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James
D. ROBERTSON
A.K.A.: "Jimmy"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Parricide
-
$2.2 million inheritance
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders:
November 25,
1997
Date of birth: 1973
Victims profile: Earl
and Terry Robertson, both 49(his
parents)
Method of murder:
Hitting with
a claw hammer
/ Stabbing
with knife
Location: Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA
Status: Sentenced to death in June 1999
On
November 25, 1997 - two days before Thanksgiving - Earl and Terry
Robertson, both 49, were found brutally slaughtered inside their
home in Rock Hill, a college town and flourishing suburb of
Charlotte, North Carolina.
They were family people, churchgoing and law-abiding. Yet someone
had wanted them dead - badly enough to cut Terry's throst and
crush Earl's skull with a claw hammer. Suspicion swiftly fell on
the couple's eldest son, James D. "Jimmy" Robertson, 21, who'd
recently moved back in with his parents. After graduating high
school with honours, Robertson had taken a wrong turn, flunking
out of college, spiralling downward into drug and alcohol abuse
and petty crime.
In
the predawn hours of November 25, he called his teenage
girlfriend, Meredith Moon, and told her to come over. When she got
there, Robertson told her today was the day he was going to kill
his parents. What had motivated a once-promising young man to
slaughter his parents in cold blood? Was it, as prosecutors put
forth, greedy desire for his share of a $2.2 million inheritance?
What dark secrets did the Robertson family's all-American facade
conceal? When James Robertson's own grandmother talked to a
newspaper reporter about him, she said, "He'd be better off put to
sleep."
In
1999, a jury would decide the fate of the son who ended the lives
of the people who gave him his.
Already
convicted of murdering his parents for inheritance, Robertson gets
the death penalty
By Bryan Robinson - CourtTV.com
June 7, 1999
YORK, S.C. (Court TV) — James Robertson
appeared to have it all. But now he has nothing except a murder
conviction and death sentence for murdering his parents for their
$2 million fortune.
Once characterized as a math genius, Robertson
attended Georgia Tech in Atlanta and seemed on his way way to
earning an engineering degree. His father, Earl, was an executive
at a textiles firm called Springs Industries, and Jimmy, as he was
known, was the heir to his parents' $2.2 million fortune.
But in 1997, something went horribly wrong with
Robertson and his parents. Jimmy was expelled from college for
missing too many classes, prompting his father to cut him off
financially. Robertson was forced to take odd jobs at different
restaurants in South Carolina.
Upset about the sudden turn his life had taken,
Robertson allegedly began talking casually to his friends about
killing his parents — and according to prosecutors, kill them he
did.
On November 25, 1997, Terry and Earl Robertson
were discovered bludgeoned to death inside their own home.
Debbie Brisson became worried when her co-worker
Terry did not show up for a meeting that morning. Thinking that
Terry had overslept, Brisson went into the house. She was on her
way to the master bedroom when she tripped over Earl's prone body
on the second floor of the house.
Detectives and evidence technicians found blood
spatter on the walls, floors, doors, and ceilings. Earl was found
lying face down wearing nothing but his underwear. He had been
clubbed repeatedly, and his flesh bore impressions left by the
baseball bat used to attack him. Investigators determined that
injuries to Earl's head were made by the claw end of a hammer. The
head injuries were so traumatic Earl's brain had spilled out of
his skull and pooled around his head.
Terry was found lying next to her bed. Her
skull was fractured by blows inflicted by the sharp end of a claw
hammer. Terry had been slashed and stabbed repeatedly on her face,
arms, neck, and back. One slash wound went from her wrist to her
elbow, and was so deep it exposed her bone. The attack was so
violent that the knife blade broke off during the attack.
Police first began suspecting Jimmy Robertson
when they traced a car parked just outside the Robertson house to
Douglas Moon, the father of Robertson's girlfriend.
Douglas Moon told police that his daughter
Meredith told him she used the car that morning to take her best
friend Erin Savage, who had allegedly cut her finger, to the
hospital.
However, Savage revealed that, in fact,
Meredith Moon was accompanying Robertson to Philadelphia to pick
up his younger brother Chip and had arranged for Savage to cover
for her. York County investigators notified Philadelphia police,
where they set up surveillance at Chip's apartment and arrested
both Robertson and Moon the next day.
Under police questioning for two days, Moon
initially said she was in the car while Robertson murdered his
parents. Eventually, she told police what she knew about the
murders and led investigators to the murder weapons.
Moon was originally charged as Robertson's co-defendant
with two counts of murder, armed robbery, and credit card fraud.
However, in exchange for her testimony, she pleaded guilty to two
counts of accessory to murder after the fact, and armed robbery.
Moon was sentenced to the 20 years in prison and will be eligible
for parole in seven-and-a-half years. She could have received a
maximum 60 years in prison
Because of the brutality of the murders and
because evidence suggests that Robertson plotted against his
parents, prosecutors sought the death penalty.
During the guilt-phase of Robertson's trial,
his defense seemed non-existent: Robertson's lawyers said they
would try to make prosecutors prove their case beyond reasonable
doubt. During the penalty phase, defense attorneys tried to save
Robertson's from the death penalty by arguing that he and his
mother suffered from bipolar disease, or what used to be known as
manic depression, and that Robertson's frontal lobes — the parts
of the brain that control impulses — were abnormal. The defense
also argued that, at the time of the murder, Robertson's abuse of
Ritalin triggered a psychotic episode.
At the time of James Robertson's trial, his
younger brother, "Chip" or Earl Robertson Jr., was not indicted in
connection with his parents' murder. Testimony in the guilt phase
revealed that James called his brother before he called Meredith
on the day of the murders. Just what Chip knew and when he knew it
remains a mystery. But there are suggestions that Chip also wanted
his parents dead, and may even have actively conspired with James
to kill them.
At this time Chip is in jail awaiting
prosecution on drug charges. South Carolina investigators are
continuing their investigation and have not ruled out charging him
as an accessory after the fact of murder in his parents death.
Man Convicted of Killing
Parents Rejects Death Sentence Appeal
Associated Press
February
24, 2005
In York, a Rock
Hill man convicted of killing his parents 7 years ago told a judge
that he does not want to appeal his death sentence to the South
Carolina Supreme Court.
James Robertson, 31,
spoke during a hearing Tuesday to determine whether he is
competent to withdraw the appeal.
Robertson, an
Eagle Scout with 2 years of college, told the judge his guilt has
never been in question.
He told The Charlotte (N.C.)
Observer that spending 60 years in prison would be much worse than
being executed.
"It's better to live life as
best you can in here and then to die," he said, "than to suffer
for 60 years."
Robertson, who has been on death
row for six years, murdered his parents Earl and Terry Robertson
in their Rock Hill home two days before Thanksgiving 1997.
According to court testimony, Robertson cut his mother's throat
and repeatedly stabbed her with a kitchen knife while she lay in
bed. He beat his father with a claw hammer and a baseball bat.
Prosecutors portrayed Robertson as self-centered and obsessed with
getting rid of his parents so he and his brother could inherit
their $2.2 million estate.
Defense attorneys
said a dangerous mix of mental illness and drugs led Robertson to
kill.
In court Tuesday, Robertson said he is
being treated for manic depression and takes three medications.
But he said he understands the consequences of what he wants to
do.
Judge John Hayes didn't rule Tuesday and
didn't say when he will make a decision.
Son's appeal renews agony over parents' 'horrific'
deaths
The
Herald
January 24, 2007
Kathy Wood remembers how her parents told her about sitting at the
kitchen table more than 10 years ago, listening to the neighbor
couple's apology.
That's what neighbors who have
kids do. They try and settle problems over coffee at the kitchen
table.
The neighbors' son had broken into the
house of William and Alma Wood, then stolen their car and credit
cards. He would soon serve months in prison as a youthful offender.
"They tried to be good parents," Kathy Wood said of the neighbors
on Rock Hill's Westminster Drive. "When they sat at that table,
they had courage. That took guts."
Not too long
afterward, in November 1997, the couple that came to the kitchen
table to apologize for their son were brutally killed in their
home. Their names were Earl and Terry Robertson.
The same son, James "Jimmy" Robertson, was sentenced to die after
he was convicted of killing his parents. He's been on death row
ever since, making news along the way as he changes his mind about
whether to fight execution.
Jimmy will be in
court again next week. He filed a lawsuit claiming his trial
lawyers were ineffective.
"I wish you wouldn't
do another story on him," Kathy Wood said Tuesday. She was on the
phone in her family house on Westminster Drive, so close to where
Earl and Terry Robertson were beaten to death that she can see
where the cops hovered after the bodies were found.
She remembers "the gawkers" who drove by and stopped to look after
the media kept reporting more and more on the story of the slain
Springs executive and his wife, and the son who did it.
Wood said she has no problem with the death penalty for Jimmy
Robertson. She said Terry and Earl Robertson in death were "dragged
through the mud" in an attempt to save Jimmy Robertson's life
during the trial.
Painful coverage
Since conviction, Jimmy Robertson has dropped his appeal and then
filed the lawsuit. Nobody knows what Jimmy's motives are but Jimmy.
"He just wants publicity," Kathy Wood said. "If nobody gave him
attention, he'd just shut up and die."
Some
don't want coverage of what is going on with Jimmy Robertson. Too
painful for Rock Hill, many say. It is painful.
But that doesn't change that Jimmy Robertson, from a well-off
family, after the private schools and all the rest, was convicted
of killing his parents because he wanted their money.
And now he's going to court again with a chance, albeit slim, to
get a new trial.
A neighbor from around the
corner, Linder Tucker, called Terry Robertson "warm, loving,
giving."
"We were like sisters," Tucker said.
Tucker remembers what she described as the "All-American family."
Then she remembers the trial testimony of another neighbor who
told the jury Jimmy talked before the killings about murdering his
parents.
"Then he did it," Tucker said.
Tucker went to part of the trial, watched Jimmy Robertson cry. She
didn't buy Jimmy Robertson's tears for one second.
Tucker wants the story to be followed, closely. So that people
remember Earl and Terry. "Not just him," Tucker said of Jimmy.
A pastor's call
Yet, Tucker, like the
Rev. William Pender from Oakland Avenue Presbyterian Church, said
Terry Robertson would be first in line Monday pleading for her
son's life.
Pender seems to be a standup guy. He
does what preachers are supposed to do. He helps someone in his
fold look at death.
Even if the person killed
the parents that Pender knew so well.
Jimmy
Robertson is still a member of the church, Pender said. He still
gives Robertson "pastoral care," and it has "never been an issue
to take him off the rolls."
Pender hopes to see
Robertson at the York County jail, where Robertson arrived earlier
this week, before Monday's hearings. Pender equated Robertson
facing death to a terminally ill church member facing death.
Pastoral care doesn't mean making excuses, Pender said. Not a
whitewash. Not that Earl and Terry's death wasn't "horrific." He
has to balance honoring the memory of Earl and Terry Robertson
with the needs of the son convicted of slaughtering them.
I asked Pender if the Robertsons' death 10 years ago, and all that
has happened since, affected people in York County.
"Absolutely," Pender said.
So Monday, in court,
the wounds of patricide open again.
