Wife of convicted murderer faces trial
State police suspect that Helen Gillin has been dead for 10 years. The 26-year-old mentally retarded woman disappeared from her Bear Rocks, Fayette County, home in 1992. Her parents, police allege, continued receiving and cashing her Social Security disability checks in the years after her disappearance.
In 1995, Mary Jo Overly, Gillin’s sister, confided in a friend that she saw their father, James Gillin, and mother, 52-year-old Roberta Gillin, kill Helen Gillin in 1992.
Four years after that friend turned Overly’s confidence over to police and Overly wore a wire and allegedly caught her parents on tape discussing the killing, James and Roberta Gillin were charged.
While James Gillin’s case already has been decided – a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and related charges in January 2001 – his wife is scheduled to go to trial this week.
Roberta Gillin, free on bail and living in Masontown, will defend herself against criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse and two counts of conspiracy.
Police allege that when Roberta Gillin found out that her husband and Helen Gillin were having an affair, she tried to poison the young woman with a cocktail of detergent and other ingredients. When that attempt failed, however, Roberta Gillin instructed her husband to beat their adopted daughter to death, police allege.
A jury convicted James Gillin of doing so in the couple’s backyard fire pit.
Testimony at James Gillin’s trial revealed that when it took too long to beat Helen Gillin to death, Roberta brought out a knife to help him finish the job. That knife, according to testimony, was never used, because Helen Gillin died.
After her death, the Gillins burned their adopted daughter’s body and then had their other, natural children clean out the fire pit and throw out the ashes, police allege.
Although an archeologist recovered bone bits in 1999 from the place where the children said Helen Gillin’s body was dumped, DNA tests could not prove that the fragments were hers.
Nonetheless, prosecutors proceeded with cases against the couple and, at one point, planned to use Roberta Gillin to help convict her husband.
In accordance with a plea bargain arranged with prosecutors, Roberta Gillin was to testify against her husband in exchange for pleading guilty to third-degree murder and serving four to eight years in prison. After Overly took the stand, however, and testified to the events of the day her sister died, prosecutors opted to keep Roberta Gillin off the stand. However, they upheld the plea bargain.
Ultimately, the court refused the deal, prompting Gillin to enter another plea, which a different judge accepted. That plea was withdrawn, however, and Gillin is headed to trial, represented by attorney Paul Gettleman.
First Trial Assistant District Attorney Joseph M. George Jr. said Friday that prosecutors are not concerned about a taped interview Overly did after her father’s trial.
Overly appeared on the syndicated Montel Williams Show last year on an episode about murder in families.
George said Overly said nothing on the show that would be in conflict with her prior testimony in her father’s case, and he added that both he and District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon felt that her interview would not be a factor in the upcoming trial.
The case is scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection before Judge Gerald R. Solomon. Prosecutors are seeking a first-degree murder conviction, which carries with it an automatic life term in prison, since prosecutors did not file to seek the death penalty.