Posted on 08/13/2009 11:34:55 AM PDT by GSWarrior
The gruesome death of Jim Robinson nearly 40 years ago to the day was replayed Tuesday in a Mesa County courtroom in a wrongful death suit being pursued by Robinson’s son.
Matt Robinson of Grand Junction is suing Meeker sheep rancher Nick Theos for damages related to his father’s death, which was attributed decades later to exposure to thallium, a poisonous element used in the 1950s and 1960s for a variety of purposes, from killing insects to coyotes.
Nick Theos frequently used thallium to kill coyotes and other predators, Matt Robinson’s attorney, Keith Killian, told a jury of five women and two men during opening statements Tuesday.
No witnesses, however, ever saw Theos administer thallium to Jim Robinson, Killian acknowledged. His case in that regard is circumstantial, he said.
Opposing attorneys pointed out that Robinson himself was selling thallium to Meeker-area ranchers at the time he began showing symptoms of the illness that ultimately killed him.
But Theos had carried on a long-term affair with Robinson’s wife, Lois, and married her after Jim Robinson died, Killian said.
Nick and Lois Theos also actively opposed efforts by Matt Robinson to exhume his father’s body, and Nick Theos once threatened Rio Blanco County Sheriff Si Woodruff as he investigated the death of Jim Robinson, Killian said.
The findings made by Dr. Robert Kurtzman, a pathologist and former Mesa County coroner, suggest a long-term exposure, then a “killing dose” of thallium was administered to Jim Robinson, Killian said.
Robinson died Aug. 31, 1969.
Kurtzman first opined in 1996 after reviewing medical records that Jim Robinson’s death throes were the result of thallium intoxication. That led to the eventual exhumation of Robinson’s body in April 2001, at which time Kurtzman found thallium in Robinson’s body and declared his death a homicide.
No criminal charges ever have been brought in the case.
Attorneys for Theos and the estate of Lois Theos said the wrongful-death case was strained at best and filed too late in any case. Under Colorado law, such cases must be filed within two years of the time a potential plaintiff becomes or ought to be aware of what took place.
Matt Robinson secretly taped-recorded his mother in 1996 after Kurtzman first said it was likely that Jim Robinson died of thallium intoxication. He didn’t file the wrongful death lawsuit, however, until 2002.
Lois Robinson ultimately married Nick Theos, but it was seven years after Jim Robinson’s death, said Sam Starritt, attorney for Lois Theos’ estate. She used her husband’s life-insurance proceeds to pay off her home and raise her children, Starritt said.
Matt Robinson’s case, Starritt said, amounted to a “grain of truth and a silo full of fabrications.”
Nick Theos’ attorney, Dan Wartell, said the evidence would suggest a long-term exposure to thallium killed Jim Robinson, not a large-dose exposure, and he called the suit a “quest for money” by a son who had been disinherited.
Killian told the jury he was seeking between $91,000 and $161,000 in economic losses and that he would discuss an award of non-economic losses and punitive damages later.
The trial before Judge David Bottger is set to continue for eight days.
And now we know the rest of the story. Jim Robinson died long ago. Jim Thompson has been impersonating him for decades.
What.. no ‘Erin Jockitch’ involved?
I use to stay at the Meeker Motel while hunting elk over in the shale oil reserves, nice little town.
Murder and betrayal in the hinterlands, with coyotes.
There was a huge uranium mining boom just west of Grand Junction during the 1950’s. Heavy metals of all sorts were being released into the air, earth and water all over the region. The whole place was hot as the proverbial pistol.
That is why I am bald.
Does Colorado have a Statute of Limitations?
He had contact with the poison through his own free will activities. Nothing in the article suggests a firm conclusion that he died of a lethal dose rather than long term exposure.
I lived on a house built on the tailings. My aunt swam in a pool that was where the tailings went in Uravan. My grandparents and parents grew up there. So far so good. My grandmother lived to be 98, my grandfather 83, my mother is 85, my father is 92 and my aunt is still alive as well. I almost think the stuff might be GOOD for you!
Aa fellow wrote a nice little book about growing up in White Mesa (?), a little “location” now under Lake Powell. The book was called, I think, White Mesa.
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