http://www.wchstv.com/newsroom/oh/news4.shtml Priest charged in 1980 slaying of nun always a suspect
April 24, 2004 1:35 PM
A Roman Catholic priest remains in a Toledo jail on charges that he strangled and stabbed a nun in 1980.
Police charged the Rev. Gerald Robinson with murder late yesterday in the killing of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
The two worked together at Toledo's Mercy Hospital where he was the hospital's chaplain.
Retired deputy police chief Ray Vetter investigated the killing.
He says it was the worst crime he's ever seen.
Robinson was a suspect because he was near the chapel at the time of the killing.
But police never could gather enough evidence.
They reopened the case about five months ago.
Police Chief Mike Navarre says it was "new technology" that led them back to Robinson.
Murder tied to priests' club?
While the threats against Brady are unsettling, there are indications that those who delve too deeply into the connection between clerical homosexuality and child abuse – finding perversion slipping into an abyss of satanic ritual – may pay for their curiosity with their lives.
In the late 1980s, two young Chicago private investigators, Bill Callaghan and Hank Adema, agreed to assist a "friend of a friend," whose child had been molested by a priest of the Chicago Archdiocese.
The parents of the abused child sought help after the Archdiocese under Joseph Cardinal Bernardin threatened to counter-sue following their original allegations. Before the scandal of clerical child abuse came to the public's attention through the efforts of the mass media, it was common practice for a diocese to file a libel suit against parents who charged diocesan clergy with abusive behavior.
As their investigation into the background of the abusive priest proceeded, Callaghan and Adema discovered the existence of a homoerotic group, made up mostly of priests, calling itself The Boys' Club.
During their inquiry into the membership and activities of The Boys' Club, a woman identifying herself as the girlfriend of a murdered church organist contacted the investigators and stated that she had information that would be useful to them.
The woman's friend was one Frank Pellegrini, once the organist and choir director at All Saints-St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Chicago's South Side. Pellegrini had also served as chair of the Sociology Department of Loyola University of Chicago.
According to the information obtained from the girlfriend, Pellegrini had a homosexual relationship with one of the priests involved in The Boys' Club, but was in the process of leaving the priest-lover and marrying her.
Before completely severing ties with the priest, however, Pellegrini discovered that The Boys' Club was involved with far more than homosexual relations. Tied closely with their sexual exploits was ritualistic satanic worship and the regular abuse of young children from low-income, ethnic families.
Pellegrini informed the Chicago Archdiocesan Chancery, and scheduled a meeting with one of the archdiocese's top officials.
The day before the meeting, Pellegrini was brutally murdered in his home, which showed no signs of forced entry.
Callaghan, who spoke with police personnel originally working on the case, stated that Pellegrini was found with his hands tied with barbed wire and had been stabbed repeatedly.
Even Pellegrini's dog was slashed, leaving it seriously wounded but alive.
In the opinion of police detective/profilers working on the case, the brutality and manner of the killing indicated that it was carried out either by a woman or a homosexual, Callaghan stated.
Pellegrini was stabbed 47 times – the same number of years he had lived.
Just after Pellegrini's body was discovered, and while police were still on the scene of the murder, police observed two unusual incidents, Callaghan reported.
The first involved the arrival of then-Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago – and one of the most powerful men in the American Catholic Church – Joseph Bernardin. Although there was never an indication that Bernardin met Pellegrini, he arrived at the murder scene and quizzed police personnel on the progress of the investigation.
Left unanswered was how Bernardin learned of the killing and why he should personally visit the scene of a relatively unimportant individual whom he had no reason to know.
The second incident involved Pellegrini's dog. As the police conducted their investigation at the scene, the dog remained quiet, still suffering from its wounds. When the dog saw priests come into the apartment, it suddenly became aggressive and barked wildly.
The Pellegrini murder occurred in 1984 and was "reopened" with federal funds in the early 1990s, but many of the investigation's informal police notes have been "lost," and important leads in the case have never been fully followed up, according to Callaghan. The Pellegrini case, at present, remains one of the many hundreds of unsolved Chicago murders.
Although Callaghan never met Pellegrini, nor participated in the original investigation, he and Adema found that whatever secrets the case entailed posed a direct threat to their own lives.
As Callaghan and Adema pressed on with their investigation on behalf of their client, they learned of a warning, which came through contacts in the Chicago Police Department.
Callaghan learned that mob informants had stated that a contract had been offered on his life, and on that of Adema, by an individual closely tied to the Pellegrini case.
Although no one in the local underworld was interested, there did exist the real possibility that the contract could be accepted by "a black or biker gang," Callaghan revealed.
The full extent of The Boys' Club influence in Chicago – and beyond – still remains unclear, as does the extent of ritual abuse associated with clerical assaults on children.
http://www.catholiccitizens.org/platform/platformview.asp?c=8568Now I've heard everything.
This poor nun...the pervert priest should get the death penalty.