“The State has proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, and presented evidence that puts him there, puts him telling people what he did. And that is enough.”
That was the prosecution during the closing argument that sent Terry Robinson to death row for a crime he has always maintained he knew nothing about. There wasn’t any physical evidence in the case that could tie Robinson to the murder.
We don’t have to have DNA. We have to present enough evidence so you know in your heart that he was involved, and he did this. The State has done that.
“So, convict this man. Don’t let him out.”
The jury did just that.
Robinson was in the area of the murder that night. It was normal for him to be in the area. Robinson lived in Wilson, North Carolina, and he had a girlfriend who lived across the street from the Pizza Inn, where a murder occurred, not to mention friends and relatives in the surrounding area.
DNA exists in connection to the crime, but it does not point to Terry Robinson.
There are also two latent fingerprints and one palm print available, but they do not point to Terry Robinson. According to the testimony of Special Agent Navarro of the NC State Bureau of Investigation, “Terry Lamont Robinson did not make any of the latent fingerprints that were of value for identification purposes.”
When asked, “The long and the short of it is, palm prints or other kinds of prints, nothing matched?”
Agent Navarro responded, “That is correct.”
There were hairs collected. They weren’t hairs that matched Ronald Bullock, the one man who said he was involved in the crime. They weren’t Terry Robinson’s. According to Special Agent James Gregory, assigned to the Trace Evidence Section, when asked if he was able to find a match between what was collected at the crime scene and samples from Ronald Bullock and Terry Robinson, “I did not find any hairs that had a root attached to them that were consistent with the known head hair standards collected from the – from Terry Robinson, or Ronald Bullock.”
There was a gun associated with Terry Robinson, which Robinson doesn’t deny being connected to. But when asked specifically if the bullets used in the murder were from the gun associated with Robinson, Special Agent Marrs responded, “It could not have been fired from that .380 pistol, State’s Exhibit Number Two.”
Terry Robinson was not an angel. He had a criminal record and sold drugs for a living, but the gun associated with him was not the gun used in the crime.
The case rested with two men who accused Terry Robinson of murder. Both of those two individuals have since contradicted their own testimony. According to the testimony of Ronald Bullock, who accused Terry Robinson of hatching the plot to rob the Pizza Inn, pulling him into it, and eventually murdering a man in front of him, they stopped by Jesse Hill’s home before the crime. Bullock testified that Robinson asked Jesse Hill to participate in the crime as well.
“He said he didn’t want to be part of it. We were crazy.” Bullock then testified he and Robinson dropped Jesse Hill off at his mother’s home.
After Robinson’s conviction and sentence to death, Bullock had something different to say – things he didn’t share with the jury. “Jed (Jesse Hill) gave me his dreadlocks and a headband to wear as a disguise. Jed rode with us to the Pizza Inn and to ride behind the Pizza Inn at the apartment complex.”
Bullock went on to say that Jesse Hill, “was going to get some money for his part for the help.” Bullock, in a written statement then described the robbery which differed from how he described it in his original testimony, and he also stated Jed said, “I want my dreadlocks back.”
That written statement, made in 2003, was how Terry Robinson first learned the dreadlocks he had heard about at his trial – belonged to Jesse Hill. The dreadlocks used as the murderer’s disguise, were actually made of hair that belonged to one of his accusers. A jury never heard that. They actually heard Jesse Hill described by the prosecution as an innocent ‘hero’ who received nothing for his help with the case. That turned out not to be true as well.
Jesse Hill has had a few things to say since the trial also, much of which contradicts what the jury heard.
Following is more of the closing argument from the prosecutor when he described Jesse Hill – at length.
“Now, Jesse Hill. If you ever wondered why people don’t want to come forward and testify in cases when they witness things, or they know things in a crime? If you ever wondered why? Because this man gets up there and he is trying to tell you the truth. And all the defense can do is malign him, to go on and try to trip him up on times, which don’t matter, because he said it was light or dark or whatever, and then act like, ‘You’ve got worthless check convictions?’ as if that would somehow equate with what happened in Boulder, Colorado when the Ramsey girl disappeared. Or, maybe a Bosnian war criminal.”
“He knew about something that happened that was terrible, and he could not live with the fact that they had told him about it, he knew about it, and he knew it was wrong.”
“This man is a hero.”
“He testified against his cousin, and he’s getting nothing out of it. And, don’t you know that if he was getting something out of it, both of these men would have brought it up. But, no, they want you to become cynical. They want you to look at everything, even when a man is trying to do the right thing, they want you to look at it like, ‘Well, what’s he getting out of it?’”
“Did Bullock ever come forward and say, ‘Well, yeah, Hill was involved, too. He did so-and-so.’ Which they’re going to try and make you believe, which isn’t true.”
It turns out… the prosecution was mistaken. Ronald Bullock has since stated Jesse Hill was involved, from the planning, to supplying a disguise, to being promised a cut, only the jury never heard that part.
If Terry Robinson had known anything about the murder at the Pizza Inn on May 16, 1999, if he had gone to Jesse Hill’s home prior to the crime, taken Jesse Hill’s dreadlocks and worn them in the Pizza Inn while he murdered somebody – it stands to reason he would have nudged his attorney when the dreadlocks were submitted as evidence at his trial. It stands to reason he would have said, “Hey, that hair right there belonged to Jesse Hill.” It stands to reason, facing a death sentence, Robinson would have indicated the man being hailed as a ‘hero’ was involved in the crime and his hair was found at the crime scene. It also stands to reason – Terry Robinson didn’t say anything because he didn’t know where the dreadlocks came from at that point in time.
In 2003, eight days after Ronald Bullock told an investigator the dreadlocks belonged to Jesse Hill, Hill confirmed the dreads where his, saying he supplied the dreadlocks to Ronald Bullock for a disguise, and that they were his hair. He also told the investigator he had told the police and the prosecutors about supplying the dreadlocks, but he didn’t remember when he told them. In addition, Jesse Hill said he received $5,000 for his help in the case.
Over the years, Jesse Hill, has been interviewed on a couple occasions. According to the original case file in 1999, Hill initially called police and told them Ronald Bullock and Terry Robinson were responsible for what took place at the Pizza Inn, and after sharing that information with police, Hill then drove with them to show them where Bullock lived. More recently he remembers it differently, saying Bullock turned himself in, “I heard he called the police while I was at my sister’s house.” “I heard he called them, they came down there and they locked him up.”
In contrast to Bullock’s 2003 statement regarding Hill’s involvement, Jesse Hill is adamant he had nothing to do with what took place that night in spite of his own 2003 interview with an investigator in which he admitted supplying the disguise. “That man had a family. You don’t do stuff like that. Get a job. I had a job. They coulda had a job, they coulda worked. They didn’t have to do what they did. Come on, man.”
When asked about Bullock’s statement regarding a cut of the money from the planned robbery, “No! I don’t know nothin’ about no money. Come on, man.”
Although they don’t agree on a lot there is one thing the two agree on. Jesse Hill and Ronald Bullock both agree Terry Robinson shot and killed a man on May 16, 1999.
Several years ago, when asked if he would have testified in court about the dreads if he had been asked, Jesse Hill responded, “Sure, if he asked me, yeah.”
But – neither attorney did ask him. So, the jury never heard Jesse Hill, the ‘hero’, was involved in the crime.
Jesse Hill, in contrast to what he said years earlier when he admitted to supplying a disguise for the crime, later said, “They did it them self, they need to handle it.” “They robbed that place because they want to. I ain’t got nothing to do with that.”
He even seems to have a different perspective of who went to the police, “Montrel was with him. Montrel the one told people what happened. That’s why they had so much on him. Cause he was with him. Shit, it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me and nobody else.”
I have reached out to Ronald Bullock and Jesse Hill for a response, but have not heard back. I’ve also reached out to the public, and I am doing so again. If you saw Terry Robinson at any time during the day or night of May 16, 1999, please contact me at kimberleycarter@verizon.net. According to Robinson’s accusers, he was with them the entire day from midday through approximately midnight.
The above photograph was shared with me by Terry Robinson’s mother, who has quietly stood by her son’s side for over two decades. She told me Robinson was about fifteen years old in the photograph. He is second from the left with the white hat on, and had been working in the tobacco field that day. Although not asked, Jesse Hill also spoke of Terry Robinson’s mother several times.
“His mama know how that boy is. I don’t know why she’s trippin’.”
“She know how her son was.”
Terry Robinson writes for WITS when he is not working on other various projects. You can read some of his work here. He has also co-authored Crimson Letters, available on Amazon. Details of his case can be found here. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at:
Terry Robinson #0349019
Central Prison
4285 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
