Neola Robinson

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Let's go.

Bravos, the real housewives of Salt Lake City, are back.

Here we are, ladies.

I don't like it.

And they're taking things to the next level.

You know, some people just get on your nerves.

You questioned every single thing I have.

You're supposed to be my sister.

I am your sister.

No, you're not.

We have to be honest about this.

I'm afraid.

You should pay the lawsuits off.

No one sues the bottom.

They all go for the top.

Can I have the crazy pill that y'all took?

Apparently, you're already taking it.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, September 16th, I'm Bravo.

And streaming, I'm Peacock.

When a good-hearted Texas trucker finally found her good timing man, it seemed like a match made in heaven.

They like to drink a little bit.

They like to dance.

They like to raise hell.

They seem like a perfect match for each other.

I thought, yeah, maybe my dad finally found his true love.

Were they destined to ride into the sunset together?

Or was one of them looking for love in all the wrong places?

There were theories that he had ran off with another woman.

The relationship had just been so strained.

And when another handsome stranger enters the picture, gossip starts to churn.

When I saw the guy wearing his clothes and his hat and his boots, that just totally blew my mind.

I think there was a whole nother side to Shorty that not everybody saw.

There was no signs of sympathy.

There was no signs of heartache.

He knows where he's at.

Wasn't doubting my mind.

All of us had driven by it a hundred times.

So it was creepy.

It was shocking.

It was unbelievable.

None of us could wrap our brains around it.

July 12th, 2013.

It's 6 a.m.

in Tarrant County, Texas, and lawman Claire Barnes is leading a man named Ray through the doors of the sheriff's office.

Ray was a local barfly.

He loved to drink, but not much else.

However, Ray isn't here because of a bar fight or a DUI.

He's here to breathe new life into a Texas-sized mystery that's been raising eyebrows in this cozy corner of North Texas for more than three years.

My dad, Shorty, disappeared in 2010.

He supposedly run off with another woman.

Someone might think because my dad had been married several times that maybe one of these women was

the cause of his disappearance.

No one was hearing from Shorty

and essentially it became a cold case.

But now with Ray coming forward, Ranger Claire Barnes intends to light a fire under this case.

Claire had just become a Texas Ranger 30 days before.

That's why he is a Texas Ranger to help solve this case.

Claire Barnes took that case and he ran with it and he wasn't going to stop until until he figured it out.

Ray was interviewed years earlier in the disappearance of Shorty Robinson.

He was definitely considered a possible suspect.

Now, Ray claims to have groundbreaking new information about Shorty's disappearance.

What he basically admitted to Ranger Barnes was that this was not a missing Percy case, this was a homicide.

For Shorty and Neola Robinson, theirs was a story of second chances in both life and love.

For Neola, it began decades earlier in the Pacific Northwest.

She was reared in Tacoma, Washington, and she attended Franklin Pierce High School.

By all accounts, she was a regular student.

She was on the drill team.

Neola's life took a dramatic turn when, at the tender tender age of 17, she dropped out of school and married her boyfriend, Alan.

To make ends meet, Neola took an unusual job for a 4'10-inch teenager, driving an 18-wheeler.

Neola Robertson was called Cotton, and no one knows why, but that's what her name was over the CB handle.

as a truck driver.

She had a ton of friends, a ton of friends from her truck driving career.

Neola wasn't just a hard-working trucker.

She was also known for hard partying.

Neola was rough around the edges.

She liked to wear hats.

She liked to hang out in the bars.

By no means was she shy.

She

had a mouth on her.

Life on the road soon took its toll on Neola's personal life.

and in the mid-1970s her marriage ended in divorce.

In the two decades that followed, Neola continued to rack up the miles and the marriages.

She had several marriages, and eventually one of those marriages brought her to Texas and she settled down here in Tarrant County.

Neola refused to give up the trucker's way of life, even as she entered her 50s.

And in 2007, marriage number four ended in divorce.

Instead of feeling sorry for herself, this hard-charging single-again trucker hit the North Texas bar scene, where her favorite watering hole was the Stagecoach Ballroom.

It's been known to be

a pretty rough place as far as the bars are concerned.

That's a pretty raunchy crowd.

They like to drink a little bit.

They like to dance.

They like to raise hell.

It didn't take long for one of the stagecoach's most hell-raising regulars to catch Neola's eye.

A 5-foot-4-inch metal welder and wicked line dancer named Pleasant Irvin Robinson, better known to his friends as Shorty.

They always hated that first name, Pleasant.

As it turned out, I believe that that really expressed his personality and the type of person that he was.

And I believe that they gave him the name of Shorty because he was just a small, you know, about five foot four

man,

kind of like a little rant in a way.

And I believe that's he got the nickname.

He really never even met a stranger.

I mean, if somebody's over there that's just kind of sitting by themselves, he's going to go there and strike up a conversation, try to get to know him, maybe invite him over to his table and buy him a beer.

And, you know, who knows, maybe that's his next best friend.

Shorty was a very typical Texas fan.

He loved, like I said, he loved to dance,

he loved country music, he loved dressing up like a cowboy in his boots, in his starch jeans, his starch shirt, and his cowboy hat.

And

he was just a little cowboy and he loved to ride his motorcycle.

Like Niola, 55-year-old Shorty had never been lucky in love.

I would almost consider him a hopeless romantic.

I think he fell hard for women

at first really quick.

But it seems Shorty often fell out of love as quickly as he fell in.

I think he was married like seven times.

I remember we used to go bowling and

I was like, hey, dad, can I come home with you?

He's like, oh, I'm going to go spend time with my new wife.

And I was like, got married?

After every every divorce, Shorty was always itching to get back in the saddle.

Shorty was by no means shy.

And if you were

any woman, it was, hi, how you doing?

Can I get you a drink?

And then if he found out you was single, he'd be having you on that dance floor.

Which was exactly what happened the night Shorty first bumped into Neola.

He had gone out there to go dancing.

And he seen this lady and he asked her to dance.

And then they started talking about motorcycles.

From that first dance, Shorty and Neola were inseparable.

They both liked to hang out in the bars.

They enjoyed wearing cowboy hats and dancing.

By all accounts, they seemed like a perfect match for each other.

It wasn't long before Shorty asked Neola to be wife number eight.

He got married at the honky-tonk woman.

The owner's son married him.

They were dressed up cowboy, western.

Wasn't nothing really fancy, but nice.

We all had a a really wonderful time.

Was very happy for him.

After their wedding, Neola moved into Shorty's home in the tiny town of Pelican Bay, and they carved out the life they'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know if the marriage was going to last,

but when I'd seen how her and my dad interacted with each other,

then I thought, yeah, maybe my dad finally found his true love.

But in October 2009, the couple's life is nearly derailed by a horrific tragedy.

In 2009, she got into a truck accident.

She actually rolled the 18-wheeler that she was driving.

She had had an accident, hurt her back, could not work anymore.

She couldn't drive a truck.

And I knew that that had

kind of hurt their finances a little bit.

Although the accident forced Neola and Shorty to tighten the purse strings, During Neola's recovery, they found a potential new business opportunity.

He had bought her a t-shirt machine so that she could try to get her own business started making t-shirts because that's what she kind of wanted to do.

If she needed something, you know, he would get it for himself or he would give her the money.

Over the next few months, the fledgling t-shirt business started to grow.

And though Neola's injuries made their motorcycle rides and camping trips a thing of the past, on the outside, the couple seemed as happy as ever.

When I saw them interacting together and I saw how my dad was, you know, happy, I was impressed that, you know, he found somebody somebody that

he felt like that he could grow old with.

But on June 2nd, 2010, their seemingly blissful relationship proves to be anything but perfect.

Neola burst into Shorty's boss's office at the machine shop, claiming that Shorty just left her for another woman.

She said he had come home from work one day and he had informed her that he was leaving her.

He then then stormed out the front door and she watched him right away in a white pickup truck.

He alla said that my dad run off with a Hispanic lady.

They took off in a white Chevy truck, newer model with chrome rims.

Coming up?

Is Shorty's sudden departure just another case of love him and leave him?

Or is something more sinister in the works?

No, Shorty won't answer his phone.

Didn't go to work.

Then people started, hmm, that was so far away from his characteristic.

And another man takes Shorty's place right down to his very boots.

When I saw the guy wearing Shorty's clothes and his hat and his boots, it was in my head he knows.

He knows something.

After weathering the storm of multiple broken marriages, Neola and Shorty Robinson's newfound romance had all the elements of a hit country song.

She loved the dancing, she loved the riding the motorcycle, going out camping, and he never really had anyone that enjoyed doing all them things, you know, and I think that's what really drawed them together.

She really looked like a very sweet, nice person.

She was quiet, you know, was very polite to everybody in the family.

She did seem to make my dad happy.

But on June 2nd, 2010, their love song hits an unexpected low note when a teary-eyed Neola explains to Shorty's boss that he had just left her for another woman.

She said that he was just the rudest and cruelest man ever alive.

I don't understand why he would do such a thing like that.

Though he tries his best to console Neola, Shorty's boss, like everyone else in Pelican Bay, figures this is probably just another case of Shorty being Shorty.

My dad, he was a ladies' man.

Given the fact that he had been married eight times before, it wasn't a story that was completely out of the realm of possibility.

Shorty's boss tells Neola he'll get the full story when Shorty shows up for his next shift.

But Shorty misses his next shift.

And the next, And the next.

In fact, two weeks go by without a single word from Shorty.

His employer came out and talked to me and we spoke very intimately about Shorty.

He knew something was wrong.

Shorty did not show up for work for two weeks.

His boss obviously was very concerned.

His tools were there.

He had not picked up his paycheck.

And he knew that there was something wrong because that wasn't like Shorty to at least not call and let him know what was going on.

And so at that point, his employer filed a missing persons report.

On June 18th, 2010, Shorty's case is assigned to Detective Anthony Tobar of the Pelican Bay Police Department.

Tobar's first move is to question the woman Shorty supposedly left behind, Neola Robinson.

From the get-go, it seems Neola has resigned herself to the fact that she's just another in Shorty's long line of women scorned.

When I talked to her,

there was no signs of sympathy.

There was no signs of heartache.

She was

just as a matter of fact, he just left.

He was a grown man.

He can do whatever he wants.

Neola said that Shorty had run off to Ontario, California, but Niola didn't really seem to care.

She didn't seem to mind.

Shorty's better than the prior husbands I had.

Nothing happened that day he left.

He already had his plan to leave.

I think, honest to God, I think he had a plan from day one.

I thought one time he might be married somewhere else, too.

In fact, Neola tells Detective Tobar that even though Shorty had only been gone for three weeks, she'd already found herself a new man.

I thought it was pretty weird that Niola started dating pretty close after my dad's disappearance, but in my mind, I think that she was just trying to get on with her life.

Detective Tobar has his suspicions, but based on Niola's own reputation for quickly moving from one man to the next, there's no evidence to suspect her of foul play related to Shorty's disappearance.

Three days after the initial report to us, it's just a missing adult, maybe a man actually left.

On the afternoon of June 22nd, Detective Tobar heads to Shorty's favorite watering hole, the Honky Tonk Woman's Saloon, to see if any of Shorty's drinking buddies have heard from him.

We were his family.

I mean, his friends were his true family because we knew him the best.

You know, he went in there, everybody knew him.

He

really never even met a stranger.

It wouldn't be rare for Shorty to walk into the bar and he'd have a new love.

According to Shorty's friends, that didn't happen this time.

And the fact that Shorty split town without so much as a goodbye seemed out of character.

Countless friends that he talked to on a daily basis, if not hourly, all said something's wrong.

Shorty doesn't walk away from his friends and his family.

I saw Shorty once a week.

every Tuesday, no matter what.

When he didn't come into the bar that week, I knew something was wrong.

Shorty's friends also believed that Shorty leaving Neola for another woman was a long time coming.

Shorty had told me that, you know, the relationship had just been so strained after she had that accident.

She didn't have a job.

She didn't have unemployment.

Shorty was having to pay her car payment and her motorcycle payment.

After a while, Shorty started coming in by himself more and more.

And when they were together, you could tell there was some tension.

I believe that that's what put a strain on their marriage.

That was the beginning of the downfall of the marriage.

As the couple's t-shirt printing business got up and running, Shorty's friends say it hadn't really panned out the way Neola had hoped.

At that time, you know, finances were tight.

They were living in a small town and it was hard to make ends meet.

Things were getting worse and just arguing about the money and he told me that he was going to to ask her for a divorce.

Shorty's friends tell Detective Tobar that the last time they saw him was over Memorial Day weekend, just hours before he planned to break things off with Neola.

He was going to ask her for a divorce and be gone so that she could have her privacy to get her stuff out of his house.

And he just comes up missing with everything left there.

Neola said that he had run off with another woman to Ontario, California.

Shorty does not call in.

Shorty doesn't walk away from his friends and his family.

With the mystery of Shorty's whereabouts growing deeper by the minute, Detective Tobar phones his counterparts in Ontario, California.

Neila thought he went to California.

Police ran down every lead, but that went nowhere.

They couldn't find any evidence that Shorty was in California with another woman.

After the Ontario, California Police Department says there is no sign of Shorty in California, Detective Tobar issues a subpoena for Shorty's bank and phone records.

The bank records will take time to process, but Detective Tobar receives Shorty's cell phone records within 48 hours.

Immediately, the red flags start flying.

His phone numbers were not logging calls or registering off any cell towers.

Had he actually ran off, you'd have some sign of him in some other location, whether it be a cell phone locating in another state, him contacting his family and friends, telling, hey, look, this is where I'm going to go.

As Detective Tobar ponders these possibilities, he receives a phone call from two of Shorty's friends, Lisa Arneson and Denise Dunnegan.

The two women say they just left another bar in town called Lynn's Saloon, and they can't believe what they saw.

Right there at the bar, I thought it was Shorty

because he had this shirt that shorty wears and this black hat and i thought oh my gosh he's back and then when i got right next to this guy i said oh my god it wasn't shorty when i saw the guy wearing shorty's clothes and his hat and his boots it was in my head he knows he knows something

according to lisa and denise The man in Shorty's clothes was a well-known barfly named Ray.

And when Lisa and Denise asked Ray why he was wearing Shorty's clothes, his response chilled them to the bone.

Coming up, who is Ray and what does he know?

He was concerned about his own well-being.

And there are signs of life in Shorty's bank records.

Police discover that there is activity on his bank account, that his debit card had been used.

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In June 2010, 59-year-old Neola Robinson told police in Pelican Bay, Texas that her husband, 57-year-old Shorty Robinson, had run off with another woman.

Given Shorty's reputation as a ladies' man, Neola's story was certainly plausible.

But now, Shorty's friends have given investigators an astonishing new lead in the case.

About three weeks to a month into Shorty's disappearance, here comes this guy walking in with Shorty's clothes on and his boots and his cowboy hat.

I thought it was Shorty.

Then I thought, well, why in the world did he not get a hold of me?

And as I got closer, I realized it wasn't him.

Denise and Lisa asked Ray why he is wearing Shorty's clothes.

We're like, where did you get that?

You know that Shorty's.

Well, he didn't need it anymore.

How do you know he don't need it anymore?

You know, it kind of like wigged us all out.

Then he knows where he's at.

Wasn't doubt in my mind that man knew.

His life was going to the bar.

He lived in a small apartment with a family member and he did tree service whenever he could.

Wasn't well well-liked.

But according to Shorty's friends, there was one person in town who had grown quite fond of Ray.

Neola Robinson.

She started dating this guy named Ray, and they had started dating shortly after Shorty left.

And Ray was wearing Shorty's clothes because they were, funny enough, same size.

On July 16th, 2010, Detective Tobar sits down with Ray for a one-on-one interview.

He begins by asking Ray about his relationship with Neola.

Ray says, in addition to tree services, he also does a little handyman work on the side, which is how he met Neola.

Ray told police that on July 10th, Neola came to the bar and asked him if he could do some handyman work around her home.

She said that Shorty had always done this work before, but that Shorty had abandoned her and run off with another woman.

Ray says that the following day, he did the work at Neola's place, and that once he was done, Neola asked him if he'd like to come inside.

The handyman work led to sex, which in turn immediately led to Ray and Neola becoming an item.

Ray moved into Niola's home.

They were just waiting on Niola's divorce to make things official.

Could Ray have had something to do with Shorty's disappearance?

And if so, was it at Niola's bidding?

So how does this guy go from meeting Neola to moving in with her six days later?

Something about Ray's story just doesn't gel.

With no concrete evidence that Ray was involved in Shorty's disappearance, detectives have no choice but to let him go.

Detective Tobar obtains a subpoena for both Ray and Neola's phone records.

As Tobar examines the call log, he uncovers a discrepancy in Ray's story.

Ray said that he met Neola on July 10th, but their first phone call was actually June 12th.

That was four days before Shorty was reported missing.

Just as Detective Tobar is zeroing in on Ray and Neola, Shorty's bank releases his financial records.

Shorty had expressed to some people that he was thinking about leaving Neola.

In fact, in the days before Shorty's boss reported him missing, he had actually opened his own checking account, a separate checking account.

Shorty had cut her off financially, that he had told her, I'm not giving you another dime.

You need to get off your butt and you need to start work.

And the activity on that account suggests Shorty Shorty is potentially alive and well.

Police discover that there is activity on his bank account, that his debit card had been used.

When Detective Tobar digs a little deeper, he discovers Shorty's debit card hadn't been used anywhere except in and around Pelican Bay.

Either Shorty is still hanging around Pelican Bay and is somehow avoiding being seen by his friends and co-workers, or someone in Pelican Bay has been using Shorty's card.

Detective Tobar also takes a look at the checks written against Shorty's account and discovers even more irregularities.

I got a signature card.

If that signature card is what he activated his account with, it would also be the signature that confirms on all his, all of the checks.

The signatures did not match at all.

So at first they thought, well, maybe he's around.

Maybe he's using his debit card.

But then they found out it wasn't him.

It was Neola that was using it.

When you look at the notes that Niola wrote on the calendars, the lettering was the same.

The sweeping of the letters was the same.

It was all indicative that she's the one that wrote the checks.

On August 13th, 2010, Detective Tobar and a CSI execute a search warrant of Niola and Shorty Robinson's home.

For a man who had allegedly left town to start a new life, Shorty didn't seem to take much with him.

His motorcycle was still there.

His truck was still there.

His tools were there, his tools were at work.

His friend Lisa said she talked to him daily and she hadn't heard from him and she knew something was wrong.

A working class man, especially in this area of Texas and almost anywhere, doesn't just leave and leave everything behind that he owns.

Shorty had worked a long time and very hard.

That is just not consistent.

with any person to leave all of that behind.

That's not the only disturbing disturbing discovery investigators make.

We did find blood inside the house.

There was detection in the bathroom and there was detection on the bathroom counter underneath a Lysol bottle.

The crime scene investigator had to pry the bottle off because it had stuck to the counter so severely.

The CSI collects the blood and sends it off to the lab for processing.

The blood was tested at UNT against samples from his son.

Unfortunately, it was so degraded that there was no DNA sample available.

With no blood evidence, or for that matter, any evidence that indicates a crime has occurred, the investigation hits a dead end.

Essentially, all you have is a missing man who may or may not have left town with another woman.

And you have an angry wife who helped herself to her husband's finances and personal belongings.

That does not rise to the level of a major crime.

There were no new leads that were developed.

There was no evidence that suggested either the truthfulness or the falsity of Miola's story.

Essentially, it became a cold case.

Coming up, Shorty's friends and family begin to lose hope.

I didn't have any hope that he was going to be found alive.

This day and age,

people like Shorty don't disappear off of the face of the earth unless they're dead.

But just when things look their bleakest, an old witness comes forward with new information.

She told the gentleman, I've already got rid of one man in this town.

I can get rid of another.

I think there was a whole nother side to Shorty that not everybody saw.

I agree.

Investigators now suspect that Neola Robinson or her new boyfriend, Ray, is responsible for the disappearance of Neola's husband, Shorty.

Despite circumstantial evidence that suggests foul play, there's nothing concrete to tie them to any sort of crime.

We're running out of leads to follow up on.

Everything has been followed up on.

Search warrants have been done, but I didn't have any

concrete proof that Shorty was indeed murdered and that he was indeed dead.

Not that Detective Tobar is giving up on the case.

Over Over the next three years, he continues to run down even the slightest leads, all to no avail.

I still looked into everything.

Someone said he actually went into a local grocery store, and I sat for six hours at that grocery store, reviewing three days worth of tapes, just hoping to see him come through the grocery store.

And it never happened.

I didn't have any hope that he was going to be found alive,

just because

he was the same kind of guy.

He went to work, come home, went to work, went to the bar, come home.

He was just the same routine.

However, in June 2013, this cold case starts to heat up when Claire Barnes of the Texas Rangers reaches out to police in Pelican Bay.

One thing that Texas Rangers do that is a great help, particularly for smaller police agencies in the state of Texas.

They help out with complicated investigations, like cold case investigations.

Claire had just become a Texas Ranger 30 days before, and he just young and energetic.

Ranger Barnes called me and asked if he could get all the information I had on the case.

And I said, yeah, let me get it to you as soon as possible.

What he did was check to see in this intervening period of time from when the case went cold to when he picked it up, does Shorty pop up anywhere on the grid?

And when it was apparent that he he had not, Claire knew right away that Shorty is deceased.

It's just a matter of finding out where he is.

Ranger Barnes' first move is to circle back to one of the original suspects, Ray.

Ray was always a strong suspect for a number of reasons.

One, he was romantically involved with Neola around the time of Shorty's disappearance.

Two, Ray stepped into Shorty's life and literally, for that matter, into Shorty's clothes.

And three,

Ray's timeline of when he started interacting with Neola was false.

He lied to police.

On July 12th, 2013, Barnes brings Ray in for an interview and asks him point blank if he knows what happened to Shorty Robinson.

Ray maintained that he had nothing to do with Shorty's disappearance.

and he generally sticks with the same story he told years ago.

But Ray mentions somewhat offhandedly that over time, he's become very afraid of Neola.

At some point in time, he actually started getting fearful of her.

He said that

she's not right in the head.

He was concerned about his own well-being.

Once they broke up, she went crazy again, leaving him voicemails, threatening him.

She told the gentleman, I've already got rid of one man in this town.

I can get rid of another.

And that's when Ray told police that Neola had admitted to him that she killed Shorty herself.

The following morning, Claire Barnes reaches out to Neola Robinson.

He developed a rapport with her, explained that he was following up on the investigation, wanting to hear her story once more, and she agreed to speak with him at the Texas Department of Public Safety office.

In an interrogation room, Barnes and Lieutenant Todd Snyder take an unusual approach and start their interview by apologizing to Neola.

We were a little bit taken back by the way you were treated.

I know Claire's touched on it, but I wanted to apologize too for

the way you were treated by law enforcement in general.

He made her feel like he had to close this case up and wrap it up because it was a cold case and all he was doing was just finalizing it.

In my experience, seasoned investigators like Ranger Barnes use different techniques when dealing with subjects.

One technique is to project blame on someone other than the person being interviewed.

In fact, Barnes and Lieutenant Snyder insist that if anyone is the real villain in this case, it's Shorty himself.

I think there was a whole nother side.

to Shorty that not everybody saw.

I think everybody on the street, his bosses, his buddies,

see a great guy, hard worker, but when you shut the door, there's another man that walks in.

I agree.

He played the good cop, someone that was on her side.

She was a victim, and she felt like she had a friend.

I have just a sneaky suspicion that there was a lot more physical violence toward you than what you've ever told anybody.

Some slapping around.

Some shoving, some beatings.

Ranger Barnes' tactic dangled the opportunity opportunity out to Neola to come up with a plausible theory about Shorty's disappearance and about Shorty's death that did not implicate her in his murder.

Neola doesn't take the bait.

She gave him the same account of what happened that she had been giving to everyone for the period of three years.

What happened to him in the journey?

Nothing.

He left.

Ranger Barnes confronted her, said he did not believe her story to be truthful, and asked for her to be truthful.

It was either an accident, you snapped,

or it was self-defense of something.

But he didn't walk out that house that night.

He was dead, and we know it.

You know it,

I know it, and Claire knows it.

Ranger Barnes had a box that was full of binders and papers and other records and directly addressed Neola and told her that what was was in the box was a murder case.

I go for the grand jury and tell the tale that this box contains

and woe be um to you.

You know what happened.

That's all I'm asking.

That's all I'm saying.

I don't know what happened.

You do know what happened.

They're saying you killed him.

I didn't kill him.

Enough, Cotton.

Enough.

I want to know where his body was found.

You may not know what happened, but you know where his body was found.

I don't know what happened.

Okay.

Then tell us where you found him in the house.

In his chair?

That's it.

Boom.

The wall's down.

It's the ovar.

The wall is down, darling.

Take a minute.

Gather your thoughts.

And then when you're ready to tell us, you tell us.

Because as Claire said, the wall's down now.

Neola starts by telling her version of what happened the night Shorty disappeared

She said that Shorty had returned home intoxicated from the bar.

He came back in

and he is mad as ill He was worse than that

Her and Shorty had gotten to a heated argument that night and that she had sprayed a chemical in his face

I bet that pissed him off even oh he was

throwing stuff around.

He was throwing the recliners around.

At one point during this verbal altercation, Shorty approached her in what she termed to be some aggressive manner, and that she turned and sliced at him with the fruit knife.

She said the fruit knife cut him on his arm or his hand.

All I remember is running for the bedroom and closing the door.

Okay.

And

I heard him throwing a bunch of stuff around.

Okay.

And then he got quiet.

Neola says that the next morning, she crept out of the bedroom.

He was in his chair.

Okay.

He was dead.

According to Neola, it wasn't the knife wound on Shorty's arm that killed him.

It was the bug spray she'd hit him with.

I think what it was in that can, I think, that killed him.

But I didn't mean to.

Neola Robinson's explanation for Shorty's death was completely absurd.

Where's he at Cuba?

Where?

He's on the property?

Yep.

Niola said that after she found Shorty dead, she waited until the night, and then she stuffed his body into an air mattress, and then she dragged the air mattress out into the front yard where she buried his body.

So after her interview on July 13th, Niola leads investigators out to her house and shows them where Shorty is buried.

To the left of the house, there was a tree and just in front of the tree, there's a small shed.

Right behind that small shed, closer to the tree, was where he was buried.

All of us had driven by it a hundred times, so it was creepy.

It was shocking.

It was unbelievable.

None of us could wrap our brains around it.

I mean, who does this?

Who buries their husband in the front yard

and is deadly just walking around him all day long?

Who does this?

Even though investigators believe Neola is lying about the manner of Shorty's death, they need concrete evidence.

Investigators exhumed the remains and sent them to the coroner's office to be examined and to determine the true cause of death.

Not surprisingly, the coroner's report makes clear Shorty's cause of death wasn't poisoning by bug spray.

There were no substantive cuts on the body, nothing to suggest a fatal stabbing.

And there was no bug spray in Shorty's system, certainly not a lethal level of it.

According to the coroner, the true cause of death was far more gruesome.

Shorty's thyroid cartilage had been snapped off at the base.

And according to the medical examiner's office, it's a finding that is most frequently made when there has been focal pressure to that cartilage.

In other words, hangings, ligature stranglings, or a focal manual strangling.

Coming up, investigators lay out their theory of the crime.

She waited till she could take advantage and did what she needed to do.

But is there enough evidence to convict Neola?

She murdered my friend.

How is that possible?

How is that right?

After a three-year investigation into the disappearance of Texas resident Shorty Robinson, his wife Neola has finally admitted to killing him.

And after receiving the medical examiner's report, investigators now know Shorty's cause of death.

Ranger Barnes had an excavation team come to recover the remains.

Thyroid cartilage had been snapped off at the base.

The autopsy came back that basically he was choked, it was broken.

Based on this information, investigators pieced together the events that led to Shorty Robinson's death.

Saturday evening in May of 2010, he told me that he was going to ask her for a divorce.

I think that Shorty and Neola's discord had become almost unlivable.

Shorty was really really frustrated that Neola wasn't working and was basically living off of the income that he was making.

And when Shorty told her he wanted a divorce, Neola began to panic.

Neola was a woman in her 60s that was not employed, had no nearby family and real friends.

She would have essentially become destitute.

Rather than engage in a physical confrontation, Niola waited for Shorty to slip into a drunken sleep.

I think that Shorty came home intoxicated and he fell asleep in his recliner and Neola came up behind him and turned off the air.

She was not going to be left out on the street and waited till she could take advantage and did what she needed to do.

On July 15th, 2013, Neola Robinson is charged with the first-degree murder of her husband.

Her trial is slated to begin on September 15th, 2014.

But just before the opening gavel drops, Neola's defense team reaches out to prosecutors.

Neola began to, through her counsel, ask for a plea offer.

I called Shorty's son, Michael, and I asked, I explained to him the circumstances.

And I said,

Anything less than her admitting to murder, I don't want to hear it.

And he said that they will agree to 18 years with her admitting to murder.

I did agree to it.

It was a fair punishment.

Though Shorty's family is comfortable with the 18-year sentence, many of his friends feel like Niola got off with a slap on the wrist.

I thought it was wrong.

She murdered my friend.

And you're going to give her 18 years?

How is that possible?

How is that right?

While there's certainly no love lost for Neola, Shorty Robinson will never be forgotten, especially at the Honky Tonk Woman's Saloon.

Shorty's urn is in the shape of a motorcycle gas tank, and even today, it is in the honky tonk bar that he used to frequent.

In the bar business, you have a lot of people that end up

dying, but not everybody gets an urn.

Shorty was that important.

Neola became eligible for parole in July of 2022, but is not scheduled for release at this time.

She is 72 years old.

Ray was never charged in connection with Shorty Robinson's murder.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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