Reporting Highlights
- Quick-Lived Investigation: After Clayton Robust drove his spouse’s physique to a hospital in Idaho, the coroner took his phrase that it was a pure demise.
- A Historical past of Purple Flags: Police had beforehand made repeated visits to the Strongs’ dwelling in Florida. After an officer referred to as in grownup protecting providers, the couple left city.
- One other Spouse Dies: Clayton Robust was indicted in homicide of the following lady he married. Each ladies’s households say Idaho’s flawed coroner system is partly responsible and wishes reform.
These highlights had been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
Clayton Robust pulled as much as a tiny hospital in Idaho, walked by the emergency room doorways and instructed a clerk that his spouse’s physique was outdoors of their SUV.
A sheriff’s deputy was on the hospital speaking to Robust by the point the coroner arrived. This was an “unattended” demise: one the place no physician might attest to a medical motive for the individual’s demise. That made it the coroner’s job to find out how and why she died.
Robust, a stocky man with white hair and bushy eyebrows, defined that he and his spouse lived in an RV park on the sting of the woods close by. He mentioned his spouse had been bedridden for years with Parkinson’s illness. That morning she’d woken up and requested for peanut butter and water, Robust instructed the deputy. He discovered her useless a while later.
The coroner regarded over Betty Robust’s physique. It was skinny and frail. He didn’t see a motive to suspect something aside from a pure demise for this 75-year-old lady. The sheriff’s deputy gave the impression to be happy with the reason too. So, the coroner dominated that Betty Robust died round 8:40 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2016, from issues of Parkinson’s, and he signed off on permitting cremation of her physique.
Lower than 5 years later, Clayton Robust’s subsequent spouse turned up useless, too: shot within the chest in Texas.
It seems that each marriages had a historical past of home unrest, with visits from police who documented threats to every lady’s security.
It’s inconceivable to know whether or not a unique strategy to investigating Betty Robust’s demise would have uncovered foul play. What is definite is that clues and proof within the case had been misplaced eternally — and Idaho’s system for demise investigation let it occur.
Relations of each ladies consider a extra thorough investigation of the demise in Idaho may need saved the lifetime of Clayton Robust’s subsequent spouse in Texas.
“Somebody reveals up with a useless physique and simply says they died of pure causes,” mentioned Amy Belanger, one in every of Betty Robust’s youngsters. “I imply, actually, do you simply take their phrase for it?”
The reply isn’t any, in response to 5 of six nationwide demise investigation consultants ProPublica consulted. They mentioned the coroner ought to have obtained medical data to substantiate Betty Robust was identified with Parkinson’s, examined the trailer the place her husband mentioned she died, or each.
“You possibly can consider all types of situations — legal, unintentional or pure — that might have occurred there,” mentioned Jennifer Snippen, a demise investigator, educator and advisor in Oregon. “However my argument is, when you don’t go to the scene and also you don’t take a look at the medical data, you simply don’t know.”
Many of the county coroners in Idaho are part-time elected officers with tiny budgets and no oversight or state funding to help their work. The nationwide consultants mentioned that type of system is extra vulnerable to cursory investigations just like the one into Betty Robust’s demise.
The failure to reform demise investigations in Idaho has raised alarms for greater than 70 years, in response to present and former Idaho coroners and former ProPublica reporting.
A nationwide journal referred to as Idaho “one of the best place within the nation for a legal to ‘get away with homicide’ within the literal sense” due to the state’s “antiquated county coroner’s system,” the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported in 1951.
Requested whether or not murderers have escaped prosecution in Idaho’s coroner system, Wealthy Riffle, coroner for the county that features Boise, mentioned, “My humble opinion? Sure.”
That nearly occurred in 2019 when one inexperienced Idaho coroner determined to take the phrase of Chad Daybell that his spouse, Tammy Daybell, had died in her sleep after power well being issues, vomiting and a cough. Her physique was later exhumed after his subsequent spouse’s youngsters went lacking. An post-mortem by the Utah medical expert’s workplace discovered what medical data would have proven, had the Idaho coroner requested them: Tammy Daybell was wholesome. A jury convicted Chad Daybell of murdering her by asphyxiation and of killing his subsequent spouse’s two youngest youngsters. The case is underneath attraction.
At trial, coroner Brenda Dye mentioned she had regrets. Her voice shaking, Dye instructed the court docket she would have ordered an post-mortem if she’d identified higher, however “at the moment, with my restricted coaching and being new, I did one of the best I might.” She declined ProPublica’s interview request, citing the case’s impact on her psychological well being.
Credit score:
John Roark/Publish Register by way of AP
Idaho isn’t the one place the place demise investigations fall brief. As a result of there isn’t a uniform federal system, the rigor with which your demise is investigated will depend on the place you die. Different states lack sufficient forensic pathologists to do autopsies. And plenty of native techniques like Idaho County’s are squeezed for cash.
However even amongst its short-staffed, underfunded friends, Idaho stands out. One measure is the state’s post-mortem price: third-lowest for autopsies in all deaths, final within the nation for autopsies in identified circumstances of murder.
Gov. Brad Little mentioned in January that he would help extra state sources to assist Idaho’s coroners do their jobs. However he by no means acquired the possibility; coroner-related payments handed by the Idaho Legislature this yr contained no funding or different help for coroners and demise investigations.
So for now, every of Idaho’s 44 coroners will bear prices that different states assist cowl: driving a physique a whole bunch of miles to an post-mortem; paying for a few of these autopsies; or making an attempt to recruit yet one more individual to affix Idaho’s statewide forensic pathology workforce of three.
“If you happen to don’t care sufficient about how demise investigations are achieved in your jurisdiction to spend money on the folks doing it, to offer them with the sources or to have excessive sufficient requirements for the folks that you just rent to do that, you’re going to get what you get, what you settle for,” mentioned Snippen. “You’re going to get what you enable to occur.”
Florida, 2010-2015
Betty Brock was a mom of seven who loved singing and artwork, lengthy bicycle rides, organizing household pictures and researching her ancestry.
She was caring for her terminally sick husband in 2010 when Clayton Robust befriended her on the web, in response to Belanger, her daughter. Robust claimed to be “principally destitute and dwelling in his automobile,” a backstory that appealed to a lady with a tender spot for taking in “wounded folks” and making an attempt to heal them with love, Belanger mentioned.
Robust drove a whole bunch of miles from Southwest Florida and confirmed up on the Brocks’ property within the Florida panhandle. They agreed he might sleep in his automobile there so long as he helped with caregiving and housekeeping. Quickly he was sleeping in an outbuilding on the property, then in the home.
Betty’s youngsters had been puzzled as this newcomer turned a fixture of their mom’s life. They wished to provide Robust an opportunity, however they quickly grew suspicious.
Betty Brock’s husband died in August 2010. By January, she was Betty Robust.
After their courthouse marriage, Clayton Robust used their now-shared funds to purchase a Ford truck and an Airstream trailer and took his bride on the highway, Belanger mentioned. The couple visited nationwide parks that Betty had at all times wished to see. They camped and hiked their means throughout the continent. They purchased mining claims and panned for gold within the distant Idaho wilderness.
Credit score:
Courtesy of Amy Belanger
After that honeymoon, the partitions round Betty Robust grew impenetrable, her youngsters mentioned. Based on what two of her youngsters instructed ProPublica and to statements two others made to police, Clayton turned the gatekeeper of all communication with their mom, and he padlocked the doorways of their Florida dwelling and held the important thing.
The final time Betty Robust noticed her major care physician in Florida was in Might 2013, in response to data her son obtained after the demise. Earlier than that, she hadn’t been in since 2010, the yr Clayton Robust entered her life. The notes from the 2013 checkup present well being points widespread in older adults however no Parkinson’s analysis, and neither Parkinson’s nor different neurodegenerative ailments had been listed within the household historical past part.
The kids watched from afar as the wedding devolved over the following two years. Between January 2014 and February 2015, police went to the couple’s residence for welfare checks and home disturbances a minimum of six occasions, in response to police experiences that Belanger supplied to ProPublica.
Her youngsters instructed police that Clayton Robust threatened to shoot them in the event that they set foot on the property, threatened to harm their mom in the event that they didn’t again off, and prevented her from seeing a health care provider.
Within the first of these police visits, in January 2014, the data present that Belanger’s sister, who lived close by, referred to as the sheriff whereas standing outdoors the Robust residence, a brown home surrounded by oak bushes and pines on a winding nation highway. A deputy arrived to search out Belanger’s sister and Clayton Robust in a stalemate, then talked to everybody outdoors, in response to a sheriff’s workplace report. The deputy then watched as Betty Robust turned to her husband to “ask him for permission” to hug her daughter, and Clayton Robust “eliminated a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the porch entrance gate so Betty might go within the yard” for the hug.
The report says the deputy made a referral to Florida Division of Youngsters and Households, the company that investigates doable abuse of weak adults, and that the division opened a case.
An analogous scene performed out when one in every of Betty Robust’s sons went to the home to test on her in February 2015. For 2 years, Clayton Robust turned the son away when he tried to go to, and this time Robust “threatened to shoot him with a gun if he didn’t depart,” the son instructed a sheriff’s deputy. Clayton Robust denied that, the deputy’s report says.
The deputy discovered Betty Robust alone on a mattress in an RV parked behind the house, the report says. She mentioned she had Parkinson’s illness and couldn’t get round effectively. Clayton wasn’t holding her in opposition to her will, she instructed the deputy, however she couldn’t handle herself with out him.
She had a walkie-talkie. The deputy requested: Is Clayton utilizing that radio and telling you what to say? Betty answered “no” whereas nodding her head “sure.” It was a cold afternoon, and the deputy seen Betty had a blanket however no heater.
“Betty’s demeanor, dwelling circumstances, and the controlling conduct by Clayton” warranted a referral to the Florida Division of Youngsters and Households, the deputy wrote.
Requested for the result of that referral, a spokesperson instructed ProPublica the division investigates “all allegations of abuse, neglect, or exploitation” however that data of these investigations are confidential underneath state regulation.
Days after the referral in February 2015, police had been once more dispatched to the Florida dwelling. This time, it wasn’t one in every of Betty Robust’s youngsters who referred to as; it was somebody from grownup protecting providers in want of police backup. Based on the dispatch log, the employee mentioned Clayton Robust “has threatened earlier than to tug a gun on her and could be very anti-law enforcement.”
The couple left city a month later. Betty Robust’s youngsters by no means heard from her once more.
Credit score:
Courtesy of Amy Belanger
Idaho, December 2016
By the point Betty Robust died in Idaho County in December 2016, she hadn’t been seen in Florida in 21 months.
Idaho County’s elected coroner, Cody Funke, had been within the job about as lengthy.
He knew the county effectively. Its huge forests, mountains and meadows stretch throughout extra land than Massachusetts. Rugged and distant, it attracts individuals who need to be left alone and who mistrust each authorities and standard drugs.
Funke, pronounced “funk,” was in his late 20s in 2014 when he realized his part-time job at a funeral dwelling was being eradicated. His boss requested: Had he thought-about working for coroner? The coroner on the time was retiring and urged Funke to do it. So did Funke’s boss from his different part-time job, as an EMT. What sealed the deal for Funke: As coroner, he would get medical health insurance.
Funke began the job with a sense of “good luck, godspeed, you’re gonna want it.” There was no apprenticeship or ride-along to observe seasoned execs, like he’d gotten when he skilled to be an EMT. There was a coaching convention he attended in Las Vegas earlier than taking workplace, and Funke acquired greater than double the 24 hours of coroner training required by Idaho regulation. Even so, he isn’t positive it was sufficient to organize him.
Funke realized on his first day that he wasn’t getting a car to maneuver our bodies from a demise scene. If the native funeral dwelling’s car was occupied, Funke had to make use of his household truck. A yr after Betty Robust’s demise, the county fee acquired the coroner a car: a pickup truck the sheriff’s workplace didn’t want anymore.
The workplace he inherited additionally had no digicam, and the county hadn’t budgeted to provide him one. He’d have to make use of his cellphone to take photos of our bodies and demise scenes.
There was no morgue.
The Idaho County coroner’s workplace didn’t even have an precise workplace.
Funke’s predecessors stored their recordsdata on paper, at dwelling, he realized. The earlier coroner’s home had flooded, so when Funke took over, all that remained slot in two manila folders.
The coroner’s total funds this yr is $85,651. By comparability, coroner’s places of work serving small populations had a mean funds of $280,000 in 2018, in response to a nationwide examine.
Paid $13,000 a yr, Funke is on name 24 hours a day and, final yr, investigated and dominated on 71 deaths, about one each 5 days. Papers on an extra 102 deaths of individuals underneath a health care provider’s care got here by needing his signature for cremation.
Funke does the coroner work on high of a full-time job. When a name is available in throughout enterprise hours, he dips out to go to a demise scene. If somebody dies at dinnertime, he may not see his household till morning.
He should resolve with every demise what the circumstances require: a easy cellphone name; an all-out investigation with post-mortem, witness interviews, tissue samples and extra; or one thing within the center.
To look at a demise scene, Funke may need to drive three hours or longer every means. At any time when he orders an post-mortem, Funke or his deputies must take the physique to the closest post-mortem heart, a visit that takes a full day and normally calls for an in a single day keep. His present funds can cowl 10 autopsies a yr.
Credit score:
Liesbeth Powers for ProPublica
In these first years as coroner, Funke typically leaned on police.
Funke discovered it unusual that Clayton Robust had loaded his spouse’s physique into their SUV and pushed to the hospital. Most individuals name 911 to report a demise and anticipate assist to reach, Funke mentioned. However Robust supplied an evidence that appeared to fulfill the sheriff’s deputy: He didn’t know many individuals on the town and wasn’t positive what to do.
Robust had mentioned his spouse hadn’t seen a health care provider as a result of she caught to homeopathic treatments. That’s common for Funke to listen to.
The widower gave Funke the impression a coroner and sheriff’s deputy wouldn’t be welcome contained in the trailer the place she died. That’s not so outdoors the norm for Idaho County both, Funke mentioned.
Betty Robust’s demise regarded like a simple name. So Funke helped transfer her physique to a cot to be taken from the hospital to a neighborhood funeral dwelling.
Based on a later report from the sheriff’s workplace, Clayton Robust confirmed up on the funeral dwelling that day, mentioned he wished her cremated and paid $2,310 in money. The way in which Funke heard it from a funeral dwelling worker just a few days later, Robust paid in $100 payments out of a lunch field.
The element struck Funke as peculiar. However he let it go.
Florida, 2017
The couple’s Airstream trailer confirmed up sooner or later in January 2017, parked outdoors their home in Florida. A neighbor referred to as Amy Belanger with the information, and she or he dispatched her brother, Daniel, who lived close by. They’d spent virtually two years fearing the worst.
The one individual on the home was Clayton Robust.
The household’s matriarch had died just a few weeks in the past in Harpster, Idaho, Robust mentioned. Then he instructed his son-in-law to get off the property.
Amy Belanger began making calls the following day. One of many first folks she reached was Funke, the county coroner. She was perplexed, she mentioned. Why hadn’t anybody referred to as her or her siblings? Why didn’t he query whether or not Betty Robust had really succumbed to a illness or if one thing else had killed her? Belanger instructed Funke in regards to the historical past of police calls in Florida and considerations about their mom’s security.
Funke thought again to what he’d heard from the funeral dwelling. A lunch field of money for a cremation? That picture by no means sat fairly proper. Now he had stable floor for suspicion. Funke instructed Belanger he’d speak to the county prosecutor and see what might be achieved.
The prosecutor and the sheriff’s workplace initially instructed Belanger that they had opened a murder investigation, in response to an in depth timeline she created on the time. However the demise scene — the Strongs’ trailer — was lengthy gone, the physique cremated. The sheriff’s investigator and prosecutor in the end didn’t appear to suppose there was sufficient proof for a murder investigation, Funke instructed ProPublica.
(The prosecutor and sheriff’s investigator didn’t return cellphone calls, emails or licensed letters from ProPublica requesting touch upon their selections following Betty Robust’s demise.)
Notes from Belanger’s timeline quote a Florida detective saying he was sorry the demise had occurred outdoors his jurisdiction. He defined to her that “in Florida, deputies would have had the medical expert’s workplace confirm medical data and take a blood pattern.”
The yr Betty Robust died, 20% of pure deaths investigated by a medical expert within the a part of Florida the place she had lived underwent autopsies earlier than the examiner determined the reason for demise was pure. About 65% of all deaths taken in by Florida’s medical expert that yr had been autopsied. Each numbers dwarf Idaho’s coroner post-mortem charges.
It’s not simply Florida. Many states have extra refined techniques for investigating deaths than Idaho’s. In a lot of the nation, centralized state medical expert places of work oversee all demise investigations or present a backstop to elected coroners in every county.
Idaho’s rural neighbor Montana has a hybrid system of health workers and coroners, supported by a coroner liaison who works with demise investigators to make the method extra constant statewide. And subsequent door in Wyoming, a state board units guidelines for coroners to observe. The foundations spell out what every demise investigation ought to embody: scene investigation, toxicology pattern, DNA pattern, pictures, exterior examination of the physique and a list of property, proof and drugs.
Jennifer Snippen, the demise investigator in Oregon, was one of many consultants who drafted the Nationwide Institute of Justice’s 2024 death-scene investigation guidebook.
She mentioned demise investigations usually tend to be thorough when states and counties give their investigators sufficient funding and training, “in order that they’ve the motivation and the flexibility to get to as many scenes, and get as a lot details about each single demise, as doable.”
Those that examine the work of coroners and health workers within the U.S. have realized that the deaths of aged persons are particularly prone to be written off as age-related, with out contemplating whether or not the individual might have additionally been a sufferer of abuse or neglect.
Snippen’s analysis in 2023 is likely one of the most up-to-date research to substantiate that. She reviewed knowledge from 1000’s of circumstances. The individual least prone to get a scene investigation or post-mortem? An aged lady who dies at dwelling.
Lauri McGivern, a nationally acknowledged skilled in demise investigations, mentioned nationwide requirements would have Funke confirm Betty Robust’s Parkinson’s analysis and ask extra questions of Clayton Robust as the only caregiver of a weak grownup. McGivern, who coordinates medicolegal demise investigations in Vermont, reviewed the information that Funke was given on the time of Betty Robust’s demise and his subsequent report at ProPublica’s request.
To observe nationwide requirements, McGivern mentioned, Funke additionally would have gone to the Airstream trailer or requested regulation enforcement to look at the demise scene and report again to him.
However McGivern and different consultants mentioned they perceive why Funke didn’t observe these nationwide pointers — as a result of they’ve seen it occur so many occasions in locations like rural Idaho.
“He’s doing what he was proven find out how to do,” McGivern mentioned. “And doubtless doing one of the best he can, with no funds and no help and no training.”
Credit score:
Liesbeth Powers for ProPublica
Annoyed by how little Idaho officers knew and why they hadn’t dug additional into her mom’s demise, Amy Belanger channeled her grief into looking for solutions on her personal.
She adopted a path of public data left by Clayton Robust. Had he harmed different ladies? Had he been in a relationship with anyone who went lacking? “I used to be wanting into his previous to see if there was a sample like that,” Belanger mentioned. One thing she might share with officers in Idaho.
Then she stumbled throughout a doc: a latest marriage license.
Three months after depositing Betty Robust’s physique at a hospital in Idaho, Clayton Robust wed a lady from Texas.
Belanger wanted to warn her.
Texas, 2017-2021
Shirley Weatherley had lots in widespread with Betty Robust. She was a mom and grandmother. She’d been married earlier than. She lived in a small, modest dwelling on a big piece of land in a rural locale, the place she’d been caring for a terminally sick former partner when Robust contacted her on Fb.
They’d identified one another as youngsters in Lubbock. Their reconnection after he arrived at her home in Weatherford, a suburb of Fort Price, finally started to fret her youngsters.
“He remoted her,” mentioned Jamie Barrington, Weatherley’s son with a earlier husband. “He wouldn’t let grandkids, my brother — anyone’d come over, he simply stored them at arm’s size.”
Credit score:
Courtesy of Jamie Barrington
Barrington mentioned he and different members of Weatherley’s household had suspicions about Robust. Then they related with Belanger and heard what occurred in Florida and Idaho.
Belanger urged the household to inform their mom all the things they’d heard. She “really was pleading with us to be careful,” Barrington recalled.
Figuring out one other household was anxious helped gas Amy Belanger’s quest for the reality about her mom’s demise. Her siblings chipped in to assist Belanger lease a van and drive throughout the nation searching for clues — something that might make clear her mom’s demise.
As soon as she acquired to Idaho, Belanger spent greater than every week investigating. She met with the coroner and sheriff. She went to the mining claims the Strongs had bought. She stayed on the RV park the place Betty Robust died and interviewed the individuals who’d owned it in 2016; they remembered speaking to one another about how “hinky” the demise and Clayton Robust’s response to it appeared.
Again in Texas, Weatherley’s household tried to warn her.
After they relayed the story about Betty Robust to her, Weatherley chalked it as much as a grieving household making an attempt to deal with loss by greedy for an evidence, Barrington mentioned. In spite of everything, Robust had a demise certificates that listed pure causes.
The small print Barrington later realized from members of the family and police about his mom’s life with Robust had been “fairly horrific,” he mentioned. Weatherley had reported that Robust threatened to kill her, however no expenses had been filed. Then at one level, within the midst of an argument with Robust, Weatherley lobbed the accusations about Betty Robust’s demise at him, Barrington mentioned. Robust flew right into a rage.
Weatherley referred to as police in July 2021. She and Robust had been splitting up, and he shoved her whereas transferring his stuff out of the home, Weatherley instructed the officer. Robust had “harm her” up to now, so she referred to as police to ensure it didn’t occur once more, the officer’s report says. The officer acquired Robust’s facet of the story — she was “working him off,” however he didn’t push her — and caught round till Robust agreed to go away.
Police would later doc discovering two objects in the home. The primary was a replica of Weatherley’s will that left all the things to Robust, on which she’d written “VOID,” the second was a digital digicam hidden of their bed room. The digicam contained selfies of accidents to her face and chest and a video of Robust placing his arm round her neck as she screamed for assist.
Robust persuaded Weatherley to let him again into their dwelling as soon as extra on Aug. 4, 2021, in response to police data.
4 days later, Weatherley’s son and grandson discovered her physique wrapped in a grey tarp close to the entrance steps to her dwelling. She’d been shot within the chest. Authorities matched shell casings on the scene to an AK-47-style rifle, which safety footage confirmed Robust ditching in a buying cart outdoors a Walmart.
Picked up later by police in Mexico, Robust died of cardiac arrest whereas awaiting extradition in Weatherley’s killing.
Credit score:
Parker County Sheriff’s Workplace by way of Fb
Right now
Jamie Barrington, Shirley Weatherley’s son, was reluctant at first to talk publicly about his mom’s demise in Texas, even years later. He agreed to speak with ProPublica, he mentioned, as a result of he needs Idaho’s coroner system to enhance. He mentioned he by no means imagined {that a} demise like Betty Robust’s might be dominated “pure” based mostly on what a partner instructed authorities.
“I actually consider that if there had been a correct investigation and never taking his phrase for it,” Barrington mentioned, “that it in all probability would have made a giant distinction” in what occurred to Shirley Weatherley.
Phrase of Weatherley’s homicide finally reached Funke, the coroner in Idaho. He mentioned in hindsight, Robust’s actions in Idaho County appear extra suspicious than they did on the time to his inexperienced eyes and ears.
Now, after 10 years as coroner, “I might have pushed a bit of bit tougher” to have an officer or deputy observe up or go to the RV park with him. He would have requested police to make use of a nationwide database — one he didn’t learn about on the time — to search out Betty Robust’s members of the family and study extra about her background. “I’ve belief points after circumstances like this,” he mentioned.
Funke mentioned the story of Betty Robust’s demise must be instructed, even when it reveals that he and Idaho County made errors, as a result of it could possibly assist lawmakers perceive what’s flawed with the state’s system.
Idaho’s coroners want extra funding, he mentioned, as a result of proper now they’re an afterthought in county budgets. Most counties set a coroner wage at what quantities to lower than minimal wage, so it’s inconceivable for somebody like Funke to be coroner with no second, full-time job.
“These places of work needs to be totally staffed,” he mentioned. “Perhaps we now have one or two folks which can be right here full time to reply questions and reply to those calls, versus, ‘Hey, I’ve acquired to take break day work, boss.’”
And he believes new coroners who lack expertise needs to be required to discover ways to work a case from begin to end earlier than they’re referred to as out to a demise like Betty Robust’s.
Daniel Belanger, one in every of Betty Robust’s youngsters, got here away from his interactions with Idaho County officers satisfied that the one means deaths like his mom’s will probably be correctly investigated is thru laws forcing coroners and regulation enforcement businesses to alter their approaches.
“They utterly dropped the ball,” he instructed ProPublica.
Amy Belanger mentioned her household has reclaimed only a few of her mom’s possessions from the Airstream trailer. Robust emptied the Florida home of household heirlooms after their mom’s demise, Belanger mentioned. Many of the household photograph albums her mom toiled over are gone.
The brown home on the winding highway in Florida remains to be there. Belanger’s recollections of household cookouts and vacation gatherings linger in the home; they weren’t wiped away by the police visits and padlocked doorways. However the household dwelling isn’t the household’s anymore. Years later, it’s caught in authorized limbo — the deed nonetheless within the identify of Clayton Robust and Shirley Weatherley, the girl he married after the demise of Betty Robust.
