn't thoroughly checked.

Speaker 41 The lead homicide detective testified he was ordered to leave Robert Atkins alone.

Speaker 75 What impact did that have in the courtroom?

Speaker 21 It felt tense and heavy. And I could see the judge had a visceral reaction to that.

Speaker 38 What's more, according to the prosecution,

Speaker 37 there was evidence that placed Robert Atkins at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 52 There's one car that keeps coming up in this.

Speaker 62 A blue Monte Carlo.

Speaker 70 It was so specific in that multiple people had seen this car outside the house.

Speaker 19 In spite of those witnesses, back in 1991, police did not link a blue Monte Carlo to Robert Atkins, only a black one.

Speaker 21 But multiple sources who didn't know one another knew that robert atkins had access to or his grandmother owned this blue monte carlo

Speaker 43 robert's cousin testified she saw him driving a blue monte carlo

Speaker 14 she even said that a family photo taken about two weeks before the murder showed his blue monte carlo in the background the monte carlo just became such a focus that it's clear it's his car even though parts of april's story were excluded from trial, she was still the prosecution's star witness.

Speaker 75 When you took the stand in the courtroom, did Robert ever look at you?

Speaker 17 He had this death look that he has. And that was intimidating.

Speaker 19 She described seeing Robert come home in filthy clothing

Speaker 51 and that rushed trip to the Poconos.

Speaker 7 It's not an exaggeration to say that April Atkins' testimony might be the strongest evidence against him.

Speaker 40 Do call me with this.

Speaker 38 The prosecution also played those recorded phone calls.

Speaker 112 You've already said enough.

Speaker 21 It just crystallized what April said. You know, he's a menacing, threatening, violent individual.

Speaker 67 But did Robert have a motive to murder Joy?

Speaker 109 You're asking a judge to believe that a man committed this unthinkable crime over a $20 marijuana deal.

Speaker 40 That's a pretty steep hill to climb.

Speaker 21 There are some things that are very challenging to prove because they're just so bad and make no sense.

Speaker 18 The defense attorneys would also argue that the case made no sense.

Speaker 36 What's more, they were about to say they knew who was really to blame.

Speaker 18 33 years after Joy Hibbs was murdered, Robert Atkins was on trial, facing life in prison, or even the death penalty.

Speaker 38 His defense attorneys set out to demolish the prosecution's case by attacking the investigation, starting with the crime scene.

Speaker 71 They said that for the first 24 hours, investigators believed Joy had died in a house fire.

Speaker 53 Reporter Joanne Chiavalia.

Speaker 8 Firefighters were in there tromping all around. Evidence could have been, you know, tampered with or washed away.

Speaker 8 I think at one point the defense attorney said that he's never seen such little forensic evidence in a murder case.

Speaker 48 As for that blue Monte Carlo, the defense argued prosecutors invented it because they needed to place Robert Atkins at the crime scene.

Speaker 27 Did police ever find that car?

Speaker 8 No, the police never found that car.

Speaker 36 And the defense said that family photo proved nothing.

Speaker 31 The blue object in the background wasn't a car at all and was more likely a nearby building.

Speaker 7 I am not a forensics expert. I struggled to see the car in the photo myself, which was an argument that the defense attorney made vigorously.

Speaker 106 The Monte Carlo is always going to be a little bit of a mystery.

Speaker 71 But the defense saved its strongest firepower for the police investigation, turning the tables on the prosecution.

Speaker 7 A key strategy from the defense was to try to discredit Bristol Township police as a whole, including Sergeant Slaughter, who is reinvestigating what had happened.

Speaker 9 In an extraordinary turnaround, Sergeant Slaughter, the detective who'd broken open the case and called out the 1991 investigators for backing off a murder suspect, became the defense's sole witness.

Speaker 13 I was taken aback when I was named as a defense witness. I was called as a defense witness.

Speaker 30 The defense used slaughter to argue Robert Atkins didn't get a fair shake precisely because the 1991 investigation and subsequent investigations were so badly done.

Speaker 13 The 500 or 600 questions I prepared for, they threw four or five at me that I never saw coming.

Speaker 13 And I left that staying going, oh my gosh, this, like, this is, I mean, that's how intense this case was.

Speaker 7 Among the forensic evidence that the defense attorney criticized was a cigarette butt that survived the fire that was never tested and still to this day has not been tested for any remaining DNA.

Speaker 28 And the defense insisted police in 1991 failed to pursue other possible suspects.

Speaker 7 One of the potential suspects that the defense highlighted was a suspect in a house fire and domestic murder in New Jersey around the same time that Joy Hibbs was killed.

Speaker 7 He was never questioned or even looked into at all by the Bristol Township detectives.

Speaker 41 The investigation wasn't just botched, said the defense.

Speaker 47 It was worse.

Speaker 7 The defense attorney was cross-examining one of the lead detectives from 1991 and essentially asked him, why did you feel like you were able to not do your job, intimating that police corruption was involved.

Speaker 82 Did that feel like a turning point in this trial?

Speaker 8 It just raised questions.

Speaker 26 We were going away.

Speaker 47 And as for those secretly recorded phone calls, we went upstate to the Poconos.

Speaker 112 If you can't remember that you were upstate, well, I don't know how to tell you.

Speaker 8 Rightfully, they said he never implicated himself. In fact, he denied it and denied it and denied it.

Speaker 18 While the defense attorney didn't cross-examine April, he said she wasn't credible.

Speaker 36 She'd admitted that she'd lied, so how could anyone believe her now?

Speaker 71 He argued there was so much reasonable doubt that his client should be found not guilty.

Speaker 81 The defense rests.

Speaker 10 Now the case is in the judge's hands.

Speaker 27 Do you feel that your team has done enough?

Speaker 8 I do.

Speaker 21 I feared, you know, what degree of homicide, even though second degree would have been a life sentence, we wanted for the family first degree.

Speaker 46 After just two hours, the judge came back with his verdict.

Speaker 24 We were all holding hands,

Speaker 25 and I just emotionally started crying.

Speaker 18 Robert Atkins was guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 14 When you heard the guilty verdict, what was that moment like?

Speaker 6 I still don't believe it. I think it's going to take me some time to even acknowledge that this is real.

Speaker 12 My mind just froze there. It just froze.
Nothing else mattered at that moment. Thank goodness.

Speaker 25 There's still a big hole in my heart.

Speaker 24 But

Speaker 25 I felt justice for joy finally.

Speaker 68 The following day, the judge sentenced Robert Atkins to life without parole, plus up to 30 years for setting fire to the home.

Speaker 14 Your family could have asked the DA to pursue the death penalty. You decided not to.

Speaker 25 Why? I was done. He's not getting out of jail.
We came here to fight a fight. We fought it.
We won.

Speaker 84 Robert Atkins denies ever threatening or abusing April.

Speaker 46 His lawyer says his three children stand by their father.

Speaker 55 Even though Atkins is now behind bars, troubling questions hang over the 1991 Bristol Township police investigation.

Speaker 8 Even the judge in sentencing Robert Atkins said he felt that the police at that time had prioritized a confidential informant over a murder victim.

Speaker 38 Dateline asked the former lieutenant who'd overseen the case in 1991 why the lead detective was told to back off of Atkins.

Speaker 37 He declined to comment.

Speaker 6 I feel like there's still so much that needs to be explained and so much that needs to be answered for.

Speaker 14 Do you know why, even with that story from April Atkins, still,

Speaker 27 for several years, nothing happened?

Speaker 59 I don't.

Speaker 38 Detective Hanks, who investigated the case after Sergeant Slaughter, says he doesn't know either.

Speaker 106 I'm just happy we are where we are, and I have

Speaker 106 no explanation for the Hibs for many things.

Speaker 27 Do you think that they will ever get those answers?

Speaker 79 No.

Speaker 59 No.

Speaker 106 No, I think they're going to be playing it through their minds for years and years and years.

Speaker 74 Way bye.

Speaker 66 But a weight has finally been lifted.

Speaker 61 How are you all doing as a family?

Speaker 6 Today, I can tell you we are stronger than ever. Nothing brings a family together than fighting for a cause you can all get behind.

Speaker 43 When you think about your mom, how do you feel when her smile comes to your mind?

Speaker 69 I miss it.

Speaker 43 What do you miss the most about your mom?

Speaker 54 Her love and support.

Speaker 25 I miss my partner.

Speaker 14 What do you think she would love to do today?

Speaker 25 We'd be working in the garden, running the dogs on the beach. Digging for clams.

Speaker 14 David, your story in so many ways is really about fighting for her, about never giving up. Do you think your mom would be proud of you?

Speaker 72 I do.

Speaker 6 I think she would also say, move on,

Speaker 6 get a life.

Speaker 25 That's all for now.

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 22 Thanks for joining us.

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