Post by Joanna on Mar 30, 2014 17:28:10 GMT -5
Brutal Murder of Pennsylvania Mother an Enduring Mystery
When David Hibbs exited the school bus near his home in Bristol Township, Penn., on Friday, April 19, 1991, he was anxious to find his mom. It was a sunny afternoon – and report card day – and the 12-year-old boy had just made the honor roll. Unfortunately, that happy moment in time proved to be short-lived. When he approached his house, a horror unlike any other he had ever experienced unfolded before his eyes. “When I got to the house, I noticed smoke coming out of a window,” Hibbs told police. “I also saw my mom’s car in the driveway and I ran around to the back entrance, where I usually entered the house.” He pulled open the back door, which opened into the kitchen area, and was hit in the face by a plume of thick smoke. “There was smoke pouring out. I remember noticing that all four burners of the stove were on. I envisioned my mom cooking something, leaving the stove on and somehow the whole house caught on fire.”
The thick smoke made it impossible for the boy to venture any farther into the family’s three-bedroom, one-story home. He needed help and fast: His mother was inside the house. He did not see her when he peered through the smoke billowing into the kitchen, but somehow knew she was still inside. “I was hysterical and crying out, ‘Help, help, my mom is in there,’ and I got the attention of a neighbor who was weed-whacking,” Hibbs recalled.
When he looked up from his lawn work, Varan Lowry, 45, noticed the smoke coming from the house next door. “The kid was yelling that his mom was inside the house,” Lowry, now 68, said. “There was a guy doing some concrete work for another neighbor, so I waved to him and he came running over.” Lowry and the concrete worker attempted to enter the house through the back door, but the smoke and intense heat forced them back. “When the kid opened the back door, it let oxygen in, allowing the fire to run rampant,” Lowry explained.
Within minutes, a half-dozen other neighbors joined the two men. Some used garden hoses in an attempt extinguish the flames, but all was in vain.
“I asked him [David Hibbs] where he thought she would be and he said she was probably napping in her room,” Lowry recalled. “We broke a window to that room, but she was not there.”
Firefighters were soon on the scene and a paramedic got the hysterical child into the back of an ambulance. Later, Hibbs said he didn’t remember how long he was in the ambulance. Time, he said, felt like it was standing still. “The [paramedic] was trying to calm me down. I was banging on the door because I felt trapped and overwhelmed. I don’t know how long it took them to put out the fire.” Then his mind went blank and the next thing he recalled was the paramedic giving him the worst news of his young life: “He finally said, ‘Your mom is dead,’ He said it [without emotion] and I was stunned.”
Firefighters found the body of 36-year-old Joy Hibbs in her son’s bedroom. According to retired Bristol Township Detective Lt. Richard Bilson, the scene inside the bedroom was horrific. “She was lying face-up on a mattress that was nothing but springs,” he reported. “Her body was black – completely burnt beyond recognition. She looked like a mummy and the entire room was charred.”
Initially, fire investigators believed Mrs. Hibbs was the tragic victim of a house fire, but the following day, the coroner confirmed only part of that theory – her death was tragic, but it was no accident. “The coroner advised us she died before the fire started,” Bilson said. “He located five stab wounds to her neck and chest, and there was a computer cord wrapped around her neck. At that point, it became a homicide investigation.”
Unfortunately, there were few clues. The fire had gutted much of the interior of the residence and anything that wasn’t scorched was watered down or unwittingly trampled upon by firefighters. “There was nothing we could dust for prints or get DNA from,” Bilson added. “We were literally without any physical evidence.”
Fire investigators determined the fire was started in the same bedroom where the body was discovered. They checked for a variety of accelerants, but were unable to identify any, meaning the cause of the fire was unknown, Bilson recalled. The woman’s body was too badly burned for the coroner to determine if a sexual assault occurred, however, an item found at the scene suggested she wasn’t. “When we examined her, her clothes were burned off, but the snap that was on her jeans – the waist snap – was intact and still closed,” Bilson explained. “If her jeans had been pulled off, it is unlikely that the [perpetrator] would have took the time to redress her. The fire was set by the [perpetrator] to cover his tracks. The fire was strictly an afterthought, to destroy evidence.”
In addition to the lack of evidence, authorities were having trouble establishing a motive. Joy Hibbs, according to friends and relatives, was a charming country girl who grew up in northern Florida, where she met and married her husband. The couple settled in Pennsylvania. “She loved the outdoors,” her husband, Charlie Hibbs, then 36, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in July 1991. “She liked to fish, to work in the garden and to cook. We spent a lot of time together. We went everywhere together.”
David Hibbs shared similar memories: “She had a really good spirit. She was graceful, polite and easygoing.”
Without a motive, investigators concentrated on putting together a timeline of the victim’s activities the morning of her murder. After sending David and his 16-year-old sister, Angie, off to school, she went to a local bank to cash her paycheck from her job as a medical assistant, leaving the bank at approximately 9:53 a.m. She then went grocery shopping and a receipt showed she left the store at 10:54 a.m. Shortly thereafter, the Rev. Furie Orlando, a minister at Bensalem Baptist Church, visited Joy Hibbs at her home. The 71-year-old minister was accompanied by another church member. Orlando, who died in 2004, discussed the visit in a July 1991 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. He said he called on Mrs. Hibbs after she expressed interest in joining the church when she stopped in at Easter. “I asked her if she was 100 percent sure that if she died, she’d go to heaven," Orlando told the Inquirer. “She looked a little disturbed to think that spiritually she was not ready for heaven, but we prayed there in the living room and she had tears of joy, for she knew then that she would go to heaven.” According to Orlando, she was “saved and born again that day.”
Bilson questioned Orlando, the associate who was with him and other members of the church. “We questioned them and that went nowhere. They all fully cooperated.”
Orlando and his associate left the Hibbs home just before noon.
Two other things occurred at the house that day before David Hibbs exited the school bus at 1 p.m. First, a neighbor saw a 1980s-model, dark blue Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked in front of the house between 12:30 and 1 p.m. The second was a sighting by Lowry – a sighting previously unreported in the media. “While I was doing the lawn, a [garbage man] went in back of the house,” Lowry recalled. “I don’t know why he went back that way because the trash was out front. I told police about it, but they just washed it aside.” Lowry said he didn’t remember what time the garbage truck stopped at the house, but believed it was sometime between the pastor’s visit and the time David Hibbs got off the school bus.
Bilson was unaware of anyone providing information about a garbage man. “That is news to me,” he said. “Our whole division was working on it, so I don’t know if another detective was aware of that or not. If I had heard about it, I would have investigated it.”
The other lead – the one involving the mysterious Monte Carlo – was investigated by police. “There was a suspect that developed to some degree, a Robert Atkins,” Bilson revealed. “He drove a Monte Carlo and Charlie Hibbs readily admitted he had purchased small amounts of marijuana from this guy.”
According to Bilson, upon being shown the Atkins vehicle, the witness who spotted the Monte Carlo in front of the Hibbs residence was adamant that it did not match the Monte Carlo she saw that day. Nevertheless, it was the only lead, so he asked Atkins if he would voluntarily submit to a polygraph examination. “He refused,” Bilson said. “That raised my antennas, but there was not enough probable cause to do anything with it.”
Atkins admitted he knew the Hibbs family and sold them marijuana. “Yes, I would get them some [marijuana],” he told police. “We both bought about a quarter ounce a week. I was not a dealer and they gave me the money and I’d get it. I haven’t done that in a very long time.”
However, David Hibbs remembered overhearing his parents talking about a disagreement with Atkins in the weeks leading up to his mother’s murder. “I remember hearing my mom talking about it on the phone two weeks before this all happened,” he explained. “My dad wanted my mom to return pot because he said it was all stems and seeds.”
Atkins also admitted there was a disagreement over the sale of some marijuana. “I think it was Joy that brought it back … and wanted the money back," he claimed. “But they took pot out of it and added seeds to it. I told her, ‘I can’t take it back. That guy would be mad at me thinking I was trying to rip him off.’”
The disagreement was known to investigators. “It’s not like these people were buying pounds of marijuana,” Bilson insisted. “It was small amounts and even if they owed someone $20 or $40, is that going to result in a homicide? That doesn’t make sense.”
As for the polygraph, Atkins said he had good reason to refuse it. “I had a torn nerve in my shoulder and carpal tunnel. My attorney advised me not to take the test [because] the nerves could throw it off.” He also had an alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the murder. “We left for the mountains that Friday and came back Sunday,” he told reporters. “Detectives I knew and respected came to my home that Sunday or Monday, I believe, and told me what happened. I honestly couldn’t believe it, because she wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
According to Bilson, the lack of identification of the witness who spotted the Monte Carlo, as well as the alibi Atkins provided are what prompted authorities to cease looking at Atkins as a possible suspect in the case. “He was in the Poconos,” Bilson said. “I sent two detectives up there to where he was staying, along with a photo of him, and my detectives came back and said they had verified he had been there at the time of the murder.”
After ruling out Atkins, detectives took a closer look at the victim’s personal life. She and her husband had celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary six days before she was killed and investigators wanted to know if any issues were festering below the surface. “I spoke to people that knew them,” Bilson continued. “I asked if she was running around or if he ever bitched about her. Every time the people would say, ‘No, no, no.’ Everyone said they were happy and in love.”
Bilson also interviewed Charlie Hibbs. “He was fully cooperative. He took a polygraph and passed with flying colors. He was willing to do whatever we wanted him to.”
In his July 1991 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charlie Hibbs said he was devastated by his wife’s murder. “I don’t believe in God anymore,” he admitted, “If there was a God, this wouldn’t have happened. She never hurt anyone in her life. She had me on a diet and not smoking. Now, I’d die tomorrow and I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me. I’m sick to my stomach all the time.”
So far as is known, Joy Hibbs had only one enemy – the one who killed her – and for more than two decades, authorities have been unable to determine just who that someone is. This, to David Hibbs, is unacceptable. “I honestly believe they know who did it and they botched the investigation,” he declared. “All of the detectives who worked on it retired shortly thereafter. These were cops who had put their time in and were waiting to retire. They didn’t know what they were doing.”
Bilson said he could understand why David Hibbs is angry, but does not believe there’s anything more he could have done. “I know the son thinks we did a shitty job, but it was his mother and if it had been my mother, nobody would have done it good enough, either,” he said. “What he does not understand is, if you don’t have evidence or probable cause, you don’t have anything.”
In the past 22 years, little has changed. The current investigator assigned to the case, Bristol Township Lt. Terry Hughes, said only that it is an active and ongoing investigation.
For now, it would seem, the case remains as cold as it was in the weeks following the murder.
“I’ve grown up feeling like there is always something missing,” David Hibbs admitted. “I feel cheated by the person that did this. I want people to ask questions about what happened. I want them to care about what happened. I want them to care that police could not solve it and I want them to be outraged by that.”
Sources: The Philadelphia Inquirer; Bristol Township Police Dept.; and David Lohr, The Huffington Post.